The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (21 page)

They found out all too soon.

The first screams were those of the living, shrill and panicked, caused by the sensation of undead teeth sinking into soft flesh. It was not long before the entire village was stirring. At least one villager possessed enough of a survival instinct to reach for his firearm, because an orange flash could be seen through one of the square-cut windows, accompanied by a loud boom.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Jamelia sent her psychic sense probing and questing in that direction. Sure enough, one of the beacons in her mind’s eye had gone out; where before she had been aware that six of her soldiers were inside that particular home, now she saw only five.

No matter. One creature is hardly a loss in the greater scheme of things. She dismissed the thought and moved on. With a flash of insight, Jamelia realized that she had made an error, albeit one of omission. She needed the village in order to set her trap. A few flesh and blood villagers would serve as excellent bait. If the British arrived to find the place completely deserted, they might well be put on their guard. That wouldn’t do at all.

Hastily, she issued orders for the undead army to leave at least a handful of the villagers alive, and also to do as little damage to the outside of the homes and buildings as possible. Most were probably a little on the dilapidated side anyway (she couldn’t tell for sure in the low light) but there was no point in making Wellesley and his men unduly suspicious, was there?

It had been a bizarre few days. During the long and dusty journey, a multitude of windows offering both insight and perception had opened up into Jamelia’s new condition. She knew that being…whatever it was that she had become, was going to require a great deal of adjustment on her part.

Every once in a while, there would come a moment in which the bizarre nature of her new reality rose up and smacked her squarely in the face. A case in point: it had taken her two days after rising from what should have been a watery grave for her to realize – to truly realize – that her once-mighty heart no longer beat inside her chest. In the past, Jamelia had exulted in the pounding of blood through her veins, reveled in the mad song that it sung directly into her ears. Nothing had energized her more during the heat of battle than feeling the thud thud thud of that organ pumping away inside her chest: Yet now, it seemed to have been replaced with a cold, dead, lifeless sack of meat, which felt as though it did little more than sit behind her breastbone and occasionally swing to and fro whenever she moved quickly enough.

She had been surprised to find that, despite her first impressions upon seeing the undead rise once more, being dead did not actually seem to hurt. At least, it did not hurt her; there was no lingering agony in her bones or the muscles and nerves which surrounded them, which came as something of a relief. Yet the reverse was also true. Jamelia had found herself idly stroking the palm of her hand with the fingertips of the other. She had been disturbed, if not shocked, to realize that she could no longer feel the light stroking sensation which the tender self-caressing action should have induced.

Jamelia felt…nothing.

She wondered whether she would ever feel anything again, other than the ever-present thirst which covered her mind like a red blanket. When she had held Vinkesh close, it had taken every scrap of her not-inconsiderable willpower and self-discipline to keep from sinking her teeth into him, surrendering to that ravening urge which threatened to constantly overwhelm her. Jamelia had felt bloodlust before. It was practically a given for any were-tiger or tigress, a product of their predatory nature. She had always controlled it before without much in the way of difficulty. Like any other excess – alcohol, food, sexual congress – one simply controlled it, so that it did not control you.

Yet this hunger was an order of magnitude greater than its predecessor. This hunger had to be kept on a much tighter leash, lest it slip just once and wreak havoc.

Her newly-undead state was not without its benefits, however. The inability to feel pain was only the first. With just a small amount of additional focus and effort on her part, Jamelia had learned that it was possible for her to quite literally see through the eyes of any one of her soldiers.

Giving in to a somewhat morbid fascination, she exercised that power now, using it to get inside the head of Nayan. For a moment, it was disorienting; Nayan’s vision was whited out, and it seemed almost as though she were peering out at the world from behind a veil or a cotton sheet. Dead eyes, Jamelia thought to herself, unblinking and as dry as bleached bones in the desert.

A dark, rectangular smudge must have been the front door of the creature’s old home. He lurched forward through it, and as he did so, Jamelia felt the unsteady yet still resolute plod of his gait.

Screams now, shrill and terrified. Nayan whipped his head around with a snarl, hunting for the source. Jamelia could not quite make out details upon the small, grey form that suddenly filled the dead man’s field of vision, but from the sound of things, guessed that it was a young girl. The man’s daughter, she assumed with a lack of compassion that surprised her.

Nayan’s daughter stood rooted to the spot, able to do nothing more than scream at the appearance of the monstrous apparition which had once been her father. The lumbering undead thing snatched the child up and, completely ignoring the panicked cries, sunk its teeth into the junction of her neck and shoulder. Still piggy-backing upon Nayan’s seat of consciousness, Jamelia shared the sensation of hot, coppery blood spurting into their shared mouth, felt the tenderness of the young flesh, still supple and not even remotely tough, yielding easily beneath their teeth.

As she passively witnessed the father tearing out his daughter’s throat and devouring the strips of flesh around it, Jamelia underwent something of an epiphany. The tigress knew that the old Jamelia, the one who had despised the vampire Wellesley and all of his underlings with an almost pathological hatred, was dead and gone, perhaps forever. That woman had died on the bed of the River Kailna. She had been replaced by someone both new and very, very different, somebody who could bear witness to the brutal death of a child – and perhaps even worse, its subsequent resurrection as a flesh-hungry walking corpse – with total composure and equanimity.

Jamelia knew that she had become something that was both more than human, and yet at the same time much, much less.

Worst of all, she couldn’t bring herself to give a damn.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“It’s no bloody good. The heathen bastards won’t stop running until the gates of Gawilghur are slammed shut behind them.” Colonel Stevenson was in an uncharacteristically foul mood, Wellesley noted, and it seemed to be growing worse with every passing mile.

“You’re eager for battle?” Arthur asked with just the faintest hint of a smile.

