A ragged cheer went up from the ranks. Normally, cheering was something Arthur disapproved of when it came from among the ranks — let them cheer you one minute, and they’ll be booing you the next, he had said on more than one occasion — but in this case it was just what the doctor ordered, serving to bolster the mens’ nerves and put some lead into their backbones.
What he did not yet know was that one of his commanders was about to lead his men into the jaws of disaster.
"...a favor to us..."
“I don’t know what that imbecile is doing,” Anthony Pohlmann said conversationally, “but it’s certainly a favor to us.”
Jamelia frowned, squinting to try and make sense of what her sharp feline eyes were seeing. Pohlmann had exercised the right of the commanding general and placed his compoo in the very center of the Maratha line, and Jamelia’s battalion in the very center of his compoo. As such, they both had an excellent vantage point from which to observe the progress of the British attack.
“He appears to be drifting,” she said at last, watching incredulously as the rightmost formation in the British line began to move further and further towards the north, isolating itself from the main body of the army, which was in the process of forming one large line of battalions where previously there had been two. All the while, the massed batteries of Maratha cannon that were deployed in front of their infantry punched bloody holes through their ranks.
Still the rogue unit continued to drift…
…towards the village named Assaye.
“It is unwise, not to mention churlish, to interrupt the enemy when he is in the middle of making a mistake,” the vampire said, a thin smile twisting up the corners of his lips.
Even harder to believe was the fact that the battalion which had been stationed directly behind it seemed to be following their lead, also branching off from the main force of Wellesley’s army and crabbing slowly towards the north.
As the tigress and the vampire looked on, the British picquets of the day crept further and further towards the fortified stronghold that formed the linchpin of the Maratha line’s left wing, a village that positively bristled with artillery pieces and soldiers wielding flintlocks by the thousands.
Better still, the King’s 74th followed them to the slaughter.
A Bloody Idiot
“What is that bloody idiot doing?” groaned Dan Nichols, his voice a mixture of disbelief and horror.
The King’s 33rd were the sixth battalion in line, counting from the British left wing to its right. On their left side, the sepoys and officers of the 2/12 Madras Native Infantry absorbed the punishment being dealt out by the Maratha guns and kept marching ever forwards, bayonets fixed and muskets held at the vertical. To their right was supposed to be the 74th, and to their right the ad hoc picquets of the day, stretching the line out to a frontage of eight battalions in all; what was actually on their right, Dan noted with a sinking feeling growing in his belly, was empty ground. The 74th, who should have been marching practically shoulder to shoulder with his lads from the 33rd, were a good two hundred feet away and gaining more distance with every passing minute.
The reason for it was obvious. At the far right end of the line, the battalion comprised of the day’s picquet half-companies was edging its way further to the north, angling away from the main body of British troops like a paramour spurning a lover. Not wishing to leave their comrades hung out to dry, the 74th were sticking to the picquets like bloody glue, Dan realized, and so two battalions were parting ways with the remaining six and striking out for the left flank of the Maratha line.
Where the guns of Assaye would tear them apart.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Volley Fire
Only a bare fifty paces remained between the Maratha cannons and the line of advancing British soldiers.
Oh, how the redcoats had suffered to get there — hundreds lay broken and bleeding in the fields between here and the ford, pouring out their life-blood in the harsh white moonlight. Their screams and wails were mostly masked by the thunder of the constant rolling cannonade, until death finally silenced their cries.
But now, it was the turn of the British to inflict some suffering.
“Halt!” bellowed Wellesley. All of his battalions crashed to a standstill at the same time. “Commanding officers: you may commence volley fire at your discretion.”
It was now a race against time, because the distance between the two opposing armies had closed sufficiently for the Maratha gunners to be able to fire cannister. Each tin contained hundreds of metal balls that would blast outward into the enemy ranks in a cone of destruction, tearing men limb from limb wherever the balls struck home. The gunners worked frantically to swab out their barrels after the last volley of roundshot and to load the new type of ammunition instead. For their part, the redcoats coolly brought the stocks of their Brown Bess muskets up into the aim position and awaited the order to fire.
The order was not long in coming.
“Fire!”
Over four thousand muskets fired almost at once, spitting raw vengeance at the men who had, until just seconds before, tormented them from the safety of a great distance. That safety now proved to be illusory, as the heavy iron balls slammed into the gun crews at short range. Each time a ball struck the barrel of a cannon, a thudding whang sound echoed along its length from the point of impact. Now it was time for the artillerymen to scream, as the murderous salvo scythed through flesh and bone alike. Hundreds of gunners fell, victims of the hideous trauma inflicted by the legions of Brown Besses. Some of the smarter ones had crawled underneath the gun-carriages, seeking such shelter as they could from the hailstorm they knew was sure to come. Most of them survived, though not all: one man took a ricocheted round in the abdomen, eviscerating a small section of bowel and starting an internal bleed which would kill him within moments; another had his nose blown clear away from his face, causing bubbles of red frothy blood to well up in the center of his ruined features.
