Goddess of the Dead
Author: Richard Estep
Date: 2015-11-13 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy historical vampires
Description: India, 1803. Arthur Wellesley, the British Army's foremost vampire general, has begun to make a formidable name for himself on the field of battle, leading them to victory in the siege of Seringapatam and vanquishing its ruler, the Tipu Sultan, at the point of his blade. Jamelia, shape-shifting daughter of the Sultan, burns to avenge her murdered father in the only way she can possibly by bringing about the demise of Wellesley and driving the hated British from India for all time. Forging an alliance with Kali, the Hindu Dark Mother Goddess whose powers of death and destruction are soon to be
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Rights: Copyright 2015 Richard Estep

Contents

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

Death at the Oasis

Temple of the Goddess

CHAPTER TWO

Shadows of the Past

Matters of Faith

CHAPTER THREE

The Goddess Speaks

The Best-Laid Plans

CHAPTER FOUR

Reconnaissance

Council of War

Enemy at the Gates

The Emissary

CHAPTER FIVE

Assault on Ahmednuggur

CHAPTER SIX

Escalade

CHAPTER SEVEN

Repulsion

Double-shotted

Into the Pettah

Slipping the Noose

CHAPTER EIGHT

Resurrection

An Assassin Strikes

CHAPTER NINE

Hearts and Minds

The Seed is Sown

CHAPTER TEN

A Nightmare at Sunrise

"The head, lads!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Banishment

Bitten

Blood Magick

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Now sit down, Captain Campbell."

Back in Command

"On whom would you wager?"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Who Shall Command?

Borkardan

A Medical Opinion

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Side By Side

A Side of Beef

Fears in the Darkness

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Three Europeans

A Stage Set for Slaughter

A Clash of Scouts

Humbugged

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Consequences Be Damned

A Hidden Ford

Flanked!

"Wellesley is no fool..."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Form the Line

Out of the East

Advance on the Guns

"...a favor to us..."

A Bloody Idiot

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Volley Fire

Unleashing the Beast

A Disaster Unfolds

Once and For All

Orrock's Folly

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lost For Words

Now is the Time to Break Them

Counterattack

Death of the Picquets

From Out of the Shadows

CHAPTER TWENTY

Revenge at Last

Go For the Throat

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A Fall From Grace

The Last Stand

This Waking Nightmare

A Walk Among the Mortals

Author's Note

For my dear friend Keith Richardson on the occasion of his 38th birthday.

May your supply of cawfee never run out.

CHAPTER ONE

Death at the Oasis

July, 1803 - The Deccan Plateau

The noon-day sun was riding high in the sky when Lieutenant Philip Goodchild, in command of a detachment from His Britannic Majesty’s 19th Light Dragoons, reined in his horse at the top of a low rise, and cursed.

It was starting to get hot. Damnably hot. The lanky young officer wiped his brow with a tunic sleeve, smearing a long streak of sweat across the expensive fabric.

Goodchild’s mount apparently shared his discomfort, because the tall brown gelding tossed its head and flicked its tail back and forth irritably. Scanning the horizon, he reached down and patted the horse’s neck absently.

“There, there, Bellerophon.”

The British cavalry patrol had been abroad for the past two days, with orders to try and intercept the armed brigands who had brought terror to the region of late. At first, it was only merchant caravans that had been preyed upon by these rogues, but they had lately turned their attention to the supply trains of the British Army — and that simply could not be tolerated; which is how Lieutenant Goodchild and his patrol of sixteen men found themselves trudging across the stark plains, hoping to locate the bandits’ trail.

So far, their luck had been poor. Other than a few carrion birds picking at the sun-bleached bones of some unidentifiable animal victim, nothing appeared to be stirring as far as the eye could see. Goodchild raised a hand to shield his eyes and squinted against the sun’s merciless glare, scanning the horizon for signs of life.

Nothing.

“Damn it.”

A stand of thick, coarse trees — known locally as tope — some two hundred yards to their front was the only terrain feature which broke up the vista of nothingness, just earth and sky as far as the eye could see. The lieutenant eyed it carefully and thought for a moment. The patrol had been riding since sunrise, and while their pace had been relatively sedate, simply being exposed to the late-morning temperatures had a way of sapping the strength and making one tired.

“Sergeant Kiernan.”

“Sir?”

Frank Kiernan cantered his horse to stand alongside that of his commanding officer. The dark-haired young NCO from Dublin followed Goodchild’s outstretched arm, which was pointing towards the stand of tope.

“That looks like a suitable place for the men to halt and rest for a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take the patrol across into the shade, Kiernan. Have the men water their mounts and take one half-hour of rest.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The relief was plain to hear in Kiernan’s voice. Getting out of the sun and enjoying a little tepid water looked like it was shaping up to be the highlight of the patrol’s day. Gesturing for the enlisted cavalrymen to follow him, the Irishman guided his mount towards the stand of tope at a leisurely pace that would spare their mounts any further exertion.

Goodchild allowed them all to pass, sitting patiently and continuing to sweep the horizon with his eyes. A wispy haze marked the boundary where the earth met the sky. The lieutenant sighed, wondering if they would be forced to return to the British lines empty-handed. He truly hoped not; General Wellesley was not considered by most to be a forgiving man.

Seeing that his men had dismounted and were now taking shelter amongst the trees, Goodchild eased his horse into a slow walk towards them.

When he arrived, Kiernan saluted him smartly. Goodchild returned it in a rather more languid manner.

“Sentries are posted, sir, and the men have been instructed to rest once they have taken care of their mounts.”

The lieutenant looked beyond the sergeant’s left shoulder to where the cavalrymen were feeding their horses and giving them water. More than one soldier was patting his mount on the nose or stroking its mane, betraying the affectionate bond each man had for the horse that had accompanied him on the long voyage out from England.

All was as it should be.

Goodchild removed his canteen from its usual place behind Bellerophon’s saddle, removed the stopper, and took a long draught of tepid, brackish water. The shade was a genuine mercy, he reflected - practically heaven-sent. Even with the sun’s rays being screened by the leafy canopy above, the air was still stiflingly close.

One by one, as their horses were attended to, the enlisted men found their own shady spots and flopped down onto the ground to rest, doffing their heavy shakoes and settled in to enjoy their own water. The cavalryman’s mantra remained the same as it had always been, passed down through generations of soldiers since time immemorial — first you took care of your weapons, then took care of your mount, and lastly, you took care of yourself.

Ten minutes passed without incident, the men enjoying their rest in companionable silence under the watchful eye of four posted sentries. Sergeant Kiernan changed the guard again after a few moments, allowing everybody an equal chance to rest.

It was then that they chose to strike.

Neither the lieutenant or any of his men had even the faintest idea that they had been hiding in the branches above their heads; so focused had they been upon their mounts or, in the case of the sentries, the far horizon, that not one of the British cavalrymen had ever thought to look up.

The black-garbed figures fell from above their heads like rain — a rain of death. Each wielded a curved blade with brutal precision, and as they landed amongst the astonished British soldiers, the wickedly-sharp steel weapons flicked out expertly, opening throats and puncturing organs in a spray of bright red blood.

Within the space of a few seconds, the peace and quiet within the stand of trees was suddenly shattered by the screams of dying horsemen. Agog, Lieutenant Goodchild fumbled at his waist for one of the brace of pistols which always hung there, tucked into his belt. He drew one successfully, and fought to cock the weapon with trembling fingers. Adrenaline was already surging through his veins, causing his hands to shake, but Goodchild raised the pistol shakily and sighted it on one of the black-clad ambushers, who was repeatedly thrusting the point of a blade into a shrieking cavalryman’s chest and belly.

The lieutenant closed one eye and pulled back on the trigger. The pan flashed, causing Goodchild to flinch. It was the first time he’d ever fired a pistol in anger, and he was amazed to see the lead ball fly relatively straight and true, taking his target high up in the throat, just beneath the chin. The man was wearing some kind of scarf or mask across his face, so Goodchild couldn’t see anything of his features, but it was gratifying to see his head snap backwards, blood gouting from the entry wound in a pressurized spray that followed his body down into the undergrowth.

“Well shot, sir!”

“Thank you, Kiernan.” Hoping that his voice sounded much calmer than he actually felt, Goodchild replaced the empty pistol and removed its twin. He shot a second adversary in the back, placing the ball right between his shoulder blades.

That was it. He was down to the saber now.

For his part, the Irish sergeant had let his own carbine drop and was in the process of drawing his saber from its scabbard; before it was more than halfway clear, one of the shadowy assailants pounced on him from behind, dragging the sergeant’s head back by the hair and drawing a knife blade cleanly across his throat. The neat red slash glistened wetly and blood began to pour from it, drenching the front of Kiernan’s jacket, but evidently that was not quite satisfactory enough for his attacker, who sawed the blade back and forth repeatedly until the Irishman’s head was separated from the bleeding ruin of his neck.

The sudden explosion of violence was beginning to terrify the horses. Their reins were tied to tree trunks, and so the wide-eyed, suddenly-skittish beasts — usually so steady on the field of battle — simply danced in place, tossing their heads and manes back and forth in a desperate attempt to escape. For just the briefest of moments, Goodchild considered slashing through the reins of the closest charger with his blade, leaping into the stirrups, and making good his escape. The idle temptation was gone as quickly as it had arrived, dismissed in the sure and certain knowledge that such conduct was unbecoming of an officer in His Majesty’s army.

Goodchild turned to find Corporal Paddock locking blades with an attacker, the flat of his cavalry saber grating against that of his opponent’s curved tulwar. With a grunt, the masked man rolled his wrist in an attempt to slide his own sword over the top of the corporal’s guard, seeking to drive the point into a vulnerable spot. Reacting in the fashion of the true London gutter-rat, Paddock threw all subtlety to the wind, choosing instead to drive forwards from his left foot and kick his boot out towards his opponent’s crotch.

The man yelped, not quite sinking to his knees, but definitely sagging. His free hand went instinctively to guard his family jewels, while his sword arm sagged just enough that Paddock saw his opening and struck, reversing the saber for a backhand cut that took a respectable chunk out of his enemy’s chest.

The point beats the edge — always. Goodchild remembered that particular refrain from his first fencing master, a grizzled old veteran by the name of Campbell, but he had also been taught that in a pinch, the edge was better than nothing. Certainly the competing pain in both chest and balls seemed to have unmanned Paddock’s adversary, who tottered unsteadily backwards for a few steps, the tip of his blade drooping to rest limply in the dirt beside him. The corporal ended it quickly, ramming almost a foot of sharpened steel into the guts of the man in black, twisting it viciously through ninety degrees, and then jerking it back out again. Purple-blue entrails bulged around the edges of the ragged, gaping tear in his enemy’s abdomen, falling out in loops as the intestines were dragged down and out of the abdominal cavity by their own sheer weight and momentum.

Paddock turned away dismissively.

“Nicely done, Corporal.”

“It’ll serve, sir,” the big NCO grunted. Paddock was tall for a cavalryman, topping six feet in height, and broad at the shoulders to match. He would have been a natural recruit for the infantry, but at this particular moment in time, Goodchild was delighted to have the man watching his back.

The lieutenant looked around anxiously, trying to make some order out of the chaos that surrounded them. It looked as though the fight was not going well for the dragoons. At least seven or eight of their bodies lay sprawled across the ground inside the stand of trees, half in and half out of the shadowy vegetation.

None of them were moving.

Goodchild hastily reckoned that there were close to twenty of the dark-garbed ambushers still on their feet, and they were beginning to encircle the desperate British survivors in groups of twos or threes, working together to first open up a hole in their enemy’s guard and allowing one of them to exploit it, sinking in a blade up to the hilt to finish the job, or in the case of one luckless cavalryman, dispatching him with a pistol ball straight into the heart.

Finally, only Goodchild and Paddock remained.

The two men stood back to back, officer and NCO using their sabers to protect one another as best they could, fending off the attacks of the six warriors who had encircled them.

“Sell your life dearly, Corporal,” the lieutenant ordered. “I expect you to fetch a damnably high price.”

Paddock grunted an acknowledgment, too busy focusing on keeping the enemy tulwars at bay to answer his officer’s order.

Both men knew that it was only a matter of time.

Finally, the enemy seemed to tire of their resistance. At the same moment that Corporal Paddock was answering a flurry of blade strokes to the very best of his ability, one of their assailants stepped in close on his left-hand side. This is it, the big corporal thought as his peripheral vision registered the black form raising its arm to strike, there’s no way I can turn in time…

It took another heartbeat for Paddock to realize that the attack wasn’t meant for him.

The sound of the pistol firing at such close range was almost deafening. Paddock flinched, but fought down the instinct to raise a hand to his ear protectively. He felt several razor-sharp somethings slice into the back of his skull, followed by a splash of something warm, wet, and viscous — fragments of his lieutenant’s skull and a mess of brain matter, released from their bony cage by the pistol ball which entered just above Goodchild’s right ear.

“Enough of this,” came a voice from beneath one of the black masks directly in front of Paddock — the man with whom he had just been matching blades. Two cold hazel eyes glared at the NCO, their mood impossible to determine without seeing the rest of the face.

Paddock did not recognize the words, as they had been spoken in the native dialect, but the man’s intent was all too clear.

Slowly, the black-garbed warrior reached up and removed the covering from his face, allowing the loop of cloth to dangle at the side of his head.

Paddock did a double-take. The facial features were graceful, their angular lines framed by strands of long, dark hair. It was a beautiful face.

“You’re a woman…” Paddock gaped. How had his squadron been wiped out by a gang led by a woman? He could hardly credit it. Mr. Goodchild, he felt sure, would have said that it just wasn’t proper.

“I am,” she acknowledged slowly, as though speaking to a backward child. She spoke perfect English. “And unfortunately for you, one with little time to waste on Englishmen.”

From sheer force of habit, the corporal moved to correct her. He wasn’t an Englishman at all; he came from Galway.

The woman never gave him the chance.

“Finish him.”

His world exploded in a blinding ball of light and pain.

Temple of the Goddess

The holy man knelt on the cold stone floor, abasing himself in supplication before the altar that was dedicated to his goddess. His forehead was pressed lightly against the ground, forming a point of spiritual connection with She to whom he had devoted his entire being. Out of the entire thirty-eight year span of his life, Achalraj had spent the past thirty-five engaged in blissful worship to the Dark Mother, and never once had she failed to answer his prayers — though perhaps not always in the exact manner that he had hoped for…

Worship of Kali was widespread throughout the Maratha lands, as it was throughout much of India, and was seen by some as a sign of the troubled times in which they now lived. The Dark Mother was a goddess of fire, bloodshed, and destruction; a vengeful deity who reveled in the destruction of her enemies, and rewarded those of her loyal followers who displayed the greatest capacity for strength, aggression, and sheer ruthlessness. Hers was not a divinity best suited for the weak and feeble.

This temple was but one of many dedicated to Her divine glory, but it was the one in which Achalraj felt most at home; perhaps more importantly, it was one which the goddess, by her own admission, also personally favored. A circular chamber some two hundred feet wide and one hundred feet high, it had been hewn from the solid rock with crude tools and manual labor, although not even the most revered and holy elders among Kali’s devotees could say precisely how long ago; the most educated guesses ran to somewhere between five and six hundred years in the past.

A mighty fortress had long ago been constructed around the temple. It was a fortress that was widely considered to be invulnerable to siege and assault from the outside, so steadfast was the mountain stronghold in design and geography.

It was called Gawilghur, and the Marathas held claim to both its power and its many dark secrets.

A ten-foot deep circular pit with steep sides lay between Achalraj and the room’s only exit. Four pairs of stout wooden posts had been driven into the ground on the edge of the pit, roughly corresponding to the cardinal points of the compass. From each post dangled a chain that ended with a sturdy iron manacle.

The altar itself was carved from a thick slab of stone some eight feet wide and twelve feet long, which was little more than a platform for the twenty-foot tall statue of the goddess herself. Kali appeared to be prancing or capering upon the plinth, her feet hidden by the large mound of skulls which surrounded them on all sides. The skulls were not carved, but rather were those of human sacrifices carried out in her name over hundreds of years by her devotees. A pair of skulls also hung from her earlobes, though these had been carved as part of the statue itself. Her skin was somewhere between dark blue and midnight black in color, but displayed an orange sheen as it reflected the light from the burning braziers that were placed discreetly at the edges of the chamber.

Nor did Kali’s uniqueness end there, for she was blessed with an additional pair of slim yet muscular arms; two were spread away from her body, casting a beneficent blessing upon those who worshiped her, and of the remainder, one hand held a severed head by a knot of hair, while the other wielded a curved sword. A bright-red tongue protruded rudely from between her black lips, and appeared to be lapping at the dried bloodstains which coated her chest and belly. The stains, too, were real, the result of the same ritual murders which had resulted in the platform of skulls upon which she now stood. A necklace of severed male heads, each dessicated with age and painted a garish white, tastefully covered her naked breasts. Each face wore a subtly different expression, ranging from a slack-jawed gawp which implied that the owner had not foreseen his imminent decapitation, to a screaming rictus of horror which made it clear that this particular victim most definitely had. The years and, in some cases centuries, had not been kind to the heads, shriveling their features to become obscene parodies of how they had once appeared in life. Kali herself remained forever young and unblemished. Which was just as it should be, Achalraj reflected, the hard stone of the floor inducing welcome twinges of pain in his knees and shins. The glory of our Dark Mother shall remain constant and undimmed forever, long after we, her humble servants, have crumbled into dust and ashes.

The scrape of a sole upon stone caught his attention.

“All is in readiness,” he said. It was phrased as a statement, rather than a question, and stated with confidence. Those who served Achalraj were only too aware of not only his exacting standards, but also the price of failure.

“It is, my lord.”

Achalraj slowly stood and turned to face the chamber’s single doorway, not bothering to brush the dust and dirt from his dark maroon robes. He was a tall man, who had once been slender but whose frame was now beginning to run towards fat. His long, black hair was coiled out of sight beneath a purple turban. Two dark brown eyes regarded the world soberly from beneath a pair of thick-set, bushy eyebrows. A cruel mouth was topped by a long, neatly-trimmed mustache, both ends of which were oiled and curled slightly upwards at each tip.

With his back to the statue and the altar, the High Priest of Kali regarded the newcomers impassively. Two of his thugs were half-carrying, half-dragging the form of a bound man into the temple. The man was obviously European, judging from his skin (which, though tanned, was blatantly pale by the standards of the region) and the mop of unkempt dark hair which hung down over his eyes. The man was struggling against the bonds of coarse rope which lashed both his wrists and ankles together, the former being secured behind his back. A piece of rag had been stuffed into his mouth, one small corner of which protruded from the opening between his teeth.

Perhaps most interesting of all was his attire. The man wore a very distinctive style of blue jacket and red sash, which marked him out clearly as a British cavalryman; not one of the countless native silladar horsemen used by the British dogs and their whores of the East India Company, but rather an actual dragoon, part of the contingent sent out from England to further the serve the greed of its corrupt and corpulent king. What was more, markings on the sleeve suggested that this was a man of at least some small rank. This was a prize catch indeed.

“Bring him to me.”

As the thugs muscled their captive charge towards the waiting priest, he caught sight of the enormous prancing statue for the first time. The dragoon’s eyes bulged wide in their sockets, taking in the panoply of blood, skulls, and death which adorned the ebony skin of the prancing goddess. His struggles took on a new intensity, and were quieted only when one of the guards struck him a fearsome blow on the back of his skull which rendered him insensible for a few moments. The soldier’s head lolled drunkenly forward. Pushing the now-limp body into position between a pair of the wooden posts, the guards fought little resistance from the incapacitated dragoon as they slashed the rope binding his wrists with a knife and then maneuvered him easily into the pair of manacles, sliding an iron pin firmly into place to secure each one. His body hung slackly from the chains, arms extended tautly above his head.

“You have the others?” Achalraj asked, eying the prisoner with just a hint of approval.

“Yes, Your Excellency,” the shorter of the two thugs replied earnestly. “Three more of the British soldiers, just as you said.”

“Good. Bring them in. Place them there,” he indicated the pit with a nod of his head.

The two thugs left the temple, and Achalraj waited patiently while they returned with four comrades. Each pair of men carried between them a thick woolen blanket, and within each blanket lay the corpse of another dragoon. The three British soldiers had all died by some combination of bullet, blade, and blunt-force trauma. The first had been shot twice, once in the chest and then again in the shoulder; the second bore slashes to both head and torso that were consistent with the razor-sharp edge of a tulwar; whereas the third had a musket-ball lodged in his abdomen, and had then apparently been helped through death’s doorway by having his skull stoved in with a hefty object, probably the butt of a heavy firearm.

One by one, the pairs of guards shuffled to the edge of the pit and unceremoniously dumped the dead bodies into it. The corpses rolled limply down the steep sides, finally settling into a jumbled heap close to one another along one inner edge. The guards lined up to face their master, who had removed a human skull from somewhere within the confines of his robes. The upper part of the cranium had been meticulously sawed away and discarded, leaving the interior open to the outside world. The brain and other contents had been scooped carefully out, and the inner surfaces scraped with a blunt knife edge until they practically gleamed. Then, candlewax had been poured into the large, irregular hole through which the brainstem and spinal cord had once passed, then allowed to harden until it formed a very effective plug. The end result turned out to be a skull-shaped chalice.

“You have done well,” the priest of Kali conceded. “Just as I asked. Three dead, one living. What of the rest?”

“There were thirteen others. We killed them all, excellency, just as you instructed.” The senior man spoke for all of them. “Unfortunately, we lost ten of our own during the encounter. The British fought well, and bravely.”

Achalraj nodded. “Such is their reputation. Say what you will of their ethics and gutter-bred morality, their courage and skill upon the battlefield should never be questioned.” A moan from the sole surviving dragoon signified his return to wakefulness. Achalraj walked over to stand in front of him, just in time to receive a look that was filled with pure venom. The priest reached out a hand and took hold of the exposed corner of rag, gingerly tugging it from the man’s mouth. He allowed it to flutter down into the pit, discarding it with obvious distaste.

“What is your name, Englishman?” Achalraj asked gently. He was rewarded with an almost perfectly-aimed gobbet of spit, landing squarely on the bridge of his nose.

“Drop dead, you heathen bastard,” gasped the prisoner, breathing heavily. “I’m from Galway, and I’m no bloody Englishman.”

Without even the merest suggestion of reproach, the priest brushed away the saliva with the edge of one long sleeve. Fingering the two roughly-cut white chevrons that were stitched onto the outer fabric of the dragoon’s upper sleeve, he said, “Whatever your name is, it would seem that you are a leader of some kind. Let us hope that your blood proves worthy of the fact.”

None of the men saw the knife-stroke coming, for both the weapon and the hand which wielded it had been concealed within the folds of his long sleeve. In a blur, Achalraj swiped the curved blade from left to right across the captive soldier’s throat, slicing neatly through the skin, muscle, and connective tissue with minimal resistance. More importantly, on the right of the now-dying man’s throat, the carotid artery and both the internal and external jugular veins were completely laid open. Hot blood jetted from the wound, which looked to the onlooking thug cultists as though their prisoner had suddenly developed a second mouth, but this one a gaping red orifice without teeth. Knowing what was coming, the priest of Kali had stepped nimbly aside, avoiding the spray of pressurized blood which he knew must inevitably follow.

For his part, the dragoon began to cough and gag, fighting desperately to breathe as his body died. Bug-eyed, his mouth formed a horrified ‘O’shape, and his limbs struggled futilely against their restraints. With each heartbeat, the torrent of blood became less forceful. The man’s heart was rapidly giving up, unable to sustain even its own need for blood. The raging red torrent had already lessened to a mere gush. Seeing his moment, Achalraj stepped forwards and brought the skull-cup into position to rest directly above the captive’s breastbone, angled upward and inward towards his chin. Steadily, the skull began to fill with blood. The level rose with each weakening pulse of the dying man’s heart, excess blood slopping over the rim of the open skull and spilling onto the earth at the priest’s feet. As the makeshift chalice grew redder, so did the cavalryman’s skin grow paler and whiter. Shortly after it had become full to the brim, the luckless corporal sagged against his chains, completely lifeless.

“Take him down,” Achalraj ordered. The thug guards hurried to obey. “Throw his body into the pit.”

Holding the chalice carefully in both hands, the priest turned and knelt once more before his goddess.

“Dark Mother Kali,” he intoned, “please hear the prayer of this, your most humble and utterly worthless servant. Bless this offering of our enemy’s life-blood, and bestow it with your divine essence, O Kali, that we might bring about your will upon this land.”

High above him in the darkened upper recesses of the chamber, the statue’s eyes slowly began to glow. The precious stones which were inlaid in the eye sockets took on an ethereal crimson hue, pulsing as if in time with some silent heartbeat. As the glow intensified, there suddenly came an ear-shattering groaning sound. Kali’s head slowly tilted downward on its slender neck, twisting until her gaze settled squarely upon the form of her most faithful priest. The statue’s mouth ground open.

“I have been watching you, Achalraj.” The voice that emerged was comparable to the sound of two huge boulders grating against each other, and yet somehow still managed to possess a distinctly feminine quality. “Watching with great interest. What is it that you desire of me?”

Raising the chalice in both hands, Achalraj bowed his head in supplication, not daring to make eye-contact with this, the most capricious of deities. “I entreat your help, most munificent and terrible Kali, in casting off the yoke of the English oppressor from our land.” The thugs had all similarly abased themselves, foreheads pressed to the ground and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Achalraj fancied that he could hear the pounding of their terrified, racing heartbeats.

“This pleases me,” Kali rumbled, causing her priest to breathe the slightest sigh of relief. He rarely called upon the favors of the goddess, mainly because they frequently turned out to be a double-edged sword; therefore, hearing that the great Kali’s goals were in alignment with his own came as no small mercy. “Tell me, Achalraj, how it is that you intend to achieve this lofty ambition.”

In a halting, hesitant voice that rapidly grew in confidence as he spoke, Achalraj began to outline his plans. No secrets could be kept from Kali, nor was it worth even making the effort to try.

When he had finished, the priest waited with bated breath, fearing that at any moment, the wrath of a displeased Goddess of Death could fall upon him. Instead, Kali simply said, “Your request is granted, most faithful servant. I shall bestow upon you that gift which you ask of me. See that you use it wisely.”

One of the statue’s unladen hands began to move, the long, slender fingers passing slowly over the chalice held in the priest’s shaking hands. The blood within started to glow the same color as that of Kali’s eyes, boiling and bubbling in agitation as the great shadow fell across its surface, as though somehow heated from within. Eyes widening in anticipation, Achalraj climbed slowly to his feet, taking great care not to spill even a drop of the now-blessed contents of the chalice as he walked over to the pit. Leaning carefully out over the edge, the priest poured a brief stream of blood onto one of the blue-coated corpses down below, and then repeated the process three more times, in each instance making certain that the warm, viscous fluid splashed into the eyes, mouth, or an open wound.

It was not long before the enchanted blood began to take effect. The first sign was a twitch in one of the dead soldiers’ hands, soon followed by the entire arm moving. Achalraj saw that it was the corporal, which made perfect sense to him; he is, after all, the most fresh, he thought to himself as he watched the dead man throw his head back and utter a heart-rending moan, the sound of a soul suffering absolute torment. At first, the dead man flopped like a fish abandoned on the shore, struggling to get to his feet. After a few moments of trial and error, he finally succeeded, rocking unsteadily back and forth on his heels as he worked to find his balance.

Drawn by the anguished howl and desperate to sate their curiosity, the thugs joined Achalraj at the edge. All seven men looked down in horrified fascination as the remaining three corpses began to stir, each one moaning and howling just as the first had. The reanimated dead bodies started to shamble around the pit, paying no heed to one another as they occasionally caromed into each other.

“Your divine will has brought the dead back to life, great and terrible Kali.” Achalraj could not keep the blatant sense of wonder from his voice. His six guards were silent, staring in mute disbelief as men that they had only recently killed were suddenly back on their feet again, seemingly oblivious of the horrific wounds that each of them carried.

The goddess towered above her subjects, eyes glowing redly against the dark background of the chamber. “Four new soldiers for my cause…a humble start, but a start it is.”

“Yes, most magnificent Kali,” Achalraj responded with great humility. “Your will shall be done.”

“Then raise me an army, priest, an army of many thousands; and with it, we will descend upon the unbelievers, shall drive them from this land forever.”

A cruel smile crept across the priest’s face as the implications finally sunk in, yet he managed to keep his tone obsequious. “As your humble and most devoted servant, I would be most honored to lead your army in the furtherance of your glory.”

The laughter which came in response shook the chamber to its very foundations, causing thin cracks to appear in the rock walls and small pebbles to fall from above. Terrified at the mirth of their dark goddess, the thug cultists sank to their knees and abased themselves before her statue, whose eyes now glowed even more brightly.

“Make no mistake, priest,” the goddess rumbled, “it is not you who shall not ride at the vanguard of my army.”

Achalraj’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Most munificent and fearsome Kali, your humble servant does not understand…”

A slender figure appeared in the entranceway, little more than a silhouette in the chamber’s all-pervading gloom. Like the thug cultists, the figure was dressed entirely in black from head to toe. It stepped forward slowly, moving to stand beside the kneeling priest. Achalraj looked up into the cold, hard face of a young Indian woman.

“Jamelia?” the priest gaped. “Jamelia is to command?”

“What better instrument for a goddess than a tigress?” Kali asked rhetorically, her booming voice echoing percussively throughout the cavernous chamber. “Know your place, Achalraj. It is given to you to birth my army. Jamelia shall lead it against the British. There is honor to be found in both.”

“Most divine Kali.” Having recovered his composure somewhat, Achalraj nodded in obeisance.

Despite the fact that she was a deity, the priest knew from long years of experience that she was incredibly powerful but most certainly not omniscient. He did not think that she could read his mind, but Kali was a fickle mistress and it did not pay to take chances with her. He had seen others do so, and the price they paid in the end was always both horrific and extremely memorable for any who witnessed it.

It was therefore a matter of survival that Achalraj make a conscious effort to bury the feeling of growing resentment he now felt, and so he put on the mask of the humble, unassuming servant. But the sideways look that he risked taking at the expressions of both the goddess and the tigress suggested that neither female was anywhere close to being fooled.

CHAPTER TWO

Shadows of the Past

Major General Arthur Wellesley knew that he was dreaming, and yet the knowledge didn’t help him in the slightest — not one damned bit.

The same dream came upon him with greater and greater frequency of late, and it was ever the same; he found himself in a dank, dark tunnel, walking purposefully from its entrance towards the far end. Night had fallen hours before, and the vampire colonel (for such had been his rank at the time) was advancing upon his mortal enemy, the Tipu Sultan. Only one thing dominated his mind: to take the man captive, or failing that, to bring his dead body back to the British lines.

Wellesley had succeeded — at least, in reality. Refusing his politely-worded request to surrender, Tipu had spat defiance to the last — and paid for it on the point of Wellesley’s sword, a weapon crafted with silver in order to combat the Sultan’s supernatural form. The great tiger had died bravely, as the colonel had told all who asked him of the incident, but he and his elite Tiger Guard had been no match for the Irish colonel and the hard-bitten soldiers of the 33rd Regiment of Foot’s Shadow Company, a body of specialist skirmishers hand-picked from amongst the ranks in order to handle enemies of a distinctly supernatural nature.

It had still been night when the colonel had walked back out through the entrance doors to the tunnel, dragging the Sultan’s body behind him by the heel of one richly-tailored leather boot. The Tiger of Mysore had seemed bloated and corpulent to the casual eye, but a keener observer would realize that he was in fact composed of fat and muscle in equal measure. His head lolled limply in time to Wellesley’s measured footsteps on the tunnel floor, the colonel finally bringing his enemy’s jewel-encrusted corpse out into the courtyard beyond the Water Gate.

Seringapatam was already burning, falling victim to the baser urges and passions of those British and Indian besiegers who had assaulted the breach made in the city’s walls by determined cannon-fire, the horde of red-coated soldiers streaming inside the city and putting all who resisted — and many who did not — to the blade. Orange flames lit the night, sending plumes of billowing black smoke up to obscure the stars. Having been given tacit permission to slip the yoke of discipline at long last, the redcoats let loose animalistic tendencies which put those of the Sultan’s were-tigers to shame.

The scum of the earth, Wellesley had reflected bitterly. How are we to achieve excellence in battle with such filth as this?

And yet the truth was, Wellesley and his men had achieved excellence on the field of battle — magnificence, even. Their defeat of the Sultan’s troops at the battle of Mallavelly had been nothing less than a triumph of disciplined musketry and vigorous use of the bayonet, particularly when led by vampire officers of only the finest breeding and education.

“Place his body under guard,” the colonel had ordered, gesturing towards his vanquished foe. “See that it is treated with dignity and respect.”

“Yes, Colonel.” Company Sergeant-Major Daniel Nichols, the senior non-commissioned officer of Wellesley’s elite Shadow Company, offered a crisp salute. His men (known throughout the British Army by the nickname of Shadows) were tired, and yet despite their fatigue — and despite having lost a number of good soldiers in the assault on Seringapatam in general and on Tipu’s Tiger Guard in particular — the mud-splattered, blood-soaked infantrymen obeyed his word as though it came from the pages of the very Gospels themselves.

“Make all men aware,” Wellesley had raised his voice to address the troops, “that I shall stretch the neck of any man who attempts to molest the Sultan’s body in any way.” The vampire suddenly seemed tired, his skin appearing sallow and waxen in the light of the burning island city. The eyes, though…the eyes were a different matter entirely. They still gleamed with a dark light all of their very own.

“He was a brave man, sir,” Dan said.

“Brave indeed, CSM — and we shall treat him as such.”

Needing no more prompting than a meaningful look from their CSM, the Shadows had set about securing the Sultan’s body in one of the opulent bedrooms of what had been (until mere hours before) his spacious inner palace. Before the night was out, the building would be requisitioned and become a part of the British headquarters in Seringapatam.

Shadows had stayed on watch throughout the night and well into the following day, working on a rotating schedule devised by the sergeant of the day. Only the Tipu’s family, which consisted mostly of his children, were permitted entry into the room and allowed to mourn him in privacy.

And yet, not all of them were there. One of them — Jamelia, the tiger’s daughter, who had been at her father’s side just moments before Wellesley had ended his life with the stroke of a blade — had fled the city. Wellesley had briefly toyed with the idea of going after her, but had allowed himself to be dissuaded from mounting such a pursuit by the the knowledge that the sunrise was not far off, and even in his vaporous flying form, it would require a stroke of enormously good fortune to run the tigress to ground in such a short amount of time.

No, that is a battle for another day, the vampire had mused as the lid was fitted carefully into place to seal his coffin, enclosing him in the reassuring safety of the earth before the coming of yet another dawn.

The rain had come the following day, dousing the smoldering fires of Seringapatam. There was a certain irony to the fact; if Wellesley and his men had waited until the next night to launch their attack, the swollen River Cauvery would have been unfordable.

By Wellesley’s order, the Tipu’s body was conveyed by a guard of honor through the torchlit streets that same evening. The colonel wanted Tipu’s subjects to have one last chance to pay their respects to the man who had ruled over them, and had seemed to have been both loved and hated in equal measure. The streets and roadsides were lined with residents of the city, packed shoulder to shoulder and jostling one another to get a better view of the horse-drawn funeral procession as it wended its way slowly towards its final destination: the mausoleum in which the Sultan’s parents were already buried. His mortal remains were going to join theirs, in one last gesture of respect from the man who had defeated him.

How many of them truly mourn the Sultan? Arthur asked himself as he scanned the faces of the throng. Enterprising young beggar boys sold fruit to the spectators. Some of them actually seem to be entertained, if such a thing can even be credited.

He had to admit that the people of Seringapatam had turned out in their thousands, though whether to pay their respects to their fallen ruler or simply to be able to claim that they had been there one day in front of their grandchildren, it was impossible to tell.

When I am ended, I should be fortunate indeed to have garnered such a turnout.

Matters of Faith

Laying in his coffin in the hard earth beneath the palace, Arthur had not dreamed that first day, nor the day after that, nor indeed for almost an entire week; but on the sixth day following the fall of Seringapatam, with his role as interim governor of the island city now fully assured and approved by higher command, Arthur had found himself partially waking into a semi-lucid state, aware of the coffin lid just inches above his aquiline nose, and yet also somehow finding himself back in the Water Gate tunnel once more.

With the Sultan.

“Colonel Wellesley. Strange as it may seem for me to say this, it pleases me to see you.”

Tipu had somehow been restored to his former robust self once again, standing casually at the scene of his death without the slightest wound or even the merest suggestion of one to be seen. The jeweled rings on his stubby fingers caught what little light there was as the Sultan pressed his palms together and bowed respectfully to Wellesley.

“I must say that it surprises me also. Particularly in this place where, as we are both all too aware, I was forced to end your life.”

The Sultan threw back his head and laughed; there was no falsity to it, the laughter seeming entirely genuine to Arthur’s keen ear.

“Forced, he says! Forced!” Tipu grabbed his belly with both hands, its folds shaking out of sheer mirth. “I am afraid that you left me no choice, my dear Colonel. What other option did I have - to live under the yoke of the British, bowing and scraping to your King George and his ‘honorable’ East India Company?”

“It would have meant life,” Wellesley countered quietly.

“It would have meant slavery!”

Arthur had to concede that the Sultan had almost certainly hit near to the mark in that regard. For him to live as a puppet king, serving in thrall to the real power behind the throne half a world away in London, would have been nothing less than a living death for one with such pride as Tipu had been born with.

As quickly as it had come, the Sultan’s anger seemed to dissipate. He took a step closer to Wellesley, whose preternaturally-enhanced eyesight allowed him to make out every nuance of the man’s features even in the near-total darkness of the brick-lined tunnel.

“What is it that you want?” the colonel asked.

“Not to torment you while you sleep, if that is what you believe.”

“Hardly a reassurance that needs to be made, when one considers the fact that you are nothing more than a figment of my exhausted mind.”

The Sultan’s eyes suddenly glowed yellow in the darkness, each one split directly down the middle with a black oval slit where the pupil would normally have been.

“You are so very sure of that, are you, my dear Colonel?”

“I am,” Wellesley replied equably. “What alternative is there? Do you claim to be a discarnate spirit? I gave up believing such things when I was a boy, growing up in Ireland.”

“This, coming from the walking dead man,” the Sultan pointed out petulantly.

“That is entirely different. Vampire-kind — my kind, have accompanied mortalkind down through the ages. Even the oldest tracts tell us as much. We are the night side of nature, yes, but natural nonetheless — just as your tiger-kin were.”

“Are, not were,” Tipu corrected.

“I believe that my men may have contributed somewhat to their extinction.”

“My daughter yet lives, Wellesley. She lives, and she will be coming back for you.”

“She is more than welcome to try.” Absent-mindedly, Arthur’s fingertips found the leather-bound grip of the sword which was scabbarded at his waist. It was the same sword which he had plunged into the Sultan’s chest just one week before.

Cackling with laughter, Tipu’s form slowly faded away into nothingness. Arthur had awoken with a racing heart. Had he been mortal, doubtless he would have been drenched in a cold sweat; but vampires did not sweat, nor did they emit an odor of any kind. The only tangible reminder of that first…dream? Nightmare? Encounter? with the Sultan was a sense of indefinable dread that grew slowly in the pit of its stomach, pushing ice-cold tendrils upwards into his chest like the questing fingers of some invasive alien malevolence.

That had been four years ago, and this particular dream — and many others that were very similar in nature - had plagued his daylight sleeping hours ever since.

It appeared very much that today was going to be one of those days.

“What is it this time?”

The fat man emerged from the darkness in the same old way, flashing him a grin that was some part ingratiating and part insolence.

“What? You are not pleased to see me?” The Sultan affected a hurt tone, belied by the smirk plastered across his face. “I would have though that you would have grown used to my company by now.”

“Used to it, yes. Happy, no; for that is a very different thing.”

Sighing, Tipu moved to place a hand on Wellesley’s arm. For his part, the vampire ducked gracefully aside, shrugging it off without apparent effort. This was becoming part of their ritual, had become so over the past few years of meetings such as this.

“What is it that you want of me?” Arthur suddenly felt tired, as though even the mere act of dreaming about his old adversary was capable of draining him of energy.

“Be at peace, Englishman. I seek nothing more than your companionship, to help pass the time in this place of darkness.”

“I am an Irishman, as well you know,” Wellesley corrected him irritably.

If the truth be told, the young Arthur Wellesley had worked hard to erase traces of his Irish heritage from his accent and mannerisms, politely but firmly deflecting the subject whenever it came up in conversation. There were certain political benefits within the officer echelons of the British Army if one could pass oneself off as being more English than one’s competition, and it was a talent that he had worked hard to master ever since his time as a young subaltern. Arthur was perhaps guilty of overplaying it from time to time, and was on rare occasions mistaken for a dandy; it was not an error that was generally made more than once, for beneath the studiously cultivated exterior lay a core of cold, hard steel.

“Yes, yes.” Tipu waved the correction away with equal irritation. “English, Irish, you are all one and the same. White-skinned devils bent upon conquering Mysore for yourselves and plundering it to line your own pockets.”

“Utterly ridiculous. We are not even in Mysore.”

“A mere technicality. Yes, you and your army may indeed have left my lands behind—”

“King George’s lands, I believe you mean.”

“My lands,” the Sultan repeated sternly, “but your red-coated heathens are even now busily shoveling anything with even the slightest value into the bottomless pockets of the East India Company. Is that not so?”

Mutely refusing to answer, Wellesley half-turned away. In his heart of hearts (if indeed a vampire had such a thing) he knew that the Sultan was correct. Leaving Tipu on the throne of Mysore was simply bad for business, which in and of itself would have been a suitable reason to depose him; but when one factored in his courtship of the French…well, that simply could not be allowed. Tipu’s efforts to persuade France to deploy forces to Mysore in order to help him oppose the British had not gone unnoticed in London, and the possibility of a military alliance against the British between the two factions simply did not bear thinking about.

“You have no answer,” the Sultan said, clapping his hands together in delight. Despite the almost total darkness of the tunnel, the jeweled rings on each of his fingers glinted in Wellesley’s vampiric vision. “You have no answer, simply because you know the truth of the matter and do not wish to admit it.”

Arthur whirled back to face him, his usual reserve and coolness suddenly deserting him.

“And what of it? You, of all people — the so-called Tiger of Mysore — should know the way of the world. The strong survive and prosper, while the weak fall by the wayside. It has ever been so, Tipu, and I suspect shall remain so until the end of time. You wish to speak of the truth? I shall give you the truth: His Britannic Majesty’s forces were the stronger, and you were the weakling. Nature simply took its natural course, that is all.”

All traces of his joviality now gone, Tipu simply glowered at him.

“Our dance is not yet over, Wellesley, for here we are.” He spread his arms to encompass their dank surroundings. “My bloodline did not end here at this Water Gate.”

“You speak of your daughter.”

“I do, and you would do well to listen to me.” The Sultan sighed. “I love her, Irishman, with all of my heart; and yet, that has proved to be difficult thing sometimes. She is cruel, you see, deep down. Where that cruelty comes from is a mystery to me. Certainly she did not get it from her mother, for a kinder, gentler blossom you could never find if you searched Mysore for a thousand years.”

“It is often said that the apple does not fall far from the tree,” Arthur countered, and then chastised himself internally for the remark. That was ungentlemanly.

But the Sultan seemed unfazed. “I have heard the expression, and have found it to be true more often than not,” he agreed. “Yet I like to believe that I am not a cruel man by nature, Wellesley — only when the situation demanded it, and which leader of men can claim to have bloodless hands when all is said and done?”

Unbidden, Arthur thought back to the floggings he had ordered during his service with the army. He had taken pleasure in none of them. It was a distasteful thing for him to see a man squirm and bleed for some infraction against the King’s regulations, but discipline and order must be maintained, no matter what the cost.

“On that, at least, we can agree,” he replied quietly.

“Yes, I suspected that we might. You too have worn the mask of command, Wellesley; which means that you, like I, know full well the price it exacts upon the soul.”

“I am a vampire. There are many who say that I have no soul.”

“And do you believe them?”

Arthur stood silent once more, refusing to answer. In truth, he tried not to dwell upon such things.

“At any rate,” the Sultan continued, having realized that Arthur was probably not going to answer his question, “we were speaking of my daughter. There is a coldness and a cruelty inside of her that I do not believe originates from either myself or her dear, sweet departed mother.”

Intrigued despite his misgivings, Arthur asked, “From where, then, does it come?”

“From her upbringing, I suspect. You know that she commanded my venerable Tiger Guard.” It had been a statement, not a question. Arthur simply nodded. “She is the first and only female ever to have served in that capacity,” Tipu went on. “In and of itself, that was an exceptional achievement.”

“I daresay it was.”

“A streak of tigers is no easy thing for a female to keep up with, let alone dominate. They are cruel, vicious in the extreme…there is little room for mercy among their ranks. And yet, my little Jamelia excelled — as she has excelled at everything that she has ever set her mind upon.”

“Why do tell me this?” Arthur asked curiously, his interest piqued in spite of himself.

“I have grown somewhat fond of our conversations, vampire. Believe it or not, as you wish; nonetheless, it is the truth.” The Tipu’s eyes glowed a feral gold in the darkness of the tunnel. “I should miss them a great deal if they were to cease, and you must trust me when I tell you that when my daughter comes back to find you - and she will come back to find you, Wellesley — she will not stop until one of you is dead.”

“As you so astutely pointed out, Tipu, I am a vampire. I cannot die.”

“Oh, but there are far worse things than death, Irishman.” A thin smile played at the corners of the Sultan’s mouth, never reaching his eyes. “Take it from one who is in a position to know.”

“If you are attempting to frighten me, then you may as well save your breath.”

“If I were attempting to frighten you, then I would simply remind you of that which truly terrifies one such as you,” Tipu countered.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “And that is…?”

“Do not play coy with me, Irishman. I have no time for it,.”

“Then do not ply me with riddles, Indian, and I suspect that you have nothing but time!”

Tipu narrowed his eyes. “Very well,” he began. “Let us both assume, if you will indulge me for a moment, that I am not simply a figment of your twisted imagination, vampire. Let us assume that I am real, that all which was once the Tipu Sultan of Mysore has survived bodily death and is able to talk with you now.”

“We may stipulate that, for the sake of argument. Pray continue.”

“You were a believer in the nailed god, the Christ-God, during your mortal lifetime, were you not?”

“I was. What of it?”

“May I ask whether you still believe?”

Arthur did not answer for quite some time. The silence stretched out between the two men. Tipu refused to break it, simply giving the vampire time to consider the question and formulate his response. Finally Arthur said, “I know many vampires who consider themselves to be followers of Christ, including King George himself.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“It shall have to suffice, for I am unwilling to pursue the subject further with you.”

“I suspected you might be,” the Sultan smirked. “And that is why I terrify you, is it not?”

“You? Terrify me? Preposterous!” Arthur barked out a harsh laugh.

“But it is true, isn’t it? Because I, of all those you have known who have died, or perhaps ended as you vampires like to say, have returned. And I am more than willing to answer those questions which you do not dare to ask, Irishman — questions the answer to which will give even a creature of the night such as yourself nightmares.”

“Of what questions and answers do you speak?” Wellesley demanded.

“Matters of life and death, birth and rebirth. Of what those of you who follow the Christian God choose to call Heaven and Hell.”

“You are mistaken, Tipu. Such matters concern me little, for we shall most certainly find out one way or another when we come to the end of our life, whether mortal or vampire.”

“Mortal, vampire, or tiger,” the Sultan corrected him snidely. “For your information, Irishman, I have already found out the truth. As you will recall, in life I was a Muslim. I followed the dictates of Allah, and his Prophet Muhammad. I obeyed the strictures of the Quran scrupulously.”

Arthur thought he could see where the conversation was heading, and didn’t like it in the slightest.

“I was, by all accounts, a good and devout Muslim,” Tipu continued earnestly, his gleaming eyes holding Arthur’s own and refusing to let go. “And yet, here I am. I am not sleeping until the Day of Reckoning. I have not been cast down to suffer in the eternal fires, yet nor have I been welcomed into paradise. I am simply here, Wellesley, trapped inside your mind. There is nothing else. No agony and no bliss. No fire and no garden. Here, at the end of it all, there is only…emptiness.”

The Sultan sighed.

“And I know that it must terrify you every bit as much as it does me.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Goddess Speaks

The lion’s share of the Maratha army which owed allegiance to Daulat Rao Scindia was currently encamped on the plains some ten miles to the north of Ahmednuggur. As the sun sank beneath the western horizon and the first stars of evening began to appear in the darkening sky, the soldiers and camp followers set about the business of breaking down the camp and preparing for the long night’s march ahead.

In terms of pure numbers of men, horses, and artillery, Scindia’s force outmatched that of the upstart Wellesley several times over; and, one of the compoo commanders thought to himself as he stretched his long legs out lazily in front of him, this was before Scindia united his forces with those of the Raja of Berar.

Once the two armies were joined together, they would outnumber the British more than ten times over — and some reckonings put the number nearer to twenty.

Colonel Anthony Pohlmann, formerly a sergeant in the Honorable East India Company, had done really quite well for himself, he reflected while sipping from a cup of freshly-drawn blood. The young native girl who had willingly supplied it lay spent and sleeping inside Pohlmann’s tent. She made for rather lovely ornamentation, Pohlmann thought; not only that, but her blood had the sweet tang of youthful vigor that was so prized (and therefore reassuringly expensive) among vampires.

Yes, the girl was indeed lovely…but she could not hold a candle to the woman who was sitting directly in front of Pohlmann right now.

“How is the blood?” Jamelia inquired politely, sipping at a glass of heavily-watered wine.

“Quite acceptable,” Pohlmann replied with his usual understatement.

The Hanoverian liked to think of himself as being something of a connoisseur, and it was a rare cup indeed which earned anything more than faint praise from his snobbish palate. A man of initiative during his mortal lifetime, Pohlmann was a master of spotting an opportunity and seizing it before it could dissipate. Such a natural talent had led to his defection from the East India Company in order to enlist in the service of Daulat Rao Scindia. After just a few short years of quick thinking, good judgment, and no small amount of luck, Pohlmann had soon found himself rising rapidly through the ranks within Scindia’s service, finally attaining his colonelcy and being given command of a compoo, which was roughly equivalent to a brigade in British terms. He had also been given the Dark Gift along the way, becoming both a vampire and a captain on the very same memorable night.

Pohlmann’s compoo was widely acknowledged to be the best in Scindia’s army, and their owner therefore lavished the most money, personnel resources, and of course the very best equipment upon it. The compoo was comprised of eight regular battalions in total, each one officered by a European with extensive military service under his belt. But one of the biggest problems faced by Scindia was desertion. Despite the fact that he was a generous employer, providing much better prospects for advancement than either the regular British Army or its EIC counterpart, many of Scindia’s officers were British veterans, and as such they had insisted upon an agreement that would allow them to terminate their employment rather than take up arms against their former comrades.

Every man knew that war was inevitable. The British craved it, just as they craved dominion over all India. Lake, King George’s chief military puppet on the continent, would give his man Wellesley free reign to make war upon the Maratha Confederacy, or so the talk went around campfires and dinner tables. The British would have to be shown the power of the Marathas, and with upwards of 200,000 armed men under their command, it would be a very foolish man indeed who would bet on Arthur Wellesley and his tiny band of redcoats and sepoys.

Anthony Pohlmann was no man’s fool.

What he was, however, was a pragmatist. It didn’t help that the British government was offering similar jobs with equivalent pay to any man who deserted from the Maratha army. With the seasoned British soldiers exercising their right to leave Scindia’s service in droves, there were far too many gaps in the command hierarchy for his liking. Which was why the deceptively young woman with whom he was currently enjoying a glass was of such great value to him.

When he had first met Jamelia and listened to her story, the colonel had been extremely skeptical of some of her claims. That she was the Tipu Sultan’s daughter; that she had commanded his private army in battle; and perhaps most importantly of all, that she had faced the British general Arthur Wellesley (who had been a colonel at the time) and had brought him to the brink of defeat.

Pohlmann liked to keep his ear to the ground when it came to regional affairs, and had therefore known that such a commander as Jamelia claimed to be truly had existed; her reputation truly had preceded her. But rumor had insisted that the Sultan’s daughter had died, killed on the night that Seringapatam had fallen to the British.

“No body was ever found,” she had replied when questioned on the subject. “My father tricked me…forced me outside and locked me out.”

“Why?” Pohlmann had asked, genuinely curious.

“To save my life. He knew that the British colonel was coming to kill him. My father had been wounded in the assault. He could never have fended off the vampire’s attack.”

“You might have been able to save him,” the vampire reasoned. “Had you remained.”

“He did not give me the opportunity,” Jamelia growled. After a moment she softened. “He insisted upon being my father to the very last. How could I possibly blame him for that?”

“Could he not have surrendered?”

“And been what? A puppet of the English, to dance to their King’s tune as and when they pulled upon his strings?” she scoffed. “My father was a proud man, and an able ruler. He would rather have died than live under the British boot.”

“Which is ultimately what happened.”

“Yes.”

“And so, here you are.”

“Yes. Here I am.”

“The question becomes, ‘what shall we do with you?’”

