Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  In their wisdom, they elected not to report the matter to their superiors at the front of the column.

  “If this continues, Nichols, then our army shall be bled dry by this damnable curse. I want the Shadows to deal with each and every incident, swiftly and decisively.” Wellesley had been very clear on that point. “Patrol the column, CSM. Have the Shadows move up and down the line, keeping a watchful eye out for stragglers. If they show the same symptoms of those afflicted…well, you know what to do.”

  “Yes, sir. I know what to do.” Dan’s voice sounded hollow even to his own ears. This was without a doubt the most horrifying and reprehensible duty he had ever been ordered to undertake in all his years of service to the King; and yet, he had come to see that it was totally and utterly necessary. The general was right. If it wasn’t stopped soon, the lust for flesh shown by these walking dead men would take a heavy toll on the small British army. “You can depend upon us, sir.”

  “I have never doubted it, CSM.” With that remark, Wellesley had spurred Diomed away to the north, a detachment of dragoons breaking away from their main body in order to accompany him.

  It had probably been harder on Doctor Caldwell than on anybody else, Dan reflected as he trudged back towards the 33rd’s position in the long column of soldiers, horsemen, cannon, and camp followers. He was glad the surgeon was now sleeping the march away in the back of a covered wagon. The poor man must have been utterly exhausted. Before they had broken camp the previous evening and set their feet upon the road, pandemonium had broken out in the medical tent.

  “We can hardly take them with us,” said the 78th’s surgeon brusquely. “They are a liability at best, and a bloody great hazard at worst!”

  “Then what do you propose that we do?” Caldwell had asked with uncharacteristic petulance, even going so far as to stand with his fists planted upon his hips. “Put them to death like so many rabid dogs?”

  “They are already dead,” the other physician replied quietly, “and many more will join them if we do not act decisively.”

  Caldwell knew in his heart of hearts that the man was right. General Wellesley had made no secret of his intentions. The Maratha army was encamped at Borkardan, and the much smaller British force was going to bring them to battle. Even if things went miraculously well — and when did they ever upon the battlefield? — then there would still be a significant butcher’s bill to pay, that dreaded list of dead, dying, and wounded soldiers, many of whom would demand the time and attention of Caldwell and his staff. How could they do that with a hospital tent already filled to bursting with creatures such as these?

  There was no cure in sight, of that he was all but certain. In such small increments of time as he had been able to snatch in between attending to patients that day, Caldwell had begun to dissect one of them while it was still ‘alive.’ He used one of the far corners of the medical tent, arranging for an orderly to string a rope across and hang a makeshift curtain in order to provide him with a little privacy. Then he had ordered one of the creatures to be carried on its table into the isolated little space, and had set to work in the furtherance of medical knowledge.

  Firstly he had taken a sturdy hammer and battered the thing’s teeth out of its mouth, pounding away at it ten times until he felt sufficiently safe to approach it a little more closely. It might still inflict its bodily secretions upon him, he reasoned, but hopefully without the benefit of tearing into his flesh, the skin would act as a barrier against the sickness.

  It was then that the real work had begun. He had carefully laid out a set of his very oldest and most worn and threadbare surgical tools, in the full knowledge that whatever implements he used upon the creature’s body would have to be either abandoned or burned afterwards, for there was no chance that he would risk exposing a living patient to them ever again. Placing the flat palm of one hand down upon the center of the dead man’s forehead, Caldwell took up the bone saw and began to work it back and forth across the thing’s face. He used the same iron mental discipline that he had cultivated as a young medical student, a complete newcomer to the disgusting sights, sounds, and stenches of the anatomist’s table, in order to cope with the knowledge that the body he was now taking apart had until yesterday been a fighting man of the 74th Regiment of Foot.

  This is no longer a man, he remonstrated with himself, so do not allow yourself to be fooled. This is a thing, an unholy abomination that no longer has possession of its soul, and nothing more than that.

  Sawing through the maxillary bone just beneath the nose, he had soon cut away the creature’s upper jaw just above the top lip. He carried on vigorously, making the cut circumferential and severing the lower jaw bone on either side. Now the thing could no longer bite him. Viscous black fluid which he could only assume was blood welled up from the jagged incisions, before pouring down into the creature’s snapping mouth, causing it to gargle wetly from the back of its throat.

  This must surely be the first time in the history of medicine that an autopsy has been performed on something that was still moving at the time.

  He stifled the sudden urge to laugh, one which would have been harsh and inappropriate, but an entirely natural reaction to the absurd circumstances under which he now found himself.

  From time to time he would be fetched to deal with the latest medical emergency, but always returned to his makeshift anatomy lab once the crisis had been averted. He worked without sleep, could not remember the last time he had left the hospital tent in fact, and grew more and more tired until it seemed he must surely begin to hallucinate. Over the course of that long, hot day, Caldwell opened the thing’s abdominal cavity and removed intestine, stomach, liver, and spleen, and then cut his way into the retroperitoneal space and sliced out both kidneys.

  Still it continued to thrash and gurgle, testing itself against the unyielding grip of the leather restraints.

