Almost as if the enemy had read his mind, one of the figures who was standing proudly on the Mysore defensive line gave a shout and gestured in Arthur’s direction. Arthur was surprised to see the figure of a running man – a man wearing a British Army jacket, no less – haring across the broken ground that separated the two armies. At a glance, he took in the fact that the man’s hands were bound behind his back, and also noted the three white chevrons sewn onto his sleeve.
At least now we know what became of Sergeant Belton.
He had made it to no more than two hundred feet from the front rank of the 33rd when a single musket shot sounded. Sergeant Belton’s head was slammed viciously forward in a welter of blood. His legs ran on for just a few more steps before his body collapsed limply to the ground and lay there, unmoving.
Wellesley blinked in surprise at the incredible accuracy of the shot. Just who was this marksman, that he could hit a moving target, in the dark, with a smooth-bore musket, a weapon notorious for its inaccuracy at anything beyond short ranges? His eyes quickly settled upon the man who was holding the smoking musket, was even more surprise to find that he was in fact a she.
The incline was getting steeper and the ground rockier. Diomed was handling it well, however, and Arthur steered the horse gently using a combination of pressure from his knees and the occasional light touch on the reins. Major Shee had taken up position on the left side of the line. Vampires or not, it would not do for the regiment’s two senior officers to be within striking distance of the same cannonball while anywhere on the battlefield. The undead were practically immortal, yes. But practically was profoundly different to absolutely.
The 33rd was now at about the extreme range at which muskets would be lethal. Arthur dismounted gracefully, and still holding Diomed by the reins, placed the tips of two long fingers lightly at a spot just two inches above the horse’s nose.
“Diomed: stay.”
With the light holding glamor now conferred, Arthur took his customary place on foot, just to the right of the battle line. He could smell Sergeant Belton’s freshly-spilled blood, could smell it quite keenly in fact, an unmistakably coppery undertone carried upon the night air.
The sergeant still hadn’t stirred, continuing to lie motionless just two hundred feet away. His heart is still beating, Arthur realized, although his breathing is strangely irregular and shallow. Perhaps the musket ball had only clipped his head rather than actually penetrating the skull, although he was convinced that he had heard bone fracture and shatter when the projectile had struck home. He debated sending a handful of men to go and retrieve the man; he was, after all, a member of the 33rd and by extension a part of Arthur’s responsibility as its colonel; but Arthur also knew that the welfare of no one man could be placed before that of the regiment achieving its objectives. Belton would have to wait.
Something was emerging from within the haze of smoke that perpetually wreathed the enemy-held ridge up ahead of them, and whatever the something was, it appeared to be very big.
It turned out to be a column of the Sultan’s infantry, every man clad in a tiger-striped tunic and marching in close step with one another. Regarding them down the length of his aquiline nose, it was easy for Arthur to believe that the enemy column was aimed directly at him, and at him alone.
Putting all thoughts of the wounded sergeant from his mind for the moment, Arthur gripped his sword firmly and began to issue orders.
“33rd! 33rd…halt.”
Seven hundred pairs of boots crashed to a half on the same step.
Smartly done. Damned smartly done. It was though the regiment were parading on the drill-ground, so smooth and precise were their movements.
“The 33rd will prepare to receive the enemy.”
Wellesley had briefed his officers carefully on the march out from camp, making sure that even the lowliest ensign was aware of their commanding officer’s overall intent. The men would march with muskets loaded and primed. Once they came within reach of the enemy position, there would be no benefit to the regiment simply standing there and trading volleys with the Sultan’s troops. The soldiers of Mysore held the advantage of a defensive position, and Wellesley hadn’t been at all sure that they had not spent even more time hastily fortifying it prior to the British attack. No, this was going to be all about the bayonet work. One volley would be fired to soften the enemy up, and then the Redcoats were going to have to charge them.
“We shall get stuck in with bayonet and blade,” he had told the officers firmly. “One volley, and then in we go. Is that absolutely clear?”