What they had done with her had been to put her in command of a battalion in Pohlmann’s own compoo, one of eight infantry formations within the larger brigade. Pohlmann had been given good reason to be pleased with that decision ever since. Jamelia did indeed excel on the field of battle, and knew as much about the maneuvering of troops (if not more) than any other officer he had ever met, western or eastern.

For her own part, Jamelia also held the Hanoverian vampire in high esteem. As much as she despised his particular creed of blood-sucking supernatural parasite, she was willing to make an exception in Pohlmann’s case. The vampire was not only highly capable and an outstanding leader of men, he also maintained a rigid code of honor when it came to the performance of his duties. Perhaps the worst thing that could be said of him was that his proclivities verged upon the eccentric; Pohlmann kept a gaudily-decorated personal elephant for transportation, of all things, and dressed in a flamboyant manner that seemed more appropriate for an actor than a colonel.

As vices went, it was essentially harmless.

Both Pohlmann and Jamelia were currently guests in the personal tent of their employer. Even when he was not speaking, Daulat Rao Scindia’s very presence tended to command whichever situation it was in which he found himself. Scindia had remained silent while his two underlings had exchanged pleasantries, but in truth he had little inclination towards small talk.

“Wellesley and his army have crossed into our lands at last,” Scindia began without preamble. “Considering the approximate position of their army — which we can ascertain based upon the observations of their cavalry scouts — then they must strike first at Ahmednuggur. Unless, of course, they are complete fools.”

“Wellesley may be many things, but a fool is not one of them,” said Jamelia.

“Just so,” Scindia agreed. “As things currently stand, the town and fortress are barely defended, with only a token garrison in place.”

“We do want Ahmednuggur to fall,” Pohlmann pointed out.

“Indeed we do. But our plan—”

“The plan of our Goddess!” Jamelia corrected him with surprising venom.

Scindia recoiled as if struck. In the past, he had put commanders to death for showing less insolence. Jamelia, however, was favored by Kali — he had heard that from the lips of his goddess herself, when his high priest had arranged for Scindia to commune with her. It had been the night before Scindia had ridden out from Gawilghur. The Dark Mother had left him under no illusion about the importance of the tigress to her plans for wiping out the British… and then Achalraj had taken him to the edge of the pit, and shown him the horrors which dwelt within. Scindia’s eyes had widened, fit to burst at the sight of the dead British soldiers walking again. The corpses were snapping at the air with their mouths and clawing desperately with hands that were already rotting to the bone, sloughing off flesh and tissue as the unholy creatures scrabbled hungrily at the sides of the pit in an attempt to get at the living meat that remained just tantalizingly beyond their reach.

“The plan of our Goddess, the most beneficent Dark Mother Kali,” Scindia repeated, in an attempt to placate the capricious deity. One never knew quite when she might be listening. “As I was saying, the plan of our goddess requires that most ancient type of offering to her magnificence: a blood sacrifice.”

“And no meager sacrifice either. We must neither stint nor hold back, Scindia. We—”

Jamelia stopped in mid-sentence, then suddenly began to choke, screwing her eyelids tightly shut. Her teeth clenched down hard, drawing a thin line of blood from her tongue in the manner of one suffering from fits. Pohlmann and Scindia exchanged a confused look as the tigress reached out and gripped the arms of her chair, her knuckles turning white with the sheer pressure she was applying.

“What is happening, Pohlmann?” Scindia asked. The vampire merely shrugged, completely at a loss for words.

With her entire body both rigid and simultaneously trembling, Jamelia snapped her eyelids open. The pupils were gone, rolled back into their sockets so that only the whites remained.

A sinister smile spread slowly across her lips, which the empty white gaze somehow only made more disconcerting. Jamelia flicked out her tongue, now red with blood, and licked her lips slowly, almost suggestively.

“Jamelia is correct,” said Jamelia at last. “The amount of power that you are asking for from me is far from a trivial thing, even for a goddess. The recompense that you offer must be of a comparable magnitude. Otherwise, I shall be most…displeased.”

“Dark Mother?” Scindia asked intently.

Jamelia simply inclined her head, her smile becoming a fraction more twisted. “None other. This one is simply a vessel. And you are correct. One never does know when I might be listening.”

“Forgive me, almight Kali. I meant no disrespect.” Scindia abased himself on the ground, touching his forehead to the cool earth.

“This I know too,” Kali answered through Jamelia’s mouth, though the voice had a different timbre than that of the tigress, an ethereal quality that Scindia found difficult to describe. “You may rest assured that had it been otherwise, you would already have felt my displeasure.” She turned to look at Pohlmann, who sat with his usual quiet stillness, his eyes taking in everything. “You do not bow down before me, vampire. That is brave, after a fashion. It might also be considered extremely foolish.”

Pohlmann seemed to consider this. After a moment, the colonel got out of his chair and went down on one bended knee, bowing his head so that his chin touched his chest. “I, also, meant no disrespect, madam. In truth, I regard the mistress of my master as my own mistress.”

Kali laughed, clapping her hands together in delight. “Such a pretty way with words,” the goddess cooed. “I can see why this one” — she indicated Jamelia’s body with a sweep of her own hands — “holds you in such high regard.”

“As I do her,” Pohlmann replied gravely, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground before him.

“I will keep this brief, if only because Jamelia’s body could not long tolerate the sheer power of my manifestation without sustaining permanent damage. Scindia, look at me. Look at me.”

Startled, Scindia obeyed. Kali was smiling at him, but it was the kind of smile that threatened to turn his blood to ice. Her eyeless gaze felt as though it was boring straight through him to his core, reading every last secret and lie he had ever kept or told.

“I know many things, Daulat Rao Scindia. I know what drives you — yours hopes, your dreams, and above all, your fears. You are so very proud of your toy soldiers, are you not? The white-coated little darlings of your compoos…”

“Yes, Magnificence. I am proud of my men,” he answered truthfully. What sense was there in lying to a deity that seemed able to read your every thought, to know every word before you spoke it? “I swear to you that they will give their all in your most honored service.”

“Indeed they shall,” Kali nodded in agreement, “and some shall give more than others. Here is my price, Daulat Rao Scindia. My magic is blood magic. Give me the blood of one thousand men. Not all must be yours, but all must be spilled on the same night, and in the same place.”

The same place? Scindia couldn’t help but think that it was going to be more than a little difficult to get a thousand soldiers onto the same stretch of ground and then kill each one.

“Not literally,” the goddess replied, as though talking to a simpleton. “The dark magic only requires that they die within the same walls. All else is simply detail.”

“It shall be done, O Magnificence.”

“See that it is. It is better that these offerings are made in the blood of the British, but as long as they are not made in the lives of those who bow down before me, I care little.”

“Yes, Kali.”

“Yes, Kali,” she mimicked. “Do you know what will happen once my priest has worked his wonders in my name?”

“The dead shall rise again. They will turn on the British, and together with our soldiers, shall exterminate them,” Scindia replied fervently.

“Yes, the dead will rise,” Kali confirmed, “though only the newly-dead, and they will hunger for the flesh of the living, for that is the only way in which my blood magic may be sustained. Without nourishment, they will die the Second Death, where they will remain until Lord Shiva destroys this mortal world at the end of days. But you should also know this: the living dead do not discriminate. Whether light-skinned or dark, they care not. They will only see food, Scindia. Do not take them for friends or comrades, for they will take you for their very own.”

“I understand, Dark Mother.”

“Even my great power has its limits. I may bestow the ability to command these creatures upon one mortal being, and one mortal being alone. That shall be my chosen host—” Kali indicated Jamelia’s body with her own hands — “and even then, both time and circumstance must be right before she can lead them.”

“Great Kali…unworthy though I am, may I ask a question of your Magnificence?”

Jamelia’s head turned toward Pohlmann, for it was the vampire who had spoken, though his head remained bowed.

“You amuse me, vampire. Why not?”

“There is no limit to your divine powers, O Kali. Therefore, I am forced to wonder why you do not simply rid these lands of the English with a wave of your hand…without spilling the blood of your most humble servants.”

The white-within-white eyes narrowed, and for a moment Scindia feared that the goddess had taken offense. That would mean the end for Pohlmann. What was the idiot thinking, asking a question like that of a goddess?

Finally, Kali said: “There are limits to even my powers, vampire, though it pains me to admit it. I may move mountains if I so choose, and yet all actions must be paid for. Nothing is given for free, do you understand?”

Pohlmann nodded, though he was not entirely sure that he did.

“I am far from the only deity whose influence extends to these lands,” she went on, “and there are other players in this game which we call leela, the great contest of life. Leela truly is the great game, played only by we gods and goddesses. All mortal games are but pale reflections of its divine glory. Have you ever played the game which the mortals call ‘chess,’ vampire?”

“I have,” he confirmed. In truth, Pohlmann was really rather good at it. Many outstanding military officers were. He suspected that fact was no coincidence, either.

“Consider that the world is the chess-board. Think of these lands — what you presently call the Maratha lands — as one square upon that board. The English represent one side; my followers, the other.” Kali regarded the vampire levelly. “Is it permitted for the player of either side to simply sweep his opponents from the board at a single stroke?”

“Indeed not. The game has rules, and…ah!”

“I see that light dawns upon your mind at last, vampire. The great game in which all gods are engaged also has its rules. Much like chess, though with vastly different consequences.”

“This raising of the dead…adds another piece to the board?” Scindia asked.

“You may choose to see it in those terms,” Kali agreed, “but with one very important difference. For you see, unless you take the greatest of care, this particular piece may threaten your own side every bit as much as it endangers that of your opponent. And on that note, I shall leave you.”

As though punched by a giant invisible hand, Jamelia’s body was slammed back into her chair, bending over backwards at the waist. She began to laugh maniacally, blood-tinged spittle drooling from the corners of her mouth as her spine hyper-extended itself. Then, as though she was a puppet whose strings had been cut, the tigress slumped into unconsciousness, every muscle turning limp and flaccid.

All that was left behind were the echoes of laughter from a most volatile goddess.

The Best-Laid Plans

A quarter of an hour later, Jamelia had still not awakened from her slumber. The vampire colonel had rather gallantly taken a light blanket and covered her with it. Scindia looked on impassively, making no comment.

At last, both officer and potentate returned to the comfort of their chairs, Scindia to wine, whereas Pohlmann was less than enthused to discover that the young girl’s blood had long since turned cold. Not that it would prevent him from drinking it.

“You will find it difficult to kill a thousand of Wellesley’s men if only two thousand of our own are defending Ahmednuggur,” Pohlmann pointed out, believing that he sensed a flaw in Scindia’s plan. But the potentate shook his head slowly, offering a sly smile to his vampire underling.

“I seem to recall that we have several thousand Arab mercenaries accompanying the army, chiefly for the purpose of garrison duties.”

The vampire’s face lit up as understanding suddenly dawned.

“Indeed we do,” Pohlmann confirmed. The Arabs, almost all of them Muslims, had a reputation for hard fighting and loyalty that was so often hard to find in the mercenary world.

“Their most important attribute is that they are not Hindus,” Scindia added. “See that a thousand of them accompany Jamelia and her battalion to Ahmednuggur. In addition to the bodies of the fallen English, they shall comprise our grand blood sacrifice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Achalraj shall also accompany them. It is long past time that that one earned his keep. He knows how to bless the bodies of the dead with the will of Kali.” Scindia shuddered, suddenly feeling cold and tired. “I have seen it done, at Gawilghur.”

“I have heard speak of it, sir. The resurrected corpses of the British dragoons. Jamelia told me of them. I must confess that I found it a little hard to believe, at the time.”

“Every word the truth, Anthony. The dead returned to life. Above all else, they are…well, hungry seems the best word. Hungry for living flesh. They seemed drawn to it.”

“How do you know, sir?” Pohlmann sounded genuinely curious.

“As Achalraj told it to me, the thug temple guards grew bored one day and tossed in a wild dog. The creatures tore it apart and ate the bloody scraps whole.” Scindia made a face. “Following that, I ordered…purely in the name of research, you understand…ordered a beggar be taken from the street and introduced to them, as it were.”

Introduced, Pohlmann thought disgustedly. It almost sounds respectable when put like that.

“He too was torn apart and devoured.”

“If these…creatures are as hungry for human flesh as the goddess states…”

“And we would never, ever doubt her word!” Scindia interjected hurriedly.

“Indeed not, sir. At any rate, I have been thinking about what she said regarding the nature of this particular ‘chess piece’ — more specifically, what is to prevent this plague of the dead from overwhelming the British, just as we intend, and then going on to spread its foul pestilence through the entire region?”

“We have an army of more than two hundred thousand men,” the potentate replied dismissively. “I am sure that they can handle a few thousand of the walking dead. The creatures are mindless.”

“Yes, but how do we know that the creatures can be killed?”

It was a reasonable point, Scindia had to admit, but he had anticipated the question — had asked it himself, in fact — and already had a response prepared.

“None of the British dragoons now survive, Anthony,” he explained. “My thugs made good use of them for, once again, the purposes of research. And do you know what they found?”

“Do please enlighten me, sir.” Pohlmann knew that Scindia would never miss an opportunity to hear the sound of his own voice.

“They found that the creatures can receive the most horrific wounds to the arms, to the legs, even to the belly or to the chest, and still continue to function…but any injury which penetrates the head, or better yet separates it from the rest of the body, will finish them off for good.”

Pohlmann paused silently for a few moments, digesting this information and considering the potential ramifications. Finally, he spoke.

“Then it would behoove us, sir, to make sure that the men receive a little more target practice over the next couple of days…”

CHAPTER FOUR

Reconnaissance

The sun’s glowing amber disk had barely dipped below the western horizon when the lone rider spurred his horse into a canter, leaving the British lines behind and heading northward onto the open plains. He gave the stallion free rein, allowing him to stretch his legs and work off some of the stiffness accrued after being stabled in camp all day long.

After covering the better part of a mile, Arthur Wellesley was satisfied that he had located a suitable vantage point. He reined Diomed in gently. Superbly disciplined, the grey obeyed his master’s command instantly, slowing first to a walk and then coming to a complete stop.

Arthur twisted around in the saddle, reaching behind him into one of the leather pouches that were slung on a strap over each side of his mount’s broad back and retrieving a brass telescope. Extending the telescope out to its full length, he placed the eyepiece up to his right eye and tracked the tube across the darkening plain until at last his intended target swam into view: Ahmednuggur.

As he had pointed out to his officers during their meeting to discuss strategy, the town was indeed co-located with the real prize—the fort. In order to distinguish between the two, the local people referred to Ahmednuggur Fort and to Ahmednugger Pettah, which meant ‘town’ in the native language.

Arthur scanned his way across the walls, his enhanced vampiric vision taking in every detail with great clarity despite the low light conditions. The flag of Scindia flew above the main gate. He paid particular attention to the fort itself, his reasoning that it would be the tougher by far of the two nuts to crack.

Twenty feet high, the walls looked to be extremely solid and formidable. If he was any judge of scale, the bastions which broke up the wall’s smooth surface had been placed at intervals of approximately one hundred yards. There were gun embrasures spaced between each bastion, with small artillery pieces pre-positioned there in readiness to scour the approaches.

Bastions—they may well take a heavy toll upon our men. Upon my men.

Circular protrusions that looked like nothing so much as miniature towers, the bastions were extra platforms from which the defenders could pour fire into any attacking force that attempted to assault the fortress. With there being one bastion every hundred feet, any assault would have to strike at a point between two of the bastions, which meant that the redcoats would be the recipients of a brutal, withering crossfire from both their left and their right flanks simultaneously.

The cost in British and sepoy lives would be horrific.

Surely there had to be a better way…

It was a long-established axiom of siege warfare that the besiegers must take several days to open the door into a defended fortress. This was typically accomplished by employing heavy artillery, specially-designed siege guns; when sited properly, the batteries would pound away at the same section of wall night and day, throwing enough lead at their target to weaken and ultimately collapse it. The resultant gaping hole and pile of rubble was known as a breach, and it was into this that the first batch of valiant (though many would prefer to call them foolhardy) assault troops would go, storming ahead of the main body in a desperate attempt to gain a foothold and force their way inside before the enemy could repel them with shot and steel.

To establish a breach would take days – days that Wellesley knew he did not have. But nor dare he simply march around it and advance further into Maratha territory; leaving a fortress like Ahmednuggur in his rear would be tantamount to strategic suicide. According to his very best intelligence reports, the fort and town were guarded by at least one battalion of Scindia’s prime infantry, and another thousand or so Arabic mercenaries. Unlike some mercenaries who would take their employer’s money and then flee after the first exchange of shots, the Arab troops were renowned for both their courage and steadfastness, which was why the Marathas found them such an attractive proposition for garrisoning their fortresses.

Leave a force of upwards of two thousand enemy fighting men to threaten his rear? No, it simply did not bear thinking about. The fortress must be taken, and the garrison either taken captive or put to the sword if they refused to surrender.

There was simply no other choice.

Dismounting, Arthur touched Diomed gently just above his nose, placing a minor glamor upon the beast and intoning the word: “Stay.” Obediently, the grey stallion lowered his head and began to search the ground for anything that even remotely resembled an edible root or a plant.

Closing his eyes for a moment and summoning his energies, Arthur levitated slowly into the evening air. As he reached a height of around ten feet, the vampire general allowed his body to accelerate, rising until Diomed was little more than a dark smudge against the distant earth far below him. He still held the telescope loosely in the fingers of his right hand.

The air was cooler up here at altitude, and Arthur took a moment to simply enjoy it, luxuriating in the decadent feeling of indulgence brought on by the breeze ruffling his hair and flowing across his skin. Above were the stars, shining brightly in all their glory. Inwardly, he reveled at being suspended part-way between the heavens and the earth.

After a time, he decided that enough was enough. Angling himself slightly forward in the air, Arthur willed his body to move. Like most vampires, he had an exquisite level of control over his physical form – including its density and composition, when he so desired it – that allowed him to perform feats that seemed nothing less than miraculous to mortal eyes.

The plains streaked by beneath him, all shadow and darkness. It took less than five minutes for both the fort and the town to appear below his feet, both of them dotted with the twinkling lights from a host of burning torches, candles, and fire-pits.

Looking down on it for above, Arthur could see that the fort was circular in shape. A ditch surrounded it, which would serve to slow the charge of any attacking force on their final approach to the walls.

The walls themselves were extremely thick, his professional eye noted — hewn blocks of stone that would repel cannonballs for hours and probably days.

Placing the telescope to his eye once more, Wellesley swept it across the fortifications from this new, aerial perspective. He was intrigued to see that in some places, the big outer walls completely lacked a firestep or fighting platform, offering instead just a steep drop down into the fortress interior. While those particular stretches of wall could not be defended directly, and therefore might seem like a good choice to assault, any troops climbing over the parapet there would not only be excellent targets for any defenders manning the ramparts to the left and right of them, but also for those troops who would almost certainly be placed in the inner courtyard in order to prepare for just such an eventuality. Not to mention the fact that a drop of twenty feet was an almost guaranteed leg-breaker or ankle-twister, leaving those unlucky redcoats wide open to be shot or spitted at the leisure of the defenders on the ground.

And then an alternative struck him, springing up out of who knew which part of his tactical brain and ambushing him unawares.

What’s needed isn’t a breach, he realized, wondering how he had ever been so stupid as to contemplate it. What we need is an escalade.

Wellesley hovered there soundlessly, hundreds of feet above Ahmednuggur, and contemplated the various angles and possibilities until he had lost all track of time.

His army possessed twenty-six cannon of varying calibers, and equally varying effectiveness. That would certainly be sufficient to punch a hole in the outer wall, if he had the patience to sit and wait for days in order for them to do so.

The problem was that every day – no, every hour – that passed in the process of besieging the fort and the city was an hour in which Scindia’s main army would be doing whatever it bloody well wanted to, which most likely meant locating and unifying itself with the Raja of Berar’s army. If the two forces united, Wellesley’s own force of barely more than ten thousand men would be massively outnumbered by their adversary.

Committing to a siege meant ceding the initiative to the enemy, a concept that sickened Wellesley to his very core.

No, they must attack, and attack both quickly and aggressively. The two battalions of Scottish troops would be perfect for that, Arthur mused, particularly considering the aggressive nature of the officers who led them. The 78th and 74th were both hardened fighting regiments. The 78th actually wore kilts, the only soldiers in the British Army of India to actually do so. Rumor had it that nothing was worn beneath but boots and socks, a rumor that their commanding general had absolutely no intention of proving either true or false.

Conducting an escalade was always a gamble, and not one for the faint of heart. Instead of reducing the enemy’s defenses with cannon-fire, an escalade attack simply went straight in, the troops carrying long scaling ladders with them in the front ranks. As those ladder-bearers were shot, the men behind would be expected to pick up the fallen ladders and soldier on, finally planting them close to the base of the wall and scaling them quickly, often in the face of sustained enemy fire.

Floating there, hidden in the darkness, the beginnings of a plan began to form in Wellesley’s mind, crystalizing with ever-increasing clarity the more he considered it. He foresaw three columns, one on either side of the main gate, and one sent straight up the middle to try and force the gate itself from the outside. The 33rd could take the gate, flanked by the fighting Scots on either side.

They would have to trust raw aggression and guts to win the day, the Highlanders flinging themselves up the ladders and spilling over the top of the walls, while the redcoats of his trusty 33rd forced the gate somehow...either a battering ram, or some sort of explosive device would be in order.

Yes, Wellesley nodded to himself, that might actually work. Much depended upon the nature of their commanding officer, their killadar. He knew that the troops were steady enough, for the men of Scindia’s compoos were reputed to be good soldiers, trained by European officers no less; and the Arab mercenaries were also not to be taken lightly, based upon what he had heard of them. But ultimately, the man who oversaw the entire defense would be the principal deciding actor. Would he stand fast and put up a good fight of it, or would he run at the first volley of musketry?

Arthur couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that Scindia was a man who readily forgave failure…or cowardice.

Despite their best efforts, his intelligence operatives – which chiefly meant his exploring officers, brave men who ranged far and wide behind enemy lines wearing full regimental uniform, so that they would not be shot as spies if they were captured – had been unable to ascertain the identity of Ahmednuggur’s commander.

Well, no sense worrying about that now. Whoever the killadar is, he shall doubtless make his presence felt soon enough.

Council of War

Arthur Wellesley did not wake up in a cold sweat. Indeed, as a vampire he no longer possessed the capacity to sweat, whether within the close confines of his coffin or on the hot twilight plains of the Maratha lands; but he awoke from each dream in which he encountered the Sultan with a racing heart and a troubled mind.

Tonight was to be no exception.

Was Tipu truly just a figment of his own imagination; a nightmare arising from the dream-state, and nothing more? Or was he real, the restless soul of the Tiger of Mysore, having taken up residence in Arthur’s own mind. If so, what did he want? If it was simply the opportunity to torment him, then he was most certainly achieving that particular goal. Rarely was Arthur’s sleep undisturbed these days. The Sultan came to visit him more and more often, and their conversations seemed always to come back to the very same theme: that there was nothing but a lonely, eternal darkness at the end of life’s journey.

The coffin lid was removed, jolting him out of his rumination and allowing candle-light to spill inside. Arthur opened his eyes and squinted, attempting to focus. A face swam into view, peering intently over the edge of the casket.

“Good evening, General,” said a familiar voice.

“Good evening, CSM Nichols.”

Daniel Nichols was the senior non-commissioned officer in charge of the Shadow Company, the 33rd Regiment of Foot’s elite special force of skirmishers. Although the company was trained for a wide variety of unorthodox missions both on and off the battlefield, perhaps their most solemn tasking was the one which they performed all day and every day: Shadow Company was entrusted with the close protection of all of the army’s vampire officers when they lay in the ground during the hours of daylight, reposing in coffins while they awaited the return of the night.

It was a responsibility which they undertook with the utmost seriousness.

Wellesley sat and gratefully accepted the cup of blood which the Company Sergeant Major offered to him. He sipped the coppery liquid sparingly, savoring the warm sensation as it slid smoothly down his throat. Before he had been turned, he had not been averse to the occasional glass of fine wine, and at times he had even partaken of some of the coarser, more vulgar distillations. His undead body could no longer be affected by the consumption of alcohol, which Arthur found to be both a blessing and a curse. He sometimes found himself missing the easy familiarity and camaraderie that the drink engendered, sweeping away some of the inhibitions of those within the officers’ mess.

On the other hand, the violent aches and pains with which one must pay the price the following morning, he most definitely did not miss.

Blood was a far better form of nourishment. Already he could feel strength suffusing his body, spreading outward from his core in a constantly-expanding wave. He returned the cup to Nichols and rose smoothly in one single, graceful motion. Had any observer happened to be watching who was unfamiliar with vampiric speed, it would have seemed that the major general had gone from sitting to standing without moving through any of the steps in between.

“What word of the day’s events?” Arthur asked, stepping out of the coffin. A Shadow moved instantly to replace the lid, lifting it with the utmost care and respect. He had been waiting patiently at attention for Wellesley to stand clear, the major general realized with approval, and now that he had, the private worked to secure the senior officer’s place of rest for the following night.

Looking to his left, Arthur saw that a similar tableaux was being played many times over. By long-established tradition, the vampire officers of the British Army were buried at sunrise each morning in a central location, usually shielded from the harsh light of the sun by the officers’ mess tent. Protocol dictated that the officers were interred by order of rank and seniority, with the commanding officer’s grave being placed at one end and a long line of officers being buried in order of decreasing rank to his left. At the far left end of the line lay the grave of the most junior vampire officer in the army.

“It’s been mostly quiet sir, all told. But I’m sure that Lieutenant Campbell will have a more detailed report to present to you.”

Wellesley nodded curtly.

Ah, yes — Campbell. The man is so damnably efficient, I should be lost without him, I daresay.

The officers’ mess was held in what could more rightly be called a marquee than a mere tent, a word which hardly did the scale of the huge canvas enclosure any justice at all. It was fully fifty feet across from one side to the other. A large wooden table filled the central expanse of open space, upon which the mess-servants had already laid out the regimental silver in preparation for the evening meal — supper for those officers who still drew breath, and a breakfast of blood for those of a vampiric nature.

Milling about in informal clusters of ones and twos, Arthur watched for a few moments as his officers chatted good-naturedly with one another. Occasionally, a laugh would rise up from within one of the small groups. He firmly believed that such social interactions were good for morale and the forming of bonds between men who were expected to behave as brothers in battle, and was therefore loathe to break it up; but there was the business of the night still to attend to, and judging from what little natural light was making its way through the canvas walls of the marquee, darkness was almost upon them.

As if to emphasize this point, the servants who were bustling around the mess table began to place candles at regularly-spaced intervals and proceeded to light them, one by one. Arthur called his officers to order. They promptly took their seats, vampire and mortal sitting next to one another by order of rank and seniority.

Mess servants promptly flocked to their charges, pouring goblets of freshly-warmed blood and placing them in front of those officers for whom the act of eating was nothing more than a distant memory, while serving more conventional fare to those who were still among the living. Although pickings were slim in Maratha territory, one thing for which Arthur Wellesley was renowned was his painstaking, some would have said fanatical attention to detail where supply and logistics were concerned; this was the selfsame Arthur Wellesley who, as a junior officer, had weighed his footsoldiers whilst they were wearing full battle kit, and timed them over a series of forced marches in order to determine exactly how long it ought to take them to maneuver from one part of the battlefield to another. Small wonder that as the commanding general, Wellesley should have decreed that a sizeable amount of both forage and food be transported on the army’s bullock train; and so the officers and men ate tolerably well, and were not forced to earn the enmity of the local population by scavenging from their lands like a horde of ravenous red-coated locusts.

Dinner took the better part of an hour, and passed with the help of no small amount of arrack, blood, and cigars. Jovial banter was very much the order of the day, for it was frowned upon for the officers to bring professional talk to the dining table; but once the servants had cleared away the silver dishes and refilled each man’s glass or goblet, all knew that the time for business was at hand once more.

“Gentlemen, let us recap our situation,” Wellesley said, leaning forwards and steepling his long, slender fingers upon the tabletop.

Four years before, the war against the kingdom of Mysore had been engineered intentionally by the British in order to further the economic and political interests of the Crown, which was why General Harris had struck into the heart of the Tipu’s territory in 1799 with the intent of removing him from the throne for good, replacing him with somebody more to their liking.

It just so happened that the somebody in question had happened to be Wellesley himself.

Not that he had really been surprised. With General Baird gone, fallen in battle against the Sultan’s forces, Wellesley had seemed like the most qualified candidate for the temporary governorship of Seringapatam and its environs. Besides, the whispers around the British officers’ mess had said, even if Baird had survived, Harris regarded him as something of a blowhard; certainly the man’s disdain (sometimes bordering on outright hatred, or so it had seemed) of the native Indian populace would have made him a prickly and capricious ruler at best, and Harris had insisted upon smooth governance of the district. He wanted no revolt, no armed insurrection. Frankly, the British had too few redcoats to police and garrison their newly-acquired lands, even if the military forces of the Honorable East India Company were added to the tally, for they were needed to face yet another threat, one which was growing its power base to the north and whose existence was beginning to garner attention in London: the Maratha Empire.

Some called them the Maratha Confederacy, but Wellesley had no doubt as to the imperialistic ambitions of this particular band of princelings. There were five of them in all, and their fortunes waxed and waned over the years as some achieved greater prominence than others, only to fall back into a state of decline again and be overtaken by one of their rivals as fortune played her many tricks.

Scindia was the most powerful of the princes at present, and it was hardly a secret that the man held no love for the British. His greatest rival, Holkar, also roundly detested them; an alliance between the two factions would be a cause for genuine concern, as Arthur’s brother Richard had taken great pains to point out to him.

“Fortunately, they’d just as soon trust a cobra as each other,” Arthur’s elder brother Richard — Lord Mornington by title — had laughed over a goblet of warm blood when last they had seen one another. “The buggers’ armies have at each other on a fairly regular basis, burning and pillaging each other’s territory and essentially tearing off the scab before the wound has time to heal.”

“Better that than a reconciliation and an alliance between them,” Arthur had observed archly, decanting himself a second draught of what was turning out to be some really quite excellent blood.

“Quite so. All of which makes your job rather simple, brother. Restore the Peshwa to his throne, and have the man sign an alliance with His Majesty’s government. Once that little matter is taken care of, we’ll have just the reason we need to intervene in the region if the Maratha situation gets any further out of hand. I shall have General Stuart draft your marching orders forthwith.”

Arthur had found the Peshwa to be an obsequious and odious little man. Ostensibly the most senior of the Maratha princes, something akin to a Prime Minister of sorts, Baji Rao was just the sort of political animal that he had known and loathed during his own days serving in the Irish Parliament. Nonetheless, Arthur was a man who knew his duty and adhered to it slavishly; he had duly escorted the Peshwa to the city of Poona as ordered.

When the British force came within forty miles of the city of Poona, the traditional seat of the Peshwa’s government, word reached them that Baji Rao’s enemies were tearing the city apart. Wellesley had reacted immediately, reaching out for the steadiest troops under his command — his beloved 33rd Regiment of Foot, the 19th Light Dragoons, and a handful of native cavalry, and had led them on an overnight forced march that would have broken units of lesser quality; indeed, two men had dropped dead en route due to the blistering pace set by their commander.

Dusty, filthy, and weary to the bone, the small ad hoc force had stormed into the city just before sunrise the next morning, and were shocked to find that rumors of its destruction had been grossly exaggerated.

“We’ve bloody well covered nearly forty miles…forty miles…in one night, for this?” Dan Nichols had groaned incredulously. “It looks like Holkar’s men have just dropped everything and buggered off.” The streets were practically deserted at that early hour, but there were no signs of the carnage which had been rumored to have taken place. Poona was peaceful, almost tranquil, as the first fingers of sunlight began to appear above the horizon.

“Count your blessings, CSM,” Arthur had countered archly. “History tells us that it is not often that a prince is restored to his throne without any blood being shed.”

“Yes sir,” Nichols had replied dutifully.

The next problem to rear its ugly head was that the Peshwa was turning out to be quite the fickle man, doing everything possible to undermine British influence in the region short of openly opposing them. Mornington had actually considered removing him from the throne and replacing him with somebody more amenable, he had confided to Arthur in a private letter, but knew that the high and mighty in London would never stand for his having used British troops to restore a supposedly friendly ruler back to power, only to have those same troops remove him again in favor of somebody else…particularly when those troops were being led by none other than Mornington’s own younger brother.

Politics, Wellesley mused, always contain wheels within wheels within wheels. It was something he had neither the time nor the stomach for.

Suddenly,with no forewarning, Holkar had suddenly threatened to march his own army south, launching an attack on Hyderabad, whose Nizam was an ally of the British. Naturally, such an outrage against a friend of the Crown could not be permitted, and so Arthur had marched swiftly to stop him, splitting his army in two and assigning command of the second half of the force to his old comrade Colonel James Stevenson, who had commanded his squadron of cavalry most skilfully at the battle of Mallavelly.

Arthur regarded Stevenson as an extremely steady officer, with a natural flair for both battlefield leadership and also a talent for the less glamorous but equally vital arts of administration. Stevenson had actually replaced Arthur as the governor of Seringapatam for a time, and had performed the duty with great aplomb.

To make matters worse, that jackal Scindia, seeing potential weakness among his enemies and perhaps sensing an opportunity, had taken up arms with yet another of the Maratha princes, the Raja of Berar. Intelligence bought with good British coin told Wellesley that the two men, who were fast becoming as thick as thieves, were assembling a massive army to oppose the British encroachment into Maratha lands.

There had been one piece of good news. Holkar seemed to have even less stomach for a fight than Arthur had for politics. As the British army marched to engage him, Holkar’s Maratha army had simply packed up its tents and retreated. Like spoiled and sulking children, they had burned and pillaged some frontier settlements along the way, but the threat of a pitched battle had successfully driven the invaders out of the Nizam’s territory all by itself.

Now, with Holkar’s army retreating to the north, and therefore out of the strategic picture for the foreseeable future — for Arthur would have staked his last penny on the fact that Holkar would never ally with Scindia and the Raja of Berar, so great was the enmity between them — that only those two princes remained for him to deal with.

All of which explained why Major General Arthur Wellesley and his men, another motley mix of British redcoats and East India Company sepoys, had come to find themselves encamped in the sparse countryside far to the north of Hyderabad and deep inside Maratha territory, engaged in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the forces of Scindia and the Raja of Berar.

One strategic mis-step could spell disaster.

Wellesley was satisfied that his army had served an important strategic purpose: they had effectively prevented the combined Scindia-Berar army from launching an invasion of the Nizam’s lands. But it was a far cry from the surprise decisive knockout punch, the coup de main, that Wellesley craved so desperately.

Unlike that of their British opponents, the Maratha army was biased extremely heavily towards the use of cavalry. That gave the Marathas the advantage of greater mobility, but Wellesley knew that, on reflection, he would much prefer the tactical flexibility afforded to him by his combined army of infantry, cavalry, and artillery any day of the week and twice on Sunday; which was a damned good thing, Arthur thought, because the British force was heavily outnumbered by their Maratha counterparts.

We are more than capable of trouncing a bunch of bloody horsemen…but first, there is the small matter of actually finding them.

For what seemed like an interminable age now, but in reality could have been no more than a few weeks, the British and Maratha armies had been locked in a competition of feint and deceit, a contest of guile and misdirection in which each side vied for even the slightest advantage of position over the other. Not only Wellesley but also practically his entire officer corps had grown frustrated with the constant routine of march and counter-march.

Just let it be over, and have it be done with! Arthur had found himself raging internally more than once over the past few days, though outwardly he had maintained the studied air of impassive calmness that was expected of any British officer, let alone a senior one. None but those who knew him extremely well, such as his brother Richard, Earl of Mornington, would have detected just how much he seethed inside. To the officers assembled around this table, he seemed nothing other than his usual imperturbable self — aloof, detached, and utterly in control of all that he surveyed.

“There has been no sign of the enemy during the day’s watch, Lieutenant Campbell?”

The youthful Scot shook his head earnestly. “None, sir. The picquets reported no activity throughout the course of the day, nor did the cavalry scouts encounter enemy horsemen during their reconnaissance sweeps further afield.”

“The enemy plays coy with us.” The voice was that of Colonel Michael Connolly, appointed to command of the 33rd as Arthur’s replacement. In truth, Arthur still missed being their colonel; he still thought of the regiment as being uniquely his, and his alone, which explained their presence in the current order of battle. The original plan had been for them to remain at Seringapatam, securing the island-city, along with the roads and surrounding countryside from bandits and desperadoes. More than willing to pull a few strings, Arthur had put paid to that particular idea as soon as he had heard of it, giving orders for the regiment to accompany his expeditionary force northward onto the Deccan Plateau and into the lands of the Marathas.

“So it would seem, Colonel, so it would seem.” Wellesley narrowed his eyes, staring into the flickering light of a candle on the tabletop. Nobody around the table spoke for several heartbeats.

Finally, he appeared to come to a decision.

“With that being the case, gentlemen, it seems that we have no choice but to press the matter ourselves.”

The remark was greeted with a chorus of enthusiastic assent from the assembled officers.

“I feel duty-bound to remind you, sir, that we are not yet at war,” Connolly pointed out, a note of warning evident in his tone. “Not a shot has been fired.”

“Leaving aside the constant stream of murder and pillage that has been inflicted upon the frontier settlements, you are correct,” Arthur replied equably. “But let us speak plainly, bluntly even…the status quo cannot be maintained forever. It is devilishly expensive to maintain an army in the field, particularly one such as ours which does not simply take what it wishes from the poor farmers found along the way. No, we must either strike now, or withdraw to Mysore once more in ignominy, having achieved nothing of any real worth.”

“May I ask what it is that you propose, sir?” the Colonel asked respectfully.

In answer, Wellesley beckoned for a subaltern to unroll the large map of the Deccan plateau and surrounding geography which he maintained for just such a purpose. Spreading it out upon the tabletop, the Major General indicated the army’s approximate location with a single pointed fingernail. “We, gentlemen, are here. The enemy is somewhere to the north, although precisely where, we are not sure. But what we can know with some degree of certainty is the location of the closest enemy fortification, and it is there that we shall strike.”

The tip of Wellesley’s fingernail tapped sharply three times on a clearly-marked spot, one which bore a single word in carefully-penciled script: Ahmednuggur.

“Why strike there, General?” enquired Colonel Harness curiously. “With the greatest of respect, should not our aim be to locate and defeat the main force of the Maratha army?” He peered more closely at the map. “Ahmednuggur looks to be a small place, unless the map is not drawn correctly to scale.”

“The map is accurate,” Wellesley replied, covering his annoyance at being second-guessed by maintaining a light and civil tone. “And you are right when you point out that this would not be a major strategic objective — under ordinary circumstances at least. But these are no ordinary circumstances. The town is co-located with a fortress,” the General went on, “and both are presently under the governorship of Scindia. We know that only a small force of perhaps two to three thousand holds both places — a mix of regular Maratha troops and Arab soldiers-for-hire — but we dare not press on into Maratha lands in pursuit of Scindia and the Raja of Berar without securing our rear first.”

Connolly nodded sagely. “Even just two thousand men could wreak havoc on our supply trains and sever our lines of communication,” he agreed.

“Precisely. And so we have little choice but to seize Ahmednuggur first, before the meat of our campaign may commence. Are there any questions?”

Enemy at the Gates

“A battering ram?” Lieutenant-Colonel William Wallace scoffed, slapping the palm of a hand down on the tabletop with unrestrained mirth.

The senior officers were once more gathered around the central table, enjoying brandy, arrack, or blood, depending upon each man’s preferred poison.

“Then I am forced to conclude that you have a better suggestion, Colonel?” Wellesley asked drily, raising an eyebrow as he regarded the red-headed commander of the 74th.

“Indeed I do, sir,” Wallace said, turning sober in an instant.

“Please do enlighten us.”

“Use a cannon,” he answered confidently.” Oh, I’d say a six-pounder should do the trick nicely. Double-shot the bugger, drag it up against the gate, and blow the bloody doors off.”

This time, both of Arthur’s eyebrows went up.

A cannon, by God. That may just serve.

“A cannon is going to be dashed heavy,” he mused, already weighing the risks and benefits of Wallace’s proposal.

“So is a battering ram,” Wallace countered, “and the difference is that the cannon is mounted on a pair of wheels, sir. We’ll pick some of the burliest lads. They’ll be well-motivated to push and drag the damned thing, what with the enemy taking them under fire. No city gate ever built could withstand a six-pounder at point-blank range.”

“Especially one that’s double-shotted,” added Colonel William Harness thoughtfully. Harness commanded Wellesley’s second brigade, in parallel to Wallace’s first. His brigade was centered around the 78th Regiment of Foot, fighting men who, like the men of the 74th, were also hard-drinking Scots warriors that loved to fight.

“What harm will discharging the cannon at such close range cause to our men?” Arthur demanded.

“Precious little, assuming that they show the common sense to stand clear and to duck,” Wallace dismissed the concern with an airy wave of the hand. “Splinters will be a concern, aye, but the lads should be able to shelter to either side of the gateway, put some nice thick wall between them and the blast.”

“With respect sir, won’t the enemy will have plenty of time to see us coming and assemble their forces behind the gate?” said Colin Campbell. The young Lieutenant was also a Scot, who had done a brief spell as a midshipman on an East Indiaman before picking up a commission in the army instead. Arthur thought that he looked rather boyish, which belied the adventurous nature of his twenty-seven years. Campbell had been in and out of more scrapes than some men twice his age, and he had been picked out as a young man who might perhaps go on to do great things in His Britannic Majesty’s army…if he survived.

Arthur suspected that once Campbell attained the rank of captain, it would not be long before he was offered the Dark Gift to go along with it. The young man served as the lieutenant of the 78th’s Grenadier company, a plum assignment if ever there was one, and it was said that his company commander, Captain Huddlestone, had no shortage of confidence in Campbell’s abilities.

Huddlestone would be the one to recommend him for turning, and Wellesley knew that he himself would endorse the recommendation without the slightest hesitation. He had witnessed the lieutenant drilling his troops and perhaps more importantly, inspecting the men with a critical eye for such embuggerances as blisters and the Malabar Itch. An officer who put the fighting condition of his men before his own welfare was a rarity, and something to be nurtured.

“Aye, they will,” agree Wallace, “and I suspect that is the reason why the General is sending in not one column to attack, but three.”

All eyes turned back to Wellesley.

“You are quite correct, Colonel. And make no mistake about it, I shall look to you to lead the assault.”

“It would be my honor, General.”

Vampires did not flush, but had they been able to, Wellesley suspected that Wallace would have turned beetroot at the honor just afforded to him.

Seated next to Wallace, Harness opened his mouth to speak — most likely to protest, if Wellesley were any judge of the man. He therefore cut him off peremptorily.

“Before you protest my decision, Colonel Harness, you should know that you too have been chosen to spearhead the assault on Ahmednuggur.”

“You do me great honor, General,” Harness all but stammered, his protest now completely forgotten.

“I merely recognize your competence, gentlemen, and choose to act upon it. Now, here is my plan of attack…”

The Emissary

The British officers had assembled their attacking force just after sunset. Each man had been given a hearty breakfast and as much of a full day’s sleep as was possible, given the heat. There was precious little complaining among the ranks, just the occasional shuffling as the infantrymen changed position to ease the load on their feet.

The men knew that their vampire general would allow true darkness to settle upon the land before launching his assault.

There was no honor to be found in a sneak attack, and it would have been insulting to the capabilities of Scindia’s officers to even try. They knew that the British would come at night — that they must come at night — and so had gotten into the routine of resting their men during the hours of daylight, rousing them for breakfast just before dusk and having them stand-to with weapons at the ready during the hours of darkness.

Before even a single shot could be fired, the time-honored forms of gentlemanly warfare must be obeyed.

The clocks were reading a quarter till ten. Jamelia stood on the firestep atop a section of the pettah walls and watched the lone British rider approach, the white blaze upon his horse’s nose the only thing to mark him out in the darkness. Then his red jacket and white trousers became visible, and lastly a pair of glowing red eyes.

He is doing that for effect. It is an attempt to scare us. Well, this Englishman shall find out that we are not so easily intimidated.

Behind the rider, the massed forces of the British and their Indian lap-dogs waited. Vampires were not the only creatures with heightened senses, Jamelia reminded herself. She had almost forgotten that the soldiers standing to her left and right, most of them wearing the white uniforms and dark cross-belts of Pohlmann’s compoo, could see nothing other than a formless black mass out there upon the plains. The assembly of enemy soldiers was still invisible to those who were not vampires, which was the great majority of the force assigned to hold Ahmednuggur against Wellesley and his men.

The officer — for surely the British would be too snobbish to send an enlisted man — rode at a leisurely trot, doubtless concerned that his horse might lose its footing in the darkness and break a leg. Under one arm he held a pole to which a white flag was affixed. It fluttered in the light breeze.

“That’s quite close enough, Englishman.”

Obediently, the officer spurred his horse to a halt just outside of musket range of the pettah walls. The man raised his voice, sounding thoroughly bored with the chore he was about to perform.

“Major General Arthur Wellesley, commanding officer of His Britannic Majesty’s army in northern India, bids you welcome. I come bearing a flag of truce, seeking terms.”

“Terms?” Jamelia sounded faintly amused.

Two glowing red eyes snapped sharply upwards. She could already practically read the vampire’s mind, but still could not quite believe that he dared say what he chose to say next.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” the officer drawled, “but is there by any chance a man that I could parley with? Perhaps your husban—”

The sound of a musket firing split the still night air asunder. A pistol-ball zipped past the messenger’s face, slicing the tip of one pointed ear as it went. Instantly, the injured flesh began to smoke and char. The vampire clapped a hand to his ear and hissed, baring his fangs in anger. All semblance of restraint was now gone.

“That ball was made of silver,” Jamelia called out helpfully from the firestep, leaning the smoking musket against the rounded upper rampart. “I tolerate condescension and disrespect from no man, least of all a dried-out husk of an Englishman such as you.”

“Bitch!”

“Such language is most unbecoming of a King’s officer,” she tutted, favoring him with a smile that never quite reached her eyes. “It seems that perhaps a second lesson is in order.”

She retrieved the musket once more and made a great show of reloading the weapon in front of him, slowly and methodically. The vampire’s gleaming red eyes watched the second silver ball carefully as Jamelia dropped it into the barrel and withdrew the ramrod from the three round hoops that held it snugly in place against the barrel.

From her careful and meticulous study of vampire lore, Jamelia knew that such creatures could suffer permanent wounding if they were struck with silver anywhere on their body; but a penetrating hit to the head or torso would be fatal, causing them to burst into flames and suffer total immolation.

She was a crack shot, even with something as inaccurate as a musket. The range had been moderate rather than long, and her intent had never been to kill the vampire — merely to send a message to his master.

Jamelia brought the rifle back up to her shoulder with insouciant slowness. Unwilling to call her bluff, the British officer flashed his fangs impotently once more, before turning his horse and galloping away. She was more than capable of putting the silver ball between his shoulder blades even at this range, but that had never been the point.

“Go and tell your general that we await his presence eagerly,” she called instead, eliciting grins and laughter from the men on either side of her. “Perhaps we will have some hot tea waiting for him when he gets here…”

CHAPTER FIVE

Assault on Ahmednuggur

“Quite a sight to see, ain’t they?” Wellesley said to himself under his breath, regarding the three columns of troops which were now fully formed-up in front of him.

He waited patiently, allowing Diomed to wander along the length of one of the columns and back. The evening breeze stirred dust into swirls around the feet of the men, but otherwise all was still and calm.

The sound of the shot came as a surprise to everybody. Wellesley actually saw the flash of light from on top of the pettah walls a split-second before the noise reached his ears.

Have they fired upon Captain Bridge while under a flag of truce? If they have dared violate the code of safe conduct, I shall make them wish that they had never been born!

The sound of thudding hooves reached him next. Bridge appeared out of the darkness moments later, his white flag streaming behind him as he rode. When he reigned in next to his general and offered a smart salute, Wellesley returned it and looked the man up and down without letting a trace of the anxiety he suddenly felt show on his face.

“You are unhurt, sir? I heard a shot fired.”

“I am largely unharmed, General, and you did indeed hear a shot. I had the misfortune for it to graze me.”

Bridge was completely bald, his scalp shaved completely clean beneath his black bicorn hat. The captain tilted his head to one side, affording Wellesley a clear view of his ear. Like those of all vampires, the tips of his ears were swept back and slightly pointed. It appeared to Arthur that the end of Bridge’s left ear had been torn completely away, leaving an ugly ragged tear in the cartilage that had already necrosed the skin around it and begun to turn it black.

“This was no ordinary musket ball – this was a silver munition.” Bridge’s eyes glowed a baleful red as he briefly recounted the events which had just taken place outside the pettah walls.

“Indeed,” Wellesley agreed, his face hardening to become as cold as the light of the stars that circled above their heads. “Tell me what you can recall of their killadar.”

“Well, sir, it seems that that was the issue which occasioned the enemy to open fire upon me. You see, the person who answered my call for a parley was a female—“

“A woman?” Wellesley was incredulous. Admittedly, he had encountered one female battlefield commander before, but she...

Captain Bridge was staring at him, he realized.

“Describe her,” he ordered flatly.

“I could see little of her body above the parapet, General.” Bridge was apologetic. “A native, certainly, but an English speaker – and an educated one, based upon the sound of her voice. The inflections were all very British. She seemed taller than the men posted on either side of her, and I could see dark hair drawn back and tied. I’m afraid that I can recall little else of value, sir.”

Struggling for control of his expression, Wellesley said: “You did not serve at the storming of Seringapatam, did you, Captain?”

“Regrettably not, sir.”

“Which means that you are unfamiliar with the Tipu Sultan’s daughter.”

“I have heard of her, General, but it’s true that I have no direct experience. I was still in transit from England at the time of your great victory. Do you believe it is the same woman?”

There came no answer for a few moments. Wellesley appeared to be deep in thought, his eyes narrow. Finally he answered, “I cannot envision there being a great many female commanders of military units, Captain Bridge. The Sultan’s daughter was a skilled tactician and a capable adversary, and her gender was of no account.”

He sighed. Vampires put less stock in the differences between the sexes than their mortal counterparts seemed to. The flesh-and-blood men of today’s so-called ‘polite society’ had very definite ideas with regards to the nature of a woman’s place, and more particularly with how far she ought to be allowed to rise. Many believed that women ought not to be permitted to work at all, and they were certainly far too frail and delicate to be permitted to serve in the army or navy.

Vampires, on the other hand, took a distinctly different view. They put great stock in breeding and in age, but above all respected power and, to a lesser degree, ability; all of these factors added up to help define a vampire’s station.

In some ways, vampiric society was the ultimate meritocracy, allowing those who were sufficiently powerful and motivated to rise to the highest echelons. An individual’s gender mattered not one whit to them. All that mattered were results and, of course, one’s station. Thus had it been since the very beginning of recorded history, and having spoken with a number of vampire elders, Arthur did not expect things to change any time soon.

Jamelia, he thought darkly, conjuring up her face in his mind once again. It seems that there is to be a reckoning between us after all.

Somewhere, in the darkest recesses of him mind, Arthur suddenly thought he could hear Tipu’s mocking laughter.

Did I not tell, you Irishman—my daughter comes for her vengeance...

Shaking his head to clear it, Arthur spurred Diomed forwards towards Harness. The colonel was standing to attention in front of his massed Highlanders, who looked for all the world as though they were on a parade ground in Edinburgh rather than an Indian field of battle.

“General.” Harness drew his claymore and saluted Wellesley, sweeping the great blade up and bringing it flatly towards his nose.

“Colonel,” Wellesley nodded in return, looking down on the man from Diomed’s back. “You have your orders, sir. The attack shall commence whenever you are ready.”

“I am ready now, sir.” The colonel raised his voice, amplifying it subtly via an old vampire technique that had been used during times of battle for thousands of years. “78th!” That got their attention. Across the ranks, the kilted soldiers braced to attention. “The 78th shall advance!”

There was no quick-stepping, just the slow, methodical tread of superbly-drilled combat troops. Harness and the 78th formed the left wing of Wellesley’s attack. Their orders were to attack the section of pettah wall that lay directly to the left of Ahmednuggur’s main gate. On the opposite flank, William Wallace was stepping off smartly, leading the 74th towards their assigned target: the wall directly to the right of the gate.

And in the middle, the men of Connolly’s 33rd were hauling the six-pounder field gun towards the gate itself, straining, pulling and heaving to overcome the beast’s sheer weight and the challenge posed by the rough, uneven ground beneath their feet. These men had arguably the hardest task – once the garrison defenders noticed the cannon, they would almost certainly draw the majority of their fire.

Behind the King’s regiment in each column were supporting units of native infantry, sepoy soldiers who had been supplied by the East India Company in order to swell the British ranks. There were actually so few King’s regiments in India that without the contributions from the Company, the army itself would have been outnumbered and overrun years before.

Wellesley fully expected the attack to be successful, though at what cost in the lives of his men, he really could not say. He simply hoped that the dreaded butcher’s bill would not be so hellishly dear.

