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

humours such a conversation had conjured, the pair kicked forward together, cantering to close the gap between themselves and Stryker. Almost immediately Forrester saw that they need not have bothered, for the lone officer had slowed to a virtual halt. He was looking across at a group of mounted men passing on the other side of the road, though they too were tugging on reins to hold their charges still.
    Forrester looked from the group – numbering around twenty – to his friend, and realized Stryker’s face, visible now that he had half-turned, was rigid and strained. He had removed his hat in an evident show of respect, but something about his expression did not seem right. And then Forrester’s heart began to quicken, for he noticed that the coats worn by the troopers were dyed a rich yellow. He scanned the group, searching the faces for the one he feared was amongst them, until, with growing horror, he laid eyes upon a man he had prayed he would never again see. It was a countenance obscured by the three vertical metal bars of a gleaming cavalry helmet, but Forrester could nevertheless identify the white beard and thick, wet lips, and, as he and Skellen drew ever closer, hear that terribly familiar voice.
    ‘Shite,’ Sergeant Skellen intoned grimly.
    Forrester swallowed hard. ‘Artemas Crow.’
     
    Captain Innocent Stryker had been thinking of Lisette Gaillard. Dreaming of her as the stones of the road passed beneath Vos’s reddish bulk. They had not seen one another since early April when, after a night making love in the warmth of the Lion Tavern in Oxford, they had once again parted. Stryker had gone south and west with the army, sent to bolster Sir Ralph Hopton’s campaign against the Devonshire Parliamentarians, and she had gone . . . where? She had not been willing to say, but some well-placed threats in the corridors of the king’s new capital had given rise to rumours of Paris, or Rome or Madrid. But then she had returned, for he had been ordered to join her in London for the rescue mission on Cecily Cade, the girl with knowledge of great treasure. The girl who had been taken by the enemy from under Stryker’s nose. The order, of course, was countermanded almost immediately, as Waller’s great rebel army had threatened Hopton’s progress, and Stryker was denied the chance of seeing her again. Lisette Gaillard. He revelled in her image. Tried desperately to see her in his mind’s eye. See the faint white scar on her chin, the blue eyes that seemed to look right through him. Christ, he missed her.
    ‘By God!’
    His dream instantly shattered. In a heartbeat those lovely images had disintegrated into a thousand shards, tumbling away like a great church window under an iconoclast’s hammer. What replaced them was a reality as bleak as it was dangerous. And it came in the form of a man. A short, plump man with tiny blue eyes and a flat, bulbous nose.
    ‘By God, I say,’ the voice of Colonel Artemas Crow rang out again. That voice. That shrill, furious voice Stryker recalled with the most terrible clarity. It was as though it drilled a hole into his very skull. He felt instantly sick, even as Crow tugged the helmet from his head, tossing it to one of his stern-faced dragoons. ‘If it ain’t the Prince’s little hero.’
    Stryker simply stared, dumbstruck and frozen in his saddle, as Crow grinned his way down from atop his fine mount, grunting as his tall boots hit the mud. He was just as Stryker remembered; short in stature, stocky as a mortar and angry as a hornet. His white beard positively glowed against the livid red of his fat nose, and his huge lips glistened in the afternoon sun.
    ‘See how he conducts himself ?’ Crow sneered loudly so that his troopers could all hear. ‘Sits when his betters stand. I’d expect nothing less. A rogue, this one. A rakish cur, good for murder and deserving of the gallows.’
    ‘Was not Captain Fantom sent that way only recently, sir?’ one of the dragoons