CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The first of the elephants was practically upon them now, could not have been more than forty yards away from the front ranks of the 33rd. Its companions were charging along behind it at staggered intervals, and that, Wellesley realized, was the problem. Those intervals weren’t very big, with no more than fifty or sixty yards between elephants. Once the first volley was fired at the leading elephant, there would be precious little time to reload before the remaining five beasts struck the British line.
It will be carnage. Utter carnage.
Baird was obviously thinking the same thing. The Scotsman’s claymore cleared its scabbard with an ominous rasp. “We can’t expect the infantry to see them off all by themselves. Gentlemen, what say you we offer the rank a file a little helping hand?”
Shee eyed the steadily-brightening eastern horizon with concern, but there was not the slightest tremor in his voice when he said, “You may count on me, General Baird.”
“And I, of course,” Arthur added. The company commanders also drew their swords in silent support. They were King’s officers, and nothing more needed to be said.
“I may be a little rusty, but I believe that I can still face down an elephant with the best of them.” All heads turned to face General Harris, who had unsheathed his own slim blade and now held it defiantly at his side. “Well, don’t look so surprised, gentlemen.” He flashed them a predatory smile, the points of his sharpened teeth just visible beneath the top lip. “This campaign is, after all, entirely my responsibility. So let us put paid to Tipu’s last feeble hope, and then chase the bugger down and end this once for all. Shall we?” He gestured inquisitively with his head towards the attacking elephants.
Before any of them could say a word, the redcoats in just the front rank unleashed their volley. The leading elephant suddenly became a pincushion of red holes, and the beast collapsed to the ground just ten feet away from the British line. It lay there, mewling piteously, until a well-meaning sergeant from the rear rank took pity upon it and put a musket-ball through the top of its skull.
The team of three who had been riding on the animal’s back had been thrown clear when it hit the ground, the jolt of impact snapping the buckle on the leather harness which secured the firing platform to it. There were a couple of broken bones sustained during the fall, but this didn’t matter in the slightest because three Shadows promptly broke ranks for a second and ended their lives with a swift thrust of the bayonet, before darting back to their assigned places again just in time to receive the second elephant’s charge. This time, the men of the rear rank fired over the shoulders of their comrades, putting hundreds of musket balls onto their target at almost point-blank range.
Now they were down to four, and the 33rd had nothing else to face them down with other than their bayonets.
Moving faster than the human eye could see, the British officers suddenly appeared to materialize directly in the path of the charging war elephants. The redcoats gave a ragged cheer – let the colonel be angry with them afterwards! – as the vampires began to dart between the creatures’ legs, slicing at them deftly and then dancing out of the way before moving in for another strike. It was pure poetry in motion, and simply knowing that these creatures of darkness were on their side buoyed the morale of the British soldiers immensely. Encouraged by their NCOs, they began to reload frantically, keeping one eye on their muskets and the other on the fight taking place directly in front of them.
Time itself seemed to slow down around Arthur as he entered that vampiric fugue state which had served him so well during moments of crisis. His senses were heightened once more, hyper-alert to all that was going on around him. He was aware of the positions of each of his fellow officers and their relationship in space and time to the enemy war elephants and the battalions of soldiers all around them.
Baird and Shee were working together to hamstring one of the beasts, and making a great job of it by all appearances. Arthur had just slashed the edge of his blade against the back of one of his elephant’s knees, and then threw himself into a backwards somersault that afforded him the opportunity of grabbing a tusk for leverage with his left hand and driving himself upwards in front of the creature’s face.
A genuine shame to have to do this to such a magnificent beast, he thought with just the slightest pang of remorse; Arthur plunged the point of his blade deep into the elephant’s right eye. The creature howled as blood and a torrent of clear, viscous fluid gushed from the ruined organ. Unfortunately, the blow had not been deep enough to penetrate the skull and pierce into the brain. Arthur continued to fling himself across the wounded creature’s face, slamming both boots down hard on a spot located just between its eyes and using the thick, bony skull as a place from which to launch himself up onto the canopied platform atop the elephant’s back.