Other cannon were coming up behind the main body of infantry, bigger field guns, heavier and therefore less maneuverable. This was attested to by the fact that they were being dragged by elephants rather than bullocks, oxen, or horses. Wellesley knew the truth: by the time these artillery pieces were brought into action, the fight would probably have already been won or lost, based upon the momentum achieved by those brave souls in the three vanguard columns.

The skirling wail of bagpipes was carrying on the calm night air. Although not overly fond of the racket himself, Arthur could not help but admit to their effectiveness as a morale booster for the men of the Highland regiments, most of whom said that they felt naked going into battle without them.

With a dull, percussive thump, a cannon let loose from behind the pettah wall. The ball went high, zipping over the marching soldiers and losing itself somewhere in the darkness behind them.

That appeared to be the cue for the entire Maratha artillery compliment to open fire. The front face of the wall was wreathed in smoke as a single rolling barrage thundered out. At least half of the balls went either too high or too low, but a couple managed to find their mark, plowing through the red-coated ranks.

One was a bouncer, skimming through the files of the 74th at ankle-height. Even the most disciplined fighting man would scream when his legs were taken off at the knees by a heavy iron ball traveling at high speed, and a handful of the marching Scots duly went down, their lower extremities mangled in a welter of arterial blood.

“Close up! Close up, I say!”

The sergeants were now setting about their grim work, and were performing it well, repositioning the men and adjusting the files into some semblance of their normal order.

The Maratha gunners reloaded and let loose a second salvo. More soldiers fell to the cannon-fire, not only the red-jacketed British troops, but also the sepoys marching in their wake. Some of the rounds were skimming just above the heads of the front ranks, falling to land amongst the East India Company men at their rear.

All suffered equally at the cannon’s mouth. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do, but simply to march onwards, grit one’s teeth, and bear it.

The very front ranks of the vanguard were carrying long wooden scaling ladders. Whenever one of their number was hit, the closest sergeant would direct another man forward to take up the place of the fallen soldier.

Hundreds of orange flames blossomed out through the billowing smoke, spewing musket balls into the massed ranks of the attackers. More screams. A private of the 74th had his lower jaw shot away and ran shrieking from the ranks, hemorrhaging blood from the ruins of his broken face. His tongue flapped from side to side as he ran, making no more than twenty steps before finally sinking to his knees when the sheer pain overwhelmed him.

Over on the left wing, a ladder-bearer from the 78th took a musket ball in the liver. The force of the impact blew him backwards and sideways, caroming into the private behind him and tripping them both to the ground.

“Back on that bloody ladder!” growled a watchful sergant, trotting up from the rear and grabbing the shoulder of the second man’s jacket in a beefy fist. He hauled the stunned redcoat to his feet and shoved him back into position on the scaling ladder, then headed away to find a replacement for the squealing, mewling man who was bleeding his life away beneath their trampling feet.

From his position at the rear of the central column, CSM Dan Nichols did what he always did when he was leading his men into the face of the enemy – dug down deep, swallowed his fear, and pulled up every last reserve of courage he possessed in order to keep putting one foot in front of another, over and over again.

The Shadow Company had actually been placed in a relatively sheltered spot at the back of the assault, something that Major General Wellesley had probably insisted upon, Dan knew. The General had lavished a great deal of time and effort towards training the special company of the 33rd in the arcane arts of combating supernatural opponents, and it would be nothing short of stupid to employ them as cannon fodder against a defended enemy fortress.

No, far better to keep them in reserve, and bring them forward only as the situation demanded. Every man’s Brown Bess musket was loaded with a precious silver ball. Each weapon was also tipped with a bayonet crafted from the purest silver, each one worth more than two years’ pay to the average soldier of the line – which is why they were guarded so vigilantly by the quartermaster, and were always issued only bare moments before the company was sent into action.

Looking up at the top of the pettah walls, Dan could see fleeting glimpses of the white tunics worn by the defenders, appearing and disappearing through patches in the smoke.

Another ragged volley rang out from atop the wall, scything down more red-coated soldiers in the front ranks.

“Looks like the 74th is copping a fair old beating.”

The voice belonged to McElvaney, the dark-skinned little Scots corporal who had once fancied himself a hunter of tigers.

“Silence in the ranks!” Dan growled without turning his head.

He’s right though, the CSM had to admit, looking ahead and to his right; the front ranks of the 74th had made it to their intended destination, the stretch of wall immediately to the right of the main gateway. The ladder-bearers confidently planted the butts of their ladders into the ground just a few feet away from the base of the pettah walls, then began to walk them up into the air until the tips rested against the very top of the upper parapet.

Muskets were unloaded on the Highlanders from the bastions on each side, flinging the red-coated men from the ladder and back down into the mass of their comrades who were huddled at the base, awaiting their turn to try and scale the twenty-foot high walls. Bizarrely, there was no fire raining down on them from directly above.

Thank the good Lord for small mercies, Nichols thought, imagining how much worse the carnage would be if the men were taking fire from above their heads as well as from the sides.

The space at the foot of each ladder was fast becoming an abattoir, as men were claimed by the enemy fire more quickly than they could clamber onto the ladder and make their way up it.

Two hundred feet away, Jamelia could not suppress a satisfied smile. She knew full well that either Wellesley himself or more likely one of his vampire underlings would have conducted a reconnaissance of the fort and pettah from the air, and in the process have become fully acquainted with the layout of the walls.

He would have discovered that the firestep was thin and narrow at that section of the wall, directly above the gate, and known that I could not have posted defenders there…a classic weak point. Which is precisely as I intended…

The real question was, would Wellesley take the bait?

The larger and firmer a firestep was, the greater the number of defenders that could stand shoulder to shoulder upon it and pour musket-fire down into the ranks of the attackers. In actuality, there had been no firestep at all in the area of the main gate when Jamelia and her battalion had first entered the city. She had given orders for a false platform to be constructed in that same area. It wouldn’t pass close inspection – indeed, anybody looking up at it from the ground below would realize that it was a flimsy wooden affair – but it might just fool an observer who happened to be flying high in the air, looking down on it from above in the dark. Enhanced vampire vision or not, she was willing to bet that the ruse would pass muster and achieve the effect she wanted it to.

Now, they were about to find out.

Red-coated Highlanders wearing bearskins were shrugging the straps of their Brown Besses over one shoulder or the other and doggedly climbing the scaling ladders. For each man that was shot down, falling screaming to their death, two more arose to take his place.

Finally, a stocky little corporal of the 78th reached the top of the ladder. Triumphantly, he threw one bare leg over the rounded top of the parapet and launched himself over onto the other side.

Sitting astride Diomed some half a mile away, Wellesley watched the bloody progress of the escalade through his telescope. His keen eye zoomed to the left of the main gateway. Fighting to maintain an appropriately detached exterior, the general forced himself not to shout out loud as the squat Scotsman hooked himself up and over the scaling ladder, then reached down with crossed hands to help the next man on the ladder come up and over the top. With a ragged cheer from the men gathered around the base of the ladder, more men joined those climbing the rungs.

Go on, my boys! Get up there, seize the firestep, and get me that foothold!

And then it all went to hell.

The added weight of the second Highlander over the parapet turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. With an ominous creak that neither man heard over the intermittent fire from cannon and muskets, the false wooden platform splintered and broke, collapsing under the strain.

Falling headlong, the first soldier lost his bearskin on the way down and hit the ground head-first, smashing in his skull and blasting an eyeball out of its socket. The second was only a little bit more fortunate. He landed on his feet, fracturing the bones in his heels along with the tibia and fibula of his right ankle, before first his buttocks and then his head impacted a fraction of a second later.

The blow to the head concussed him, which may well have been a mercy, because one of the Arab mercenaries burst from his hiding place and hacked the man to death with his tulwar.

What the devil has happened?

For a moment, Wellesley thought that the two victorious climbers had been shot down by musket fire from beneath the wall, but then he watched yet another Highlander clamber atop the parapet and freeze, straddling the wall but flatly refusing to cross over onto the other side.

There could only be one explanation, Arthur knew.

Cunning little tigress – you have removed the firestep, haven’t you?

Arthur slammed a clenched fist into his palm as he realized that he had been outfoxed.

An incredibly well-aimed musket ball punched a hole in the summiting Highlander’s bearskin, sending hair, blood, and brains flying in all directions. The unlucky man’s head was snapped back with the force of the impact, and then slowly, the soldier’s eyes rolled back up into their sockets and he toppled sideways, falling out of sight beyond the far side of the wall.

It was slowly beginning to dawn on Wellesley that he made a terrible error. He had already determined that rolling a cannon up to the main gate was going to be the central prong of his attack, but as he had glassed the pettah walls earlier that evening, he had been seriously tempted to deploy the two outer wings of the assault to parts of the wall that were a little further afield.

The number of white turbans guarding the more distant sections of the pettah wall soon put paid to that idea; noting with satisfaction that the section directly above and adjacent to the main gate was practically unguarded, Arthur had fallen back on the comfortable and entirely believable supposition that, with only a couple of thousand troops to guard such a long perimeter of parapet, the enemy killadar had simply been forced to leave some areas lightly defended.

Yes, he had convinced himself like a bally idiot, the foe was convinced that he would launch his attack somewhere other than the main gate, and had distributed his men – her men, he was forced to remind himself harshly – elsewhere along the ramparts.

And now his men, those brave lads of the 74th and 78th , were dying for his blithe complacency. It wasn’t enough to have scouted the defenses from the air, Arthur now realized with a sickening sense of clarity; he should have probed them more aggressively, or asked more in-depth questions about the Maratha killadar’s disposition of her troops.

With a vicious snarl that was directed only at himself, Arthur got a grip of himself and forced himself to snap out of it. There would be plenty of time for self-recrimination later, once the escalade was over and the dreaded butcher’s bill had been paid.

“Lieutenant Hunter!”

“Sir!”

Hunter was a member of Wellesley’s small command staff. He had been sitting astride his mount in the company of two other very junior officers, keeping a respectable distance away from their commanding general, whilst simultaneously being within easy reach if he should require their services.

“Take a message to Colonels Harness, and Wallace. Tell them to re-form their ranks and storm again – but this time, they are to assault the bastions, not the walls – do you hear?”

“Assault the bastions and not the walls. Yes sir,” Hunter nodded earnestly. The ginger-haired lieutenant was only two weeks past his nineteenth birthday, and Ahmednuggur marked his first exposure to real combat. Nonetheless, despite his wide round eyes and trembling hands, he rode off in the direction of the pettah walls as though all the hounds of hell were at his heels.

We cannot withdraw now. The men have given too much, have bled too much, for them to be asked to simply hand it right back over to the enemy again…

CHAPTER SIX

Escalade

The hapless British vanguard was caught in the crossfire between the two bastions located closest to the main gate, whose defenders simply loaded, aimed, and fired repeatedly, pouring a near-constant barrage of deadly accurate shots into the redcoats who were struggling to ascend their ladders.

“This is bloody ridiculous!” roared Colonel Harness from his position farther back with his column. Too many of his prime Highlanders were dead or wounded already, their blood-splattered corpses strewn amongst a small sea of abandoned bearskins at the base of the wall.

“There’s no bleeding firestep on the other side, Colonel!” Sergeant Henderson screamed from the foot of the ladder, relaying the critical piece of missing information for which the 78th had already paid in blood.

“For Christ’s sake!” the vampire colonel blasphemed. He shot a quick glance to his right, where it was obvious that Wallace’s men of the 74th was caught in exactly the same predicament. The 33rd, for their part, were still trying to manhandle their six-pounder up to the main gate.

“What are your orders, Colonel?”

Harness snapped his head back around. It was Huddlestone, the Captain of his elite Grenadier Company. The man was obviously waiting for a decision to be made.

“We cannot sustain losses on this scale,” Harness said at last, though it pained him to make the admission. If it goes on like this for much longer, I shall have no battalion left. “Sound the withdrawal.”

“Sir…”

“You have something to say to the contrary, Captain?” Harness snapped, the frustration that he felt suddenly emerging as boiling anger. As a professional soldier, he should be above such petty displays of emotion – and as one who had received the Dark Gift, he should be doubly so. But his men were getting massacred out there, damn it, and Harness didn’t see any other option than to retreat.

“Pardon my presumption, sir, but would you be willing to allow the Grenadier Company to attempt the escalade?”

Colonel Harness clapped a cold hand upon his shoulder, seeking both to ask forgiveness for his emotional outburst and to offer a gesture of support.

“That’s brave of you, Huddlestone, but I simply do not think—”

They were interrupted by the galloping of hooves. Lieutenant Malcolm Hunter reined his horse to a halt and leapt clumsily from the saddle. He had obviously ridden the horse hard, Harness realized, because the beast’s flanks were lathered with sweat, and spittle bubbled at the corners of its mouth.

Hunter’s gangly frame slammed to attention awkwardly and he launched a vigorous salute.

“General Wellesley’s compliments, Colonel Harness, and he regrets that he must order you to re-form your men and storm Ahmednuggur once more.”

Harness opened his mouth to speak, but Hunter went on to point out the bastion that was to be his new objective.

“Please relay to the General that his order has been understood and acknowledged.”

The lieutenant re-mounted his horse and spurred away in the direction of the 74th, determined to relay the same message to Wallace. Harness turned back to face Huddlestone.

“Well, Captain, it seems as though you are to get your wish. You may carry out the attack as soon as you are ready.”

“Yes, sir!” Huddlestone saluted and spun around, making deliberate strides towards his grenadiers.

“Mister Campbell!”

The vampire-augmented voice brought the young lieutenant to his captain’s side almost immediately. Huddlestone slid his claymore from its scabbard smoothly and pointed it towards the closest bastion.

“We are to assault that abomination forthwith,” he explained insouciantly, as though they were about to do nothing worse than take a walk in the park. “Assemble the men and follow me!”

“Yes, sir!”

If Campbell had been a puppy, thought Huddlestone, his tail would have been wagging ten to the dozen. Don’t be quite so eager to rush towards your own death, boy. You’re not a vampire yet…

The grenadiers were milling around close to the base of the ladder, trying to find some cover – any cover – and taking potshots at any white-turbaned target of opportunity which dared to raise its head above the ramparts down the line.

A dead soldier had gotten tangled up in the lower rungs of the scaling ladder, his body lolling drunkenly backwards while the brains leaked from a gaping hole above his right ear. Huddlestone watched with quiet satisfaction as Campbell reached up and grabbed the dead man by the collar of his jacket and jerked the corpse from the ladder. It landed with a sickening thud on the ground below.

“Corporal Simpkins!” Campbell bellowed, in a voice that cut through the noise of battle like a blade through silk, “Take two men and get this ladder moved. I want it up against that bastion in under a minute, or I’ll know the reason why!”

“Sah!” Simpkins roared in acknowledgment. By Huddlestone’s counting, the tips of the ladder were scraping up against the bastion wall in under thirty seconds.

“Follow me!”

Clutching his claymore in his right hand, the young lieutenant placed one boot confidently on the first rung of the already-bowing wooden ladder and began to climb, utterly sure that his fellow grenadiers would be at his back.

Gripping his own claymore tightly, Huddlestone took two steps forward and lined himself up with the top of the ladder. Campbell was only halfway to the top by the time that his vampire captain had summoned up the power to perform a standing leap, flying up and over the heads of the clambering grenadiers.

The vampire landed amidst a mass of dark-skinned soldiers dressed in white, all of whom gaped at the intruder who had suddenly appeared on top of the stone bastion. With a single sweep of his claymore, Huddlestone removed the head from the closest man, then spun on his heel and gored the chest of a second with the tip of the blade, before thrusting it forward through the man’s torso until the basketed hilt was lodged against his ribs.

With a twist, the captain wrenched the blade free, taking the better part of a lung along with it. Blood and gore spattered the floor beneath Huddlestone’s feet as he took three more steps and slashed at the tulwar of a third mercenary. To the man’s credit, he barely even flinched as the edge of the vampire-driven sword sliced cleanly through the metal of his own curved blade and hacked into the side of his neck, severing the carotid artery and bringing the light of blood fever into the captain’s eyes.

That split-second of distraction was all that it took.

“Hello,” whispered a silken voice in Huddlestone’s slightly-pointed ear, “and goodbye.”

Jamelia pulled the trigger of the pistol whose muzzle she had just pressed against the side of his temple, angled slightly towards the back. With a flash of gunpowder, the perfectly-crafted silver ball was propelled down the length of the barrel, exiting in a blazing-hot cloud of expanding gases and propellant.

The ball entered Captain Huddlestone’s skull at one of its thinnest points, shattering bone and severing the middle meningeal artery in an instant. Immediately upon making contact with vampire flesh, the silver projectile began to ignite and necrose the tissue surrounding it.

Huddlestone barely had time to utter a shriek before first his brain and then the entirety of his cranial vault caught fire, blazing with all the intensity of a miniature sun as the contents of his skull burned spectacularly from the inside out. The vampire’s eyes liquefied, turning to streams of glutinous black fluid that gushed down the front of his now structurally-distorted face. A geyser of angry flame exploded from his mouth.

The captain’s body was suddenly consumed in a torrent of green fire, exploding outwards from the center in all directions. Arms windmilling frantically, he flailed backwards, away from the circle of Arab mercenaries who were now shrinking towards the ramparts in order to put as much distance between themselves and the blazing torch as was humanly possible.

Jamelia looked on impassively as the vampire died, and then made her way down the wooden stairs that led into the dark interior of the bastion. Sooner or later the British were going to make their way to the top, she reasoned, and this was no place for a battalion commander to get tied up in hand-to-hand combat. She had bigger concerns to address.

Somehow finding the exposed tips of the scaling ladder, Huddlestone’s legs became entangled and caused him to trip. Still in the process of being consumed by the eldritch fire, his flailing body went head-over-heels backwards, falling straight down the length of the ladder and colliding with Colin Campbell.

The startled young lieutenant had already braced himself for the stiff enemy opposition that he was expecting to find at the top of the ladder; in no way was he prepared to be hit in the face by the burning husk of a newly-dead vampire. The falling remains of Captain Huddlestone hit him hard, forcing the air out of his lungs and knocking him off the scaling ladder. As he fell from roughly fifteen feet above the ground, Campbell’s boot struck the redcoat who was next on the ladder, causing him to slip and fall also.

Campbell hit the ground hard and lay there for a moment, stunned by the force of the impact. Ten feet away, the charred and blackened hulk of what had until moments before been his company commander began to smolder, the inferno which had consumed it already having burned itself out.

Flash burns had scorched the right side of his face and neck, raising the skin in a series of angry red welts. His ribs and flanks hurt from where he had hit the ground in a graceless mess, but it didn’t feel as though anything was broken when he ran his hands down his body to check.

Feeling ever so slightly naked without it, Colin realized that he must have dropped the claymore during the fall. Casting about frantically for it, he saw the blade gleaming in the dirt some five or six paces away. With a determined grunt, Colin forced himself to his feet and limped over to retrieve the weapon. An officer without a sword would never do, after all, and Colin suddenly had the horrifying realization that he was the commander of the Grenadier Company now. The men were all looking to him for leadership, already seeming to have written off the smoking remains of Captain Huddlestone.

As if to mirror his thinking, Sergeant David Pace stepped out of the milling mass of grenadiers and asked quietly, “What are you orders, sir?” The short, dark-haired little man was one of the company’s most senior veterans, and a true lynchpin when it came to holding things together.

Campbell didn’t even stop to think about it, because to do so would be to open the door to retreat, to invite the possibility of failure in and set it a place at the table. They had lost too many good men already in the assault on the false rampart, and he be damned if they would go back to Wellesley with their tails tucked between their legs and nothing to show for the beating they had taken.

“We form the men and we attack again.” Colin hoped that he sounded more confident than he actually felt. Muskets still banged and thudded from the bastions, each ragged volley snatching redcoats from their feet in a shower of blood.

If we stay here, we die. To retreat is utterly unthinkable. The only alternative is to go on.

He found the weight of the claymore strangely reassuring, hefting it in his right hand. Already the pains scattered throughout his body were beginning to fade into the background as the rush of adrenaline pulsed through his veins. Colin put one hand on the ladder, pressed the closed fist of the other against the side rail, and began to slide the sword hand along as he climbed, using it as another point of contact to steady his ascent.

There was no need to look down. He knew without question that Sergeant Pace would be the first man onto the ladder behind him. They were the Grenadier Company, after all; courage and professionalism under fire were their watchwords.

Where the bloody hell was the 33rd?

He risked a quick look over his shoulder, saw that the sweating redcoats of Connolly’s regiment were still struggling to manhandle their gun up to the gate. The defenders seemed to be focusing their attention on the more immediate threat, dividing the majority of the musket and cannon fire between the 74th and 78th in an attempt to defeat their escalade.

Colin returned his attention to the ladder, looking up towards his ultimate destination just in time to take a stone full-on in the face. A second one, larger this time, hit his left shoulder and bounced. The mercenaries were hurling down rubble, he realized when he caught a glimpse of a white-turbaned figure upending a bucket from the rampart. He was caught in a rain of debris, as first more stones and finally larger rocks came pelting down upon him. One smashed him squarely in the nose and he saw stars, thousands of pinpricks of blinding white light exploding across his field of vision.

Then his hands were letting go of the ladder, and he was falling.

Colin must have blacked out, because the next thing he knew, he was laying prostrate on the cold ground with blood streaming from his nose and mouth. Gingerly he raised two fingers up to his nose, and then recoiled at the lance of agony that shot through his face when he applied even the slightest pressure to it.

Nose is broken, damn it.

Blinking tears from his eyes, the young lieutenant forced his head upwards to gauge the progress of the assault. Pace was nowhere to be seen. Three other redcoats were lined up on the ladder. As he watched, the man closest to the top took a musket ball in the chest and fell, screaming, nearly twenty feet to the ground. He took the next man down with him. Then a large rock was hurled into the third man, striking his head with a sickening crack and sweeping the ladder clean once more.

The escalade was failing.

No, Colin resolved with a sudden surge of anger. He would not tolerate it. This would not stand.

Fighting his way to his feet, he staggered drunkenly for a moment as he fought to regain his balance. Flashes of double-vision painted the world as a nightmare canvas of blurred smudges, and Colin squinted repeatedly. Finally, it cleared.

Miraculously, the sword was still in his hand. He resolved to bury it up to the hilt in some bastard’s chest, or to die trying. Colin looped the cord that protruded from its hilt over his right wrist and let the weapon dangle from his arm by it, thinking that he might get up the ladder more quickly if he had the use of his right hand. He could worry about the enemy at the top if he ever actually got to the top.

Third time’s the charm, eh? He laughed manically, dimly aware that the blows to his head were making him act strangely, but he simply could not bring himself to care. His blood was up, his blood had been spilled, and Colin Campbell wanted to shed a little of somebody else’s blood in retribution.

One step. Two. Three. The base of the ladder was within reach.

“Are you alright, sir?”

It was Pace, good old reliable Pace. Colin nodded absently, a strangely detached smile ghosting across his features.

“Never better, Sergeant. Right, up and into the buggers again, eh?”

“If you say so, sir. Want me to go first, sir?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Sergeant. Follow me.”

And then he was climbing, making better time now that he was going hand-over-hand. The cold blade of the claymore occasionally banging against his bare legs, but that was little more than a minor annoyance. Colin was suddenly grinning, despite the noise and fury and death which surrounded him on all sides; for the first time in his life, he felt truly alive, and relished every single heartbeat and sweet lungful of air as a gift given to him by God.

Campbell realized with a shock that he was running out of rungs to climb. Three, two, one, and then his hands closed on empty air. The top of the parapet loomed into view, and without conscious thought Colin threw himself up and over the top of the ladder, landing with an undignified stumble on top of the bastion.

Dignity counts for nothing now, he told himself as he scrambled to clutch the claymore’s hilt between his fingers once more, all that matters is that you have made it up.

The defenders seemed every bit as surprised as Colin was, momentarily stunned at the sight of the broken-nosed, bloody-faced young officer clambering over the parapet to stand before them. Hands in the small of Colin’s back shoved him forwards rudely, and he risked a quick look back to see that Sergeant Pace had landed behind him and was trying to create enough room to bring his weapon to bear.

Calmly, Pace brought the Brown Bess up to his shoulder, aimed the bayonet-tipped muzzle at one of the several white-uniformed defenders, and pulled the trigger. The blast half-deafened Colin, but he was willing to forgive the sergeant when he saw his target’s chest gout bright red blood. The man collapsed backwards against the inner rampart, a look of confused disbelief on his face.

The well-placed shot seemed to have jolted the defenders back to life. Three mercenaries wielding vicious-looking curved blades advanced on the lieutenant and his sergeant, while a fourth brought a pistol up and fired. Neither man dared look back, but the lighter ball cut through the air between both of their heads and elicited a scream from Corporal Simpkins, who had been gamely struggling to climb off the ladder and onto the bastion. His right femur shattered from the ball’s impact, the luckless corporal was thrown off-balance and pitched backward into the empty air.

Colin lashed out with the sword, locking blades with a swarthy mercenary whose angry dark features stood out in stark contrast to the white of his apparel. Both men grunted with exertion, trying to overpower one another with brute force alone. In an attempt to break the deadlock, the mercenary aimed a kick at the Scotsman’s crotch. It missed its target, but the sandal connected with Colin’s inner thigh instead, driving him backwards a step.

Seeing an opening, Pace fired the musket from his hip. It was a showy move rather than an elegant one, but it did the trick, planting the heavy lead ball directly into the swordsman’s belly. He uttered a high-pitched squeal and fell heavily backwards onto his rear end, reflexively dropping the tulwar in order to press the fingers of both hands against the gushing entrance wound.

Not one to rest on his laurels, the stocky NCO pivoted smartly on the balls of his feet and thrust the bayonet towards the next closest man. The point slipped past the mercenary’s guard by mere inches and penetrated into the man’s exposed throat, causing him to gurgle up a fountain of bubbling arterial blood.

“Always wanted to do that,” Pace grunted with satisfaction, referring to the golden opportunity to fire from the hip rather than the more traditional shoulder-aim. “Look out, sir!”

Campbell brought his sword up just in time to block a wildly-swinging overhand cut. The momentum drove his blade downwards and to the right, but in the process opened his attacker up to a kick from the lieutenant’s boot, which by happy chance planted itself firmly between the mercenary’s legs. Pain of that nature tends to elicit a very special cry, and this was no exception. Capitalizing on his success, Colin reversed the course of his blade into a backhand counterstroke, hacking the sharpened edge into his adversary’s flank. The man went down hard and lay there squirming until Pace finished him off with an efficient thrust and gore of the bayonet into his chest.

More Highlanders were clambering over the parapet wall by the minute, filling the upper bastion until the sea of red uniforms easily outnumbered the white. Within moments it was over, and Colin stood there panting amidst the dead bodies of their vanquished foes, his sword arm drenched with blood up to the elbow.

Propped wide open and secured by a heavy stone, a wooden trapdoor beckoned the redcoats down a darkened stairwell into the bastion’s interior. Campbell made towards it, but was stopped in his tracks when a commanding voice bellowed:

“Grenadiers: reload!”

Thank God for Sergeant Pace. In the heat of the moment, he had completely forgotten that the men’s muskets were dry. This is how a good NCO saves his officer, Colin thought ruefully. Ramrods flashed as the men pushed a fresh load down into the barrels of their muskets and poured in a gunpowder charge to propel it.

While he was waiting, Colin ran a shaking hand through his sweat-soaked hair and looked out across the gateway towards the neighboring bastion. Pace was there at his shoulder.

“The 74th are doing well, sir,” he said with grudging approval. Wallace’s men had thrown a pair of scaling ladders against their bastion, and the bearskin-wearing Highlanders were getting stuck in to the defenders with boot and bayonet alike.

“Aye, a magnificent job of it they’ve done, right enough,” Campbell agreed, “and it’s time we capitalized on our success.”

With that, the determined lieutenant tightened his grip on the claymore’s hilt and led his men down the stone steps into the bastion’s black heart.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Repulsion

The vanguard of the 33rd may have taken less fire than their comrades in the 74th and the 78th, but that did not mean that they hadn’t suffered losses. Roundshot fired from cannon and a constant volume of musketry had taken their toll, thinning the ranks and leaving behind a steady stream of the dead and wounded.

Despite the bloodshed, the redcoats simply gritted their teeth and leaned into the six-pounded cannon, pushing and pulling it in equal measure, getting closer to the pettah wall’s main gate with every hard-fought step.

Watching intently through his field telescope, their general silently urged them on. Diomed must somehow be sensing his master’s agitation, he realized, because the grey stallion was suddenly skittish. Arthur attempted to calm him with a few gentle pats from a cold hand.

Come on, Connolly…come on!

Never could he recall a time when he had felt so impotent. It was one thing to lead the charge oneself, Arthur reflected, facing the enemy head-on with sword in hand; it was something else entirely when you were the commander, forced to sit back and watch helplessly while other men — disposable men — fought and died in accordance with the orders that you had just given.

The additional load of the cannon had caused the 33rd to lag behind the Scottish regiments. As soon as their column got to within musket-range of Ahmednuggur, Colonel Connolly formed them into line of battle. Obediently, the troops pushed out towards the flanks in an expanding red line that thinned as it extended to both the left and to the right at the same time. In the center, more or less, came the six-pound cannon, the key with which they would brutally unlock the gates to the city.

It suddenly became apparent to the vampire colonel that the enemy fire was beginning to ebb in strength. Looking up, he scanned the pettah walls quickly. The line of white-garbed soldiers was conspicuously thinner than it had been just a few moments ago.

Then he saw why.

Infantrymen from the 74th and 78th were swarming up the ladders into their respective bastions, facing only minimal opposition from further down the ramparts, and more importantly, none whatsoever from on top of each tower. Several piles of dead bodies lay clustered around the base of each scaling ladder, serving as mute testament to the ferocity of the enemy defense just moments before.

Flashes of brilliant light from within the firing loops partway up the bastion suggested to him that Harness and Wallace’s men were sweeping the enemy from each room of the bastion, which indeed they were; although some of the Arab mercenaries were shot down in brief exchanges of fire inside the close confines of the towers, the majority were killed or ejected at the point of a bayonet.

Splattered with blood from head to toe, Lieutenant Colin Campbell stepped over the body of the last mercenary to unsuccessfully defend his bastion and opened the ground-level door with a swift kick. The door flew back on its hinges, revealing an open stretch of ground inside the pettah walls that led towards a series of buildings.

Campbell and Pace were ten steps into the open, their troops following closely behind them, when they realized that it was swarming with enemy troops.

Based upon their uniforms, which were more formal than those of the soldiers that had been manning the walls, Campbell judged these to be regulars from one of Scindia’s compoos. They had obviously been laying in wait for the British soldiers to penetrate the city defenses, and now was their moment to strike.

An officer barked a command in the local language which Colin could not decipher; based on the fact that somewhere in the region of a hundred matchlocks came up into the mens’ shoulders, he was fairly confident that the word meant ‘aim.’

This is it. We are going to die here, in this narrow stretch of killing ground.

Damn it…

Double-shotted

“One last effort, my lads! Three…two…one…heave!”

Colonel Connolly was glad that, along with several other bodily functions that he found rather distasteful, he was no longer capable of sweating. The same could not be side of the men under his command, particularly those who were charged with maneuvering the six-pound cannon into position.

With muskets slung over their shoulders by the strap, the small group of redcoats strained until their backs and legs felt fit to burst, while their fellow soldiers maintained line of battle formation and traded shots with those few enemy defenders still manning the pettah walls.

Two of his vampire captains had even pitched in, despite the distasteful nature of what to all intents and purposes could be considered manual labor; but even with the boost provided by two supernatural entities, it had been a long, painful, and above all else a slow process to manhandle the weapon up the length of the road that led to the main gate.

Finally, with a definite air of anti-climax, the flared muzzle of the six-pounder kissed the heavy wooden door.

“Stand aside!” The sergeant in charge of the gun was on loan from an East India Company artillery unit. He waved the men away with both hands. They hurried to obey, not wanting their soft flesh to be anywhere near the carnage that was about to take place. “Take cover!”

All of a sudden, or so it seemed, the sergeant found himself standing alone, with just the cannon and burning port-fire in his hand to keep him company. The red-jacketed men of the 33rd had scattered, most of them pressing their bodies against the outer stone of the pettah walls in an attempt to shield themselves from the shrapnel that they knew was soon to come their way.

Hesitantly, with his heart in his mouth, the artillery sergeant brought the flame of the portfire into contact with precisely the correct spot to ignite the big gun’s primer. It flashed and sizzled.

The sergeant turned and sprinted for all that he was worth.

Into the Pettah

Lieutenant Colin Campbell watched the man that he presumed was the Maratha commander open his mouth in preparation to give the command for his men to open fire.

Then the world exploded in noise and fury.

The pettah gate was made of thick wood that was reinforced with bands of iron running horizontally across its length, none of which made the slightest bit of difference to a double-shotted cannon firing into them at point-blank range.

Campbell felt the percussive shock wave slam into him like a hammer blow, driving him backwards several steps. Fortunately for him, the rounded corner of the stone bastion shielded both he and Pace from the hailstorm of shrapnel that was flung outward when the gate was smashed into smithereens, disintegrating as though struck a blow by some vengeful titan.

The Maratha soldiers were not so fortunate. Most of them had formed an irregular line directly in front of the gate, the better to take both bastion inner doorways under their fire. Their commanding officer had not anticipated the British actually breaking through the gateway itself, and in the heat of battle none had communicated the existence of the six-pounder to him.

Splinters of wood, fragments of metal shrapnel, and lastly two heavy cannonballs exploded into the white-jacketed Maratha ranks. The white almost immediately turned to vivid red as hundreds of puncture wounds erupted, spraying blood and tissue in every direction.

One unlucky Maratha standing in the second rank managed to escape the torrent of destruction due to being shielded from the blast by the man in front, only to be blinded by bone fragments that were propelled from the same soldier’s shattered skull. His eyes began to weep tears of hot blood, streaming across his cheekbones and down his neck.

To a man, the entire mass of Maratha soldiers was stunned. Campbell, never one to miss an opportunity whenever one should present itself, decided to seize the moment.

“Come on, Grenadiers – let’s have at ‘em!” He swung the claymore in a circle above his head, then launched himself into a charge towards the enemy lines.

“Into the bastards, lads!” Pace yelled, putting on a burst of speed in order to keep up with his new company commander. In his experience, officers had a way of getting in over their heads if there wasn’t a capable NCO around to keep an eye on them.

The 33rd’s Grenadier Company needed no further prompting, streaming down the inner staircase of the bastion that they had paid such a hefty price in blood to take. They fanned out into the open space beyond the doorway and without any ceremony, lowered their bayonets and got stuck into the dazed enemy ranks.

Led by Colonel Connolly, their brothers swarmed through the smoking ruins of the main gateway and into the town itself. It became nothing less than a massacre, as was traditional throughout military history when a fortified settlement dared to resist its besiegers. The men of an attacking force who had lost friends and comrades in taking the prize usually made the inhabitants suffer greatly in terms of violence, theft, and rape.

Bayonets and swords rose and fell, cutting a bloody swathe through those few Maratha soldiers left standing. The 33rd was nothing less than a superbly-trained killing machine; it had been honed to that level of perfection by their former colonel, Arthur Wellesley. With the pettah ramparts in the process of being mopped up by the 74th and the 78th, Connolly’s men focused their attention on taking the settlement itself.

A quarter of an hour later, Wellesley eased Diomed through the still-smoking ruins of the arched gateway. Lieutenant Hunter and a brace of subalterns accompanied him at a respectful distance. The six-pounder sat abandoned, having done its job with a single blast. Scores of dead bodies filled the space behind the pettah walls, and although he found that the sight of the fallen in the aftermath of a battle usually brought on a deep melancholy within him, Arthur was at least gratified to note that there were far more white uniforms than red.

Of Jamelia – if, indeed, Jamelia it actually was – he saw no sign.

They began to sweep from door-to-door, meeting surprisingly little organized resistance. Here and there, a few pockets of Arab mercenaries tried to make a fight of it, usually a last stand within a building, but a short, violent response by the redcoats soon put an end to such minor irritations.

A few of the more fortunate mercenaries had managed to escape into the fortress itself, but the majority were either forced to surrender, or were killed during the process of pacification.

“Lieutenant Hunter.”

“Sir?”

“From the sounds of it, the town is well on the way to being cleared. My compliments to Colonels Harness, Wallace, and Connolly; you will instruct them to stamp out all resistance and, when the sun rises, direct their junior officers to search this place with the utmost care and thoroughness. The men will go room-by-room if necessary. I want the enemy killadar found and brought to me by any means necessary. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” Hunter rode back to his fellows in order to disseminate the General’s orders.

Dismounting, Arthur bade Diomed to stay. He walked across to the nearest knot of dead men, their corpses shredded by a mixture of fragmentation trauma and wounds inflicted by the redcoats. The vampire’s eyes glowed redly as he focused upon their uniforms. It wasn’t difficult to tell the mercenaries from Scindia’s regulars; the trousers and tunics of the latter were far more, well, uniform than the more diverse garb of the former.

He moved on cautiously through the darkness, following the line of the inner walls and trusting to his hyper-acute senses and the sword belted at his hip to protect him from danger. There was no way that a battalion of even the best fighting men and a few companies of mercenaries could have defended fortifications of this length; there was simply too much distance to cover, and the possibility of a flanking attack could not have been discounted, which meant that any remotely competent killadar would have been forced to post a portion of their force in the rear to guard against such an eventuality.

Outlined starkly against the darkness, white-uniformed bodies hung limply over the firesteps on the rampart above, silent testament to the marksmanship of the British picquets. In the distance, Wellesley could hear the crackle of musketry, but already it was growing fainter and less intense. The resistance was collapsing, he knew, yet the bodies he had seen were almost entirely those of the Arab mercenaries. Precious few of the regulars lay dead among them on the ground or up on the walls.

Which meant that there was almost a battalion of men unaccounted for…not to mention their mysterious commander.

Slipping the Noose

Conventional military wisdom has always held that the most difficult maneuver for any commander to pull off effectively is the withdrawal in the face of the enemy.

Jamelia therefore felt rather pleased with herself. After leaving behind a small rearguard force — little more than a token, really — she had successfully gathered the remainder of her battalion and extricated them from all contact with the attacking forces, pulling them back into the heart of the township.

The men behaved with absolute professionalism, and in truth, Jamelia had expected nothing less. During her tenure as their commander, she had taken an already outstanding body of troops and, through the rigorous application of hard training and firm but fair discipline, honed them to the sharpness of a razor.

“That was smartly done, Bindusar,” she commended her second-in-command. The diminutive little officer acknowledged her compliment with a curt nod, his roving eyes concentrating on the shadows, scanning them for potential threats in the manner of a true professional. Although his tulwar still rested in its scabbard, he was able to draw it in the blink of an eye, should the situation require it.

Bindusar’s small stature — he stood at somewhere around the five foot mark — belied his capabilities as a commander of fighting men. The man had a natural talent for leadership that was rare enough, Jamelia reflected as they marched northward through the interior of the pettah. She had been truly fortunate to inherit him as her second.

From far off in the distance, the sound of gunfire crackled at their backs. With their escalade complete, the British were pushing their way further into the city.

They may not hold the fortress - yet - but the pettah is as good as lost. Little sense in throwing good men after bad.

Fortunately, Wellesley had not wanted a siege, or so it seemed. Rather than surround the fortress and pettah with his soldiers, the vampire general had simply pushed his men straight at the main gate of the pettah, apparently willing to pay any price in the blood of his men in order to see the job done.

Blood runs freely for those such as he, she thought bitterly, his men little more than mere cattle or pawns in the furtherance of his damned ambitions!

With their muskets slung and their blades holstered, the battalion of white-uniformed Maratha warriors emerged from the closeness of the dark and shadowy streets and converged on an open stretch of bare ground. Just two hundred yards in front of them, Jamelia was greatly relieved to see that the rear gate was not only still in friendly hands, but also uncontested. A small contingent of Arab mercenaries — just ten, by her admittedly quick counting — had been posted there. Each man fingered his matchlock somewhat nervously, some of them flinching as the sounds of musketry drew nearer. Even from this distance, their body language spoke of the men being delighted to see the Maratha soldiers arrive.

Raising a hand to halt the battalion, Jamelia turned towards Bindusar. “There is a duty which requires my personal attention,” she said, speaking under her breath so that the men could not hear.

“Yes, Mistress Jamelia.”

“Lead the battalion out of the city, Bindusar. Begin an immediate forced march, before the forces of the accursed British can move to cut you off.”

“Their cavalry may already be moving to do so.”

“Possible, but doubtful. Although Ahmednuggur pettah will soon have fallen, that still leaves the fort to be besieged and taken. It shall be a great deal more difficult to assault than this place was. Besides, it always goes in the same way when the British take a settlement by force. There shall be looting, pillage, and…worse. You may take it from me.”

Jamelia remembered the fall of Seringapatam as though it had only taken place yesterday. The British and native enlisted men had unleashed their animal passions on the innocent and helpless citizens of her home. Although she had not been there for the aftermath of her father’s death, reports of the humiliation and depravity that had been inflicted upon his people that night had spread far and wide.

“No,” she continued, shaking her head, “the British shall be drunk within the hour, and good for nothing else for the remainder of the day. Their horsemen shall not trouble us.”

“As you say, Mistress.”

“I do say. My mission shall not take long — certainly no more than a few hours at most. March the men towards the rest of Scindia’s army. Drive them hard and do not rest before the sun is high. If all goes according to plan, I shall leave the city before daybreak and rejoin you presently.”

“It shall be done, Mistress.” Bindusar bowed to his commander, a salute which she returned with a grave inclination of her head.

“I have absolute confidence in your abilities, Bindusar. Now go.”

With the aid of the junior officers and NCOs, Bindusar formed the battalion into a long column just four ranks wide. Jamelia stood and watched them file towards the gate, the small figure of her second-in-command looking rather queer marching at their head.

One of the mercenaries — presumably the man in charge — detached himself from where he had been leaning upon the wall, peering out into the early morning darkness.

The man approached Bindusar, and with her preternaturally sharp sense of hearing, she was just about able to follow the brief conversation which ensued. The mercenary leader’s gratitude at seeing the Maratha soldiers suddenly turned to disbelief and then ill-advised anger when the troops, who he had wrongly assumed had been dispatched to defend the rear pettah gate, marched straight past him and out through that very same gate.

His worst mistake, Jamelia reflected afterward, was in mistaking Bindusar’s size for weakness. When the mercenary demanded that the Maratha officer stand and do his duty, there came a glint of steel flashing between the two men, and the sword-for-hire received a blade in the belly for his trouble. Although Jamelia couldn’t see either man’s face in the darkness from this distance, she had watched Bindusar kill before. His expression rarely changed, not even a fraction.

What she could see was her second-in-command jerking the blade upwards sharply, disemboweling the startled mercenary in one single, fluid motion. With a hiss of escaping air,the dying man collapsed onto the floor and proceeded to bleed to death.

Well, that was one of the thousand sacrifices demanded by the Goddess.

It was a start.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Resurrection

The first question that emerged from Jamelia’s mouth when she stepped through the front doorway served to do little more than annoy Achalraj enormously.

Although the Maratha officers had appropriated — for which one could easily substitute the term stolen, he was forced to admit — practically all of the decent buildings within Ahmednuggur for their own personal use, Jamelia had seen to it that this small, unassuming little hovel located in one of the more downtrodden backstreets had been set aside for use as a makeshift shrine. As such, Achalraj had created a temporary altar, on which he had placed a small carved statue of the Dark Mother.

The priest looked up at the newcomer with unconcealed irritation. He was kneeling on the floor before a modest-sized bowl of freshly-spilled blood. Its unwilling donor was trussed, gagged, and hanging upside-down from an iron hook that had been pounded into the wooden ceiling. After making the proper venerations to Kali, Achalraj had cut the man’s throat and drained the contents of his bloodstream into a second, larger bowl.

Jamelia looked at the dangling dead man and cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

“One of the foreign mercenaries,” Achalraj explained. “He will not be missed.”

“Certainly not after the events of this night,” Jamelia agreed.

“What news of the assault?”

“The British have taken the main gate, and are even now working their way through the city.”

“No doubt searching for you,” Achalraj said pointedly. “What of the sacrifices demanded by our most venerated Dark Mother?”

“Many of the mercenaries stood and fought, either on the walls or in the town. Knowing the redcoats, they are butchering the Arabs wherever they may be found. I relayed the written orders from Scindia to their leader earlier this afternoon, instructing the mercenaries to make a fight of it while there was still hope, and then to fall back to the fortress when it seemed as though there was no further hope of holding out.”

As if to prove her point, a volley of concerted musket-fire thundered in the distance. Rather than the matchlocks preferred by the mercenaries, this was quite plainly the roar of the Brown Bess.

Achalraj raised himself slowly up into a squat, reaching down to pick up the bowl from where it lay upon the floor in front of him. The bowl was inscribed with delicate symbols and words of mystical import, painstakingly etched into the precious metal by artisans who were now long-dead. Blood shimmered inside it, gently lapping against the lip as the holy man straightened to his full height.

This was no ordinary blood. It seemed to somehow glow from within, as though lit by an ethereal radiance emanating from its very core. Not a drop was spilled on Achalraj’s black robes, which was fortunate because the blood was sacred – it had just been blessed by the hand of Kali herself, working through the medium of her priest.

“I shall need a moment to change, priest.” Jamelia went to the back of the room, using the blood-drenched corpse of the mercenary to shield her from his view. Opening the small canvas back which had been looped over one shoulder, she removed several items of dark-colored clothing: the garb of a thug cultist.

In practically no time at all, Jamelia was now wearing in soft felt boots, long trousers, a loose-fitting black tunic with long sleeves, and a wraparound shemagh that obscured all of her facial features except for the eyes. A curved dagger was belted at her waist in a sheath, and a longer sword was scabbarded in place between her shoulder blades, held there securely by a pair of pliable leather straps.

Truly, she was clad in the night.

While she had been changing, Achalraj had busied himself with laying out four bronze bottles, each of which was capable of holding perhaps three glasses of water, and a small funnel. But water had no place in what was to come next.

“Help me, if you please.” The priest lifted the bowl once more and nodded for Jamelia to take up one of the bottles and the funnel. While the tigress held the funnel in place with the narrow end inserted firmly into the neck of the first bottle, Achalraj slowly tilted the ceremonial bowl, allowing some of the rich red contents to trickle into the smaller container. Once it was full, he righted the bowl once more. Jamelia wedged a cork stopper in the neck of the bottle, setting it aside gently on the window sill. They then proceeded to repeat the pouring process with the remaining three bottles, taking great care not to spill even a single drop.

Once all four of the bottles had been filled, perhaps a thimble-full of blood still remained in the bowl.

“This is now the blood of our goddess,” cautioned Achalraj, still holding the bowl reverently between trembling fingers. “We must not allow even the tiniest amount to go to waste.”

“That should be simple enough to remedy.”

Jamelia walked over to the hanging corpse. Removing the curved dagger from its sheath, he flipped the blade into an underhand grasp and slashed it forcefully across the dangling rope. The knife was sharp, and the strands separated immediately. With a sickening thud, the body landed on its head upon the bare wooden floorboards, then flopped over onto its back. Sightless eyes gazed fixedly into the air, seeming to regard the hook from which he had fallen.

“He shall be our first,” Jamelia said, stating the obvious. Achalraj bowed his head in silent agreement, and without a word the priest upended the bowl, draining the last of the consecrated blood into the dead mercenary’s open mouth. The viscous fluid spattered across the man’s lips, decayed teeth, and the tip of his tongue.

“Step back,” cautioned Jamelia, casually placing an outstretched arm in front of the priest’s chest. He did not need to be told twice, for Achalraj had seen the speed and viciousness with which the bodies of the dead could be brought back to life. Instead, not quite daring to turn his back on the corpse, he went to the heavily scratched wooden table that occupied one entire corner of the room and proceeded to wrap first the bowl and then the statuette of Kali in several layers of protective cloth, before placing them carefully inside a plain sack that he kept for just such a purpose. The four bottles went in after it.

His fall onto the wooden floor had succeeded in staving in the mercenary’s skull, causing a depressed fracture some six inches in diameter that spanned the crown. Dark black blood was leaking from one ear, oozing down the side of his jaw and neck.

The fingers of one hand twitched, followed by a spasmodic jerking of the entire right arm. With an animalistic groan, the mercenary’s face began to reanimate, its facial features assuming an expression of apparent puzzlement. The tongue flicked out, smearing the fluid which had until recently run through his own veins and arteries but was not transmogrified into the blood of Kali herself, across his pale grey lips.

For a brief moment, the man looked to Jamelia like some ridiculous street performer, one who perhaps rouged his lips in an obscene parody of the feminine.

And then he lunged.

Reflexively, she slammed Achalraj back against the wall with one hand, placing her own body between his and the slowly awakening creature. For his part, the priest took no offence, choosing instead to simply scoop up the sack and duck through the front door and out into the street.

The hungry dead thing was clawing at the floorboards now, Jamelia noticed with equal parts disgust and horrified fascination. Doubtless the creature sensed in her its next meal. The thing was as weak as a newborn at first, but it was getting stronger with every passing second. Its fingernails scrabbled at the rough wood, leaving long furrows in its excitement to get at her, finally gaining enough traction to begin hauling the snapping mouth towards her.

Satisfied that all was going according to the Dark Mother’s plan, Jamelia joined the priest outside in the street. She did not bother to close the thin wooden door behind her. After all, why make it harder for the creature within to gain its freedom and set about doing the holy work of their Goddess?

“I will lead,” she told Achalraj in a tone which left no room for argument. “Stay close to me. Stick to the shadows. Do that, and we may yet survive this night.”

“As you say,” the priest acquiesced with a nod. In truth, her easy assumption of the mantle of command rankled with him, but Jamelia’s reputation as both an assassin and a merciless killer of men was well-known throughout Scindia’s domain. Achalraj was above all else a pragmatist, and knew that his best chance of making it back to the safety of the Maratha lines in one piece was to follow in the wake of this exceptional killing machine.

Her dark attire melding into the dark shadows along the right-hand side of the street, Jamelia duck-walked along the frontage of hovels, finally reaching an intersection with a broader cross-street.

“This way,” she hissed, darting across the intersection of the two roads. Achalraj followed her, trying to mimic her speed and follow in her actual footsteps as much as possible. Cloaking herself in still more darkness on the opposite side of the street, Jamelia turned left and began to pick up the pace.

Screams and more musketry came from somewhere off to their right. Achalraj judged them to be coming from two or possibly three streets away. Fortunately, they were shielded from sight by the row of squalid little homes.

The pair crept along for what seemed like an age, finally reaching the end of the street. Jamelia halted the priest with an upraised hand, pressing his chest firmly backwards against the mud-brick wall. Dropping into a crouch, she slowly stuck her head out from behind the wall – any observant enemy would be watching for something to appear at head height, rather than halfway up from the ground.

“The way is clear. Come.”

Jamelia had led them to a stretch of barren wasteground which abutted the pettah walls. This particular stretch was quiet and appeared to be deserted, though as it circled around to their right, the twenty-foot high wall would soon abut with the main gate, for which the British had paid what she considered to be a fairly modest price in blood to seize…which was just as she had intended.

Turning right, the pair skirted the inner pettah wall, taking advantage of the natural cover provided by the shadows until the main gate came within sight. A cannon stood at a skewed angle in between the shattered wooden gates, smoke still curling languidly up from its barrel even though the assault had taken place over an hour ago…perhaps even two, Jamelia realized. She had no timepiece, and hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to the passage of time tonight, so great was her focus upon the mission at hand.

A single red-jacketed figure appeared to be supervising the work of four native soldiers. She guessed the man to be a sergeant or similar non-commissioned officer, based upon the way in which he ordered the Indian soldiers around. Under his direction, the four were performing the work of laborers, dragging the bodies of fallen British redcoats into a rough line that followed the curve of the pettah wall.

Laying out their dead in preparation for burial.

Perfect.

“This will do,” she whispered to Achalraj. “Hand me one of the bottles, please.”

Dropping slowly to one knee, the priest laid down his sack and rummaged around beneath the flap, finally producing one of the four bottles containing blessed blood. He handed it to her wordlessly, reverence apparent in his every move.

“Wait here.” And with that simple instruction, the tigress was gone, her figure absorbed into the darkness with an almost supernatural speed.

Puffing out his cheeks, Achalraj let out a long, slow breath before settling down into a particularly deep patch of shadow. He surmised that it wouldn’t be long before the performance began.

An Assassin Strikes

Sergeant Steven Brown had been given the shitty end of the stick yet again, and he was less than bloody happy about it.

In their infinite wisdom, his employers – technically the bloody Court of Directors of the bloody Honorable bloody East India Company – had decided that his place was not to be among those first into the city behind the assaulting party, plundering whatever was of any value and making warm acquaintance with the female inhabitants – no, not for Brown the joys of wine and women this night. His appointed task was to police a bunch of bloody heathen Hindus, making sure that the illiterate little swine didn’t go through the pockets of the dead redcoats while they were lining them up nice and neat for a proper burial.

Brown was a tall man and stocky with it, standing a good six feet if he was an inch. His long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and caked with powder, in the fashion of so many soldiers of the British Army of India. The sticky white powder flaked off down the back of his red jacket whenever he turned his head, but the nasty stuff at least kept it under some form of control and, more importantly, out of his face.

