It was only Arthur’s vampire reflexes that saved him. The powder sparked and flashed, thrusting the mini-ball out of the barrel at lightning speed. Arthur was already beginning to swerve, tilting his upper body farther to the right in a desperate effort to avoid it. Even so, it was damned close. The ball flensed his left cheek open to the bone.
It is a strange truth that vampires do not bleed, no matter how grievous the physical trauma which they may have sustained. They could be injured and indeed killed (although killed is not strictly the right word - they tend to prefer the term ended) most certainly; direct sunlight, intense heat and flame, water that has been blessed by a priest or some other holy man, and most particularly the bite of silver could all inflict varying degrees of damage upon even the strongest vampiric frame.
The wound burned for a moment, causing Arthur to wince, but within seconds he could feel the flesh and musculature of his face beginning to knit itself back together. He heard the ball sink into the chest of a redcoat that was running along behind him, could hear the crack of a rib breaking and the soft slurp of the now-deformed missile embedding itself into one of his lungs. The man collapsed with a hiss of sharply expelled air. Arthur refused to turn his head to look, needed to stay focused on his opponent; the enemy officer’s expression had changed from one of triumph to one of disbelief, but to his credit he recovered well, slashing his scimitar at the British colonel in a vicious shoulder-level cut. Arthur ducked smoothly under the wild swing, and rather than stab the man, he thrust his left hand forcefully outward, striking him squarely in the chest.
Coming from an ordinary human being, the blow would at best have fractured the officer’s breastbone; but with all the supernatural strength of a vampire behind it, the open-palmed strike not only shattered the man’s beating heart right there within his chest, it also propelled his body sixty feet backwards through the air, cutting a swathe of devastation through the file like a human cannonball, bowling over all those that it touched. One ranker went down with blood gushing from his nose, clipped in the face by the officer’s boot as it flew past. A second was knocked unconscious by a head-butt, and a third dislocated the fingers of one hand, bent backwards at an untenable angle by the officer’s hurtling body. The corpse plowed a furrow in the earth some ten feet long when it landed at the rear of the column, where it lay unmoving – the officer had died as soon as Wellesley’s hand had struck him.
With a sickening crunch, the two sides came together. Bayonets and swords rose and fell, blade clashing with blade. Some fought dirty, having learned to fight in the gutter. They were not averse to gouging out an eye with hooked fingers or planting a knee firmly in their opponent’s crotch before cutting his throat. Wellesley caught a glimpse of Major Shee, anchoring the far left end of the 33rd’s line. The man was little more than a red-jacketed blur, cutting, thrusting, and hacking at the tiger-soldiers, only to dart nimbly out of range before the counter-strokes could land.
The 33rd had a well-deserved reputation for hard fighting. They wasted no time in getting stuck into the Sultan’s men with boots, blades, and musket butts. The junior officers, all mortal humans, did not shirk from their bloody duty, but the true force multipliers were the handful of vampire officers. In terms of pure shock factor, each one was worth a company of trained troops, even one as elite as the Shadow Company. Most vampires that held the King’s commission had trained hard, some of them for years and even decades, in order to master the twin arts of maneuvering a body of soldiers on the battlefield, and of close-order combat with edged weapons.
At the edge of his peripheral vision, Arthur saw a slew of tiger-soldiers fall dead in the wake of three spinning red whirlwinds. One could track the path of his captains and Major Shee simply by focusing upon the gouges that they tore through the enemy ranks. Here a decapitated head flew high into the air; there an arm, still clutching a sword in a death grip, was tossed carelessly aside, having been ripped bodily from its socket and flung away.
The two bodies of fighting men had been engaged for less than a minute, and yet already the Butcher’s Bill numbered in the hundreds. Secure in the euphoric realization that the very devil himself was on their side today, the 33rd were spurred on to fight even harder.
