With his right hand hanging uselessly at his side, Lieutenant-Colonel Dunlop swooped down upon the hapless sharpshooter like a giant bird of prey. Scabbarding his sword for the time being, Dunlop sank his teeth into the trembling soldier’s throat, instinctively finding the carotid artery and severing it. A torrent of blood propelled by extremely high pressure sprayed into Dunlop’s mouth, much of it escaping and painting the vampire’s face and neck a bright shade of crimson.
While their colonel fed, Dunlop’s men were methodically working their way along the northern wall, clearing it of every defender they encountered. Captain Goodall, leading a company from the 12th Regiment of Foot, came upon a flimsy bridge of scaffolding that connected the outer wall with its inner counterpart, and led a platoon of redcoats across to begin clearing the interior fire-step and finish the work that Dunlop had begun.
Behind them, more British troops swarmed into the breach, and very soon they would be into the city itself. Few of them were in a merciful mood.
Wellesley and the Shadow Company had advanced roughly one third the length of the outer north wall, and were still taking an unhealthy amount of fire from behind the parapet of the inner wall. Whenever a head popped up above the edge of the parapet, one of the redcoats would take a shot at the target of opportunity, but with the daylight now all but gone they missed more than they struck.
“We need to get across,” Wellesley said, thinking for a moment. In their haste to clear the outer wall, he and the entire company had rushed right by the scaffolding linking the outer wall to the inner, never even noticing that it was there; this was unfortunate, because it could have saved them a great deal of time at this point.
“The pioneers will be up soon, sir. They’ve got scaling ladders,” Corporal Dodds put in helpfully.
“No time to wait for the pioneers, Dodds,” Wellesley replied.
Turning to Nichols, he asked which one of the men had a rope.
“Several,” Dan replied, having inspected their kit before the company had entered the access trenches. That seemed so long ago now, a world of anticipation and fear now replaced with one of fire and violence. “Foster, over here. Sharpish now.”
Private Foster trotted obediently towards the CSM, and on demand removed a coiled length of rope from the depths of his pack.
“What did you have in mind, sir?” Nichols asked, pausing to take a potshot at a tiger-soldier who had slowly raised his head from cover. The musket-ball flew straight and true, snapping the man’s head back with a sickening crack.
“Take one end and tie it to something sturdy,” Wellesley ordered, casting around him for a suitable anchor. “Look, one of these 18-pounders will do. Quickly now.”
The CSM tied a bowline knot around the barrel of a wrecked heavy cannon that lay in pieces in an embrasure close-by, an obvious victim of the British gunners. Sheathing his silver blade, the colonel took the working end of the rope and, after giving it a tug to verify the security of the knot (and thereby earning a look of such hurt from his CSM that he actually felt a momentary twinge of guilt) Wellesley made a standing leap out into the void, bridging the gap between inner and outer wall in one immense bound and landing lightly behind the parapet on the opposite side.
Twenty feet to his left, three defenders stared at him, expressions agog with mute surprise. Taking full advantage of their fear, Arthur closed the distance between them in under three seconds and dispatched them with a series of vicious blows to the body and head, resulting in one broken neck, one instant arterial brain bleed, and six shattered ribs which punctured the lung underneath. Fatal wounds all, and it was the work of mere seconds to pitch the bodies into thin air behind him, clearing this section of the inner fire-step of all life.
Far across on the eastern side of the city, the shriek of rockets launching reminded Arthur that this night’s fight was far from over. There was unfortunately no appropriate anchor point for him to tie the rope onto, so he simply decided that he must serve that particular function itself.
“CSM, send the men across!”
Stretching the rope taut between the inner and outer walls, Arthur braced himself as the first redcoat took hold of the rope and swung himself out into space. Dangling by both hands over the gap between the inner and outer walls, Corporal Stewart Dodds worked his way hand over hand towards his colonel.
Part of Shadow Company training involved extensive rope work, and each man learned to haul his own body weight plus weapon and pack across obstacles of varying shapes and sizes. Dodds was a large man with powerful shoulders, so the simple hand over hand technique worked well for him, and he was across the gap in seconds, throwing one knee up over the parapet’s edge and slithering across to the fire-step.
For those soldiers with slighter builds, it was often easier to modify the technique by swinging the legs up and hooking the rope with one foot or ankle, and then swinging the entire body up to join it, so that the soldier was laying on top of the rope with one foot hooked over the top and a second dangling down to act as a counterweight.
As the redcoats began to assemble in greater force on the inner wall, they began to fan out to their left and right, working to clear the fire-step of the defenders further down. It took the better part of half an hour to get the entire company across, which did nothing for Wellesley’s already souring mood.
“What now, sir?” Nichols asked, aiming his reloaded musket out into the night.
“We start by getting down from this damnable wall, and into the city proper. Then we find the Tipu, CSM.” Half of the company had already done just that, taking a set of wooden steps that they had found thirty feet east along the fire-step.
“Of course, sir.” Nichols paused. “Er, any idea where we should start looking, sir?”
