Reaching into the depths of the crate on cue, Nichols removed a triangular bayonet, similar in design to the standard-issue pig-sticker that was given to every British soldier. He held it up proudly as Wellesley spoke, and the blade gleamed in the starlight. “The first method is tried and tested – the solid-silver bayonet. I know that you have seen these before. You will affix them prior to our assault, and leave your ordinary bayonets behind. The silver has been shaped and hardened by the finest armorers in the land, and has been honed to a perfectly serviceable sharpness. They will serve well enough on the Tipu’s ordinary troops, with a bit of British muscle behind them; but to the were-tigers, they will be positively lethal.” He did not venture to add the caveat: or so we hope.
Nichols popped the lid on a second chest, this one further down the line, and scooped out a handful of gleaming spheres. “Something else that most of you have seen before: special ordnance. Musket-balls, to be precise, once again cast from silver,” Wellesley explained. “Devilish expensive, and so I am afraid we can only issue you with five rounds apiece. Before you complain, know that General Harris was forced to exhaust no small number of favors simply to get these few completed in time for our assault.” This was absolutely true, but what Arthur did not tell them was that the King’s 74th was missing more than a third of its regimental silver, purloined by a pair of cunning junior lieutenants under his command, in order to supply the necessary raw materials. If General Harris ever finds out, there shall be hell to pay, Arthur thought to himself. But then, better the 74th than the 33rd. The thought brought just the slightest trace of a smile to his lips.
A small iron sphere with a tapered fuse extended from its uppermost part was the last item that the CSM held up for all to see. Scratched into the casing was a crude white ‘X’.
“Lastly, we have what is perhaps the most dangerous item of all. This is an experimental piece of equipment. Are you all familiar with these devices?”
“It’s an ‘and grenade, sir!” chirped up a voice from the back.
“Indeed it is a hand grenade, Corporal Bolton,” Wellesley replied gravely. “But do not mistake it for an ordinary hand grenade, for that it most certainly is not; for inside, in addition to the explosive powder, has been carefully poured a handful of nails. Silver nails.”
This time there were excited mutterings from among the ranks. Wellesley and his CSM exchanged a meaningful glance, the gist of which was that they would allow it go, just this once, being mindful of the men’s morale so close to the beginning of a major attack.
“A word of caution, however.” He made eye contact with as many men as possible. Some refused to meet his gaze even now, mostly those who had been raised in an environment of superstition and fear of the vampire. “These grenades must be used with extreme care. While they will be deadly effective against the Sultan’s Tiger Guard, they are also every bit as dangerous to your own officers.” The consequences of a vampire being struck by silver shrapnel hardly bore thinking about; the wounds would be comparable to those of a standard explosive-propelled chunk of metal on an ordinary human body.
“Very well. The Company Sergeant-Major will now fall you out, and you will line up to take receipt of your equipment. CSM, if you please?”
Arthur and his fellow senior officers dozed fitfully in their coffins throughout the heat of the following day. True to their word, the British artillerymen labored at their guns from dawn until dusk, keeping up a constant fall of shot upon the mouth of the breach.
The Tipu’s work parties attempted to carry out at least partial repairs upon the damaged area, but the harassing fire laid down by the besiegers made even standing up in the area of the breach completely untenable. The lesson had to be learned at the cost of five workers’ lives.
For the flesh and blood soldiers from the British line battalions, sleep was also somewhat elusive. Their officers generously allowed them to sleep until four o’clock in the afternoon, at which time they were roused and given a hearty meal. A few had no appetite, but most ate heartily, all too aware that tonight might be their last night on earth.
Once the men had been fed, they were paraded by company and sorted into the order in which they would be attacking the city. Once the assault columns had been formed, the men were sent out to their mustering areas, duck-walking along the zig-zagging approach trenches. A few guns opened up on them from the walls of Seringapatam; not along the western walls, where friendly artillery had done such sterling work in scouring them clean of the enemy, but from those embrasures farther away. The fire was inaccurate, and little more than one more irritation on a day which already threatened to be miserable.
