Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  “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 t
he 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!”