Wellesley paused, and motioned for the men to be silent. Slowly, he allowed his senses to attune to the night. He began to filter out the background noise of the siege - cannons firing in the distance, the crackle of musketry, the cries of terrified civilians…Arthur focused his attention on one area close-by which was seeing a particularly large volume of musketry, and yet there was something else, something almost as loud, but an entirely different type of loudness…his eyes suddenly opened wide.
Got you!
He was hearing the roar of vengeful tigers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Despite the Tipu’s many and varied failings, the lack of courage was not among them.
Seringapatam was all but lost, he knew that now; the British had forced the breach, and swept away the defenders like so many cattle, and now a plague of red-coated locusts swarmed through his city, raping, looting, and pillaging everything within sight.
Beasts.
Standing by his side as always, his stalwart Jamelia had begged him to flee. Did he not understand that they could get him out, that he could escape and live to fight the British another day? The people would protect their Sultan, she reminded him, for he was Mysore.
It was the first time he had ever seen tears in his precious Jamelia’s eyes, which was almost certainly why he had felt them welling in his own.
“Please, Your Majesty,” she all but begged him. He knew then that she would not allow him to refuse, for if he died here in the city it would break her heart; and yet what she did not truly understand was that if she died here in the city, his heart would also be broken - and Tipu’s heart was too old to heal from such a grievous wound.
It was then that he set his final gambit into motion, deciding to play along with her for now in order to place the last pieces on the board. The Tipu loved chess, and had framed much of his philosophy on life in terms of the game. Now, for example, they were approaching the inevitable checkmate, and he wanted it to happen on his own terms.
The Sultan, Jamelia, and the entire Tiger Guard had exited the inner palace and turned quickly north. Reaching the inner wall, they saw that a number of redcoats had already penetrated this far into the city, and were on top of the wall, trading gunfire with the defenders
of the Sultan Battery on the outer wall, a heavily-fortified position that was located just a stone’s throw from the dungeons. The tiger-soldiers that were posted to defend the Battery were already hard-pressed by the British dogs, not to mention increasingly outnumbered. More redcoats were coming into the area with each passing moment.
Jamelia saw the look in his eyes, and knowing him as well as she did, knew that he could not bear to leave his men to die without offering at least some form of aid. She was right.
“Send ten of the Tiger Guard,” he ordered her, not knowing how long the increasingly-willful tigress would continue to obey his orders. “Have them reinforce the defenders here at the battery. It may buy us some time.”
Although she plainly didn’t like the idea of stripping down his personal protective force, Jamelia knew that there was little time to argue. She gave the orders, and without a single question, ten of the Guard stripped off their clothes then and there, willing themselves to undergo the change as quickly as possible.
The British were flooding into Seringapatam from the west. From paying close attention to the sound of the musketry, she deduced that they were fighting their way along the outer walls in addition to entering directly, probably trying to encircle the entire city in an attempt to pin the Sultan in. If she were the British commander, she might well have done the same.
Jamelia knew that there was one way out of the city that may yet remain viable, however, and it was to there that she led the Tipu now, along with the remaining thirty of his Tiger Guard. Following the track of the north wall, the party worked their way towards the east. From behind them at the Sultan Battery, an increase in the volume of musketry was followed immediately by the roar of multiple tigers, and then the agonized screams of dying redcoats.
Tipu smiled, thinking to himself that it was not such a bad day to die after all, considering the number of British infidels he would send to their deaths first. For her part, Jamelia mistook his apparent happiness for hope that he would escape the city alive, and she moved to hurry their group along. Up ahead, she saw the means of their salvation.
The Water Gate was not yet taken.
The enormous tiger that was still partly Thomas Gilman closed his jaws about the arm of a British lieutenant and with a singular powerful jerk, tore the limb away from the man’s torso. Blood sprayed from the wound, and yet the lieutenant did not scream, seemed too shocked to do anything but stare in mortification at the place where his arm had once been.
As the fighting around the Sultan Battery began to turn in the favor of the defenders once more, Thomas looked around for another Briton to kill. He and his nine brothers (for that was how he had come to think of them) had torn through the ranks of the attacking redcoats in moments, shrugging off their feeble musket balls and taking the screaming soldiers apart with tooth and claw.
All was quiet during what he assumed was a temporary lull in the fighting. The men of the Sultan Battery reloaded their muskets, keeping one wary eye on the tigers who prowled atop the inner wall, and also on the ground on both sides of it.
He smelled them before he heard them, the stink of a mass of blood-stained, sweaty bodies heading their way. From the way his brothers’ noses twitched and their ears pricked up, they could sense it too.
When the first redcoat came out into the open, keeping close to the inner wall, Thomas roared a challenge. Excitement quickly turned to pure rage when he saw the identity of this new interloper.
Wellesley.
And there was his precious Shadow Company, guarding his back as always. All of the hatred that had festered within him since the flogging bubbled up to the surface, boiling over into a blinding, white-hot rage. His brother Jaspal acted first, however, breaking into a powerful run and springing at the vampire colonel.
Thomas never even saw the blade leave its scabbard, but even as the weapon cleaved into Jaspal’s neck, he knew no concern for his brother, for what could a British officer’s blade do to a beast such as he?