Having reached the closest point of approach in their trenches, the men had nothing else to do but wait. Most settled down against the trench walls and tried to snatch a few hours more of sleep. Others passed around bottles of arrack, though none dared drink so much that he could not walk in a straight line and fight when he got there. Word had got out of what Colonel Wellesley had done to Captain Ponsonby, and perhaps more importantly, the reasons why; few would have the courage to get drunk before an attack that Wellesley himself was about to lead.
At the very front of the lines were the two Forlorn Hopes. These units were composed of some of the finest fighting men in the army, and were led by a sergeant accompanied by twelve hand-picked soldiers, who would be the first into the breach. After them came a lieutenant, leading a larger force of twenty-five of the regiment’s toughest men. Every man in each of the Forlorn Hopes was a volunteer, because their task was considered to be almost suicidally dangerous - but it was also a way to gain instant promotion for some, and the right to wear the highly-coveted laurel wreath on the forearms of their uniform jackets, which signified that they had been among the first to storm an enemy fortress. Sometimes the men of the Forlorn Hope did indeed survive, but the casualty rates among them were always horrific.
After much deliberation, Colonel Wellesley had decided that he and his small force would enter the breach and then fight their way along the northern outer wall. The Tipu’s inner palace was located in the northern part of the city, and so it seemed reasonable that he and his Tiger Guard might be found there. Colonel Dunlop had the left of the two assault columns, and so the men of the Shadow Company were now sitting in the approach trench behind those of his Forlorn Hope.
“Stick behind me, lads,” grinned the chirpy sergeant who was the very first man in line, “and you’ll be alright. There’ll be none of the buggers left to kill by the time I’m done in there.”
“He’s a damn sight happier than I would be,” Dan Nichols muttered to himself. Yet perhaps it was simply the man’s way of coping with what lay ahead. If making light of the matter was Sergeant Graham’s way of forcing himself up that slope and into the mouth of the enemy breach, good luck to him.
The British cannon continued to fire, and managed to widen the breach a little more during the late afternoon. At sundown, the rate of fire suddenly picked up significantly. That was the signal, Dan knew, the sign that they were about to go in. All of a sudden, a black mist appeared next to him in the trench, and quickly coalesced into the form of Colonel Wellesley.
“Sir.” Dan remained sitting but offered the colonel a salute, which was promptly returned.
“How are the men, CSM?” Wellesley appeared rested and almost eerily calm. For his part, Dan’s heart was beating ten to the dozen.
“Oh, you know sir,” he offered a weak smile. “About as well as can be expected. They’re ready for the fight, like, but they’d just as soon be through that breach already, if you take my meaning.”
Wellesley nodded, for he did indeed understand. The waiting was the worst part. It played on the idle mind, giving it leave to conjure up images of the carnage which might await them all up ahead.
“I see you’ve found a new sword, sir,” Nichols saw, looking in admiration at the beautifully-crafted hilt that was visible above the colonel’s scabbard. “And it looks like a ni
ce ‘un, too.”
Arthur removed the sword slowly, held it up for Dan to inspect. He made a point of not touching the blade, and after a closer look Dan could see why. “Is it just me, or is that made of silver, sir?”
“It is not just you, CSM,” Wellesley replied, gingerly returning the blade to its sheath. “It is an alloy of silver and certain other metals, or so I am told. The regimental armorer has been working on it for quite some time now, purely in his spare time of course, and was kind enough to allow me to buy it. I’d best not cut myself with it, hmm?”
“That could be rather nasty, sir. I hope you’ll be careful.”
Making his way to the front of the trench, Arthur returned a salute from Sergeant Graham and asked if he was ready. “Ready as I’ll ever be, sir,” he responded with a cheeky grin, but the look in the man’s eyes told a different story. He was scared, and no man in their right mind would blame him for it. “Will you start us off, sir?”