The three broad chevrons stitched onto his sleeve reminded all and sundry of the authority bestowed upon him from on high, and carried with them an almost godlike power that he applied to any man of lower rank whenever he felt like doing so.

“Juldi! Juldi! Get a bleeding move on, you sons of Hindu whores. We ain’t got all night!”

The sergeant stopped short of applying his well-worn boot to the men’s bodies – he knew from experience that even the most cowed soldier might be tempted to put a bayonet in the back of a physically abusive commander during the sound and fury of a battle, if he thought he could get away with it – but he felt no compunction whatsoever about unleashing a stream of near-continuous bigoted invective, which served to engender hatred amongst the men rather than to motivate them. Brown frankly didn’t give a damn, so long as they obeyed his orders and took care of all the manual labor themselves.

Sergeants weren’t meant to get their hands dirty. That was what privates were for.

He stood still for a moment to catch a breather, leaning against the outer wall with one hand, enjoying the cool touch of the stone through the coarse material of his jacket. He propped the heavy Brown Bess musket up against the wall next to him, and cast a speculative glance at the gateway and its surroundings.

The fighting had been ferocious around the main gate; the ladders used for the escalade still stood in place on either side of the pettah wall, though one of those outside had gotten blasted into smithereens by a stray cannon ball fired by the defenders.

Brown looked around him at the bodies.

So many bodies, he thought, and gave a sigh that was part sadness at the loss of British life and part relief at the fact that his EIC battalion hadn’t been a part of the initial assault. A lot of the red-coated corpses had bare legs, wearing kilts instead of long trousers. God, but how those poor Scots bastards had suffered during the escalade.

Still, better them than me.

A respectable line of dead British soldiers was beginning to form, the four sweating native soldiers laying the broken and traumatized bodies out side-by-side in the shadow of the pettah wall. Heads, arms, and legs were missing or mangled beyond all recognition in some cases, but the Indian detail treated them all with a degree of gentleness that even a heart as cold and calloused as that of Sergeant Brown could not help but be touched.

A sudden skittering noise caught his attention. He squinted into the darkness, thinking that the sound had come from the general direction of the ramshackle homes on the other side of the barren stretch of ground. Had a stone been kicked, perhaps? It had certainly sounded like it.

Brown reached for the musket’s barrel and hefted it. The weapon was loaded, he had made sure of that, but he hadn’t expected to fire the damned thing on a body recovery detail. He cocked the weapon, causing a loud click that turned the heads of his men.

“Keep bloody working,” the sergeant scowled, holding the weapon at port arms and strolling slowly across the wasteground towards the closest house.

The pebble came out of nowhere, catching him a glancing blow on the right temple. Staggered by the blow, the sergeant threw up a hand instinctively to guard his skull, letting out an indignant roar as he did so.

As soon as his hand left the barrel of the musket, Jamelia struck.

The tigress had been clinging to the flat roof of the closest hovel, pressing her body down in order to keep the lowest profile possible. A pebble tossed with just the right amount of force had served to lure the sergeant in, and it had taken the second being thrown with considerably more force to render the big man vulnerable. In the very same instant that the stone had slammed into the side of the Englishman’s head with an audible thwack, Jamelia sprang from the roof with practiced ease.

During her apprenticeship as part of the thug cult, she had added a multitude of new killing techniques to her already-impressive arsenal. One such method was that of the garrote, a short length of thin cord which she looped expertly over the sergeant’s head as she fell, tightening it around his neck and dragging his body to the ground within a particularly deep pool of darkness.

Fully prepared for the fall, Jamelia landed lightly, squatting on her haunches and then following through to drop onto her left side. Sergeant Brown fell much less gracefully, slamming into the hard-packed dirt with full force. His head struck first, the force of the impact denting his shako, but the dazed man had no chance to utter a cry; the garrote was slicing tightly into his fleshy neck, cutting off almost the entire flow of air through his windpipe. With beet-red face and eyes popping out of their sockets, the squirming sergeant clutched desperately at the cord with his fingertips, fighting to breathe even as his vision began to blur and darken.

Jamelia responded to his struggle by simply applying more pressure to the garrote, eliciting a hoarse rasp of air from her victim’s rapidly-constricting throat. One final exertion on her part did the trick, cutting off not only the trachea but also compressing the carotid arteries and jugular veins so severely that the entire blood supply to and from the sergeant’s brain was taken out. Brown’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head, turning them completely white, and his purple tongue protruded obscenely between his lips. His body went completely limp.

The assassin held the pressure on for another minute, and then yet another, just to be sure that the sergeant was dead.

Finally, Jamelia relaxed her death grip and rolled smoothly to her feet. Her superbly conditioned body had neither broken a sweat or was breathing hard. Coiling the garrote about itself, she replaced the weapon back inside her clothing.

None of the four native soldiers had noticed a thing. They simply carried on with their task of lining up the dead British soldiers against the wall.

Keeping a watchful eye on the sepoys, Jamelia took the bottle from where she had hidden it amongst some weeds. Unstoppering it, she poured a generous measure into the dead man’s mouth.

Now it truly begins.

CHAPTER NINE

Hearts and Minds

Although not even approaching the scale of brutality that was inflicted upon the inhabitants of Seringapatam, the victorious redcoats made it their business to ensure that the people of Ahmednuggur pettah paid a high price for daring to resist them.

With the single regular battalion of infantry that had been assigned to defend the settlement gone, the only remaining troops with any loyalty to the Marathas were the Arab mercenaries. A surprising number chose to stand and fight, trading musket-fire with the marauding British soldiers until they were overrun and put to death. Others made for the safety of the fortress, but precious few were able to get inside before the cavalrymen of the 19th Dragoons scented their vulnerability and charged them down.

Before the sun rose the following morning, Kali would have her thousand blood-sacrifices, and more besides.

Steely-eyed and with a face seemingly cast from stone, Major General Arthur Wellesley took in the scenes of looting, assault, and rapine with obvious disgust from the back of Diomed. Escorted by a phalanx of Shadows, the commander of the British combined forces slowly made his way towards the center of the pettah. He was anxious to hear news of Jamelia, though feared that she may already have fled the township; either for the open desert, or the illusory safety of the fort nearby.

He would send cavalry patrols out at first light, Arthur decided at last. It would take that long to pull the disparate elements of his army back together again, and his horsemen were currently engaged in finishing off the mercenaries who had abandoned the pettah once it became painfully apparent that it could not hold out against the British assault.

A violent crash pulled him from his reverie and back to the here-and-now. The entire street was full of East India Company soldiers and more than a few redcoats, all of whom were engaged in acts of wanton destruction and savagery.

Directly to his front, four grinning sepoys were dragging the occupant of a humble-looking hovel out into the street, along with what appeared to be his wife and daughter. The girl could have been no older than ten or eleven at most, but the way in which the native troops pawed at her left no doubt as to the nature of their vile intentions.

An example must be made.

“Halt!” Wellesley ordered, reining Diomed in. Both horse and Shadow entourage obeyed, stopping smartly on his word of command. The vampire general dismounted gracefully, and two of the redcoats parted instinctively to allow him passage through their protective circle.

He did not even bother to issue a warning. Lashing out with an open palm, Wellesley issued a stinging slap that, when augmented by the full fury of his vampire strength, propelled one of the sepoys twenty feet across the road and into the front of an opposing house. The man’s neck snapped on impact, his body falling to a jumbled heap on the ground.

The remaining three turned to face the vampire’s wrath, their mouths already beginning to form excuses. Wellesley wasn’t remotely interested in hearing them. Focusing his ire on the one who was not using the child as some kind of defensive human shield, he stepped to the side more quickly than the human eye could see, and then jerked the sepoy backwards by the scruff of his neck.

The man shrieked, reflexively losing his grip on the rag of a nightdress that barely covered the girl’s modesty. Arthur yanked his head back and sank his newly-extended fangs into the screaming man’s neck, savoring the sensation of hot coppery blood as it gushed into his throat.

He was not, however, here to feed. This was about making a point, about countering savagery with even greater savagery. To that end, Arthur bit down even more forcefully, burying his teeth to their maximum depth as he did so, and then wrenching his own head away with his jaws still clamped tightly down. A huge chunk of neck and tissue tore away with him, exposing a ragged and gaping wound through which the plane of muscle tissue was clearly visible beneath the arterially pumping blood.

Arthur spat out a large gobbet of flesh, letting the man’s spasming body collapse to the ground at his feet. His eyes glowed with a preternatural red light, an almost perfect match for the red blood which now stained his lips and ran in a rivulet down the front of his chin.

The commanding general had become a creature out of the sepoys’ worst nightmares.

With their faces now seemingly every bit as drained of blood as their mortally-wounded companion was, the two remaining sepoys hurriedly unhanded their victims and simply ran for all they were worth.

Arthur let them go. Reaching slowly into the inner pocket of his jacket, he removed a silk scarf and dabbed it around the edges of his mouth, then absorbed what he could of the blood from the rest of his face. Finally satisfied that he had cleaned up as much as the situation allowed, he turned to face the family of three. Both parents were shaking, but their daughter simply looked at him with unbridled curiosity.

No doubt this is the first time that she has ever seen a vampire.

He offered them a low bow, which seemed to astonish the girl’s father more than his transformation into a monster had. The young girl clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“Please accept my most sincere apologies for the reprehensible behavior of these men,” Arthur intoned gravely, straightening back to his full height. He looked up and down the street. For the moment at least, all criminal activity appeared to have stopped. Clearing his throat, he added a touch of preternatural augmentation to his voice and addressed them.

“These people are not the enemy. They may not be our friends either, but that is by-the-by. Most are simply caught in the middle of a conflict they did not seek to be a part of, innocent victims of the clash between us and the Marathas. You will offer them no further offence or insult; nor shall you steal their food, drink, or personal possessions. Any man caught in contravention of this order will find himself dancing at the end of a rope with a stretched neck before sunrise.”

There was grumbling, which was only to be expected from men who had had the promise of booty dangled tantalizingly before their eyes and then snatched away again, but the soldiers dispersed without any real insubordination. It had been a tenet of warfare since time immemorial that once the defenders of a town chose to resist a siege, they – and their families – would be forced to pay dearly if even a single drop of blood was spilled during the inevitable assault.

But this situation was different, Wellesley knew. For one thing, he strongly suspected that the people of Ahmednuggur had not wanted to resist at all – that choice had been made for them by Scindia, something for which the citizens could hardly be blamed. For another, allowing their persons and property to be defiled by a pack of ravening beasts would hardly further the British cause in India .What hope was there to be of a lasting peace once the Marathas were defeated, if Wellesley’s army had a reputation for little more than rape, murder, and theft?

“Nicely put, sir, if I may make so bold.” Dan Nichols said quietly. He had spent the entire duration of the encounter standing back and holding Diomed’s reins with one hand, not only securing the General’s mount, but also scanning their surroundings for potential trouble.

“Thank you, CSM. Take the Shadow Company into the township, if you please. Hang the first five troublemakers you encounter that are up to anything more than some minor mischief. Do it visibly, perhaps from the main gates. Let us see if that gets the message across.”

“Sir,” the Company Sergeant-Major nodded obediently. “If it’s all the same with you, General, I’ll leave a few of the lads in your keeping. Just in case, like.”

Wellesley suppressed a smile. The CSM was a mother hen at the best of times, always fretting after Wellesley’s safety when he was out of sight.

“Very well, CSM. No more than five.”

Nichols was plainly unhappy at what he thought to be a pitifully small number of guards, but knew better than to argue.

“Sir,” he said again, more neutrally this time, and moved off to detail the men.

Arthur sighed and re-mounted Diomed, patting the grey horse absently at the base of its long neck. As the grumbling sepoys and redcoats went their separate ways, he returned his attention to the bigger picture. Closing his eyes for a moment, Arthur let his sensitive hearing dominate over his other senses. There was still the occasional gunshot, and more than a few screams, but based on the overall pattern he was hearing there was little that might be called organized resistance any more.

Ahmednuggur’s back had been broken, he thought; but then his gaze traveled across and upwards towards the fort, where – unless he missed his guess – more garrisoned soldiers or mercenaries of some description were still holed up. They would need to be ferreted out, and damned quickly, lest he lose the initiative and get bogged down in an interminable bloody siege, for the walls of the fort were much too high to be carried by escalade as the pettah’s had been.

On that cheerful thought, Arthur circled Diomed about and rode off to determine where best to site his artillery against those blasted walls.

The Seed is Sown

Jamelia and Achalraj had chosen their hiding place with great care. They both crouched behind a low mud-brick wall which was far enough away from the pettah walls that they were unlikely to be seen by the sepoy burial detail, and yet close enough to afford them a good view when the reanimated corpse of Sergeant Brown shambled across the stretch of broad wasteland towards them.

The four men noticed nothing amiss until their supervisor was within ten feet of where they were still dragging the bodies of dead redcoats into a relatively straight and even line. The closest was named Vijay; his ears were the first to pick up on the pained moan that was emanating from the sergeant’s mouth, and he straightened up after releasing the ankles of a Highlander who was missing the right side of his head.

The startled sepoy caught a glimpse of a bright purple face, fronted with two rows of gaping teeth, and before he had time to react, Vijay’s face was suddenly inside the creature’s mouth. The thing that still wore the body of Sergeant Brown clamped its jaws down on its victim’s nose and tugged, tearing away cartilage and gristle in a spray of blood.

Vijay let out a bowel-loosening squeal, staggering backwards away from the creature with both hands pressed to his face in a desperate attempt to ease the pain and staunch the bleeding. It was no use, for blood simply poured through the gaps between his fingers.

Chewing hungrily, the creature stumbled forwards again, its gait looking eerily similar to the many redcoats who were even now staggering drunkenly through the streets of Ahmednuggur with plundered bottles of arrack clutched in their hands. Vijay felt something hard and unyielding behind him, and realized through the miasma of pain and terror that the sergeant had backed him into the pettah wall.

There was nowhere left to run.

Brown’s reanimated corpse fell on him, gnashing and clawing at his face and neck. Fueled by panicked desperation, Vijay brought one knee up and buried it as hard as he could manage between his attacker’s legs. The blow would have folded any mortal man in half, crumpling him to his knees in a shuddering, vomiting mess. The monster did not so much as flinch: rather, it took the sepoy’s left ear between its teeth and began to worry at the soft flesh, tearing the tissue away in chunks.

One of Vijay’s incredulous comrades had finally recovered his wits. Despite hands that were shaking fit to drop it, the sepoy nevertheless managed to bring his musket up into his shoulder. The muzzle bobbed and weaved as he tried to aim at the living dead corpse of his former sergeant; the problem was that as Vijay struggled, he kept obstructing the line of fire.

Terror of the monstrous creature finally overcame the sepoy’s fear of hitting Vijay, whose screaming face was now saturated with blood, more of which continued to pump from a dozen ugly-looking bite wounds, and the man jerked back clumsily on the musket’s trigger.

From ten feet away, the shot could hardly miss. Entering the creature’s upper back just to the left of its spine, the heavy lead ball disintegrated two ribs before plowing through the chest cavity and lodging inside the left lung. Blood gushed from the entrance wound, and the sepoy was even more horrified to discover that far from taking the creature down, all that he had achieved was to draw its attention towards himself.

Releasing its grip on Vijay, Sergeant Brown’s body whirled drunkenly towards its assailant. Cold, dead eyes widened as they somehow seemed to recognize the significance of not only the smoking musket but also the man wielding it. The creature lunged for him, and the sepoy suddenly wished with all his heart that he had shown the forethought to fix his bayonet before taking the panicked shot. Knocking the musket aside as though it was little more than a toothpick, the reanimated corpse locked its arms around the sepoy’s body and drew him into a bear-hug. The man kicked and yelled in a desperate attempt to free himself, but his cries and struggles were both cut short when ravenous teeth were sunk into his throat in what looked like a grotesque, even more vicious mockery of the act of vampirism.

The dying sepoy’s cries for help were lost in the noise and violence of Ahmednuggur’s capitulation, the wails of those unfortunates who were suffering the brutality of being beaten, raped, or murdered. Vijay’s body had ceased moving by now, having bled out as much of its precious life-blood as it could afford to lose.

Not even thinking to use their muskets on the creature, the remaining two sepoys decided that their best chance of survival was to flee. The pair took to their heels like men possessed, splitting up and running with no particular direction in mind other than simply away.

As events transpired, neither man would get far.

Jamelia’s right hand flicked outward with the speed and force of a striking cobra. A streak of light flashed briefly through the air, terminating abruptly when the blade of the throwing knife thudded into the neck of the more distant sepoy. His body continued to run for five more steps, until the man’s central nervous system finally took note of there being a length of sharpened steel embedded in between the first and second cervical vertebrae. Then the body dropped as though poleaxed, landing with a hard thump in the dirt.

The sepoy was already halfway to death’s door, unable to breathe due to the transection of his spinal cord; the only bodily functions that could still be performed happened next, as muscle tone in bowel and bladder were lost simultaneously, voiding their unpleasant contents into the seat of the dead man’s trousers.

For his part, the final surviving sepoy was running directly towards the roof on which Jamelia had concealed herself.

“Do not let him get away,” Achalraj urged her pointlessly from his hiding place. Had she actually been able to hear his condescending remark, the female assassin would have almost certainly shot him a look which could have curdled milk at fifty yards.

Before the words had finished leaving his mouth, the priest saw Jamelia’s dark shape fly through the air, landing directly on top of the runner. No garrote for this one, he realized as a long blade cleared its sheath between her shoulder blades and slashed the man three times. With a strangled cry that was suddenly cut off by a final stroke of the blade, the sepoy finally lay motionless.

Keeping a wary eye on the walking corpse of the British sergeant, Jamelia wiped her sword blade clean on the dead sepoy’s tunic and returned it to its sheath. The creature had somehow managed to rip open the abdominal cavity of its second victim, and appeared quite content to be devouring the rope-like contents, one loop of intestine at a time.

The tigress walked over to the wall behind which Achalraj still squatted, pausing only to retrieve the throwing knife from the neck of her more distant target and the bottle of holy blood which she had used on the British sergeant.

“Extraordinary,” was all the priest could bring himself to say, though whether he referred to the reanimation of the dead bodies or to Jamelia’s skilled execution of the two survivors was left unclear. She chose to interpret the comment as meaning the latter, and responded with a curt nod of acknowledgment.

“We must move quickly, in case more British troops arrive.”

“Agreed.” Achalraj removed one of the bottles from his sack and unstoppered it, then sprinkled liberal amounts of blood on the bodies of the two murdered sepoys.

Jamelia had what she thought would be the riskier task, though it was a challenge she accepted willingly in the name of the Goddess. Taking the still mostly full bottle and one of its completely topped-off companions, she skirted the pettah wall until she reached the first body in the line of dead Highlanders.

The sergeant’s hungry corpse was still engrossed in the contents of the dead sepoy’s abdomen, and she suspected that it would pay her little mind unless she made the mistake of getting too close to it and its blood-soaked food supply.

The closer sepoy was another matter. Jamelia looked down and regarded the face, which had been torn to shreds by the Englishman’s grinding teeth. One eyelid had been completely ripped away, but as she looked closer the assassin noticed that the eyeball underneath it was moving slowly, rotating erratically in its socket.

Vijay’s body was coming back to life.

Not wanting to be the freshest and closest thing on the menu when the reanimated corpse was capable of fully moving once more, Jamelia knew she had to act quickly. Pulling the stoppers from each of the two bottles, she darted along the line of dead Highlanders, leaving a sticky trail of blessed blood splattered across the slack face of each and every one. She counted over thirty in all, more than enough to spread the glory of Kali once they were reborn.

Finished at last, she tossed the bottles aside without a second thought. The contents were no longer holy or consecrated, which made the bottles merely vessels again, of no further consequence.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a sudden movement. Turning swiftly in that direction, Jamelia was just in time to see the mangled face of Vijay open its remaining eye and mouth. It sat up, groping weakly towards her with one hand.

It was time to go.

Jamelia broke into a run, angling herself to follow the curvature of the pettah wall and cut around the two blood-thirsty creatures in the process. By the time she reached Achalraj, the priest had already retreated into one of the darkened backstreets, fearful of what would happen when the other two corpses reawakened.

“It’s high time we were away from here,” said the tigress to the priest of Kali. “The sun will be upon us before long.”

“Agreed. Though you should perhaps change first.”

“Oh, I shall be changing priest,” the tigress said slyly, flashing him a toothy smile. “But not, perhaps, in the way that you would think…”

CHAPTER TEN

A Nightmare at Sunrise

Wellesley was utterly exhausted by the time he returned to the familiarity of his coffin at sunrise.

You were not the one forced to escalade those walls, or to march into the storm of shot and shell, he told himself sternly. If this is tired, how must the men feel? Not to mention the fact that they are only human…

Much had happened in the hours since he had entered Ahmednuggur. True to his orders, CSM Nichols had taken the majority of the Shadow Company, combing the streets in search of mischief — and putting at stop to it wherever they found it. Four sepoys and a private from the 74th now dangled from ropes in the area of the main gate, a stark warning to any who might consider looting and abusing the inhabitants of the township.

“We found something odd, sir,” Nichols had reported back to him. The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, and Wellesley and his vampire officers had all returned to the British camp. A phalanx of Shadows met them there, and were busily engaged in helping the officers back into their coffins so that they could be secured in the safety of the earth once more. “By the main gate, that is.”

“Odd in what way, CSM?” Arthur stifled a yawn, thinking it unseemly in front of the enlisted men.

“The bodies of them that had been killed in the attack were all lined up next to one another underneath the inner wall, sir. Nothing wrong with that, of course. I poked around at bit. Turns out that some one of the Company’s native regiments put out a detail to retrieve our fallen and prepare them for burial.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Wellesley replied, wondering just what exactly the CSM was getting at.

“Yes, sir. But what doesn’t make any sense at all is that the detail has disappeared. Just upped and gone.”

“That is strange. Could they have deserted?”

“Maybe. There was five of them though, sir, and one of them was a British sergeant by the name of Brown.”

“What do we know of this Sergeant Brown?”

“I asked around, General. Knew you’d want to know, see?” Dan gave a wry smile. “According to some of the other NCOs in his regiment, he was a pretty solid bloke, sir. Solid, but lazy, if you take my meaning?”

Wellesley did take his meaning. Solid, but lazy. That description fit far too many of the men serving in the ranks of the East India Company, and more than a few of the officers too. Something about Indian service seemed to do that to a man — perhaps the heat, or quite possibly the ready availability of arrack. It was less of a problem in the King’s Army, of course, where discipline was more readily enforced, but there were still far too many miscreants among his own ranks for Wellesley’s liking.

“Not the sort to run, then?”

“Doesn’t sound like it, sir. His colonel’s concerned about the disappearance. Wonders if perhaps the Indians deserted and killed their sergeant, then hid the body before they scarpered.”

Wellesley raised an eyebrow. “It’s certainly possible. I want you and the Shadow Company to get some rest, CSM — at least, those of you not engaged in guarding the officers while we sleep. But before you turn in for the day, please speak with the officer of the day and ask him to notify the cavalry patrols. Inform them that they are to bring any rogue sepoys in for questioning.”

“I shall take care of it, sir. But that’s not all, General. You see…” Nichols paused, unsure of how to proceed.

“Out with it, CSM. We haven’t got all night.”

“The bodies of our soldiers, sir…they seem to have disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yes sir. Hard to believe, I know; but every last one of them is gone.”

“How could the bodies have been snatched so quickly?” Arthur struggled to wrap his mind around the concept. “And perhaps more to the point, why would anybody want to?”

“Could be the locals, sir,” Nichols said dubiously. Wellesley shook his head.

“Hardly. Those poor unfortunates who were not being dragged from their homes by the more barbaric elements of our army were all hiding behind closed doors, waiting for the situation to blow over — not scurrying about dragging off the corpses of our deceased. Looting them, maybe, which is another reason that a work party was assigned to put them in order and keep a watchful eye on them; but actually taking the bodies is a very queer thing indeed.”

“It beats me too, sir.”

“Thank you, CSM. See if you can get to the bottom of this little conundrum once you have gotten some sleep, and be ready to give me a report by nightfall. Will there be anything else?” Arthur looked pointedly at the canvas roof of the tent, through which the first light of dawn was already beginning to filter.

“Just one last thing, sir.” Nichols was apologetic. “The tigress and her battalion.”

“What of them?”

“No sign of ‘em inside the pettah, General,” the CSM prompted.

“Nor is there likely to be,” sighed Wellesley. “Which means that she is either holed up in the fortress with her precious white-jackets, or on the run back to rejoin Scindia’s main force. Knowing her experience with the outcome of a certain siege in the past, I tend to suspect the latter rather than the former.”

“If only the army weren’t in such a bloody shambles last night, we could have cut them off with our cavalry, sir.” The regret was apparent in the CSM’s voice, but Wellesley waved it away.

“In an ideal world, I would agree with you, CSM; but the truth is that our cavalry were engaged with the mercenaries attempting to get into the fortress.” That much was most definitely true. There had been a huge carpet of dead bodies ringing the area of Ahmednuggur fort at the end of the night, several hundred of the Arabs choosing to make a futile last stand rather than surrender to the British dragoons, whose sabers and carbines had made damned short work of them. “All that remained were the native squadrons, and we are all very aware of their level of competence.”

The native horse meant well, and were decent enough riders, but when it came to a fight they tended to lack the discipline of the British cavalrymen; for the enemy, it was more like being attacked by a howling mob of disorganized bandits, rather than a well-trained unit that operated as a single weapon. No, Wellesley knew that sending the native horse after Jamelia’s battalion would have been a bloody fiasco, and that assumed that they could even have found the Maratha troops in the first place, out in the vast expanse of wilderness which they would have needed to search in the darkness. No vampire officers could be spared, for they were all busily engaged with the assault and subsequent pacification of the pettah.

“We shall just have to skin that particular cat on another day,” Arthur said firmly, laying his head down against the velvet cushion and closing his eyes. “Excellent work today, CSM. Now get some rest. You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, General.”

With that, the CSM lowered the coffin lid gently but firmly into place. He placed his palms flat on the edge of the hole in the earth that he was standing in, which came up to the level of his chest, thrust with his feet and hauled his body back up to ground level.

Two red-coated Shadow privates stood at attention in front of the grave, with bayonets affixed to the muzzles of their primed muskets. On Dan’s order, other men who had been standing by stepped forward with long-handled shovels and began to ladle soil from a neat little mound on top of the coffin, sealing their commanding officer in for the remainder of the hot Indian day.

The Shadow Company ran like clockwork for the most part. Fully a third of their number had remained behind in camp when the night attack took place; they would be required to guard the vampire officers during the day. After checking in briefly with the oncoming duty sergeant and finding that the oncoming day watch was already formed up and assigned to their posts, Nichols made his way back to the 33rd’s lines. Most of the regiment was still streaming back in from Ahmednuggur, handing over the reins to the 1/8 Native Infantry, but a few had returned to camp already. Weary but seemingly in good cheer and apparently famished, the first cooking fires were already lit. The CSM made his way over to the closest, where a clutch of NCOs from the Sixth Company invited him to share in their supper.

As the sun rose higher in the cloudless blue morning sky, the air began to grow warmer. A gentle breeze sprang up out of the east, stirring the mens’ uniforms and hair. Tilting his head back, Dan closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun and the contrasting cool breeze upon his face. He took another swallow of tepid water and sighed, feeling something very close to contentment.

“Sergeant! Sergeant!”

Trust some bugger to spoil it…

He turned and saw Corporal McElvaney running towards him. The man was out of breath, which drew a frown. The little Scotsman wasn’t exactly lazy, but his attitude was usually somewhere along the lines of: never run when you can walk, never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lay down. McElvaney had never been big on exertion. In fact, when the CSM thought about it, he didn’t think that he had ever seen the man in a hurry, short of being under attack by the enemy.

“What’s the matter, Corporal?” Dan got slowly to his feet, after draining the last of the water and setting the empty mug down with a grateful nod.

“Spot of bother in the town, Sarn’t. Well, more than a spot, to tell you the truth.”

“What kind of bother? I was just about to turn in.” It had been a bloody long night, and the CSM was developing the sinking feeling that it wasn’t over yet.

“Best you see it for yourself, Sergeant. You’ll never believe it else…”

"The head, lads!"

Clutching his musket firmly to his chest as though in an attempt to ward off some great evil, the little Scots corporal led his Company Sergeant Major through the maze of streets and alleyways that lay within the Ahmednuggur pettah. The loud crack of a cannon sounded in the middle distance, followed by the thud of its payload hitting home. General Wellesley had given orders before retiring for the day that the artillerymen were to site their weapons on the walls of the fort and to pound them, day and night, in an attempt to make its commander capitulate. The place would be a proper bastard to assault, Nichols knew; there would be none of the relative ease of an assault by escalade where the fort was concerned. The damned place, while not impregnable (for no fixed defenses ever truly could be) would cost a much greater price in blood than the pettah which it overlooked.

Well, that’s a problem for another day. It’s in the lap of the gunners until then.

McElvaney led them into an open square at the intersection of four dusty streets. A throng of redcoats some thirty strong were clustered around what looked to be four or five other men. Nichols couldn’t see clearly from his particular angle of approach, but it looked as though some of the soldiers were prodding at someone with their bayonets. As he drew nearer, it became apparent to the CSM that the targets of that prodding were also British soldiers.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” he demanded, elbowing his way through the crowd of men to get a better look. “Well, bugger me.”

Corporal McElvaney had spoken the truth. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he may very well not have believed a word of it.

The four men now standing in the center of the square were quite obviously dead. They had to be. Setting aside for a moment the fact that each man’s skin had taken on the waxy, grayish pallor that came over the body in the hours after its heart stopped beating, Dan Nichols had seen a great many wounds during his many years spent in the service of the King, and all four of these snarling, growling redcoats had injuries that, in his professional judgment, simply were not survivable. One had a hole of such depth in the right side of his skull that brain matter was exposed, glistening slickly in the bright sunlight of mid-morning; another had no mouth at all, simply a long, spit-covered tongue that protruded obscenely from the space beneath the nose from where his jaw had been shot away. A third had suffered a gaping wound to the chest, affording a glimpse of three gleaming white ribs through a jagged rent in his red jacket, while the last man, who bore the stripes of a corporal, seemed relatively intact — save for the musket ball-sized holes punched into his upper thigh and pelvis. Based upon the sheer size of the dark brown stain which covered the front of the corporal’s uniform trousers, Dan suspected that the man had probably bled to death through the two wounds…yet now here he was, standing on his own two feet and groping desperately at the closest British soldiers, fended off only by their bayonets.

“They’re our men, Sarn’t Major,” McElvaney exclaimed excitedly, “our dead men. That bald bloke there is Jason Fellon, from the 78th’s Light Company. We used to play cards every now and again.”

“The one with no jaw?”

The little Scot nodded. “That one, yes. He got shot dead in the escalade, Sarn’t Major — I got it from one of his mates this morning…dunno if you know him, Sean Rice from Limerick?” Nichols shook his head, watching in horrified fascination as the one with the exposed brain was bayoneted in the guts and kept on straining towards the incredulous redcoats. “Took a shot to the face, so he told me when I seen him in the town earlier this morning,” McElvaney continued. “Proper upset he was, too.”

“I’ll bet he bloody was,” Nichols grunted. At least we know now where those bodies got off to. Some of them, at any rate.

Catching sight of Dan’s rank insignia, one of the sweating redcoats turned his head for a split second and said, “They’re bloody dead men, Sarn’t Major!”

“Well, make ‘em even bloody deader then, lad! Get stuck in with that bayonet!”

Dan could fully understand why the men were hesitant. The fact that these were somehow resurrected dead bodies was difficult enough to swallow, at first — at least, until Dan reminded himself that most of his commanding officers technically met that same description — but equally disconcerting was the realization that these were their own comrades, and in some cases, their friends. Short of a firing squad, it somehow felt just fundamentally wrong to be having a go at a man wearing the same uniform as you were, even if he was trying to take your throat out with his teeth.

What was needed here was a bit of order. They could sort out the whys, the wherefores, and the whatnots afterward. Nobody else was stepping up to take charge, so…

“Listen in, you men!” the CSM roared at the top of his lungs. The dead creatures paid him no attention, being absolutely focused on trying to get past the hedgehog-like wall of sharpened bayonets, but most of the men risked a sideways glance in his direction at the very least. “Form two ranks! Smartly now.” There was a pause during which a great deal of nothing took place. Drawing in a chestful of air, Dan bellowed, “ISAIDFORMTWOBLOODYRANKS—NOW!”

That did the trick.

It wasn’t smart, it wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t even close to the standards of the parade square or the battlefield, but after a bit of shoving and shuffling that was aided and abetted by the not-so-gentle prodding of an NCO, the jumble of redcoats somehow sorted themselves into two ranks, one behind the other.

“Front rank will stand!” Nichols ordered. “Rear rank — load!”

The ranks of the British Army of India were filled with superbly trained veterans, each one of which had gotten the basic movements of loading, aiming, firing, and reloading beaten into them on countless parades, drills, and even a few actual combat engagements, until this bread-and-butter technique became as simple and instinctual as the act of breathing. The rear rank had their Brown Bess muskets loaded and primed in under twenty seconds, and on the CSM of Shadow Company’s command, they brought the butts of their weapons smoothly up into their shoulders and trained the muzzle edges on the yowling, slavering creatures to their front.

“Fire!”

Fifteen muskets roared in unison, almost deafening the men in the front rank and hurling a storm of lead balls into the four reanimated corpses. At such close range, the effect was horrific; the heavy projectiles slammed into their targets in a welter of blood and bone, peppering the first line of bayonet-wielding redcoats with red splatters and more than a few small pieces of tissue. Not one of the four still stood when the gray cloud of smoke had finally dissipated. Three of the creatures still moved, however, writhing and twisting in the dirt in an obscene parody of life. Nichols was reminded of the very drunkest soldiers he had ever seen back in good old England, so pissed out of their tiny little skulls that they couldn’t even crawl from the ale house back to barracks to face charges, having to be carried or dragged by the grim-faced duty NCOs.

“Front rank will stand! Rear rank — reload!”

The arms and legs of the creatures had shattered, bending them into bizarre angulations that simply looked wrong to the eye. Jagged bone ends poked from beneath the skin, dripping with a sticky black liquid that appeared almost too dark to be blood. Almost all of the blood that the Sergeant Major had ever seen spilled in his entire life was far redder than this slop was; it seemed old, somehow, and dirty, as though it possessed an inherent wrongness. More of the viscous fluid oozed from newly-inflicted puncture wounds in the creatures’ chests and bellies. Despite the sheer savagery of the close-range trauma delivered by the muskets, they kept on coming, crawling on their bellies and using such of their arms and legs as still worked for locomotion. The exception was the man named Fellon, who lay motionless in a spreading pool of black ichor. At least one shot from the volley must have taken him squarely in the face, which was now little more than a ruined pulp. Little remained of the unfortunate soldier’s skull, which had ruptured and disgorged its contents far and wide.

“The head,” Dan whispered under his breath as realization slowly dawned. Then, louder: “The head, lads! You’ve got to hit them in the head to put them down!”

As word spread down the line, the redcoats began to switch tactics, taking turns to step forward and jab at the snarling creatures with their bayonets. After a couple of misplaced blows that opened the flesh of the crawlers’ shoulders and backs, a huge bruiser of a private soldier planted his blade right between the closest creature’s eyes, burying it a good six inches deep just as the crawler lunged upwards at him with outstretched hands. Even as the dead fingers closed around his shin, the private stepped backwards smartly, twisting and jerking the bayonet free in a gush of black liquid. The creature slumped lifelessly to the ground and lay there, devoid of all movement at last, but another of the creatures put on a sudden burst of speed, dragging itself towards him with wounded hands.

The private screamed as the creature’s teeth bit into the soft flesh of his calf. Almost but not quite overcome by the pain, the redcoat reversed his musket and slammed the heavy wooden butt down hard in his assailant’s face, breaking the nose and smashing several teeth out of their sockets.

Dan saw the bulky private cross himself as he staggered backwards, muttering a benediction under his breath. A devout man, then. No harm in that, the Sergeant Major thought, especially the way today was shaping up. He watched as the soldier pressed both hands to the wound in his calf in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

Emboldened by their comrade’s success, other redcoats waded into the fray, thrusting at the two remaining crawlers until the head of one was completely sheared off at the neck. It, too, ceased to move, although perversely the head itself continued to snap and contort its features, eyes rolling to stare hungrily at the closest redcoat. A second-ranker put a stop to that by placing the muzzle of his Brown Bess in direct contact with the thing’s temple and pulling the trigger. The head actually exploded, splattering the boots of the front rank with gobs of stringy wet tissue.

The third went down the same way, shot from point-blank range through the crown of the skull.

“Rest in peace, lads,” Nichols said, loud enough for all around him to hear. “And sleep a little easier for knowing that we’ll find the bastards that did this to you, you can be sure of that.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Banishment

As the day grew warmer, it remained comfortably cool inside the coffin. It had been a long night for all concerned, and Arthur fell asleep almost immediately.

It wasn’t long before the Sultan came to pay him a visit. As soon as he had found himself to be back in the Water Gate of Seringapatam, standing amongst the dank blackness of that claustrophobic brick tunnel, he had known that another meeting was inevitable.

“I see that Ahmednuggur has fallen,” Tipu said without preamble, strolling out of the darkness with his usual insouciance. “The pettah, at least. I suspect that you will find the fortress to be more of a challenge, no?”

Wellesley regarded him coldy. “Seringapatam was a challenge too,” he pointed out, deliberately trying to touch a nerve. “We both know how that ended, do we not?”

“I suppose that depends upon whether you believe that the last page in particular book has been written yet.” Tipu did not respond to Arthur’s attempted low blow. He simply offered the vampire a disapproving look which seemed to suggest that such behavior was beneath men such as they.

“You can speak more plainly that.”

The Sultan smiled in that manner which Arthur found to be so damnably annoying. “I could indeed, my dear General, but where would be the fun in that?”

“Then you will cease wasting my time with these infernal visitations!” Arthur thundered. He had finally had enough. Closing the distance between them both with three quick steps, he stuck his face mere inches from Tipu’s and glowered at him down the full length of his patrician nose. For his part, Tipu maintained his placid smile without blinking or backing away even a single inch.

“You have already killed me once, vampire. If you seek to intimidate me now, you shall have to try a little bit harder than this.”

Wellesley held his gaze and for a moment, neither man spoke. It was the General who dropped his eyes first, turning his back and walking away.

“What is it that you want from me?” Arthur asked finally, some of the weariness accrued during the night attack finding its way into his voice. “Why must you disturb my sleep so?”

“It is a lonely place, this…wherever I have found myself. There is little company here in the outer darkness. Believe it or not, Wellesley, I have grown rather fond of you.”

“Forgive me if I do find that rather hard to believe,” Arthur replied dryly.

“That is entirely your choice. Do not let if puff up your already considerable ego, Wellesley. Suffice it to say that even the company of the one who took both my throne and my life from me is preferable to no company whatsoever.”

“Now that I find easier to stomach.”

“Then perhaps you will allow me to offer you a little advice.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes, suspicious of this unsolicited offer. “Advice obtained at no cost is usually worth exactly what one has paid for it,” he replied skeptically, “as all leaders of men should know.”

“True enough,” Tipu conceded with a dip of his head, “and so I ask only that you listen to what I have to tell you. Whether or not you choose to take that advice, I leave entirely up to you.”

“I am listening, Tipu.”

The self-styled Tiger of Mysore took a deep breath in preparation to speak. “Even the mightiest blaze must grow from the smallest flame,” Tipu began, spreading his hands. “Before the inferno, there is first the spark. Do you follow?”

“I understand, though I would not say that I follow.”

Tipu laughed. “Forgive me again, vampire. I doubt that you will understand this, but there are rules to this place in which I now find myself. Do not ask me how I know; you must simply accept that I know. One of the most paramount rules is that I may tell you but a little of that which I now foresee.”

“Being dead has gifted you with new insight?” Arthur asked, trying to unpick the Sultan’s riddle.

“Oh yes, though there are limits to that which is known to me. For example, answer me this: what is the single most important quality of a general?”

“The ability to know what is on the other side of the hill.” The answer came without hesitation. It was something that Wellesley had believed for the entirety of his military career, a fundamental truth that had somehow always been self-evident to him.

“Exactly!” Tipu clapped his hands together in delight. “The talent for reading the ground, and the enemy’s disposition, and for knowing how the two shall intersect. On that, the great general builds his strategy. The dead have the ability to see beyond the distant hills, Wellesley, without first having to cross over them. Such I have gained, though it came at the greatest of prices.”

Arthur found himself growing more and more intrigued. Even though he was still far from convinced that the ghost of the Sultan wasn’t anything more than a phantasm dreamed up by his slumbering mind, the general couldn’t quite help but wonder…

“And what do you see on the other side of my particular hill, Tipu?”

“Blood and death, almost beyond measure.” The Sultan’s aspect had suddenly changed. He was now utterly serious. “It is that of which I now speak, although there is precious little that I may tell you. The spark was struck today, Wellesley, and thrown amongst the kindling. You cannot put this fire out, vampire— it burns too strong, and grows too quickly. I doubt that you can even begin to contain it…”

“More riddles! You offer me nothing but more confusion, Tipu— bringing less clarity, not more!”

“Then you must listen, Irishman,” the Sultan hissed angrily, “because her day is coming, and if you wish to survive it—”

The blow seemed to come out of nowhere, hitting him with all the force of a cavalry charge. The Sultan suddenly found himself hurled through the air, slamming into the brick wall of the tunnel. Instead of sliding down the brick surface and landing in an undignified heap on the floor of the Water Gate, the portly figure simply winked out of existence, in the manner of an extinguished candle flame.

“I think that you have said more than enough already.”

Wellesley turned to face the newcomer, whose outline was dimly visible when silhouetted against the distant glow of the tunnel entrance. The woman walked confidently, which was remarkable in itself when one considered that she was alone in a tunnel with a vampire and a were-tiger; but then, it stood to reason that she must either be a specter or a product of his imagination as well, just as the Sultan had to be.

With his enhanced vampire vision, Arthur looked the woman over. She was tall, taller than most native women that he had encountered during his time in the country, and her musculature was almost perfectly sculpted. For a fraction of a second he thought that she might be Jamelia, but one more step towards him soon showed that for the mistake that it was, for the woman’s skin was an unnaturally dark blue in color, something which no human woman had ever been born with. Golden bracelets and bangles adorned her wrists and upper arms, twinkling and sparkling with each step she took despite the lack of ambient light for them to reflect. Her lustrous hair was blacker than the air which surrounded her, falling about her shoulders and framing a necklace that was comprised of tiny white skulls. She was both bare-footed and bare-breasted, Wellesley noted, and seemed curiously unashamed of the latter fact.

As a gentleman, Arthur confined his eyes to her own, which gleamed every bit as redly as his own.

“And who, madam, might you be?”

She laughed, a high, mellifluous sound that echoed within the close confines of the tunnel. “So deliciously formal! The man — no, the thing which wears the shape of a man, who has invaded my lands and slaughtered my people…whoever would have thought that it would be so polite?”

“You insult me.” It was phrased flatly as a statement, not as a question.

“I simply speak the truth,” the woman countered, flashing a ruby red tongue and flicking it absently across equally red lips. It was not a suggestive gesture, and indeed despite her near-nakedness, there was nothing of the harlot or temptress about this woman so far as Wellesley could see. She carried herself with a grace and dignity that belied her lack of clothing.

“I am a creature of duty, madam, in the service of my King.”

“Creature is right,” she said archly, “and you will soon learn that your precious king’s reach has exceed his grasp where the Maratha lands are concerned.”

“I shall ask you again, madam,” Arthur repeated, enunciating each word slowly. “Who. Are. You?”

The woman raised her arms high in the air, as though stretching languidly. Arthur was nothing short of amazed to see a second set of arms emerge from behind and below them, seeming to sprout from beneath her shoulder-blades and stretch themselves to full length, complete with bangles, bracelets, and rings. This second pair of hands she placed insolently on her hips.

“I am your worst nightmare made manifest, vampire, and I shall at least tell you this.” She leaned in more closely towards him, and although Arthur stiffened, he neither flinched nor backed away, for it would not have been seemly. “The fat cat spoke the truth,” the woman whispered, as though imparting the greatest of secrets. “The kindling has indeed been lit, and my fire is beginning to burn. Before long, it shall burn as brightly as the very sun itself— and we both know the effects of that upon those of your kind…”

She brought both pairs of hands together, pressing the palms and outstretched fingers firmly against one another as though she was assuming a state of prayer; but rather than bow her head, she instead flashed the vampire a broad grin which revealed a set of teeth that were every bit as pointed as his own. Arthur blinked in surprise and made as thought to speak, but in the space of that single heartbeat the woman was gone, leaving him alone in the darkness of the tunnel with far more questions than there were answers.

Bitten

The sun was still above the western horizon when Dan Nichols awoke from his dead sleep, although the upper edge of its disk was all that remained of the day. It’s last few rays were seeping in through the canvas wall of his tent.

He had nearly overslept, Dan realized, which wasn’t at all like him. As with most NCOs, he was a creature of habit; but the events of the night attack, coupled with that ugly business in the square this morning, had thrown his body off just a bit.

Nichols opened his eyes to find Corporal McElvaney was in the process of shaking his shoulder gently.

“What?” the CSM mumbled, a thin line of drool dripping from the corner of his dry mouth.

“Time to get up, Sarn’t Major. Lieutenant Campbell’s respects, and could you report to him before waking the General so’s he can give you an update on the day’s events, like.”

“Tell the Lieutenant that I’ll be there sharpish, Peter,” Dan said, by which he meant that he would report in after giving himself a splash with some cold water, a bit of a strop with a razor, and hopefully scrounging up something quick to eat before rousing Major General Wellesley from his slumber.

“Right you are, Sarn’t Major.” The diminutive Scots corporal ducked out of the small tent with apparent relief, no doubt on his way to find his own breakfast.

Pouring a little water into his tin cup from a communal company barrel, Dan splashed it under his armpits and poured the rest over his face and hair. The tepid liquid nudged his fuzzy brain a little further towards wakefulness, and the Sergeant Major even went so far as to hum a jaunty tune as he shrugged on his red jacket and began to button it up. The general’s command tent was pitched only a couple of hundred yards from the 33rd’s sleeping area. The two Shadow Company sentries posted at the entrance flap took a slight step aside to allow their CSM access. It was gloomy inside, which was only fitting, and mess servants were already lighting the candles in their sconces.

“Good evening, Sarn’t Major Nichols,” said a cheerful young officer who saw him enter.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Dan replied in a flat voice but with just the slightest suggestion of a smile. It had actually become something of a long-standing joke between them, this disparity in times caused by the tendency of the Shadows to operate primarily after dark when their vampire masters were up and about. “Corporal McElvaney said that you wanted to see me, sir.”

Colin Campbell might have been in his twenties, but his grin was still boyish. Dan had known the lieutenant too long to be fooled, however— beneath the devil-may-care exterior, there was a definite undertone of worry that seemed very out of place. Dark puffy circles highlighted his eyes, and Dan new that he must be practically fit to drop, considering that he had gone straight from the escalade into assuming the mantle of the appointed officer of the day. There was a wicked-looking bruise on his head, and he was holding one arm a little stiffly, Nichols noticed when the lieutenant made an expansive gesture, but he seemed otherwise none the worse for wear in the wake of the night’s events.

“He told you rightly, CSM. General Wellesley will of course expect his daily briefing from me once he awakens, but we both know that he’ll try to pry the high points out of you the instant that his coffin lid comes off, what?”

“I really couldn’t say, sir,” Dan smirked, “but better safe than sorry.”

“Quite so, CSM. Quite so. Now, first things first…you’ll recall the thorny little problem that you left me with before you hit the hay this morning?”

“The walking dead bodies, sir?” Nichols couldn’t think of any other little grenades that he’d dropped into the lieutenant’s lap before retiring.

“Exactly. Our own men, Sergeant — our own bloody men, men who ought to be resting peacefully in their graves with honor and dignity. Instead, some vile sorcery has robbed them of that peace. When I get my hands on the vermin that dreamed this up…”

“Any luck finding out who precisely that was, sir?”

“Not the slightest bloody clue, CSM. The four that you…well, I don’t suppose that killed is the proper word, but you know what I mean. How about put out of their misery? At any rate, those four were only the beginning, as it turns out. The patrols found over twenty more of them, wandering the city and looking for victims.”

“That is worrying, sir.” Dan’s brow furrowed as he considered the implications. “Did we get them all?”

“Every last one, CSM, fret ye not. Your tip about destroying the head came in damned useful. You’ll forgive us for having taken the time to test your theory, of course…one of the poor sods took fourteen shots before we finished him off. Fourteen! Can you credit it?”

Nichols could credit it. He had seen the monsters in all of their horrifying glory with his own two eyes. An involuntary shudder coursed through his body.

Those were our men…our mates. What was done to them was bloody obscene.

“Any of our lads hurt rounding them up, sir?”

“Just a couple, and nothing more than a few scratches and bites.”

“Bites?”

“One or two, yes,” Campbell said airily, waving his hand in dismissal. “As I said, there was no real harm done…two of the men got a little too close to the creatures and got nipped.”

“Our lads, sir?”

“If by our you mean the 33rd, CSM, then yes. At least, one of them is. The other’s a chap from the 74th.”

“Who, sir?”

“A Private Clarke, if I recall correctly.”

“Rob Clarke, from Third Company?”

“Yes, that’s the fellow, if memory serves.”

Dan knew Robert Clarke in passing. The man was the bookish type, unusual for a ranker. Ironically, he had been a bank clerk in civilian life; a secret compulsion for gambling had gotten out of hand, and a judge had left him with two choices at the assizes— a debtor’s prison, or enlisting in the army. Clarkie, as his friends called him, had jumped at the chance to join up and serve overseas, as far away from his creditors as was humanly possible. Since then he had sworn off the cards and seemed to have found religion, though he was not the sort to proselytize. The man had a reputation as a solid soldier, well-liked among the ranks.

“The bite’s not bad, sir?”

“Mister Caldwell says not,” Campbell replied, referring to the 33rd’s regimental surgeon. The newly promoted captain clapped the CSM supportively on the arm. “So cheer up, eh? Whatever this devilish business is, it looks as though we’ve got it contained.”

“Let’s hope so, sir.” Dan said doubtfully. “Are we sure we’ve gotten all of those…things?”

“There could be the odd one lurking, I suppose.” The lieutenant stroked his chin thoughtfully. “But I really rather doubt it. They cause enough bloody mayhem when they get around living people, in case you hadn’t noticed. I find it hard to believe that they’d simply sit and wait.”

“I suppose not, sir.”

“At any rate, CSM, on to bigger things, eh?” Dan nodded, forcing the rising sense of unease to the back of his mind. “We’ve had word from Colonel Stevenson. His army is close — within a day’s ride of ours, in fact — and he’s requesting further orders from the General. I suspect that we are about to rejoin forces and give the Marathas a bloody good kicking.”

And not a minute too soon, Dan reflected. But the buggers outnumber us ten to one, if the rumors are true. It’s going to be a bloody one, if we go toe to toe with Scindia’s lot.

Blood Magick

The General accepted a cup of freshly-warmed blood from the Company Sergeant Major, as had become their long-established habit. Arthur listened intently as Nichols described the events of the day, and although he found the incident of the reanimated corpses disturbing, his mind was focused far more intently on the broad strategic picture. Although a full and proper briefing would come soon, delivered by Lieutenant Campbell in his capacity as officer of the day, Arthur still preferred to hear the salient points beforehand from his CSM. It was a foible, he realized, but a harmless one when considered in the grand scheme of things.

“Less than a day’s march, you say?” he asked, as Dan assisted him with hitching his sword belt around his waist.

“So the Lieutenant tells me, sir.”

“Scindia and the Raja of Berar cannot have gotten too far away,” Wellesley mused, picturing the surrounding terrain in his mind. He had made several long night flights over the past few weeks, committing the topographical features into his practically eidetic memory; every river, hill, bluff, and stand of tope was in there somewhere, and could be recalled with just a little concentrated effort. “We shall bring them to battle on terms of our choosing, if I have anything to say about it.”

“The odds are pretty heavily stacked against us, sir,” Dan said, risking the ire of his general with the doubtful remark. Surprisingly, Wellesley conceded the point with a gracious nod, his black eyes twinkling in the light of the scattered candles.

“Numerically, yes— the enemy outnumbers us significantly, CSM. But take heart…there is more to the tale than mere numbers.”

“Like what, sir?”

“Like the steadiness of our troops. Most of the Maratha cavalry are nothing more than amateurs, good for putting on a show of force, I will grant you, but of precious little value in a fight. Not that they’re cowards, mark you — but they are undisciplined. They shan’t stand against steady troops.”

“But aren’t the infantry European-trained, sir?”

Again, Wellesley conceded the point with a nod. “Trained, yes, and with a leavening of European troops among their ranks to boot; but their quality is still not up to that of the British redcoat, on that you may depend.” He looked at the NCO calmly. “You are still not convinced, I take it.”