  Making a Y-shaped incision in the chest that ran from each shoulder to a point just above the breastbone and then downward to circumscribe the navel, Caldwell cracked open the ribs on each side and exposed the entire thoracic cavity to the open air.

  What he found in there astonished him, though why this should be the case was beyond him. After all, he knew that the creature was dead…this was merely verification.

  The lungs lay limply on either side of the midline, flat and shriveled. These were hardly the mighty bellows which provided air to fuel the spark of life. Cutting the cartilage around the sternum, he lifted the breastbone free and discarded it in an empty bucket that he had set aside for that very purpose. The blood-streaked bone clanged when it hit the bottom of the bucket, spun, and rattled a few times before finally settling.

  He was not sure of the precise time at which the heart had ceased to beat, but it too sat lifelessly in the center of the mediastinum, no longer pumping blood to the lungs and vital organs via the great vessels. This appeared to be the one muscle in the body that wasn’t functioning any longer, and that puzzled him. Why, then, if there was no need for the ingestion of blood in order to support life, did the creatures feel so compelled to seek out the flesh of the living?

  “Pardon me for interrupting, sir.” It was Coleman, one of his orderlies. “Only we have been ordered to strike the tent and prepare for the evening’s march—” His eyes caught side of the partially dissected cadaver, which still squirmed and gurgled on the table in front of him. The fact that the creature’s intestines sat in grey loops in between the thing’s thighs could not have helped matters any, because the orderly suddenly felt his gorge rise explosively, and barely had time to bring a hand up to his face before the vomit came, exploding through the gaps in his fingers as his stomach emptied itself in disgust at the sight before him.

  “No time for that, Coleman,” Caldwell said briskly, hoping that he sounded more confident than he actually felt at the moment. “Let us begin packing everything away. This one—” he pointed to what he now thought of as the dissection specimen — “comes along wit
h us. You can stick it in the back of a covered wagon.”

  While the men under his command went about the business of taking down the field hospital, Doctor Caldwell had a far less pleasant duty to perform. He had reluctantly sent for CSM Nichols, who arrived with a couple of Shadows in tow just a couple of minutes later. The man was nobody’s fool, Caldwell had decided, for he had anticipated the needs of the situation as soon as he received the doctor’s message.

  “What needs to be done?” Nichols asked him quietly, his face set in a grimly determined mask.

  “The…the patients,” he began, finding that the abhorrent words were turning to ash in his mouth almost as quickly as he gave voice to them. “We cannot transport them with us, and we…we cannot leave them here, for the local people to stumble upon—”

  “You leave it to me, sir,” Dan said kindly, wanting to put the doctor out of his misery. Which, ironically, was what he and his lads were about to do for the poor sods strapped down to his tables. “If you’d be so kind though, could you please clear everybody out of the tent? This is probably something they ain’t going to want to see.”

  “Of course, CSM.” Relief washed over Caldwell like a great wave. He had been dreading this moment all day, and now that it was finally here, Wellesley’s personal Sergeant Major was going to take that load up on his behalf.

  Once the orderlies had left the hospital tent, Dan and his Shadows — Corporal McElvaney and Private Armstrong — set about their grim task. They moved slowly but purposefully from table to table, from bed to bed. At each one they stopped and delivered a death blow with the heavy butts of their Brown Bess muskets, repeating it until the thing tied down in front of them had stopped moving.

  All but one.

  “That one’s coming with us,” Caldwell explained, sensing the CSM’s distaste at the idea. “He may provide us with the answers we need…the key to unlocking the secrets of this awful mystery.”

  “Rather you than me, sir,” Dan had said, and he bloody well meant it to. Killing the things again was one thing; taking them apart piece by piece and poking around inside was something else entirely. He had nodded to Armstrong and McElvaney, and the two men each grabbed an end of the now-sticky wooden table, lifting it a foot of the ground with its occupant still attached by straps.

  “Right, sir,” the little Scots corporal had said with a cheeky grin. “Where would you like your side of beef delivered to?”

  The grotesquely nicknamed ‘side of beef,’ which was still very much active and kicking despite the loss of approximately one third of its former body mass, was delivered to a bullock-drawn wagon whose bed was covered with a frame of canvas stretched over wooden supports. Four men of the Shadow Company would attend the wagon on its journey, just in case the monstrosity within should get loose.

  “It’s not as though there’s much it can do if it gets free,” Dan had told the four men detailed to this very specific form of guard duty. “The bloody thing’s got no teeth. But if it gets out, put it out of its misery sharpish, alright?”

  “Sarn’t Major,” one of the men began nervously. It was Sutcliffe, the private from Norwich.

  “Yes, lad?”

  “Pardon me for asking Sarn’t Major, but who…er, well…” His voice trailed off nervously.

  “Who did that wretched thing in the wagon used to be?” Dan finished the sentence for him.

  “Er, yeah.”

  “Never you mind, lad. Nothing good will come of asking such questions. The poor sod who was born in that body is long gone, that’s all you need to know. What’s left is just gristle and bones. It isn’t alive as we understand it, so don’t think of it as one of us. Understand?”

  “It looked pretty alive to me,” one of the others muttered, mistakenly thinking that he would not be heard. Dan rounded on him.

