Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  CHAPTER TWO

  Shadows of the Past

  Major General Arthur Wellesley knew that he was dreaming, and yet the knowledge didn’t help him in the slightest — not one damned bit.

  The same dream came upon him with greater and greater frequency of late, and it was ever the same; he found himself in a dank, dark tunnel, walking purposefully from its entrance towards the far end. Night had fallen hours before, and the vampire colonel (for such had been his rank at the time) was advancing upon his mortal enemy, the Tipu Sultan. Only one thing dominated his mind: to take the man captive, or failing that, to bring his dead body back to the British lines.

  Wellesley had succeeded — at least, in reality. Refusing his politely-worded request to surrender, Tipu had spat defiance to the last — and paid for it on the point of Wellesley’s sword, a weapon crafted with silver in order to combat the Sultan’s supernatural form. The great tiger had died bravely, as the colonel had told all who asked him of the incident, but he and his elite Tiger Guard had been no match for the Irish colonel and the hard-bitten soldiers of the 33rd Regiment of Foot’s Shadow Company, a body of specialist skirmishers hand-picked from amongst the ranks in order to handle enemies of a distinctly supernatural nature.

  It had still been night when the colonel had walked back out through the entrance doors to the tunnel, dragging the Sultan’s body behind him by the heel of one richly-tailored leather boot. The Tiger of Mysore had seemed bloated and corpulent to the casual eye, but a keener observer would realize that he was in fact composed of fat and muscle in equal measure. His head lolled limply in time to Wellesley’s measured footsteps on the tunnel floor, the colonel finally bringing his enemy’s jewel-encrusted corpse out into the courtyard beyond the Water Gate.

  Seringapatam was already burning, falling victim to the baser urges and passions of those British and Indian besiegers who had assaulted the breach made in the city’s walls by determined cannon-fire, the horde of red-coated soldiers streaming inside the city and putting all who resisted — and many who did not — to the blade. Orange flames lit the night, sending plumes of billowing black smoke up to obscure the stars. Having been given tacit permission to slip the yoke of discipline at long last, the redcoats let loose animalistic tendencies which put those of the Sultan’s were-tigers to shame.

  The scum of the earth, Wellesley had reflected bitterly. How are we to achieve excellence in battle with such filth as this?

  And yet the truth was, Wellesley and his men had achieved excellence on the field of battle — magnificence, even. Their defeat of the Sultan’s troops at the battle of Mallavelly had been nothing less than a triumph of disciplined musketry and vigorous use of the bayonet, particularly when led by vampire officers of only the finest breeding and education.

  “Place his body under guard,” the colonel had ordered, gesturing towards his vanquished foe. “See that it is treated with dignity and respect.”

  “Yes, Colonel.” Company Sergeant-Major Daniel Nichols, the senior non-commissioned officer of Wellesley’s elite Shadow Company, offered a crisp salute. His men (known throughout the British Army by the nickname of Shadows) were tired, and yet despite their fatigue — and despite having lost a number of good soldiers in the assault on Seringapatam in general and on Tipu’s Tiger Guard in particular — the mud-splattered, blood-soaked infantrymen obeyed his word as though it came from the pages of the very Gospels themselves.

  “Make all men aware,” Wellesley had raised his voice to address the troops, “that I shall stretch the neck of any man who attempts to molest the Sultan’s body in any way.” The vampire suddenly seemed tired, his skin appearing sallow and waxen in the light of the burning island city. The eyes, though…the eyes were a different matter entirely. They still gleamed with a dark light all of their very own.

  “He was a brave man, sir,” Dan said.

  “Brave indeed, CSM — and we shall treat him as such.”

  Needing no more prompting than a meaningful look from their CSM, the Shadows had set about securing the Sultan’s body in one of the opulent bedrooms of what had been (until mere hours before) his spacious inner palace. Before the night was out, the building would be requisitioned and become a part of the British headquarters in Seringapatam.

