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 squeak
ed. 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.”
Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2) Page 16