A small handful of the big guns had been reloaded with cannister when the British volley struck, and now the surviving members of their crews took the opportunity of discharging them into the British ranks. Cannister was designed with such short ranges in mind, and had every battery been able to load and fire it in time, the effects would have been disastrous upon the red-jacketed line — as it was, the British ranks were still decimated by the relatively tiny salvo, with entire files of men being blasted halfway out of existence.
Arthur went down hard, feeling as though he had been swatted by the hand of vengeful and malevolent god. A high-pitched shriek that could never have been uttered by a human throat told him that Achilles, his poor Achilles, had been hit, and from where he lay supine on his back Arthur looked down the length of his body and saw that his mount was covered in blood, the blood from multiple cannister projectiles. With a grunt, he rose into a crouch and then duck-walked over to caress the wounded horse’s head, cradling it sadly in his hands. Achilles tossed his head back, flinching instinctively at his approach. Only the whites of his eyes were visible, and Arthur knew that the poor beast must be suffering the most intense pain.
He knew what must be done.
Placing his hands just so, Arthur kissed his faithful mount tenderly on the front of his face. Then, with a deep sadness that was belied by an expression of absolute stoicism, he applied a burst of vampiric strength and cleanly broke Achilles’ neck.
The mighty beast gasped once, and then sagged limply as the life left his broken body.
“Sleep well,” Arthur whispered, rising to his feet and casting about for his orderly. He was pleased to see that both the young Highlander and Campbell had survived the murderous cannister-fire without so much as a scratch, and held out a hand to receive Diomed’s reins. Smoothly, he vaulted up into the Arabian’s saddle, then took a moment to assess the situation.
As soon as the dust had settled, the British survivors methodically reloaded their muskets, with a calmness an
d an efficiency that was as impressive as it was deceptive. Many of the reloaders’ hands were shaking, for the effects of cannister fired a close range were fearsome indeed. Nonetheless, the redcoats did what they had been trained to do, returning their muskets to service in less than twenty seconds.
Finally, when each musket was once again loaded, their general gave the command for which every man was eagerly waiting.
“Bayonets!”
Very few of the enemy gunners were vertical any longer, and as tempting as it was to give them another volley, Arthur knew that the ammunition was better saved for the massed ranks of Maratha infantry that stood formed just behind the line of cannons. No, this would be wet work for the triangular blades that tipped each man’s musket, and as he ordered the British line forward, they were put to use with ruthless efficiency. The redcoats advanced, rolling over the Maratha batteries like one single living wave, and wherever a man moaned or so much as moved, a bayonet would lash out and gore him, puncturing a chest here and a throat there, until nothing remained on the gun-line but smoke and silence.
Arthur smiled with cold satisfaction as he surveyed the handiwork of his men.
Two could play at slaughter.
Unleashing the Beast
Standing at the rear of her white-coated battalion, Jamelia may not have known Arthur Wellesley’s precise position on the battlefield, but her heightened feline senses could at least point her to the general whereabouts of her nemesis. She felt her attention being drawn to the area at the far right of Pohlmann’s line, and craned her neck around to look at the place where the infantrymen of Saleur’s compoo were about to be on the receiving end of a bayonet charge.
The vampire was there. She knew that he was, and sooner or later she would have the opportunity to face off against him with a sword in her hand and vengeance in her heart.
Tread carefully, child, said a voice from somewhere deep inside of her mind. Take no unnecessary risks, for I have plans for you yet.
Yes, Dark Mother, she thought back with unthinking obedience.
Besides, Jamelia now had worries of her own. Snapping her attention back to the situation of her own battalion and compoo, the tigress saw that three rows of finely-honed bayonets were advancing towards her and the assembled ranks of her men, the faces of the men who wielded them set in grimaces of hatred and spite. Beyond them, most of the gunners — the cream of Scindia’s European artillery corps — lay dead or dying.
It would appear that it is up to us now.
Barked commands rippled along the British line, and her own men suddenly seemed a little less confident than they had at the outset of this engagement, when a line of heavy artillery stood between them and the enemy. The guns may still have been there, but they now sat silently smoking, no longer plying their bloody trade upon the redcoats, whose ranks had now slammed to a halt once more and brought their muskets up, over four thousand tiny black muzzles suddenly facing the Maratha infantry across a narrow stretch of killing ground.
She opened her mouth to give the command to aim flintlocks, but the British officers got there first, and volleys thundered along the face of the enemy line, hurling their payload of death into Pohlmann’s formation. The colonel-general himself was nowhere to be seen as the carnage cut down his men left and right, and her precious troops fell by the dozen in that first blast, clutching at holes in their bodies with which they had not been born. Through gritted teeth, Jamelia ordered her own men to return fire, and so they did, but with considerably less gusto than she had expected.
Redcoats fell, parts of their bodies punctured or shot completely away, and yet still they stood there, simply taking it as they had since the engagement had begun.
