A toothy white grin and two wide eyes stared back at him from a face that had been heavily darkened by the Indian sun. The little Scotsman from the First Company had apparently been hard at work, at least if the state of his hands and bayonet were any indication. Both were streaked heavily with blood.
“Yes, sir!” the corporal answered cheerfully. He nodded at the fallen corpse of Wellesley’s opponent, which lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. One of its legs gave the occasional twitch. “Smashing work with the sword there, Colonel, if I might make so bold.”
The mark of respect, from one man of war to another. I shall allow it, just this once. “Indeed you may, McElvaney. This time, at least.” Wellesley softened his words with just the slightest of smiles. “Now, get along with you. Don’t you have tigers to hunt?”
“I’ll bag you a nice big one to put over the fireplace, sir. You mark my words, sir!”
The enthusiastic little corporal disappeared into the darkness, in search of someone else to kill.
Wellesley looked around him, trying to get a grasp of the bigger situation. All around him, the redcoats were locked in furious hand-to-hand combat with the Sultan’s infantry soldiers. Almost all of the combatants were human, and found themselves in the unenviable position of having to fight in the semi-darkness. Were it not for the full moon, even the little coordination that our forces do have would be utterly impossible, Arthur thought to himself.
He realized that he had allowed himself to get lost in the bloodlust of the melee for a few moments, and silently remonstrated with himself. That wasn’t the role of an officer. His responsibility was the grander scheme of things, greater in scope than even that the affairs of the entire 33rd itself, which Major Shee was mostly capable of handling. Arthur’s responsibility was to his entire division.
Shutting out the clash of weapons and the screams of the combatants, Arthur closed his eyes and gathered a part of those dark energies which flowed through him and every other vampire. He had applied the same practice and dedication to mastering the vampiric arts as he did to all other endeavors in his life, both professional and personal, and had therefore become quite skillful at manipulating the composition of his body in order to suit the needs of the moment. Arthur began to levitate skyward, soaring up into the night air until he was floating high above the struggling throng below.
He saw that Major Shee appeared to have had the same idea. The major hovered silently in the air, some three hundred yards to Arthur’s eight o’clock position and perhaps fifty feet lower down. Scanning the skies for Baird or any of the other senior officers, he spotted two additional red-jacketed uniforms floating in the far distance, where they were shepherding the easternmost division as it pressed hard against the Sultan’s left wing.
Baird’s division had suffered the greater number of casualties up to this point, having drawn the full ire of the enemy gunners during their approach, but now they were getting their revenge, Arthur noted; for the redcoats and sepoys were fast closing on the far left end of the enemy’s line, threatening to roll it up and collapse the entire defensive position, which was anchored on that side by perhaps half a company of tiger soldiers.
Baird was not above taking a little revenge either, it seemed, for every so often one of the flying officers would swoop down low in the manner of a hawk snatching up a mouse; but this particular hawk was hacking off turbaned heads with single sweeps of a huge claymore, before shooting back up to his position of command once more.
As Wellesley watched, the British troops slammed home the first and only volley that they would fire into the packed ranks of that enemy half-company, which withered under the impact of hundreds of musket balls striking all at the same time.
The Sultan’s artillerymen were all struggling to bring their cannon around to bear upon Baird’s men, but the redcoats were having none of it. Their officers must have given the order to charge, Arthur realized, though even he had not heard it over the cacophony of the fray; for the men lowered their bayonets and let out a tremendous whoop. The smoke from the barrels of their muskets had barely even cleared before the British soldiers were storming out of it like a horde of howling banshees, eager to get stuck into their enemy.
Yet if the redcoats had believed that the soldiers of Mysore would be a pushover, they were to be sorely disappointed. Tipu’s men fought back valiantly, meeting their charge head-on and making their enemy pay in blood and sweat for every yard gained. Arthur could not help but admire their valor, even if their tactical acumen did leave much to be desired. Slowly but surely, the tiger-soldiers were driven backwards, step by step. Each time a man fell to a redcoat’s bayonet, the fragile half-company line came that much closer to buckling.
When buckle it finally did, no more than five minutes had passed by the Colonel’s reckoning. Every single one of the Sultan’s flank half-company were either dead or injured, some carrying more than one wound – and all of them to the fronts of their bodies.
With an exultant roar, Baird’s men pushed through the shattered remnants of the enemy company. Passing the wounded enemy soldiers, some of the redcoats paused to bayonet them and pilfer any articles about their person that looked to be even remotely valuable. Wellesley’s mood darkened to see this, but he realized that there was precious little he could do about it until the engagement was over. Besides, he reflected, this is hardly the same thing as looting a captured city or town. Baird’s boys have met the enemy face-to-face, have suffered quite the pasting from their cannon in order to get there. Who am I to deny them the spoils of war? To the victor go the spoils.
The sacrifice of the half-company had bought their comrades time to re-orient the defensive line against the attack that was coming from the east. Entire companies of Tipu’s men were swinging around to face the men of Baird’s division. Rotating gracefully in the air, Arthur returned his attention to the attack of his own 33rd, whose men were still making good headway. Both the redcoats and the sepoy battalions which marched in support of them were driving hard into the enemy’s right flank. It was slow going, but the British soldiers would not be stopped, simultaneously grinding the enemy line down from both ends. Each division had now formed one of a pair of giant pincers, and they were closing inexorably upon one another.
