The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (30 page)

Horsemen were snatched from their saddles by the fusillade, then dumped unceremoniously on the ground, only to be run over by the hooves of those behind them. A surprising number of them had gone down, and the survivors peeled off to the left and right, executing a looping turn and riding off in the direction from which they had come.

What is happening?
Bappoo fumed.
Have they lost their nerve? Or did that idiot of a commander simply order a demonstration rather than a charge?

Whichever turned out to be the case, the irregular horse formation was now streaming back towards their own lines, completely ignoring the new battle going on to their left, where their comrades had engaged the British cavalry head to head. Sabers flashed and mounts wheeled as the two factions met, merged, and each rider fought for advantage against his opponents.

Bappoo returned his attention to the melee in the center. He was dismayed by what he saw. His men were losing the battle, if he was any judge. The redcoats were crushing them, bayonets rising and falling in an orgy of blood-letting. The skirl of the bagpipes lent a surreal air to the slaughter, and was sometimes drowned out by the agonized cries of the fallen combatants.

He wondered idly whether he should have supported the arabs by sending in more line infantry on either side, but quickly discounted the notion. He had chosen the position of his infantry formations with great care, and he had no desire to reinforce a bad position at this late stage. Advancing the arabs had been a gamble, he realized, and it had transpired that the odds were not in his favor.

Such were the fortunes of war.

A scream close to his right ear gave him pause. Something blasted through the air in its wake — something heavy and fast. The cannonball plowed into the line of infantry behind him. Bappoo turned just in time to see it remove the head of a man some ten feet away, pulverizing it in a cloud of red vapor. He had some twelve thousand men positioned in two blocks, and now the British gunners turned their attention toward them. More holes were punched in the Maratha ranks as the storm of shot intensified, plucking men from their ranks and leaving them in bloody smears upon the earth.

The Maratha foot-soldiers watched with mounting discomfort as the red-coated battalions shredded the arab formation to tatters, and then marched on toward them. Bappoo saw that the vampire general must have sounded a general advance, because now the entire British line was moving forward, straddling the watercourse on both sides. They plodded slowly but inexorably toward the Maratha line, bayonets standing proudly at the vertical. Their colors fluttered in the light breeze, and even to a warrior as brave and experienced as Bappoo, it seemed as if nothing in all the world could stop them.

And so the Maratha infantry did the only thing that seemed reasonable in the face of such a mighty killing machine: They turned and fled.

Wellesley’s bold advance had crushed the Maratha center, the three red-coated battalions smashing through the force of men that had been sent out to meet them, and was now pushing forward toward the outskirts of Argaum. On either flank, his cavalry had broken and routed the Maratha irregular horse, who were fleeing the field of battle in droves.

Which leaves my counterpart in quite the pickle: if he does not withdraw his infantry and what little remains of his artillery now, then he must surely know that my cavalry can outflank them and attack them from the rear at their leisure.

Before he had time to prepare and issue orders to that effect, Wellesley was rather surprised to watch the main line of enemy infantry turn tail and retreat. It was like watching a stone fall into a millpond, he thought, with tremors rippling outward in all directions. Once those men in the center of the line had turned and ran, their comrades to the left and right adopted the same approach themselves.

Now the entire Maratha line took flight, moving northward at a speed that could only be explained by a state of near-panic.

All except for one man.

The lone figure walked calmly forward toward the oncoming front line of the King’s 33rd. When he was perhaps three hundred yards away, he halted, drawing a curved sword and resting its blade lightly against his right shoulder. He planted his legs in the classic swordsman’s stance and simply waited for the redcoats to come to him.

The general acted without thinking. Slipping his boots out from the stirrups, he rose quickly into the air, propelling himself forward and upward in a great arc that deposited him gracefully on the ground some twenty feet in front of the man. Wellesley cast an appraising eye over him. The man had a thick black beard and was both trim and heavily muscled. Based upon the richness of the silk in which he was garbed, obviously an officer and a man of some importance.

“I am Manoo Bappoo,” the man said, tapping the edge of his blade impatiently against one collar-bone. “The former commander of this…” He seemed at a loss for words, and finally settled for, “Rabble.”

“Major General Arthur Wellesley. Your men have fought bravely, sir. It is no great shame for them to retreat now.” Which was not strictly true in Wellesley’s eyes, but he wanted to offer the man an out, some shred of dignity here at the finish. He held up a hand. Colonel Connolly saw it without difficulty, and barked an order that brought the 33rd crashing to a halt before they ran their general over.

“They are sheep,” Bappoo spat, stiffening with anger. He gestured expansively with his arms, flinging them out to either side. “Cowards. The brave ones lie dead all around us.
They—”
he gestured with the
tulwar
in the direction of Argaum, now full of fleeing Maratha soldiers, “are not fit to lick the dust from their feet.”

“As you say.” Wellesley paused, choosing his next words with great care. Finally he said, “You have fought with honor and courage this night, Manoo Bappoo. It is not necessary for you to die here in order to sharpen that point even further.”

As if he did not hear those words, Bappoo instead said, “Do you know where our army is heading, vampire?”

“To Gawilghur,” replied the general, taking no real umbrage to the term
vampire,
which had been spoken in the manner of an epithet.

“To Gawilghur,” Bappoo nodded somberly. He looked directly into Wellesley’s eyes, which were glowing redly in the darkness. Looking back at him, the vampire saw no fear in his opponent’s gaze.

This is a man who has made his peace with death.

Suddenly, Manoo Bappoo began to shudder. At first, Wellesley thought it might be a seizure, for the man’s eyes had rolled up into his head, leaving only the whites upon display. Then he coughed, and the cough was bloody. The vampire winced ever so slightly, for he had not yet fed properly this night, having been too caught up in the preparations for the attack to drain more than a few mouthfuls of blood from one of the army’s human cattle. He fought down the urge to spring forward and sink his fangs into one of the man’s carotid arteries.

