Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  Le Foche considered the question for a moment in silence. Finally, he shook his head. “Non. At least, I consider it to be highly unlikely. The gradient is not impossibly steep, but it would take many hours to maneuver even a part of one of their armies into contact with the other so long as the hills keep them apart. In my humble opinion, Colonel Pohlmann, the British will seek to converge upon us at Borkardan, striking from two directions simultaneously in an attempt to catch us off guard.”

  Cupping his chin in the palm of one hand, Pohlmann nodded thoughtfully. It made sense. In fact, it was even something that he might do, were he to find himself in Wellesley’s boots. The Irishman expected to find them encamped at Borkardan, he would learn just ten minutes later, because the second of the vampire captains to return — a man by the name of Bertrand — had located Wellesley at the very forefront of the British column, riding calmly and confidently as though this were nothing more than a social outing rather than an invasion.

  Swooping down through the still night air as slowly and silently as possible some half a mile in front of the British advance, Bertrand had found a rock formation and hidden himself away in the deepest pools of its shadows. The cavalry vanguard trotted by first, completely unaware of his presence. Then came the Major General, and the Frenchman listened in something akin to glee as he heard Wellesley talking quite animatedly of his army’s ultimate objective: an attack upon the Maratha assembly at Borkardan, sometime during the evening of the Twenty-Fourth.

  That decided it. Pohlmann, ever an aggressive field commander, was not the sort of officer to merely sit back and react to his enemy’s battle plan. Ceding the initiative to the British was a totally alien concept to him. No, the only possible course of action was to catch the British off-guard. Wellesley must be defeated first, and destroyed in detail. That would free him up to go after the second army some ten miles to the west of the first, led by this man Stevenson — an unknown quantity, if ever there was one.

  And so the following day at sunset, the Maratha army had begun to march in an easterly direction, bearing slightly towards the south and leaving the village of Borkardan far to the rear. It was truly staggering how many men were at his back, Pohlmann realized as he happened to turn around and take in the sheer scale of the army which had been entrusted to his field command. There were thousands of infantryman, it was true, though only a few thousand of them actually met the professional standards of the European forces after which they were modeled; where the horde really took one’s breath away was in the dizzying array of irregular horsemen, whose numbers truly were beyond the eye’s ability to count.

  It would not do to get complacent, however, the vampire cautioned himself. The irregulars are impressive to behold, most certainly, but they have little reputation for performing well in a true stand-up fight.

  After much internal debate, Pohlmann had finally decided to leave his beloved ceremonial elephant behind that evening, in the care of its grooms and handlers. With ornamentation and trappings fit for a king, the beast was also second to none as a comfortable means of conveyance. On the battlefield, however, it would cause him to stick out like a sore thumb, and make him the target of every Englishman with a musket. It also usually guarded his gravesite during the daytime, a task which would now fall upon a handful of Jamelia’s men that she had hand-picked specifically for the task.

  As a mount, he had chosen instead a beautiful brown gelding named Amathar. The horse could be a little spirited at times, but more importantly was trained to be practically unshakable on the battlefield. Pohlmann needed a mount that wouldn’t take fright when the first cannon sounded, and Amathar should fit the bill nicely.

  In a display of trust which both took him by surprise and touched his cold heart, both Scindia and the Raja of Berar had declined to accompany the army, choosing instead to entrust it entirely into his hands. “You are more than capable, Anthony,” Scindia had said within the comfort of his tent. The potentate had draped a hand casually about his subordinate’s shoulder, in what he had hoped would come across as a fatherly gesture. “Berar and I are both in agreement on this. Take the army and crush the British. We shall remain here, and await news of your great victory.”

  In reality, both men had an ulterior motive, for Scindia knew that the hungry dead would walk the land in their thousands once the battle had concluded. He had looked upon their horror before, and had not the slightest inclination to get close to it ever again.

  Pohlmann had simply bowed smoothly, spun on his heel, and strode off to see to his duties.

  At Pohlmann’s invitation, Jamelia rode alongside him. An entire army marched at their backs, and both the vampire and the were-tiger felt the sense of heady invincibility that came along with leading such a vast assemblage of fighting men. He shared with her the intelligence gathered by Le Foche and Bertrand early that same morning.

  “Wellesley believes that we are still camped at Borkardan,” she said with a sly smile, the full implications of this knowledge finally sinking in.

  “Which means…?” Pohlmann prompted.

  “Which means that he will advance too far, into the jaws of a trap that we will set for him,” Jamelia replied immediately. “A trap from which he will be unable to extricate himself.”

  “Precisely!” The Hanoverian grinned from ear to ear with uncharacteristic joviality, obviously rather pleased with this turn of events. His fangs gleamed in the cold light of the stars. “The river Kailna runs from east to west,” Pohlmann explained, warming to his theme. “In order to reach Borkardan, the British must cross the Kailna. Must!”

  “But they will find us waiting for them first.”

  “On the north bank,” the colonel agreed. “There is little need for finesse here, Jamelia. The river shall flow across the front of our army, and we need only array the infantry and artillery in line along the Kaitna’s length and simply await the inevitable.”