In the middle of that steadily-shrinking defensive line, the Sultan screamed his outrage.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Reinforce the flanks with all that we have…everything in the reserve, Jamelia – send it forward, now!” Flecks of spittle flew from Tipu’s lips as he bellowed orders in all directions. “Where is Tamar Singh? Where are the damned cavalry?”
The British were closing in on both flanks now, Jamelia saw. She had counted upon them taking the more direct approach, coming up through the village and straight into the path of her heavy guns, but the fates had not been kind in that regard. Although the artillery had softened up the British formation that was attacking from the east, nobody had seen its companion division until the last possible moment.
It did not help that Tamar Singh and his horsemen were nowhere to be found. The cavalry had performed flawlessly at the outset of the battle, luring the British general forward onto the boggy ground immediately before Mallavelly. Their single scattered volley and subsequent retreat upslope, passing back through the main defensive position on the ridgeline, had been almost perfectly executed, but now that the horse had disappeared to the bottom of the hill at the rear of their lines, she hadn’t the slightest idea of where they had gone next.
Ironic that Tamar Singh may also find himself being perfectly executed, once this day is over. She stifled a snort of inappropriate laughter at the play on words. Time enough for humor when we have broken the back of the British assault.
Fortunately, she had kept a healthy reserve of men on hand for just such an eventuality as this. Clustered at the back of the low line of hills on which they stood were thousands of fresh tiger-soldiers, bolstered by a small herd of six war elephants. These bea
sts, though largely reduced to a ceremonial role on the modern battlefield, had the most useful effect of scaring enemy soldiers half to death. Something about the thudding, pounding tramping of those massive legs, each one of which was as solid as a tree trunk, gave the impression that these animals were utterly unstoppable.
The British were about to find that out for themselves.
Jamelia sent runners to the officers who were in charge of those units still being held in reserve, splitting them roughly into two halves; one group was dispatched to each flank, with orders to launch a counter-attack that would break the British line and hurl it back in ignominious defeat.
Standing tall, Jamelia looked out across the ridge towards the eastern end of the defensive line. Although the unit that had been charged with holding the left flank had been obliterated, she noted with immense satisfaction that multiple columns of her tiger-infantry were already starting to stream towards the broken portion of the line; thousands of men, beneath banners of colorfully-embroidered silk which fluttered in the low breeze. One such banner caught her eye despite the gloom and shadow that blanketed the hill. It was that of a giant snarling tiger, leaping from left to right across a bright red background with fangs bared and claws outstretched.
Apropos of nothing, the oddity of the moment suddenly struck her. How was it that she could actually see the tiger in this darkness? Her eyes kept tracking upwards, above the line of redcoats which were tramping resolutely across the hilltop with their bayonets lowered. She saw one of the accursed British officers floating high in the air above the formation. A second flying man suddenly popped into existence next to him, and the two fell into deep conversation.
Then a slow smile crept across Jamelia’s face.
For there behind the levitating British officer, just beginning to peek across the face of the eastern horizon, were the first glowing fingers of the oncoming dawn.
It was then that Tamar Singh’s cavalry struck.
General Baird was the second officer to see them coming. He had assumed a commanding view of the entire British right wing, able to see all of the units that were under his control (and a fair few of young Wellesley’s) from what he judged was a hundred feet in air.
His boys were earning their pay today, to be sure, but he’d be damned if it wasn’t a magnificent sight. Clusters of torn and bleeding bodies lay in their wake, some of them admittedly redcoats, but most were clad in the tiger-skinned tunics and sashes of Mysore. Even fewer were still moving, and he had turned a blind eye to the bayoneting of the wounded enemy survivors and the swift, efficient looting of their corpses.
Like a boxer punching hard with his dominant fist, Baird had led his attack with that steady old regiment, the 12th. Their commanding officer, Colonel Shawe, was a damned good field officer in Baird’s estimation, and ideally suited to lead this attack.
The general had kept a watchful eye on proceedings, pausing only briefly to flit down onto the battlefield a few times and divest some heathen bastard of his head. Once the British line had passed him, he covertly landed some hundred yards behind their advance in order to drink blood from body of a fallen redcoat. It was the work of only a few minutes for Baird to sink his teeth into the dead corporal’s external jugular vein and extract the sustenance which he so desperately craved. Proper British blood, Baird thought approvingly as he drew the coppery liquid patiently from twin puncture wounds in the slackly lolling neck. None of that foreign filth. Baird was unapologetically anti-Indian, and would sooner starve than sully his own pure bloodstream with pollutants from an enemy body.
The corporal’s body was still warm, and the blood therefore as fresh as fresh could be, when one considered that the heart had stopped pumping only moments before. It took time for the blood to sink through the walls of a dead body’s vessels, at which time it became at best unusable and at worst dangerously poisonous for a vampire to consume.
Sated, he had wiped the bloodstains from his lips with the back of one hand and looked around hastily to see whether he had been observed. Fortunately, the only eyes staring in his direction were fixed and glazed over in the eternal sleep of death.