Apparently it had been clear, because the men of the 33rd smoothly brought their muskets up into the aim position when he ordered it and prepared to receive the enemy as instructed. The enemy infantry continued to close, but this time it was the British who would deliver the first volley. It was only when his entire forward arc of his view was filled with tiger stripes that Arthur gave the order to fire.
Seven hundred fingers pulled back seven hundred triggers at almost the same instant. The resulting roar was thunderous, practically deafening the two long lines of redcoats who had caused it. Their colonel had waited until the range had narrowed so much that there was simply no way the British muskets could possibly have missed. The musket-balls had created utter carnage amongst their intended targets, scything cruelly through the first few ranks in a maelstrom of blood and soft tissue damage that turned the top of the crest into an abattoir.
Hundreds of the enemy soldiers had gone down with that initial volley. The lucky ones had been killed outright, taking shots directly to the head and chest. Those who were less fortunate had been gut-shot, left alive with the promise of a slow and excruciating fever-wracked death from the infection that would almost surely follow, or hit in the pelvis and had to be left bleed to death.
No matter how well-drilled they may be, some soldiers would always fire low, particularly if they were anxious, and so there were more than a few wounds to the legs and hips of those in the front ranks. Blood gushed from open thigh wounds, where the jagged ends of shattered femur bones poked out from underneath the torn skin. Even those shots which had failed to damage a major blood vessel were perfectly capable of shattering bones, breaking the legs and hurling the victim to the ground.
A collective howl of agony went up from the front ranks of the enemy column, an expression of agony and anguish which was nauseating to hear. Yet still the Sultan’s soldiers came on, driven almost entirely by adrenaline and a very real fear of what their master would do to them if they should fail this night. Those soldiers who had been fortunate enough to have been shielded by the meat shields in the front ranks counted their lucky stars, and offered up both thanks and prayers to their gods that it had been somebody else this time, those poor bastards up in front, that had been forced to bear the brunt of the British volley; and still they kept coming, continued to march towards the waiting redcoats, even though it was necessary for them to trample over the corpses of their own dead comrades and over the writhing, shrieking bodies of their wounded in order to get at their enemy.
Then, upon Wellesley’s order, the men of the 33rd lowered their bayonets and charged.
“Now,” he said to the men, “you may cheer.”
And cheer they did. The redcoats also howled, whooped, hollered, and roared, determined to make the most of their colonel’s newfound laxness. Whatever it took to get their blood up, to keep it pounding in each man’s ears and to drown out the soft voice of fear that wanted to paralyze them, was entirely acceptable to him. Some men soiled themselves in battle, Arthur knew, and indeed one or two had, for he could smell it now, coming from at least one of his own men in the Seventh Company. It was of no great import. Just so long as they charged when he ordered it and fought as though the very Devil himself were behind them when they got there, then all else was inconsequential to him.
Some of the Tipu’s men were drunk. To be fair, some of Wellesley’s were also under the influence of
the cheap arrack that got passed around in the ranks, and he suspected that one or two of the officers had taken aboard a little more brandy or rum from their hip flasks than was strictly proper during the march up here, when they’d saw that he wasn’t paying attention. His keen vampire nose could smell it. The truth was that Arthur didn’t mind strong drink so long as it did not unduly impair the drinker, and if the sort of courage that motivated a man to charge an enemy battle line was of the liquid variety, then that was mostly acceptable in his book. It was only when the drinker became a drunkard like Ponsonby that it became a problem.
The tiger-striped warriors of Mysore made a valiant effort to counter-charge the onrushing redcoats. Far too many of them tripped over their own dead and wounded, falling flat on their faces and providing fresh obstacles for those coming up in the column behind them. Without having had time to fire a disciplined volley, the Sultan’s men instead loosed off individual shots at their red-coated adversaries. In the heat of close-quarter battle, many of these musket balls missed their mark, although a handful did take British soldiers to the ground.