They’re breaking, Arthur realized as he quickly glanced to his left and then to his right. I’ll be damned if they aren’t breaking! He disemboweled a charging tiger-soldier with the edge of his blade, and then decapitated a second on the backswing. Blood gouted lustily from the stump of the corpse’s neck. As it took six more shambling steps, the spurting of the arterial fountain grew lower with each passing heartbeat, until finally the headless body toppled sideways into the dust.
“Push harder my lads!” he cried, laying about him with the sword on all sides. Not once did Wellesley stand still for more than a heartbeat, staying one step ahead of the vicious enemy counter-strokes that tried to put him down. “They’re ready for cracking, I tell you!”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the Sultan’s men proved him right. As though some form of wordless signal had been sent, the troops that the Tipu had sent to save the right flank of his army suddenly broke and ran. Most had the presence of mind to at least hold on to their weapons, but not all did. The vampire captains stabbed several of them in their backs as they passed, but were disciplined enough not to pursue the fleeing enemy without first obtaining permission from their colonel.
Wellesley took to the sky, and circled his sword three times clockwise around his head in the pre-arranged signal for “officers shall repair to my location.” Major Shee and the cadre of regimental vampire captains immediately streaked to his position, and an impromptu conference was held some two hundred feet in the air above the Mallavelly plain. Generals Baird and Harris rushed to join them.
“My men are still holding in square,” Baird offered without preamble. “The Tipu’s cavalry may have caught us by surprise, but we gave them a proper bloody nose to be going along with.”
“Will they stand?” Arthur asked, instantly concerned for the security of his right flank.
“Of course they’ll bloody well stand, Wellesley,” Baird snapped. “The men of the 12th would rather die to the last man than give up to this mob of bloody heathens.”
“Easy now, Baird.” Harris laid a gentle hand upon his fellow general’s shoulder. “Colonel Wellesley makes a valid point. He was casting no aspersions upon the quality of your men. Is that not so, Wellesley?”
“Indeed it is, sir. No offense was intended, I can assure you.”
Mollified, Baird flashed his fangs in a conciliatory smile. “None taken, Wellesley. The blood’s up, you understand.”
Arthur nodded. He did indeed understand, could feel the lust for it burning in every part of his body. Baird was prone to rash words and sometimes rasher deeds on any given day, but how much more so when the plain about him ran red with the blood of both friend and enemy alike?
“At any rate, the bastards are breaking,” Harris stated matter-of-factly. “Their cavalry probably won’t be back in a hurry.” He looked meaningfully towards the village, where the Sultan’s much-reduced band of horsemen was listlessly attempting to reform. They appeared to have no real leader, and were doing little more than milling around in small groups. Some were applying dressings to their own wounds or to those of their comrades. Several were forced to put wounded horses out of their misery.
Out beyond the village to the south, a growing haze signaled the approach of the British artillery, accompanied by several battalions of native infantry to act as an escort. These men, supplied by the Nizam of Hyderabad, were British-trained and therefore more than capable of forming square against the cavalry if they decided to chance an attack.
“General Floyd, if I may ask – just where are your cavalry?” Arthur attempted to keep the peevishness out of his tone, but didn’t entirely succeed.
Baird, on the other hand, didn’t even make the attempt. “Aye, Floyd. You were supposed to be scr
eening our flanks from those bastards. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of your bloody dragoons or the native cavalry all morning. It’s a damned disgrace!”
The usually affable Floyd visibly stiffened. “You must understand, General Baird, that I am in the habit of entrusting those officers under my command with a certain degree of autonomy. That is the cavalryman’s way. I have issued orders to the effect that—“
“Yes, yes, yes,” Baird interrupted, balling up a fist in frustration and smacking it into his open palm. “There is no time for that now! We may have broken their line, but those war elephants still have to be answered.”
All looked up and saw that the war elephants were now perhaps three hundred yards from the line of redcoats.
