The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1)

by Richard Estep

  Fighting at the very forefront of his Guard, Tipu swung his scimitar in great erratic arcs, hacking chunks out of the British invaders with pitiless ease. The sergeant who appeared to be leading them lunged at him with a bayonet, but the Sultan merely laughed and chopped the last eight inches from the barrel of his musket with a single stroke. Staring into the yellow eyes of a tiger set within a human face, the sergeant let out a cry, only for it to be silenced by the edge of the curved blade opening him up from sternum to pelvis.

  They had invaded his lands, killed his soldiers, and broken into his home. Tipu was starting to feel a genuine hatred for these pale-skinned soldiers, and with every one which fell to his blade, his joy grew exponentially.

  Jamelia derived no less pleasure from her killing, raking powerful claws across the faces, throats, and chests of the struggling redcoats. With a snap of her jaws, she took one corporal’s head off in a single bite.

  In just minutes, the fight was over. Every redcoat outside the Water Gate’s inner entrance was dead. “Get that gate open!” Tipu ordered, and the tiger-soldiers hurried to obey, lifting the heavy wooden plank that barred it from the inside.

  The stench of human and animal bodily waste assaulted their nostrils as the gate swung wide. It was pitch black inside, the tunnel receding backwards some fifty feet and bypassing both the inner and outer walls of the city, until it finally came out on the banks of the North Cauvery.

  “Now the outer gates,” Tipu directed them, and five men disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel, their footsteps echoing heavily from the surrounding brickwork. Moments later there came the sound of a second wooden bar being removed, followed by that of the far gate creaking open. Tipu had half-expected to find British soldiers waiting outside, but so long as the Sultan Battery held out to the west, the invaders would not make it this far along the outer wall to the Water Gate’s distal opening.

  The night was alive with the crackling of muskets and the screaming of both the innocent and the not-so-innocent alike. Rockets and cannon still roared their defiance at the British, and Tipu was pleased to know that his subjects were still putting up stiff resistance.

  “The outer gate is open!” Jamelia said urgently, pawing at his silk sleeve and attempting to bodily push him towards the Water Gate. “We must get you out of here, to safety.”

  At that moment, a large force of British redcoats entered the square from its far end, led by a single officer, a man that had haunted the Tipu’s nightmares for days on end now.

  “Wellesley,” Tipu whispered.

  Shadow Company had lost an unlucky thirteen men thus far. The remainder were in good shape, and Wellesley had made every man load silver balls into their muskets. As they entered the wide, square expanse which contained the Water Gate on its northern side, they could see a phalanx of Tiger Guard and the less-impressive tiger-soldiers forming around the figure of a plump, brightly-dressed man who could only be the Tipu Sultan.

  Were-tigers prowled the hard-packed earth between the two bodies of men, growling at the newcomers and displaying their wickedly-sharp teeth.

  Tipu would not suffer a man to take his place in the line of battle. He stood proudly in the front rank with his men, and fired the first musket ball at the formation of approaching redcoats. The ball missed. Unwilling to sully his hands with the messy business of reloading, Tipu simply passed the musket back to the tiger-soldier that he had designated as his own personal reloader, receiving a fresh musket in exchange. “Use silver for the next one,” he ordered. The men of his Tiger Guard all had silver loads in their firing pieces, and he wanted the same.

  For his part, Wellesley ignored the lead ball that whistled through the air some three feet to the side of his head.

  “Am I addressing His Majesty, the Tipu Sultan?” he called, using the proper forms and respect that the situation demanded. “I am Colonel Arthur Wellesley, of His Britannic Majesty’s 33rd Regiment of Foot. It is my duty, sir, to ask for your surrender. You may rest assured that both you and your family will be well-treated.” Wellesley continued walking slowly towards the Tipu and his band of men, sword in hand, his Shadow Company forming line behind him on either side, CSM Nichols at their head.

  “I know who you are, Wellesley,” the Tipu called back. “Perhaps more to the point, I know what you are! The Tiger of Mysore shall never surrender to the likes of you.”

