Goddess of the Dead (Wellington Undead Book 2)

by Richard Estep

  The Raja of Berar’s men had known full well that they occupied a strong defensive position both in and around the village, and yet a new enemy had suddenly emerged, one that turned its ire upon both British and Maratha alike. The corpses of those who had fallen, whether wearing a coat of the brightest red or robes and turbans of many assorted colors, were all suddenly freeing themselves from the embrace of death, clambering to their feet, and lunging for the closest living soul in order to satisfy their perverted and insatiable desire for flesh and blood.

  Now, the dead outnumbered the living, and more were rising with every passing moment.

  In the center of what had until recently been their regimental line, David Pace and a handful of his fellow redcoats had clustered around a severely-wounded officer.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, Captain Campbell, sir,” Pace said with a sense of reassurance that he most definitely did not feel. “We’ll soon have you out of here.” He had just dragged back his musket to the full-cock position after reloading, and as a Maratha corpse stumbled towards him, Pace allowed it to get within ten feet before pulling back on the trigger. His Brown Bess belched smoke and flame, followed a fraction of a second later by the creature’s face imploding as the heavy lead ball took it straight between the eyes. The creature fell silent immediately, dropping lifelessly to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  There was no response, and Pace looked down to where the officer to whom he now felt a definite fraternal attachment was shivering uncontrollably, his teeth chattering in a face that would be hideously scarred even after Doctor Caldwell had managed to work his surgical wonders upon it.

  The morning was cold, Pace knew, but it was most probably the loss of blood that was causing the gravely wounded officer to shiver. Keeping a watchful eye out for any corpses that threatened to come after them, Pace shrugged off his tattered red jacket and laid it gently across the Captain’s upper body, snugging it firmly against his blood-encrusted neck and chin.

  Eight men remained with him now, a tiny bodyguard for a man who might die even if he did get medical treatment. For a moment Pace was tempted to run, but he cast the thought angrily from his mind. Campbell was a good officer and a decent man, which was far too rare in the British Army. He wasn’t going to let him die alone. It simply wouldn’t be right.

  A lone cavalryman blew past their small circle. One of the privates called out for help, but the rider ignored them, galloping away towards the east. The sky above the battlefield was slowly beginning to lighten, and what Pace saw filled him with dread.

  There was no British army left, just scattered and uncoordinated groups of men dotted across the plain. Ragged bursts of musketry told him that they were facing the same undead horror that he and his brothers were now up against, as the bodies of the fallen lurched upon their positions with ever-increasing numbers.

  Campbell blinked and spat out a gobbet of blood to clear his throat.

  “Don’t let me die like this, Pace,” he wheezed, clutching at the enlisted man’s ankle for emphasis. “Help me…onto my feet, if you please.”

  Uncertainly, Pace leaned down and took the captain’s outstretched hand. It was trembling, and his grip was as weak as that of a newborn.

  “Look out!” bellowed one of the redcoats, and Pace looked up to see three kilted corpses staggering towards him. He brought his musket up, but knew — stupid, stupid! — that he hadn’t reloaded it after the last shot.

  Standing between the monsters and his captain, David Pace leveled his bayonet with resignation, and got ready to sell his own life dearly.

  This Waking Nightmare

  From his position amongst a handful of the King’s 33rd, Colonel Michael Connolly could well believe what was happening, for this was surely just another instance of the horror that had inflicted itself upon the small British army after the storming of Ahmednuggur; only this time, the nightmare was writ large in scale upon a much greater canvas, and the horde of the re-awakened dead now numbered in the thousands, with more potential recruits lying scattered across the plain, patiently awaiting their turn to join it.

  “It’s a nightmare,” muttered Dan Nichols, shaking his head with disbelief from his position at the colonel’s side. “A bloody nightmare,” he repeated.

  “No, CSM. A nightmare is something from which one eventually wakes,” Connolly corrected him, much too reasonably for the CSM’s liking. “I have a sense that we’ll be dealing with this particular horror for quite some time to come. Far longer than a mere night’s slumber, at any rate.” As if to emphasize the point, the figure of a blood-splattered sepoy came at them both out of the pale early morning light, with a mouth questing hungrily for flesh and its arms outstretched like claws. The creature staggered drunkenly, as though it were full to the gills with arrack, and uttered a low, keening moan that spoke of both abject torment and an all-consuming hunger.