Wellesley nodded. Turning to face the men who now crouched and squatted along the trench wall, he augmented his voice just enough to reach those at the very end of the long, winding line. “Now, my brave fellows!” he roared, standing to his full height as he began to climb out of the trench. “Follow me, and prove yourselves worthy of the name ‘British soldiers!’”
For a moment, Wellesley stood on the western bank of the Cauvery, entirely alone. It was still dusk, not yet full dark, and he stared at the breach, mapping out every inch of the terrain between where he stood and the foot of the glacis, burning it into his brain.
Sergeant Graham and his men were already up and off, marching with determination towards the broken city wall. To their right, the Forlorn Hope that was leading Sherbrooke’s men forward was keeping pace alongside them.
The entire Shadow Company fell into their separate platoons and fell into step behind their colonel, who started to lead them forwards, keeping twenty feet back from Sergeant Graham and his volunteers. Behind them, Dunlop and Sherbrooke were ushering their own men out of the trenches, and started about the task of hastily forming them into a battle line.
A pair of vampire officers had made a clandestine reconnaissance of the Cauvery the night before, and had identified appropriate places for fording. Two small white rags, some fifteen feet apart, signaled the most shallow point that was still close to the breach, and Graham oriented himself on an imaginary point mid-way between the two.
So far, the only casualties were a lot of very wet feet, Wellesley thought to himself; but surely it couldn’t last? Looking backwards, he saw twin columns of red-jacketed soldiers stretching out behind him almost as far as the eye could see. The Shadow Company splashed straight across the thigh-high river as quickly and strode up the opposite bank.
All suddenly became almost deafeningly quiet. The British artillery had finally lifted its fire, afraid of hitting the men of the Forlorn Hopes who had just now reached the base of the breach. Sergeant Graham was the first to mount the slope made of rubble, and began picking his way carefully up towards the opening some thirty feet above his head.
And then the night exploded in noise and fury.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
As soon as the British cannonade had finally lifted, a swarm of defenders had crept slowly to the top of the breech and hid themselves just below the summit. Each man carried four muskets, two slung on each shoulder as they climbed. Others, similarly armed, were making their way swiftly to the north and south ramparts, where stacks of muskets had been prepositioned the day before.
The defenders opened up on the attacking British with everything they had. A torrent of musket fire began to knock redcoats backwards from the ascent to the breach, sending their bodies hurtling into the path of their comrades who were climbing the rubble behind them. Those defenders on the outer ramparts whose view of the breach was blocked instead opened up on the two oncoming British columns, the 6,000 men who were marching toward the city in order to take it by storm.
Miraculously, Sergeant Graham was not one of those shot down in the first wave, and became the first British soldier to successfully force entry into Seringapatam. As he stumbled up towards the top of the breach, Graham saw that is was crawling with tiger-soldiers, all firing down past him onto the slope. One swung his musket around to face him, but the sergeant coolly shot him in the chest, blowing his body backwards into the city.
Taking one more step, Graham suddenly found himself standing all alone at the very top of the breach. Enemies surrounded him on all sides, and yet the constant fire of their muskets never seemed to touch him. A ball cut the air just past his right ear, and the sergeant started to his left, clambering onto the defended outer rampart.
For just a moment, he could not resist looking back, down upon the breach beneath him. Redcoats streamed up it like ants climbing a hill, and some were blasted off by the enemy’s muskets, but still they came on, bayonets at the ready, a solid press of sweating infantrymen with their eyes set firmly on the prize: Seringapatam.
“It’s Lieutenant Graham now!” he roared jubilantly, as the realization finally hit home that he had made it alive into a defended breach, and his life would never be the same again.
