“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 s
ufficient 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.
Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2) Page 5
