Free Marston Moor by Michael Arnold Page B

hard, grinding his lone eyelid down in a vain attempt to eradicate her. The servant drifted by, and Stryker thrust the vessel into the startled man’s hand, pushing his way out of the hall.
    Outside, the dying light and melding clouds had turned the world a uniform grey. There were small fires around the courtyard, but this time they had been lit for the warmth of sentries rather than the cooking flames of an entrenched garrison. Lathom House was more castle than manor, with a thick stone wall punctuated by eighteen imposing towers that provided plenty of billets for all the men. Stryker’s group were quartered in a modest guardroom close to the armoury, where their trio of heavily laden wagons had been placed for the night. He made his way there, leaving Hood to doubtless sink well into his cups before the night was over.
    A pair of musketeers watched him approach the armoury from up high on the rampart, and he plucked off his hat to acknowledge them. Even in the gathering gloom, they evidently recognised him, for both let him pass unchallenged through the archway below their feet. On the far side of the arch was a smaller yard serving the armoury rooms. His three carts were here, their stoic palfreys tethered to rings set into the stonework nearby. At dawn the vehicles would be unloaded, the powder barrels stored in the stout subterranean chamber serving as Lathom’s magazine, while the firearms, musket-balls and coils of match would be carefully stacked in the armoury’s cavernous rooms. It was much darker here, for the presence of black powder, despite the heavy, damp sheet that covered the cargo, made torches far too hazardous, and he had to speak softly to soothe the animals who scraped their hooves in agitation at his approach. His own mount, Vos, nuzzled into his touch. He was a powerful thing, a Dutch warhorse, trained to snap and kick at enemies and to ignore the thunder of cannon. He had been in battle many times, been shot at and stabbed, been captured at Newbury the previous March and liberated by Prince Rupert’s genius. Yet even he, Stryker reflected fondly, needed reassurance on occasion.
    ‘Evenin’, sir,’ Will Skellen’s voice broke the quiet.
    Stryker stared into the near impenetrable murk. After several moments, he caught the ghostly outline of a tall figure, slim and bald-headed. ‘Sergeant.’
    Skellen sidled out into the yard, his boots crunching on gravel. He wore nothing above the waist, revealing a bony frame that belied his immense strength. Stryker considered his sergeant as akin to a weathered tree, bowed and knotted and gnarled, but possessed of roots and boughs of seasoned toughness. ‘Would you tell Jack Sprat, sir, that we’re bound for the north?’
    A second figure appeared from the doorway, as Stryker knew it would. He looked at Simeon Barkworth, childlike next to the gigantic Skellen. ‘The north it is, Master Barkworth.’
    ‘The north, aye,’ Barkworth croaked, ‘but to what end?’ He thumbed the air between himself and the sergeant. ‘This long streak o’ piss claims we’ll engage the Covenanters.’
    Stryker shrugged. ‘I know not, except that the Prince intends to relieve York.’ The latest threat to the king’s greatest northern stronghold had come almost immediately following the heavy defeat at the Battle of Cheriton. Though the respective crises came from opposite ends of the country, their combined effect had delivered a hammer blow against the hitherto ebullient Royalist cause, and late spring had seen the sovereign’s forces frantically consolidating their positions, with a ring of new defences begun in order to protect the king’s capital at Oxford, and Prince Maurice, Rupert’s brother, charged with the swift conquest of the west. That left Rupert himself, who abandoned his operations in Wales and the Marches and set out from his base at Shrewsbury to assist the Marquis of Newcastle at York. But first they needed to secure Cheshire and Lancashire,