The newly-minted Lieutenant Graham survived for only three more seconds, and never saw the ball that killed him. It was a perfectly-aimed shot, taken from the fire-step on the opposite side of the breach. The musket ball entered at the base of his neck and emerged from the front, leaving the lieutenant’s throat a torn and bleeding ruin. He had the small good fortune of dying instantly, and therefore never felt the impact of his body slamming into the hard ground some thirty feet below.
Both Forlorn Hopes were up and on top of the breach, albeit with over half of their number dead or dying, and were sticking it to the defenders in fine old style, fighting like the gutter rats most of them had once been.
Now it was the turn of his Shadow Company. As CSM Nichols started to mount the rocky slope, Wellesley decided to try and even the odds a little at the summit. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, the vampire colonel turned and sprang forty feet into the air, altering his density at the top of his arc in order to slam him back down onto the northern shoulder of the outer wall.
The outer parapet was thick with defenders, all of who were shocked at his arrival. Wellesley laid about him with blade, boots, and elbows, cutting throats and hurling tiger-soldiers to their death until the entire stretch of rampart was clear.
“Shadow Company!” he bellowed. “To me! To me!”
The musket fire which had been raining down on the open breach had suddenly slackened, partly because of Wellesley’s clearance of the northern shoulder, but also because the fighting at the breach’s summit was now purely hand-to-hand. The survivors of the Forlorn Hopes both fought like lions, and the arrival of the Shadow Company tipped the balance of power firmly in their favor. With a colossal roar, the redcoats drove forwards into their opponents with renewed force, and those who didn’t die at the end of a bayonet were physically pushed backwards down the reverse slope into the dark space between the inner and outer walls.
Obedient to their colonel’s order, the men of Shadow Company began clambering up onto the north shoulder of the western outer wall, following him all the way around to the northern wall proper. Men of Graham’s Forlorn Hope were intermingled with them, and the ad hoc force began to clear the outer rampart of its defenders.
A heavy volume of musketry was coming from the inner wall, which was manned by a large number of defenders who had also stockpiled weapons there. Others below the inner wall reloaded their empty muskets for them, passing them back up so that they could be fired at the British again. Redcoats were falling to the musket-fire left and right, but still more came, and now both Lieutenant-Colonel Dunlop and Colonel Sherbrooke were both into the fray, with the men of their assault columns directly behind them.
Once into the breach, Dunlop turned left and Sherbrooke right. Sherbrooke began to clear the entire western wall, digging the
enemy defenders out of the two round towers and hurling them over the parapet. Dunlop first secured the northwest bastion, and then followed the trail blazed by Wellesley. The near-constant hail of fire from directly across on the inner wall was taking a steady toll, and Dunlop decided that he’d had quite enough.
“Follow the wall and keep on at ‘em!” he instructed the lieutenant of infantry who happened to be directly behind them. The lieutenant-colonel then sprang across the gap between the two walls, clearing the parapet of the inner wall easily and landing on the back of a defender who was laying down while attempting to reload a musket. With a crunch, the man’s thoracic spine snapped under the force of the vampire’s heels.
The tiger-soldiers who were manning the inner rampart’s fire-step turned all of their panicked attention towards the sudden intrusion, which reduced the pressure on the redcoats clearing the north wall immensely. Dunlop fought like a man possessed, hacking his way through the press of defenders until it seemed that there were none left to kill.
A single musket shot rang out, and the ball hit Dunlop in the right hand, passing straight through the palm and out the other side. Fangs bared, he hissed in agony as the neat hole turned black, the flesh around it beginning to necrose and bubble.
Through the river of pain now coursing up his arm, Dunlop knew that only a silver ball could have done that kind of damage. Glancing down into the courtyard behind the inner wall, he saw a harried-looking tiger-soldier hurriedly reloading a weapon with an extremely long barrel. Dunlop recognized it for one of the rifled weapons he had once expressed such disdain for, and realized that the Sultan must be employing sharpshooters with silver bullets to target the British officers.
The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 22