Free Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles by Michael Arnold Page A

onwards with a renewed sense of optimism.
    ‘And those nags are some of the best I’ve seen,’ Skellen’s droning voice cut across Stryker’s train of thought.
    Stryker caught the hint in his sergeant’s tone. ‘No one rides, Will.’
    ‘Just thinking what a nice journey this’d be on horseback, that’s all,’ Skellen muttered, glancing back at the eleven magnificent mounts they had taken from Wild and his men. The beasts – eight bays, two blacks and a roan – were tethered in a line behind the cart.
    Stryker shook his head. He had a horse, Vos, a big sorrel-coloured stallion, but he had taken the decision to leave him back in Launceston. ‘No man rides. I do not want us drawing attention to ourselves. Men on horseback are too conspicuous on these bleak horizons.’
    By noon the column had reached a high point on the undulating terrain, affording an excellent vantage, and topped by one of Dartmoor’s many granite tors. Those rocky outcrops, grey-stone blemishes on the bleak plains, provided excellent shelter from the whipping wind, and Stryker ordered they rest in its shadows.
    After setting a perimeter of pickets, Stryker went to where his most senior men had gathered. Many of them were lying on the damp ground, propped on elbows, but Ensign Chase was seated on a pale lump of granite. He vacated the perch on his captain’s approach.
    ‘Thank you, Matthew,’ Stryker acknowledged, and sat on the cold stone, his scabbard clanging against the granite.
    Skellen, having lit his pipe, began to sing songs of home. Ditties speaking wistfully of Gosport and Portsmouth, of buxom tavern maids and of the crashing sea.
    ‘How did you know Wild’s regiment weren’t nearby, sir?’ Lieutenant Burton asked after a short time.
    ‘I didn’t,’ Stryker replied bluntly. ‘But it was a reasonable guess. They did not come from the Bovey Tracey garrison, for they’d have passed us on the road.’
    ‘They probably didn’t know there was a new garrison at Bovey at all,’ Skellen put in, before resuming his lilting tune.
    A flock of small black birds raced overhead, changing direction in the blink of an eye, like a mass of speeding thunder clouds. Stryker watched them dart back and forth, amazed at the unison with which they moved. ‘So they’re a detached unit,’ he said when the birds had disappeared from view. ‘Mobile and sturdy.’
    ‘When it is’nae raining,’ Simeon Barkworth replied with a sharp-toothed smirk.
    ‘They roam where they may, watching the Cornish border, harrying our troops, carrying messages.’
    ‘Recovering arms caches,’ Burton added.
    ‘Indeed,’ agreed Stryker. ‘But if you were Wild, would you use your entire regiment for that task?’
    Burton shook his head. ‘Not enough food and shelter on the moor to support that many men and horses.’ He paused in thought, taking the moment to scratch at his withered forearm with his good left hand. When he looked up, there was a new glint of understanding in his eyes. ‘Wild must be based in one of the towns on the moor’s fringe.’
    ‘That is my guess,’ said Stryker. ‘Newton Abbot. Exeter, perhaps.’
    Skellen ended his song. ‘I’d have still used more than a dozen men though, sir,’ he said, with a rearward jerk of his head to indicate the wagon. ‘Given the size o’ this meaty old stash.’
    ‘They did not expect to encounter you.’
    The voice was new to the conversation and the group turned to stare at the speaker. The man, the only one in the company dressed in the drab clothes of a common farmer, was sat, cross-legged, some ten or twelve paces away. It was the man who had driven the rickety cart for Colonel Wild, and who had been taken with his vehicle as part of the ambush. A man who had not met a gaze nor uttered a single word in the two days since his capture.
    ‘Speak, sir, if you have something for us,’ Stryker said when the carter suddenly turned away with a look of sheer terror.
    The group watched and waited as