Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

with riding in one of Balfour’s troops.
    But five months had passed since that bloody day when they had ridden their horses into the storm of musketry and flesh-ripping pikes, and when faithful Achilles though shot through the chest had run on, carrying Tom towards his enemies until at last the stallion had faltered and fallen and bled to death in the mud. And now Tom stood shivering in the gathering dark, waiting for a corporal in Captain Clement’s troop to return and tell him whether or not Clement would see him. He had foundthe army easily enough, its myriad camp fires casting a copper glow on the dusk sky above the royal park, and he had walked his mare past infantry regiments each comprising anything from three to thirteen companies, their tents ranged across the uneven ground like the spume of wind-whipped waves. But from then on, when he came amongst the horse brigades, he had been sent from pillar to post and troop to troop because no one seemed to know which regiment was where. The open land of grass and pollarded oaks upon which the King so loved to hunt his deer was now a seething mass of men and beasts on which an army’s sense of order was struggling to impose its will.
    ‘What makes you so special, lad?’ the corporal had asked, his shadow-played face hard and scornful, tempered by a harsh winter spent in the field. ‘Why would the captain want to waste his time with you?’
    ‘Because I am back from the dead,’ Tom had replied, knowing that appearing insane was unlikely to ingratiate him with the surly man, but not caring. ‘Tell Captain Clement that Black Tom has come back from the dead to kill Cavaliers.’
    The corporal had eyed him suspiciously, scratching his stubbled cheek, then shrugged and turned, walking off into the dark without another word.
    Tom realized he was shivering, but rather than from cold it was more akin to the feeling he got after a fight, when his very blood seemed to bubble in his veins and his soul trembled like the ground under a troop of charging horse. He recognized the feeling for what it was: the thrill of being back amongst others like himself, men who had known the savage joy and the animal instinct to survive at all costs. It was not quite a sense of belonging, but it
was
something similar.
    He waited for what seemed a long time, letting the atmosphere of the camp – the noise and bustle and men’s raillery, the stink of latrine pits, damp wool and wood smoke – wash over him. Men were cold and likely hungry and were surely missing theirhomes and families, and yet the occasional peal of laughter or good-natured insult threaded officers’ bellowed orders and the horses’ neighs and the lowing of the artillery train’s oxen, so that Tom was reminded of those heady days when they all had thought it would be a simple matter of giving the King’s army a bloody nose to prove their resolve. Remove the King’s wicked advisors, they had said, and His Majesty would hear his subjects’ plight and attend to them. But it had not been as easy as that. Now the country was at war and men on both sides were preparing for the river of blood that must surely flow in the spring if the current peace negotiations failed. In his heart Tom hoped that they would.
    The corporal returned, appearing as a silhouette with a fire’s glow behind him. ‘You’re in luck, lad,’ he said, knuckling snot from his nose. ‘The captain says he knows you. Follow me.’
    Leading his mare by the reins Tom followed the man past tents and a troop of between thirty and forty men all clustered around a fire that was raging, cracking and spitting as it devoured three gnarly old oak boughs and other deadfall. Despite the cold and the apparent lack of wine and beer being passed around, the men seemed in good spirits. They were swaddled against the chill, red montero-caps rolled down to protect the backs of their heads and necks, and about half had pipes clamped between teeth. Five or six, Tom noticed,