Babylon's Downfall: An Uncivil War 6

"Proper cocked that one up, didn' 'ee?"

Hollie Babbitt squinted sideways at Venning. What with the big Fenman being normal for Norfolk, it was sort of hard to tell what he was on about, betimes: if he meant Hollie had cocked that one up – which he had – or whether he was referring to Sir John Belasyse, who had been in command of Selby for the King up until a week ago and was now hard pressed to command a hot dinner.

Hollie's rebel rabble had emerged victorious from that scramble. A bit singed about the edges, due to the independent thinking of two of his junior officers and the odd little bugger they tagged around with. He paused, and the gawky brown horse he'd acquired in the battle at Selby leaned heavily on the bit with a horrible slobbering snort. They tagged around with. Aye, right. Somewhere in that mess of blood and fire, they'd managed to suck Hollie into their dreadful insubordinate tangle. Two years back – when they'd first dumped this rat's nest of every Dissenter, anarchist and horse-thief the rest of the Army of Parliament didn't want, onto one hung-over ex-mercenary captain of horse fresh off the boat from Europe – his troop had been like an ink-blot, messy, unpredictable and running off in all directions. Now he reckoned they were more like frogspawn: a bugger to get hold of, and hard to tell where one began and t'other ended.

Unlike some of the officers of his acquaintance, though, it meant that Hollie could not look down his aristocratic nose and point languidly and drawl, "That man. That man, there. " (If he'd had an aristocratic nose. Which he did not. All right, look down his bloody big nose and point and all.) Because for the most part, he was that man. If it wasn't him personally in the thick of causing insubordinate free-thinking bother, he'd probably put 'em up to it. Mind, he hadn't been responsible for that mess at Selby. You took the appetite for self-destruction of one half-mad lapsed Puritan lieutenant, the unbridled aggression of a trooper everyone disliked, and mixed it in with the lofty ideals of one posh poet, and what you got was –

Was a bloody shambles, like most of the engagements involving Babbitt's company, but they'd won the day.

Venning was still smirking, though, and that meant he was expecting an answer, and so Hollie sighed and rose to the bait, with resignation. "Who did?"

"Brownie, here."

Wrong, then, on both counts. Not Hollie, and not Belasyse, but the lolloping, nameless brown horse.

The brown horse summed up Selby, for Hollie. He'd lost his own Tyburn in the street fighting – not lost-lost, though he had feared it, for a while, but lamed out of action, and probably for ever. And he'd acquired this gangly clumsy brown horse in the thick of the fighting, and now he felt sort of obliged to the beast to put it into some sort of shape that befitted the mount of a senior Parliamentarian commander. Which was a bloody fool's errand, as it turned out, because Hollie had spent a furious week brushing the benighted bloody animal and endeavouring to train it to prance and curvet and caracole and all the other flashy tricks that a good cavalry mount could be persuaded into.

He had no intention of giving the beast a name. That was too much like admitting he meant to keep it.

On the other hand, he was buggered if he was going to admit defeat and give the bloody animal up, because then everyone would know. He was not the least conspicuous man in the Army at best, being two yards high and russet-haired, with a ponytail halfway down his back, and putting him on a lolloping great brute that fell over its own feet at anything faster than a walk was just asking for trouble anyway, but it was getting to be a point of pride with him. The brown horse meant well. It was just thick. Kind, slow, well-meaning, and as thick as two short planks.

Something like Captain Andrew Venning, then, or at least how he liked to appear to be. And wasn't. "You just going to stand there passing unhelpful remarks, you web-footed frog-fucker, or d'you come to tell me summat useful?"

"Ah?" Venning closed one eye, and looked at the gawky brown horse thoughtfully. "Been trying to get him to do that for a week, Rosie, and most o' the time I d'see either you or him on the floor. Mebbe acrobatics ent his thing, bor. Quit while I was behind, if I was you."

"No," Hollie said through gritted teeth, and yanked the brown horse's head up, meaning to try it just once more. It was not such a difficult bloody thing, Tyburn had picked it up by the time he was a four-year-old (six years ago – where had the time gone?) not so hard, to come up on to his hind legs and strike out with his forelegs. Old-fashioned, aye, but it had saved his arse on a few occasions now, that Tib had been a weapon in his own right –

The brown horse flung his head up and took three awkward steps backward, his ears flicking as if he were confused by what was being asked of him. Hollie growled between his teeth, dug his heels in to the beast's ribs – it's not difficult, you witless brute, just do it – and the animal tried to trot backwards. Fell over its own trencher-sized feet. Dumped Hollie down its shoulder, absolutely without malice, just out of an inability to keep its own legs co-ordinated, and then turned its clumsy head and looked at him reproachfully.

"Captain Venning," he said grimly. Shoved his hat out of his eyes where the bloody witless animal had just pushed it. "Captain Venning sir are you laughing at me?"

"No, sir," Venning said, staring at a point over Hollie's right shoulder with an expression of careful blankness. "Would never do such a thing, sir." His lips twitched helplessly. "Honestly. I'd not, bor –" And then he couldn't help it, he tried to stop it but a snort escaped him, "Not much, mind, I mean it was funny when –"

A year ago, Hollie would have stiffened and bridled and taken offence and either punched Venning in the head or had him up on a charge. On the other side of Selby... he raised one eyebrow, and sighed. The stupid brown horse blew down his neck, which was no consolation at all. "Sat there in the mud an' all," Venning said feebly, and it was sufficient to make Hollie start to giggle himself, "if you could ha' seen the pair of you, wiggling round each other, I d'never see such a lollopin' gret pair o' mawkins!"

And, you know, Colonel Holofernes Babbitt was a personal friend of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Parliament, and he commanded a company of horse in his own right; it was beneath his dignity and not fitting for his position to sit on his bruised arse in the spring-wet grass a mile outside Wetherby, and cackle like a setting hen at the sheer bloody unlikeliness of it all. "Give it up," Venning said, when they'd both got their breath back, "- seriously, I would, I'd let that poor beast be. He ent never going to be a cavalry mount, Rosie, he come off some bloody farm in the wilds or the wolds or some damn' thing, he ent got the sense the good Lord give to badgers."

The brown horse snuffed again, his clumsy muzzle brushing over Hollie's hair. Tipping his hat into his eyes again, which set Venning to giggling again. Wanting petting, wanting to be fussed. You might argue that a week of relentless grooming – which had not improved the beast's disreputable appearance one bit, mind – had spoiled the creature; that he craved the attention, now, as his right. Aye, and you might, if you were of a sentimental turn of mind, feel pity for a beast straight off a farm in the wilds – or the wolds – and thrust into the midst of war and noise and pain, cast adrift on the kindness of strangers without a single hand he might recognise to steady him; that such a beast might seek comforting more than the damaged, bloody-minded Tyburn ever had.

Hollie reached up absently and rubbed the beast's nose. "He means well, poor bugger," he said, knowing as he said it that he sounded defensive. "Not his fault he looks like he's overdue for t'knackers'-cart."

"Looks like you," Venning said cheerfully, "all hair and no wit –"

Which was, of course, the point at which Hollie, personal friend of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and commander of a company in his own right and all this and all that, surged to his feet and was in the middle of giving Captain Venning the scragging of his life, when Lucey Pettitt turned up.