Read Online Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles by Michael Arnold - Free Book Online Page B

dark, between the starry sky and the tar-black swell, they had seen the walls. They rose out from the high ground some hundred paces back from the shoreline, and Stryker had known that they were looking at a fortress. It was quite small, to judge from the sweep of the walls, but formidable for all that, the roof of a central keep jutting heavenwards from behind a stone-faced earthen rampart. And that rampart was built in the shape of a star, providing artillery with coverage of all flanks, its points sharp against the black of the night. Stryker had looked from the high walls to Jethro Beck, and the fisherman had grinned broadly, spat over the side of the skiff, and nodded up at the fort. ‘Welcome to Star Castle, cully.’
    And it was into Star Castle’s dingy bowels that the seventeen Royalists, suspected of being Parliamentarians, had been thrown. They had grown accustomed to the dark, and, other than the surly guards who cleared away their effluent and occasionally gave them tasteless pottage and ominously gritty water, they had not laid eyes on a single soul. ‘So where the pissin’ hell is Miss Lisette?’ Skellen said suddenly, his deep voice reverberating about the stone walls.
    This was the very question with which Stryker wrestled throughout each hour of their incarceration. While the army’s focus was squarely on the Earl of Essex at Newbury, Lisette had come ahead of the main party to locate the Cade fortune and keep it safe for Stryker’s impending arrival.
    ‘Dead?’ Simeon Barkworth suggested.
    Skellen jabbed him with a fist to the shoulder. ‘Shut yer prattle.’
    Barkworth shoved him back. ‘Och, it’s possible.’
    Stryker put up a hand for peace. ‘Aye, it is.’ His guts twisted. Lisette had become something of a talisman for Stryker’s musketeers over the last year. Their captain’s love, and a woman who could wield a blade as well as any man.
    Barkworth’s yellow eyes, strangely visible in the darkness, seemed to widen as his head shot round to look at the door. ‘Someone comes.’
    ‘Should we ask ’em of Miss Lisette?’ Skellen said.
    ‘No. Do not breathe a word, unless you wish to see me upset.’ Stryker cast his gaze about the shadowy outlines of his men. ‘We give nothing away until we know what we are dealing with. Understood?’
    The lock clanked, a bolt rasped, and light streamed into the chamber as the door creaked inwards. Stryker squinted against the new brightness and waited for his single eye to adjust. It was not the rotund figure of the gaoler, nor his usual confederate. The newcomer, stepping casually into the room, hands planted squarely on narrow hips, had skin that was so dark, Stryker’s first thought was that the castle had been occupied by pirates from the Barbary Coast. His hair was black and thick, though beginning to recede at the temples, his brown eyes gleamed almost as brightly as Barkworth’s, while his nose was almost completely flat, as though a sword had cleaved it through the bridge. There were other scars too, white as chalk lines against the copper complexion, highlighted as it was in the light of a flame held at his back.
    The newcomer took another pace into the cell, and Stryker noticed half a dozen others behind him. ‘Captain Stryker?’ the dark-skinned man said, casting his sharp eyes across the bunched prisoners.
    Stryker heaved himself to his feet. ‘Aye, sir,’ he said, relieved. ‘You have heard of me?’
    ‘Absolutely, Captain. Your reputation precedes you.’ The man turned back briefly to address the small party. ‘This is he, gentlemen. Stryker. Blackguard, cut-throat and notorious rebel.’
    Stryker advanced a pace, feeling the weakness in his legs as he moved, and the party shied immediately away like trout below a kingfisher’s shadow. ‘I told Mister Beck, I am no damned rebel!’
    The dark-skinned man simply laughed and slunk back with his gawking group, the lion-keeper at the Tower menagerie. And then the door slammed