The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (20 page)

Without breaking stride, Nichols turned about and walked backwards for a few steps. He did this periodically, casting a weather eye over the men. It was good for them to know that their Company Sergeant Major wasn’t sleeping on his feet; the thought made him grin ruefully, but he forced his face back to a suitably dour expression straight away.

Any other unit in the British Army would be marching in step, organized into some sort of formation by their Corporals. Not so the Shadow Company – or not today, at least. Although the Shadows could move like clockwork on the parade square when the circumstances demanded it, circumstances had not demanded it in quite some time. They were irregular troops, skirmishers and individuals by nature. Shadows like to rely on their wits and instincts, and on the battlefield they would be seen darting from one patch of cover to another, taking careful, aimed shots at whatever they considered to be the best target of opportunity.

General Wellesley had given them that latitude. Indeed, he had positively encouraged it. He trusted his CSM to hand-pick the best candidates possible to fill the ranks of his beloved personal company, and Nichols took the job with extreme seriousness. When considering a potential recruit (and he considered each one with great care) he selected for a variety of characteristic, but the one trait that he valued above all others was usually the least common: initiative.

The men were divided up into three irregular columns of roughly thirteen apiece, although given just how strung out each column was, it was difficult to say how many were in them at any given time. Shadows moved from the middle column out to those on either side, and then drifted back again. To the untrained eye, it might have looked sloppy; on closer inspection, however, the keen observer would note that every man’s head was on a swivel, their eyes constantly scanning from the middle distance out to the far horizon and back again.

Every weapon was loaded, but not yet primed, for the strips of cloth still bound each pan. It would only take a few seconds for an experienced soldier to untie the cloth and apply the appropriate amount of powder, and in flat terrain such as this, where the Shadows had visibility out for a couple of miles in all directions, even the fastest unit of cavalry would be pressed to charge the half-company before they could form square and get a volley off.

“Not a sign of man nor beast,” Dan mused to himself, not realizing at first that he had spoken out loud. Campbell looked up sharply from his own inner thoughts, and Dan wondered if it had been his use of the word beast.

“I wouldn’t expect there to be much in the way of life out here, CSM.” The Captain rested a hand lightly on the hilt of his saber, despite what he had just said. “The Marathas should all be off to the north-east, buggering about and trying to get to Gawilghur before the General catches up with them and tans their arses.”

The two officers had positioned themselves out in front of the formation, not that it placed them in much danger. Both shared a similar philosophy of leadership: that you couldn’t lead from the middle or, God forbid, the rear. You to be out in front, a constant presence, and always within sight of the men.

“I’ve heard bad things about Gawilghur.” Dan dropped his voice so that only his Captain would be able to hear it. “They say that its walls are impregnable. That it can’t be taken.”

“There’s no such thing as an impregnable fortress,” Campbell scoffed. “Besides, CSM, you should know better than to listen to them.” He smiled to take the sting out of the mild rebuke.

For his part, Dan knew that the Captain had a point. Most of the horror stories concerning the Maratha fortress had been told by redcoats, who in turn had heard them from the camp followers and allied native troops. As rumor-mongering went, maybe that wasn’t the most credible source for him to be listening to.

“The fortress hasn’t been built that can’t be taken, either by siege or by storm,” the Captain went on, obviously warming to his theme. “One look back at the history books tells us that hiding behind walls, no matter how big or thick they are, usually ends badly for the defender.”

“I haven’t read a lot of books in my time, sir,” Nichols admitted without shame. “But I have heard a lot of officers talk about strategy and tactics.”

“And what have you learned, CSM?” Although his eyes were scanning the plain in front of them, Campbell’s voice sounded genuinely interested. From any other officer, it would have sounded condescending, but there was just something about the newly-promoted Scotsman that reeked of sincerity and earnestness.

“Mainly that it takes at least three attackers for every defender, if you’re trying to take a fort by storm.”

Campbell nodded. “Three to one is the commonly accepted minimum, yes, but the more the merrier as I always say.”

“Even with a lot of men on your side, storming can be a damned bloody business,” the CSM said gloomily.

“True enough, but not always. You were at Seringapatam, were you not?”

That startled Dan. He had been in the first waves through the defended breach at Seringapatam, charging up that rubble-strewn slope alongside the then-Colonel Arthur Wellesley. It had been an intense, violent, and yet surprisingly bloodless affair, with a butcher’s bill that was far lower than even the most optimistic estimates had predicted.

“You make a good point, sir,” Nichols replied at last, having thought the matter over. “Seringapatam should have been a death trap. Cannons on every wall. Rocket batteries. You name it, the Tipu had it, ready to chuck at us when we came to depose him, the vicious little bastard.”

“Then why did more men not die?”

“I think the vampire officers were a large part of it, sir. But I put it down to speed and aggression of attack.”

“Go on.”

“Once the artillery had blasted a hole in the outer wall, both sides knew that that was where we were going to have to go in. Stood to reason. The Sultan’s men defended that breach with everything they had, but Colonel Wellesley and his, er, brother officers, if you take my meaning, flew right on up there and played merry hell with the heathen buggers.

“Then, when the breach was clear, that was pretty much that. We sent men around the walls on either side, as you already know, sir, until we had the whole place ringed. Then it all came down to flushing them out a yard at a time.”

“So much for the invulnerable fortress,” Campbell laughed easily. “And Seringapatam was built on an island in the middle of the river. Not that it helped much in the end.”