  Shadows had stayed on watch throughout the night and well into the following day, working on a rotating schedule devised by the sergeant of the day. Only the Tipu’s family, which consisted mostly of his children, were permitted entry into the room and allowed to mourn him in privacy.

  And yet, not all of them were there. One of them — Jamelia, the tiger’s daughter, who had been at her father’s side just moments before Wellesley had ended his life with the stroke of a blade — had fled the city. Wellesley had briefly toyed with the idea of going after her, but had allowed himself to be dissuaded from mounting such a pursuit by the the knowledge that the sunrise was not far off, and even in his vaporous flying form, it would require a stroke of enormously good fortune to run the tigress to ground in such a short amount of time.

  No, that is a battle for another day, the vampire had mused as the lid was fitted carefully into place to seal his coffin, enclosing him in the reassuring safety of the earth before the coming of yet another dawn.

  The rain had come the following day, dousing the smoldering fires of Seringapatam. There was a certain irony to the fact; if Wellesley and his men had waited until the next night to launch their attack, the swollen River Cauvery would have been unfordable.

  By Wellesley’s order, the Tipu’s body was conveyed by a guard of honor through the torchlit streets that same evening. The colonel wanted Tipu’s subjects to have one last chance to pay their respects to the man who had ruled over them, and had seemed to have been both loved and hated in equal measure. The streets and roadsides were lined with residents of the city, packed shoulder to shoulder and jostling one another to get a better view of the horse-drawn funeral procession as it wended its way slowly towards its final destination: the mausoleum in which the Sultan’s parents were already buried. His mortal remains were going to join theirs, in one last gesture of respect from the man who had defeated him.

  How many of them truly mourn the Sultan? Arthur asked himself as he scanned the faces of the throng. Enterprising young beggar boys sold fruit to the spectators. Some of them actually seem to be entertained, if such a thing can even be credited.

  He had to admit that the people of Seringapatam had turned out in their thousands, though whether to pay their respects to their fallen ruler or simply to be able to claim that they had been there one day in front of their grandchildren, it was impossible to tell.

  When I am ended, I should be fortunate indeed to have garnered such a turnout.

  Matters of Faith

  Laying in his coffin in the hard earth beneath the palace, Arthur had not dreamed that first day, nor the day after that, nor indeed for almost an entire week; but on the sixth day following the fall of Seringapatam, with his role as interim governor of the island city now fully assured and approved by higher command, Arthur had found himself partially waking into a semi-lucid state, aware of the coffin lid just inches above his aquiline nose, and yet also somehow finding himself back in the Water Gate tunnel once more.

  With the Sultan.

  “Colonel Wellesley. Strange as it may seem for me to say this, it pleases me to see you.”

  Tipu had somehow been restored to his former robust self once again, standing casually at the scene of his death without the slightest wound or even the merest suggestion of one to be seen. The jeweled rings on his stubby fingers caught what little light there was as the Sultan pressed his palms together and bowed respectfully to Wellesley.

  “I must say that it surprises me also. Particularly in this place where, as we are both all too aware, I was forced to end your life.”

  The Sultan threw back his head and laughed; there was no falsity to it, the laughter seeming entirely genuine to Arthur’s
keen ear.

  “Forced, he says! Forced!” Tipu grabbed his belly with both hands, its folds shaking out of sheer mirth. “I am afraid that you left me no choice, my dear Colonel. What other option did I have - to live under the yoke of the British, bowing and scraping to your King George and his ‘honorable’ East India Company?”

  “It would have meant life,” Wellesley countered quietly.

  “It would have meant slavery!”

  Arthur had to concede that the Sultan had almost certainly hit near to the mark in that regard. For him to live as a puppet king, serving in thrall to the real power behind the throne half a world away in London, would have been nothing less than a living death for one with such pride as Tipu had been born with.

