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 tha
t 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.
Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2) Page 14