  It was the role of any strong second-in-command to play Devil’s Advocate, and so Jamelia threw herself into the role with gusto. “What if Wellesley chooses not to attack?”

  “He really has no choice in the matter,” Pohlmann replied, laughing. “We have tens of thousands of horsemen here, Jamelia. If the British shrink from our position, retreating back from whence they came, Wellesley must surely know that our horse will harry him every step of the way. His army shall die the death of a thousand cuts; one cut here, another slice there, until the body has bled to death. No, once Wellesley espies our disposition, he shall no other option than to take the offensive.”

  Jamelia pondered this for a moment. “If I understand your strategy correctly, then you intend to array our forces in line, based on the assumption that he will launch a frontal assault.” Pohlmann nodded. “With that being the case, could he not simply launch a flanking attack?”

  It was a valid question, Pohlmann knew. If there was one thing that every commander feared, it was being successfully flanked; but he dismissed the possibility out of hand. “Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps — but one must take into account the topography of the region, my dear. To the east, the river Kailna branches off, with a tributary running to the northwest of the main body.”

  Searching her memory and recalling the map she had seen only yesterday, Jamelia asked if that was the smaller river known as the Juah.

  “Just so,” Pohlmann agreed equably. “There is a small village located on the Juah’s south bank, a place of little import that goes by the name of Assaye. Just to the south of Assaye is where we shall anchor the left flank of our line. It will be secured in the fork of the two rivers.”

  “What of the far right?”

  “Borkardan,” the vampire shot back at once. “The village is fortified, and we shall place the great mass of our cavalry upon that wing. The British would not dare to attack us there.”

  “Which leaves only the frontal assault,” Jamelia agreed, nodding slowly. “I see.”

  “Yet you have questions.” Another toothy sm
ile. “There is no need to be reticent. Simply ask them.”

  “Very well. Say what you will, but the British redcoats are superb soldiers, drilled almost to perfection. This I learned at Seringapatam.” There was a moment of silence as her memory inadvertently strayed back to that night of blood and fire. With a shake of the head, she willed herself back to the present. “It is rare that one hears of British infantry formations being bested in open combat.”

  “This is true,” Pohlmann conceded, “but then, how often do they face odds of ten to one? Of fifteen to one? Wellesley has, if our intelligence is correct, less than thirty guns. We have a hundred. A hundred. If the two British armies do not unite, then Wellesley will be pitting 7,000 men against fifteen times that number. Not to mention the fact that we shall have the defender’s advantage.”

  Jamelia nodded thoughtfully. It was commonly accepted wisdom that in order to successfully assault a fortified position, the attackers needed to outnumber the defenders by a factor of at least three to one…and even then, the price that must be paid in blood was often horrific.

  “Tell me of the Kailna,” she said at last. “Is it fordable?”

  “It is,” Pohlmann admitted. “Though only at certain specific places. There are villages on each bank, both north and south.”

  “Could the redcoats not simply wade across?”

  “Highly unlikely. A number of brinjarries in our employ have been questioned most closely by my intelligence staff. At practically every point along the river, the water would be at chest height on most men. The banks are steep and usually slippery. Unaided, the British could cross only with great difficulty. Cavalry and artillery would be unable to cross at all, unless it were to be at one of the natural fords.”

  “And those…?”

  “Those we shall guard with everything we have. Our finest troops—” he eyed her meaningfully, his intent utterly clear “—will be positioned directly in front of them, along with our heaviest cannon. We can only hope that Wellesley is truly naive enough to try to cross there.”

  Jamelia could well imagine it, the pictures already forming unbidden in her mind’s eye. The British redcoat was determined in the face of adversity, and whatever else might be said of them, none could accuse them of lacking either courage or discipline. She could see the shallow slopes down to the fords on the Kailna’s south bank, enticing the invaders to their doom; for just across the river, the north bank would be alive with the roar of Pohlmann’s deadliest artillery, lined up wheel to wheel in batteries and served with brutal efficiency by the superbly-trained European crews. The British and their native allies would have no choice but to march directly into the mouths of those beckoning cannons. At first, she knew that they would hurl heavy lead shot, the basic cannonballs that could tear bloody swathes through the rank and file.

  Then, once the redcoats actually splashed their way into the river itself, the water at the ford slowing their pace to little more than a crawl, the real horror would begin. Switching their loads from roundshot to cannister, the gunners would employ shell casings that were crammed full of little metal pellets. As the British line or column splashed its way across the Kailna, the air would be split with the buzzing whine that marked their passage by the thousands, smashing what was once an organized and well-led infantry formation into nothing more than bleeding, screaming meat and gristle.

  The carnage would be horrific. Still, Jamelia knew that this would not be the end of it, for the British were not men to give up easily. Wellesley would be chancing all on this one attack, and retreat would mean not only failure — something which was anathema to the snobbish, aristocratic vampire general — but also the slow attrition of what scraps remained of his once-proud army, forced to try and march its way back to Mysore with the ignominious shuffle of the recently trounced, and harried by Scindia and Berar’s horde of irregular cavalry every step of the way.