With a disjointed clash of steel ringing upon steel, the blades of the 33rd clashed with those of the Tipu’s soldiers. The fighting quickly deteriorated from being a clash of two discrete armies, into a desperate hand-to-hand melee that owed more to a brawl in a public house than to an organized battlefield engagement.
No quarter was either given or asked, by either side. Arthur came forward with his sword held at the ready. Out of the corner of one eye, he watched as a private of the 33rd slammed the point of his bayonet into the belly of an enemy soldier, expanding the gored wound by twisting the musket expertly, just as he had been taught. Bracing his legs firmly, the private wrenched the steel-tipped weapon once to the left, then once to the right, before finally jerking the bayonet point out of his opponent’s abdomen. Thick ropes of bloody intestine followed the blade out, dragged along by one sharp edge. The pulsing, eviscerated lengths of bowel began to steam gently in the cool night air. Their owner collapsed to the ground, drew his knees in to his chest, and began to squirm.
The colonel nodded his approval.
One aspect of the Dark Gift which Wellesley truly relished was that of supernatural speed. A fully-rested vampire who had recently fed was capable of feats of great strength and of great speed. When employed on the battlefield, such gifts could be utterly devastating to the enemy.
Arthur moved with a grace and agility that no living man could possibly come close. He danced lightly on feet that were moving so quickly that they were almost a blur, and yet there was an economy of motion to this particular dance, with not even a fraction of energy being wasted. Arthur lunged at a ferocious-looking tiger-warrior, thrusting the point of his blade past the charging enemy’s musket and in between the second and third ribs on his left side. The man had scarcely begun to fall before Arthur pivoted, took eight nimble steps in rapid succession, and speared the tip into the side of another enemy who was in turn preparing to stick a fallen redcoat with his own scimitar. The sword blow took him completely unawares, slicing through skin, muscle, and finally kidney. When the blade was effortlessly withdrawn in a single fluid motion, it unleashed a spray of bright crimson blood.
All of Arthur’s senses were attuned to a hyper-acute level now. Being surrounded by so much freshly spilled blood tended to do that to a vampire, and he could not help it. His teeth had fully extended, like two stalactites descending from the roof of a cave. Although he had already fed earlier that night, the blood fever struck him again like a physical blow. The sudden onslaught of bloodlust caught him unawares, the craving for it coursing through his entire body all in the span of a single moment.
He had been in the presence of freshly-spilled blood many times before, of course, but never in such copious amounts. This was his first major engagement that was truly worth the name. He wondered how the others were feeling, how they dealt with the inner burning that threatened to tear apart the body out of sheer need; how did Shee, Baird, even Harris cope?
You are a King’s officer, Arthur remonstrated with himself. Moreover, you are a Wellesley, a creature of breeding and culture. With that terse reminder, some of his usual self-control began to return. Not all of it, not by any means, but enough at least for him to regain a degree of self-mastery. Arthur was able to distance himself from his physical body, seeing it from the outside in the manner of a dispassionate observer watching a play being performed upon a stage.
Arthur went into a graceful pirouette, but with the sword extended at arm’s length; the blade took off the heads of three of the Sultan’s men, slicing through their thick, bullish necks with ease; he then dropped smoothly into a crouch, launched himself into a sideways leap which covered almost twenty yards, and dropped once again, this time plumb in the middle of a cluster of enemy soldiers. Their faces barely had time to register surprise before Wellesley’s blade swept through a flurry of thrusts, cuts, and slashes – six in all, one stroke of the blade for each man. Six corpses obliged him by falling to the ground, each one sporting a skillfully-administered lethal wound.
An insect crawled along a branch somewhere just behind him and to his right, the noise of its legs as loud as the enemy cannon fire in his ears. Arthur could not name the insect, but knew that it had eighteen legs, so acute had his hearing and focus become. He made a conscious choice to tune the distraction out, refocusing his attention on the black-bearded giant of a man who was now aiming a musket in his direction and slowly taking up pressure on its trigger.