Three of the Sultan’ men gaped at him in surprise, none more so than the gunner who had been in the process of swinging around the flared barrel of a firing piece towards the animal’s head, obviously planning to blast him to smithereens with it. Arthur recognized it to be a blunderbuss; such guns fired a fan of shot outward in an ever-expanding cone, tearing apart anything that was unfortunate enough to find itself in the weapon’s arc. This particular weapon was pointed directly at him, and even with the relative slowness of passing time and the incredible speed of his vampiric reflexes, Arthur knew with utter certainty that he would not be able to avoid this particular blast.
You will almost certainly survive this, yes—but it is going to hurt like the very devil.
His hyper-acute senses slowed the flow of time down even more, forced him to take in everything going on around him in minute detail. He felt the rolling motion of the wounded animal swaying beneath his feet, stomping irregularly in the aftermath of the damage he had done to its legs, tossing its head violently from side to side in its agony and terror at being partially blinded. The man who was steering the beast was now reaching for a pistol that he had tucked into the bright yellow sash at his waist. The second gunner did not seem to be aware of Arthur’s presence at all, focusing all his attention down the barrel of a musket that he was aiming towards the figure of General Harris, himself fighting his way to the top of a neighboring elephant’s firing platform. Lastly, there was the man who was about to turn Arthur’s world into one of nothing but pain and thunder; his shock-widened eyes were already changing their shape, eyebrows squinting as they focused on this newer, more immediate threat. The cruel, thin-lipped mouth was changing from an incredulous ‘O’ into a broad smile. Arthur tried to dodge anyway, but he was moving far too slowly even in vampire time; he seemed to be moving about as quickly as a fly caught in amber. He saw the gunner’s finger tightening upon the trigger, applying incremental force to it, heard the slow, drawn-out click of the mechanism beginning to fire, and recognized the futility of his attempt to avoid the blast that was surely coming.
Arthur’s gaze continued to sweep downward, past the man’s tiger-striped tunic, frayed green silk trousers, and rough leather boots, somehow drawn to a humble clay pot that was being used to store ammunition for the gunners.
For the first time on this entire campaign, Colonel Arthur Wellesley finally knew the sting of fear. By the Dark Gift, he thought, suddenly horrified at the realization of just precisely what those shining little balls were. The devils are using silver.
He was going to be ended.
The trigger finally clicked back into place, causing a spark and subsequent flash in the frizzen. Arthur watched with a detached sense of fatalism as the fluted barrel exploded with light, noise, and sound, began to spit silver pellets at him, saw the agent of his doom coming straight towards him and knew that there was nothing whatsoever that he could possibly do about it.
I shall not close my eyes, Arthur thought resolutely. If die I must, then I shall die on my feet with a blade in my hand, facing my adversary with my eyes wide op—
“Wellesley!” cried a familiar voice.
The impact was hard, harder than that of being struck by a charging elephant; but it did not come from his front, as Arthur had expected. Whatever it was had blindsided him, slamming into his right shoulder and propelling him sideways through the air. Arthur pivoted in mid-flight, turning to look backwards towards his savior.
Baird!
The Scottish general had witnessed Arthur’s peril, and had reacted with a speed and aggressiveness of which only the undead were capable - and now he paid the price. After shoving Wellesley clear, Baird took the full brunt of the weapon’s discharge from less than five feet away. There was no possible way that the shot could miss. Packed silver pellets fountained outward from the muzzle, hundreds of them peppering the vampire general from his head all the way down to his knees.
There was no blood, not a drop of it, Wellesley saw as he continued to fall along his sideways trajectory, now beginning to sink towards the earth as well. Absently, he realigned his energies in order to lighten his body mass and slow the fall, until finally he was floating in mid-air. He gave this no thought, for all of his conscious attention was riveted to the fate of General Baird, whose body had instantly become a burning pillar of flame that added its light to that of the slowly emerging dawn.