“It’s not that I doubt you, sir…” Dan replied hastily, his loyalty — and no small measure of fear — rushing to the fore.

“That’s quite alright, CSM. Between us, Colonel Stevenson and I have slightly less than 15,000 men, counting the infantry, cavalry, and artillerymen. The enemy have somewhere in the region of 100,000. Only a madman would not balk in the face of those odds.”

“I know that it’s not my place to question your strategy sir…I mean, I’m just a Sergeant Major…but if they outnumber us that badly, how can we possibly win?”

“It’s really quite simple, Nichols. Riddle me this…how does one eat an elephant?”

Dan was gobsmacked, turning the problem over and over in his mind. None of the solutions that presented themselves to the General’s riddle made much sense to him. “I don’t know, sir,” he concluded lamely.

Arthur smiled, the upwards curl up his lip exposing the tip of one gleaming fang.

“One bite at a time, CSM. One bite at a time.”

Dan laughed, although he wasn’t entirely sure whether the General was joking or not. The vampire’s wry smile could have been taken either way, but the tension was broken at the very least, and he let out a breath that he hadn’t even realized he had been holding.

“Now,” Wellesley continued, fussing with the high collar of his uniform jacket. “I have business with Colonel Harness. If you should be so kind as to fetch him, please, I should be most appreciative.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Good man. Once that little matter has been taken care of, I shall convene the officers for supper and for orders.”

“Very good, sir.”

The CSM disappeared into the recesses of the tent, heading off to locate the colonel of the 78th. Arthur watched him go.

Do they all doubt that we shall be victorious in this campaign? Nichols is usually a paragon of optimism.

He wondered what it was that had shaken the CSM’s faith so. This nasty business with the resurrected corpses? Such incidences of newly-dead corpses rising from the grave was not completely unknown, although it was relatively rare in the annals of British recorded history. Had the Marathas enlisted some local necromancer to aid their cause? If so, it would be a nuisance, he acknowledged, but little more than that.

Arthur searched his distant memory, struggling to recall some of his early schooling on such matters. This was blood magick, he knew, the oldest kind in existence. Not the sort of thing with which vampires would be involved; no, this had to be a mortal sorcerer of some description, hoping to be a thorn in the side of the British invaders, perhaps to delay their advance or handicap their army in other ways — fear of the newly-risen dead being just one that he could think of. But one thing that he did know of blood magick was that, in order to reanimate more than a handful of corpses, it would take a significant amount of power, far more than that which would be available to a mere Hindu holy man.

No, in order to do any real harm, that would take…well, that would require the power of a god.

Arthur chuckled dismissively. He didn’t believe in gods, for the most part — except for one, of course; no, he was far more concerned about the actions of a tigress.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Now sit down, Captain Campbell."

There was one more piece of business to be taken care of before the command staff meeting. Shortly after he had been exhumed from his grave, Arthur pulled Colonel Harness aside for a quiet word.

“I can’t say as I like it, sir,” the aristocratic colonel said unhappily when Arthur had revealed his intent. “However, you are of course the commanding general, and I shall of course bow to your wishes.”

Arthur regarded him soberly for a moment. “Sure you can see, Harness, that this is for his own good, as well as that of the army?”

“It does an officer good to broaden his horizons every once in a while,” the 78th’s colonel conceded. “And there’s no doubting that it will be good for his career.”

“Then we are agreed.”

Harness knew from long experience that when Wellesley spoke in that manner, it was meant to be taken as a statement of fact, rather than as a question.

“Yes, sir.”

Clapping a hand on his shoulder, Arthur remarked with rather more cheer: “Look on the bright side, Harness. You may be losing an officer, but I am gaining a damned fine adjutant.”

The officers assembled around the large wooden table as usual, fussed over by the mess servants as they were provided with their meal of choice. In the case of the vampire officers it was to be a liquid meal, as were they all once a man accepted the Dark Gift. The mortal officers were to be graced with the rather more conventional side of beef and such vegetables as could be scrounged.

Ting-ting-ting. Wellesley tapped the rim of his crystal goblet with the flat edge of a knife blade.

“Gentlemen, your attention please.”

The good-natured banter and general hubbub around the table quietened down. His eyes twinkling in the candle-light, their general regarded them with a suddenly serious mien.

“Before we eat, and subsequently discuss the future movements of this army, we have an item of business to take care of.” He exchanged glances with Harness, who from his expression now seemed to be more resigned than annoyed. Wellesley gestured towards the lower end of the table, where the more junior officers were seated. “Mr. Campbell, stand up, if you please.”

Casting his eyes around furtively as though seeking to discover the nature of whatever trouble he now found himself in, Colin Campbell climbed slowly to his feet. Standing at attention, he reached down and self-consciously tugged at the hem of his red jacket, straightening it as though for inspection.

“Lieutenant Campbell,” the general continued sternly, “it seems that we must discuss the matter of your actions during last night’s escalade of the Ahmednuggur pettah.”

Campbell’s face froze into an unreadable mask.

“Of course, sir. If I might be permitted to explain…”

“Oh, by all means, Lieutenant.” Arthur leaned backwards in his chair, taking a leisurely sip from the goblet of blood. It left the slightest tinge of red around his lips. “By all means, please do explain yourself.”

Clearing his throat, Campbell searched for the right words. He was painfully aware that every officer gathered around the very large table was watching and listening intently. “Well, General, it’s rather like this, you see…” He looked at Wellesley beseechingly, but the General simply raised his eyebrows in a gesture to indicate that he should proceed. “I, um, saw that the escalade was in trouble, sir — and looking back on it now, I know that it was rash, so I must beg your forgiveness — but I just had to do something, sir…anything, as long as it got the attack moving again. It was hotheaded of me, I do understand that now, but in the heat of the moment…”

His words tailed off, fizzling out like a gunner’s burning taper when dipped into a bucket of filthy cold water. The Lieutenant’s face had turned a deep crimson in color.

For his part, Major General Wellesley slowly steepled his hands in front of him.

“Mister Campbell,” he went on in his most intimidating tone, deliberately injecting the tiniest fraction of supernatural amplification into his voice in order to give it a little gravitas. “Are you really…are you really…standing here, before the assembled officers of this army…” Campbell closed his eyes, wishing that one could actually physically die of embarrassment rather than endure the lambasting that was surely now upon him. “…and apologize for your outstanding success?”

A colossal roar erupted from the officers, who began pounding their fists and cutlery upon the tabletop in approbation. Each had known what was coming, of course; their general’s sense of humor rarely showed itself, but when it did emerge, it was usually worth waiting for, particularly if General Wellesley happened to be on fine form, as he was tonight. The captain seated next to him clapped Campbell hard on the shoulder and then took his hand, pumping it vigorously. Cries of “huzzah!” did a circuit of the table. Even Old Nosey himself was smiling, though taking care to largely conceal it behind one strategically-placed hand.

Finally, the ruckus calmed itself again. Colin remained standing when the other officers sat, feeling every bit as shell-shocked as he had last only last night when his skull had taken a definite beating on the scaling ladder. To Arthur, he looked like nothing so much as a startled fawn.

Time to put him out of his misery, Wellesley decided, and then get on with the bloody business of soldiering.

“Lieutenant Campbell,” he began, causing the younger officer to brace to a ramrod position of attention once more. “As a Major General in the army of His Most Britannic Majesty King George, I am afforded a number of…allowances, if you will. Some can most definitely be considered indulgences, but some are also absolutely necessary to the conduct of this war. I have been most remiss in one particular aspect of my generalship, though it pains me to admit it. Do you know to which aspect I refer?”

Campbell racked his brains for a respectable amount of time before finally replying that he did not. Even if he had been able to think of such a thing, he would never have dared to speak its name in the first place.

“As the commanding officer of this army I am entitled, according to the order of battle, to one adjutant, an officer dedicated to meeting my administrative needs. We currently have no such billet filled, Mr. Campbell.” Arthur leaned forward, fixing the Lieutenant with his steely gaze. “Are you willing to undertake the position?”

“Indeed I am, sir,” Colin answered without hesitation.

“Then we find ourselves with a problem, for this is not a position which the authorities at Horse Guards deem to be suitable for a mere lieutenant.”

“I understand, sir,” said Colin stoically, though truly he did not. Crestfallen, he wondered why Wellesley had been so cruel as to dangle the promotional carrot directly in front of his face, only to snatch it away gain in an instant.

“No, I really don’t think that you do.” Arthur’s voice warmed as he fired his final salvo. “It is also within my authority to promote you to the rank of Captain, a right which I shall hereby exercise. Now sit down, Captain Campbell.”

Yet again the table erupted in cheers of congratulation. Several of the other lieutenants — who had been, until just seconds ago, Colin’s peers — attempted to conceal their envy, with varying degrees of success. Some had been commissioned into the army before him, and therefore held seniority over the young Scot, but Wellesley cared more for sheer ability and potential than he did for seniority, station, or birth.

With a stupid grin plastered across his face, Colin sat down a little too heavily.

Captain Campbell.

He could hardly believe it.

Back in Command

Once they were both clear of the pettah gates, Jamelia had shape-shifted into her feline form. Achalraj had at first not turned away, but as she began to shed her clothes Jamelia favored him with the glare of the unrepentant killer, causing the priest to finally turn his back. It was not the nakedness of her human form that she did not want him to see — Jamelia was fiercely proud of her body, for she had worked long and hard to train it to its current peak condition — but rather the actual transformation into a great hunting cat. Shape-shifters would no more voluntarily change form in front of a non-shifter than a gentleman would drop his britches and defecate in polite company. It was simply too ugly a thing to contemplate.

At the sound of a low, throaty rumble, Achalraj believed that it was safe to turn back around. The tigress was already loping confidently towards the east, heading directly into the glare of the rising sun. She held a bag in her mouth containing the clothes that had just been doffed, shed along with her human skin in favor of the sleeker form of a huntress.

Had she left him behind to fend for himself, Jamelia’s long strides could have eaten the leagues as though they were nothing. As it was, both priest and tigress made relatively good time. Stopping every half-hour or so for her to sniff the air and reacquire the scent of her marching battalion, it was barely past mid-day when they finally caught up with the column of white-coated soldiers.

“I return command of the battalion to you, mistress,” Bindusar said formally, offering her a deep bow. Jamelia had chosen to remain in her feline form for now, for she was a firm believer that it was good for the men’s morale to be reminded every once in a while that a tigress led them.

“Accepted,” she grunted, the word sounding guttural and foreign coming from her animal throat. “Cavalry?”

“No sign.” Her second-in-command seemed very pleased indeed by the fact that no British or native cavalry had been sighted so far. They might not have been out of the woods just yet, but every passing step was one step closer to the main body of Scindia’s army and to their rightful place in its vanguard.

Their journey passed uneventfully from sunrise to sunset, and the battalion made a rough camp underneath the stars that night, out on the open plain.

“No fires, and post double the usual number of picquets,” Jamelia ordered. Bindusar bowed and gave orders for the guards to be posted.

“Why no fires?” Despite being wrapped up in the folds of his voluminous black robe, Achalraj could feel his teeth chattering as the cold evening wind swept in.

“Because we do not wish to attract the attention of their vampire officers, if any should be scouting for us,” Jamelia explained, in a tone of voice which implied that she was talking to a simpleton.

“The plains are vast.”

“And fire can be seen from many miles away…particularly from the air.” She glanced upward with a knowing little smile, and Achalraj shivered, though this time the cause was nothing to do with the cold. “Do you have any idea what an aerial night attack by just a handful of the blood-drinkers would do to us?”

Achalraj fell silent, choosing not to answer. He could already see the horrific imagery in his mind’s eye: the vampires descending on an unsuspecting camp from on high, striking with superhuman speed and — so the stories said — unparalleled savagery.

Jamelia must have guessed his thoughts, for she said: “It matters not that we have an entire battalion, Achalraj. Fight the vampires on their terms, and the end result will be a slaughter.”

On that note, the priest curled up on the cold ground and did his best to pass the night away while sleeping with one eye open.

"On whom would you wager?"

This place is little more than a backwater, Jamelia thought to herself as her battalion of men in white marched in proud step towards the tiny little village of Borkardan.

It did not look like much in the long shadows of the setting sun.

There was little of note about the place, for it was essentially a collection of ramshackle huts centered around what passed for a main street. What did make it worth mentioning was the fact that both Scindia and the Raja of Berar had chosen Borkardan as the place at which to unify their forces.

The first thing that caught the eye on approaching the village was the vast number of tents pitched upon the outskirts, seemingly on all sides. So many cavalry horses roamed the surrounding countryside that the air reeked of excrement, the stench of which crowded out all other odors.

Soldiers and camp followers alike thronged the area, most of them at a leisurely stroll which belied the fact that the Maratha Confederacy was currently in a state of war with the invading British. Most of the activity seemed to center around a cluster of brightly-colored tents, which upon closer inspection with Bindusar’s telescope were revealed to be far more finely ornamented than those of the common troops. They were also more heavily guarded.

Scindia’s tent, and the Raja’s.

It did not take long for Bindusar to locate Pohlmann’s compoo. The vampire was remarkably eccentric, and absolutely loved traveling on a platform carried atop a war elephant. Scanning the camp with his glass, Bindusar picked up on the magnificent beast, devoid of its harness and being watered by a trio of attendants.

“Take the men and establish camp alongside the rest of the compoo,” Jamelia instructed her second-in-command. “I must present myself to Scindia.”

She could not present herself to Pohlmann, for the sun would be up for at least another half-hour, and therefore her superior officer would be buried in the dark comfort of the earth. Acknowledging her order with a curt bow, Bindusar marched the battalion off in the direction of their comrades’ camp. It was obvious from both the expressions on their faces and the spring in their steps that the morale of the men was high, despite what they had experienced at the escalade of Ahmednuggur.

And it is any wonder? Jamelia looked all about her at the sea of humanity, horses, and tents flapping in the light breeze. We must outnumber Wellesley by ten to one. No general on earth could withstand those odds, no matter what his reputation would have us believe.

She made her slowly across the Maratha camp, weaving between soldiers and mercenaries, wives and children, not to mention the seemingly endless herd of beasts of burden that always accompanied an army on the move. Finally, she stood before the largest of the colorful tents, one whose fabric was dyed a brilliant yellow. In order to reach the entrance, she had had to receive the approval of no less than eight guards, which suggested that both Scindia and the Raja of Berar could be found within. For his own personal tent, which she believed was actually slightly smaller than this one, Scindia usually held that just a pair of guards on the doorway would suffice.

A French captain by the name of Le Marchand recognized her and arranged for her to be admitted into the inner sanctum of the great tent. Le Marchand was one of Scindia’s highly-prized European officers, who commanded a company within a different battalion of Pohlmann’s compoo. He was just on his way out of the tent when Jamelia was attempting to gain admittance from four guards who must have been the Raja’s men, because they wore uniforms alien to those she saw every day.

“You would be wise to admit the lady into the presence of Their Excellencies,” Le Marchand told the senior of the four with a cautionary tone to his voice. “She commands the second finest battalion in Pohlmann’s compoo,” he smirked, throwing her the sideways look of one soldier intentionally trying to bait a comrade, “and she has certain other…talents that make her indispensable to our commanders.”

Grasping completely the wrong end of the stick, the guard swept Jamelia from head to foot and back again with his eyes, offering an unmistakable leer. “I’ll bet she does.”

Before he could realize just how foolish his implication had been, the tigress thrust out her left hand and took a firm grip on his testicles. The man winced. As Jamelia applied pressure, he actually began to whine like a lost dog.

“Would you care to elaborate on that?” she asked reasonably, tightening her grip fractionally.

Tears were now welling up in the corners of the man’s eyes.

“Mmmmff,” was all he could say, obviously biting his lower lip so hard that Jamelia actually thought she could smell blood.

“I’m sorry, what?” She leaned in a little more closely, sweeping the long, dark hair from her ear with her right hand and cocking her head theatrically. “I’m afraid that I didn’t quite catch that.”

The man uttered a soft moan which, despite the contact of Jamelia’s hand with his genitals, was about as far away from pleasure as it was conceivably possible to get.

“…’m s’rry,” the guard squeaked. One of the other guards took a step forward, seemingly intent on currying favor with his superior by trying to release him from her grip. A throat growl escaped Jamelia, its rumble far too menacing and wild to have been uttered by a normal human throat. The would-be hero hurriedly stepped back.

“I thought that’s what you said. May I enter?”

Sweat beaded on the guard’s brow, soaking the hem of his turban. A single tear coursed down his cheek. To his credit, he did not utter another sound, simply nodding once, a jerky back-and-forth snap of the head.

“That’s what I thought you would say.”

She released the man’s testicles and brushed past him, ducking under the inner awning and stepping into the tent interior. From somewhere behind her, she heard a groan — probably of relief.

She was convinced that she could actually hear Le Marchand smirking back there.

The canvas opened up into a spacious inner sanctum, and the reason for the increased security on the entrance became clear. Not only Scindia and the Raja of Berar were to be found sitting within, but also the lion’s share of their senior commanders and a smattering of holy men. This was no mere durbar, or meeting of the Maratha army’s leaders, Jamelia realized as all eyes turned towards her: this was a fully-fledged council of war.

“And so she appears!”

The Raja of Berar leaned forward on his ornately-carved wooden throne, which was softened by a handful of plump purple pillows. He was a large man, heavyset and yet also powerful in the same way that Jamelia’s father had been. A full black beard frame a rounded face from which intelligent eyes regarded her keenly.

“Just as I said she would,” Scindia replied from his own throne, immediately to the left of the Raja’s. “What news do you bring us? Does all proceed as it should?”

Jamelia approached the two leaders, stopping some ten feet from the twin thrones and offering a low bow; unusual behavior for a female but entirely appropriate for one who commanded soldiers.

“Everything is unfolding according to plan, Your Excellency,” she reported, inclining her head respectfully. “The first seeds of chaos have been sown amongst the British. By now, I fully expect that they will already be bearing fruit.”

“Tell us.”

Jamelia went on to recount her experiences with the fall of Ahmednuggur pettah, including the spreading of the blessed blood and subsequent resurrection of the dead British soldiers. As she had expected, Scindia peppered her with questions, and she answered them in great detail.

“You have extracted your forces from Ahmednuggur without loss?” he concluded with raised eyebrows.

“I have, Your Excellency.”

“That was well done,” Scindia commended her. “To tell you the truth, I had feared that your battalion may have been lost — or at the very least, severely depleted — in the defense of the pettah. You have done well, Jamelia.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency.”

Scindia was right, Jamelia knew; she had done well. A less-able commander would have thrown their forces into resisting the British attack and gotten them engaged. In the great game of chess that was being played out on the board of the Maratha lands, Ahmednuggur was nothing more than a pawn, offered up for sacrifice in order to save a more valuable piece — her battalion. Although he almost certainly didn’t have an inkling of it yet, Wellesley had just been maneuvered into checkmate.

The Raja addressed the assembled officers confidently, obviously much buoyed by the promising news that the tigress bore.

“A sickness now spreads through the British army; it is a sickness that shall weaken them further and further, day by day, until finally they lack the strength of even a new-born babe. In her most munificent and infinite wisdom, the Dark Mother has blessed us with the perfect opportunity to strike.”

“Then strike we must.”

All eyes turned towards the tent entrance. Pohlmann had just arrived. The man was dressed nattily in a pristine uniform which belied his having been buried in the ground for the past eight hours.

“Must we indeed?” The Raja of Berar smiled, and from his tone Jamelia guess that the question must be a rhetorical one, for he already sounded convinced.

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Please explain your reasons for the benefit of our friends,” Scindia practically purred, settling back into his throne and signaling for a servant to bring him a glass of arrack.

“This man Wellesley will be aggressive,” Pohlmann predicted, amplifying his voice to address the assembly at large. “Despite our great disparity of numbers — a disparity which would cause any sane commander to retreat from Maratha lands with his tail tucked between his legs — he really has no other choice but to come on. Our armies have marched and counter-marched for far too long already, maneuvering for even the smallest advantage, in the manner of two pugilists circling and circling around another, each man waiting for his opponent to make the first mistake before launching himself into a flurry of blows.

“Wellesley seeks to tire us out, to force us into making that first mistake, and we have refused to allow ourselves to be goaded.”

A wave of nodding assent rippled through the assembled company, as each man present congratulated himself on how clever they had all been.

“But now, the British general has made not one, but two critical errors,” Pohlmann continued when the gathering had quieted itself once more.

“Two?” the Raja asked quizzically.

“Two,” affirmed the colonel, ticking them off on the fingers of his cadaverously-pale right hand. “Firstly, he has divided his army. Roughly half of his force has been dispatched some thirty or forty miles away, under the command of a colonel by the name of Stevenson. This man is, by all accounts, a capable enough officer, but that shall not save him when our horde falls upon him and destroys his…well, we cannot in good conscience call such a pitiful little band an army, since it is only some seven thousand men strong. Wellesley commands roughly the same number of men.

“And their second mistake?” prompted Scindia, despite knowing the answer full well. He wanted his cleverness to be made clear to every man in the tent.

The vampire obliged him. “Allowing our tigress and priest to spread the gift of the goddess among them. If I have understood Her plan correctly, their dead will already have begun to rise. They will be ravenously hungry, and each person that they bite shall become one of them. Is that not so?” he asked Scindia.

“Indeed it is,” Scindia smirked, covering his mouth with the fingers of one hand. “As more are bitten, more shall rise. Before they know it, the British invaders shall be terrified of every single movement in the shadows.”

“Which is why we must strike, and strike now.” Pohlmann brought the argument full-circle. “We must break camp and march upon the British immediately. Our scouts have a rough idea of their position, which will be refined in practically no time at all once we dispatch some of those tens of thousands of cavalrymen currently standing idle, in order to screen our advance. Whether we encounter Wellesley’s band first or that of Stevenson, it makes no matter. The tiny force shall be isolated, crushed, destroyed in detail, and then we shall turn our attention upon the other.

“There is no way for this to unfold which would end well for the British.”

Anjou, one of Scindia’s European majors, piped up: “What if the two British formations unite?”

Pohlmann had anticipated the question, knowing that it would be foremost on the minds of everybody present, and moved quickly and smoothly to allay those fears. “Then the British shall have fifteen thousand men to oppose us. Fifteen thousand…against one hundred thousand.” He looked around the room, dark eyes searching every face. “On whom would you wager?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Who Shall Command?

Only half an hour remained until midnight when the grand durbar was finally drawn to a close, capping hours of plotting, planning, and debate. The Raja of Berar and Scindia had come to the decision that their combined army would indeed march upon the British, and march immediately; the business of striking camp and advancing in the direction of the suspected British position was to commence at once, that very night.

Perhaps the most contentious issue was to be that of who was to hold supreme command of the Maratha forces upon the battlefield. Neither of the two senior ‘commanders’ (or any of the lesser ones) were anything more than figureheads, preferring to offset their extremely limited military experience by hiring capable European commanders for a king’s ransom. Each man who held the rank of colonel or above felt entitled to stake his claim, but the candidates were quickly winnowed down to those few who were entrusted with Scindia’s compoos. Dupont, Saleur, and Pohlmann were all strong candidates; each had their supporters for the candidacy, and so the debate went on until the candles burned low.

Ultimately, the decision was made, and a supreme commander who almost everybody could live with had been elected.

It was to be Anthony Pohlmann.

“I want more scouts out there now,” Pohlmann snapped curtly at his aide-de-camp as the two left the great tent. “Sweep our line of advance and get me the exact position of the British forces. Both, if at all possible; one, at the very least.”

The aide, a mortal French captain by the name of Goumot, nodded. “What of the vampire officers, Colonel? Should they also be deployed to seek out the enemy?”

The vampire was silent for a moment, turning the question over in his mind and examining it from multiple angles. “Send three,” he finally said. “None above the rank of captain.”

Vampire officers were the rarest of the Europeans in the employ of the Marathas, and cost significantly more in terms of pay and plunder. Even with such exorbitant rewards to be gained, there were still only a handful — nine, at last count, including Pohlmann himself. The British had more, and although their military doctrine allowed the use of such men as ‘exploring officers,’ who ranged far and wide throughout enemy territory while alone and wearing full uniform so that they could not be executed as spies if they should be captured, Wellesley was reputed to be cautious in their employment; he too recognized the immense value of a vampire officer in leading his companies, battalions, and regiments, and was understandably hesitant to fritter them away on a task that cavalry were well-suited for.

It would therefore have surprised both Colonel Pohlmann and his aide to know that at that very moment, they were being watched and listened to from high up above. Major Matthew Williams was one of the Major General’s most experienced exploring officers, and was well-used to flying above the landscapes of India by night, working mile by mile to sketch out accurate and detailed maps of the terrain and local topography which Wellesley had at times used to deadly effect.

Williams had seen the cooking-fires of the Maratha camp from miles away, their glow reflected against the base of the low-lying clouds. Flying stealthily in their direction, the major had reached Borkardan in just moments, and now levitated in the cool night air some five hundred feet above what he had shrewdly identified as the tent of the Maratha princes.

Listening intently with the preternaturally-enhanced hearing which was just one of the reasons for which vampire officers were so highly prized upon the battlefield, Williams had been unable to make out any detail of the conversations taking place within the tent, but had heard every word spoken by Pohlmann and his aide after they had exited.

The Maratha army may not be on the march yet, the major thought to himself as he digested the results of his eavesdropping, but their cavalry most surely are.

General Wellesley was going to want to hear about this, and he would want to hear about it immediately.

Borkardan

“Borkardan,” Wellesley hissed between clenched teeth. “The Marathas are at Borkardan.”

“The entire enemy force,” Williams confirmed, just moments after he had dropped gracefully to the ground behind the British lines. The army was camped just outside Sailgaon. He had made his way directly to the general’s tent, where he found his commanding officer contemplating one of the very maps he himself had drawn of this region only four days prior. The general was sharing a decanter of blood with Colonel Stevenson, who had flown across at sundown from his own army’s encampment at Budnapoor, some miles to the west.

“How many?” Wellesley pressed him. “Your best estimate?”

“I would say all of them,” Williams answered without a trace of exaggeration. “Their encampment stretched almost from horizon to horizon, sir.”

Arthur paused in silence to digest this news.

It is time. I can feel it.

“You have done good work this night, Williams,” Wellesley said at last. “Know that you have my thanks. You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.” The major inclined his head respectfully to both Wellesley and Stevenson, who until this point had said nothing, and ducked out of the tent.

Setting his goblet down carefully on a side table, Arthur turned to regard his second-in-command.

“You are conspicuous by your silence, Colonel.”

Stevenson looked up from where he had been seemingly contemplating the contents of his own goblet. He took a dignified sip, the coppery liquid staining his lips red.

“I would be rather less than honest if I were to tell you that I liked these odds, General.”

“Nor I,” Wellesley shot back. “It is not necessary for us to like them, Colonel — only for us to beat them.”

He realized that he had raised his voice, allowed himself to grow heated. Stevenson was right; the odds were indeed fearsome. But what other choice had they? Arthur was a keen student of the military art of logistics, and had planned his army’s ability to support itself in a hostile enemy country with almost obsessive, excruciating detail, calculating the precise amount of barrels and beef, shot and shell, needed to prosecute a campaign against the Marathas. What he had not anticipated was their apparent unwillingness to engage him in battle. From what he had known of them, coyness had not seemed to be their style.

“We cannot sustain this army in the field for much longer, as you are quite aware.” Arthur was giving voice to his fears now, exposing them to the only man that he reasonably could inflict them upon. “It is either do battle, here, now, over the next few days, or march back to Mysore in ignominy and failure.”

“I understand,” Stevenson agreed solemnly. “But if the Marathas do indeed outnumber us by ten to one, their cavalry by almost twenty to one…”

“You compare apples to oranges, Colonel. Most of their horse and the majority of their foot are irregulars, little more than an ill-disciplined rabble. Numbers count for something, yes, but not everything. They do not tell the whole story.” Arthur sighed, taking a deeper draught of blood this time. It helped to calm his nerves, something which he felt was sorely needed this night. “It has always been my firm belief that a smaller, professional fighting force of well-trained men can defeat a horde many times its size, if handled competently by a skilled commander.”

“You are most certainly that, sir.”

“You flatter me, Stevenson, and for that I thank you. But it is entirely possible that you shall be the one to strike the first blow against our enemies, and I have every bit as much confidence in your abilities as you have expressed in mine.”

“I shall endeavor to conduct myself in a manner worthy of the general’s trust, sir.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. Now, we are going to attack. It is decided. So let us be about the business of planning it.”

The two men went over to the map that was already spread out upon the general’s table, Arthur bringing a candelabra and setting it down atop the table so that its glow illuminated the rivers, hills, and plains of the Deccan.

Wellesley pointed at the village of Sailgaon. “We are currently here,” he said, and then moved the tip of one sharply-pointed fingernail westward to hover over the town of Budnapoor. “Your army is encamped just here. And here,” he traced a line northward towards a location on the River Kailna, “is Borkardan.”

Stevenson nodded slowly. He had the experienced mind of an old campaigner, and it was already reading the terrain between Budnapoor and Borkardan, visualizing every defile and rise in three dimensions. It was something every senior officer could do without consciously choosing to, simply the way in which a commander’s brain worked — no, had to work — in order to appreciate a potential battlefield.

There was a ridge of hills running between the two tiny British armies, separating them from one another. Stevenson saw straight away that they were going to be an obstacle. So much of their logistical train, not to mention the artillery, was wheeled, and therefore reliant upon roads in order to move. Roads did lead north from both Sailgaon and Budnapoor, and they were the only thing that made the hills passable to carts, wagons, and cannon.

“I suspect that I know exactly what you are thinking,” Arthur said. Stevenson looked at him askance. “Oh, this is no psychic eavesdropping,” the general laughed, its uncharacteristic bray betraying his underlying nervousness. “You are a fine commander, and as such you are going to suggest that we reunite both halves of our army now, and only then advance north upon Borkardan.”

Colonel Stevenson’s eyes widen in surprise. That was precisely what he was going to suggest.

“Is that really such a terrible option, sir?”

“Under normal circumstances, no. The problem is, the circumstances under which we find ourselves are anything but ordinary. You see, if we amalgamate now and then march north, it will take us twice as long. We shall not only have to bring one army across to join the other, but then we shall be sharing one single road, which means that our column will advance at half the speed it would take if we each advance northward from our current respective positions.”

It was hard to argue with that kind of logic, Stevenson saw. But did it outweigh the risk of the enemy attacking them first, of dividing and conquering their forces piecemeal?

Wellesley apparently thought not.

“Speed is of the essence now, Stevenson.” He rapped the tabletop with his index finger for emphasis. “Speed is everything. You know how jittery these Marathas are, how they hardly like to stay in one place for more than a few days. We should have brought them to battle before now otherwise. We must hit them hard, and we must hit them now.”

The colonel had been performing the calculations in his mind while Wellesley made his case. “I would estimate that it is still a good two days march to their position, General — perhaps three.”

“All the more reason to begin immediately.” Wellesley’s voice was impassioned, and the colonel saw that there was going to be no changing the man’s mind.

“Very well, sir.”

“Tonight is the Twenty-First,” Arthur consulted his pocket-watch, “although not for much longer, for it is almost midnight. We shall strike camp and begin the march in one hour, with the cavalry leading the way…the dragoons, I think. My army shall arrive here in two days, three at the absolute latest, but two if all goes well. That puts us at the Twenty-Third, at worst the Twenty-Fourth.” Arthur was pointing to a village named Naulniah, which sat on the banks of the River Purna. “We shall make camp there and attack the following evening.”

“Then I shall make for Hussainabad, General Wellesley. I shall make every effort to reach it by the Twenty-Third and shall camp there for what remains of the evening.” Stevenson indicated a village that was roughly ten miles to the west-southwest of Naulniah as the crow (or the vampire) flew. Both villages were perhaps three or four hours’ march from Borkardan, which would lie to the northwest of Arthur’s intended campsite and northeast of Stevenson’s.

“Excellent, Colonel. Then, at dusk on the Twenty-Fourth, we shall decide this damnable affair once and for all.”

On that note, the two senior officers shook hands and parted company, Stevenson flying west to chivvy his own force on the long road northward. Calling for his newly promoted adjutant, Wellesley issued a flurry of orders intended to mobilize his portion of the army to do the very same. When he had vacated his command tent, men of the Shadow Company scuttled about it, efficiently striking the poles and rolling the canvas up so that it could be packaged and stowed for the march.

Arthur stood in the light and warmth of one of the campfires, enjoying the comforting feeling until a private from the 78th apologetically doused it. Looking up at the cold, clear night sky, with the finely speckled band of stars arching above his head, one thought was foremost above all others in the vampire general’s mind.

If only they will remain at Borkardan…

A Medical Opinion

Wellesley’s army marched north in column until sunrise on the morning of the Twenty-Second, and then made camp for the day on an open plain. Arthur slept a dreamless sleep until sunset, and for once was more disconcerted than relieved when the Tipu Sultan did not intrude on his repose. The mysterious dark-skinned woman who had made such veiled threats to him would have been intriguing under any other circumstances, but Arthur had written her off as little more than the vampire equivalent of a nightmare or phantasm, a description that he still wasn’t entirely convinced should not extend to the Sultan as well. He had the business of running an army to occupy his mind — not least of all was getting to the bottom of just what had happened to the feral redcoats in the square at Ahmednuggur — and such responsibilities left no room for anything more fanciful.

And yet…when Arthur closed his eyes and entered that twilight world between sleeping and wakefulness, he found her image drifting back into his mind. He could easily conjure her appearance in his mind’s eye, paradoxically both so close and yet so far from reach at the very same time. She had reminded him of something, but he could not think of precisely what.

Then it came to him.

Kali.

The Hindu Goddess of the Dead.

He had seen shrines and statues to Kali at several places during his time in India. She seemed to be venerated throughout the land, particularly by the poor and the dispossessed, for whom death was always but a heartbeat away. Arthur searched his memory for some of the stories that he had heard, finally recalling that Kali was said to be the wife of Shiva, and was always pictured with several sets of arms in the icons that he had seen; each arm was usually holding an object of some kind, such as a dagger, a trident, a serpent, and sometimes a severed human head.

The woman in his dream had somehow grown a second set of arms.

She had also dispatched the Tipu Sultan as though he were nothing more than an afterthought.

When Company Sergeant Major Nichols unearthed him from the ground at sunset, it was not the logistics of moving an army or the tactics of opposing a vastly superior enemy that kept Arthur’s attention — it was the enigmatic woman.

He accepted the obligatory cup of warm blood gratefully, sipping it to restore his strength and vitality. Arthur noticed that his senior NCO appeared to be something less than his usual, cheerful self.

“Is something bothering you, CSM?”

“There have been some…unusual developments today, sir.”

Arthur cocked an eyebrow curiously. “Unusual in what sense?”

“Best that I let Dr. Caldwell explain, General.”

Knowing better than to pry something out of Nichols when he was being uncharacteristically reticent, Arthur simply gestured for him to lead the way. The medical tent had been pitched some four or five hundred yards from the officers’ mess, just far enough away that the stench of human effluvia and the cries of the wounded would not carry that far.

To the casual observer, Doctor Reed Caldwell might have seemed young for a surgeon; yett his relative youth belied an encyclopedic knowledge of medical practice and a total unflappability under even the most trying of conditions. The son of a wealthy and influential barrister, Caldwell had eschewed the traditional avenue of private practice following the completion of his medical schooling, choosing instead the far riskier — but equally more rewarding — alternative of signing on as the 33rd’s regimental surgeon. A life of adventure and hardship on campaign held far greater appeal for the adventuresome young man than the staid family estates in Sussex. Tall and lean, the harsh Indian sun had tanned the still-mortal man’s face a deep brown. The doctor kept his dark hair trimmed neatly, the better to keep it out of his eyes when the blood was flowing and the sweat stung during the brutal grappling that was battlefield surgery.

It was not unusual to hear screams originate from within the medical tent, but this time Wellesley realized that there was something a little…off about them. There was also no guard posted on the tent’s entrance when Dan led the way inside. The tent was unusually busy, crammed almost to capacity with not only patients lying down on makeshift beds and trellis tables, but also a swarm of red-coated soldiers milling around them. Arthur soon realized precisely where the two guards who should normally have been manning the entrance had gone; they were restraining a prostrate figure on one of the wooden trellis tables, wrestling the man face-down.

“Hold him! Hold him!” Caldwell ordered, and although his voice was raised, the command was delivered with the doctor’s characteristic gentility of manner which so endeared him to his staff. The assisting redcoats struggled to obey, but the patient was thrashing and struggling for all that he was worth. It was from him the moaning and screaming came, and yet on closer inspection, Arthur realized to his bemusement that the surgeon wasn’t actually doing anything to the man to elicit such a response. Screams were only to be expected during an amputation, when the agony of the bone-saw was blunted only by the strongest of alcohol and a rubber bit placed in the patient’s mouth to prevent him from biting off his own tongue; but this particular patient appeared to be entirely whole, his only visible wound seeming to be a bandage tied around his lower right forearm.

Nichols rushed in to lend some muscle to the struggle, and that gave Caldwell the opportunity he needed to apply thick leather straps to each of the writhing patient’s wrists, cinching them tightly through a metal buckle and fastening them securely. Each brown leather strap was heavily discolored in patches, a result of the blood of hundreds of former table occupants soaking into them. The doctor repeated the restraint procedure at the patient’s ankles, then stepped back and wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of one blood-stained forearm.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Caldwell said to the two redcoats, each of whom was still watching the patient warily despite having stepped away. Although face-down, the man still fought against his restraints like a caged beast, but the tough straps were winning the battle…for now. “You may return to your duties.”

“Bastard bit me,” grumbled one of the soldiers, holding one hand inside the other. Blood oozed from between the man’s clenched fingers, and Arthur swiftly crushed the sudden thirst that sprang up unbidden within him. Nevertheless, the uninjured soldier must have caught some sign upon his face, some flash of the eyes or change of expression, because he shrank away into the shadows of the canvas wall.

“Let me see.” The doctor was all business, prising open the wounded soldier’s grip and assessing the injured hand. He turned it this way and that, searching for the best view in the candlelit gloom of the medical tent. He had indeed been bitten, Arthur saw, on the back of the right hand. Although it did not look particularly bad — no muscle, bone, or connective tissue was visible — Caldwell searched around in his pockets for a linen dressing, which he pushed against the open wound in order to staunch the venous bleeding. “I shall be with you in just a moment, General,” he apologized, rummaging inside a plain wooden chest set on a nearby folding table.

“Of course. You must see to the welfare of the men first.”

Caldwell inclined his head in gratitude. Wellesley was not like other officers, the doctor had come to learn. Far too many for his liking would have thought nothing of allowing a ranker to bleed while giving their own needs absolute priority. He was not entirely sure whether the vampire general truly cared for the men under his command, or that he simply wanted to keep his fighting machine in the best condition possible, but Caldwell really didn’t give a damn. He finally found what he had been hunting for, fishing a needle and thread from the depths of the storage chest. Gesturing for the injured soldier to take a seat on one of the many benches scattered around the tent, the doctor sat down directly opposite him and proceeded to sew up the wound.

Once the final stitch had been placed, he cut the threat and deftly knotted the end. “See Mister Davis for some tincture and a clean dressing.” Caldwell indicated one of the orderlies with a sideways nod of his head. “Tell him that you require the special treatment, if you would be so kind.”

“Thank’ee, sir,” the man said humbly, wincing as he got to his feet and wandered off to find the orderly in question. His companion offered the general a smart salute, which was briskly returned, and left the tent to resume his sentry post outside.

Letting out a long, slow breath, Caldwell stood up as well and turned to face Wellesley and Nichols, both of whom had stood by patiently, waiting for the doctor to finish his stitching.

“The way things are going today, he’ll be back within the next twelve hours.”

Arthur raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he isn’t the first. Not even close.” The doctor sighed, scratching his scalp absently. He pointed at the still-struggling patient. “In fact, we’re going to need a bigger tent if they keep on coming in like this.”

The man tied to the bed wore a jacket whose facings looked to be those of the 78th. His lank blond hair was plastered to his skull with sweat — not simply that which was typical of the warm climate and close air of the tent, for it appeared as though the private had dunked his head in a water barrel, so wet was it. His skin was equally slick. Huge damp circles stained his armpits and collar.

“I am no medical man, of course, but he appears to be running a fever,” said Wellesley dispassionately. “So we must have some ague or contagion breaking out among the ranks?”

“That’s what I thought too, at first,” Caldwell affirmed, “until I saw this man.”

Leading them further into the inner recess of the tent, the doctor passed by five tables, all of which had a thrashing human being strapped down to it. Arthur was horrified to note that one of them was a young child, no older than six or seven. Caldwell stopped when he reached a man who Wellesley and Nichols actually knew. He wore the trousers and boots common to soldiers of the 33rd, but his red coat and shirt had been removed, leaving his torso completely exposed. Something glistened redly on the man’s chest, but even the colonel’s keen vampire-enhanced eyesight could make out little more than a dark smear upon his breastbone in the gloom that permeated the hospital.

When he got a little nearer, it became apparent that the smear was a round hole, about the same size as a pistol ball. Seeing that the wound had caught the general’s eye, Caldwell explained rather sheepishly that in order to get the man into his restraints, it had been necessary to shoot him in the process.

“Dear God,” Arthur exclaimed, his eyes widening in shock. “That’s Cornell, isn’t it?”

“Private Cornell from Fourth Company?” Dan craned his head to look more closely. The supine fellow was spreadeagled, his arms and legs lashed down like all of the other cases that they had seen so far, but that didn’t prevent the man from snapping at the CSM’s face with his teeth. Nichols jerked his head back, moving quickly out of range of the feral soldier’s jaws.

“Look around, General.” Caldwell spread his arms wide, indicating the entire tent. It was practically wall-to-wall with patients, all of whom were struggling against their bonds. Some of the restraint methods were rather creative. One man had his wrists bound together above his head by what looked to be the strap from a Brown Bess musket, which was looped several times through a stake driven into the ground. “We are practically full to capacity already, and the first cases were only brought in to us yesterday morning.”

“That would have been Clarke from Third Company, and that other unfortunate from the 74th?” Wellesley recalled.

“They seem to be…well, breeding, for want of a better word, sir.” Nichols said tersely. “They’re just like the ones in the square.”

“Do you mean to tell me that all of these victims are dead?”

“Many, sir, but not all. Some of them are most definitely alive. Those seem to invariably be the ones who have recently come into contact with the more severe cases and been bitten by them.”

“So this…witchery, call it what you will, is passed on through being bitten by one of the creatures?” Arthur struggled for clarity. With an enemy to defeat, this was the last thing he needed on his plate right now.

“It is, sir. Based upon my observations today, I can state with a high degree of confidence that once the bite has occurred, the patient becomes febrile within anywhere from ten minutes to ten hours — there seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. The same can be said of the duration of the fever. I have seen it last for six hours today, and yet also take as little as one hour to turn the unfortunate victim into a slavering beast.

“But forgive me, General. I am getting ahead of myself. We were speaking of the onset of fever. Once the patient’s temperature rises, their heart beat increases until it is so fast that the rate can scarcely be counted. The pulse disappears from the wrist, and then from the neck soon after. There is one final, agonal gasp, and then the breathing stops. At that point, the patient is clinically dead — at least, by all the standards of modern medicine. The period of time that elapses from onset of the fever to death simply cannot be predicted with any degree of accuracy.”

“And then?” the Colonel prompted him.

“And then a short interval passes, no more than ten or at most fifteen minutes, and the body returns to some semblance of life once more. You see it in the form of the horrors that are all around us.” Caldwell spoke with dispassionate, totally clinical detachment, and yet Wellesley could sense the very palpable fear beneath his carefully measured tone.

“The poor sod who was just bitten on the hand,” Dan put in. “He’s going to turn out just like these others?”

“It is essentially guaranteed, Sarn’t Major.” The doctor shook his head sorrowfully. “That is why I sent him over to see Davis and to ask for the special treatment. It entails the man being struck over the head with the stock of a musket, and once he is unconscious, he will be securely restrained along with the rest of these poor souls.”

“That seems a bit harsh, sir.” Nichols sounded doubtful.

“Desperate times require desperate measures, CSM. It is either that or allow this vile malady to be spread amongst our men unchecked.”

“As you say, sir,” the CSM responded neutrally, which Wellesley had learned long ago was essentially the man’s code for ‘I disagree with you, General, but what’s the sense in arguing?’

“I do say so, Nichols,” he replied with just a trace of irritation. “Can you imagine what would happen if this situation were to get out of hand? Our ranks would be decimated, man. Decimated!”

“As they may yet be,” Caldwell interjected gloomily.

“What’s that? How?” demanded the colonel, turning to face him once again.

“Even with the precautions now in place, it is highly unlikely that we have caught them all, sir. All it would take is one — just one — to evade detection, and our attempts at isolating the carriers of the disease will have all been for naught.”

Wellesley said nothing further for a moment, simply standing there and stroking his chin thoughtfully. “It isn’t a disease,” he said finally.

“May I ask how you can possibly know that, sir?” the surgeon asked. His manner was respectful enough, but there was a decidedly skeptical undertone to it. “It is passed on from mouth to flesh, from carrier to victim, and that is the very way in which a disease is normally transmitted.”

“True enough,” Wellesley conceded, “but you are missing one salient point, Doctor Caldwell: the bodies.”

“The bodies, sir?”

“Yes. To be more precise, the bodies of our fallen comrades who died in the escalade of Ahmednuggur. They disappeared in the few hours after their deaths, only for some of them to show up the following morning in the square of Ahmednuggur. CSM Nichols did an admirable job of dispatching them with a few well-placed strikes to the head.”

“It does sound like the work of this same disease, though, sir,” Nichols said. “Bringing our dead back from their hard-earned eternal rest as raging monsters and all.”

“But the men who died in the escalade died in the escalade, Nichols. These weren’t living men who were bitten and then changed; no, these were men who were already dead and somehow resurrected. It is their bite which transmits the sickness, I will grant you, but that does not tell us the manner in which it actually started.”

“I’m no nearer being able to answer that particular question than I was first thing this morning.” The doctor’s frustration was beginning to show. “Not only do I have my hands full with the near-constant influx new cases streaming through the door, I’m also hesitant to carry out any sort of experimentation on the bodies of our own men — whether they are moving around at the time, or not.”

“Quite right, sir,” Dan agreed. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“I’m afraid that we are well beyond the bounds of propriety now,” said Wellesley. “We must get to the bottom of this, no matter what the cost. Doctor Caldwell, I am afraid that I must ask you to make every effort in uncovering the cause of this sickness. Leave no stone unturned.” When Caldwell did not reply, Wellesley said “I could make it an order, and an order in writing at that, if it would make things easier.”

“That will not be necessary, General,” Caldwell responded quietly. “I shall begin immediately.”

“See that you keep me informed.” With that, Arthur turned on his heel and strode from the tent, his face once more an unreadable mask.

“It seems that dead are not the only ones with ice-cold blood running through their veins,” the doctor said under his breath, once the general had exited the hospital tent.

“Sir, we are marching head-first against an army that outnumbers us by at least ten to one,” the CSM pointed out. “The way I see it, that ice-cold blood of his might be the only chance we have of getting out of this alive…”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Side By Side

Both British armies marched northward on parallel tracks that night. This was it, Wellesley knew. If all went according to plan, the evening of the Twenty-Second and the morning of the Twenty-Third would mark their final night of marching without a battle at the end to show for it. They would reach Naulniah before dawn, camp there for the rest of the day, and once night fell, both British armies would converge upon Borkardan and give the Marathas merry hell.

Arthur took the lead, along with an escorting squadron from the 19th Light Dragoons for company. He rode on Diomed, giving the stallion some fresh evening air and healthy exercise. The men of the Shadow Company, who had long been assigned the responsibility of acting as Wellesley’s personal bodyguard, muttered and grumbled about the fact that their general had eschewed their protection tonight for the company of what one old salt referred to as “a sack-full of ponces on ponies.”

As a relatively inexperienced colonel who was new to India, Arthur Wellesley had quickly earned himself a reputation as a hard taskmaster. He was at the very least fair, which was a real saving grace so far as most of the line soldiers were concerned, but if the situation warranted it then he could drive the men as though they were little more than slaves.

So it was now. The enemy was at Borkardan, and although they might simply choose to retreat further to the north as they had done so many times already on this damnable campaign, it would take time to move such a vast horde of men and horses – a great deal of time. Wellesley was convinced that a quick thrust by a smaller, much more nimble force could catch the lumbering Maratha army on the hop and tear it limb from limb.

Which meant a forced march.

The cavalry led the way, as usual; both the British cavalry and their native Indian counterparts fanned out in a wide arc along the column’s line of advance. They were not only the eyes and ears of the marching army, but also served to protect it. Like a prize-fighter keeping his guard up, the cavalry were there to prevent any sort of large-scale ambush by an enemy that was lying in wait. There was also the added benefit of the cavalry screen preventing the Marathas from getting any sort of real look at the British disposition, depriving them of valuable intelligence.

“Come along, my lads. Just a few more miles, and we’ll have some beef and tea in Naulniah!” Arthur rode Diomed up and down the long straggling column, chivvying the men along with a kind word here, and a harsher one where he deemed it more appropriate.

Nosey’s in fine old form tonight, David Pace thought to himself as he forced his tired and aching legs to go just that little bit faster. He missed the company of Mister Campbell since his promotion to Captain and Wellesley’s adjutant. Pace had caught sight of him earlier, following in his general’s wake on the back of a fine grey gelding that he assumed must have been on loan, for Campbell didn’t own a horse of his own. Few lieutenants could afford one.

Campbell had nodded at Pace as he trotted past, with just the slightest hint of a smile, an acknowledgment of the mutual respect each man held for the other. That bond had been forged in blood and fire at Ahmednuggur.

Then again, even if Campbell hadn’t been made up to the rank of captain after his heroism that night, Pace knew that he probably still wouldn’t be marching alongside his soldiers now. Campbell had been one of the daytimers, one of those mortal officers who worked primarily while the sun was up and then slept through most of the evening when the main body of the army was up and about. Daytimers were sort of an underclass amongst the British officer corps, despite the fact that they were absolutely vital to the operation of any modern vampire-led army.

After all, the senior and middle-ranking officers absolutely had to be buried under the earth for as long as the sun was in the sky; and yet, there were still hundreds, if not thousands of command decisions both large and small that could only be made by officers. The army bivouacked during the day, which is when most of the administrative hustle and bustle was taken care of, marching almost exclusively by night. Those daytimers who were so critical to keeping the army running also needed their sleep, and since the army was usually on the move after sundown, a number of covered wagons were set aside for their use as a type of ‘rolling bedroom.’ Daytime officers soon learned how to fall asleep practically anywhere, including in the back of a wagon that was bumping and jostling over what passed for roads in this part of India.

If only the dead would sleep as soundly.

A Side of Beef

“You’re going to have your hands more than full tonight,” Arthur had told Nichols firmly at the beginning of their night march. The CSM had just protested the decision to leave the Shadows in the ordinary column of march, rather than fulfill their traditional function as Wellesley’s personal bodyguard. “If…no, when there are more attacks, I want the Shadows to respond immediately.”

By attacks, both men knew exactly what Wellesley meant. Throughout the long night’s march, the episodes of violence had grown more and more frequent. They always seemed to go the same way. Word of the sickness had spread like wildfire throughout the British camp, and along with it was the news that the only way to deal with those who were afflicted was to shoot or otherwise critically injure them in the head. Several of those who were secretly nursing bites decided that there was no way they would allow one of their comrades to put a musket to their head and pull the trigger. Hoping against hope for a stay of execution that never came, these men marched in their ranks, their step getting more and more shambolic as the sickness took hold.

Finally they would collapse in the dust, and an NCO would fall out of the column of march to take a quick look at them, checking for a pulse at the very least. Wellesley had issued the sternest orders that those men who fell and died by the wayside were to have their heads obliterated immediately. That was easier said than done, however; Arthur knew that he was essentially asking the men to desecrate the freshly-dead bodies of their brothers-in-arms, and a significant number either could not bring themselves to do it, or simply refused to obey. Some took half-measures, such as the sergeant of the 78th who attended the roadside death of one of his corporals. Wanting to obey orders but unable to bring himself to bludgeon the sleeping face of a man he had come to know as a friend as well as a subordinate, he had taken up his bayonet and, with tears streaming unashamedly down his face, slit the dead man’s throat.

Cuffing away his tears, the sergeant had rejoined the ranks, now feeling nothing other than a total emotional numbness. His company was ten minutes away to the north when the dead corporal opened his eyes, slowly sat up before the horrified eyes of a passing East India Company battalion, and had lunged for the throat of the closest man. By the time the startled sepoys had fended their frenzied attacker off, finally laying him to rest with a musket ball through the back of his skull, three of their number had fallen victim to his teeth.

In their wisdom, they elected not to report the matter to their superiors at the front of the column.

“If this continues, Nichols, then our army shall be bled dry by this damnable curse. I want the Shadows to deal with each and every incident, swiftly and decisively.” Wellesley had been very clear on that point. “Patrol the column, CSM. Have the Shadows move up and down the line, keeping a watchful eye out for stragglers. If they show the same symptoms of those afflicted…well, you know what to do.”

