The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (16 page)

As though reading his mind, Wellesley said, “Dismissed, Sergeant Pace. You may return to your duties.”

“Sir.” Pace snapped his heels together in a manner that was just this side of insolent, performed a parade square-perfect about face, and marched off into the darkness. The ranks parted to let him through.

The native and his three escorts came to a halt some six paces away from the general’s mount. Wellesley cocked a quizzical eyebrow at the man, seeming to read him and form judgment with a single sweep of his eyes, and then transferred his gaze to Sergeant Norris.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Norris started out, bracing up to the position of attention. “Caught this fellow coming in through our lines just now.”

“This was the nature of the brief altercation we just heard, I presume?” Wellesley sounded faintly amused. The sergeant nodded.

“That it was, sir. That it was. He had a pair of them dead devils coming after him. The lads here soon put paid to that.” He gestured proudly toward the corporal and the private, both of whom looked rather more discomfited than pleased at being singled out for praise in front of their general.

“Capital.” Wellesley inclined his head toward each man in approval, then returned his gaze to the native. “And who, sir, might you be?”

Much as the sergeant had, the native straightened, tilting his head up to look the general in the eye. There was no insolence there, just a quiet strength and dignity that Nichols found impressive.

“My name is Vinkesh,” the man began, speaking slowly with broken and halting English. “I am come seek great general Wel-les-lee.”

“I should say that you have found him.” Arthur dismounted, handing off the reins of his mount to a junior officer. “And now that you have, what is it that you wish of him?”

Vinkesh drew in a deep breath, paused as if trying to frame his words properly.

“I wish of him that he save my village.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“You wish me to save your village?” Wellesley repeated curiously. “Save it how – and from who?”

“Not…who…what,” Vinkesh corrected, struggling to find the words. He was one of the most proficient speakers of English in his village, having learned the language at his father’s knee when the older man had dealt with East India Company traders, but that had been decades ago, and his ability to communicate in that language was now extremely rusty.

“Captain Campbell, fetch an interpreter, if you please.” Arthur was impatient to hear what this man had to say. He had obviously walked a long way in order to track down the British force, and Arthur wanted to know why.

“Of course, General.”

“And please have suitable refreshments brought for our guest as well.”

“I shall attend to it immediately, sir.” With a salute that Wellesley returned, his adjutant headed off to carry out his orders.

To nobody’s surprise (least of all Wellesley’s) Colin Campbell had turned out to be a remarkably efficient adjutant ever since his appointment. It took no more than five minutes for him to locate one of the many hired natives who were paid well for their fluency in English, and only five more for a plate of food and small jug of water to be placed in the hands of a delighted Vinkesh, who gulped down half of the water straight away and then began to devour the sliced fruit with all the gusto of a man who had not seen real food for days.

The British officers waited patiently for him to finish, doubtless thinking of tonight’s supper – human blood, freshly bled and carefully warmed to body temperature.

Once the last morsel was gone and washed down with the final swallow of water, Vinkesh offered the general a low bow of gratitude.

“Thank you, great General Wellesley,” he said via the translator, “for your kind and generous hospitality.”

“You are most welcome,” Arthur replied with a gracious nod. “Now please, tell me how we might be of service to you and your village. What I have heard thus far intrigues me, I must confess.”

Vinkesh cleared this throat and began to tell his tale, sometimes pausing to allow the translator to finish a sentence.

“I am a simple man, sir. A farmer. I live in the village of Talwada, some four days march south from here, by my guess.”

“By your guess?” Arthur repeated. “How is it that you are not sure?”

“Because I have spent the past three days seeking your army, sir, and while the lands to the south are well known to me, this region is not.”

“And yet you seem to have found us anyway,” Wellesley observed with a single upraised eyebrow. “Coincidence?”

Vinkesh shook his head. “No coincidence, sir. You see, my people heard the sounds of distant battle several nights ago, and knew that there had been a clash of armies far to our east.”

“Indeed there had. At Assaye.”

“It was two days after the battle that we found the first bodies, sir. Children. Two boys, five and seven years old. They were not doing any harm, General Wellesley, they were simply…” Vinkesh seemed overcome with emotion for a moment, placed a hand over his eyes as though to stifle an uncontrollable sob which leaked through anyway. The translator, a middle-aged man of no small girth, laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. Vinkesh thanked him with a grateful nod. “They were simply playing, General. They did not deserve the evil that was done to them.”

Wellesley leaned forward, fixing the man with his gimlet stare. “What, precisely, was done to them? This ‘evil’ of which you speak?”

“They were savaged, General. Torn apart by some great beast.”

Two of Wellesley’s vampire colonels exchanged a meaningful glance at that. ‘Great beast’ sounded devilishly familiar. The phrase was obviously piquing Wellesley’s fascination too, because he was gazing at Vinkesh without blinking, his eyes boring into the back of the man’s skull and trying to read what was written there.

Vinkesh did not drop his eyes, but rather continued to meet the vampire’s gaze levelly. He has a strong will, this one, Wellesley realized, frowning slightly. Exceptionally strong psychic defenses. I could force my way through, but not without breaking his mind…perhaps irreparably…

“What manner of beast?”

“A great tiger, sir. Much bigger than normal.”

“A tiger?” Wellesley grunted. “A tiger, indeed…”

“Yes, General,” Vinkesh continued, his voice breaking as he told his story. “When the boys did not return for their supper, their older brother was sent to look for them. He found their bodies…they were torn apart, ripped and shredded like dolls…” Vinkesh covered his face again, ostensibly to stifle the tears that should be welling up in his eyes – yet all that he could feel was a gut-wrenching sense of dread about what might even now be happening to his family. He knew that if he did not make this look good, did not make it sound good, and the vampire general was not convinced, then his family was as good as dead.