To a vampire, the mere pull of a trigger could seem to last for days. Arthur slipped sideways to escape the musket’s line of fire, and then sprang forwards with his sword arm outstretched. He was coming at the Hindu soldier from an entirely different angle now, and the man’s eyes widened beneath their brushy black brows as he realized that his musket had discharged itself not at the British officer, but rather into the space behind him in which another of the Sultan’s infantry soldiers happened to be standing. The ball took the oblivious victim high in the back, entering to the left of his thoracic spine between the shoulder blades. It hit a rib, angled downwards even as it continued to travel forwards, and blasted his heart to pulp.
His mortified killer gaped at the musket held in his hands as if he had never seen it before, let alone used it to inadvertently kill a comrade The gape widened for an instant, and then the man’s face went completely slack. Wellesley’s sword had entered his mouth, expertly inserted between the two rows of gleaming white teeth, and exploded from the back of his skull in a spray of blood. He sank to his knees, and then fell silently to the ground. Wellesley kept a grip on the hilt of his sword, and withdrew it with a single, fluid shrug of his wrist.
Another threat was coming his way, he sensed, this time a lighter projectile, a pistol ball. Arthur rocked casually backward at the waist, allowing the ball to pass just inches by his face before going on to bury itself in the trunk of a nearby tree, throwing out a tiny shower of bark and sap. The man who had fired it was obviously an officer, judging by the gold hooped earrings and the multitude of necklaces that he wore around his neck. In his hand was a still-smoking pistol, but he quickly dropped it and drew a curved scimitar from a sheath that was tied to his waist by a pale blue sash. He was massively muscled, with corded arms that were thicker about the wrists than Arthur’s thighs.
An officer? Arthur smiled, which had the bonus effect of turning his opponent’s blood to ice water. The fangs tended to do that. Let’s see what you are made of, old chap. He brought his sword up and into the guard position, expecting the Indian officer to do the same. Instead, the man began to work the ungainly blade through a series of sweeps and dips. The pattern repeated itself, as the scimitar slashed from high to low, then climbed upwards to waist height before continuing on up to reach the high position once more.
For the briefest of instants, Wellesley toyed with the idea of using one of the brace of pistols which he carried, to end the contest
before it had even begun. He swiftly dismissed the idea. A gentleman should match steel with steel, he firmly believed, and while his opponent may not meet the true definition of “gentleman,” he was at least an officer. Shooting him in order to end the challenge would simply be vulgar.
Arthur stepped in to meet him blade to blade. The two weapons clanged against one another, then separated with a shower of sparks. The brief contact seemed not to have thrown his enemy off in the slightest. The Indian warrior continued to work his scimitar aggressively and with no little skill, slicing and carving the air in a series of increasingly intricate patterns. This was plainly an attempt to intimidate, Arthur knew. To an inexperienced swordsman, the whirlwind of steel would appear impenetrable, but to one possessed of vampire reflexes, it was little more than child’s play.
Judging his moment to perfection, Arthur lunged. Timing his thrust to the split-second, he plunged the point of his blade into his enemy’s abdomen, angled upwards to slip underneath the breastbone. His thrust ran both smooth and true, slicing his opponent’s heart neatly in two. Propelled by superhuman force, the blade kept traveling, shearing through muscle, bone, and connective tissue until finally it poked through the skin of his enemy’s back. Arthur saw a look of horrified fascination freeze on his opponent’s face. He looked slowly downward, seemed unable to believe that his guard had been penetrated by this British officer with the cold, cruel smile. His jaw dropped slackly, releasing a single gobbet of drool which was already beginning to turn red.
The two men eyed one another silently for what seemed to take an age, but which was in reality less than a second. Arthur dipped his head in salute, silently acknowledging his opponent’s courage. The scimitar fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. He withdrew his own blade cleanly, was surprised at how little blood accompanied it.
“Colonel!”
Arthur turned, his enemy already forgotten. “Corporal…McElvaney, isn’t it?”
The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 11
