Highwayman: Ironside Read Online Free PDF Page B

wheeled about to face one another again. Lyle felt Star's huge bulk judder beneath him, and he knew the battle-scarred animal was beginning to panic. He had to forgo his blade so that he might cling on with both hands, desperate to keep himself in the saddle, even as the saffron-scarfed pursuer bore down again. He knew he would be skewered this time and, just as the horses were about to meet, he wrenched savagely on Star's reins, tearing the bit to compel the steaming grey away from the line of collision. Star slewed violently to the right, Lyle felt himself sway in the saddle, his rump sliding precariously out of position, and his thighs screamed in pain as he clamped them tight. Somehow he stayed on, the trooper's blade cleaving nothing but crisp air, and then he was into the trees, pounding along a narrow track that was fringed with tangled branches and perilously dark. He could not hear a thing above Star's thrashing breaths, but he twisted back to see that the armoured man had given chase, despite the risk to his own mount. Lyle leaned in to whisper encouragement in the horse's ears, and was immediately gratified to sense a calming in the frightened animal's demeanour.
    "There you are, Star, old thing," he said, slapping the stallion's hard neck. "Keep your nerve and we'll see what can be done."
    The trees thinned and the track widened until Lyle found himself in a small grove. It was skirted by ancient looking boughs, the kind Grumm often talked of when telling tales of the first people of his native Cornwall, and strangely illuminated by the moon. He let Star run across it but wheeled him around as soon as they reached the far side.
    The man on the black mount burst out from the woods to meet them and drew his horse to a halt. "I have you now, Lyle!"
    Lyle felt exhausted from the chase, but he forced himself to doff his hat in mock salute. "Well bless me, if it isn't the Mad Ox of Hampshire!"
    The trooper's face was bisected by the nasal bar and obscured in the horse's billowing breaths, but Lyle caught the flash of white teeth below a bushy black moustache as he sneered. "Have a care, sir, for the life of a brigand seldom ends well."
    "Soldier, Francis!" Lyle called back. "Not brigand."
    "You are outside the law!"
    Lyle laughed. "Because the law in this county is but one man; William Goffe. And you, Francis, are Goffe's creature."
    The trooper bristled, kicked forwards a touch, sword still naked and glinting. The black motif embroidered at his shoulder now resolving into the gaping maw of a roaring lion. "It is Colonel Maddocks to you, Lyle."
    Lyle drew his own sword now that he was confident that Star had found some semblance of calm. "And it is Major Lyle to you."
    Maddocks urged his mount to the right so that it walked the perimeter of the clearing. "You relieved Sir Frederick Mason of some valuables this night. I want them back."
    "Not possible," Lyle countered. A thought occurred to him. "You clung to my tail with impressive haste, Colonel. Too soon for Sir Freddy to have reported our encounter. Were you supposed to have been his escort?"
    "I'm warning you, Lyle," Maddocks snarled. "Return the items forthwith."
    Lyle laughed. "I'm right! You should have been protecting him. Stone me, sir, but such a thing will not go well for your prospects, eh? But why would they appoint you personally? The Major-General's private mastiff sent on an errand such as this. A tad beneath you, is it not?"
    "How long do you think you can last?" Maddocks called suddenly. "Out here on the road."
    "Long enough," Lyle called back, moving Star to mirror his opponent so that they circled one another like a pair of ban-dogs in a Southwark pit.
    "Goffe has made me your nemesis, Lyle. I am his chief huntsman now. The snare closes around you, never doubt it."
    "And yet I will ever wriggle free."
    "To what end?"
    He had often wondered upon that question. The war was over. The old king dead and gone, his son hiding away in France. The bastions of