Or worse.

“There was nothing left of them,” he went on, relieved that his left eye at least was willing to obey him, splashing a single fat tear along the length of his cheek. Vinkesh wiped it away with the back of a hand. “Not only had they been ripped to pieces, but they had been eaten. Devoured.”

“My sympathies,” Arthur said, and truly meant it. It was always a tragedy when the young and innocent came to a bloody and violent end. For soldiers, it was one thing – almost expected, in fact. But a five year old and a seven year old…

Simply abhorrent.

“Thank you, General,” Vinkesh nodded gratefully. The tears were flowing freely now, his eyes already growing red and swollen. It was not hard for him to fake the sense of fear and anxiety that would be such a crucial part of selling this performance to the half-circle of senior vampire officers that were surrounding him now. “I will…forgive me, it is difficult.” He stifled another sob.

“Of course. I quite understand,” Arthur said, hoping that the translator would convey the sincerity of his words. “Please continue when you are ready.”

“I am ready, sir. The men of my village…we armed ourselves. Our weaponry is not that of an army, by any means, but it is more than sufficient to kill a tiger. Ten men went out that afternoon, ready to trap the beast, shoot it dead, and deliver its head to the mother and father of the two dead boys.”

“I take it that this hunting party was unsuccessful?”

“Ten men should have been more than enough. We heard shooting, General, coming from the outskirts of the village. And then screaming. Everybody cheered. We expected them to come back with the beast’s head. Instead…nothing. For three hours. Finally, another party – larger this time, over twenty men including myself – went to find them.”

“I do believe that I see where this is going,” Arthur mused. “The ten men were also torn to pieces, were they not?”

“Yes, sir. The screams we heard were not cries of victory; they were shrieks of pain. When we arrived at the location of the first hunting party, we found the remains of seven men. All had been ripped apart.” Although he could not show it, Vinkesh was particularly proud of this next flourish to his tale. It was the little things that impressed, not the broad strokes. “Their severed heads had been placed upon their bellies, and their hands folded around as though holding them in place. We knew then that whatever had done this, it was no mere tiger.”

“Quite so,” Wellesley agreed. His officers also murmured their agreement. Tigers lacked the dexterity to do such a thing, not to mention the inclination. Such calculated cruelty required intelligence, which meant humans, for the most part...or worse.

“Three of the men were missing. We found trails of blood that led into the stand of trees. Blood was splashed on some of the undergrowth too, but the trail disappeared a few steps in. The tope was very dark and shadowy. Some of the men made an argument for going inside after the tiger, but…”

“That would have been suicide,” Arthur said flatly, with a chopping gesture for added emphasis. “The creature that killed those children and the hunting party was no mere tiger. It was something far, far more dangerous.”

“I could not agree with you more, General. That stand of trees has long had a reputation for being haunted” – another lie, but one that Vinkesh was sure that he sold well to those assembled – “and we take such concerns very seriously. It was no wonder that the great beast chose to make its lair in there. It has been known as a place to avoid for as long as any in Talwada can remember. My grandfather called it a foul and cursed place, and would never set foot in there, even during the light of the day.”

“There was no sign of the tiger?” asked Captain Campbell. “None at all?”

Vinkesh turned to face him. “Oh, yes sir – we found the tiger. We could just make it out, lurking in the shadows amongst the trees. And it...it spoke to us.”

“Spoke to you?” Wellesley sounded a little more insistent this time, even going so far as to reach out and grasp the villager by his upper arm. “What did she…it say?”

“It roared as us, sir, and then spoke to us in a woman’s voice. It said that if we wished to be left in peace, then a person from the village – a young person from the village – must be offered up as a sacrifice each week. Otherwise the tigress would come down from her lair one night when all were asleep and do to our village what she had done to our hunting party.”

Arthur watched the man closely, engaging the entirety of his hyper-acute vampiric senses. Vinkesh was bathed in a cold sweat; beads of it stood out on his forehead and formed damp circles beneath his arms and the inside of his thighs. His pupils were dilated, and his heart was racing. Arthur listened to the staccato
lub-dub, lub-dub
of its drumbeat.

The villager swallowed. He had a dry mouth, Arthur observed, consistent with a fear response. Part of that could simply be his close proximity to the vampires, something which he may never have been exposed to before in what had to have been a relatively sheltered life, but it also lent credence to his tale. Looking down at his hands, Arthur could see that he had a slight tremor in each of them.

This man is quite terrified.

While one part of his mind focused upon observing the villager, another part was turning the story over and examining it from multiple angles; that particular section of his brain was rapidly coming to an inescapable conclusion.

A tigress suddenly appears the day after our battle. A talking tigress. Who else could this be but Jamelia?

The Sultan had already told him that Jamelia had returned, having survived their struggle to the death and subsequent plunge into the River Kailna. True, the way in which he had worded it – so sly and threatening – had implied that Jamelia was now one of the walking dead, yet did that necessarily mean that she was incapable of transforming into her feline form?

I have you now.

He would have to move fast and strike while the iron was hot. Already plans were forming in his brain, thoughts whirring and clicking into place like the cogs of an ornate grandfather clock. As far as his main army went, he had no choice but to keep pressure on the retreating Maratha army, maintaining the relentless pursuit until they were cornered in their one remaining bolt-hole: Gawilghur.

But a smaller force could perhaps be spared, one that would move swiftly, retaining the element of surprise right up until the last minute. He returned his attention to Vinkesh once more.