  Dan slammed the butt of his Brown Bess into the creature’s face, squashing the nose flat in an explosion of blood and smashing out several teeth at the same time. The creature barely blinked, continuing to come for him, the colonel now completely forgotten as the senior NCO supplanted him as the target of the creature’s lust. Cursing, Dan reversed the musket and lunged, jabbing the point of the triangular bayonet into the dead sepoy’s open mouth. The creature’s wail became a strangled, gargling cry as the blade lacerated its tongue and angled upwards through the soft palate in the roof of its mouth. As soon as the bayonet’s tip penetrated the brainstem of the reanimated corpse, the creature dropped to the ground as though pole-axed, dragging the heavy musket down with it. The CSM planted one foot on its chest and with a grunt, twisted and hauled the weapon free, being careful to keep the spatters of blood away from his uniform and that of his colonel, who had watched the entire incident without comment.

  “Nicely done, CSM,” Colonel Connolly said with a nod of approval. “Keep on like that, and we’ll have to promote you.”

  “I think that the RSM will have something to say about that, sir,” Dan replied, referring to the Regimental Sergeant Major, who was the ultimate non-commissioned authority — and the closest thing to the right hand of God — in any King’s regiment.

  “I haven’t seen the RSM since all this started.” Connolly sounded ever so slightly worried. “Let us hope that he has made it through unscathed, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” Dan agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment. Not only was the RSM a decent sort, but he was damned if he’d want to take on that level of responsibility. Herding the Shadow Company and keeping General Wellesley safe were more than enough…he paused, suddenly overtaken by a cold chill.

  General Wellesley.

  Where had he gotten himself to?

  Dan looked around, yet all he saw was clusters of soldiers banding together to stave off the horde of the living dead. Bodies were still rising all across the plain, and yet the General was nowhere to be seen.

  “Sir,” he said urgently. “The General—”

  “— is more than capable of looking after himself,” Connolly finished, suddenly feeling tired to his very core. “We must look to the army, CSM, and must do it now, while there still is an army for us to look to.”

  “What do you mean, sir?” Dan was confused, born in part from his own utter exhaustion.

  “I mean that whoever commands the army now must issue the order to retreat, unless he wishes to lose it in its entirety. These…things, for want of a better word, shall soon outnumber the living. If each man that falls rises again from death and joins their horde, we shall all find ourselves as their companions before too long.”

  Dan didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know that there was anything left to be said, for he knew deep down that Colonel Connolly was absolutely correct. If they were to have any chance against this swelling horde of monsters, the plain of Assaye was the last place to make a stand.

  “I’ll see to the men, sir.”

  Connolly appeared not to hear him,
yet finally acknowledged the remark with an absent-minded inclination of his head. The Colonel’s thoughts were lost in calculation, as he pondered the sheer number of fallen combatants that were visible all around him, scattered across the plain on both banks of the Kailna and the Juah.

  Sweet Lord, he thought bitterly, how can we possibly come back from this?

  A Walk Among the Mortals

  None saw the naked blue-skinned woman making her way across the plain of Assaye.

  This was entirely by design, for Kali did not wish to be seen. Even the hungry corpses let her pass by, not pausing even to look up from where they feasted upon the bodies of those who had not yet been reanimated by her dark blood-magic.

  She passed a knot of three redcoats, all of whom were standing back to back and trying desperately to fend off a much larger circle of their undead brethren, men who had been their comrades in arms until just moments ago, when their lives had been taken by a Maratha bullet, blade, or shell. Now they were little more than vicious predators, hungrily circling the sweating trio, whose jabbing bayonets became increasingly frantic as the crowd grew.

  Kali snapped her fingers casually.

  Three bayonets fell from the ends of the soldiers’ barrels, falling harmlessly at their feet. As the terrified redcoats scrabbled in the dirt to retrieve them, the undead horde swarmed them hungrily.

  The Goddess smiled. It was the small things in life that afforded the most pleasure, she reflected, finally arriving at the north bank of the River Kailna. Kali simply stood there for a few heartbeats, gazing down into the dark waters below as though searching for something. Then, as though satisfied that she had found it, she extended a hand palm-downward, sweeping it across the surface of the river six times in a complex and intricate pattern, the meaning of which was known only to her.