  “So be it,” Arthur said quietly. The proper forms had been obeyed; the Tipu had been offered the chance to surrender with dignity, and had thrown it back in his face. Now there was only one way that this could possibly end.

  A roar of musketry came from the Tipu’s men, felling two of Arthur’s redcoats. As one of the balls passed by him in the air, the vampire could sense that it was no ordinary shot, had been made with molten silver poured into a musket-ball mould.

  So that’s how it was to be?

  Snarling, the were-tigers fanned out in a wide semicircle to his front. “Shadow Company…halt.” The redcoats crashed to a halt. Arthur gave the order to take aim, then took a running jump and hurled himself twenty feet in the air, landing in a crouch on top of the inner wall just as he gave the order to fire.

  Muskets spat fiery death, and the great cats twitched and jerked as the balls hit home. Growls of defiance turned to high-pitched shrieks of pain as the silver munitions began to burn their way through tissue, blood, and bone, the wounds hissing and crackling violently.

  “Shadow Company!” Dan Nichols took up the call. “Reload!” Drawing ramrods, the Shadows did just that, rightly assuming that a second load of silver was required.

  From his elevated position atop the inner north wall, Wellesley surveyed the scene of carnage taking place in the square below him with no little satisfaction. Every single were-tiger was either dead or dying, struck by the massed fire of his very best troops. Some of the beasts rolled on their backs and pawed at the air, but he suspected that it was mostly just their death throes playing themselves out.

  One of the great cats was dragging itself back towards the Sultan and his bodyguard. Looking more closely, Arthur saw that it was the female tigress that he had confronted amongst the confusion of the tope. She had taken a bullet in her rear left leg and was leaving a trail of blood behind her, but she made it back to the cover of friendly lines, and Arthur felt a begrudging admiration for her pluck.

  The men of Shadow Company had reloaded and resumed their advance, directed by the steady hand of their CSM. Some kneeling and some standing, the defenders fired another volley in their direction. Six more redcoats fell, three to wounds in the arms and legs, the remainder taking fatal hits to the head and trunk.

  “Close ranks! Close ranks!”

  Arthur worked his way slowly along the top of the inner wall. Just moments ago, the Sultan’s head had been on a swivel, searching the skies for him; the bulk of the inner wall had blocked his view, and the angle was too steep for him to spot the approaching vampire. Now, the Sultan seemed more worried about the tigress, stooping to assess the wound in her leg with a look of grave concern plastered across his features. Stepping backwards out of the line of fire, Tipu helped the female tiger into the comparative safety of the Water Gate.

  “CSM Nichols, deploy the grenades!” Arthur called. The Company Sergeant-Major acknowledged with a nod, and ordered the ten makeshift grenadiers to take out and prime their deadliest of weapons.

  Dan held the grenade in the palm of one hand, keeping a watchful eye on the tiger-soldiers as they reloaded after their last volley. Lighting the fuse was going to be the tricky part, he knew, but they had planned for that in advance. At his order, ten of the Shadows turned their muskets upside-down and allowed the precious silver munitions to roll out of the barrel, catching them in eager fingers and returning them to their cartridge-boxes. These ten muskets were no longer loaded but were still primed, and the men who wielded them worked by prior agreement with the grenadiers, placing the end of each fuse next to the frizzen of each musket. Then they
pulled the trigger. The resultant flash of powder in the pan ignited the grenades’ fuses, which began to spark and hiss as they slowly burned down.

  “Let ‘em get halfway, lads,” Nichols said calmly, still watching the enemy formation finish the process of reloading their own muskets. “Alright, prepare to throw grenades on three…one…two…three!”

  The redcoat grenadiers pitched all ten of their charges at the Sultan’s bodyguard, who were all too focused on bringing their freshly-loaded muskets back up to the aim position. The grenades almost all fell at the feet of the Tiger Guard and their comrades, detonating split-seconds later in a hailstorm of silver shrapnel.

  Wellesley shrank back and flattened himself against the parapet as fragments of silver whizzed just inches past his face. Once the string of irregularly-spaced detonations seemed to have ended, he peered out over the lip of the wall and assessed the scene of devastation that was playing out below him.