“Eager, sir? I thirst for it. The sooner we teach these impudent wretches just who it is that runs this bloody country, the better for all of us, I should say.”

There it was: Impudent wretches.
And that,
thought Arthur,
is where we differ. He thinks the natives inferior to us; lesser beings, somehow. Poppycock.

Wellesley sighed, another habit left over from his lifetime as a living, breathing human. Whether one wanted to believe it or not, the truth was that Stevenson was far from alone in perceiving the native Indians as a lower form of life. Many of the British officers, both the living and the undead, looked down their noses at any man with a brown skin.

Bigotry was simply the way of the world. Back in England, a large proportion of the vampires that Arthur knew shared similar beliefs concerning all mortals, no matter what the color of their skin. His own brother Richard, the supreme authority throughout all of India, was one such vampire, according the mortal men who served under his command with no more regard than he would a slice of roast beef; after all, they served much the same purpose.

The British column marched north-eastwards beneath a breathtaking canopy of stars. Although he and his senior officers were positioned at the front, they were untroubled at the prospect of danger; ahead of them ranged a screen of cavalry, a mixture of British and native horse that roamed ahead of the main body in a wide semi-circle.

In addition to the cavalry, a handful of Arthur’s precious exploring officers – all vampires, usually of relatively junior ranks such as captain or major – made periodic reconnaissance flights. Such sorties were risky, however; Major Williams, one of Wellesley’s most experienced vampire scouts, had been lost immediately prior to their last battle, ambushed and ended by one of the European vampires who took mercenary pay to serve in the Maratha army. It was a score that Wellesley was determined to even when the opportunity presented itself.

“The bastards got a day’s head start on us,” Stevenson grumbled, expertly maneuvering his mount around the remains of a dead tree before bringing it to walk alongside Wellesley’s once more. “We’ll never be able to make it up now, I’ll warrant.”

“You think me wrong to have rested the army?” The question sounded innocuous enough, but Stevenson detected an undercurrent of danger in Wellesley’s question. The colonel was no fool. He knew that the general, while sometimes tolerant of his decisions being questioned and debated among his staff, was in two minds about having not pursued the Marathas through the morning after the battle at Assaye.

“No sir, I do not,” Stevenson admitted reluctantly after a long pause. “Your army had given its all on the field, and paid a steep price in blood for the victory. Allowing them a night’s rest and unifying into one force once more was the only way to guarantee that they…that we would not be annihilated.”

“Such was my thinking also,” Wellesley agreed, apparently mollified.

The two rode in silence for a while, listening to the steady, rhythmic thumping of horses’ hooves and the infantrymen’s boots on the hard-packed ground. Far behind them in the distance, both vampires could just make out the squeak of cartwheels coming from the baggage train.

Finally, Wellesley said, “Patience, Colonel. Patience is key. I seem to remember your having been considerably more optimistic last night.”

Stevenson merely nodded, content to let his general speak. The colonel knew from long experience that Wellesley did much of his best thinking aloud, using those around him as a sounding board. Besides, he truly had felt cheered last night. Wellesley had come up with quite the audacious masterstroke of a plan, and he wondered why his optimism seemed to have dissipated just a day later.

“They have a good twenty miles on us, by all accounts, it is true,” Wellesley went on. By all accounts referred to last night’s reconnaissance mission, when Major Lewis had ventured out under the cover of darkness and had personally laid eyes on the much larger enemy force. Wherever the opposing vampire officers were, Lewis had seen neither hide nor hair of them, and had made it safely back to deliver his report to an eager Wellesley.

“Yes, General, a good twenty miles,” Lewis had confirmed, when asked for his best estimate. “Perhaps a little more, but no greater than twenty-five.” Even for an experienced officer such as he, it was notoriously difficult to judge the distance one traveled by air – especially as they flew by night, when the darkened terrain flashed by beneath one in a blur.

Arthur leaned forward in his chair, his tone betraying the eagerness he clearly felt. “What can you tell me of their disposition, Major? Are they in good order, or still dispersed?”

“Somewhere in between. I noted lone stragglers, dawdling behind the main body of men. In fact, I stopped to feed upon one during my return visit.” Lewis gave Wellesley a look that seemed to seek his approval. For his part, Wellesley simply nodded. Despite the fact that it appeared to be effortless and graceful, taking flight was an arduous business, and he had absolutely no quarrel with an officer who picked off one of the enemy in order to sustain his energy levels.

One less for us to deal with at Gawilghur.

“The cavalry still guard the rear and flanks, just as one would expect,” Lewis continued, relieved to have obtained his general’s tacit approval, “and behind them is a small force of infantry. They are maintaining formation, but show little of the discipline displayed by our own troops.”

“Few can,” Stevenson had interjected.

“Next came the baggage and supply train—”

“A total bloody shambles, I’ll be bound,” Stevenson cut in again.

Lewis went on as though the interruption had never happened. “—in some disarray, it must be said. Their artillery, considerably fewer in number, and then the main body of infantry.”

“No cavalry in front?” Arthur frowned. Lewis shook his head.

“None that I could see, sir.”

“They believe themselves safe, heading into friendly territory,” Wellesley mused, stroking his chin absently with the tip of one pointed fingernail. “Why waste their horse anywhere other than along our expected axis of advance?”

Arthur had stood and walked across to the map, which was spread out on the wooden table against the far wall of the tent. Stevenson and Lewis followed him, each leaning over to follow their general’s finger as it traced along the contour of a stream.

“The enemy is fast approaching this point,” Arthur observed, indicating a village named Argaum with the point of his fingernail. Based upon what they could glean from the map, it was little more than a hamlet, of no real strategic import. Stevenson had said as much. “The same could easily be said of Assaye,” Arthur had shot back, “and I suspect that men shall be speaking of that ‘place of no strategic import’ for the next thousand years.”