  As quickly as it had come, the Sultan’s anger seemed to dissipate. He took a step closer to Wellesley, whose preternaturally-enhanced eyesight allowed him to make out every nuance of the man’s features even in the near-total darkness of the brick-lined tunnel.

  “What is it that you want?” the colonel asked.

  “Not to torment you while you sleep, if that is what you believe.”

  “Hardly a reassurance that needs to be made, when one considers the fact that you are nothing more than a figment of my exhausted mind.”

  The Sultan’s eyes suddenly glowed yellow in the darkness, each one split directly down the middle with a black oval slit where the pupil would normally have been.

  “You are so very sure of that, are you, my dear Colonel?”

  “I am,” Wellesley replied equably. “What alternative is there? Do you claim to be a discarnate spirit? I gave up believing such things when I was a boy, growing up in Ireland.”

  “This, coming from the walking dead man,” the Sultan pointed out petulantly.

  “That is entirely different. Vampire-kind — my kind, have accompanied mortalkind down through the ages. Even the oldest tracts tell us as much. We are the night side of nature, yes, but natural nonetheless — just as your tiger-kin were.”

  “Are, not were,” Tipu corrected.

  “I believe that my men may have contributed somewhat to their extinction.”

  “My daughter yet lives, Wellesley. She lives, and she will be coming back for you.”

  “She is more than welcome to try.” Absent-mindedly, Arthur’s fingertips found the leather-bound grip of the sword which was scabbarded at his waist. It was the same sword which he had plunged into the Sultan’s chest just one week before.

  Cackling with laughter, Tipu’s form slowly faded away into nothingness. Arthur had awoken with a racing heart. Had he been mortal, doubtless he would have been drenched in a cold sweat; but vampires did not sweat, nor did they emit an odor of any kind. The only tangible reminder of that first…dream? Nightmare? Encounter? with the Sultan was a sense of indefinable dread that grew slowly in the pit of its stomach, pushing ice-cold tendrils upwards into his chest like the questing fingers of some invasive alien malevolence.

  That had been four years ago, and this particular dream — and many others that were very similar in nature - had plagued his daylight sleeping hours ever since.

  It appeared very much that today was going to be one of those days.

  “What is it this time?”

  The fat man emerged from the darkness in the same old way, flashing him a grin that was some part ingratiating and part insolence.

  “What? You are not pleased to see me?” The Sultan affected a hurt tone, belied by the smirk plastered across his face. “I would have though that you would have grown used to my company by now.”

  “Used to it, yes. Happy, no; for that is a very different thing.”

  Sighing, Tipu moved to place a hand on Wellesley’s arm. For his part, the vampire ducked gracefully aside, shrugging it off without apparent effort. This was becoming part of their ritual, had become so over the past few years of meetings such as this.

  “What is it that you want of me?” Arthur suddenly felt tired, as though even the mere act of dreaming about his old adversary was capable of draining him of energy.

  “Be at peace, Englishman. I seek nothing more than your companionship, to help pass the time in this place of darkness.”

  “I am an Irishman, as well you know,” Wellesley corrected him irritably.

  If the truth be told, the young Arthur Wellesley had worked hard to erase traces of his Irish heritage from his accent and mannerisms, politely but firmly deflecting the subject whenever it came up in conversation. There were certain political benefits within the officer echelons of the British Army if one could pass oneself off as being more English than one’s competition, and it was a talent that he had worked hard to master ever since his time as a young subaltern. Arthur was perhaps guilty of overplaying it from time to time, and was on rare occasions mistaken for a dandy; it was not an error that was generally made more than once, for beneath the studiously cultivated exterior lay a core of cold, hard steel.

  “Yes, yes.” Tipu waved the correction away with equal irritation. “English, Irish, you are all one and the same. White-skinned devils bent upon conquering Mysore for yourselves and plundering it to line your own pockets.”

  “Utterly ridiculous. We are not even in Mysore.”

  “A mere technicality. Yes, you and your army may indeed have left my lands behind—”

  “King George’s lands, I believe you mean.”