“Yes, sir. I know what to do.” Dan’s voice sounded hollow even to his own ears. This was without a doubt the most horrifying and reprehensible duty he had ever been ordered to undertake in all his years of service to the King; and yet, he had come to see that it was totally and utterly necessary. The general was right. If it wasn’t stopped soon, the lust for flesh shown by these walking dead men would take a heavy toll on the small British army. “You can depend upon us, sir.”

“I have never doubted it, CSM.” With that remark, Wellesley had spurred Diomed away to the north, a detachment of dragoons breaking away from their main body in order to accompany him.

It had probably been harder on Doctor Caldwell than on anybody else, Dan reflected as he trudged back towards the 33rd’s position in the long column of soldiers, horsemen, cannon, and camp followers. He was glad the surgeon was now sleeping the march away in the back of a covered wagon. The poor man must have been utterly exhausted. Before they had broken camp the previous evening and set their feet upon the road, pandemonium had broken out in the medical tent.

“We can hardly take them with us,” said the 78th’s surgeon brusquely. “They are a liability at best, and a bloody great hazard at worst!”

“Then what do you propose that we do?” Caldwell had asked with uncharacteristic petulance, even going so far as to stand with his fists planted upon his hips. “Put them to death like so many rabid dogs?”

“They are already dead,” the other physician replied quietly, “and many more will join them if we do not act decisively.”

Caldwell knew in his heart of hearts that the man was right. General Wellesley had made no secret of his intentions. The Maratha army was encamped at Borkardan, and the much smaller British force was going to bring them to battle. Even if things went miraculously well — and when did they ever upon the battlefield? — then there would still be a significant butcher’s bill to pay, that dreaded list of dead, dying, and wounded soldiers, many of whom would demand the time and attention of Caldwell and his staff. How could they do that with a hospital tent already filled to bursting with creatures such as these?

There was no cure in sight, of that he was all but certain. In such small increments of time as he had been able to snatch in between attending to patients that day, Caldwell had begun to dissect one of them while it was still ‘alive.’ He used one of the far corners of the medical tent, arranging for an orderly to string a rope across and hang a makeshift curtain in order to provide him with a little privacy. Then he had ordered one of the creatures to be carried on its table into the isolated little space, and had set to work in the furtherance of medical knowledge.

Firstly he had taken a sturdy hammer and battered the thing’s teeth out of its mouth, pounding away at it ten times until he felt sufficiently safe to approach it a little more closely. It might still inflict its bodily secretions upon him, he reasoned, but hopefully without the benefit of tearing into his flesh, the skin would act as a barrier against the sickness.

It was then that the real work had begun. He had carefully laid out a set of his very oldest and most worn and threadbare surgical tools, in the full knowledge that whatever implements he used upon the creature’s body would have to be either abandoned or burned afterwards, for there was no chance that he would risk exposing a living patient to them ever again. Placing the flat palm of one hand down upon the center of the dead man’s forehead, Caldwell took up the bone saw and began to work it back and forth across the thing’s face. He used the same iron mental discipline that he had cultivated as a young medical student, a complete newcomer to the disgusting sights, sounds, and stenches of the anatomist’s table, in order to cope with the knowledge that the body he was now taking apart had until yesterday been a fighting man of the 74th Regiment of Foot.

This is no longer a man, he remonstrated with himself, so do not allow yourself to be fooled. This is a thing, an unholy abomination that no longer has possession of its soul, and nothing more than that.

Sawing through the maxillary bone just beneath the nose, he had soon cut away the creature’s upper jaw just above the top lip. He carried on vigorously, making the cut circumferential and severing the lower jaw bone on either side. Now the thing could no longer bite him. Viscous black fluid which he could only assume was blood welled up from the jagged incisions, before pouring down into the creature’s snapping mouth, causing it to gargle wetly from the back of its throat.

This must surely be the first time in the history of medicine that an autopsy has been performed on something that was still moving at the time.

He stifled the sudden urge to laugh, one which would have been harsh and inappropriate, but an entirely natural reaction to the absurd circumstances under which he now found himself.

From time to time he would be fetched to deal with the latest medical emergency, but always returned to his makeshift anatomy lab once the crisis had been averted. He worked without sleep, could not remember the last time he had left the hospital tent in fact, and grew more and more tired until it seemed he must surely begin to hallucinate. Over the course of that long, hot day, Caldwell opened the thing’s abdominal cavity and removed intestine, stomach, liver, and spleen, and then cut his way into the retroperitoneal space and sliced out both kidneys.

Still it continued to thrash and gurgle, testing itself against the unyielding grip of the leather restraints.

Making a Y-shaped incision in the chest that ran from each shoulder to a point just above the breastbone and then downward to circumscribe the navel, Caldwell cracked open the ribs on each side and exposed the entire thoracic cavity to the open air.

What he found in there astonished him, though why this should be the case was beyond him. After all, he knew that the creature was dead…this was merely verification.

The lungs lay limply on either side of the midline, flat and shriveled. These were hardly the mighty bellows which provided air to fuel the spark of life. Cutting the cartilage around the sternum, he lifted the breastbone free and discarded it in an empty bucket that he had set aside for that very purpose. The blood-streaked bone clanged when it hit the bottom of the bucket, spun, and rattled a few times before finally settling.

He was not sure of the precise time at which the heart had ceased to beat, but it too sat lifelessly in the center of the mediastinum, no longer pumping blood to the lungs and vital organs via the great vessels. This appeared to be the one muscle in the body that wasn’t functioning any longer, and that puzzled him. Why, then, if there was no need for the ingestion of blood in order to support life, did the creatures feel so compelled to seek out the flesh of the living?

“Pardon me for interrupting, sir.” It was Coleman, one of his orderlies. “Only we have been ordered to strike the tent and prepare for the evening’s march—” His eyes caught side of the partially dissected cadaver, which still squirmed and gurgled on the table in front of him. The fact that the creature’s intestines sat in grey loops in between the thing’s thighs could not have helped matters any, because the orderly suddenly felt his gorge rise explosively, and barely had time to bring a hand up to his face before the vomit came, exploding through the gaps in his fingers as his stomach emptied itself in disgust at the sight before him.

“No time for that, Coleman,” Caldwell said briskly, hoping that he sounded more confident than he actually felt at the moment. “Let us begin packing everything away. This one—” he pointed to what he now thought of as the dissection specimen — “comes along with us. You can stick it in the back of a covered wagon.”

While the men under his command went about the business of taking down the field hospital, Doctor Caldwell had a far less pleasant duty to perform. He had reluctantly sent for CSM Nichols, who arrived with a couple of Shadows in tow just a couple of minutes later. The man was nobody’s fool, Caldwell had decided, for he had anticipated the needs of the situation as soon as he received the doctor’s message.

“What needs to be done?” Nichols asked him quietly, his face set in a grimly determined mask.

“The…the patients,” he began, finding that the abhorrent words were turning to ash in his mouth almost as quickly as he gave voice to them. “We cannot transport them with us, and we…we cannot leave them here, for the local people to stumble upon—”

“You leave it to me, sir,” Dan said kindly, wanting to put the doctor out of his misery. Which, ironically, was what he and his lads were about to do for the poor sods strapped down to his tables. “If you’d be so kind though, could you please clear everybody out of the tent? This is probably something they ain’t going to want to see.”

“Of course, CSM.” Relief washed over Caldwell like a great wave. He had been dreading this moment all day, and now that it was finally here, Wellesley’s personal Sergeant Major was going to take that load up on his behalf.

Once the orderlies had left the hospital tent, Dan and his Shadows — Corporal McElvaney and Private Armstrong — set about their grim task. They moved slowly but purposefully from table to table, from bed to bed. At each one they stopped and delivered a death blow with the heavy butts of their Brown Bess muskets, repeating it until the thing tied down in front of them had stopped moving.

All but one.

“That one’s coming with us,” Caldwell explained, sensing the CSM’s distaste at the idea. “He may provide us with the answers we need…the key to unlocking the secrets of this awful mystery.”

“Rather you than me, sir,” Dan had said, and he bloody well meant it to. Killing the things again was one thing; taking them apart piece by piece and poking around inside was something else entirely. He had nodded to Armstrong and McElvaney, and the two men each grabbed an end of the now-sticky wooden table, lifting it a foot of the ground with its occupant still attached by straps.

“Right, sir,” the little Scots corporal had said with a cheeky grin. “Where would you like your side of beef delivered to?”

The grotesquely nicknamed ‘side of beef,’ which was still very much active and kicking despite the loss of approximately one third of its former body mass, was delivered to a bullock-drawn wagon whose bed was covered with a frame of canvas stretched over wooden supports. Four men of the Shadow Company would attend the wagon on its journey, just in case the monstrosity within should get loose.

“It’s not as though there’s much it can do if it gets free,” Dan had told the four men detailed to this very specific form of guard duty. “The bloody thing’s got no teeth. But if it gets out, put it out of its misery sharpish, alright?”

“Sarn’t Major,” one of the men began nervously. It was Sutcliffe, the private from Norwich.

“Yes, lad?”

“Pardon me for asking Sarn’t Major, but who…er, well…” His voice trailed off nervously.

“Who did that wretched thing in the wagon used to be?” Dan finished the sentence for him.

“Er, yeah.”

“Never you mind, lad. Nothing good will come of asking such questions. The poor sod who was born in that body is long gone, that’s all you need to know. What’s left is just gristle and bones. It isn’t alive as we understand it, so don’t think of it as one of us. Understand?”

“It looked pretty alive to me,” one of the others muttered, mistakenly thinking that he would not be heard. Dan rounded on him.

“Oh, he does, does he, Private?” the CSM hissed through clenched teeth. All of the frustration of the past few days was bubbling up. Careful now, Dan. Don’t take it out on these poor buggers. They’re as shaken by it all as the rest of us, I’ll be bound.

“Sorry, Sarn’t Major,” the private replied apologetically, breaking eye contact and looking down towards his feet.

“It’s alright, lad.” Dan deliberately softened his voice, then reduced the sting further with a rare smile. “Don’t think of it as a he, boys. Think of it as an it. Because it is. Try not to let it get under your skin, eh?”

There were nods all round and a few murmurs of assent from the men. As satisfied as he was going to get under the circumstances, Dan left the detail to their business and strode off to find Captain Campbell.

Looking back on it now, after several hours of long, hard marching through the Deccan night, Dan reflected that the poor carved-up bastard tied up in that wagon had turned out to be the very least of their worries. Periodically, he would head back in the order of march and check up on it, just for his own peace of mind. The guards looked bored, and when asked they had told him that the creature had caused them no problems other than its grunting and growling. Unsurprisingly, the sounds got on the guards’ nerves after a while, so one of them had stuffed a dirty rag into the back of what remained of its mouth. It had given them no further trouble ever since.

Fears in the Darkness

A fear grew in the breast of Arthur Wellesley that night. He was not usually the sort of man to give counsel to his fears, and yet this one was of an entirely rational nature, and so he indulged it, brooded, fed the dark flames with every passing mile.

He was afraid that they would reach Borkardan the next evening and find it deserted.

Finally, he could stand the tension no more. Calling for Major Williams, Arthur determined to be done with it once and for all. He would dispatch the exploring officer to ascertain whether this was in fact the case; were the enemy still encamped at Borkardan or not?

“Major, I trust that you are suitably well-rested after the exertions of yesterday evening.”

Always a dapper man, Williams looked as though he could just as easily attend a formal ball as go scouting for his general. Every hair on his head, including a set of spectacular mutton chops, was groomed perfectly in place. His uniform was immaculate, from the brightly-polished boots to the high collar of his red jacket. He had left his bicorne hat behind, Wellesley saw, probably because it was too easy to lose when in flight.

“I am in fine fettle and completely at your disposal, General Wellesley,” he answered smoothly.

“I am glad to hear it.”

“May I ask the general about my target for the evening?”

“The same as you stumbled upon yesterday, Major Williams: Borkardan. I need to be sure that the enemy is still encamped there, before I commit our forces to an attack.”

“Is there any reason that they should not be there, sir? If the rumors are true, then the Marathas are an indecisive lot at best.”

“Indecisive sometimes, yes,” Wellesley conceded, “but also deuced hard to get to grips with. They have evaded and eluded this army on far too many occasions of late, and I would not be at all surprised if you were to tell me that they had already gotten wind of our presence here, and had bally well turned tail to run northward once more.”

The major nodded thoughtfully. “Then with your permission, I shall be about the King’s business sir. One way or the other, you shall know before dawn.”

With that, the exploring officer changed the density of his body, lightening it to something less substantial than that of the air around him. It was a trick that practically every vampire either learned instinctively or was taught by a mentor in the first few weeks after they received the Dark Gift. Williams rose gracefully into the early morning sky, and Arthur watched him floating into the starry heavens until he was lost amongst the blackness.

Then he returned his mind to more earthly matters.

The enemy was just ten miles away to the north, and that distance lessened with every passing footstep. If fortune was with the British, then the Marathas would still be camped at the village of Borkardan, and would hopefully be blissfully unaware that two separate enemy armies were marching on their position in as stealthy a manner as fifteen thousand men could manage.

From far behind him in the order of march, Arthur heard a shrill scream pierce the still night air. It was followed by the sound of a musket crackling, and then silence returned once more.

Another attack. Was there ever to be an end to them?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Three Europeans

On the first night that they had been sent out, the three European officers that had been dispatched by Pohlmann in order to scout for the British forces had struck gold. It had taken the entire night of flying in their low-density spectral forms, but the three captains had between them managed to locate both of the enemy armies that were not advancing northward towards their position.

“The hills divide them both,” Captain Henri Le Foche had explained to an eager Pohlmann upon his return. Le Foche was the first vampire officer to return from the evening’s reconnaissance trip, although the others shouldn’t be too long, for the first fingers of a pink dawn were already streaking the eastern horizon.

The Colonel had left orders to be awakened when the vampire officers were back, and so it was a yawning Pohlmann that poured his captain a cup of warm blood which had just been extracted from one of the many servants that attended him.

“They are still separated, the two armies?” the Hanoverian demanded, his eyes searching the French vampire’s sallow face.

“As I said,” confirmed Le Foche. “One army marches on either side of the range. They are not unified; nor do I think that it is possible, given the nature of the terrain between them. Infantry and perhaps cavalry could crest the hills with minimal effort, but there is little likelihood of the artillery being able to make that journey.”

“I believe that I can recall the hills of which you speak, but you have seen these hills from the air. Tell me — do you believe that the British armies can consolidate?”

Le Foche considered the question for a moment in silence. Finally, he shook his head. “Non. At least, I consider it to be highly unlikely. The gradient is not impossibly steep, but it would take many hours to maneuver even a part of one of their armies into contact with the other so long as the hills keep them apart. In my humble opinion, Colonel Pohlmann, the British will seek to converge upon us at Borkardan, striking from two directions simultaneously in an attempt to catch us off guard.”

Cupping his chin in the palm of one hand, Pohlmann nodded thoughtfully. It made sense. In fact, it was even something that he might do, were he to find himself in Wellesley’s boots. The Irishman expected to find them encamped at Borkardan, he would learn just ten minutes later, because the second of the vampire captains to return — a man by the name of Bertrand — had located Wellesley at the very forefront of the British column, riding calmly and confidently as though this were nothing more than a social outing rather than an invasion.

Swooping down through the still night air as slowly and silently as possible some half a mile in front of the British advance, Bertrand had found a rock formation and hidden himself away in the deepest pools of its shadows. The cavalry vanguard trotted by first, completely unaware of his presence. Then came the Major General, and the Frenchman listened in something akin to glee as he heard Wellesley talking quite animatedly of his army’s ultimate objective: an attack upon the Maratha assembly at Borkardan, sometime during the evening of the Twenty-Fourth.

That decided it. Pohlmann, ever an aggressive field commander, was not the sort of officer to merely sit back and react to his enemy’s battle plan. Ceding the initiative to the British was a totally alien concept to him. No, the only possible course of action was to catch the British off-guard. Wellesley must be defeated first, and destroyed in detail. That would free him up to go after the second army some ten miles to the west of the first, led by this man Stevenson — an unknown quantity, if ever there was one.

And so the following day at sunset, the Maratha army had begun to march in an easterly direction, bearing slightly towards the south and leaving the village of Borkardan far to the rear. It was truly staggering how many men were at his back, Pohlmann realized as he happened to turn around and take in the sheer scale of the army which had been entrusted to his field command. There were thousands of infantryman, it was true, though only a few thousand of them actually met the professional standards of the European forces after which they were modeled; where the horde really took one’s breath away was in the dizzying array of irregular horsemen, whose numbers truly were beyond the eye’s ability to count.

It would not do to get complacent, however, the vampire cautioned himself. The irregulars are impressive to behold, most certainly, but they have little reputation for performing well in a true stand-up fight.

After much internal debate, Pohlmann had finally decided to leave his beloved ceremonial elephant behind that evening, in the care of its grooms and handlers. With ornamentation and trappings fit for a king, the beast was also second to none as a comfortable means of conveyance. On the battlefield, however, it would cause him to stick out like a sore thumb, and make him the target of every Englishman with a musket. It also usually guarded his gravesite during the daytime, a task which would now fall upon a handful of Jamelia’s men that she had hand-picked specifically for the task.

As a mount, he had chosen instead a beautiful brown gelding named Amathar. The horse could be a little spirited at times, but more importantly was trained to be practically unshakable on the battlefield. Pohlmann needed a mount that wouldn’t take fright when the first cannon sounded, and Amathar should fit the bill nicely.

In a display of trust which both took him by surprise and touched his cold heart, both Scindia and the Raja of Berar had declined to accompany the army, choosing instead to entrust it entirely into his hands. “You are more than capable, Anthony,” Scindia had said within the comfort of his tent. The potentate had draped a hand casually about his subordinate’s shoulder, in what he had hoped would come across as a fatherly gesture. “Berar and I are both in agreement on this. Take the army and crush the British. We shall remain here, and await news of your great victory.”

In reality, both men had an ulterior motive, for Scindia knew that the hungry dead would walk the land in their thousands once the battle had concluded. He had looked upon their horror before, and had not the slightest inclination to get close to it ever again.

Pohlmann had simply bowed smoothly, spun on his heel, and strode off to see to his duties.

At Pohlmann’s invitation, Jamelia rode alongside him. An entire army marched at their backs, and both the vampire and the were-tiger felt the sense of heady invincibility that came along with leading such a vast assemblage of fighting men. He shared with her the intelligence gathered by Le Foche and Bertrand early that same morning.

“Wellesley believes that we are still camped at Borkardan,” she said with a sly smile, the full implications of this knowledge finally sinking in.

“Which means…?” Pohlmann prompted.

“Which means that he will advance too far, into the jaws of a trap that we will set for him,” Jamelia replied immediately. “A trap from which he will be unable to extricate himself.”

“Precisely!” The Hanoverian grinned from ear to ear with uncharacteristic joviality, obviously rather pleased with this turn of events. His fangs gleamed in the cold light of the stars. “The river Kailna runs from east to west,” Pohlmann explained, warming to his theme. “In order to reach Borkardan, the British must cross the Kailna. Must!”

“But they will find us waiting for them first.”

“On the north bank,” the colonel agreed. “There is little need for finesse here, Jamelia. The river shall flow across the front of our army, and we need only array the infantry and artillery in line along the Kaitna’s length and simply await the inevitable.”

It was the role of any strong second-in-command to play Devil’s Advocate, and so Jamelia threw herself into the role with gusto. “What if Wellesley chooses not to attack?”

“He really has no choice in the matter,” Pohlmann replied, laughing. “We have tens of thousands of horsemen here, Jamelia. If the British shrink from our position, retreating back from whence they came, Wellesley must surely know that our horse will harry him every step of the way. His army shall die the death of a thousand cuts; one cut here, another slice there, until the body has bled to death. No, once Wellesley espies our disposition, he shall no other option than to take the offensive.”

Jamelia pondered this for a moment. “If I understand your strategy correctly, then you intend to array our forces in line, based on the assumption that he will launch a frontal assault.” Pohlmann nodded. “With that being the case, could he not simply launch a flanking attack?”

It was a valid question, Pohlmann knew. If there was one thing that every commander feared, it was being successfully flanked; but he dismissed the possibility out of hand. “Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps — but one must take into account the topography of the region, my dear. To the east, the river Kailna branches off, with a tributary running to the northwest of the main body.”

Searching her memory and recalling the map she had seen only yesterday, Jamelia asked if that was the smaller river known as the Juah.

“Just so,” Pohlmann agreed equably. “There is a small village located on the Juah’s south bank, a place of little import that goes by the name of Assaye. Just to the south of Assaye is where we shall anchor the left flank of our line. It will be secured in the fork of the two rivers.”

“What of the far right?”

“Borkardan,” the vampire shot back at once. “The village is fortified, and we shall place the great mass of our cavalry upon that wing. The British would not dare to attack us there.”

“Which leaves only the frontal assault,” Jamelia agreed, nodding slowly. “I see.”

“Yet you have questions.” Another toothy smile. “There is no need to be reticent. Simply ask them.”

“Very well. Say what you will, but the British redcoats are superb soldiers, drilled almost to perfection. This I learned at Seringapatam.” There was a moment of silence as her memory inadvertently strayed back to that night of blood and fire. With a shake of the head, she willed herself back to the present. “It is rare that one hears of British infantry formations being bested in open combat.”

“This is true,” Pohlmann conceded, “but then, how often do they face odds of ten to one? Of fifteen to one? Wellesley has, if our intelligence is correct, less than thirty guns. We have a hundred. A hundred. If the two British armies do not unite, then Wellesley will be pitting 7,000 men against fifteen times that number. Not to mention the fact that we shall have the defender’s advantage.”

Jamelia nodded thoughtfully. It was commonly accepted wisdom that in order to successfully assault a fortified position, the attackers needed to outnumber the defenders by a factor of at least three to one…and even then, the price that must be paid in blood was often horrific.

“Tell me of the Kailna,” she said at last. “Is it fordable?”

“It is,” Pohlmann admitted. “Though only at certain specific places. There are villages on each bank, both north and south.”

“Could the redcoats not simply wade across?”

“Highly unlikely. A number of brinjarries in our employ have been questioned most closely by my intelligence staff. At practically every point along the river, the water would be at chest height on most men. The banks are steep and usually slippery. Unaided, the British could cross only with great difficulty. Cavalry and artillery would be unable to cross at all, unless it were to be at one of the natural fords.”

“And those…?”

“Those we shall guard with everything we have. Our finest troops—” he eyed her meaningfully, his intent utterly clear “—will be positioned directly in front of them, along with our heaviest cannon. We can only hope that Wellesley is truly naive enough to try to cross there.”

Jamelia could well imagine it, the pictures already forming unbidden in her mind’s eye. The British redcoat was determined in the face of adversity, and whatever else might be said of them, none could accuse them of lacking either courage or discipline. She could see the shallow slopes down to the fords on the Kailna’s south bank, enticing the invaders to their doom; for just across the river, the north bank would be alive with the roar of Pohlmann’s deadliest artillery, lined up wheel to wheel in batteries and served with brutal efficiency by the superbly-trained European crews. The British and their native allies would have no choice but to march directly into the mouths of those beckoning cannons. At first, she knew that they would hurl heavy lead shot, the basic cannonballs that could tear bloody swathes through the rank and file.

Then, once the redcoats actually splashed their way into the river itself, the water at the ford slowing their pace to little more than a crawl, the real horror would begin. Switching their loads from roundshot to cannister, the gunners would employ shell casings that were crammed full of little metal pellets. As the British line or column splashed its way across the Kailna, the air would be split with the buzzing whine that marked their passage by the thousands, smashing what was once an organized and well-led infantry formation into nothing more than bleeding, screaming meat and gristle.

The carnage would be horrific. Still, Jamelia knew that this would not be the end of it, for the British were not men to give up easily. Wellesley would be chancing all on this one attack, and retreat would mean not only failure — something which was anathema to the snobbish, aristocratic vampire general — but also the slow attrition of what scraps remained of his once-proud army, forced to try and march its way back to Mysore with the ignominious shuffle of the recently trounced, and harried by Scindia and Berar’s horde of irregular cavalry every step of the way.

So they would go on, spurred on to greater effort by their merciless vampire officers. Jamelia did not even have to close her eyes to see it, so clear was the premonition in the forefront of her mind…and just as the near-broken and battered survivors attained the far bank, in the hopes of getting their bayonets wet in the blood of the Maratha gunners, the infantry would take their turn, for they would have already been positioned close behind the artillery batteries, formed up into long lines and awaiting their turn to dish out some punishment to the enemy.

It would be a massacre. Nothing less. And standing in the forefront of those white-coated ranks would be Jamelia’s very own brigade, taking pride of place in the van of Pohlmann’s compoo. They had been trained remorselessly, their fighting skills honed to the edge of perfection by their tigress commander. While the gunners swabbed and sponged out the long barrels of their cannon, her men would fire three, sometimes even four aimed rounds each minute, pouring volley after volley of lethal musketry into the helpless British survivors. Oh, doubtless some would get a shot or two off in return, she thought airily — but most would be far too preoccupied with screaming, falling, and ultimately dying in a blood-red river some thousands of miles from the land of their birth.

Now it would be her turn to seek revenge, sweet retribution for the savagery that had been inflicted upon her home city of Seringapatam…and her father.

Which just left Wellesley, he whom she hated above all others; hated with a passion that burned like the fires of the living sun, eternally raging and impossible to quench. It would come down to just the two of them in the end. She knew that, felt it somehow in her very core; and in her obeisances to Kali, the Goddess had tacitly confirmed that knowledge, for when Jamelia opened her eyes after such ceremonies, she invariably saw the afterimage of that most hated of all foes, superimposed against the canvas of the material world to which she had just returned.

Wellesley…it was always Wellesley. He stirred her blood and haunted her nights with dreams of vengeance. She dreamed up such exquisite tortures for him, fantasies in which she opened the creature’s veins with a silver blade, draining him of his life’s blood one excruciating drop at a time, until his dessicated husk of a body was bone dry. What did happen when a vampire was robbed of his last drop of blood? Such an intriguing notion had kept her awake on many a long night, stretched out in the comfortable silken bed in her luxurious apartments at Seringapatam. She had pictured him literally dying of thirst, manacled with bonds that were also made of silver, powerless to move further than the reach of the restraints would allow. They would burn his wrists and ankles constantly, the hostile caress of the silver never allowing his pallid undead flesh to heal.

The vampire would writhe and scream, growing ever weaker as each precious drop of blood was lost, wasted carelessly upon the ground. Meanwhile, Jamelia would taunt and tease the creature even as she tormented him, allowing her engorged, blood-rich jugular to drift into his view; she would place her neck just beyond his reach, tantalizingly close, and Wellesley would cry for it, plead for it, rage for it, and ultimately beg for it, for she imagined him breaking down into the sobs of the parched man lost in the desert who is presented with a skin full of water, reaching out for it, only for it to be cruelly snatched away at the very last moment.

Nor would that be the end of it either; for once the Dark Mother had reaped her fill of souls at the fords, their dead bodies would rise again in accordance with her will; rise and turn upon their former comrades, chasing them down and tearing desperately at their flesh with teeth and clawed fingernails, in turn making more of their own kind to serve the most exalted Kali’s will.

Yes, as a plan, it was practically perfect.

Pohlmann shot her a sidelong glance. Although most of Jamelia’s face was bathed in shadow, he could see that her mouth twitched with a very definite smile. He had a pretty shrewd idea of the reason behind it, or so he believed. Jamelia’s hatred of the British in general and their commander in particular was something of which she made no secret. That ire, if properly channeled, could be worth more than an extra thousand men on the battlefield, the vampire thought to himself; but then, such a miniscule advantage was hardly even necessary, for so greatly did the forces under his command outnumber those of the Irish general that he would almost literally have to trip over his own feet in order to fail.

At that thought, Pohlmann smiled too, enjoying the farcical image that sprang to mind. No, he would be sure-footed and agile when battle came, both in person and as the master tactician that he knew himself to be.

Shortly after three o’clock, his finely-tuned vampiric eyes were among the very first to pick out the cluster of dark buildings that were rising up above the horizon in front of them.

“Assaye.”

There was nothing else to be said.

Assaye: as good a name as any for the place in which the British would be utterly annihilated.

A Stage Set for Slaughter

Colonel Anthony Pohlmann — who now found himself effectively promoted to general, a position of which he felt most deserving — was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. No sooner had the village appeared on the horizon than he set to work, firing off orders to his subordinate officers with all of the confidence, vitality and enthusiasm of a man who knew that he simply could not lose.

Daulat Rao Scindia had provided the lion’s share of the forces for this little military adventure, and Pohlmann was more than glad of the fact. He knew the relative strengths and weaknesses of Scindia’s men from long and sometimes hard-earned experience in the man’s service, whereas the soldiers marched under the colors of the Raja of Berar were much more of an unknown quantity to him.

“I have heard that some are rather good,” he confided to Jamelia in a low voice as the pair rode side-by-side towards the River Kailna, “whereas others are of little more use than a mound of elephant shit, if you will excuse the expression.”

“The same could be said of most armies.”

Pohlmann laughed. “True enough.”

“So what will you do with them?” she asked. The vampire turned in his saddle, regarding her levelly with baleful red eyes.

“What would you do with them?” he countered.

Jamelia thought for a moment, considering the tactical situation from every possible angle.

“Place them within the walls of Assaye,” she said at last. “Even the most brilliant tactician knows full-well the wisdom of preparing a fall-back plan, in the eventuality of the unforeseen taking them by surprise. You plan to meet the British head-on along the north bank of the river Kailna.” He nodded, inviting her to continue. “Assaye lies to the north of that, and would therefore serve as an excellent strongpoint, in the unlikely…highly unlikely event that we are forced to retreat. Berar’s men could be assigned to garrison the town and to harden its defenses in preparation for blunting any British attack there. Our forces could therefore fall back upon the village fortress if things do not go as planned, and thereby gain valuable breathing room for you to reassess the situation and to change your strategy accordingly.”

Pohlmann was silent for a long moment, assessing the merits of her advice.

“Despite the beliefs of some, not all vampires are as arrogant as this Arthur Wellesley is said to be. I shall take your advice. Berar’s men shall strengthen Assaye against any possible attack, while we shall do the same along the Kaitna.”

Giving his chosen battlefield one last critical look before the rising of the sun would drive him into the cool embrace of the earth, Pohlmann could not help but be impressed with the ground that was spread out before him. Assaye lay some two miles to the east, Borkardan to the west. In front was the River Kailna, and the majority of Scindia’s professional soldiers were deployed in a space that was marked out by two villages on the opposite bank to the south; Kodully and Taunklee were the sort of unremarkable, ramshackle little places that seemed to spring up everywhere in this part of the land.

Unremarkable people, thought the vampire dismissively, leading unremarkable lives. They sleep in complete ignorance of the fact that destiny’s hand shall descend upon their home this coming night, marking it in the annals of history forever after.

Each village had a ford, by which the villagers accessed the farmlands on the north bank. Those fords were two of the most obvious crossing points for the British army, and therefore Pohlmann had concentrated maximum firepower at each one, turning it into a deathtrap that was just begging to be sprung.

All told, Pohlmann’s defensive line stretched out to an incredible six miles in length from end to end.

On its far right, the line was anchored upon Borkardan, where that idiot Wellesley expected to find his main strength. There Pohlmann had posted his most numerous but also least effective troops, 70,000 irregular horse and infantry, who looked extremely impressive when viewed from afar but were far less likely to stand and put up a real fight than his regulars. Those men were true professionals, and he would willingly put them up against any other fighting army in the world — which he was about to, if all went according to plan. Pohlmann had only 15,000 of them, still twice more than Wellesley had under his command unless his two little armies were somehow miraculously able to unite.

Those 15,000 hardened killers he had chosen to deploy on some beautifully commanding high ground that gave them clear fields of fire down onto all of the known fords along the Kailna. No matter where Wellesley tried to cross, he would be walking into a storm of shot and shell that would do far more than simply bloody his not-inconsiderable nose; for in front of those crack infantry soldiers, he had deployed his entire contingent of artillery, some ninety heavy guns whose throats looked directly down upon the crossing points. Between them, the cannon and muskets of the infantry would scour all traces of life from the Kailna’s fords before a single redcoat set foot upon the north bank.

The stage was set for a slaughter the likes of which the Maratha lands had never seen before.

Pohlmann’s coffin was a magnificent affair, crafted out of the finest oak and emblazoned with a sigil of a war elephant rearing up on its two hind legs and thrusting its tusks towards the sky. By the time he had climbed inside and was lowered reverently into the earth by six men of Jamelia’s battalion, the defensive line which he had described down to the tiniest detail was already beginning to take shape along the Kailna’s north bank, overseen by the watchful gaze of his most trusted European officers.

“I have but one worry,” Pohlmann confided in Jamelia as he was stepping into his casket. She raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The fords,” he explained. “Every one that we know of is covered, and covered well, by our cannon and our infantry. If I am to lose sleep over anything, it shall be the possibility of an undiscovered crossing point, further out to the east or west. Do I make myself clear?”

“As glass.” Jamelia leaned forward and whispered in the vampire’s ear: “Sleep well, and do not worry about phantom crossings. All shall be taken care of.”

Seemingly satisfied, Pohlmann lay down and allowed one of the white-uniformed soldiers to place the lid of the casket over the top and seal him away from the outside world.

Once she had returned to her own battalion, which was placed at the extreme left of the Maratha line, Jamelia called for Bindusar.

“Take a detachment of men into the village,” she ordered him. “Rouse the locals. Be…persuasive, where necessary, but not brutal. Find out if there are any other fords across the Kailna, other than those about which we already know. If Colonel Pohlmann’s intelligence proves to be correct, than our battalion has been given the honor of guarding the easternmost ford. None should lie beyond it.”

Bindusar bowed low and went off to carry out her orders. The sun was just coming up, and her growling stomach was the first reminder that she had not eaten for far too long. Her tent had already been pitched, something for which she was extremely grateful, and Jamelia lay down in order to sleep and bank up some additional strength for what she felt sure was soon to come.

She awoke to a polite cough that was instantly recognizable.

“What news, Bindusar?” she asked groggily, sitting up and rubbing at her eyes with the heel of one hand. From the height of the sun that was shining through the canvas walls, it was already close to mid-day. She must have needed the sleep more than she had realized.

“We have questioned the villagers most thoroughly,” her second-in-command began.

“How many died?” Jamelia interrupted.

“None. I am not a butcher, mistress.” Bindusar chided her gently. “Though several will not be walking across the river until their legs have healed,” he was forced to confess.

“The unfortunate cost of our profession. Tell me about the crossings,” she commanded.

“There are none, mistress — as you said, the Taunklee ford to our front is the last safe place to cross the Kailna. The only alternatives lie to our west, in front of the guns of our comrades.”

“You are sure of this?”

“The villagers were most sure, mistress.” Bindusar spoke calmly, professionally, without a hint of malice or glee. “Our men were very encouraging. Were there another ford, I feel sure that we would have learned of it.”

“Very well,” Jamelia nodded, satisfied. Short of plunging a branch into every square inch of the river to test its depth, this would have to do. “Have the men bed down and get some rest — the usual rotating watch applies, of course.”

“Of course.”

“The British must come soon, Bindusar. Maybe tonight; maybe tomorrow night. But soon. We shall be best served if we are all rested and fresh before sending them to their deaths, don’t you think?”

A Clash of Scouts

Captain Le Foche prepared to go out on patrol again that evening. His brief from Pohlmann, along with both of his fellow captains, was twofold: ascertain the location of both of the oncoming British armies, and attempt to determine their axis of advance.

“You wish us to ascertain the direction from which the British will approach?” Le Foche clarified, to which Pohlmann offered a curt nod.

“Yes, if possible. As soon as night has fully fallen, I wish you to once again scout the British forces and glean whatever valuable intelligence you possible can of their commanding officer’s intentions.” Pohlmann’s eyes gleamed in the soft candle-light of his personal tent, which was more spacious and opulent than those of the captains by an entire order of magnitude. “Most importantly of all, I wish to know whether their general, Wellesley, still believes our army to be located at Borkardan, rather than deployed to the east of it.”

“We shall make every effort.” Le Foche had said, offering his superior a smart salute which was briskly returned. His two peers followed suit.

“Of that, I have no doubt, gentlemen.” Pohlmann looked each of them in the eye. “You may attend to your duties.”

Dismissed, the three vampire captains left their commander’s tent. The still night air was warm and close. Le Foche closed his eyes for a moment, basking in the calm of the early evening. This time, when the sun had only been below the horizon for a few brief moments and the first stars were beginning to emerge in the darkening sky, had always been his favorite time of the day. Accepting the Dark Gift had never changed that.

When he opened them again, Le Foche found himself alone, other than for the two guards who stood sentry outside Pohlmann’s tent. The other captains had already left, and he should also be about his business. Pohlmann was not a man who tolerated slackness in a subordinate.

Reaching down, Le Foche tightened the buckle of his sword belt one more notch. Usually, he kept it comfortably loose; but when one flew, the thing needed to be cinched firmly in place, lest it slide down and be lost in the slipstream.

It was then that he heard it.

Heard, or…perhaps sensed, he was not entirely sure which. But most assuredly, something was off. The feeling was subtle, but it was definitely there.

Le Foche closed his eyes again, clearing his mind of all conscious thought and simply letting himself be. After a time – he had no idea of precisely how long, because the concept of time simply did not exist for him in this meditative state – the sensation began to crystallize, becoming less vague. He followed the feeling back to its source, as one might do when tracing a long and tangled thread, inch by painstaking inch. Were he still human, beads of sweat would have broken out on his brow, such was the Captain’s depth of concentration.

Finally, he had the feeling localized. It was above him – several hundred feet above him.

It was another vampire.

His mind whirling as it ran through the implications of that particular fact, it did not take long for Captain Le Foche to arrive at the inescapable conclusion that this had to be a British spy.

Walking casually so as not to draw the man’s attention, Le Foche made his way into the bustling interior of the Maratha camp. He had a bead on the enemy spy’s location now, his vampire senses making it easy to track the interloper now that he was aware of his existence. The sensation of being watched got steadily weaker as the distance between them both grew, which told him that the target under enemy observation was Pohlmann’s tent, rather than Le Foche himself.

When he reached such a distance that he could hardly feel the other vampire’s presence at all, Le Foche was willing to bet that he had completely escaped the spy’s notice. Willing his body into a much lighter state of density, the captain rose slowly into the air. He allowed himself to climb higher and higher, going much further than he normally would during the course of his scouting duties, until the air itself became noticeably colder. He broke through the light scattering of clouds and basked in the moonlight for a moment, taking the time to loosen the silver-bladed sword in its scabbard just enough that it would draw easily and smoothly on the first attempt.

Beneath him, the Maratha camp sprawled in all directions. He could see the moonlight gleaming on the fast-flowing surface of the River Kailna, and on the barrels of Pohlmann’s ninety cannon that were ranged along its northern bank. Thousands of cooking fires flickered and glowed amber in the gathering darkness. They would probably be permitted to burn throughout the night, unless the British attacked, of course, for the Maratha army wouldn’t be marching anywhere before the dawn.

If the British should find out of their presence along the Kaitna, then the element of surprise would be lost. Pohlmann had made it very clear to his officers that he hoped for Wellesley, who still believed the bulk of the Maratha army to be at Borkardan, to blunder into the jaws of his trap and subsequently become so entangled that he would be unable to extricate himself before the Maratha artillery had reduced his army to bloody scraps.

A spy could ruin all that, forewarning the enemy general and springing Pohlmann’s trap prematurely.

If, of course, he were to make it back to Wellesley alive.

Let the hunt begin.

Le Foche tilted forwards in the air, gaining momentum with every passing second. The wind blew directly into his face and swept his dark hair back against his skull. He was several thousand feet above the British officer now, and the Frenchman did his very best to maintain a quiet mind, hoping that he would not broadcast his presence as the Englishman seemed to be inadvertently broadcasting his.

Drawing the blade from its scabbard, Le Foche was momentarily distracted by the glittering sheen of moonlight shining upon silver.

Maintain your focus, fool!

He kept a tight grip on the hilt, not wanting the extremely expensive weapon to be swept away in the rushing wind. Then, like a diver entering the water, Le Foche angled his body so that his head and shoulders were pointing straight downwards, and put on a burst of even greater speed, the sword held flat against the side of his right leg.

Directly ahead of him hovered a tiny figure that was wearing a bright red jacket, completely oblivious to the doom that now descended upon him from high up above. In his dark jacket and white breeches, Le Foche looked like nothing so much as an arrow fletched with white feathers, slicing through the air towards its unsuspecting target.

The figure was getting larger very rapidly. As he angled himself slightly to keep the British spy dead center within his field of vision, the French vampire brought the sword up and outward away from his body in preparation to strike. The move threw off his balance, just as he’d known that it would, and so he made a tiny correction, leaning to his left and extending that arm in order to counterbalance himself. This had the effect of slowing him down just a little, but he was still hurtling towards the Englishman at a great rate of knots.

Something – some instinct perhaps, or a slight change in air pressure – must have given him away at the last moment, because the red-jacketed vampire pivoted in the air, turning toward the onrushing Frenchman and throwing up his hands defensively.

It wasn’t enough to save him. Le Foche cut away to the Englishman’s right side, sweeping his blade out in a perfectly-timed arc as he did so. Traveling at over a hundred miles per hour, the silver-edged sword slashed into his right forearm just proximal to the elbow and sliced its way cleanly through flesh, sinew, and bone.

The forearm was completely severed and fell away towards the earth below. Dark black fluid gushed from the stump that remained, staining what was left of the red sleeve an inky black.

Williams hissed, reflexively exposing his fangs and clutching at his missing arm. The sheer force of the diving Frenchman’s wake had tossed him aside like a child’s carelessly discarded toy, and now he tumbled through the air, turning end over end. Struggling to right himself, the exploring officer somehow managed to slow his speed and pivot to face the follow-up attack that he knew must be coming – but from where?

The exploring officer looked wildly around him, trying desperately to find his assailant against the dark background of the earth and the night sky.

Le Foche was nowhere to be seen, for the simple reason that his follow-up attack was coming from Williams’ one true blind spot – directly beneath his feet. The vampire was rising fast, sword held straight up above him in the manner of the Lady from the Lake wielding Excalibur, finally slamming his shoulders hard against the soles of his victim’s boots.

It had been perfectly timed and judged, as masterful a piece of bladesmanship as one could ever hope to see. As the tip of his enemy’s sword punctured his perineum and punched its way up into his pelvic cavity, Major Williams let out a shrill cry of such undiluted agony that even Captain Le Foche winced empathetically. Nonetheless, he added to the momentum of his charge by thrusting his sword arm even higher above his head, skewering the squealing British officer up to the hilt.

Under any circumstances, it would have been a mortal wound – but the sword point had made its way up through the vampire’s long-defunct intestines, slicing the stomach open as it went, then pierced his diaphragm before finally coming to rest inside the right ventricle of his almost-immortal heart.

No sooner had the silver edge come into contact with that most vital of organs than the vampire burst into an eldritch column of flame, spreading outward from his core and expanding to engulf his entire body in the spare of mere seconds. This was no ordinary fire; this was the death pyre of an undead being, and it burned like a new star in the heavens above the Maratha camp. Men below gazed up in wonder, pointing at the flailing fireball that had already begun its fall towards the earth.

Captain Le Foche could only watch in stunned awe as the burning body of what had until seconds ago been his opponent blazed its way downward, leaving a trail of fire that could be seen for miles around. He had never ended another vampire before, and the experienced soldier was more than a little surprised to find that he felt a twinge of…what? Remorse? Regret, perhaps?

He shrugged it off. Such were the hazards of a life and an undeath spent in uniform. It could just as easily have been him who was ending in an inferno of supernatural intensity. One took one’s chances in the world’s second-oldest, but certainly the deadliest profession.

Still spitted upon the Frenchman’s blade, the writhing torch that had once been Major Matthew Williams slammed into the River Kailna with enough force to dump gallons of water onto the north bank, spraying some of the spectating infantrymen who were standing there and watching events unfold. As it plunged beneath the surface of those dark waters, they began to hiss and bubble, as though rejecting the Englishman’s body and wanting to spit him back out.

Finally the turmoil subsided. The river returned to its usual state of semi-turbulent flow, leaving no sign of the secret which had just been enveloped into its cold embrace.

Watching from several hundred feet above, Le Foche knew that he must cut his assigned mission short and report this turn of events to Pohlmann.

Just as he began a controlled descent towards the colonel—no, the general’s tent, he corrected himself, he was suddenly struck with a thought that seemed to come out of nowhere.

His sword. His beautiful, exquisitely-crafted, perfectly-balanced sword.

There was no way on earth he was ever going to get that back.

Humbugged

There were yet more attacks as the long hours dragged by; the bodies of dead redcoats and now more than a few of the camp followers suddenly rising from where they lay and hurling themselves at the nearest living being, desperate to gorge themselves on warm and bloody flesh.

The more frequent such attacks became, the better prepared the British NCOs found themselves, increasingly stabbing and battering the skulls of their fallen so that they would not be resurrected and return to plague the rear of the column.

As the night wore on, Arthur found himself on tenterhooks, constantly expecting the sound of carbine fire to shatter the silence; it would mean that the British cavalry screen had collided with that of the Marathas and that both sides were exchanging shots.

Yet no such disruption ever came, and as the long miles melted slowly away beneath the boots of the men and the hooves of their horses, taking the army ever closer to its planned camp site at Naulniah, the Major General actually found himself getting increasingly tense.

The army reached Naulniah some two hours before sunrise the following day, and Arthur reined Diomed in at the top of a low rise. It was now the morning of the Twenty-Third, and Arthur knew that if all had gone well, Stevenson and his men would now be making camp on the western side of the hills which separated them both, fortifying the defenses of the little village named Hussainabad.

Where were the damned Marathas? Had they packed up and fled once more? Or was the silence simply a ruse de guerre, a ploy designed to lure the advancing British into an ambush?

One question stood out above all others in Wellesley’s restless mind: just what on earth had happened to Major Williams?

The exploring officer has been destroyed. In his sinking heart of hearts, Wellesley already knew it to be true. That was the only explanation that made any kind of sense.

Destroyed…or captured. The latter would be far worse, in terms of it being a threat to the army at least. A destroyed officer could tell the enemy nothing, but one that was being held captive would be interrogated mercilessly by the most deviant minds in Scindia’s army. There would be at least one semi-professional torturer among their ranks, Arthur knew; most armies had them, even his own.

Which meant vampires.

Although it was conceivable that mortal soldiers had brought Williams down, Arthur considered it to be extremely unlikely. Like all of his kind, the Major had been preternaturally strong and agile, more than capable of defeating many times his number in human adversaries. The only thing that could have overwhelmed him would be other vampires, most likely the European officers in Scindia’s employ.

Taking that thought to its next logical conclusion, the general suddenly stiffened. Scindia and the Raja of Berar must now know that he had been spying upon them…which meant that they were every bit as likely to want to spy back. He had a cavalry screen out to the north, it was true, but they were under explicit orders to maintain a low profile and not to allow themselves to be drawn into any kind of engagement with the enemy under any circumstances.

As it stood, the cavalry – most of whom came from Goklah’s native horse irregulars – hadn’t laid eyes on a soul since assuming their watch earlier that day.

“Mister Campbell!”

“Sir?” Colin was at his side in an instant, a scrap of paper and pencil at the ready.

This one has all the makings of a fine adjutant, Wellesley thought, his mind already racing ahead through the many orders that would have to be given over the next few minutes. A different part of his mind was already composing them as he spoke to his designated aide

“Major Williams has not returned, and therefore this army is effectively blind. That is unacceptable to me. I shall therefore be riding forward myself to scout out a suitable crossing point on the River Kailna. Is something wrong?”

That last remark came in answer to the young Captain’s face, which had drained of all its color by his commander’s words.

“Frankly, yes sir – something is wrong.” Colin knew that what he was about to say might be deemed impertinent, but he felt that it was too important to simply shut up and say nothing. “You are the commanding general of our army, sir. With the greatest of respect, your place is not in the front line where the enemy skirmishers may pick you off just as they please.”

“Most enemy skirmishers – assuming he even has them deployed – aren’t issued with silver ammunition,” Wellesley quite reasonably pointed out. “And I must see Borkardan for myself; must ensure that the enemy are where we believe them to be.”

“But General, could not a more junior officer obtain that information on your behalf?”

“It is not only the enemy that I must see for myself, Captain – it is the very ground itself. How might we use it to advantage? How will the enemy attempt to funnel our attack towards his strongest points? As skilled as my officers are, there is no substitute for first-hand knowledge, I am afraid.”

“But—”

“Enough.” Wellesley cut him off with a firm wave of the hand. “Your objections have been noted, Mister Campbell.” His voice softened a little. “And your concerns for my well-being are appreciated, although perhaps a little misplaced.”

“Yes, sir.” The defeat rang through loud and clear in the aide-de-camp’s tone.

A cough came from just a short way behind them. Both men turned to find Company Sergeant Major Nichols standing at a respectful distance.

“Yes, CSM?”

“Pardon me, General. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with the Captain.”

“And what of it?” You are becoming testy, Arthur cautioned himself quietly. Be calm. Time is of the essence, yes, but it would not do to alienate those upon whom so much depends…on whom all depends.

“You’ll be needing an escort, sir. I can have a bodyguard detailed and ready to march inside of ten minutes, sir. Maybe seven or eight at a pinch.”

“I have no doubt that you could, Nichols, and I thank you for it,” Arthur demurred. “However, I am afraid that there is no time. On any other day I would feel far more secure with an escort of Shadow Company men at my back, but in this instance I must ride rather than walk, and I fear that they could not keep up with Diomed.”

“Can’t say as I like it sir,” Nichols said neutrally.

“Nor I, to tell the truth, but needs must.”

“Then you’ll take a squadron of dragoons instead, sir,” said Campbell. It was phrased as a fact, not as a suggestion, and Wellesley had enough sense not to object.

“Very well. I’ll not argue with either of you. Detail a squadron, Captain, but be sure to make this one point extremely clear: they shall not ride with me, but rather trail behind me at a safe distance. Shall we say half a mile?”

“Sir?” Nichols blinked, evidently confused.

“Even at night, a squadron of cavalry is hardly an unobtrusive thing,” the General explained patiently. “If the Marathas rumble our game, then we shall assuredly have lost the element of surprise.” Wellesley shook his head decisively. “No, I shall ride forward alone, with the dragoons trailing along behind and using the terrain to mask their presence.”

“Very good sir,” Campbell said quietly. “With your permission, I shall arrange for the escort?”

“Granted, Captain. Thank you.”

No more than a quarter of an hour had passed before Arthur was in Diomed’s saddle and riding in a northwesterly direction from Naulniah. The detachment of dragoons trailed him at the agreed-upon distance of half a mile, and he was gratified to note that the officer commanding them made good use of low hills and defiles wherever he possibly could.

He could hear it long before anything became visible; the sounds of thousands of people located in very close proximity to one another. The sheer quantity of animal noises betrayed the presence of vast herds. Thousands of fires crackled.

Then came the smells, a pungent mixture of smoke and unwashed humanity, animal dung and cooking food, the vast plethora of odors that were generated by an encamped army.

Something was very wrong about all this, Wellesley realized. He had come upon them much too soon. Assuming that the maps of the region were correct – and he had every reason to trust in the cartographical skills of his exploring officers – then the Marathas were much, much closer to Naulniah than Borkardan.

“Dear God,” Wellesley exclaimed under his breath. “I’ve been bloody well humbugged.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Consequences Be Damned

Arthur Wellesley was not a man who was ordinarily prone to doubt. Yet there was nothing ordinary about the circumstances in which he and his army now found themselves, having inadvertently gotten far closer to the much-larger enemy than anticipated, and now found themselves left with just one of two possible alternatives. The first was to retreat, fighting a constant running battle when the Maratha horde descended upon their flanks. Arthur could already picture that unpalatable option in his mind’s eye. Depending on how aggressive Scindia’s officers were willing to be, the British would either find themselves hastily engaged in a desperate rearguard action to salvage some last remnant of their army, or dying the death of a thousand cuts as the Marathas whittled them down a little at a time.

No, that will never serve.

Which left him with the second course: attack.

There was was really no choice at all. The last few weeks had been spent trying to bring the Marathas to battle, and now that moment was at hand. Never mind that he had expected more preparation time, and hoped to coordinate his assault with Stevenson’s half of the army.

No time for that, Arthur…no time. Attack now, with everything that you have. Break their regular infantry and the rest will shatter like so much glass under the hammer.

At his side, Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell and Captain Campbell kept their silence. Both were used to seeing their general’s more introspective side, and were loathe to break his concentration. While Campbell scanned the far bank of the Kailna with no small degree of nervousness, the cavalry officer continued to watch the skies, his keen senses on the lookout for any sign that the enemy’s vampire officers might be hunting them.

Spurring Diomed onward, he paralleled the track of the Kailna. Using dead ground and foliage as a screen, Arthur kept the river to his left side, and across it kept a watchful eye on the massed cannon and infantry compoos of the Maratha’s army. Scindia’s men, if his suspicions were correct, for Scindia’s men were reputed to be the steadiest fighters. Those were the men who had to be beaten if the battle was to be decisively won. His dragoon escort trailed along behind him, ever alert in case their counterparts should put in an appearance to threaten their general.