  The square in front of the Water Gate had become a charnel house, a mass of bleeding, broken, and wailing men and were-beasts. The shrapnel had inflicted grievous physical damage upon many of the ordinary tiger-soldiers that had been reloading there, but by far the most horrific trauma had been reserved for the were-tigers.

  As the silver fragments had been propelled into the flesh and muscle of each tiger’s body at incredibly high speeds, they began to sear and burn everything in their path. Several of the Tiger Guard were blinded, hands clutching desperately at sightless eyes which hemorrhaged blood down the front of their faces; others were down on the ground, trying frantically and futilely to stem the torrents of blood which were leaking out from the host of newly-inflicted wounds.

  Sensing that now was the time, Nichols sent in the second volley of musketry, wiping out fully a third of the enemy group in the space of five seconds. Their formation was already broken, he saw; what was one a somewhat-organized group of defenders had been converted into a bloody, pulped mess of staggering individuals…and it was all thanks to that most wonderful of metals, silver.

  Time to finish this, Dan thought, as a line of sweat dripped from under the rim of his shako and ran down the side of his face.

  Time to give ‘em the bayonet.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  From their position inside the inner Water Gate, Tipu and Jamelia had been sheltered from the worst of the grenade blasts by the sturdy brick doorway. The heavy wooden door had been peppered with shrapnel during the blasts, and Tipu had taken a silver fragment in the right forearm that was burning with an agonizing coldness, but they would both live.

  “How bad is the wound, my dearest?” he asked her through gritted teeth.

  Jamelia growled softly. A jagged chunk of silver perhaps a quarter-inch on a side was sticking out of her back leg. Fighting through his own pain for a moment, Tipu removed the curved dagger that was always belted at his waist, and using the tip alone, carefully pried the fragment loose.

  The tigress howled as the blade did its work, but once the silver had been removed, she could feel the tortured flesh already beginning to repair itself. Within the space of a few heartbeats, the limb was able to bear some weight again, although not yet its full capacity.

  Sultan and tigress both looked towards the closer doorway, where scenes of indescribable carnage were playing out. British redcoats were making short work of the remnants of his Tiger Guard, using quick and efficient thrusts of what Tipu could now see were silver bayonets to dispatch his men. Considering the state of some of them, their deaths were better thought of as mercy than murder; but there was little mercy in the Sultan’s heart for the vampire who had led them here.

  First things first.

  Tipu helped Jamelia limp her way to the far end of the tunnel, their heavy, panting breaths echoing from the brick walls all around them. Liquid filth which had leaked in from the nearby sewage ponds lay in pools around their feet, and the stench was almost unbearable.

  Twenty feet to go.

  Ten.

  Five.

  A shot echoed loudly down the length of the tunnel, its echoes reverberating from one end to the other. Tipu felt as though he had been struck by lightning, was driven to his knees as a torrent of blistering agony swept through his thigh. He did not need to look in order to know that he had been shot with a silver ball.

  “Father!”

  The scream came from Jamelia, who looked on with horror as the silhouette of the British colonel emerged at the inner entrance to the Water Gate, took aim with a pistol, and fired. Despite the distance of forty feet, the shot had flown true, though slightly lower than Wellesley had intended.

  Tipu went down on one knee, huffing and gasping as his body broke out into a cold sweat. Looking back, he saw that Wellesley was advancing steadily along the length of the tunnel, his silver blade reflecting what little ambient light there was.

  Only five feet separated them from freedom. Leaning upon his daughter’s muscular flank now, Tipu dragged himself to the very edge of the tunnel. Apparently stopping to catch his breath, he waved the tigress to go first. Once she was clear of the opening, he lunged for the door, using a final surge of strength to slam it closed behind her.

  “Father, no!” Her voice was muffled, but the pain of betrayal it carried wounded him almost as deeply as the silver musket-ball had. He glanced towards the far end of the tunnel, saw that Wellesley’s body was blocking out most of the light from the opening. The vampire could be no more than fifteen feet away now.

