The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (14 page)

“Are you a good actor?” the woman wondered aloud, completely ignoring his question. When he stared back at her dumbfounded, she sounded annoyed: “Can you act? It’s a simply enough question, I should have thought.”

“I…have never tried.” Where was she going with this?

“Then let us hope, for your sake, that you have a natural talent…or can learn very quickly.” She stepped forward, wrapping an arm around his neck in the manner of a lover taking him into her warm embrace. Yet strangely, despite the uncomfortable proximity of her naked body to his chest and thighs, Vinkesh did not feel even the slightest sexual urge in return. He was too focused upon the woman’s free hand, which she held up in the air before his eyes. She snapped her fingers.

The horde of soldiers broke ranks as one, surging forward with all the force and enthusiasm of a fast-flowing river. The men from Talwada had brought weapons with them, mostly swords with varying degrees of quality in the forging, and all five drew them now, one last gesture of defiance in the face of certain death. Hital voided his bladder in fear, dampening the sun-baked dirt with a steady stream of hot, steaming piss; yet despite the fact that his hands were shaking, one still clutched a half-rusted straight blade tightly, holding it at arm’s length between himself and the mob of flesh-hungry creatures that came for him now.

“What are they?” Vinkesh demanded, incredulous. “They are not…what are they?!?”

“They are the army of the Dark Mother, Kali,” she whispered into his ear, her lips curving back into a malevolent smile. “And they are mine to command. I, Jamelia.”

The small group of men from Talwada didn’t stand a chance. The undead swarm enveloped them, swallowing their tiny band whole. The living men went down in a welter of gnashing teeth and clawing hands, their puny blades no match for the sheer momentum of their foes. Vinkesh could only watch with wide eyes and racing heart as the friends and acquaintances with whom he had set out from the village earlier that morning were torn limb from limb.

Except…they were not. Jamelia closed her eyes. The horde backed away instantly, as though they had been made to do so by some command that could neither be seen nor heard. All five of the victims were intact, at least grossly so; yet each was drenched in blood, which oozed from a hundred open bite wounds.

Vinkesh got his first good look at the men who formed Jamelia’s army then. To a man, every face was distorted and repellant, the skin a sickly hue that he had only ever seen before on the bodies of the dead, particularly those who had been left in the sun and heat for too long before burial. Now he knew why Jamelia’s men — no, he corrected himself, her dead men — had shambled and stumbled their way across the plain.

The creatures made their way back into the makeshift ranks once more, shuffling to form crude files. Apparently satisfied, Jamelia opened her eyes. Her face bore an expression of quiet satisfaction.

A snarling sound from behind him caused Vinkesh to turn, pivoting with Jamelia still clinging to his neck. She released him with a soft chuckle, stepping back to rejoin her unholy army. Vinkesh screamed. Deathly pale but suddenly animated again, Nayan had clambered drunkenly to his feet, and was staggering toward him with outstretched hands.

Jamelia suspected that once he located the British army and made contact with them, Vinkesh would soon be giving the performance of his life: hardly surprising when one considered that the lives of everyone he held dear were at stake.

The only thing which had horrified the farmer more than seeing his traveling companions halfway devoured by soldiers from her undead army, was watching the dead men slowly return to some grisly semblance of life once more, clambering to their feet and howling for the succor which could only be provided by warm and living flesh.

“Fear not,” the tigress had whispered playfully in his ear. “These are my men. They obey my commands. I shall protect you, so long as you do what I say.”

True to her word, the groaning, gnashing horde reached out for him with clutching fingers, as though beseeching him to come forward and sate their unholy hunger with an offering of his own body. Yet Jamelia held them at bay, with some kind of power that Vinkesh neither perceived nor understood. If he did not know better, he would have sworn that some kind of invisible barrier stood in place between the creatures and himself, preventing those desperate teeth from sinking into his flesh and gnawing on his bones.

Jamelia took his face in both of her hands, turning it toward her own and shutting out the clamor for a brief moment. “Pay no attention to them. Simply follow my instructions, and all will be well.”

“I…” Vinkesh realized that he had no choice in the matter, not really. He had seen Nayan be brutally killed and then resurrected, turned from a living, breathing, jolly man into a soulless husk that pleaded for meat. He fought to regain his thoughts, but they were elusive, nebulous, like wisps of smoke that scudded away when he tried to concentrate on them. At last he said, “Your…men…what are they?”

“They were living men once,” she agreed, speaking softly. “Then they died, and have returned to serve the Dark Mother once more. Their existence serves a far greater purpose now, in undeath, than they ever did in life.”

“But you control them…”

“At the pleasure of the goddess.” Jamelia waved a hand airily, in the manner of one fast growing bored with such talk. “And do you know what the will of the goddess is?”

Vinkesh shook his head dumbly.

“Then I shall tell you. The Dark Mother wants the accursed English gone from her lands.” Jamelia favored him with her most penetrating glare. “What is it that you want?”

The farmer’s jaw flopped slackly open for a moment as he searched for an answer to the question. “To live,” he answered finally, with total and utter candor. “To go home to my wife, children, and my village…and to live.”

Jamelia smiled. “That can be arranged. It is certainly a far better fate than to join the ranks of my army.”

Vinkesh looked back over her shoulder, seeing once more the thousands of slavering, decaying faces. Some distant part of his mind wondered idly what it must feel like to return from the dead as a reanimated corpse. From the look of it, it was not a pleasant process – it looked very much as though it hurt. Hurt a great deal.

No, he realized with a sigh that was part exasperation, part resignation, I really do not have a choice in this.

“What must I do?”