He rode further and further eastward, passing the village of Taunklee, which seemed to mark the far left end of the Maratha line. Scindia had chosen that particular point to anchor his flank for a very good reason, for according to the best intelligence that Arthur’s exploring officers had been able to gather, this was the last of the easternmost crossing points.

Finally he reined his mount to a halt, catching sight of a cluster of low buildings off to his eleven o’clock position. Arthur removed his telescope from Diomed’s pannier and began to scrutinize the village in finer detail. Peepalgaon was a small affair, home to little more than a handful of people. Scanning further across to the opposite bank of the Kailna, his eye alighted on a second village, offset a little further to the east on the outside of a bend.

That would be Waroor, if memory serves. The village was of a comparable size to its neighbor on the southern bank. Something struck him as a little odd, and at first he could not quite put his finger on what.

“A ford,” he said at last, not realizing that he had spoken aloud.

“Sir?” said Campbell.

“See how close the two villages are? How do the villagers talk to one another, socialize with their neighbors on the opposite bank?”

“Who is to say that they do?” asked Maxwell, head still tilted back and watching the moonlit night sky.

“Oh, please.” Wellesley’s tone was full of scorn. “People are always people, Colonel, no matter where in the world you should find them. Can you conceive of two British villages similarly placed, whose inhabitants did not drink in one another’s public houses and share common festivals?”

“You have a point, General,” Maxwell conceded.

“There is more than one point to be made here, but I suspect that this is the most salient: a ford must exist between the two villages. Must.”

“If you’re right, then Scindia has left a crossing point unguarded…and it’s on his flank, at that.” The cavalry officer was growing interested. “He could very easily come to regret that.”

“Yes,” Arthur said quietly. “Yes, I do believe he might.” He turned Diomed about and without another word spurred her into a trot, cutting a straight line directly back towards Naulniah. His two companions, momentarily caught off guard, had to run their mounts a lot harder just to catch up, let alone actually keep pace. Arthur allowed Diomed to run up a full head of steam, breaking into a gallop. The big Arabian mount, relishing this unexpected opportunity to show off his full potential, was practically flying over the sparse ground, occasionally leaping over a small bush or fallen tree in his path. For his part, Diomed’s rider was content to let his horse navigate their way home, because his own mind was already filling with the details and nuances of a new offensive strategy, one that involved a hitherto unsuspected ford and a chance to turn his enemy’s left flank.

He would bring up the army and attack tonight.

Consequences be damned.

A Hidden Ford

“Come on, you shower of motherless bastards! Move! Move!”

Somehow the shouted harangue of a sergeant became even more fearsome when delivered with a Scottish accent, Arthur thought wryly as the first battalion of the 78th marched by. With bayonets fixed and their bearskins making them appear considerably taller than the average fighting man, the kilted Scotsmen truly were a sight to behold. The moonlight glinted on the tips of each blade, already honed to a fine sharpness in anticipation of tonight’s action. Colonel Harness rode at their head, and now that the decision to seek battle had been taken, the vampire officer seemed full of anticipation for the coming fight.

With Campbell and an orderly riding in his wake, Arthur spurred his horse forwards to ride alongside the Scots Colonel. He had decided to give Diomed a rest, leaving him to be drawn along by the orderly that now held his reins knotted about one fist, instead choosing to ride his spare, a dappled grey gelding named Achilles.

“The best of the evening to you, General,” Harness smiled, showing the tips of his fangs. “My Highlanders are more than ready to give the enemy a thrashing they’ll not soon forget.”

Wellesley returned the smile, utterly confident that the man could be taken at his word.

“Scindia is going to find it quite the shock when your lads drop in on him for breakfast, Colonel.”

It had been twenty-four minutes past nine when Arthur had ridden back into the British lines, Diomed’s glossy coat now bathed in sweat. Maxwell and Campbell hadn’t been far behind, and the detail from the 19th had brought up the rear.

“Have the men drop packs, blankets, and anything that isn’t a personal weapon, ammunition, or a canteen of water,” he had ordered the commanders of each battalion when they had hurriedly assembled inside his tent. “We march in ten minutes. Dismissed.”

In truth, it had taken slightly longer than that, but the army was on the march and following a dusty track northward within less than twenty minutes. The 78th were the last unit in the order of march, for he had left a battalion of the Second Madras Native Infantry posted in Naulniah to act as a garrison and more importantly to secure the army’s baggage train. Not that it really matters, because if we lose this night, who cares what happens to the baggage? But it would also not do to win the engagement, as he fully intended to do, only to find that the enemy cavalry had ransacked the army’s supply cache and butchered the camp followers. After satisfying himself that the very last company of Highlanders had joined the formation, leaving no fighting men other than the guard battalion to keep an eye on the army’s rear, Arthur broke into a canter and made his way to the head of the column. William Wallace’s 74th were the first regular King’s unit behind the picquets, and much like his counterpart in the 74th, was also in fine fighting spirit. His claymore hung heavily at his side, and Arthur knew that it would most likely see its share of blood this night.

In addition to the men of his own regiment, both Wallace and Harness were commanding a pair of Madras Native Infantry battalions, giving them a brigade of three battalions apiece. Wellesley knew that the fight would be won largely by the skill and bravery of these six battalions, little more than five thousand men in all, and the squadrons of cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell that were currently screening their left flank. In addition to the almost four hundred men of the 19th Light Dragoons, Maxwell could count upon a total of nine squadrons from the 4th, 5th, and 7th Native Cavalry.

He prayed that it would be enough.

The true vanguard of his army were that ad hoc force known as the picquets of the day. Each battalion donated a single half-company on a daily basis, and when taken together these 350 picquets were used as skirmishers, posted well in advance of the main body of the army and acting as sentries to provide advanced warning of contact with the enemy. They would assume a different role tonight, serving as line troops under the command of an East India Company Colonel named James Orrock.

Orrock was Wellesley’s sole concession towards the political, and if truth be told he was beginning to question the wisdom of his decision to appoint the man commander of the picquets. All of his senior commanders came from King’s regiments, and yet the majority of his actual fighting force was supplied by the East India Company. Arthur’s brother Richard had warned him recently of rumblings on the matter coming from the Company’s board of directors, and so after giving the matter much thought, he had put a Company man in command of the picquets as a sop to their concerns.

After all, he had thought at the time of taking the decision, that’s almost certainly where he could do the least harm.

It wasn’t that Orrock was a bad officer necessarily — if so, Arthur would never have tolerated his presence in this army at all, let alone appointed him to a position of command — but simply that he was an unproven one. Through no fault of his own, the man had no track record under fire of any kind, good or bad. Neither did I before Seringapatam, Arthur had reminded himself, and that had essentially decided him. Yet still there was a nagging concern that would not go away. Orrock was a mortal, as were so many company officers below the rank of full Colonel, and therefore one of the daylight officers that were often sneeringly regarded as an underclass, and Wellesley wondered if that fact was somehow unfairly prejudicing his judgment of the man.

No, Orrock’s appointment would stand. It was too late to change it now, particularly without grounds to do so.

“Colonel Orrock.”

“General Wellesley!” Orrock had been lost in his own thoughts, jolted out of his reverie by the General’s greeting. “I was just thinking about the coming engagement…”

Looking down, Wellesley noticed that the man’s hand was shaking when he rode through a patch of moonlight.

He is a mortal with but one life to lose. One can hardly blame him for that.

In truth, any man who claimed to be anything other than afraid before a major engagement was either insane, a liar, or drunk, and none of them mattered so long as he fought well. The British soldier was a notorious drunkard, and yet still maintained a battlefield reputation that was the envy of the world. With his heightened vampiric senses, Arthur had a keen nose for the bottle, and found too little scent of it to be concerned about in the ranks this night.

“You shall be first onto the field, after myself of course,” he said pointedly.

“You may depend upon me, sir,” Orrock replied. Was that the sheen of sweat upon the man’s brow or simply a trick of the moonlight?

Wellesley’s plan was relatively simple. After Major Williams had failed to return, Scindia must almost certainly know that the British were about. Indeed, part of Arthur’s urgency came from his own supposition that they must attack the Marathas before the Marathas could cross the river and hit them first. Either way, the enemy would be expecting to see British soldiers in the vicinity, and so in order to disguise his true intentions, he had decided to give them exactly that. To this end, he had dispatched Colonel Maxwell and his entire force to form a cavalry screen along the south bank of the Kailna. Maxwell’s dragoons and native cavalry had left Naulniah at the same time as the main body of troops, but had disappeared into the distant darkness in just a few short moments, riding in a northwesterly direction.

Maxwell’s orders were equally simple: string his squadrons out between the two villages of Taunklee and Kodully, directly in front of Scindia’s left wing. If everything went according to plan — which would include a healthy dollop of luck, Arthur realized — then the Marathas would quite reasonably assume that the British were forming for an attack across one of those two heavily-defended fords, and while they were focusing upon Arthur’s left hand, they would hopefully miss the right hook which was even now marching on a northwesterly course, following a well-worn track across country towards the village of Peepalgaon.

It was a still and peaceful night, and although he kept waiting for the calmness to be banished by the sound of harassing fire aimed Maxwell’s way, Arthur was to be pleasantly surprised. The picquets marched into sight of Peepalgaon without any indication that the Marathas were aware of their presence whatsoever.

May our luck hold…

Yet his nervousness continued to grow. Arthur kept it in a vice-like grip, working deliberately to keep a casual expression upon his face. The men must never see even the slightest sign of their general being concerned, for such things spread like wildfire amongst the ranks; and so, Arthur affected the same air he would when strolling around the camp, seemingly without a care in all the world.

“The crossing, General,” Orrock said in a hushed semi-whisper as he and Wellesley crested a low rise, bringing both near and far-side villages into view. “Are we completely sure that the river is fordable here?”

“Reasonably sure,” Arthur answered truthfully.

“Reasonably…has it been tested, sir?” the Lieutenant Colonel asked, plainly worried.

“It is about to be.”

Without pausing for further comment, Arthur splashed Achilles through the center of the village and out into the Kailna. The horse’s hooves were quickly immersed, followed shortly by his forelegs and knees. Achilles left a white wake in the darkness as the great charger felt his way carefully out into the middle of the river. Arthur felt the tips of his riding boots grow colder as they started to drag in the water. He spurred the mount on regardless. After just a few more steps he looked down once more, and was immensely gratified to see that his boots were now dripping but clear of the river by a good six inches…the river-bed was suddenly sloping upward, and he was across to the other side.

I’ll be damned if I wasn’t right! Outwardly taciturn, Arthur was internally jubilant. He had gambled all on this particular piece of reasoning, and he had been proved right. The sudden sense of vindication was almost intoxicating. Guiding Achilles up the shallow embankment on the far side, Arthur reined the horse around and was gratified to see that Orrock, true to his word, was already leading the picquets across. Campbell splashed across the ford to join him.

“You were right, General!” the young captain grinned, his teeth white in the darkness.

“Send my compliments to Colonel Maxwell,” Arthur cut him off brusquely, not wanting his ego to be fed any more than it already had been. “Have the irregular cavalry replace his in forming the screen, and the good Colonel is to bring his entire force to join us as quickly as possible.”

“Of course, sir.” Seemingly unperturbed by the General’s reaction, he wheeled about and crossed the ford heading back the way he had come. The picquets were already half-way across now, slowing in the middle as the water reached a height of perhaps three feet, and Arthur turned his attention to the west. Waroor lay a few hundred yards to the east of him, and doubtless in just a few moments the curiosity of the villagers would be aroused, but they represented no kind of threat to he and his men. No, their fox for this night’s hunt would be found to the west.

Where was that blasted orderly? he wondered, looking about him with ill-concealed irritation. He saw the lad — a private soldier detached from the 78th — sitting somewhat nervously on the far bank, sitting astride one horse and holding the reins of a seemingly-docile Diomed with the other. Arthur opened his mouth to call for him to cross the river and joined him, but never had a chance to get the words out, for the hollow boom of a cannon firing echoed from far away in the night.

The enemy had seen them, and had opened fire.

The battle of Assaye had begun.

Flanked!

Bindusar was one of the very first to notice it, as he stood at the rear of the battalion’s position while keeping a weather eye on the south bank of the Kailna. He caught a glint of moonlight against something metallic from the corner of his field of vision, somewhere far off to his left; whether it was the lens of a telescope, the blade of a weapon, or even the polished helmet of a cavalryman. The what was less important than the fact that something was there in the first place, out to the east on the extreme limits of the army’s left flank.

They had caught signs of movement across the river for the past ten minutes or so, and from the few glimpses that he had caught with his naked eye, Bindusar had come to believe that it was men on horseback moving behind the trees and vegetation to the south of the Kailna. That meant it had to be a British cavalry screen, doubtless ordered to keep an eye on the ford which he and the rest of Jamelia’s battalion had been detailed to protect. The English could even now be forming ranks behind it, ready to rush across the ford into the welcoming embrace of his men’s smoothbore flintlocks and the cannon which sat directly in front of them, ready to sweep the river crossing with lethal bursts of cannister.

Bindusar had sent a messenger to find Jamelia and inform her of the elusive horsemen to their front. Then he had settled down to wait for whatever was destined to happen next.

Now, it was beginning to look as though he had an answer.

Like most officers in Scindia’s service, he possessed a decent enough field glass, but he had left it inside his tent. Borrowing one from a nearby jemadar, he snapped it open to full extension and put it to his right eye while closing the left.

What he saw on the eastern horizon stunned him.

Soldiers. Hundreds of them.

They had to be British, Bindusar reasoned, for Pohlmann’s compoo had been positioned squarely in the middle of the Maratha infantry line, and the only troops who were stationed to their left were those of Dupont. The men of Saleur’s compoo were their neighbors to the right, extending out further to the west just beyond the Kodully ford.

He grabbed the nearest enlisted man by the collar of his shirt. “Go, and find the mistress,” he said urgently. “Try Colonel Pohlmann’s tent first, for the commanders are all said to be meeting there. Alert her — and alert Pohlmann! — that there are British soldiers advancing upon our left flank. Hurry! Hurry!”

Nodding vigorously, the man took off into the night. Bindusar turned back towards the east, where the formed ranks of Dupont’s compoo were already getting to their feet and hoisting their flintlocks.

Perhaps they have seen the enemy too, Bindusar thought to himself. His suspicion was confirmed a moment later when the distinctive sound of a 12-pounder cannon barked from somewhere to his left. Smoke wafted up from somewhere in front of Dupont’s line, catching the moonlight as it rose into the starry night sky.

“Up!” he called, moving among the ranks of Jamelia’s men — his men too — and prodding them hastily to their feet. Most rose smoothly, for they had been half-expecting a battle this night, but in truth most of them had expected to either take the fight to the British on the south bank, or to defend the ford against a determined assault by the British redcoats, tearing them apart in the three-foot deep water directly to their front.

How had the British gotten onto their left flank? There were supposed to be no river crossings further to the east! Bindusar’s mind was in turmoil as he tried to understand how the army was being flanked. Had the British built some kind of secret bridge across the Kailna? No, he dismissed that out of hand as an impossibility. There would have been some sign, or at the very least some noise, for one could not bridge a river in absolute silence. No, there was something that had been missed by Pohlmann’s officers, and now if they were not quick enough to react, it was the enlisted men who would be forced to pay the price.

"Wellesley is no fool..."

“Naulniah.” Anthony Pohlmann enjoyed the taste of the word upon his tongue, relishing it and all that it implied. “Wellesley has to be at Naulniah.”

“Closer than we thought,” said Jamelia, looking around the tent at the faces of the assembled Maratha commanders.

“Yes,” Pohlmann agreed, “and well within our grasp.”

Mere moments had gone by between his killing of the British vampire officer and Captain Le Foche striding back into the presence of his commanding officer, who had looked up from his perusal of a sketch map with an expression of great anticipation on his face. A scant two minutes after hearing his report, Pohlmann had summoned his senior officers back to his tent, and just a few minutes after that august assembly had begun to meet, they were interrupted by a messenger from Bindusar reporting sightings of horsemen along the far south bank of the Kailna.

“The question now is: what will the British general do next?” Pohlmann thought out loud. “The horsemen gathered along the opposite bank are almost certainly a cavalry screen, designed to give Wellesley advanced warning of our crossing the Kailna and marching to meet him.”

“They could just as easily presage an attack by the British themselves,” Saleur cautioned.

“If he is wise, then he shall wait at Naulniah until the missing piece of his army can join him before attacking us.” Jamelia was convinced that this would indeed be Wellesley’s course of action, if only because to do anything else would be nothing short of insane. “That will put Wellesley’s combined army up against odds that are merely desperate, rather than suicidal.”

A low rumble of laughter rippled around the tent. The men’s spirits were good, and Pohlmann was glad to see it. Morale was half the battle, and often sheer force of numbers was the other half, in which case he had everything he needed and more to break the back of the English here on the banks of the Kailna and send them scurrying back to Seringapatam, perhaps even back to London, forever.

“Our scouts have located the second force, away to the southwest,” he said dismissively. “Too far away to reach us before tomorrow night, at the very earliest.” Pohlmann stood, straightening his jacket and adjusting the sash that looped over one shoulder and was knotted about his waist. “Which means that if we move now — if we react quickly, then we can crush Wellesley’s half-army at Naulniah and then turn on the other half and destroy it in detail. We shall gobble them up in two smaller bites, rather than in one large one.”

That earned him another laugh, but Jamelia once again found herself playing devil’s advocate. “Unless he chooses to attack us first.”

“If only we were so fortunate. Wellesley is no fool,” Pohlmann opined. “If he were to attack, it would almost certainly be with his combined force, and even then, he must know that we will make mincemeat of him if he should try to cross at any of the fords. But I suspect that this is a moot point. Remember, it is likely that he still expects to find us at Borkardan, and probably has no idea that we are even here. We have found and eliminated his spy—”

“Could there not be others?”

If he was annoyed at Jamelia’s interruption, then Pohlmann did not show it. “Potentially. This is war, Jamelia, so there are no guarantees and all things are possible. However,” he tapped the map for emphasis, “what we can say for sure is that we have been handed a unique opportunity. If we can move quickly enough, we will retain the element of surprise. Our army can fall upon Wellesley in his camp, still waiting for the rest of his army to join him. It will be a massacre. One hundred thousand against not even one tenth of that number.”

Besides, Pohlmann thought to himself but did not say aloud, the British already have their own…distractions. The Goddess has seen to that.

There was a commotion at the entrance to the tent, and Pohlmann looked up to see a soldier from his own compoo being admitted by the guards. The man was from Jamelia’s battalion, based upon his livery. The fact that he was out of breath and already drenched in sweat spoke volumes of the urgency of his message. Pohlmann fully expected him to speak of British redcoats being spotted advancing upon one, or more likely several, of the river crossings. What he actually heard caused him to stand bolt upright in shock.

“British soldiers, sahib — to the east!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Form the Line

The Maratha lines were a long way off, and when the sound of the cannon discharging shattered the still night air, he found himself hoping against hope that it was the cavalry screen on the south bank that had been spotted and engaged.

No such luck. The roundshot was fired at long range, and the heavy ball — a 12-pounder, if Arthur was any judge — landed short, splashing into the Kailna some hundred yards to the west and throwing up a torrent of water.

The next would be closer, and the one after that closer still.

“Come on over here, my lad,” Arthur beckoned to the mounted orderly who led Diomed to approach him. The young man came forward to within touching distance of his general. He found it hard to tear his eyes away from Wellesley’s own, which glowed a rich, preternatural red in the darkness. “Stick close to me this night,” Wellesley instructed him, turning to face the west once more. The picquets were streaming past him, and Wallace’s 74th were close behind, marching at the quick-step.

Colonels Orrock and Wallace reined in their mounts alongside his, presenting Arthur with a pair of salutes that were about as far apart from one another in terms of precision as he could possibly imagine; Orrock’s was smartly delivered and terse, whereas Wallace’s salute was given with all of the laconic insouciance of an old campaigner. He returned them both with a snappy parade-ground salute of his own, and then cleared his throat.

“I’ll keep it brief, gentlemen, for we have the night’s business to be about—”

A second shell slammed into the Kailna some ten feet upstream from the ford, showering the Highlanders of the 74th with a spray of cold water.

“Now as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted…” That earned him a smile from both colonels, though Orrock’s was considerably more sickly than that of Wallace. “We’re going to form our infantry in two lines, each of which shall be one battalion deep; so they’ll be one behind the other, d’you see?” Both colonels nodded. “From left to right, the front line shall be composed of the 78th, the 1/10 and 1/8 Madras Natives, and finally the picquets of the day under you, Colonel Orrock, anchoring the far right of our line. Under no circumstances must you approach Assaye directly, do you understand?” Orrock nodded, although the slightly vacant expression he bore made the General wonder whether he truly did comprehend, and so he added: “We count an estimated thirty to forty guns and well over ten thousand infantry stationed in and around the village, Colonel. See that you do not serve yourself up to them on a plate, if you please...

“Now, the second line will comprise the 1/4 and 2/12 Madras, then Connolly’s 33rd, and shall be capped on the right by your fellows of the 74th, Wallace,” Arthur continued. “As each new unit crosses the ford, I shall have it directed to its place in the appropriate line. Captains Barclay and Campbell shall attend to that.” He indicated the two red-jacketed officers whose horses stood on either side of the northern ford, stooping to direct the stream of oncoming troops forward to their forming-up positions. “Are there any questions so far?”

“Aye,” growled Wallace. “Our left flank is protected by the Kaitna, but what of the right?” He gestured expansively onto the barren, wide-open Deccan plain to their right, where the only thing of any import that was visible in the moonlit was the village named Assaye, where lanterns and fires could be seen off to the northwest.

Understandable, thought Wellesley, for what soldier is ever comfortable with an exposed flank?

“Colonel Maxwell and his cavalry shall secure our right.” That earned him a grudging nod from the bluff Scotsman, who now felt a little better at having no infantry battalions supporting his open right flank. The 19th Light Dragoons and their native cavalry counterparts were good, bloody good, and would screen the advancing redcoat battalions from any attempt to flank them on the right.

A third cannonball screamed through the air, burying itself in the mud of the river bank on the north side.

“They’re getting closer,” said Orrock, stating the obvious. His hands were still shaking, and so he thrust them into his pockets to keep them out of sight. Wellesley affected not to notice.

“They tend to do that, once the gunners find the range,” Wallace replied dryly. He did not add that they were firing blind, because there was no direct line-of-sight from the enemy gun line to this ford. Still, sooner or later one of the enemy artillery crews was bound to get lucky…

“When I give the order to advance, we shall step off directly for the Maratha line,” Wellesley brought them back on-point. He stared out across the moonlit plain separating them from the enemy position, which was relatively bare except for occasional trees, defiles, and patches of scrub. “You will note, gentlemen, that although the men will be exposed to cannon-fire for a portion of that march, some of it affords cover and protection in areas of dead ground. Nevertheless,” he admitted, “their cannon shall doubtless inflict a heavy price upon us before we are able to close with them and give them the bayonet.”

“The sooner, the bloody better,” said Wallace.

“Quite,” agreed Wellesley. “Now—”

The explosion caught all of them completely off guard, but none more so than the unfortunate orderly who had just gained the north bank and was some hundred feet away from the cluster of senior officers when the round struck. The poor private’s head was torn halfway from his shoulders as the passage of the heavy iron ball hurled his scalp and one side of his face high into the air, propelled on a fountain of blood, bone, brains, and tissue. His body was flung backwards in the saddle, but so firmly were his feet hooked into the stirrups that he stayed atop the terrified mount’s saddle, pumping hot, viscous blood onto its haunches. Diomed’s reins were held in a death-grip now, and so Colin Campbell trotted over and grabbed the dead man’s hand, gritting his teeth with the effort it took to pry the man’s dead fingers apart. Finally successful, he pulled a straggler from the rearmost ranks of the 74th and told him that he was now General Wellesley’s new orderly. Knowing better than to argue — and perhaps more grateful than he would ever admit to being spared from the line of battle at this, the eleventh hour — the Highlander helped Campbell drag his near-headless predecessor from the saddle and claimed the dead man’s horse for his own, reaching out to accept Diomed’s reins uncertainly.

Colin leaned in to talk to him. “Stick to the general like glue,” he said cheerfully, “and make sure that when he needs a fresh mount, he gets one of these. He’ll probably want Diomed — that’s this one. Understand?”

“Sir.” The private bore a repulsed expression, and when Colin looked down he could see why. The kilted soldier’s bare legs were scraping against the horse’s flanks, smearing his inner thighs and calves with the dead man’s sticky blood.

“Excellent!” Campbell beamed. “Now—”

This time, the explosion hurled him from his saddle onto the cold, hard ground. He landed on his buttocks, sending a jolt of pain up through his tailbone into his spine, but suffered nothing more than a little indignity. The 74th did not escape so lightly. Four of their men were torn apart when the 12-pound ball blasted through their rank and file, separating arms and legs from torsos amidst a chorus of shrieks and bellows of pain and rage.

“It’s getting rather hot,” Arthur said with characteristic understatement. “Best we be getting on with it. Captain Campbell — are you alright?”

“Just a scratch, sir.” The aide-de-camp remounted his horse, and once in the saddle began to soothe it with a low voice and stroke of his hand.

“Good. Captain Barclay, are you able to manage the crossing if Captain Campbell accompanies me forward?”

William Barclay had been serving as Wellesley’s adjutant general since the earliest days of the campaign, and Arthur knew that he could trust the man implicitly. He had been entrusted with responsibility far in excess of his rank, and never once yet the General down. His expertise had proven invaluable more times than he could count.

“Absolutely, sir.” Barclay nodded.

Satisfied, Wellesley turned and headed west, with an aching Colin Campbell trailing in his wake.

Out of the East

Anthony Pohlmann had come to the front line to assess the situation for himself. It had seemed natural to accompany Jamelia back to her position in the center of his compoo, which in turn was situated in the center of his army. The crack of friendly cannons firing told him on the journey from his tent that battle had already been joined, unless something had gone very seriously wrong indeed.

No, he determined when Jamelia led him to Bindusar, this was indeed a British offensive, and from the east! He accepted Bindusar’s requisitioned telescope without a word and immediately used it to get a closer look at the lands far past Assaye, in the direction of Waroor village. With the aid of the moonlight which bathed the entire plain, he hardly needed a vampire’s enhanced eyesight to pick out the uncased colors of the British regiments that were now forming line.

He was being flanked.

They are coming from the east. We need to reorient ourselves to face them there. There is still time — these are my finest troops, equal to anything the British can field. It is time to put that training to the test.

Were he still living, Pohlmann would have flushed bright red and exploded with rage. The Hanoverian was still capable of such emotional outbursts, but had found it far easier to control them since accepting the Dark Gift. Instead, he simply snapped out orders in all directions to the cadre of functionaries and intermediaries who had seemed to dog his every step since his appointment to high command.

“Send runners to Saleur and to Dupont. We are going to swing our line ninety degrees to the left.” He was thinking aloud, interspersing each strategic decision with specific orders. All had been predicated on a frontal attack from the south, across the only known fords. He had been too sure — too bloody sure — that there were none further to the east. He would have his intelligence officers hung, drawn, and quartered if the army survived this night, Pohlmann decided. Their blasted incompetence may not have cost them the battle, for there was no way that Wellesley could ever actually win, but it had seriously hampered them at the very least. Now he had to pivot fifteen thousand men and over eighty gun crews into a new line, whose right flank was anchored against the Kailna and the left against the heavily fortified village of Assaye.

Assaye…the Raja of Berar’s men had been posted there with orders to turn it into a fortress, and from what he had seen earlier they had been doing a damned good job of it. The village had already been surrounded by high walls, and was now garrisoned by 20,000 of Berar’s best — whatever that meant, Pohlmann snorted to himself — and a host of heavy cannon arrayed all around it. While not impregnable (for what fortress ever truly could be) Assaye would inflict ruinous casualties on any army whose commander was foolish enough to take his troops within range of her guns.

Yes, there was still time to turn this army and its situation around, both literally and figuratively. It would take time for the English to form up, time that he would use well to establish a second defensive line facing towards the east.

Time to pound the British with long-range artillery fire until their ranks ran red with blood.

Advance on the Guns

“Damn it, they’re turning!”

And so they were. Arthur clenched his fist tightly in frustration as he watched the Maratha line, which until just a few moments ago had been oriented towards the south, begin to swing ponderously around like some enormous door made up of men and cannons.

It wasn’t neat. It wasn’t pretty. Above all else, it wasn’t quick, for many of the cannons had to be hitched up to their limbers and physically moved by bullocks and even, in a few cases, elephants. All of which took time, for it was not possible to conduct such a complex movement quickly, and that was the one saving grace, because it allowed Arthur time to get his own battalions formed into some semblance of order before issuing them the command to attack. Yet that, too, now had to be modified to take into account the change in circumstances, for now his own puny line some four battalions wide was dwarfed by the rapidly-swelling Maratha line.

We shall have to change our disposition, Arthur thought, fighting a rising tide of anger, and damned quickly…otherwise they shall envelop our tiny line and destroy it piecemeal.

He could no longer afford two lines, it was now becoming clear to him. The frontage simply wouldn’t be wide enough. It had to be one line, a single battalion deep, stretching across as broad a front as possible so that as many red-coated muskets as possible could be brought to bear against the enemy.

The next few minutes were a blur. He rode Achilles hard, with Campbell and the orderly in tow, from battalion commander to battalion commander, issuing fresh orders.

Finally he came to Orrock, posted on the far right end of his first line. He reined Achilles in from a gallop, kicking up a cloud of dust in the moonlight.

“Colonel, you must move quickly,” Arthur said without preamble, pre-empting the man before he could speak. “Shift your men to the right, so as to leave enough room for two Madras Native Infantry battalions on your left. Do not worry about your flank: I shall post the 74th there to forestall any flanking attack upon you. We must form one single line, and your battalion of picquets shall be at the far right end of it. All of the other battalions shall align themselves upon you. You are therefore going to have to bear northward, Colonel Orrock, but not too far northward, because the village of Assaye lies at the northernmost end of that line, and if you should come into close contact with that place then your men will be cut apart. Do you follow?”

Orrock evidently did, or at least said that he did, and as he was Wellesley’s final port of call, the Major General wheeled Achilles around once more and rode hard for the position of the 78th on the far left of his line, which now angled slightly away from the enemy in echelon from left to right.

“Harness and his men shall be the first to meet the enemy face-to-face,” he called over his shoulder to Campbell, whose own mount was struggling to keep pace with Achilles. More used to walking than riding, the Scots orderly in turn struggled to keep up with them both. “It is therefore with them that we shall place ourselves for now.”

He reined in next to Harness, who wore his usual mask of cheerful imperturbability that he put on whenever the lead was flying.

“Colonel,” he nodded. Harness offered him a nod in return.

“My lads are ready for the off, General Wellesley. Simply give the word.” The bluff Scottish vampire seemed almost eager to close with the enemy, and the enthusiasm had evidently been passed on to his Highlanders. The kilted men in their tall bearskins had bayonets fixed and every eye was set upon the distant Maratha line.

“Your men look damned smart, as ever.” Praise, thought Arthur, can do nothing but good now. It will be the last that some of them ever receive in this lifetime. “You may consider the word to be given.”

Nodding once more in acknowledgment, Harness bellowed the order to step off. The Highlanders moved as one, their fixed bayonets gleaming in the light of the moon and stars. The rolling ground between them and the Maratha line was uneven, spotted with clumps of vegetation and plant life, but the men of the 78th kept good form and discipline, going neither too quickly or too slowly. The rest of the line to their right had followed suit, and now all of Wellesley’s men were moving across that desolate stretch of open ground, at the end of which lay nothing but death and victory.

Arthur looked ahead to the far horizon and saw that the left wing of the Maratha army was still forming in its new positions, but the right wing, which was the hinge upon which the rest had pivoted and therefore had the least distance to move, was already mostly formed and bringing their guns into action. The range was still too long for 6-pounders to be effective — each British battalion had two of them too, and were bringing them forward in their wake — but the Maratha 12-pounders were capable of hitting them, and now the enemy gunners took full advantage of the fact. The guns were positioned in a long line running along what was roughly a north-south axis that faced towards the west, parked gun-to-gun in front of the massed ranks of the infantry. Come and take us, the artillery seemed to taunt the approaching British, if you can.

Now the Maratha guns spoke, and spoke loudly. The fire was irregular, as those crews who were both better-trained and had less distance to travel, got their cannons into action first. Each boom that shattered the night echoed across the desolate landscape, heralding the arrival of a 12-pound iron ball that would either plow into the earth in front of the marching redcoats, fly over their heads and land harmlessly behind them, or worst of all blast a path of bloody ruin through those neatly-ordered ranks. There was nothing the British could do but take the pounding in silence — apart from the screams and cries of the wounded, that was. Men fell to the ground and those behind them trampled over them, the sergeants yelling for the soldiers to “close ranks, close ranks!”

The British line left behind it a growing trail of dead, dying, and wounded men, but continued their implacable advance towards the raging Maratha guns. Arthur felt his teeth involuntarily clench each time a roundshot reduced more of his precious handful of soldiers to bloody smears of flesh and cloth, further whittling down the already thin red line. He swung around in his saddle to look behind them, and was relieved to see Maxwell’s cavalry squadrons forming up on the army’s right flank, not too far behind the 74th. Their presence brought him immeasurable relief, like the comfort of a solid stone wall at his back, and he turned back towards the front once more, just as another volley of 12-pound shots punched through the ranks and files. More men screamed, whereas others died silently. One was cut in half and died without a word upon his lips, his upper torso blown into the air along with his cartridge-box, bearskin, and musket.

“Steady, boys…steady!” Wallace held his claymore high for all to see, and yet despite the cannonade he was not touched by so much as a single piece of shrapnel. The 78th’s regimental and King’s colors had both been uncased for this fight; had there been any real sort of wind, the colors would have been streaming out behind the Highlanders as they marched, but as things stood the two sacred flags simply bounced along limply on the end of their long staffs with every step taken by the color-bearers. “We’ll give the bastards what for, soon enough!”

Achilles was so well-trained that he barely flinched when the lower leg of a Highlander flew past his face, missing it by less than a foot. Wellesley offered a calming pat on the neck anyway, watching as the man fell to the ground with blood spurting from the torn stump of his right leg.

Soon it shall be our turn, he thought to himself grimly, but not soon enough for my liking.

The thin red line continued to close upon their tormentors, with each battalion, whether British or native, absorbing the punishment that was being dished out with the resolute stoicism of the true professional soldier. Growing closer with every passing step, the enemy guns were now barely visible, due to the clouds of stinking sulfurous smoke that was being continually vomited from their now sizzling-hot barrels, most of which had now begun to glow a dull orange at their mouths.

“Stay the course, my lads!” Arthur bellowed, backing up his natural command voice with a boost of supernatural power. “Just a few moments more, and we shall see how they like the taste of cold steel!”

A ragged cheer went up from the ranks. Normally, cheering was something Arthur disapproved of when it came from among the ranks — let them cheer you one minute, and they’ll be booing you the next, he had said on more than one occasion — but in this case it was just what the doctor ordered, serving to bolster the mens’ nerves and put some lead into their backbones.

What he did not yet know was that one of his commanders was about to lead his men into the jaws of disaster.

"...a favor to us..."

“I don’t know what that imbecile is doing,” Anthony Pohlmann said conversationally, “but it’s certainly a favor to us.”

Jamelia frowned, squinting to try and make sense of what her sharp feline eyes were seeing. Pohlmann had exercised the right of the commanding general and placed his compoo in the very center of the Maratha line, and Jamelia’s battalion in the very center of his compoo. As such, they both had an excellent vantage point from which to observe the progress of the British attack.

“He appears to be drifting,” she said at last, watching incredulously as the rightmost formation in the British line began to move further and further towards the north, isolating itself from the main body of the army, which was in the process of forming one large line of battalions where previously there had been two. All the while, the massed batteries of Maratha cannon that were deployed in front of their infantry punched bloody holes through their ranks.

Still the rogue unit continued to drift…

…towards the village named Assaye.

“It is unwise, not to mention churlish, to interrupt the enemy when he is in the middle of making a mistake,” the vampire said, a thin smile twisting up the corners of his lips.

Even harder to believe was the fact that the battalion which had been stationed directly behind it seemed to be following their lead, also branching off from the main force of Wellesley’s army and crabbing slowly towards the north.

As the tigress and the vampire looked on, the British picquets of the day crept further and further towards the fortified stronghold that formed the linchpin of the Maratha line’s left wing, a village that positively bristled with artillery pieces and soldiers wielding flintlocks by the thousands.

Better still, the King’s 74th followed them to the slaughter.

A Bloody Idiot

“What is that bloody idiot doing?” groaned Dan Nichols, his voice a mixture of disbelief and horror.

The King’s 33rd were the sixth battalion in line, counting from the British left wing to its right. On their left side, the sepoys and officers of the 2/12 Madras Native Infantry absorbed the punishment being dealt out by the Maratha guns and kept marching ever forwards, bayonets fixed and muskets held at the vertical. To their right was supposed to be the 74th, and to their right the ad hoc picquets of the day, stretching the line out to a frontage of eight battalions in all; what was actually on their right, Dan noted with a sinking feeling growing in his belly, was empty ground. The 74th, who should have been marching practically shoulder to shoulder with his lads from the 33rd, were a good two hundred feet away and gaining more distance with every passing minute.

The reason for it was obvious. At the far right end of the line, the battalion comprised of the day’s picquet half-companies was edging its way further to the north, angling away from the main body of British troops like a paramour spurning a lover. Not wishing to leave their comrades hung out to dry, the 74th were sticking to the picquets like bloody glue, Dan realized, and so two battalions were parting ways with the remaining six and striking out for the left flank of the Maratha line.

Where the guns of Assaye would tear them apart.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Volley Fire

Only a bare fifty paces remained between the Maratha cannons and the line of advancing British soldiers.

Oh, how the redcoats had suffered to get there — hundreds lay broken and bleeding in the fields between here and the ford, pouring out their life-blood in the harsh white moonlight. Their screams and wails were mostly masked by the thunder of the constant rolling cannonade, until death finally silenced their cries.

But now, it was the turn of the British to inflict some suffering.

“Halt!” bellowed Wellesley. All of his battalions crashed to a standstill at the same time. “Commanding officers: you may commence volley fire at your discretion.”

It was now a race against time, because the distance between the two opposing armies had closed sufficiently for the Maratha gunners to be able to fire cannister. Each tin contained hundreds of metal balls that would blast outward into the enemy ranks in a cone of destruction, tearing men limb from limb wherever the balls struck home. The gunners worked frantically to swab out their barrels after the last volley of roundshot and to load the new type of ammunition instead. For their part, the redcoats coolly brought the stocks of their Brown Bess muskets up into the aim position and awaited the order to fire.

The order was not long in coming.

“Fire!”

Over four thousand muskets fired almost at once, spitting raw vengeance at the men who had, until just seconds before, tormented them from the safety of a great distance. That safety now proved to be illusory, as the heavy iron balls slammed into the gun crews at short range. Each time a ball struck the barrel of a cannon, a thudding whang sound echoed along its length from the point of impact. Now it was time for the artillerymen to scream, as the murderous salvo scythed through flesh and bone alike. Hundreds of gunners fell, victims of the hideous trauma inflicted by the legions of Brown Besses. Some of the smarter ones had crawled underneath the gun-carriages, seeking such shelter as they could from the hailstorm they knew was sure to come. Most of them survived, though not all: one man took a ricocheted round in the abdomen, eviscerating a small section of bowel and starting an internal bleed which would kill him within moments; another had his nose blown clear away from his face, causing bubbles of red frothy blood to well up in the center of his ruined features.

A small handful of the big guns had been reloaded with cannister when the British volley struck, and now the surviving members of their crews took the opportunity of discharging them into the British ranks. Cannister was designed with such short ranges in mind, and had every battery been able to load and fire it in time, the effects would have been disastrous upon the red-jacketed line — as it was, the British ranks were still decimated by the relatively tiny salvo, with entire files of men being blasted halfway out of existence.

Arthur went down hard, feeling as though he had been swatted by the hand of vengeful and malevolent god. A high-pitched shriek that could never have been uttered by a human throat told him that Achilles, his poor Achilles, had been hit, and from where he lay supine on his back Arthur looked down the length of his body and saw that his mount was covered in blood, the blood from multiple cannister projectiles. With a grunt, he rose into a crouch and then duck-walked over to caress the wounded horse’s head, cradling it sadly in his hands. Achilles tossed his head back, flinching instinctively at his approach. Only the whites of his eyes were visible, and Arthur knew that the poor beast must be suffering the most intense pain.

He knew what must be done.

Placing his hands just so, Arthur kissed his faithful mount tenderly on the front of his face. Then, with a deep sadness that was belied by an expression of absolute stoicism, he applied a burst of vampiric strength and cleanly broke Achilles’ neck.

The mighty beast gasped once, and then sagged limply as the life left his broken body.

“Sleep well,” Arthur whispered, rising to his feet and casting about for his orderly. He was pleased to see that both the young Highlander and Campbell had survived the murderous cannister-fire without so much as a scratch, and held out a hand to receive Diomed’s reins. Smoothly, he vaulted up into the Arabian’s saddle, then took a moment to assess the situation.

As soon as the dust had settled, the British survivors methodically reloaded their muskets, with a calmness and an efficiency that was as impressive as it was deceptive. Many of the reloaders’ hands were shaking, for the effects of cannister fired a close range were fearsome indeed. Nonetheless, the redcoats did what they had been trained to do, returning their muskets to service in less than twenty seconds.

Finally, when each musket was once again loaded, their general gave the command for which every man was eagerly waiting.

“Bayonets!”

Very few of the enemy gunners were vertical any longer, and as tempting as it was to give them another volley, Arthur knew that the ammunition was better saved for the massed ranks of Maratha infantry that stood formed just behind the line of cannons. No, this would be wet work for the triangular blades that tipped each man’s musket, and as he ordered the British line forward, they were put to use with ruthless efficiency. The redcoats advanced, rolling over the Maratha batteries like one single living wave, and wherever a man moaned or so much as moved, a bayonet would lash out and gore him, puncturing a chest here and a throat there, until nothing remained on the gun-line but smoke and silence.

Arthur smiled with cold satisfaction as he surveyed the handiwork of his men.

Two could play at slaughter.

Unleashing the Beast

Standing at the rear of her white-coated battalion, Jamelia may not have known Arthur Wellesley’s precise position on the battlefield, but her heightened feline senses could at least point her to the general whereabouts of her nemesis. She felt her attention being drawn to the area at the far right of Pohlmann’s line, and craned her neck around to look at the place where the infantrymen of Saleur’s compoo were about to be on the receiving end of a bayonet charge.

The vampire was there. She knew that he was, and sooner or later she would have the opportunity to face off against him with a sword in her hand and vengeance in her heart.

Tread carefully, child, said a voice from somewhere deep inside of her mind. Take no unnecessary risks, for I have plans for you yet.

Yes, Dark Mother, she thought back with unthinking obedience.

Besides, Jamelia now had worries of her own. Snapping her attention back to the situation of her own battalion and compoo, the tigress saw that three rows of finely-honed bayonets were advancing towards her and the assembled ranks of her men, the faces of the men who wielded them set in grimaces of hatred and spite. Beyond them, most of the gunners — the cream of Scindia’s European artillery corps — lay dead or dying.

It would appear that it is up to us now.

Barked commands rippled along the British line, and her own men suddenly seemed a little less confident than they had at the outset of this engagement, when a line of heavy artillery stood between them and the enemy. The guns may still have been there, but they now sat silently smoking, no longer plying their bloody trade upon the redcoats, whose ranks had now slammed to a halt once more and brought their muskets up, over four thousand tiny black muzzles suddenly facing the Maratha infantry across a narrow stretch of killing ground.

She opened her mouth to give the command to aim flintlocks, but the British officers got there first, and volleys thundered along the face of the enemy line, hurling their payload of death into Pohlmann’s formation. The colonel-general himself was nowhere to be seen as the carnage cut down his men left and right, and her precious troops fell by the dozen in that first blast, clutching at holes in their bodies with which they had not been born. Through gritted teeth, Jamelia ordered her own men to return fire, and so they did, but with considerably less gusto than she had expected.

Redcoats fell, parts of their bodies punctured or shot completely away, and yet still they stood there, simply taking it as they had since the engagement had begun.

She fully expected the British regiments to reload and trade a few more volleys with her men, but to her surprise the redcoats lowered their bayonets into the charge position and began to advance. Jamelia frowned. Massed volley fire was usually the preferred tactic of a British commander, and she would have fully expected Wellesley to offset his relatively small number of infantrymen by using it here tonight. What was he about?

There was no time for either side to reload, for the first British bayonets were already ringing out against the blades of her own men.

Where was Pohlmann? She cast about from left to right, looking for her general, but thanks to smoke, darkness, and the ever-present fog of war, could find no sign of him. With a shrug, Jamelia mentally wrote him off. She knew that she had a battle to fight, here upon her own stretch of the front, and she was more than capable of running her own battalion. The grand strategic picture was the vampire’s responsibility, not hers.

It was time to unleash the beast.

Her sword rasped against the sides of its scabbard as she drew it out, turning to face the wall of red that had just slammed into the white ranks in front of her. Jamelia threw back her head and gave a battle-cry that was part roar, part growl, and threw herself towards the closest redcoat with murder foremost in her heart.

A Disaster Unfolds

From his position high above the battlefield, Anthony Pohlmann thought that he could foresee disaster unfolding in front of him.

Acting swiftly to try and corroborate an ill-defined sense of impending doom, the vampire acting-general had risen into the night sky and now held position slightly above and behind his own lines. It gave him the opportunity to get a true birds-eye view of the situation on the ground, and he was surprised not to see Wellesley or one of his underlings doing the same thing.

His center appeared to be strong, and he would have expected nothing less, for his own compoo was stationed there in anticipation of it bearing the brunt of this night’s fighting. Pohlmann rotated slightly to afford himself a better view of the left wing, where things were looking very bad indeed for the British. The two stray battalions had allowed themselves to be drawn even further towards the north, their approach taking them much too close to the village of Assaye, and so now found themselves being picked apart by the defenders of that particular strongpoint. Unlike the main gun-line, which had now been overrun by the redcoats and effectively placed out of action, the Raja of Berar’s cannon were still pouring a steady rain of fire down into the enemy ranks, where more soldiers were falling with horrific wounds by the moment.

No, it was neither the left nor the center which worried him — rather, it was his right wing that gave cause for concern, for it was there that the greatest mass of the enemy attack had struck home, and where the frenzied bayonet attacks were beginning to inject fear into the defending Maratha troops. Pohlmann willed himself to fly towards them, watching with the critical eye of an experienced battlefield commander as the battalions which were anchoring the right end of his line startled to buckle under the pressure of the British assault.

Suddenly, another vampire appeared by his side, flying in at such a high speed that at first Pohlmann thought that an enemy officer must be launching a personal attack; but the newcomer’s coat was blue and not red, and the only blue-jacketed men in the British ranks were cavalrymen, of whom this tall, aristocratic vampire was certainly not one. Pohlmann recognized him instantly. Like so many of Scindia’s foreign officers, Colonel Jean Saleur had served with some distinction in the French army, and had more than earned his reputation as a capable field commander.

“Your boys are breaking, Jean,” Pohlmann said guardedly, his eyes returning to the scene of outright carnage that was playing out some five hundred feet beneath their boots. Being cut down helplessly by long-range artillery fire had thinned out the British ranks rather nicely, he had to admit, but had also served to generate a deep reservoir of rage within the redcoats which was now being vented upon his own infantry at close range. Even as his eyes focused on one small section of his right wing, the vampire’s keen vision picked out the sight of a British corporal slamming the heavy wooden stock of his musket into a Maratha soldier’s chin, blasting out teeth in such a spray of blood that Pohlmann realized the man must have bitten his tongue. The wounded soldier’s hands flew up to his face, instinctively letting go of the flintlock that he had been holding, and his attacker swiftly reversed the musket and skewered his belly on the point of his bayonet.

When at first he did not reply, Pohlmann returned his attention to Saleur. The man’s face was a mask, but the Hanoverian thought that he could detect just the slightest hint of…was it shame, shame at the fact that his vaunted troops were already giving ground in the face of the British onslaught? Most commanders would have offered up platitudes in the face of such a remark, would have assured him that his men would stand, for it was easy to say when one was an immortal being floating high above the bloodletting; but Jean Saleur had not achieved his colonelcy without also attaining an affect of cold professionalism, that ability of cutting through the fetters of emotion and seeing the tactical situation for what it truly was.

“Yes they are,” Saleur replied. It was stated as a simple fact, with no more feeling placed behind the words than an order to serve dinner would have gotten. And what more could Pohlmann say to that? Coming from one as austere in outlook as Saleur, it was as damning an indictment of impending failure as he had ever heard. But then his subordinate pointed towards the distant gun-line and said, “Yet there may yet be reason to hope. Look there.”

Pohlmann followed the man’s outstretched arm, and when he saw the object of his attention, a slow smile spread across his pale features, for it seemed that more than a few Maratha gunners had been wise enough to lay down and pretend to be dead when the tide of advancing redcoats had rolled over them. Now, these men were back on their feet and straining to pivot some of the guns around one hundred and eighty degrees to face the rear of the British line.

Then slowly, the gunners began to load their cannon, aiming them at the backs of the unsuspecting redcoats.

Once and For All

“They’re breaking my lads!” Arthur roared exultantly, his silver-bladed sword held aloft in one hand. “The buggers are bally well breaking!”

And so they were. The Maratha troops, despite their reputation for being Scindia’s very best, seemed to have no stomach for a blade-to-blade fight now that their colleagues in the artillery had been defeated. As on so may battlefields, it was just one single incident which triggered the panic, one final straw that broke the camel’s back, and in this case it was the death by partial decapitation of a mortal captain from Saleur’s compoo, his head hacked halfway from his neck by a jemadar from the 1/10 Madras. The man had been a popular and greatly respected leader, and so his sudden and violent death sent shockwaves through the surrounding Maratha ranks.

First one man turned tail and ran, then another, and another…until finally, panic overtook all three battalions that anchored Polhmann’s right flank against the River Kailna.

They all broke and ran.

A cheer went up from the ranks of the 78th, and Arthur was of no mind to stop it at first, but when the Marathas bolted he saw that the kilted Highlanders were straining to pursue them like greyhounds at the start of race, and he immediately recognized the danger: if the left wing of his line were to run headlong after the broken enemy, it would leave those units in the center dangerously exposed.

No, far better to rein them in now and maintain both order and cohesion, Arthur decided. Spurring Diomed over towards Harness, who was mounted on a chestnut horse just behind the ranks of his Highlanders, he saw a look of grim satisfaction on the colonel’s face and thought that he could fathom precisely what the other vampire was thinking: we paid a terrible price to get here, and now we shall have our measure of enemy blood in exchange. Nor could he blame the man, for Arthur was experiencing that very same feeling welling inside himself, but revenge was a luxury which an army commander could ill afford.

“A magnificent job by your boys, Harness,” he began. The Scotsman touched the hilt of his claymore to the rim of his bearskin in a gesture that was part acknowledgment and part salute.

“Obliged to you, General. Now we’ll see these bastards off once and for all, eh?”

“No,” Arthur stated flatly, eliciting a look of surprise. “You must hold this end of the line, to the exclusion of all else.”

“But General, the enemy are broken and fleeing! It would be criminal to—”

“To waste this opportunity? Perhaps. But what would be even more criminal would be to allow our center to grow vulnerable simply so that we could pursue a fleeing enemy. It would be far too easy for your men to find themselves out in front of the rest of the army and dangerously exposed.”

“Aye, I suppose…” Harness didn’t sound entirely convinced, but he did seem to see at least some merit in Wellesley’s prediction. After all, there were still thousands of enemy cavalry located on this side of the river, and he didn’t much care for the possibility of them picking on his battalion as their first target of the night.

“Excellent. Now, have your lads reload and make ready for whatever comes next. We have won a small victory, but this fight is far from over.” Without waiting for an acknowledgment, he wheeled Diomed about and headed northward with his orderly and Captain Campbell in tow. The aide put on a burst of speed, closing with Wellesley until both men were riding side-by-side, and leaned in towards his general even though it was not necessary to do so, for vampiric hearing was incredibly sensitive. Old habits died hard, however, and Campbell could not help but yell his words across the gap between the two of them.

“I believe that we have a bit of a problem sir,” he began with characteristic understatement.

“What kind of a problem, Captain?”

“On the right, sir. Colonel Orrock…” Campbell searched for the proper words, a tactful way in which to couch it. Finally, he gave up, and said with a shrug, “Colonel Orrock appears to have gone stark raving mad.”

Orrock's Folly

Lieutenant-Colonel James Orrock was not by any means a bad soldier. The East India Company was not in the habit of promoting incompetents to any level of command, much less that of an entire battalion of its native troops. But somewhere along the way, the events of this night’s engagement had all gotten to be too much for James Orrock; the mounting stress of each new cannonball scything through the ranks of his men grated upon nerves already flayed raw by the dreadful anticipation of those cannon maws which waited for him and his men along the front of the Maratha line, like a great predator crouching in ambush for its prey.