The answer became horrifically apparent when the blade cut cleanly through flesh, bone, and tissue as though it were not even there, beheading Jaspal as cleanly as if Wellesley had used a guillotine. The great cat’s decapitated body crashed to the ground in a steadily-increasing pool of blood, its black paws twitching in the throes of death.
Were he still the cunning, calculating private soldier that had once served under Wellesley, Thomas might have stopped to ask why the seemingly impossible had happened. But the beast was in control now, driving his actions with motives that were purely feral.
The remaining tigers converged on Wellesley and his men at a fast trot, building their speed to a charge. Calmly, the vampire colonel gave the order to present, take aim, and then fire. He flew twenty feet up into the air in order to allow them a clear field of fire.
The Shadow Company, now drawn up in ranks as though on the battlefield once more, went through the motions with an economy of effort born of countless hours of practice. Their muskets barked, sending a volley of shot into the group of oncoming tigers.
Thomas had never known pain like it, not even when he had been turned by the Sultan. He took a musket ball in the right forepaw, a second tore off the tip of his right ear, and a third buried itself in the haunch of a back leg. The wounds began to spew steam, as though the musket-balls themselves had set the flesh aflame. As the burning continued, Thomas found himself unable to run, unable to focus on anything other than the two gaping wounds, and collapsed onto his belly, broken by the sheer intensity of the pain.
All around him, his brothers were mewling, clawing at the wounds inflicted by the British. Three had died instantly, hit in the head. The British soldiers did not reload, but rather moved in with their bayonets, sticking each tiger repeatedly until it finally stopped moving.
Thomas wondered how this was possible, and it was only when the little dark-skinned corporal raised his musket over his head in preparation to deliver the killing blow that he finally understood, saw the wicked silver edge of the man’s bayonet gleaming in the light of distant fires.
The tiger threw back its head and screamed its hate at Wellesley, calling him a bastard and other far less savory epithets.
“Hold,” Wellesley gestured to Corporal McElveney, signaling for him to lower his bayonet. Reluctantly, the little Scotsman stayed his hand, but kept the unwavering point trained upon Thomas.
Looming over the tiger, which gave a look of such pure venom that he almost took an unconscious step back, Wellesley placed the tip of his blade just inches from the creature’s right eye. Looking into those eyes, he saw that they were wracked with agony, but could also see sentience and understanding too.
“You do know what this is?” he asked rhetorically, the blade unwavering. Answering his own question, he went on. “This is a blade containing a great deal of silver; and unless you tell me precisely what I wish to know, you shall feel its sting, many time over.”
Thomas growled, a roar which was pure tiger, but then his human aspect reasserted itself a little. “You motherless bastard, Wellesley. Is it worse than a flogging?”
Arthur’s eyes widened, not simply at hearing human speech come from the mouth of such a beast, but also because the pieces finally fell into place. “Well, well,” he said finally. “Private Gilman, I assume?”
“Go ahead and kill me, you bastard. I’ll tell you nothing.”
The blade moved almost too quickly to see, left a small nick in the flesh of the tiger’s nose that began to steam and sizzle, the odor one of roasting meat. Thomas howled, knew that only silver could cause him such pain out of all proportion to the size of the wound.
“Spare me the profanities, Gilman. You are a traitor to the Crown, and there can be only one penalty for such treason of yours.” There was no mercy in the colonel’s voice; it was as cold and brittle as a winter storm. “However, I shall offer you this: you will tell me the location of the Tipu Sultan, and in return, you shall receive a quick, clean death, which is certa
inly far more than you deserve.” Gilman opened his mouth to roar an obscenity, but Wellesley beat him to it. “If the next words from your mouth should question my parentage one more time, we shall see how many cuts of a silver blade you can withstand before your heart gives out. I do have all night, you know.” This last statement was patently untrue, but Gilman had no way of knowing that.
The tiger bellowed once more, and all to the excruciating pain and accumulated hatred of a life spent in the ranks of an army that he had grown to hate were expelled in that roar. When the echoes had died away, even the defenders of the Sultan Battery that had been trading shots with the Shadows, were riveted to the drama taking place just beyond their walls.
“You’ll make it quick?” The yellow eyes contained something new, a curious mixture of hope and pleading.
“My word on it,” Wellesley said simply.
“To the east,” the tiger said. “They’re making for the Water Gate.”
As the point of the silver blade penetrated his brain, Thomas Gilman, a betrayer in more ways than one, at last knew a kind of peace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Constructed of brick and reaching all the way through both north walls of the city, the Water Gate was barred at both ends by stout wooden gates. Tipu, Jamelia, and their entourage arrived to find a small force of tiger-soldiers arrayed in its defense, trying desperately to fight off at least a platoon’s strength of attacking redcoats.
Jamelia and roughly half of the Tiger Guard had metamorphosed into their feline forms, while the rest had elected to keep their human shapes, at least for now. Seeing the British pressing his man so sorely, the Sultan flew into a fit of rage and led a charge into their rear, howling and screaming his challenge as he ran at them with a speed which belied his fatness. Surprised at being suddenly caught between two enemy forces of roughly equal strength, the redcoats tried to fend both off at once.
The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 23