Wherever the silver touched, it burned with a flame brighter than anything he had ever seen. This was far from the ordinary, comforting flame of a camp fire, or even the violent blast of a cannon’s mouth; this was an eldritch blue-green fire, burning with a blinding white-hot intensity at its core, then tapering off into darker colors on its flickering, dancing periphery. The blaze spread across the general’s body in mere seconds, turning the once bluff and vibrant Scot into a screeching, thrashing torch.
Even his killer seemed shocked by the sheer intensity of Baird’s death, was knocked back onto his rump by the pressure wave of the pellets’ impact. The man dropped his oversized gun as though it too were burning hot, and kick-shuffled himself backwards until he reached the rear wall of the shooting platform.
General Baird was already fully engulfed, his shrieking body stumbling drunkenly forward into the midst of the elephant’s human crew, and yet strangely the preternatural flames were not setting any of the surroundings ablaze, nor leaving even the slightest scorch mark.
Summoning up all of his courage, the beast’s driver hacked desperately at Baird, landing an awkward blow with the flat of his blade and knocking him over the side of the platform. Arthur saw the blazing body go underneath the elephant’s feet and get trampled. When the great beast had passed over him, what had once been the body of one of the most senior British generals in Mysore had been reduced to just a few charred and crumbling rags of red and white cloth. The fire had gone out as quickly as it had ignited, although the general’s remains gave off wisps of either smoke or steam.
Arthur was unable to speak, shocked at the sudden and unexpected loss of such a fine and honorable soldier. For a moment he simply floated there, wordlessly ignoring his surroundings.
Could Baird have known the weapon was loaded with silver? Arthur wondered. Impossible to say. What he most certainly did know was that one of his officers was imperiled, and rather than think of his own safety, jumped into the breech himself in order to save him…to save me.
Arthur had not shed a single tear since the night of his turning. Like all vampires, he was physically incapable of such a reaction any more. But that was not to say that he was devoid of the emotions which would lead a mortal man to cry. Already, the sight of the pathetic lump of rags, all that now remained of a man that he had respected enormously despite their personal differences, was stirring up intense feelings and energies within his breast.
Then came the rage.
Arthur remembered little of the events which took place over the next few minutes. The bloodlust descended upon more, this time fueled by the seemingly bottomless anger which the death of General Baird had ignited within him.
The men of the 33rd looked on in varying degrees of amazement, fascination and in some cases outright fear as their Colonel appeared to go insane. Wellesley suddenly seemed to be everywhere. One instant he was hacking out the legs from under a war elephant that had gotten a little too close to the British line for comfort, allowing the redcoats and sepoys to finish the job with ball and bayonet; the next he was atop the firing platform of another, skewering its driver on the point of his blade while simultaneously tearing out the throat of a gunner with his teeth.
No longer was there room for nicety or refinement in his actions, simply the primal expression of raw anger and the need for vengeance upon those who had killed Baird before his very eyes. Even the rest of the officer corps stood by and watched him butcher the Sultan’s men, seeing that he no longer had need of their help. Although more silver pellets and musket balls were fired at him, none of the marksmen were able to get a bead on Wellesley’s speeding form.
Not one of the three remaining war elephants made it to within musket range of the British line. When Arthur regained his senses, he was standing in the middle of a rough diamond composed of not only their big gray corpses, but also the lifeless remains of their crews.
Blood from both human and elephant plastered his uniform jacket and breeches, yet he felt not the slightest hint of craving for it. Instead, he felt tired, in a way that a vampire rarely ever did. Even his hair ached, if such a thing were possible.
“Sir! Colonel! Sir!” Wellesley recognized the voice of Sergeant Roderick, followed the sound with his eyes until he could pick out the big man’s form in the gray gloom of the early dawn. The sergeant was gesturing urgently towards the west, where it was still mostly dark. “Cavalry, sir!”