  Nothing happened for several minutes. Then a shape, grey and indistinct, began to grow larger beneath the dark waters, ponderously making its way toward the surface.

  Kali turned her back and walked away, her form growing less and less distinct with every step, until finally not a trace of her passing remained on the field of Assaye.

  All that was left were the terrified living, and those who hunted them — a hungry army of the risen dead.

  Author's Note

  When students of the campaigns of Sir Arthur Wellesley get together, they often like to debate that most fascinating of subjects: which was Wellington’s greatest battle?

  The great man himself had no doubt whatsoever. When asked that very question (or more accurately, of which battle was he the most proud?) Wellesley is known to have chosen not Waterloo or Talavera, not Salamanca or the storming of Seringapatam, Gawilghur, or Badajoz; no, the Iron Duke chose instead the set-piece engagement that took place outside a little-known village in India that goes by the name of Assaye.

  If one studies the strategic and tactical situation today, it is little short of amazing that Major General Arthur Wellesley decided to ever fight there at all, let alone when he was facing such outrageous odds and with his army divided into two halves. Yes, it is true that Wellesley planned to reunite his small force with that of Colonel Stevenson before attacking the much-larger Maratha force, and yet even had things worked out that way, the small army of redcoats and sepoys would still have been shockingly outnumbered.

  That he fought at all is a testimony to the man’s courage, bravado, and sheer guts.

  There is no shortage of excellent reading material for those who are interested in the life of Arthur Wellesley. In terms of pure biography, the twin-volume set written by Rory Muir should make for required reading, as should Christopher Hibbert’s eminently readable Wellington: A Personal History. As far as primary sources go, the Duke’s own dispatches open an invaluable window onto the great man’s manner of thinking, and are even today held up as the very model of brevity and succinctness.

  This was a general who kept his calm in the face of great adversity, not to mention the crippling uncertainty of dealing with odds that would have broken a lesser officer, or at least sent him scuttling back to Seringapatam with his tail between his legs.

  Jac Weller’s fabulous Wellington in India is perhaps the single most indispensable guide to Wellesley’s formative campaigning, yet when it comes to the matter of Assaye, I highly recommend Simon Millar’s terrific Assaye 1803: Wellington’s first and ‘bloodiest’ victory, which is illustrated by Peter Dennis. The book does a wonderful job of detailing the fire and maneuver carried out on the small, blood-soaked plain outside what was, until that night of 23 September 1803, little more than a footnote on a map. Nor would it do to overlook Bernard Cornwell’s page-turner Sharpe’s Triumph, for one can hardly write about infantry combat in the Napoleonic era without being influenced by Cornwell and the escapades of Richard Sharpe.

  This book is quite plainly a fantasy (the vampires should be an obvious give-away) yet it is one rooted firmly in the history of the time. Nonetheless, where the needs of the story have merited it, I have taken a number of quite shameless liberties with that selfsame history. The 33rd, for example, were not even present at Assaye, and I have shoehorned them in as an extra battalion in Wellesley’s army, for in the universe of Wellington Undead, the great general is rather attached to the regiment which would one day bear his name, and fancy that he likes to employ them as both a personal guard force and as “shock troops” to help deal with threats of a supernatural nature. I am sure that the reader will indulge me, and if not, I hope that it will not spoil one’s enjoyment of the tale too much.

  Disrespect is intended to none of those personalities who feature within these pages, particularly to the Hindu Goddess of the Dead herself, Kali. For those who are followers and devotees of hers, I can only say that I needed an adversary worthy of Wellington himself, and that Kali more than fit the bill. You may rest assured that our hook-nosed vampire general has not seen the last of her.

  Special thanks are due to my wife Laura, who painstakingly proofread the manuscript prior to publication. Any errors contained within are mine.

  I truly hope that you have enjoyed reading this book, and if so, would graciously consider rating it at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. The support of readers like your good self will help ensure that Britain’s greatest vampire general will once more march to the sound of the guns when his country calls. Thank you.

  Richard Estep,

  Longmont, Colorado

  November 2015