THE GUNS WERE LOUD. They filled the air and shook the ground, the thudding carriage recoil sending shock waves up through Tom’s body. Smoke billowed in drifting clouds of white and grey, catching in the throat and bringing stinging tears. The gunners’ faces were already black with it, just their eyes showing white. The air reeked of gunpowder; he could taste it, along with the metal tang of adrenaline. No game had ever been as exciting as this.
Cannonballs flew, hitting the camp below, smashing tents, catching men as they ran out into the open. Screams and yells, thinned by distance, came on the wind. The sudden bombardment was causing just the kind of chaos that they wanted. His riflemen and musketeers were ranged across the hillside, one line behind the other. Their guns were cumbersome, loading slow, neither rifle nor musket accurate over any distance, but with one line loading while the other fired, they were keeping up a steady rate of fire. His orders were to make every shot count. Men below them were falling under the fusillade. He had the best shots next to him, aiming at the officers as they tried to organize and rally the men. The object was to harry and confuse, not to allow their enemy to form up and mount any kind of attack.
Augusta had told him to keep his sights on the big tent and wait for the commanders to emerge. There was no mistaking them. The first to come out was the fat guy with a pointy head, bursting out of his buckskin breeches, his blue jacket stiff with gold facings, with epaulettes the size of dinner plates, boots polished to mirror brightness and wearing the biggest bicorne hat that Tom had ever seen. He was joined by another, younger, in the red of a foot regiment, the white plumes in his tall hat waving in the wind. They were both making for horses that were being brought up for them. Tom had them in his sights, but with this weapon from this distance…
Before he could take his shot, the hat went flying. Augusta was standing above him, reloading, oblivious of the musket balls flying around her, cursing that she’d hit the hat not the head inside it. His own shot went wide and, by the time they were ready to fire again, both generals were spurring away—never mind the soldiers being blown to pieces around them—thundering through their own troops, the confused mess of the camp, riding over the dead and the wounded, making for the rear as fast as their horses could carry them.
The Duke and his son, Douro. She was not surprised at their pell-mell retreat. It was only to be expected. Their army was mostly for show, to parade and intimidate by sheer numbers. The officers were more interested in strutting round Glass Town, showing off their elaborate and expensive uniforms, than actually fighting. Her smaller force was made up of men from the North, loyal and unwavering, fighting for their land, their homes and villages, their way of life.
The strange young man who had appeared from nowhere seemed to know what he was about, but it wasn’t won yet.
She put the glass to her eye to scan the ground below her. The generals turning tail, with most of the officers behind them, seemed to have taken the heart out of the troops.
Augusta looked to her own lines. Their bombardment was constant but the piles of shot were diminishing. They couldn’t keep this rate of fire up for long.
She swung the eyeglass back, attracted by a movement below her. A line of battle was forming, organized by an officer on horseback, hatless and helmet-less, his long, curling chestnut hair streaming behind him as he galloped back and forth, shouting orders and waving his sabre. He was keeping on the move, riding up and down the line, turning and wheeling, deliberately making himself a difficult target. He was getting the men in place, getting them organized. They seemed to take on some of his reckless defiance; as soon as one man fell, another stepped up to take his place.
“Rogue” Percy. Whatever the odds, he would not turn and run. Neither would Captain Dorn. She could see his short, powerful figure marshalling the infantry, directing the men forward, bayonets at the ready. The line came on steadily through their own thinning cannon fire.
Rogue wheeled away, leaving the command of the infantry to Dorn. His return was just as sudden, at a thunderous gallop, sabre pointing forward, at the head of a column of heavy cavalry. Carabineers, armed with short muskets and horse pistols. Big men in plumed brass helmets, armoured front and back, bandoliers crossing their shining breastplates. He must have been keeping them in reserve. The mix of flamboyance and cunning was typical of him.
At his command, their sabres flashed red in the rising sun. At Dorn’s shout, the line of infantry broke apart, the cavalry streaming through the gap, preparing to fan out and charge up the slope, sabres drawn to cut to left and right, their big horses ready to trample the men on the ground.