Yet what was he to do, Orrock wondered frantically as he led his bastardized battalion of picquets towards the left of the enemy line. He could no more have turned down this position of command from the General than he could have swallowed a 12-pound cannonball, for a gentleman simply did not do such things, nor even contemplate such a disgraceful act. He was a commissioned colonel of the East India Company and had been given the signal honor of leading a battalion of the King’s troops in addition to the Company’s own native sepoys, and to shy away from that responsibility would be utterly unthinkable. Nor could he retreat from the cannon’s mouth while the rest of the British line was still marching forward into what he was convinced was certain defeat. The Maratha army was simply too strong — any fool with even half a brain could see that, so why couldn’t Wellesley? Beat their prime infantry, the vampire general had told them all blithely, and we’ll have beaten the rest by default. But just looking at the sheer number of enemy footsoldiers that awaited them in rank after rank, standing behind a wall of heavy artillery, showed that for the lie that it must surely be.

It was oh so easy for an entitled immortal such as Wellesley to casually order a charge against a ring of steel such as they now faced, for the vampire did not have to brave the storm of shot and shell himself, and even if he did, what harm could be done to one such as he? It was all so bloody unfair, Orrock raged, locked in his own personal world of frustration and terror, and so he did not see until it was too late that he was leading his battalion too far towards the north. Orrock rode in front of his men just as convention dictated that a colonel ought, and when he snapped out of his reverie he suddenly felt pitifully exposed and alone. Looking to his left, he saw that the King’s 74th were still sticking with him, Lord be praised, but to their left was a vast stretch of open ground where the Highlanders had separated themselves from the main body of men.

His mouth flapping open in shock, Orrock fought the urge to jam a clenched fist into it. He finally realized that he had committed that most cardinal of military sins, allowing the army to divide itself upon the field of battle.

This was how disasters happened.

At that moment, the world behind him exploded in a cauldron of blood and fury. Swinging around desperately in his saddle, Orrock craned his neck to see that an entire half-company’s worth of men — his men, the men entrusted into his care by the General — had just been taken apart, blasted into bloody chunks of screaming offal that screamed and wailed as they bled to death in the cold, harsh light of an Indian moon on a field that was, for many of them, so very far from home.

The guns of Assaye, so much closer on his right-hand side than he had realized they could possibly get, had finally spoken for the first time.

Orrock knew that it would not be the last.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lost For Words

Wellesley and his two companions rode north as though the very Devil himself were snapping at their heels.

Sparing a glance to his left, he saw that the center of the Maratha line was buckling but had not yet broken, its white-jacketed soldiers gamely giving the redcoats as good as they got. The fighting was pure hand-to-hand melee now, and for just a second Arthur fancied that he could see the figure of Jamelia, surrounded by a clutch of his own men, laying about her on all sides with a sword.

Time enough for that later, he remonstrated with himself, raking his spurs back and goading Diomed on to even greater speed. The mighty Arabian leapt over a tangle of British and Maratha corpses that lay in a jumbled heap, landing gracefully on the opposite side without breaking his rhythmic stride in the slightest.

What on earth did Orrock think he was doing? Arthur’s eyes grew wide at the sight that met them just instants later when he reached the part of the line held by the 33rd, for to their immediate right, where Wallace’s 74th should have been, was nothing but empty plain. He could see the 74th all right, but they were far, far out of position to the north, tucked in behind Orrock’s battalion of picquets…and they were advancing upon Assaye.

Arthur reined Diomed in to a halt, momentarily at a loss for words. Campbell came alongside him, and he too seemed to be stunned speechless by the spectacle that was unfolding before them. As both officers watched in incredulous silence, the artillery batteries that had been emplaced outside the town walls opened fire, speaking with one voice, a monstrous thunderclap that obscured their frontage with smoke. Tens of picquets fell with that first blast, cut down by the heavy lead shot which punched mercilessly through their ranks, annihilating everything in its path. Bodies and body parts were blown high into the air, whereas others quite literally disintegrated, reduced to a smear of red mist that rained down in droplets upon their still-living comrades.

And there, riding all alone out in front, was the solitary figure of Colonel James Orrock, looking to Arthur as though he were the loneliest man on the face of the Earth.

Orrock gave no orders or commands, issued no instructions to his men, but simply sat there, as if stunned into immobility by the horror of what was now unfolding before him. His horse continued to plod forward, leading him deeper and deeper into the killing zone before the walls of Assaye, and yet the Colonel seemed to live a charmed life, for not a single shot so much as grazed him or his mount; but the same could not be said of his men, more of whom died with every passing moment, swallowed up by cannonade after cannonade from the Maratha guns.

It was a massacre, Arthur saw, for no other word fit the description so perfectly. Already, more than half of the picquets were dead, and the 74th were still keeping pace with them, not willing to abandon their comrades in such a desperate position. With his enhanced vampire sight, he saw that one of the half-companies that constituted the battalion of picquets had been drawn from the 74th, and he knew with gut-wrenching certainty that Wallace had been unwilling to abandon that half-company of his precious Highlanders to Orrock’s stupidity, and had therefore elected to follow them into the very jaws of Hell itself. His own battalion was now suffering an equally heavy toll, and kilted bodies lay strewn haphazardly along the 74th’s line of march, most of them lying still and silent, but a few groaning and crying from the pain and shock of their injuries.

And still the cannons roared.

Now is the Time to Break Them

Sensing that the fortunes of battle may once again have swung in his favor, Anthony Pohlmann grinned from ear to ear.

The vampire colonel floated in mid-air behind the Maratha left wing, accompanied by the commander of those left-most compoos, Major John Dupont. The Dutchman was, if anything, even more gleeful than his superior at the events now transpiring within his sector of operation. Both vampires watched silently, almost believing it too good to be true, as two battalions of records which had peeled off towards Assaye now paid the ultimate price for their folly. Salvo after salvo from the heavy cannon smashed into the ranks of the beleaguered British, who could do little more than keep pressing onward, ever onward, into the maws of the guns themselves. That was how the main gun line had been overcome, Pohlmann cautioned himself, but in this case it was an unfair comparison, for that had been eight battalions advancing upon eighty guns, whereas in this case just two battalions were being turned into mincemeat by a little under forty.

It was turning out to be a bad night to wear a red coat, the Hanoverian thought, his grin widening to expose the full length of his elongated canine teeth.

Suddenly, the leading British battalion — at least, what was left of it — stopped dead in its tracks. Pohlmann had seen this phenomenon on the battlefield before. Sometimes a unit would reach its tolerance threshold, finally exceeding its willingness to soak up more punishment. Such units would not advance one step further, no matter who led them, and if the sight of the pathetic lone figure on horseback who sat out in front of them was any reliable indicator, in this case their leader was mentally unhinged.

The second battalion wavered uncertainly for a moment and then also stopped. Pohlmann and Dupont could practically read his mind, for it took little imagination to place themselves in the boots of that commanding officer. To stay or to go — endure the pummeling of the enemy guns until no man remained alive, or suffer the almost-worse shame and ignominy of retreat, abandoning their comrades in the process?

Now…now is the time to break them.

Pohlmann turned to face his subordinate, laying a hand firmly on Dupont’s shoulder. The Dutchman knew what the order was going to be before it was even spoken.

“Major…you will send in your infantry and cavalry, if you please. Finish off the stragglers, so that we can begin the business of flanking Wellesley’s line.”

Counterattack

To the south, Wellesley saw that the Maratha army was in full retreat, its right flank swinging away from the British battalions like a door closing itself; fierce fighting still dominated the center, where the men of what had to be Pohlmann’s compoo were still refusing to give an inch, going toe-to-toe with the redcoats in a brutal melee of swords, bayonets, and pikes; but to the north, things had just taken a turn for the disastrous.

He experienced a moment of indecision that was deeply out of character, watching helplessly as the picquets and the 74th were bled to death by the enemy gunners. Then, just when Arthur thought that it could not possibly get any worse, the situation deteriorated even further. Maratha horsemen suddenly emerged from behind the infantry lines, streaming eastward towards the vulnerable pair of battalions. Thousands of them came on, and behind them the massed ranks of enemy infantry started to march forward, plainly determined to bludgeon his right wing to death.

Fortunately, he still had one card left to play. No infantry reserve remained at his disposal, for the sheer size of the Maratha army had not allowed him that luxury…but there was still Maxwell and his cavalry, which he had left posted in the rear with the responsibility of keeping his right flank secure. That flank was surely threatened now, and along with the flank, his entire army.

Pray God that he was not too late, and yet when Arthur turned Diomed in preparation to make a run for Maxwell’s position, he was ecstatic to find that the canny cavalry officer had already anticipated his instruction, for the blue-coated dragoons of the 19th were already in motion; their jackets were nigh-impossible to see at night, even under the light of a baleful moon, but the dust plume that was kicked up by the hooves of their horses was quite unmistakable, and based upon the sheer amount of it, the squadrons of native cavalry were also accompanying them.

Leaving Diomed in the capable hands of his aide, Arthur dismounted and allowed himself to rise high into the night sky, taking in the full scope of the battlefield. The entire contingent of British cavalry was now bearing down on the stricken 74th and picquet battalions, but it was painfully obvious that Maxwell’s men couldn’t possibly reach them in time to stave off a massacre.

Death of the Picquets

It is so often the case that when their senior officers fail them, the junior officers and their NCOs will take charge in an attempt to avert disaster, however vain that attempt may be. With Orrock near-catatonic, a sergeant from the 78th’s assigned half-company sprinted from what remained of the ranks and near-dragged him from his horse, drawing him back to the main body of men. It was an incredibly brave attempt, Wellesley saw, made even more so by the sheer volume of matchlock and cannon fire that peppered the ground around the two men. Orrock’s body was limp and slack, so the sergeant hauled him up and over one shoulder in an undignified but undeniably effective carry. He took a firm grip on the colonel’s forearm as he ran, huffing and puffing, for the illusory safety promised by what remained of the once-proud makeshift battalion.

The sergeant dumped the colonel unceremoniously to the ground at the feet of a captain named Sullivan, who rewarded him with a smack on the arm, the nod of one fighting man acknowledging the brave deed of another; there was little time for any more formal recognition, because a horde of whooping and hollering Maratha cavalry were bearing down upon them, tulwars drawn and gleaming in the moonlight.

Sullivan and his juniors worked to form a rough semblance of a square, the only possible defense for infantry to employ against enemy cavalry, merging those men still standing from the picquets and the 74th. Every British soldier was well-versed in such a maneuver, for it meant the difference between living and dying in the face of enemy horsemen, and despite their ranks being depleted to just a third of those who had at first marched confidently but then with increasing horror behind Orrock this night, they were still able to present a square with four mostly-equal sides, ringed with fixed bayonets that all but invited the Marathas to do their worst. The few remaining survivors of Orrock’s folly, bloodied and battered though they were, were now fighting mad and ready to dish out a little of what they had already received.

Unfortunately, a square is the most desirable target in the world for an artilleryman, and in the few minutes before the Maratha cavalry struck home, the gunners of Assaye got in a few more costly licks, their deadly payloads reducing still more British soldiers to bleeding and crying shadows of their former selves. As the cavalry grew closer, the fire slackened as the gun captains grew fearful of hitting their own men, and so they were content to sponge out their barrels, reload, and watch the contest that ensued.

Despite their very best efforts, the Maratha horse irregulars were unable to break the square on their first charge, and Sullivan’s men kept their nerve, reloading and firing at the cavalrymen swarming around their tiny little square. Though sporadic, the notoriously-inaccurate muskets were firing into a target-rich environment at almost point-blank range, and almost every ball found a home in the flesh of a Maratha, be it man or horse. Those enemy riders who fell were efficiently spitted with bayonets, and before too long a makeshift carpet of corpses was forming around the feet of the British square, the dead bodies making it much more difficult for the horses to approach within stabbing range.

Dupont’s cavalry were dispirited, for they had expected to do little more than ride down an already weakened, perhaps mostly defeated enemy, only to find themselves confronted by the hated square formation, and one filled with men who were willing to use their muskets and bayonets to increasingly deadly effect.

Then came Maxwell.

The charge of the 19th Dragoons and their comrades of the native cavalry regiments struck the irregular Maratha horsemen like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. Riding knee to knee in two lines, the British horsemen charged home with maximum shock effect. They broke the back of the overconfident Maratha cavalry in moments, flicking out their sabers in almost casual sweeps and strokes that nonetheless inflicted the most horrific lacerations. Their mounts were both stronger and more powerful, bred expressly for war and sold to the Crown at a pretty penny indeed.

It was simply no contest, for the 19th was a finely-tuned mobile killing machine, trained for the sole purpose of taking the point and the edge of their sabers to the enemies of the King.

“That’s it!” Maxwell called, baring his fangs wolfishly. His eyes burned red in the darkness, light from the twin orbs making him look like nothing so much as an avatar of damnation. “Run for your lives, you cowards!” He backhanded with his saber, taking an enemy’s head cleanly from his shoulders and sending it spinning high into the air.

Whether or not the Marathas listened to him, they most certainly obeyed, turning tail and bolting for the safety of the River Juah to the north. The fleeing cavalry splashed into the water, fording their way across towards the north bank, and for a moment Maxwell considered giving chase, but he was canny enough to take into account the broader picture — for he had been tasked with guarding the army’s right flank, a task which he had just executed superbly and with minimal loss of life to his own men, and yet the Maratha infantry were starting to move forward on the extreme end of the left wing in a move which threatened to engulf the right flank all by itself.

That could not be tolerated.

Not even bothering to wipe the dripping blood from his blade, Maxwell quickly set about forming his men once more for the charge. Once they were assembled to his satisfaction, the cavalry officer took up his customary position in the vanguard and led them at a trot towards the Maratha infantry. Keeping well-clear of Assaye and its gunners, the British cavalry closed in on the left flank of Pohlmann’s line, streaming passed the ragged square of survivors, who waved their shakoes in the air excitedly and cheered the horsemen on with cries of “go and get the bastards!”

From his vantage point mid-way between the north and central sectors of the battlefield, Arthur was thinking that very thing himself. Scindia’s men had no time to form square before the British cavalry were upon them, and then the slaughter began anew. Many of the dragoons had right arms that were dyed completely red from fingertips to the elbow, so much blood did they shed in the next ten minutes. Maratha soldiers scattered to the winds in the face of their assault, many dropping packs and muskets in order to lighten the load as they fled, splashing breathlessly across to the opposite bank of the Juah.

It’s crumbling! Arthur exulted internally, striking a fist into the palm of his other hand. They’re in full retreat to the south and now the same thing is happening here in the north. If only the center will hold out for just a little while longer, we shall be able to flank them at both ends and put an end to this.

There was finally a ray of light for him to cling on to, an increasing likelihood that his sheer audacity in the face of this David-versus-Goliath competition was going to pay off in the best way possible, for there was no way that Scindia’s army could stand now, not in the face of a double-envelopment maneuver.

From behind him and the rest of the British line, the Maratha gunners in the first line of guns chose that particular moment to open fire directly into the backs of the unsuspecting redcoats.

From Out of the Shadows

None was more surprised than Arthur himself when a volley of roundshot coming from several of gun batteries which his men had already cleared slammed into the rearmost ranks of his redcoats all along the line.

Fortunately, the majority of the Maratha gunners who had fallen in the first assault truly had been dead; only a relative handful of batteries were back up and firing again, and those with roundshot rather than the more lethal cannister.

“Those guns were supposed to be taken, damn it!” Wellesley roared, the entire night’s accumulated frustration and anger finally bubbling up to the surface and demanding release. “Captain Campbell!”

Colin was at his side in an instant. “General?”

“My compliments to Colonel Harness…he is to take the 78th and sweep those cowardly bastards from their guns.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Every body is to be bayoneted, Captain. Every one. We’ll have no repeat of this little surprise, or I’ll be damned.”

“Of course, sir.” Campbell turned and galloped away, seeking the tall colonel of Highlanders.

“Playing dead, of all the blackguardly…” Arthur hissed under his breath, his voice trailing away as he finally regained control of his anger once more. Well, the Maratha gunners would pay dearly for their cowardly ruse now, for the Highlanders would take no little glee in stabbing each and every one of them to death.

No time to dwell on it now, for there was a great deal of work still to be done, and Arthur launched himself into a flurry of movement and issuing orders. He was doubly glad now of his insistence that Harness and his men remain in place, rather than giving them their head to pursue the fleeing right wing of the Marathas, for they would make short — and this time permanent — work of the enemy gunners. He dispatched two of the Madras Native Infantry battalions to guard against a flanking attack from the group of irregular Maratha cavalry now massing in the southwest. Connolly and his 33rd were his last stop, and bolstered with two of the EIC native battalions, they were charged with keeping the pressure upon the now-buckling enemy infantry of Pohlmann’s compoo.

Wellesley knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that here was where the battle would either be won or lost, and so he took the opportunity of collecting the single remaining fresh unit of horsemen, the 7th Native Cavalry. They had sat out the charge at Maxwell’s insistence, in order to keep some kind of cavalry reserve, and now it was a card that the General fully intended to play, hopefully to maximum effect.

Riding at the 7th’s van, Arthur aimed for the far right end of the Maratha line. Steering well-clear of the red-jacketed men of the 33rd and its two sepoy companion units, the vampire general drew his sword and angled in towards the vulnerable enemy flank. The Indian cavalry at his back were every bit as fearsome as their dragoon counterparts, and they tore into the men of Pohlmann’s compoo with savage gusto. The tips of their lances gored and punctured white-coated flesh, and the Maratha troops now found themselves helplessly caught between the anvil of the British infantry and the hammer of Wellesley and his cavalry.

The vampire general killed by the light of the moon until the blood of his enemies drenched his sword arm up to the elbow, fangs bared and a savage joy warming his ice-cold heart. The red mist descended, that old familiar companion which fought to unman him when the blood flowed.

Dan Nichols and the men of the Shadow Company were also up to their necks in blood, they were relishing every minute of it. The 33rd had taken its share of casualties during the march upon the Maratha guns, and now that the tables were turned, revenge was proving to be so very sweet indeed. Slamming the wooden stock of his Brown Bess into the gut of the closest enemy soldier, he swung the weapon up in an arc and drove the bayonet’s blade down between the posterior ribs, just to the left of the man’s spine. The collapsing corpse pulled the musket down with it, where it stood bolt upright like a flagpole. Gripping the musket firmly, Dan jerked it free with a sucking sound reminiscent of extracting a boot from a deep puddle of mud. The steel blade was slick with blood.

Looking up to find his next opponent, the Company Sergeant Major caught sight of something even better: his general.

“General Wellesley, sir!” Dan had recognized Diomed of course, but there was also no mistaking the slender, almost willowy rider in his perfectly-tailored red jacket and commander’s sash that cut and thrust his way expertly through the enemy ranks. Hearing his name despite the chaos raging all around him, Wellesley jerked his head sharply around to look, and the CSM almost recoiled from the bloodthirsty expression he wore. No blood stained his mouth, which told Dan that the General hadn’t yet stooped to drinking from the throats of his enemies.

Thank the heavens for small mercies.

Guarding the man who was once their colonel and was now their commanding general was one of the Shadow Company’s prime functions, and it had not sat well with either Dan or any of the Shadows that General Wellesley had seen fit to dispense with their services as bodyguards, choosing instead to use those fairies on horseback, the men of the 19th, as an escort while he had scouted out the enemy dispositions. When the 33rd had been placed into the line of battle, the Shadows had taken their place without complaint, and yet all had kept one eye on the few flashes of their vampire general as he crossed the battlefield on Diomed’s back.

A small cluster of Shadows had also caught sight of their general, and tried to form a protective ring of steel about him, with Dan taking position in front of the mighty Arabian charger, but Arthur was having none of it — the fury was upon him now, and the chance to vent his rage upon the enemy was all that mattered now. Break the enemy here, a small voice spoke in the back of his mind, and the battle was as good as one. All else was mere detail.

And so he fought, guiding Diomed with his knees and cutting down Marathas as though they were wheat.

The tigress came out of nowhere.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Revenge at Last

Slowly but surely, the redcoats were cutting her men to pieces.

It was partly her fault, Jamelia knew, for she had trained the men to an exacting and sometimes brutal standard of professionalism, and their confidence had swelled in direct proportion to their fighting skills. Now, the men were unwilling to fall back as the rest of Pohlmann’s troops were reluctantly doing, choosing to stand in place and die on the blades of the British rather than to lose face.

Looking around, she knew that her battalion’s back was now broken. Bodies in white lay all around her, covered in their own blood and that of their enemies. The men had given a good account of themselves, but that had not saved them from the redcoats’ wrath, and now little more than a handful remained, yet still they matched weapons with their opponents despite the almost certain guarantee of impending defeat.

She had never been prouder of them, but it was time to end this, once and for all. Just three hundred yards for her right, she caught sight of her prize — that most hated of all British officers, the man who had murdered her father…Arthur Wellesley. The vampire was either unaware of her presence or simply chose to pay her no heed, but either way, it was a situation that would soon be remedied. Jamelia turned and bolted, running to gain the cover of a fallen tree not far behind their position. She hurdled the dessicated trunk without breaking stride, dropping into a crouch on the opposite side, and began to strip off her clothing.

There came the popping of bones and the strangled sound of a shifter changing her shape, a semi-human body elongated and twisting out of all proportion as it assumed an entirely different form.

Just moments later, the woman was gone. All that remained was the tigress.

The sleek, muscular feline form was optimized to hunt and kill. Jamelia began to lope, then broke into a run, her stride eating up yard after yard in a blur of stripes and fangs.

When Wellesley was ten feet away, she sprang.

Jaws clamped around the vampire general’s forearm, crunching down to the bone. Black ichor poured out from the wounds, and the ornate sword fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. When the weight of the pouncing cat slammed into him with all the force of a cavalry charge, Arthur was thrown from his saddle and hurled to the ground. Yellow teeth snapped closed just inches from his prominent nose, forcing him to grasp the beast by her throat and try to squeeze the life out of her windpipe. His wounded arm hung limply at his side, but the regenerative process had already begun, and it would soon be serviceable again. He focused on his one good hand, simultaneously throttling the tigress and attempting to thrust her vice-like jaws away from his vulnerable face.

It was Jamelia, he knew beyond all shadow of a doubt: the Sultan’s daughter had come for her revenge at last.

Go For the Throat

The Shadows had anticipated the possibility of a face-off against the enemy’s European vampire officers, and so had wisely chosen to affix their silver bayonets to their musket lugs. They had also each brought along a handful of silver musket balls, each one worth a small fortune if it were to be sold, but Dan hadn’t give the order to load with silver yet because the Shadows and their entire parent battalion had been engaged in heavy fighting against line infantry that were, for the most part, all too human in nature.

Dan had no trouble in recognizing the leaping tigress as Jamelia, for he had seen her years before at Seringapatam. Although the shifter had been in her human form for most of that grim and bloody night, he had suspected that ever since her escape into the darkness following the storming of the city, she would return to seek revenge on the man who had killed her father – and now here she was, roaring out of the darkness to strike that very same man down.

Not if I can bloody well help it.

Jamelia broke through the loose protective ring of Shadows with ease, barreling through two of the momentarily-stunned redcoats with a single jump. Both men were knocked from their feet, though neither was seriously injured. As the vampire general was driven to the hard earth by the great cat’s surprise attack, Dan reacted purely upon instinct. Pivoting about on the ball of one foot, he took four nimble steps around the thrashing body of Diomed, whose chest was flayed open to the ribs and pouring out blood. The wounded animal whinnied piteously, and seeing the brutality inflicted upon a horse that he had developed a great deal of affection for — one of the few living things in the entire world for which his general held any genuine affection — sent the CSM into a blind fury.

The tigress lay atop Wellesley, pinning his empty and bleeding sword arm against his side with one huge paw, and the vampire general fought back with his remaining hand, exerting every ounce of preternatural strength in his body in an attempt to resist her bite. There was a time for deeds rather than thoughts, and so Dan lunged at her with his musket, driving from his back foot, slamming the triangular silver blade halfway into the great cat’s haunch. He would have preferred to have aimed for the neck, but most of the long feline body was directly on top of Wellesley’s own, and if the silver bayonet happened to miss Jamelia and stab the general instead, the wound would be grievous…if not fatal. And so he reached for the low-hanging fruit, working on the premise that a flank wound was better than none at all.

Half-maddened by the silver’s bite, the tigress threw back her head and roared, tearing the night apart with the sound of her fury. All that she had been able to focus upon was the pale, haughty face that she most loathed above all others in the world. It had been close, so maddeningly close, to her powerful jaws, and all it would have taken to rip the sanctimonious mask away from the vampire’s skull was just a miserable few inches more, just a fraction of further exertion…and then her hind leg was suddenly on fire, waves of blinding agony shooting outward in all directions. Turning, she saw the puny little man who had possessed the temerity to stab her. His legs spread wide and braced in order to give him leverage, the British NCO twisted his musket and jerked it out of her already charred and blackened haunch.

He would die for that.

With her nemesis forgotten for the most fleeting of instants, Jamelia rounded upon Nichols and crouched, digging the razor-sharp talons of her back claws into the stunned Wellesley’s thighs, coiling her muscles in preparation for springing upon the upstart Englishman and tearing out his throat.

She sprang, claws extended and forelegs reaching for the red-jacketed man, who struggled to bring his bayonet around in time to fend her off.

There was no way that he could possibly make it in time.

“Look out, Sarn’t Major!”

This was a new voice, and suddenly a second body was standing in between her and her prey. The man held a sword out in front of him in an attempt to ward her off, but the weapon was conventional Sheffield steel without a trace of imbued silver, and so proved to be little more than an annoyance when it bit into her right foreleg. Jamelia landed on him like a ton of bricks, driving his body to the ground. She both felt and heard the crunch of breaking bones beneath her on impact. Somehow the one that had stabbed her had managed to scuttle away out of range, but this interloper was here under her jaws and claws, and the raked those claws across his face and throat, flensing it open to expose muscle and bone underneath. Blood gouted from the four parallel lacerations, gushing over the flaps of skin which hung from the man’s ruined face.

His scream was like nothing she had ever heard, the music of pure agony expressed in song. The man struggled against her weight but he was mortal, and could therefore offer little resistance as Jamelia crawled backwards down the length of his body and sank her jaws into the muscle and tissue of his chest, then dug her teeth in and began to worry the soft pulp loose.

Wellesley was on his feet now, his sword arm already mostly healed from the bite of the tigress, and looked about him for his fallen blade. A cloud passed clear of the moon and revealed its resting place to him. It lay in the dirt some fifteen yards away, so near and yet so far, for the tigress was slashing and clawing at the screaming figure who had had the courage to place his own body between the CSM and certain death.

Arthur started to move towards the pair, put on a burst of supernatural speed, and wrapped his arms around Jamelia’s neck, embracing her from behind. The great cat bucked wildly, seeking to hurl him clear, but the vampire held fast and refused to be shaken. Tightening his grip and drawing back his arms, Arthur slowly worked the beast’s head backwards until he could see flecks of blood around her nose, mouth, and whiskers.

The blood of Colin Campbell.

Campbell’s broken body seemed more dead than alive, for it hemorrhaged life from no less than a score of wounds, and yet incredibly, miraculously, it still moved. The face was little more than a mass of blood and gleaming bone, yet red bubbles gurgled out from between the Captain’s ruined lips.

He was still alive – barely.

Then something else drew Arthur’s attention, a soft, pitiful whimper from behind him. Arthur twisted his head around, unwilling to loosen his grip upon the tigress by even a fraction. What he saw there lit an ice-cold fire in his belly, and he knew then with utter certainty that this black creature must die.

Diomed, his poor, brave Diomed, lay dying, his ribs exposed to the open air. Arthur’s ultra-sensitive hearing picked up the sound of his faithful mount’s mighty heart slowing, slowing, and then finally taking its final beat.

Suddenly the red mist was back, and far more intense than ever before. I should have hunted you down and killed you after Seringapatam! Arthur raged inside, twisting the shifter’s muscular neck backward and to the side in an attempt to break it cleanly in two, just as he had done with Achilles – though that had been a sad necessity, whereas this would be nothing less than pure satisfaction. Campbell would still have been in one piece. Diomed would have lived. Well, damn you, but there shall be no more!

From the corner of his eye, Arthur caught sight of Dan Nichols making his way groggily towards the fallen silver sword, no doubt with an eye toward tossing it to him, but there was simply no time for that. Jamelia bucked and squirmed once again, more forcefully this time, and her shifter strength meant that she might even be capable of breaking free of a vampire’s grasp if this were allowed to go on. Yet try as he might, he just could not snap her neck. It was simply too muscular and strong.

Tightening his grip even further, Arthur summoned up every last ounce of strength that he possessed and then kicked upward with both feet, using the plain as a springboard. At the same time, he willed his bodily density to decrease – not to such an extent that he would lose his grip upon the still-struggling tigress, but just enough to allow him to propel them both high into the air.

Arthur’s body began to gain momentum, rising more quickly as he gained height. Jamelia had somehow managed to break his grip partially and with a growl she lashed out to ,swat him with a paw, its claws raking bloodless furrows across the flesh of his cheek and cutting their way through the thick red cloth of his jacket in four parallel lines. Powerful teeth snapped at the air just inches from his nose, holding the threat of bone-crunching force if they should actually close on his body. Arthur simply ignored her assault, his face a mask of concentration as he forced the sensation of pain to a distant corner of his mind. His every thought was focused upon one single goal: climb higher.

The vampire wasted neither the time nor the effort to look down, but if he had, he would have seen the spectacle of a Maratha army in the advanced stages of crumbling being played out hundreds of feet below him on the field of Assaye. Scindia’s men were in full retreat, and it was fast becoming a rout as panic spread through the ranks and Pohlmann’s men splashed their way northward to the far bank of the Juah. Maxwell, who had been hit several times by enemy fire, had simply shrugged off wounds that would have killed a mortal man and continued to lead his cavalrymen against the near-broken foe. His dragoons and native horse worried constantly at the Marathas’ heels, harrying and hounding them as they scattered to the four winds.

Wellesley tightened his vice-like grip on the tiger’s neck and torso even further, his supernaturally-enhanced muscles visibly straining in the attempt to strangle the life out of the creature which had robbed him of his beloved horse and most valued aide. Yet Jamelia stubbornly refused to succumb, choosing instead to sink her teeth into her adversary’s shoulder. Wellesley did scream this time, for the claws and bite of a shifter could hurt him every bit as much as the edge of a silver weapon. So focused was he on the struggle at hand that he missed the sight of Anthony Pohlmann hurtling through the sky behind him, rising in an arc above the battlefield like a rocket from its cradle.

Ever the professional soldier above all else, Pohlmann knew a battle lost when he saw one. The emotional part of the Hanoverian’s brain was still more than a little stunned at the reversal suffered by his army, unable to quite believe that such a drubbing could have been inflicted upon his pride and joy by such a numerically inferior force, but that was a question for another day — when he saw the lines of his compoo finally break beyond all repair, he realized with utter certainty that his first duty was to live to see that day arrive. Regrettably, that meant the ignominy of flight, both literally and figuratively.

But first, there was a score to settle.

His nemesis was not hard to pick out, even amongst the chaotic maelstrom of the battlefield. Wellesley was soaring high above it all, continuing to climb with what Pohlmann soon realized was a certain tigress held tightly within his clutches.

Perfect.

Another volley of concerted musketry slammed into the white-coated men all around him, the remnants of Jamelia’s battalion. Her second-in-command, Bindusar, had been desperately trying to hold them steady for the past few minutes, yet as more and more fell to the bullets and bayonets of the redcoats, the diminutive officer’s task had gotten harder and harder. Finally, Bindusar went down with a heavy lead ball embedded in his chest. Blood gouted from both his open mouth and the new hole between his ribs, and his was face screwed up into a mask of agony as the life drained from his body. Pohlmann felt the blood-lust spark within him, provoked by the sight and smell of the life-giving fluid now staining the plain before him. The vampire shook his head to dispel it. There was no time to feed now, he knew. He had to get away, reach one of the Maratha fortresses…Gawilghur, perhaps, he mused. Yes, Gawilghur would be perfect, for the place was damned-near impregnable, or so it was said.

His sword scraped clear of its ornamented scabbard in one single, fluid motion, and the Hanoverian gripped it tightly in his right hand. Willing himself up into the night sky, Pohlmann left the fragments of his once-proud army in the dust beneath his feet as one might discard a worn-out old coat. The Highlanders and sepoys surged forwards like an unstoppable tide, putting those who were too slow to take flight to the bayonet, yet none of it mattered to him now; all that mattered was the red-coated figure that his vampiric vision could still pick out some one thousand feet in the air above him and to his right, a figure upon which he was closing rapidly with every passing second.

Specially crafted for just such an opponent by an armorer from Bremen, Pohlmann’s silver blade gleamed in the cold light of the moon and stars.

“Submit to the inevitable,” Arthur hissed into Jamelia’s ear, which twitched with irritation at the merest sound of his voice. He injected a soothing, saccharine undertone that was often the last thing a vampire’s victim ever heard, pouring honey in the form of words in an attempt to manipulate their will. “Give in now, and I shall end your life quickly and with mercy.”

“As you did for my father?” the tigress growled, her words sounding unnatural coming from the feline mouth. “Dead upon his back in a stinking tunnel?”

“Yes. Think of it as a familial courtesy, if that makes you feel any better.” Arthur knew that Jamelia could not see the callous smile he now wore, but could tell from her continued struggle that his attempt to supernaturally glamor her wasn’t turning out to be very effective.

“You dare—” the tigress hissed angrily.

Arthur didn’t hear the sentence to completion, because suddenly his world was engulfed in a torrent of blinding light and pain of such magnitude that it blotted out everything else in existence. Fire blazed through him, seeming to originate from a place in his left flank just below the kidney. He reached for the spot, unable to stand the new-found agony for even an instant longer and clamped his palm over a gushing puncture wound that was already necrosing at the edges. Whatever had done this had to have been silver, Arthur knew, for his insides were aflame, burning like a miniature sun within his left side and abdomen.

His grip on Jamelia was now lost, and the tigress twisted in the air as gravity’s clutches took hold, turning to rake her claws across his face and throat once more. This time, viscous black ichor spurted from the deeper lacerations, tearing his flesh and musculature to ribbons. The vampire general opened his mouth to scream out a cry that threatened to shred his vocal cords, and then suddenly he was falling; they both were, tiger and vampire, falling earthward, the vampire enveloped in a deeply personal world of pain, whereas the tigress simply knew fear, true fear, for perhaps the first time in her entire life as the ground rushed up to embrace them both.

Grimly satisfied, Anthony Pohlmann sheathed his still-dripping blade and watched them both fall out of sight into the darkness below. It was a pity about Jamelia, the Hanoverian reflected, and he supposed that if he had truly cared about her, then it might have been possible for him to arrest her fall and return her to the ground safely. But he was already thinking ahead, and planning for every foreseeable eventuality. Somebody was going to be held responsible for this disaster, after all, and a conveniently dead battalion commander might just make for the ideal candidate.

Yes, the Hanoverian thought to himself as he increased speed and flew far away from the accursed field of Assaye, it was Jamelia who failed, and not I. A fiction was already forming in the back of his mind, a believable narrative that would lay all of the blame for this outrage at the dead woman’s door. Jamelia’s battalion had taken fright and run, he nodded as the story began to crystallize, causing the center of my compoo to buckle and break. That had caused the entire middle of the line to collapse, and with in, Scindia’s army.

Pohlmann overflew the fortified village of Assaye, heading northeast towards the distant fastness of Gawilghur, and was disgusted to see that the Raja of Berar’s men were already abandoning the place to the enemy. Gunners hitched their cannons up to limbers, then began to whip the horses frantically into motion, dodging and weaving their way through the press of soldiers that was streaming away from the field of battle.

There would be another day to defeat the British, Pohlmann knew, but it would have to be somewhere other than here. His men had performed admirably to begin with, gouging bloody chunks out of the British army on the plains below, and they had inflicted grievous wounds upon Wellesley’s ranks that may even yet prove to have broken the back of that tiny little force.

Yes, Pohlmann thought to himself as he rode the gusting winds aloft, perhaps this is no true defeat after all, but merely a stalemate…

Even now, the commander of the British cavalry was calling his men back from their pursuit along the north bank of the Juah, perhaps recognizing that his men were in great danger of finding themselves too strung out and vulnerable to the surviving Maratha cavalry who even now skulked uncertainly around the field’s edges.

Yet Wellesley was finished, and that was no small thing. Pohlmann’s adept thrust of the blade had been a little too lateral for his liking, but it had struck home nevertheless, puncturing his opponent’s flank with a point furnished from the purest of silver.

Who would command the British now? The old man, Stevenson, and his tiny little army that had failed to even find the field this day, let alone take to it? Pohlmann laughed harshly. Although competent, Stevenson was no Wellesley, and Wellesley himself was now ended. A smile played at the corners of his lips. There may be opportunity here, Pohlmann reasoned.

All in all, not such a bad day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A Fall From Grace

After falling at terminal velocity for a few interminable seconds, Arthur’s body hit the surface of the River Kailna as though it were a wall made of the strongest brick.

The impact knocked all sense from him, leaving the vampire little choice other than to allow himself to be lost within the cold, dark embrace of those swift-running waters, until after what seemed like an age he finally slammed into the river’s bed, kicking up a cloud of silt and pebbles all around him. Arthur simply lay there, alone in the murk, slowly gathering himself and refocusing his senses. He could hear as well as feel his bones knitting themselves back into their original shape once more, for so many had been shattered rather than cleanly broken by the sheer force of his collision with the Kailna.

His flank wound was fortunately not fatal, something which was rather amazing when one considered the fact that if the blade had penetrated further and struck one of his vital organs, he would have burst into flames and died screaming in even greater agony. The silver weapon had delivered an excruciating injury, yes, but not a definitive one. He would retain a scar on his side for the rest of his days, Arthur knew, but then so many vampire officers did after close calls such as this one. They tended to serve as excellent reminders for one to be cautious when in the face of the enemy.

Squinting, Arthur thought that he could just dimly make out the glowing circle of the moon shining down through the gloom above him, distorted by the passage of the water as though it were a roughly-ground glass lens sitting between him and the night sky.

One thought suddenly edged out all others, pushing its way to the very forefront of his mind. His men: he could not simply leave his men under the guns of the Marathas, or the great swarm of enemy cavalry that still remained unbloodied on the field.

Looking about him for any sign of the riverbank, Arthur suddenly realized that such an attempt was pointless, for there was no way of telling the north bank from the south in this inky blackness, and so he strove to plant his booted feet underneath him, thinking to gain leverage and then propel himself up to the surface.

Then he saw it.

The object, whatever it was, gleamed dully in the darkness just a few feet away. Driven purely by curiosity, Arthur pushed himself through the icy cold water with several smooth and graceful strokes, drawing him ever closer to the object until finally his vampiric vision could see it for what it truly was.

A sword.

Not just any sword, Arthur thought as he squatted down against the resistance of the water and slowly scooped the weapon up by its hilt. This was the sword of a European officer, most likely a Frenchman if he was any judge, and although it was impossible to ascertain how finely balanced the blade was while submerged under water, Arthur could tell from the intricate nature of its design that somebody had lavished a great deal of time and money on bringing this particular sword to life, for the metal of the blade was heavily interlaced with silver.

Well, imagine that…my blade is gone, lost to the battlefield above us. I fancy that this shall make a more than suitable replacement.

Without warning, the great cat suddenly came at him out of the darkness, her face a mask of blood and rage. In the glimpse afforded to him in the instant before she struck, Arthur just barely had time to see the damage inflicted upon her once-proud and haughty features by the fall that had broken most of his own bones, and must therefore have taken a crippling toll upon hers. One eye was missing from its socket, which now poured a trail of inky black blood into the surrounding water. Jamelia had also lost several teeth, probably smashed from their sockets by the impact; and yet she still had ample teeth remaining to inflict the most horrific of injuries upon him, a fact that was reinforced quickly as tiger claws sank into the flesh of Arthur’s shoulders, sending fresh waves of pain lancing through him. Her mouth gaped wide before him, now seeming to come at him at the slowest of slow speeds as time distorted itself in this cold, dark underwater place.

Arthur felt as though he was struggling through sticky molasses rather than water. He was fighting to bring his newly-acquired sword up and into the guard position in order to fend off his feline nemesis, yet he was too late, for as the claws sunk into his shoulders and fractured one of his clavicles, it was all he could do to bring the blade up and around in an arc towards the creature’s left side. Even then, he knew that it was going to be late, far too late; and yet he had to try, for that was what was expected of a King’s officer, to never surrender in the face of the enemy, and so as the yawning abyss came slowly forward towards his grimacing face, closing out the entire world to his senses except for that rancid, bleeding maw, Major General Arthur Wellesley rammed the tip of the French blade into the side of the looming tigress with every ounce of strength that he had left.

The Last Stand

When the first fingers of sunlight emerged to stain the lightening eastern sky, signifying the imminent arrival of a cold, grey dawn, one thing was painfully apparent to both the British and Indian combatants alike: the bodies of the dead were slowly emerging as the true victors on the field of Assaye.

The Raja of Berar’s men had known full well that they occupied a strong defensive position both in and around the village, and yet a new enemy had suddenly emerged, one that turned its ire upon both British and Maratha alike. The corpses of those who had fallen, whether wearing a coat of the brightest red or robes and turbans of many assorted colors, were all suddenly freeing themselves from the embrace of death, clambering to their feet, and lunging for the closest living soul in order to satisfy their perverted and insatiable desire for flesh and blood.

Now, the dead outnumbered the living, and more were rising with every passing moment.

In the center of what had until recently been their regimental line, David Pace and a handful of his fellow redcoats had clustered around a severely-wounded officer.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Captain Campbell, sir,” Pace said with a sense of reassurance that he most definitely did not feel. “We’ll soon have you out of here.” He had just dragged back his musket to the full-cock position after reloading, and as a Maratha corpse stumbled towards him, Pace allowed it to get within ten feet before pulling back on the trigger. His Brown Bess belched smoke and flame, followed a fraction of a second later by the creature’s face imploding as the heavy lead ball took it straight between the eyes. The creature fell silent immediately, dropping lifelessly to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

There was no response, and Pace looked down to where the officer to whom he now felt a definite fraternal attachment was shivering uncontrollably, his teeth chattering in a face that would be hideously scarred even after Doctor Caldwell had managed to work his surgical wonders upon it.

The morning was cold, Pace knew, but it was most probably the loss of blood that was causing the gravely wounded officer to shiver. Keeping a watchful eye out for any corpses that threatened to come after them, Pace shrugged off his tattered red jacket and laid it gently across the Captain’s upper body, snugging it firmly against his blood-encrusted neck and chin.

Eight men remained with him now, a tiny bodyguard for a man who might die even if he did get medical treatment. For a moment Pace was tempted to run, but he cast the thought angrily from his mind. Campbell was a good officer and a decent man, which was far too rare in the British Army. He wasn’t going to let him die alone. It simply wouldn’t be right.

A lone cavalryman blew past their small circle. One of the privates called out for help, but the rider ignored them, galloping away towards the east. The sky above the battlefield was slowly beginning to lighten, and what Pace saw filled him with dread.

There was no British army left, just scattered and uncoordinated groups of men dotted across the plain. Ragged bursts of musketry told him that they were facing the same undead horror that he and his brothers were now up against, as the bodies of the fallen lurched upon their positions with ever-increasing numbers.

Campbell blinked and spat out a gobbet of blood to clear his throat.

“Don’t let me die like this, Pace,” he wheezed, clutching at the enlisted man’s ankle for emphasis. “Help me…onto my feet, if you please.”

Uncertainly, Pace leaned down and took the captain’s outstretched hand. It was trembling, and his grip was as weak as that of a newborn.

“Look out!” bellowed one of the redcoats, and Pace looked up to see three kilted corpses staggering towards him. He brought his musket up, but knew — stupid, stupid! — that he hadn’t reloaded it after the last shot.

Standing between the monsters and his captain, David Pace leveled his bayonet with resignation, and got ready to sell his own life dearly.

This Waking Nightmare

From his position amongst a handful of the King’s 33rd, Colonel Michael Connolly could well believe what was happening, for this was surely just another instance of the horror that had inflicted itself upon the small British army after the storming of Ahmednuggur; only this time, the nightmare was writ large in scale upon a much greater canvas, and the horde of the re-awakened dead now numbered in the thousands, with more potential recruits lying scattered across the plain, patiently awaiting their turn to join it.

“It’s a nightmare,” muttered Dan Nichols, shaking his head with disbelief from his position at the colonel’s side. “A bloody nightmare,” he repeated.

“No, CSM. A nightmare is something from which one eventually wakes,” Connolly corrected him, much too reasonably for the CSM’s liking. “I have a sense that we’ll be dealing with this particular horror for quite some time to come. Far longer than a mere night’s slumber, at any rate.” As if to emphasize the point, the figure of a blood-splattered sepoy came at them both out of the pale early morning light, with a mouth questing hungrily for flesh and its arms outstretched like claws. The creature staggered drunkenly, as though it were full to the gills with arrack, and uttered a low, keening moan that spoke of both abject torment and an all-consuming hunger.

Dan slammed the butt of his Brown Bess into the creature’s face, squashing the nose flat in an explosion of blood and smashing out several teeth at the same time. The creature barely blinked, continuing to come for him, the colonel now completely forgotten as the senior NCO supplanted him as the target of the creature’s lust. Cursing, Dan reversed the musket and lunged, jabbing the point of the triangular bayonet into the dead sepoy’s open mouth. The creature’s wail became a strangled, gargling cry as the blade lacerated its tongue and angled upwards through the soft palate in the roof of its mouth. As soon as the bayonet’s tip penetrated the brainstem of the reanimated corpse, the creature dropped to the ground as though pole-axed, dragging the heavy musket down with it. The CSM planted one foot on its chest and with a grunt, twisted and hauled the weapon free, being careful to keep the spatters of blood away from his uniform and that of his colonel, who had watched the entire incident without comment.

“Nicely done, CSM,” Colonel Connolly said with a nod of approval. “Keep on like that, and we’ll have to promote you.”

“I think that the RSM will have something to say about that, sir,” Dan replied, referring to the Regimental Sergeant Major, who was the ultimate non-commissioned authority — and the closest thing to the right hand of God — in any King’s regiment.

“I haven’t seen the RSM since all this started.” Connolly sounded ever so slightly worried. “Let us hope that he has made it through unscathed, eh?”

“Yes, sir.” Dan agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment. Not only was the RSM a decent sort, but he was damned if he’d want to take on that level of responsibility. Herding the Shadow Company and keeping General Wellesley safe were more than enough…he paused, suddenly overtaken by a cold chill.

General Wellesley.

Where had he gotten himself to?

Dan looked around, yet all he saw was clusters of soldiers banding together to stave off the horde of the living dead. Bodies were still rising all across the plain, and yet the General was nowhere to be seen.

“Sir,” he said urgently. “The General—”

“— is more than capable of looking after himself,” Connolly finished, suddenly feeling tired to his very core. “We must look to the army, CSM, and must do it now, while there still is an army for us to look to.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Dan was confused, born in part from his own utter exhaustion.

“I mean that whoever commands the army now must issue the order to retreat, unless he wishes to lose it in its entirety. These…things, for want of a better word, shall soon outnumber the living. If each man that falls rises again from death and joins their horde, we shall all find ourselves as their companions before too long.”

Dan didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know that there was anything left to be said, for he knew deep down that Colonel Connolly was absolutely correct. If they were to have any chance against this swelling horde of monsters, the plain of Assaye was the last place to make a stand.

“I’ll see to the men, sir.”

Connolly appeared not to hear him, yet finally acknowledged the remark with an absent-minded inclination of his head. The Colonel’s thoughts were lost in calculation, as he pondered the sheer number of fallen combatants that were visible all around him, scattered across the plain on both banks of the Kailna and the Juah.

Sweet Lord, he thought bitterly, how can we possibly come back from this?

A Walk Among the Mortals

None saw the naked blue-skinned woman making her way across the plain of Assaye.

This was entirely by design, for Kali did not wish to be seen. Even the hungry corpses let her pass by, not pausing even to look up from where they feasted upon the bodies of those who had not yet been reanimated by her dark blood-magic.

She passed a knot of three redcoats, all of whom were standing back to back and trying desperately to fend off a much larger circle of their undead brethren, men who had been their comrades in arms until just moments ago, when their lives had been taken by a Maratha bullet, blade, or shell. Now they were little more than vicious predators, hungrily circling the sweating trio, whose jabbing bayonets became increasingly frantic as the crowd grew.

Kali snapped her fingers casually.

Three bayonets fell from the ends of the soldiers’ barrels, falling harmlessly at their feet. As the terrified redcoats scrabbled in the dirt to retrieve them, the undead horde swarmed them hungrily.

The Goddess smiled. It was the small things in life that afforded the most pleasure, she reflected, finally arriving at the north bank of the River Kailna. Kali simply stood there for a few heartbeats, gazing down into the dark waters below as though searching for something. Then, as though satisfied that she had found it, she extended a hand palm-downward, sweeping it across the surface of the river six times in a complex and intricate pattern, the meaning of which was known only to her.

Nothing happened for several minutes. Then a shape, grey and indistinct, began to grow larger beneath the dark waters, ponderously making its way toward the surface.

Kali turned her back and walked away, her form growing less and less distinct with every step, until finally not a trace of her passing remained on the field of Assaye.

All that was left were the terrified living, and those who hunted them — a hungry army of the risen dead.

Author's Note

When students of the campaigns of Sir Arthur Wellesley get together, they often like to debate that most fascinating of subjects: which was Wellington’s greatest battle?

The great man himself had no doubt whatsoever. When asked that very question (or more accurately, of which battle was he the most proud?) Wellesley is known to have chosen not Waterloo or Talavera, not Salamanca or the storming of Seringapatam, Gawilghur, or Badajoz; no, the Iron Duke chose instead the set-piece engagement that took place outside a little-known village in India that goes by the name of Assaye.

If one studies the strategic and tactical situation today, it is little short of amazing that Major General Arthur Wellesley decided to ever fight there at all, let alone when he was facing such outrageous odds and with his army divided into two halves. Yes, it is true that Wellesley planned to reunite his small force with that of Colonel Stevenson before attacking the much-larger Maratha force, and yet even had things worked out that way, the small army of redcoats and sepoys would still have been shockingly outnumbered.

That he fought at all is a testimony to the man’s courage, bravado, and sheer guts.

There is no shortage of excellent reading material for those who are interested in the life of Arthur Wellesley. In terms of pure biography, the twin-volume set written by Rory Muir should make for required reading, as should Christopher Hibbert’s eminently readable Wellington: A Personal History. As far as primary sources go, the Duke’s own dispatches open an invaluable window onto the great man’s manner of thinking, and are even today held up as the very model of brevity and succinctness.

This was a general who kept his calm in the face of great adversity, not to mention the crippling uncertainty of dealing with odds that would have broken a lesser officer, or at least sent him scuttling back to Seringapatam with his tail between his legs.

Jac Weller’s fabulous Wellington in India is perhaps the single most indispensable guide to Wellesley’s formative campaigning, yet when it comes to the matter of Assaye, I highly recommend Simon Millar’s terrific Assaye 1803: Wellington’s first and ‘bloodiest’ victory, which is illustrated by Peter Dennis. The book does a wonderful job of detailing the fire and maneuver carried out on the small, blood-soaked plain outside what was, until that night of 23 September 1803, little more than a footnote on a map. Nor would it do to overlook Bernard Cornwell’s page-turner Sharpe’s Triumph, for one can hardly write about infantry combat in the Napoleonic era without being influenced by Cornwell and the escapades of Richard Sharpe.

This book is quite plainly a fantasy (the vampires should be an obvious give-away) yet it is one rooted firmly in the history of the time. Nonetheless, where the needs of the story have merited it, I have taken a number of quite shameless liberties with that selfsame history. The 33rd, for example, were not even present at Assaye, and I have shoehorned them in as an extra battalion in Wellesley’s army, for in the universe of Wellington Undead, the great general is rather attached to the regiment which would one day bear his name, and fancy that he likes to employ them as both a personal guard force and as “shock troops” to help deal with threats of a supernatural nature. I am sure that the reader will indulge me, and if not, I hope that it will not spoil one’s enjoyment of the tale too much.

Disrespect is intended to none of those personalities who feature within these pages, particularly to the Hindu Goddess of the Dead herself, Kali. For those who are followers and devotees of hers, I can only say that I needed an adversary worthy of Wellington himself, and that Kali more than fit the bill. You may rest assured that our hook-nosed vampire general has not seen the last of her.

Special thanks are due to my wife Laura, who painstakingly proofread the manuscript prior to publication. Any errors contained within are mine.

I truly hope that you have enjoyed reading this book, and if so, would graciously consider rating it at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. The support of readers like your good self will help ensure that Britain’s greatest vampire general will once more march to the sound of the guns when his country calls. Thank you.

Richard Estep,

Longmont, Colorado

November 2015