Stryker and the Angels of Death (Ebook) by Michael Arnold

Author:Michael Arnold [Arnold, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Murray
Published: 2013-06-20T06:00:00+00:00

Innocent Stryker reached the east bank of the Oder and reckoned he had been given a glimpse of Hell.

The second barrage of pistol shots had picked off half a dozen men, and he could see those bodies lying twisted and grotesque within the ranks, but that threat was now, at least, spent. It was the charge that mattered: the wave of crashing, screaming horses and men that now came raging out of the powder mist like winged gargoyles. He had known this would happen as soon as those first high-set pistol cracks had sung across the river, because it meant that there were more lancers out in the forest, and he realised that the first, failed charge had been nothing more than a feint. Though he was as green as any officer in Europe’s Protestant armies, even Stryker understood that a full volley loosed in the faces of those sacrificial horsemen meant that the English had exhausted any hope of stopping the second, larger attack. They had pikes, and those were designed for this kind of fight, but the men Stryker had fetched for Loveless were stuck at the throat of the ford, unable to filter up on to the bank in time to meet the horses, and the musketeers must have known their fate, for they were turning away from the thundering threat, only to find themselves prevented from stepping on to the narrow causeway by the pikemen pressing up behind.

Stryker looked on in horror as the desperate soldiers were trapped between the enemy cavalry and their own pikemen. They shoaled at the water’s edge, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, discipline seemingly swept away with the Oder’s swirling current.

The charge smashed home. Horses drew up in snorting fury as the men on their backs stabbed down with their long lances at heads and backs that were turned desperately away. Those spears drove impossibly deep, some plunged through torsos completely, their wicked tips reappearing as if part of some macabre magic trick, glinting red and draped in gore. The men further into the broiling mass of bodies were forced to turn back to face their persecutors, for they knew they would be skewered before they reached the water, and they lurched up, clubbing the horses with their heavy musket stocks or jabbing with their blades. But the lancers had drawn their own swords now, and were hacking and slashing at the nearest men, carving inroads into the tight wedge of frightened faces.

From back on the ford, Stryker caught a glimpse of young Forrester. The ensign was out to the left-most side of the braying herd, his blue eyes like twin moons, his face as pallid as a corpse. He shouted at the men, and Stryker realised that it was his words they heeded. They were holding the river’s edge at the behest of the young aristocrat. But Stryker was no longer jealous, only fearful, for where in all this was the captain? His eyes fell upon a prone form just outside the right flank.

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