“What would you have done, Captain, in the Tipu’s shoes, like?” Nichols was genuinely curious. Personally, he confined his thinking to the tactical level – for him, it was all about getting things done with the minimum amount of fuss and bloodshed among his men. He left the actual orders themselves (and the thinking behind them) to the commissioned officers, and as far as he was concerned, they were bloody well welcome to that particular headache. Nevertheless, he found himself growing ever so slightly fascinated with the bigger picture that was emerging here, and wanted to know how differently things might have gone if a better command had been in charge of the fortified city.

Captain Campbell didn’t answer for a while, and Nichols wondered whether the senior man hadn’t heard his question. The two men walked another hundred or so paces before he finally spoke. “If I were in the Tipu’s shoes, I like to think that I’d have met our army outside the city, perhaps on the plain instead. Take the fight to them rather than let them besiege Seringapatam. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, CSM, but foresight is a crucial part of any General’s job.

“There were at least one or two missed opportunities. For starters, in order to encircle the city, we had to split our army in two. That would have been a good time to launch an attack. And what about Colonel Wellesley’s night attack on the stand of tope, across the waterway? A counterattack there might have swung things in the Sultan’s favor.”

The reminder of that night’s engagement sent an involuntary shudder running down the length of Dan’s spine. It had been brutal. Commanding the 33rd, Colonel Wellesley had been determined to clear the enemy out from within the cover of those thick trees, from where they had been pouring harassing fire into the British formation during the hours of daylight.

After the first opening shots, it had gotten very ugly very quickly for the attacking redcoats. The Maratha soldiers had put down a lot of fire, and the British had had no real choice other than to charge, closing the gap as quickly as possible despite their having to run forward into the teeth of heavy musketry. Once they were into the trees and vegetation, it all came down to the bayonet; hot, sweaty, and grunting work at close range.

And then there came the were-tigers. Dan shook his head to clear it, not wanting to relive the nightmare of tooth and claw that had befallen the redcoats that night, accompanied by triumphant growls and the high-pitched shrieks of those who would soon become meat for the beasts.

The villagers of Talwada never knew what hit them.

Jamelia waited until that period just before the dawn when the shadows were longest and the sleeping human brain least wakeful. To her surprise, with every passing day, she was finding it easier to control the undead creatures, no matter how large the horde had become. They had picked up no stragglers during their journey across the barren plains, none which could be added to the ranks of the undead army since the unfortunate passel of men who had accompanied Vinkesh.

She idly wondered how the sole survivor was getting on. Had he found the British army yet? Had he gained access to Wellesley’s inner circle of officers? And perhaps most importantly of all, had he spun the tale that they had concocted between them with sufficient sincerity for Wellesley to believe it?

Only time would tell.

Closing her eyes, she slowly reached out with her senses. It felt like casting a wide net over the thousands of undead soldiers that had been entrusted into her care by the Dark Mother. The past few days, although mind-numbingly boring in their lack of stimulation, had provided her with the perfect opportunity to hone her command and control techniques. Although the process of mentally instructing the creatures to do what she wanted was extremely complex, it was also bizarrely easy.

Each creature stood out in her mind’s eye like a beacon. The more recently dead they were, the more brightly their particular beacon burned; the one called Nayan, for example, blazed a brilliant and luminous white-yellow when she focused her psychic attention upon him. Nayan looked up and cocked his head to one side, in the manner of a dog whose name has been called out by its master.

Tell me…which home was yours? Jamelia projected the message from her mind directly into what remained of his. It wasn’t the words themselves that were being sent out, but rather the concept itself that she wished to convey. Somewhere, her will was being translated into terms that the creatures could comprehend. Jamelia hoped that there was enough of what had once been a man still trapped within that ruin of grey matter inside Nayan’s skull to process her instruction and respond to it.

Apparently there was, because the creature slowly raised one arm – mottled purple and suffering from death-bloat – and pointed in the general direction of the village. Jamelia got the impression that he was indicating one of the specific hovels, although she couldn’t be certain.

Very well. You may go home.

Nayan began to shamble forward, picking up the pace until he was stumbling at a speed more akin to a trot than a walk. Two of his new comrades somehow found themselves in his way. With a growl of animalistic rage, Nayan shoved them both aside, seeming not to care about the big flap of yellowing skin that sloughed off his right arm in the process. The avulsed flesh hung, dangling, from its root, bouncing obscenely with each step that the walking corpse took.

Commanding the rest of her army now, she thought: Follow. And then: Feed.

They needed no further urging. Now that the leash had been let slip, the creatures surged forward in a great tide, one that howled and moaned in an audible expression of their insatiable lust for flesh and blood.

On the outskirts of the village, Jamelia stood back and watched events unfold. In her feline form, the tigress knew that she could have killed every last man, woman, and child in Talwada had she chosen to. The same was probably true even of her human form. How did the old saying go? A thousand throats may be cut in a single night by a running man. She smiled wanly. Or woman.

The first of the creatures were flooding into the dark and dingy streets. She kept her eye on Nayan, watching with fascination as the villager staggered up to what she presumed was the front door to his former home. It was a squat single-storied affair, as were all of the buildings in Talwada. Most were built primarily of mud brick and wood. At first, Nayan simply pushed on the door with the flat of his hands, not seeming to realize that it was latched. After a few seconds of frustration, he let out a moan, high and keening. One that was fit to wake the dead.

Doors began to open, just one or two first, but each time a door was so much as cracked, a cluster of the undead saw their opportunity and pounced. The occupants, still cotton-brained and halfway asleep, never stood a chance; all that they had done was to get to their feet, throw on something to offer a little modesty, and then come to their front doors to try and ascertain what all of the commotion was about.