“Firstly, you will direct me to your village.” She wagged a cautionary finger at him. “Do not even think of lying to me about its location: at best, you will delay my army for a few hours more, perhaps a day at most. At which point, when I do finally locate Talwada, every last man, woman, and child shall pay for your feeble attempt at misdirection with their life. Is that understood?”

Her tone was pure steel. Vinkesh nodded miserably. She had already broken him, and from the expression upon her face, she knew it.

“Good. Then any unpleasantness can be avoided. So much the better for all of us.”

“What do you want with my village?”

“It shall be the bait in my trap,” Jamelia told him frankly. “One that will lure the British general in to his final defeat.”

Eyes widening, Vinkesh exclaimed, “You are going to make a battlefield of Talwada? It will be destroyed!”

“Hovels can be rebuilt!” Her green eyes flashed violently, and such was their vehemence that the farmer practically recoiled. Then the tigress calmed herself, allowing her voice to drop back into the comforting, reassuring cadence that it had been using before. She began again, “Once the British have been repulsed, I will personally see to it that your village wants for nothing. Anything that is lost shall be replaced.”

“And what of the people?” Vinkesh implored.

“They shall be quite safe. All I require is the village. We shall allow the inhabitants to gather such food and water as they can carry, and to take refuge in the hills. There they shall stay until long after the trap has been sprung.”

“You will allow them to take shelter in safety before the British arrive?” Vinkesh pleaded, suspicion written across every line of his face. It sounded too good to be true.

“But of course,” Jamelia lied smoothly. “I have no need of them. Only the buildings.”

“Alright then.” The farmer squared his shoulders. He pointed toward the far horizon. “Talwada lies less than a day’s foot-journey in that direction.”

She signified her understanding with a nod. “That is good. You have made the right choice.”

“What am I to do while you and your army go to Talwada?”

“Your task is the most important. You are to find the British army. It should not be too difficult.” She gestured from the north to the east with a sweep of her hand. “Ask to be taken to their commanding general, the vampire Wellesley—”

“Vampire!” Vinkesh had heard of the blood-leeching supernatural creatures, but had never truly thought that he would ever meet one.

“Have no fear. You are in no danger. You must simply tell Wellesley the following story…”

Jamelia went on to outline the tale of a great hunting cat – a were-tiger – that had suddenly taken up residence in the barren lands outside Talwada, coming out at leisure to prey on the innocent villagers whenever it felt the urge. She knew that with just enough detail, Wellesley would conclude that his old nemesis had survived their duel at Assaye and was even yet within arm’s reach.

The vampire general would come for her himself, to settle matters personally: Jamelia simply knew it. He was simply that type of man, obstinate and crusty. Once he learned that Jamelia had survived their mutual tumble into the Kailna, he would see it as a personal failure – one that must be rectified at all costs.

And she would be lying in wait for him, with sharpened claws and thousands of undead foot-soldiers to make the welcome every bit as warm as it was unexpected.

Perfect.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was a perfect night for a hanging.

The air way dry and not yet too cold, the sparse and desolate Deccan Plateau was usually devoid of all but the hardiest wildlife. Tonight, however, things were different: the mostly featureless landscape was thronged with hundreds of bright red jackets, the occupants of which had been carefully formed up into three sides of an open square by their officers and NCOs, while the fourth side was comprised of a handful of senior officers, most of whom were mounted on horseback.

The center of the square was marked by a crooked
albizia
tree, whose gnarled and twisted branches still bore a few leaves despite the lateness of the season, though they would most likely be entirely bare by the end of November.

A rope had been thrown over the top of one of the stronger-looking branches some twenty feet high, and its far end had been fashioned into a noose that now drifted lazily back and forth in the light early-evening breeze. Beneath it, standing in the long shadow of the tree, was a hastily-constructed wooden scaffold.

A tea chest would have done,
Company Sergeant-Major Dan Nichols thought sourly,
or even a couple of ammunition crates stacked just so. But the General likes things to be done properly.

Nichols glanced over toward the tall, slender aristocratic figure who sat silently and unmoving on top of a large gelding. General Wellesley was immaculately turned out, his pristine red frock-coat seemingly immune to the dirt and dust that others cursed and brushed away with impatient swipes of the palm. Although they were now losing the light, Dan would have recognized Wellesley’s silhouette even if the vampire general hadn’t chosen to position himself directly front and center before his troops, for his prominent aquiline nose was easily recognizable as the source of the nickname bestowed upon him by the men: ‘Old Nosey.’

“Look out, lads, Old Nosey’s on the prowl,” was often heard around the cooking fires within the British camp just before an evening’s march was to begin. On more than one occasion, Dan had caught the General fighting to hide a wry smile: few of the men realized that his slightly-pointed, swept-back ears possessed a much keener sense of hearing than those of a living, breathing man.

Even though the slender figure on horseback barely seemed to move, Dan knew better. You didn’t serve an officer for as long as he had served Major-General Wellesley without getting to know their every foible and idiosyncrasy. The general probably didn’t even realize it himself, but every time that he brooded or stressed over something (no matter how large or small) he had a habit of stroking his chin absently with the fingers of one hand, while the other crossed his chest and cupped his opposite elbow. He was doing it now, Dan saw, sitting ramrod-straight in the saddle and affecting an air of studied insouciance.

Despite the fact that one of his men was about to swing.

As the Sun finally disappeared below the western horizon, four soldiers — especially detailed for the task — stepped out of their ranks and made their way along the line, lighting torches that had been embedded in the earth on long sticks several hours ago. Each torch flared to life like an enormous candle, illuminating the faces of those men in the first two ranks. Every expression without exception was stony and dispassionate, fixed with a distant, almost glazed stare that every British soldier had mastered before every leaving his recruit depot: an expression carefully calculated to avoid incurring the ire of any passing officer.