As quickly as it had begun, the shuddering stopped. When the Indian spoke next, it was with the voice of a woman.

A voice that Wellesley recognized.

Kali.

“Gawilghur shall be your grave, Englishman. The fortress in the sky has never been taken by force. It
cannot
be. And so I make you this final offer: Turn back now. Leave this place forever. March back to Seringapatam, and thence to the coast. Take ship for England, and never return.”

“And if I do not?”

Kali-Bappoo spat, a thick gobbet of bloody sputum that landed mere inches from Wellesley’s immaculately polished boots.

“Then the sun-bleached bones of every last redcoat shall decorate the plain of Gawilghur as a warning to all future invaders.”

Kali-Bappoo moved with lightning speed, very nearly catching Wellesley off-guard. The
tulwar
sliced through the air across the diagonal plane. Wellesley danced aside, drawing his own slim blade with a smooth, fluid motion. Rather than try to match blade against blade, the vampire instead chose to allow his opponent’s momentum to do all the work. The
tulwar
was heavy, and as it reached waist height, its speed intensified, slamming into the plain below and throwing up a cloud of dust.

Wellesley’s blade flashed out, threatening to take Kali-Bappoo’s head from his shoulders, but the possessed Maratha was a superb swordsman. He ducked, letting the blade whistle through the air above him, and then launched a backswing that came close to removing the general’s aquiline nose from his face.

“I have given it some thought,” Wellesley said, spinning his silver-laced blade through a series of intricate concentric circles in front of him. He seemed to be almost daring the Maratha commander to try and break through his guard. Instead, the possessed man circled to the left, causing Wellesley to follow suit. “I am afraid that I must reject your
most generous
offer.”

“So be it.” Kali-Bappoo launched a series of powerful slashes, low, high, and then at the waist. Wellesley parried expertly, matching his enemy’s blade at every level. The goddess-man was getting frustrated, the vampire saw, because each successive slash became a little sloppier, a little less tightly-controlled. He could use that to his advantage…particularly if he stoked the fires of that frustration a little more.

“Unless you would care to accept my terms and surrender,” he taunted, raising his voice to project above the constant clang of blade upon blade. “I must admit, I have never bested a goddess before. I find the idea to be very compelling.”

Kali-Bappoo snarled, gritting his teeth angrily. “You
dare—!
”

And there it was, just like that: the tiniest window, hiding almost out of sight in between a high and a mid-level slash of the
tulwar.

An opening.

Wellesley lunged, lightning-fast, ducking low and simultaneously stepping inside his opponent’s guard. The point of his sword slid past the curved edge of Kali-Bappoo’s weapon and entered the skull directly above the bridge of his nose. With all of the vampire’s preternatural strength behind it, the meticulously-honed point punched its way through his enemy’s skull, spearing through the cranial vault and out the other side. Moving faster than a musket ball, the blade induced a barometric shock wave that helped reduce Manoo Bappoo’s brain to liquefied mush.
Surprisingly little blood,
Wellesley thought as he withdrew the sword and assumed the standard
en garde
position. The defensive stance was meaningless, for Bappoo was plainly no longer a threat: the man’s body collapsed, his fingers slackening around the hilt of the
tulwar
and allowing it to slide free of his once-firm grip. The vampire watched impassively as what remained of Bappoo’s brains dribbled out through the puncture wounds at the front and back of his skull, finally congealing in a puddle around the base of his skull.

Still, Wellesley held the stance for a few more heartbeats, half-convinced that the will of the goddess would somehow reanimate the man’s corpse and cause it to rise, as he had seen happen so many times over the past few weeks. Finally convinced that even Kali could do precious little with such traumatized materials, he cleaned the blade carefully upon his opponent’s robe before returning it to its scabbard at his waist.

Almost as if he had spoken too soon, the body began to glow. It began as a dull lavender, but rapidly intensified until it was a blazing, blistering purple that hurt the eyes. Night turned into day on the field outside Argaum, an eerie purple day that forced the gathered British to avert their gazes and shield their eyes to protect them.

When the light had dissipated just a few seconds later, a woman stood there. She was naked, her most intricate parts exposed for all the world to see, and yet Wellesley sensed that most of his soldiers were reacting with
fear,
rather than arousal.

“You should not have done that, vampire.” Now that it was freed of the physical body, Kali’s voice had taken on a mellifluous quality that he remembered all too clearly from his dream encounter with the goddess some months ago.

“Might I ask why?” he asked, summoning a politeness that he did not feel.

“Come to Gawilghur,” Kali taunted. “My former offer is rescinded, Wellesley. There shall be no mercy for you, and none for those who follow you. If you try to flee now, my followers will hound you to the very ends of the earth. There is nowhere that you can hide from me.
Nowhere.
”

“How very fortunate that we are in agreement, madam,” Wellesley shot back, baring his fangs in an obvious challenge, “because there is nowhere in all the world that I would rather be.” He bowed formally, yet managed to add just the right amount of calculated mockery into the gesture.

“
So be it!”

The goddess of the dead disappeared in a blinding flash that seared an afterimage of Kali into the retinas of every man on the battlefield.

“What now, sir?” Connolly asked, stepping out of the darkness behind him.

Wellesley looked up to the sky, saw the tell-tale danger signs of light beginning to appear in the east. He watched ruefully as the final remnants of the once-proud Maratha rearguard disappeared over the far horizon. For a moment, he was tempted to send the cavalry after them, to try to destroy them in detail, but then thought better of it. That was an excellent way to over-extend his reach, tactically speaking, and his precious cavalry were too few for him to run the risk of losing them in the pursuit of an already-broken enemy.