  So they would go on, spurred on to greater effort by their merciless vampire officers. Jamelia did not even have to close her eyes to see it, so clear was the premonition in the forefront of her mind…and just as the near-broken and battered survivors attained the far bank, in the hopes of getting their bayonets wet in the blood of the Maratha gunners, the infantry would take their turn, for they would have already been positioned close behind the artillery batteries, formed up into long lines and awaiting their turn to dish out some punishment to the enemy.

  It would be a massacre. Nothing less. And standing in the forefront of those white-coated ranks would be Jamelia’s very own brigade, taking pride of place in the van of Pohlmann’s compoo. They had been trained remorselessly, their fighting skills honed to the edge of perfection by their tigress commander. While the gunners swabbed and sponged out the long barrels of their cannon, her men would fire three, sometimes even four aimed rounds each minute, pouring volley after volley of lethal musketry into the helpless British survivors. Oh, doubtless some would get a shot or two off in return, she thought airily — but most would be far too preoccupied with screaming, falling, and ultimately dying in a blood-red river some thousands of miles from the land of their birth.

  Now it would be her turn to seek revenge, sweet retribution for the savagery that had been inflicted upon her home city of Seringapatam…and her father.

  Which just left Wellesley, he whom she hated above all others; hated with a passion that burned like the fires of the living sun, eternally raging and impossible to quench. It would come down to just the two of them in the end. She knew that, felt it somehow in her very core; and in her obeisances to Kali, the Goddess had tacitly confirmed that knowledge, for when Jamelia opened her eyes after such ceremonies, she invariably saw the afterimage of that most hated of all foes, superimposed against the canvas of the material world to which she had just returned.

  Wellesley…it was always Wellesley. He stirred her blood and haunted her nights with dreams of vengeance. She dreamed up such exquisite tortures for him, fantasies in which she opened the creature’s veins with a silver blade, draining him of his life’s blood one excruciating drop at a time, until his dessicated husk of a body was bone dry. What did happen when a vampire was robbed of his last drop of blood? Such an intriguing notion had kept her awake on many a long night, stretched out in the comfortable silken bed in her luxurious apartments at Seringapatam. She had pictured him literally dying of thirst, manacled with bonds that were also made of silver, powerless to move further than the reach of the restraints would allow. They would burn his wrists and ankles constantly, the hostile caress of the silver never allowing his pallid undead flesh to heal.

  The vampire would writhe and scream, growing ever weaker as each precious drop of blood was lost, wasted carelessly upon the ground. Meanwhile, Jamelia would taunt and tease the creature even as she tormented him, allowing her engorged, blood-rich jugular to drift into his view; she would place her neck just beyond his reach, tantalizingly close, and Wellesley would cry for it, plead for it, rage for it, and ultimately beg for it, for she imagined him breaking down into the sobs of the parched man lost in the desert who is presented with a skin full of water, reaching out for it, only for it to be cruelly snatched away at the very last moment.

  Nor would that be the end of it either; for once the Dark Mother had reaped her fill of souls at the fords, their dead bodies would rise again in accordance with her will; rise and turn upon their former comrades, chasing them down and tearing desperately at their flesh with teeth and clawed fingernails, in turn making more of their own kind to serve the most exalted Kali’s will.

  Yes, as a plan, it was practically perfect.

  Pohlmann shot her a sidelong glance. Although most of Jamelia’s face was bathed in shadow, he could see that her mouth twitched with a very definite smile. He had a pretty shrewd idea of the reason behind it, or so he believed. Jamelia’s hatred of the British in general and their commander in particular was something of which she made no secret. That ire, if properly channeled, could be worth more than an extra
thousand men on the battlefield, the vampire thought to himself; but then, such a miniscule advantage was hardly even necessary, for so greatly did the forces under his command outnumber those of the Irish general that he would almost literally have to trip over his own feet in order to fail.

  At that thought, Pohlmann smiled too, enjoying the farcical image that sprang to mind. No, he would be sure-footed and agile when battle came, both in person and as the master tactician that he knew himself to be.

  Shortly after three o’clock, his finely-tuned vampiric eyes were among the very first to pick out the cluster of dark buildings that were rising up above the horizon in front of them.

  “Assaye.”

  There was nothing else to be said.

  Assaye: as good a name as any for the place in which the British would be utterly annihilated.

  A Stage Set for Slaughter

  Colonel Anthony Pohlmann — who now found himself effectively promoted to general, a position of which he felt most deserving — was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. No sooner had the village appeared on the horizon than he set to work, firing off orders to his subordinate officers with all of the confidence, vitality and enthusiasm of a man who knew that he simply could not lose.

  Daulat Rao Scindia had provided the lion’s share of the forces for this little military adventure, and Pohlmann was more than glad of the fact. He knew the relative strengths and weaknesses of Scindia’s men from long and sometimes hard-earned experience in the man’s service, whereas the soldiers marched under the colors of the Raja of Berar were much more of an unknown quantity to him.

  “I have heard that some are rather good,” he confided to Jamelia in a low voice as the pair rode side-by-side towards the River Kailna, “whereas others are of little more use than a mound of elephant shit, if you will excuse the expression.”