  “My lands,” the Sultan repeated sternly, “but your red-coated heathens are even now busily shoveling anything with even the slightest value into the bottomless pockets of the East India Company. Is that not so?”

  Mutely refusing to answer, Wellesley half-turned away. In his heart of hearts (if indeed a vampire had such a thing) he knew that the Sultan was correct. Leaving Tipu on the throne of Mysore was simply bad for business, which in and of itself would have been a suitable reason to depose him; but when one factored in his courtship of the French…well, that simply could not be allowed. Tipu’s efforts to persuade France to deploy forces to Mysore in order to help him oppose the British had not gone unnoticed in London, and the possibility of a military alliance against the British between the two factions simply did not bear thinking about.

  “You have no answer,” the Sultan said, clapping his hands together in delight. Despite the almost total darkness of the tunnel, the jeweled rings on each of his fingers glinted in Wellesley’s vampiric vision. “You have no answer, simply because you know the truth of the matter and do not wish to admit it.”

  Arthur whirled back to face him, his usual reserve and coolness suddenly deserting him.

  “And what of it? You, of all people — the so-called Tiger of Mysore — should know the way of the world. The strong survive and prosper, while the weak fall by the wayside. It has ever been so, Tipu, and I suspect shall remain so until the end of time. You wish to speak of the truth? I shall give you the truth: His Britannic Majesty’s forces were the stronger, and you were the weakling. Nature simply took its natural course, that is all.”

  All traces of his joviality now gone, Tipu simply glowered at him.

  “Our dance is not yet over, Wellesley, for here we are.” He spread his arms to encompass their dank surroundings. “My bloodline did not end here at this Water Gate.”

  “You speak of your daughter.”

  “I do, and you would do well to listen to me.” The Sultan sighed. “I love her, Irishman, with all of my heart; and yet, that has proved to be difficult thing sometimes. She is cruel, you see, deep down. Where that cruelty comes from is a mystery to me. Certainly she did not get it from her mother, for a kinder, gentler blossom you could never find if you searched Mysore for a thousand years.”

  “It is often said that the apple does not fall far from the tree,” Arthur countered, and then chastised himself internally for the remark. That was ungentlemanly.

  But the Sultan seemed unfazed. “I have heard the expression, and have found it to be true more often than not,” he
agreed. “Yet I like to believe that I am not a cruel man by nature, Wellesley — only when the situation demanded it, and which leader of men can claim to have bloodless hands when all is said and done?”

  Unbidden, Arthur thought back to the floggings he had ordered during his service with the army. He had taken pleasure in none of them. It was a distasteful thing for him to see a man squirm and bleed for some infraction against the King’s regulations, but discipline and order must be maintained, no matter what the cost.

  “On that, at least, we can agree,” he replied quietly.

  “Yes, I suspected that we might. You too have worn the mask of command, Wellesley; which means that you, like I, know full well the price it exacts upon the soul.”

  “I am a vampire. There are many who say that I have no soul.”

  “And do you believe them?”

  Arthur stood silent once more, refusing to answer. In truth, he tried not to dwell upon such things.

  “At any rate,” the Sultan continued, having realized that Arthur was probably not going to answer his question, “we were speaking of my daughter. There is a coldness and a cruelty inside of her that I do not believe originates from either myself or her dear, sweet departed mother.”

  Intrigued despite his misgivings, Arthur asked, “From where, then, does it come?”

  “From her upbringing, I suspect. You know that she commanded my venerable Tiger Guard.” It had been a statement, not a question. Arthur simply nodded. “She is the first and only female ever to have served in that capacity,” Tipu went on. “In and of itself, that was an exceptional achievement.”

  “I daresay it was.”

  “A streak of tigers is no easy thing for a female to keep up with, let alone dominate. They are cruel, vicious in the extreme…there is little room for mercy among their ranks. And yet, my little Jamelia excelled — as she has excelled at everything that she has ever set her mind upon.”