Free Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles by Michael Arnold

mean.’
    Skellen looked at him then. ‘It was, sir. Though not in the way you think.’ He joined the captain in watching Stryker. ‘Out in the woods, when that bugger stabbed me . . .’
    ‘Someone stabbed you, Sergeant?’ Forrester exclaimed in mock horror. ‘By the nail holes of Christ Himself, man, you should have told us!’
    ‘Out in the woods,’ Skellen went on as though Forrester had not spoken, ‘the captain was—’ He hesitated, watched all the while by Forrester’s searching gaze. ‘He was angry, sir.’
    ‘He’s always angry.’
    Skellen nodded, though his face remained troubled, an expression Forrester had rarely seen. ‘Always angry, sir. But not this. This was . . . vicious. The man who stabbed me, sir. Mister Stryker broke his wrist.’
    ‘Quite right too, William. Decent sergeants are hard to come by.’
    ‘Thank you, sir, but he did it before the bastard drew his dirk.’ He shrugged. ‘Was more than that. The hate. The cold fury in his face. He’s not right.’
    Forrester glanced from sergeant to captain and back again. ‘You stay with him to protect others,’ he said in sudden understanding. ‘You’re afraid he’ll get into some scrape on account of that temper.’
    Skellen nodded. ‘He’s not right.’
    Forrester turned back to Stryker, who still forged ahead out of earshot. ‘Cuts a lonely figure, does he not?’
    ‘Wasn’t his fault, sir.’
    ‘It was that damnable greenback’s, Sergeant, I agree.’
    ‘Not the skirmish, sir,’ Skellen said, instinctively touching a hand to the place on his right thigh where the steel had punctured. ‘The lieutenant. Witch-catcher pulled that trigger, and none else.’
    Forrester let out a long, sad sigh, remembering Lieutenant Burton’s murder on that dusk-shrouded hill. He could still see the blood spatter in all directions, could hear the thud as first the young man’s knees and then his beaten torso collided with the ground. Those staring, lifeless eyes. ‘That being so,’ he replied quickly, ‘Stryker nevertheless feels responsible for his men.’
    ‘Lost a lot o’ men over the years, sir.’
    ‘Haven’t we all,’ said Forrester. ‘But Burton was different, William, you know that. More like a brother – no, a son – than a subordinate. And they’d quarrelled of course.’
    Skellen sucked at an unseen tooth, wincing slightly. ‘Aye. Up on that bitch of a tor.’ He looked across at Forrester. ‘They’d resolved it, mind.’
    Forrester sighed with a hint of impatience. ‘But young Andrew’s death was due to his recklessness. And that recklessness was nothing if not an attempt to regain some favour with the good Captain. Stryker knows that truth well enough, no matter what muttering platitudes we might offer to absolve him. He feels it as keenly as that wound in your leg.’ He dipped his shoulders, fixed Skellen with a stern stare and let his voice drop to a hoarse whisper. ‘If only you’d not quarrelled in the first place. That is what his mind whispers in the darkest hours.’ He straightened again. ‘And that quarrel, as you must know, was perhaps of Stryker’s own making.’
    The sergeant’s dark eyes searched the horizon, a ghost of concern snaking across his features. ‘Couldn’t say, sir.’
    Forrester studied the man, ordinarily so laconic and unflappable, and knew he was troubled. He wondered if the sergeant recalled the company’s time on Gardner’s Tor, hounded by a furious cavalryman and a vengeful witch-finder. They had rescued a young woman, quite by accident, and had taken her with them on to the tor. And there, so the rumour mongers said, she had come – irrevocably and, perhaps, fatally – between Stryker and Burton. Skellen would never articulate the rumours, of course, but every man had heard them.
    Forrester shook his head. ‘Nor should you, Sergeant. Either way, that is how our friend sees it, so that is all that really matters.’
    As if the very act would clear away the evil