“I’m confident that we can still stand fast against them, sir,” Arthur interjected earnestly. “By my count, there are only six. There’s no beast yet born that can stand against the massed volley fire of a British regiment. So long as the men hold their nerve, that is.”
“These men are British redcoats,” Baird growled, pointing at the line of battle formed by the 33rd directly below them. “Of course they’ll hold their nerve.”
“Quite. And look there, it isn’t as if they will have to do it unsupported, what?” Harris’s officers all turned to regard the top of the ridgeline, where the companies of sepoy troops were cresting the apex and marching down the back side of the hill to take their place on either side of their British allies.
“We can only hope,” Shee muttered grimly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Our line is collapsing, Your Highness.” Jamelia fingered the hilt of her scimitar absently, the only outward sign of the inner nervousness she was beginning to feel gnawing at her gut.
“I…” Tipu was rarely lost for words, but standing in the midst of his shattered and broken defensive position, he could think of literally nothing to say.
Flanked by the thrice-cursed British! Our counter-attack repelled, the cavalry mauled…He looked to Jamelia, his supposed general of generals, flabbergasted and reaching desperately for a lifeline.
“We must withdraw.” Her tone brooked no argument, and nor did it receive any. “This was a bold move on our part, Your Majesty, but the fates were not with us this day.”
“It was the soldiers,” Tipu snarled, his fists clenched at his side like a child throwing a tantrum. “The ones sent by Harris to find the deserter. Were it not for them, the first that the British knew of our attack would have been the blades of Tamar Singh’s cavalry at their throats.”
“Where is the general?” Jamelia asked sharply. “Has there been word?” She could see that the Sultan’s cavalry, bloodied and battered, had re-formed in the village below and to their front. The body of horsemen was considerably thinned when she considered how many had ridden out from Seringapatam, but they were still a force to be reckoned with.
Tipu shook his head sadly. “None yet. Tamar Singh believed in leading from the front. You know his character.” He shrugged, watching the surviving horsemen start of move out of the village to northwest, hopefully to threaten the British left flank this time. “It would be nothing short of a miracle for him to have survived the attack on the British square.” He suddenly feeling a chill run up his spine.
They both fell silent for a moment, lost in thoughts of their mutual comrade and one of the Tipu’s oldest friends. The consequences of his loss to the cause of Mysore would be incalculable.
Muskets suddenly crackled from both ends of their defensive position. Tipu looked towards his left flank, where the British right wing was still standing immobile in square. That, at least, is encouraging; they shall be afraid to move until they are sure that my cavalry will not return. To his right, however, things looked rather less hopeful. The redcoats had formed in line on the reverse slope of the hill, and with every passing moment more battalions of Indians troops were moving up to join them.
Peering more closely, Tipu could make out a huddle of red-coated figures floating in the air above the British line. Their vampire generals. He spat distastefully. These men…creatures…were in conference, pointing about them in all directions, obviously debating their tactics and plotting their next move. They could not fail to be aware of the six war elephants that were bearing down on their still-fragile line, surely. That thought at least brought the smallest hint of a smile to his face. Let the vampires face down my elephants. They shall not enjoy the special surprise that I have prepared for them…no, not one little bit.
He turned, snapping back to reality. He had an army to save, and after that, a city.
“Have the trumpeters sound the withdrawal. I shall take the survivors of our army back to Seringapatam,” he decided. Jamelia nodded her approval. “We shall break the British army on the mighty stone walls, pulverize them with our cannon and rockets while they try desperately to find a way in.”
“This is wisdom,” she agreed. The walls of Seringapatam were indeed strong, and protected by the flow of mighty rivers. Numerous batteries of heavy artillery ringed the fortress, ready at a moment’s notice to rain death and destruction down upon an invading army, no matter which side they approached from. “What would you like me to do, Your Majesty?” She thought that perhaps he would order her to form a rear guard, muster a battalion of troops or two to delay the British while the rest of his army made their escape; but what the Sultan actually had in mind was something very different indeed, and as he outlined his plan for her and the rest of his personal Tiger Guard, she could not at first believe her ears; but as he carried on, she was won over by the sheer audacity of the strategy he now proposed.