Reinvigorated, Baird concentrated his energies once more and returned to his aerial perch. The 12th and their comrades had just overrun one of the Sultan’s 18-pounder gun batteries; although the artillerymen had been brave enough to fight back with swords, muskets, and even the spikes, rammers, and buckets which were the main tools of their profession, they had died just the same, spitted mercilessly on the points of the redcoats’ bayonets.
General Harris suddenly appeared without warning, blinking into existence at Baird’s side.
“General,” Harris nodded amiably.
“General,” Baird returned, pleased that his superior officer was here to witness his moment of triumph, rather than standing by Wellesley’s side and allowing the young popinjay to reap even more credit and glory than he had already.
Neither general saw the Sultan’s cavalry until they were close, within just a few hundred yards of the soldiers from the 12th. Hundreds of enemy horsemen were formed up into a tight wedge formation, the point of which was bearing down directly upon the right flank of the British line.
“Baird – cavalry!” Harris had finally caught the first flashes of movement caused by the long spears that each horseman carried being lowered towards their intended targets. Baird’s head whipped around to follow Harris’s frantically gesticulating arm.
Fighting on foot with his troops rather than directing them from above, Colonel Shawe only became aware of the onrushing menace when Baird landed next to him in a cloud of dust. “Cavalry to your right. Form square, man. Quickly!” In a flash, the general was airborne again, once more hovering one hundred feet above the ground next to General Harris.
“Form square! Form square!” The cry went along the British line in a ripple, spreading like wildfire. It was taken up by each man in the ranks, passed on to his neighbor with a sense of genuine urgency. There was no need to say anything else. Those two simple words conveyed the same sickening message to every British infantryman: enemy cavalry are on their way.
For the infantryman who happened to be formed in either line or column, enemy cavalry meant nothing less than imminent death. After the initial shock of the charge, their spears, lances, and sabers were capable of tearing an unprepared infantry regiment to ribbons in the space of mere moments.
The only possible defense for infantry caught in open country was the square, and the men of the 12th rushed to form one now. As their commanding generals watched in consternation from above, the regimental non-commissioned officers rushed to divide their men up into a square with four roughly equal sides. The entire affair was centered upon the Regimental Color and the King’s Color, the two huge flags which served as the spiritual heart of any line regiment in the British Army. Regiments had been known to fight until the last man rather than surrender their colors to the enemy. The colors of the 12th had every battle honor ever earned by the regiment sewn onto its gently-fluttering cloth, and the color-bearers who carried the two flags were surrounded by a guard of color sergeants, highly experienced men who carried long, spiked halberds instead of muskets. They were charged to defend the colors to their dying breath, and accepted that duty with the utmost seriousness, gripping the shafts of their halberds grimly.
“Steady, Twelfth!” Harris was now floating directly above the rapidly-forming square, watching the three ranks of Redcoats hurriedly dress their lines. It wasn’t going to be pretty, the general realized, but it just might serve. The wedge of horsemen was less than one hundred yards away from the scrambling British soldiers now, and the riders kicked their heels back in the stirrups, goading their mounts on into the charge.
But the seasoned and highly-disciplined men of the 12th had miraculously pulled together a rough square of three ranks on a side. The front rank knelt down and grounded the stocks of their muskets firmly into the earth, tilting the barrel to an angle of for
ty-five degrees. The men of the second and third ranks held their loaded muskets straight outward in the firing position, with those in the innermost rank resting the barrel of their weapon on the shoulders of those men in the middle. In this way, the oncoming cavalrymen were now charging straight towards a sea of red that bristled menacingly with bayonets on all four sides.
Riding at the very apex of the wedge, Tamar Singh felt his guts churn at the sight. The British should never have made it in time, he knew. How was it that they had formed the square so damnably fast?
Once his force of horsemen had cleared the defensive lines, their commander had gathered up as many as he could find in the near-darkness and had led them on a wide sweep all the way around the left flank of the Sultan’s army. Some had inevitably gotten lost along the way, losing touch with the main body of horsemen, but Tamar Singh was still able to assemble a formation of around eight hundred horsemen on the plains just north of the British right wing. He had been utterly convinced that the cover of night would now work in the favor of he and his men, that their flanking charge would take the British completely by surprise and be almost impossible for them to defend against in time.
He had neglected to take the accursed vampires into account.
No matter how well-trained it was, no horse would willingly charge a wall of bayonets. Spears and lances suddenly forgotten, Tamar Singh’s riders jerked their reins in a futile attempt to get their mounts to turn away in time.
It was too late.
Captain Christopher O’Brien, an experienced human officer with over fifteen years of service in the 12th, had suddenly found himself keeping a watchful eye on the square’s northern side. The wedge of horsemen emerged from the gloom as a single amorphous gray mass at first, shaking the very ground as they came on. With each passing fall of their hooves, more and more detail emerged: the silk pennants fluttering from the shaft of each spear; the tiger-striped tunics, turbans and spiked helmets worn by each rider; and finally, the very whites of their eyes, wide with fear and adrenaline, became clearly visible.
The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 12