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| Welcome to my Blog! Wander through worlds real and fictional, meet interesting people, visit exciting places and find good books to enjoy along the way! |
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| About the Book |
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| Read An Excerpt |
The rebel drums proclaimed the
march. Stentorian voices from five
points around the Castle bawled their commands and, slowly, the Parliamentarian
host began its advance. Tension on the
battlements reached its peak … and outside the walls, Colonel Fiennes’ troopers
began chanting a psalm.
This proved too much for the
Cavaliers. A growl rumbled through the
ranks of Lord Northampton’s green-jackets and one burly trooper shouted,
‘Bugger me, lads – we can do better than that!’ And the tension dissolved into
a rollicking, popular parody.
Fight
on brave soldiers for the Cause, fear not the Cavaliers
Their
threat’nings are as senseless as our jealousies and fears.
How
often we Prince Rupert killed and
bravely won the day
The
wicked Cavaliers did run –
‘They’re coming,’ snapped Justin,
killing the song mid-verse. And to his abruptly attentive men, ‘This is it,
boys – but no one fires till I give the word.
Clear?’
Having halted briefly well out of
range, the rebels came on at the run clutching bundles of furze and scaling
ladders. For those moving in from the
north and east, there was little useful cover and this made the work of
Captains Vaughan and Ambrose relatively straightforward. But to the south and
west, Sir William and Colonel Greene faced approaches sheltered to within
twenty yards of the moat by low stone walls and the blackened ruins of houses. The ruined west wall could naturally expect
to bear the brunt of the attack.
The Royalist artillery fired its
opening volley, bringing forth screams and confused shouting and veiling the
enemy advance in a swirling, acrid haze.
‘Steady, my lads,’ yelled Justin,
peering through the smoke. ‘Steady …
give them time … now!’
The harsh crackle of musket-fire
ripped the air; more screams, blue scarves crumpling earthwards; others taking
their place and running on.
‘At
will!’ Justin levelled his own pistol and picked off a tall, helmeted
officer.
Answering volleys of cannon-shot and
grenadoes were now raining on the upper part of the Castle from the
Parliamentarian artillery in the church tower.
A musket-ball took Hugh Vaughan in the shoulder and he was carried
inside semi-conscious. Meanwhile, on the
north side, the first men had gained the moat and were throwing their bundles
of furze into the mud to form a crossing.
Behind them, rows of musketeers formed up to give them covering fire –
greatly needed since the garrison’s shot was falling about them like hail and
taking a heavy toll.
‘Justin?’ Dirty and already hoarse from the smoke and
bellowing his orders, Ned Frost paused briefly in his labours. ‘What’s that
their file-leaders are shouting?’
‘Encouragement,’ replied Captain
Ambrose, swiftly reloading his pistol, ‘in the form of prize-money. Three
hundred pounds, to be precise.’
Ned stared at him. ‘Hell.
Fiennes is a bastard.’
The day wore on in fits and
starts. Attacks were fierce when they
came but the murderous fire of the garrison prevented them being pressed home
and, by late afternoon, the pace began to abate as fatigue and hopelessness
grew like weeds in the Parliamentarian ranks.
The ground edging the moat was strewn with some three hundred forlornly
twisted corpses and littered with unused scaling ladders, firearms and even a
couple of muddy, tattered colours.
The garrison, when the tally was complete, found they had lost only nine men.
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Website: https://helenhollick.net/
Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick
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