She fully expected the British regiments to reload and trade a few more volleys with her men, but to her surprise the redcoats lowered their bayonets into the charge position and began to advance. Jamelia frowned. Massed volley fire was usually the preferred tactic of a British commander, and she would have fully expected Wellesley to offset his relatively small number of infantrymen by using it here tonight. What was he about?
There was no time for either side to reload, for the first British bayonets were already ringing out against the blades of her own men.
Where was Pohlmann? She cast about from left to right, looking for her general, but thanks to smoke, darkness, and the ever-present fog of war, could find no sign of him. With a shrug, Jamelia mentally wrote him off. She knew that she had a battle to fight, here upon her own stretch of the front, and she was more than capable of running her own battalion. The grand strategic picture was the vampire’s responsibility, not hers.
It was time to unleash the beast.
Her sword rasped against the sides of its scabbard as she drew it out, turning to face the wall of red that had just slammed into the white ranks in front of her. Jamelia threw back her head and gave a battle-cry that was part roar, part growl, and threw herself towards the closest redcoat with murder foremost in her heart.
A Disaster Unfolds
From his position high above the battlefield, Anthony Pohlmann thought that he could foresee disaster unfolding in front of him.
Acting swiftly to try and corroborate an ill-defined sense of impending doom, the vampire acting-general had risen into the night sky and now held position slightly above and behind his own lines. It gave him the opportunity to get a true birds-eye view of the situation on the ground, and he was surprised not to see Wellesley or one of his underlings doing the same thing.
His center appeared to be strong, and he would have expected nothing less, for his own compoo was stationed there in anticipation of it bearing the brunt of this night’s fighting. Pohlmann rotated slightly to afford himself a better view of the left wing, where things were looking very bad indeed for the British. The two stray battalions had allowed themselves to be drawn even further towards the north, their approach taking them much too close to the village of Assaye, and so now found themselves being picked apart by the defenders of that particular strongpoint. Unlike the main gun-line, which had now been overrun by the redcoats and effectively placed out of action, the Raja of Berar’s cannon were still pouring a steady rain of fire down into the enemy ranks, where more soldiers were falling with horrific wounds by the moment.
No, it was neither the left nor the center which worried him — rather, it was his right wing that gave cause for concern, for it was there that the greatest mass of the enemy attack had struck home, and where the frenzied bayonet attacks were beginning to inject fear into the defending Maratha troops. Pohlmann willed himself to fly towards them, watching with the critical eye of an experienced battlefield commander as the battalions which were anchoring the right end of his line startled to buckle under the pressure of the British assault.
Suddenly, another vampire appeared by his side, flying in at such a high speed that at first Pohlmann thought that an enemy officer must be launching a personal attack; but the newcomer’s coat was blue and not red, and the only blue-jacketed men in the British ranks were cavalrymen, of whom this tall, aristocratic vampire was certainly not one. Pohlmann recognized him instantly. Like so many of Scindia’s foreign officers, Colonel Jean Saleur had served with some distinction in the French army, and had more than earned his reputation as a capable field commander.
“Your boys are breaking, Jean,” Pohlmann said guardedly, his eyes returning to the scene of outright carnage that was playing out some five hundred feet beneath their boots. Being cut down helplessly by long-range artillery fire had thinned out the British ranks rather nicely, he had to admit, but had also served to generate a deep reservoir of rage within the redcoats which was now being vented upon his own infantry at close range. Even as his eyes focused on one small section of his right wing, the vampire’s keen vision picked out the sight of a British corporal slamming the heavy wooden stock of his musket into a Maratha soldier’s chin, blasting out teeth in such a spray of blood that Pohlmann realized the man must have bitten his to
ngue. The wounded soldier’s hands flew up to his face, instinctively letting go of the flintlock that he had been holding, and his attacker swiftly reversed the musket and skewered his belly on the point of his bayonet.
When at first he did not reply, Pohlmann returned his attention to Saleur. The man’s face was a mask, but the Hanoverian thought that he could detect just the slightest hint of…was it shame, shame at the fact that his vaunted troops were already giving ground in the face of the British onslaught? Most commanders would have offered up platitudes in the face of such a remark, would have assured him that his men would stand, for it was easy to say when one was an immortal being floating high above the bloodletting; but Jean Saleur had not achieved his colonelcy without also attaining an affect of cold professionalism, that ability of cutting through the fetters of emotion and seeing the tactical situation for what it truly was.
“Yes they are,” Saleur replied. It was stated as a simple fact, with no more feeling placed behind the words than an order to serve dinner would have gotten. And what more could Pohlmann say to that? Coming from one as austere in outlook as Saleur, it was as damning an indictment of impending failure as he had ever heard. But then his subordinate pointed towards the distant gun-line and said, “Yet there may yet be reason to hope. Look there.”
Pohlmann followed the man’s outstretched arm, and when he saw the object of his attention, a slow smile spread across his pale features, for it seemed that more than a few Maratha gunners had been wise enough to lay down and pretend to be dead when the tide of advancing redcoats had rolled over them. Now, these men were back on their feet and straining to pivot some of the guns around one hundred and eighty degrees to face the rear of the British line.
Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2) Page 25