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

response. He cursed his fear and bellowed at the men to press back against the hussars. But they were losing. Of course they were losing. There were just too many of the winged killers for seventeen pikemen to hold.
    ‘Now, sir!’ Ensign Forrester’s voice screeched at his back.
    Stryker glanced over his shoulder and nodded. When he turned back to the fight, he raised his sword and screamed, ‘Down! Down!’
    The pikemen fell. Every man dropped into the shallow water as though the bones had been sucked from his legs, lying flat, face in the chill Oder, body grinding against the stones.
    And the volley exploded. Forrester had waited until the last man was clear and given the order to fire before the lancers could trample Stryker and his squad. The ten muskets blasted forth, engulfed the ford in acrid smoke, and plucked the front two rows of horsemen clean into the river. They screamed for the briefest moment, and sank without trace, hauled down by their exquisite armour.
    The cavalrymen stalled, some turned, other tried to press on against the will of their mounts. Stryker seized his chance and ordered his pikemen to their feet. They scrambled up, shouldering pikes and turning back to the bank. One was too late, and he was skewered in the back by a horseman able to recover his wits, the lance bursting out through his ribcage, its pennon dyed from white to red. The rest made it quickly back, filing left and right past the wagon in the wake of Forrester’s musketeers.
    Stryker reached the west bank, revelled briefly in the hardness of dry land beneath his feet, and turned to count the men. They had lost just two pikemen, and that was a blessing, but now the real work would need to be done.
    ‘Reload!’ he bellowed at the musketeers. ‘Reload your pieces!’ He hailed Forrester with a frantic wave.
    ‘Sir!’ the ensign snapped.
    ‘Ready?’
    Forrester nodded. ‘Take half the pikes into the trees.’
    ‘Eight men,’ Stryker agreed. Christ, but it sounded so feeble.
    Forrester seemed to read the anxiety on his face, for he offered a thin smile. ‘Good luck, sir.’
    Stryker returned the words and ran back to the bank. The lancers had reached the wagon but, as he had hoped, they had striven no further. They swarmed around it, jabbing skyward with their lances and crowing their triumph as the man perched on the barrels screamed at them in German. The Poles laughed. Perhaps they did not understand his words, or perhaps the fury of victory had deafened them. Stryker did not care.
    He looked to his two small units, one bearing pikes, the other muskets, who Praise-God Sykes had organised a few paces into the clearing beside the riverbank. ‘Close up!’ he shouted. ‘Stay together!’
    The pikemen were ready, the long shafts braced at the instep of each man’s rear foot, tips angled up to meet any charge. Next to them were the musketeers, few in number, but primed and deadly. Their lips seemed to be working madly, every one of these granite-hard men whispering his own silent prayer.
    And then the noise about the cart seemed to change. The timbre of the Polish riders’ crowing was different, indistinct but definite, like the changing of the wind. They had realised their mistake. Antczak would be there, leading his men to their victory, and he would know that the man on the wagon was not Matthias, but an impostor, dressed in the spy’s clothes, head shaven to a clean baldness to complete the deception. Perhaps he had even noticed the man’s hands had been bound at the small of his back. Moreover, perhaps Antczak had noticed that the twine wound so tightly at his wrists was a length of match cord.
    ‘Now!’ Stryker screamed. ‘Now! Now! Now!’
    He did not look back to where the musketeer pulled his trigger, for the deafening crack told him the deed was done. He simply stood and stared as the lawyer, Buchwald, doubled over, a wide hole torn in his chest, and he prayed to God that the match still smouldered.
     
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