  “Oh, he does, does he, Private?” the CSM hissed through clenched teeth. All of the frustration of the past few days was bubbling up. Careful now, Dan. Don’t take it out on these poor buggers. They’re as shaken by it all as the rest of us, I’ll be bound.

  “Sorry, Sarn’t Major,” the private replied apologetically, breaking eye contact and looking down towards his feet.

  “It’s alright, lad.” Dan deliberately softened his voice, then reduced the sting further with a rare smile. “Don’t think of it as a he, boys. Think of it as an it. Because it is. Try not to let it get under your skin, eh?”

  There were nods all round and a few murmurs of assent from the men. As satisfied as he was going to get under the circumstances, Dan left the detail to their business and strode off to find Captain Campbell.

  Looking back on it now, after several hours of long, hard marching through the Deccan night, Dan reflected that the poor carved-up bastard tied up in that wagon had turned out to be the very least of their worries. Periodically, he would head back in the order of march and check up on it, just for his own peace of mind. The guards looked bored, and when asked they had told him that the creature had caused them no problems other than its grunting and growling. Unsurprisingly, the sounds got on the guards’ nerves after a while, so one of them had stuffed a dirty rag into the back of what remained of its mouth. It had given them no further trouble ever since.

  Fears in the Darkness

  A fear grew in the breast of Arthur Wellesley that night. He was not usually the sort of man to give counsel to his fears, and yet this one was of an entirely rational nature, and so he indulged it, brooded, fed the dark flames with every passing mile.

  He was afraid that they would reach Borkardan the next evening and find it deserted.

  Finally, he could stand the tension no more. Calling for Major Williams, Arthur determined to be done with it once and for all. He would dispatch the exploring officer to ascertain whether this was in fact the case; were the enemy still encamped at Borkardan or not?

  “Major, I trust that you are suitably well-rested after the exertions of yesterday evening.”

  Always a dapper man, Williams looked as though he could just as easily attend a formal ball as go scouting for his general. Every hair on his head, including a set of spectacular mutton chops, was groomed perfectly in place. His uniform was immaculate, from the brightly-polished boots to the high collar of his red jacket. He had left his bicorne hat behind, Wellesley saw, probably because it was too easy to lose when in flight.

  “I am in fine fettle and completely at your disposal, General Wellesley,” he answered smoothly.

  “I am glad to hear it.”

  “May I ask the general about my target for the evening?”

  “The same as you stumbled upon yesterday, Major Williams: Borkardan. I need to be sure that the enemy is still encamped there, before I commit our forces to an attack.”

  “Is there any reason that they should not be there, sir? If the rumors are true, then the Marathas are an indecisive lot at best.”

  “Indecisive sometimes, yes,” Wellesley conceded, “but also deuced hard to get to grips with. They have evaded and eluded this army on far too many occasions of late, and I would not be at all surprised if you were to tell me that they had already gotten wind of our presence here, and had bally well turned tail to run northward once more.”

  The major nodded thoughtfully. “Then with your permission, I shall be about the King’s business sir. One way or the other, you shall know before dawn.”

  With that, the exploring officer changed the density of his body, lightening it to something less substantial than that of the air around him. It was a trick that practically every vampire either learned instinctively or was taught by a mentor in the first few weeks after they received the Dark Gift. Williams rose gracefully into the early morning sky, and Arthur watched him floating into the starry heavens until he was lost amongst the blackness.

  Then he returned his mind to more earthly matters.

  The enemy was just ten miles away to the north, and that distance lessened with every passing footstep. If fortune was with the British, then the M
arathas would still be camped at the village of Borkardan, and would hopefully be blissfully unaware that two separate enemy armies were marching on their position in as stealthy a manner as fifteen thousand men could manage.

  From far behind him in the order of march, Arthur heard a shrill scream pierce the still night air. It was followed by the sound of a musket crackling, and then silence returned once more.

  Another attack. Was there ever to be an end to them?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Three Europeans

  On the first night that they had been sent out, the three European officers that had been dispatched by Pohlmann in order to scout for the British forces had struck gold. It had taken the entire night of flying in their low-density spectral forms, but the three captains had between them managed to locate both of the enemy armies that were not advancing northward towards their position.

  “The hills divide them both,” Captain Henri Le Foche had explained to an eager Pohlmann upon his return. Le Foche was the first vampire officer to return from the evening’s reconnaissance trip, although the others shouldn’t be too long, for the first fingers of a pink dawn were already streaking the eastern horizon.

  The Colonel had left orders to be awakened when the vampire officers were back, and so it was a yawning Pohlmann that poured his captain a cup of warm blood which had just been extracted from one of the many servants that attended him.

  “They are still separated, the two armies?” the Hanoverian demanded, his eyes searching the French vampire’s sallow face.

  “As I said,” confirmed Le Foche. “One army marches on either side of the range. They are not unified; nor do I think that it is possible, given the nature of the terrain between them. Infantry and perhaps cavalry could crest the hills with minimal effort, but there is little likelihood of the artillery being able to make that journey.”

  “I believe that I can recall the hills of which you speak, but you have seen these hills from the air. Tell me — do you believe that the British armies can consolidate?”