Sure enough, a line of the Sultan’s horsemen was slowly plodding towards them across the plain. Arthur drew breath in preparation to give the 33rd the order to form square, but then something extraordinary happened.
The British Dragoons, accompanied by several squadrons of native cavalry and with Major Dallas at riding at their head, struck them like a lightning bolt coming out of the north. What followed could most accurately be described less as a military engagement and more as sheer bloody murder. So intently focused had the horsemen of Mysore been upon the left flank of the British line that they had failed to see their counterparts arrive on the field.
Dallas and his men had ridden all the way around the enemy army, circling back upon the plains far to the north; too far to the north, as it would turn out, which is why they were so late in joining the fight. There shall have to be words about that, Arthur thought wearily, but later. Much later. For now, the British cavalry and their native allies had returned to the field as saviors, hammering their way into the enemy line at the charge. Their sabers rose and fell with brutal efficiency, and although the Sultan’s men gamely tried to give as good as they got, they never really recovered from the shock of being jumped. Cutting their losses, Tipu’s surviving cavalry broke and ran for the final time, fleeing in all directions except that of the British line in their desire to escape.
Once more, the line of Redcoats gave a ragged cheer, some going so far as to doff their shakoes and wave them back and forth in the air above their heads. Their Indian allies took up the cheer themselves, and before long the entire British line was in uproar.
“SILENCE!”
Supernaturally enhanced, Wellesley’s voice had a similar effect to that of a pistol being fired in a crowded room. The men instantly fell silent. Even before what historians would later come to call the Battle of Mallavelly, the men of the 33rd Regiment of Foot had known that their Colonel was a stickler for the rules, and that it was an unwise soldier indeed who found himself on Arthur Wellesley’s bad side. After the performance he had just put on in taking down the quartet of elephants single-handedly, the rankers were even less willing to incur his displeasure.
“Orders, sir?” asked Major Shee quietly, suddenly standing at his side.
“Have the men collect up our dead and wounded, John. Let’s also see what supplies m
ay have been left by the enemy that may be of use to us. Oh, and John…” Arthur paused as something came back to him. “Sergeant Belton and his men were evidently taken prisoner by the Tipu’s men. Belton was a brave man; he made a break for it, and one of the enemy’s sharpshooters shot him. He was still alive before our first bayonet charge. Do you see there, up on that ridge?”
Arthur pointed back in the direction from which their division arrived on the battlefield, in what now seemed like a lifetime ago. A single red-jacketed body lay apart from all the others on the field.
“I do, sir. Have no fear, I shall send some men to check on him.” Shee moved away, seeking out the closest NCOs.
“I should be most obliged to you,” Arthur whispered softly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The early-morning sun was just beginning to encroach upon the eastern horizon, casting long, stark shadows from every rock, boulder, and patch of tope. Hidden in one such stand of trees that overlooked the British camp, just as other members of their company had been hidden each morning for the past few days, twenty men of the Sultan’s personal Tiger Guard were going about the business of stripping themselves down until they were totally and utterly naked.
Each carried a leather pouch, into which went any rings, jewelry, and small personal effects that they carried. The pouches were drawn closed using a leather thong threaded through the neck, and then bundled up with their owner’s clothes; the clothes themselves were, in turn, laid out alongside each guard’s personal weapons, which were always some combination of a long and short-bladed weapon, a brace of pistols, and a long-arm; most of these were richly-ornamented muskets, the styling of which reflected one of the Sultan’s beloved tiger motifs.
The twenty-first member of their party also happened to be its leader. Jamelia, as naked as the day she was born, was standing in a relaxed pose, leaning one forearm against a sturdy tree branch. For the past five minutes, she had been watching the morning routine of the British encampment. This was not the first time that she had done so. The Tiger Guard not only assured the safety of their master the Sultan, but also performed other duties as required. When General Harris and his men had invaded his territory, the Sultan had required them to watch the enemy soldiers from afar, gleaning whatever useful information they could.
The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 15