  “It is the only way, my beloved daughter.” He grimaced as a fresh round of pain flared in his thigh. “Listen to me, my dearest, most precious Jamelia…you must survive this night, and you must avenge me. Do you hear? Because you are Mysore now. The last of my bloodline. Make the British pay for their desecration of our land, beloved. Do not rest until the blood of every last Englishman has been spilled onto the plains of Mysore. Do you hear me?”

  The reply was so quietly delivered, a human ear could not have heard it.

  “Yes, father.”

  “Now, you must go, daughter. The British will soon surround the city. Save yourself…and remember me fondly.”

  There was no answer.

  Tipu sensed the presence of the British colonel looming over him, did not turn away from the closed gate, choosing instead to press his temple against the rough wood of the door. Its coolness was wonderfully soothing.

  “I dreamed of this moment,” he said at length. “I have dreamed of it many times. Now that it is here, I find that it is not so bad after all.” Tipu gasped as the pain took hold of him again. The icy fire had spread from his thigh up into his crotch, where it was now working its way upwards towards his soft belly.

  “You may still surrender,” Wellesley said formally. “On my honor, you and yours will be well-treated.”

  Tipu did turn then, turned to regard the British officer with bloodshot yellow eyes. When he opened his mouth to speak again, Arthur saw that the Sultan’s teeth were beginning to elongate. Taking a deep breath, Tipu filled his lungs with air in order to fuel one last, defiant roar.

  “I WOULD RATHER DIE!”

  Tipu lunged towards his adversary. Both men knew that he had no chance whatsoever, but this was to be a noble death; a warrior’s death, and neither of them wanted to see Tipu go into the next life steeped in shame and ignominy. Reversing his grip on the hilt of his sword, Arthur plunged his blade straight through the sternum and deep into the Sultan’s proud heart, affording the great tiger the opportunity of a clean death and most importantly, one in which the wounds were all inflicted to his front.

  “So be it.” Arthur’s voice was quiet, but the soft words still echoed in the enclosed space. Tipu convulsed, claws reaching up to clutch the silver which protruded from his chest. The convulsions lasted mere moments, and ceased as quickly as they had begun. His stubby legs spasmed for an instant, and then the Sultan’s body went completely limp as the life slowly drained out of it.

  The Tiger of Mysore was no more.


  The rape of Seringapatam did not end with the arrival of the morning’s sunrise. The invading soldiers had run riot in the streets, looting, murdering, and abusing the inhabitants despite the protestations and best effort of their officers to rein them in.

  When the vampire officers emerged from their coffins the following evening, Harris entered the city to see the devastation for himself. Had a hurricane descended upon Seringapatam, it could hardly have done more damage. Bodies lay unburied on the walls and in the streets. Although the men of the British line regiments were mostly back under the control of their commanders, the same could not be said of the sepoys and those of the East India Company.

  “Take charge,” was all Harris had said to Wellesley; and so, he did.

  The hangings and floggings began immediately. Stretching the necks of four of the most heinous offenders turned out to be an incredibly effective deterrent to others. He established a command post in the Sultan’s inner palace, and set about the business of restoring order by deploying platoons of the 33rd and the most reliable line regiments into the city. In less than a night, calm had descended upon the city once more.

  Arthur had seen to the removal of the Tipu’s body from the Water Gate tunnel in person. The man had been brave, and was still much-loved by a great many of his subjects. Knowing that it would be unwise for the British to alienate the people of Mysore any more than they already had, Harris cannily arranged for the Sultan to be buried with full military honors. His body was laid to rest in the same mausoleum in which his parents had been buried, a last mark of courtesy and respect from those who had beaten him on the field of battle.

  The Sultan’s favorite general (and, Arthur had later learned, his daughter) had escaped to fight another day. There had been no sign of her when the sun had risen the next morning, and the British cavalry patrols had found no trace of her. No doubt she would return to cross paths with him again, Arthur thought, and found to his great surprise that he actually relished the possibility. Her father had been a truly worthy opponent when all was said and done, and the apple obviously hadn’t fallen too far from the tree.