Free The Stealers' War by Stephen Hunt

than twenty feet away, rocking in the mud ditch, thick waves of dark, acrid powder smoke pouring out of its dark iron barrel and enveloping Duncan’s position. Its crew didn’t bother cooling the barrel with water; they rammed another load into place, trimmed the fuse and set the sixpounder off again.
    With the noise of the artillery fire, Duncan only noticed the cavalry company cantering behind the artillery when it was nearly on top of him, its riders and mounts seemingly unconcerned by the cannons’ thunder. He groaned as he noted the officer at the fore was Viscount Wallingbeck.
    ‘Hold your fire!’ called Colbert, his command shouted on and passed down the wall.
    ‘Chased down many a fox through woods far thicker than this,’ Duncan’s brother-in-law hooted. ‘And rebel vermin don’t dig warrens to escape into.’ Viscount Wallingbeck spurred his horse forward, hurdling the wall and galloping towards the dark pines, yelling as his carbine tore bark off the trees. The nobleman was followed eagerly by his company, shredding their way through the undergrowth with heavy steel cavalry sabres and from the sound of it, riding down anything they encountered below their mounts’ hooves.
    ‘Forward the cavalry!’ came the infantry’s cries from behind the wall. General Colbert’s infantrymen rediscover their spirit quick enough when someone else shows up to do the dying for them .
    ‘Noble blood,’ said Benner, approvingly. ‘Quality of birth shows through every time.’
    Pity it didn’t rub off on the viscount’s wife. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Willow Landor was one of the rebels just aiming pot-shots at them from the woods.
    ‘A solid fellow,’ said Colbert. ‘A yard of sharp steel is a fitting last meal for those traitors.’
    Duncan suspected the majority of their ambushers possessed the good sense to pull back when they noticed cannons being loaded with grapeshot. Those left firing were only holding fast to slow the pursuit; but the rebels hadn’t counted on the reckless abandon of a brute like Viscount Wallingbeck riding with them. Colbert didn’t order the infantry in after them. Once the cavalrymen had the bit between their teeth, anyone around them was likely to be ridden into the mud and sliced at, friend and foe alike. A strange silence fell down the length of the road. Their column left as spectators. The creaking of cooling cannon barrels, shots and yells muffled by the undergrowth. Sentries were picketed just inside the trees to ensure their ambushers didn’t try to circle back. Wisely, in Duncan’s opinion, the artillery was left behind the wall in case they were needed to clear for action again. The road was emptied of corpses and dropped supplies, wounded soldiers attended to, horses calmed and wagons put back into some sense of order. Wallingbeck and his men emerged from the dark shade of the trees ten minutes later, a disarmed sergeant in a rebel uniform stumbling before them. A boot against his back from one of the riders sent the prisoner into the arms of the infantry.
    ‘This is all we have to show for the fight?’ demanded General Colbert. ‘A single damnable outlaw?’
    ‘There’re more bodies dead back there,’ said William Wallingbeck. ‘Not enough to account for the fire the column took, I’d say. With your permission, we’ll ride around to the eastern edge of the woods and see if we can flush out any of the pretender’s grouse that attempt to fly that way.’
    Colbert nodded and the horsemen rode off whooping, waving their sabres in the air.
    ‘I know you, man,’ said Benner. ‘You work for the Avisons as an estate manager.’
    ‘Not anymore,’ spat the captured soldier. ‘Now I work as a pig slaughterer. Southern pigs and the traitors who support them.’
    Duncan’s father might be an amateur officer, but he had a memory like a steel trap when it came to the business of the house. Particularly as it related to people who worked for