Well, let them come…
“Back! Fall back!” Tom ordered, directing his men to higher ground. “Hold position!”
Their apparent retreat accelerated the charge, which was just what he wanted. The heavy horses, weighed down by the big men in their armour, were caught in the marshy ground at the base of the slope. The charge halted as the carabineers tried to free their horses from the sucking mud. Ball and bullet pinged off metal as the horses struggled. The air was filled with the frantic neigh and snort of frightened horses and the shouts and screams of the men as the musket balls found their mark. Horses and riders went down, adding to the melee and confusion. The carabineers returned fire from horseback, but they couldn’t gain the slope and their horses were sinking deeper into the quagmire. The helmetless officer wheeled his sabre three times as the sign to withdraw.
A ragged cheer went up along the line of riflemen and musketeers lying prone on the hillside. They had won the day.
Tom stood up, slightly unsteady, light-headed with elation. He’d never felt such a rush, such a buzz. He waved his hat, grinning and laughing, accepting the salutations of his men.
Below him, the young officer turned back, steadied his carbine over one arm and took aim. A punching blow to the shoulder threw Tom backwards. He looked down in wonder at the hole smouldering in his jacket, at the bright blood welling from it. For a long moment, he felt no pain, and then it hurt like hell.
Augusta didn’t see him go down, her attention taken by the enemy forces disappearing into the smoke and dust. The retreat was as unexpected as it was sudden, and not altogether to be trusted…
The enemy camp was strangely empty except for ragged women and children picking their way through the wreckage. Where they came from was a mystery but every battlefield knew them; they descended like the carrion birds—crow, raven and kite—wheeling in the sky above, ready to descend to feed on the dead and dying.
The boy. What had happened to the boy? Without him, the day would have been lost. This victory was his.
“Come, Keeper.”
The dog followed as she strode down the hillside. He had stayed by her side, steadfast through the fighting, undaunted by the din of battle and the cannons’ roar.
They found the boy being helped to his feet, supported by Webster and Roberts.
“He’s hurt, my lady. Hit in the shoulder.”
The boy was deadly pale and near to fainting.
“Take him to my tent. Have him tended to and look to the other wounded.”
The two men carried him between them, trying to be gentle, trying not to hurt him, but every jolt sent pain shooting through him and fresh blood leaking. He could feel it running down his arm, dripping from his dangling wrist. His sleeve and the front of his jacket were soaked, the stain black on the bottle-green cloth. What kind of game is this, where you feel real pain and bleed real blood?
He was lying on a small camp bed, Webster cutting his coat away for Roberts to inspect the wound. Roberts frowned and rolled up his sleeves. He washed his hands in the basin on a stand by the bed and dipped a cloth in the ewer to swab round the wound. He wrung the reddened water into the basin before soaking the cloth again.
“Here, lad, drink some of this.” Webster helped Tom to sit up and brought a bottle to his lips.
Tom coughed and gasped as the fiery liquid hit his throat.
“Steady, steady. Bit more. That’s it. You’re in good hands, lad. Roberts were ’prentice to a barber. He has medical interests, you might say. Heard tell he were a resurrectionist for a doctor who weren’t too fussy where the bodies come from, ain’t that right?”
The other man laughed. “Aye, right enough. Dr Bady. Used to stay and watch him working. Learnt a thing or two that way.”
He unfurled a roll of fearsome-looking instruments, selected a probe and a pair of long, pointed tweezers and thrust them into the glowing coals of a brazier. He took a swig from the bottle Webster was holding and handed it back to him.
“Pour some of that into the wound and the rest of it down his throat. Hold him!”
The pain from the spirit was searing. Tom bucked, gagging and choking as rum spilt from his mouth. He struggled even more as Roberts loomed over him, probe in one thin, long-fingered hand, tweezers in the other, but Webster was too strong for him. Roberts’s movements were quick and decisive.
The probe entering the wound brought a white-hot bolt of agony. Blackness gathered all around him and he seemed to be falling, falling…
“It’s for the best,” he heard a voice say. “It’ll be for the best.”
And then there was nothing.