“Jamelia, my dearest one, will you do this for me?”
“I shall, Your Majesty,” she answered without hesitation. “The British will never know what hit them.”
Thomas Gilman was on fire. He knew that he was on fire, for how could he not be when his skin felt like this?
He had always considered himself a lucky man, at least where matters of health were concerned. Since coming out to India with the regiment, other men had dropped like flies from all kinds of exotic maladies. Thomas had seen some of his mates in the battalion literally shitting themselves to death, drenched in the sweat of a fever that would abate only when the man himself died.
But not lucky old Thomas; no, he was damned near untouchable. Never so much as a cold when he was back in England, and never a spike in temperature out here in India.
Until now.
The pain in his head was now so great that it had actually reduced him to tears. Thomas would have been ashamed of that, if he had been back in the battalion with all of his mates around him. But he wasn’t back in the battalion; after their madman of a master had attacked him – had bitten him, right on the neck wound that had barely begun to heal - two of the Sultan’s men had taken Thomas by the armpits, and half-carried, half-dragged his body down to the dungeons.
That experience alone would have reduced many a sane man to tears. They told stories about the dungeons of Seringapatam, and the horrors that went on in that god-awful place, around the campfires after dark. Never once had Thomas believed that he would find out for himself at first hand.
When the two guards had tossed him face-first onto the floor of his cell, which was covered with old straw and the bodily secretions of its last occupant, he had missed the knowing look that had passed between them. Thomas had been far too busy attempting to stem the flow of blood from the freshly-weeping wound in his neck, though much to his surprise, it seem to have completely clotted within the space of just a few minutes. Angry red streaks of dry blood trailed down the length of his back, layered on top of the ingrained dirt and the old scars left by his flogging.
Curled in the fetal position, Thomas suddenly felt his gorge rise. He retched violently, and was dimly aware that not only had he just vomited up the meager contents of his mostly empty stomach, but also that he had soiled himself once more.
Christ Almighty, but the pain was intol
erable! Reaching up to clear the sick from his mouth with feeble fingers, Thomas wondered just exactly why it was that his luck had changed so drastically for the worst. He had hoped that the Sultan would let him join his private army, let him stick two fingers up at that perfumed ponce Wellesley from the high walls of Seringapatam, but now it was looking like he was going to die here, alone and forgotten, lying in a pool of his own filth in the middle of the Sultan’s deepest, darkest dungeon.
His head hurt, his spine hurt, his belly hurt. Everything bloody hurt. Thomas began to dry-heave, his body wanting to vomit something up despite a total lack of anything for it to expel.
Flashes of agony began to shoot out from a spot between his shoulder blades, streaking their way down the length of his left arm. Suddenly, the pain localized itself, seeming to settle in the nerves and tendons of his left hand. Thomas raised it to his face, blinking fast and trying to squint through the tears of pain. After a moment, he was able to focus on the source of his agony.
His fingertips were stretching.
No, Thomas realized incredulously, the whole bloody hand is stretching!
His nails were sharpening and turning dark, curving at the tips and steadily becoming a shade of black. He could hear the sickening popping sound of joints dislocating, watched in horror as the hand began to elongate to twice its normal size. It felt as though his hand were being held in the fire of a blacksmith’s forge, so agonizing was the intense burning now.
The hand didn’t stop there, but just kept growing, the fingers flexing as they began to take on the form of a claw. He could feel his teeth beginning to grow, filling his mouth, which was also starting to stretch and distort. With an audible click, his jaw dislocated itself.
He tossed his head back and uttered a cry that was more animal than man, howling up towards the unseen sky above his head; but this time, Thomas’s howl was caused by something entirely different than pain.
The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 14