Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  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 c
lose, 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.