The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (7 page)

Then how am I to face the vampire and defeat him? she thought plaintively.

“As I have said already, you shall be given an army. An army of the dead. Do not think yourself weak, Jamelia, for you are nothing of the sort; however, your newly-resurrected body will begin to decay and deteriorate over time, until it finally falls apart completely. Only then shall you gain peace and be reunited with your father…after having the revenge that you so desperately crave.”

How long will I have to defeat him, before my body fails, my mistress?

“Long enough,” Kali replied evasively. “You will still be able to shift form, and your undead body now possesses the ability to absorb tremendous damage. But that is not the power of which I speak. For a demonstration of that, you must return to the surface.”

Immediately, mistress.

Obediently, Jamelia arched her back and used her paws in order to roll over awkwardly onto her belly. She was pleasantly surprised to find that her muscles still retained something of her old strength, although they felt stiffer and less limber. The resistance offered by the river water might explain some of that. She also no longer found it necessary to breathe; the sensation was odd and somewhat unpleasant at first, but soon she suspected that she would grow accustomed to it soon enough.

Bunching her leg muscles beneath her, Jamelia pushed upward as hard as she could. Her sleek feline body rose through the water, her eyes blinking as the daylight grew brighter with every passing second. Breaking the surface, she paddled the fifteen feet toward the closest bank, finally slinking out of the water behind three redcoats who were desperately attempting to fend off a group of attacking creatures. The hunting cat was amazed to see all three of the mens’ bayonets fall from the end of their musket muzzles at the same instant, as though pushed by some unseen force.

“Think of it as my final gift to you,” Kali laughed from inside her brain. “And do be sure to have fun discovering the others. I shall be watching.”

One of the redcoats screamed. As if a spell had been broken, the flesh-eating creatures surged forward, burying the trio in a mass of biting, clawing deadness. Jamelia stood silently and watched in horrified fascination as the British soldiers were quite literally torn limb from limb. The undead seemed to favor the soft, vulnerable flesh of the neck, she noted with almost clinical detachment; hot arterial blood jetted from the ragged puncture wounds made by the creatures’ teeth, many of which were even more rotten than the rest of their bodies were starting to become.

They are strong, and feel no pain, Jamelia thought as she watched the feeding frenzy impassively. She had been one of the originators of the undead plague, helping to introduce blood that had been blessed by the Dark Mother to enemy soldiers after the assault on Ahmednuggur. They had impressed her then, just as they impressed her now, and revolted her all the same. These creatures simply cannot be stopped—

And yet they did, every one of them. At the same time. It was downright uncanny, the way all eight of the flesh-eaters stopped what they were doing at precisely the same instant and stood up straight, even going so far as to drop whatever body part they were chewing or tearing up in the process.

Then they turned to face her.

Jamelia let out a low, throaty growl, exposing her wickedly-curved teeth and preparing to fight. But the creatures just stood there, dumbly staring back at her as though they were expecting her to do…what?

Step back, she thought to herself.

Amazingly, the creatures obliged. Each stumbled backward exactly one step. A couple of them tottered unsteadily, but all of them obeyed her command.

Obeyed…

Overcome by a sudden suspicion, Jamelia decided to test it out. Narrowing her eyes, she took a moment to gather her thoughts, drawing all of the threads of her focus together into one carefully directed thought.

Turn.

In unison, once again, they obeyed.

The tigress grinned wolfishly. This must be one of the gifts of which the Dark Mother had spoken. Time and time again, Kali had referred to an army of the dead, which would drive the hated British from Maratha lands once and for all. One could not have an army without there being a commander, after all, or it would be nothing more than a mob.

Throwing back her head, Jamelia roared her exultation at the skies. The creatures didn’t respond, instead simply standing there, waiting for their next command.

Follow me.

Jamelia broke into a confident stride, not bothering to look back and see whether they were obeying her mental instructions or not.

These would be the first recruits of many to the cause of her goddess.

As the sun rose ever higher toward its zenith, the line of stragglers stretched from horizon to horizon. The remnants of the Maratha army were still plentiful – in fact, more than adequate to smash the inferior British force, reflected Daulat Rao Scindia with a sneer – but not this day. Probably not tomorrow either.

An army was more than physical strength, manpower, and numbers, he knew. Morale was a key factor, arguably the key factor, and the morale of his men had been sorely tested this past night…and found wanting.

Scindia was no military man, preferring to play the role of potentate and politician, rather than general. He had, as the saying went, people for that: principle among them was the vampire officer Pohlmann, architect of their campaign. Thus far, his performance had been exemplary…but that had all ended on the plain of Assaye last night, when the accursed Wellesley and his red-coated battalions had launched their suicidal assault and broken the Maratha forces, sending them running from the field and into the cold grey light of dawn.

“I simply cannot believe it,” said his companion, riding alongside on a grand chestnut gelding. “How could this have happen to us? How?”

“Be at peace, Berar.” Scindia spoke calmly, the measured honey in his voice meant to soothe his fellow potentate. Between them, Scindia and Berar were capable of amassing more than a hundred thousand fighting men. Word of their alliance, although uneasy and fragile at times, had soon reached the ears of the British high command; afraid of the implications that it held regarding the balance of power in the region, the senior British representative in India (Richard Wellesley, Lord Mornington) had dispatched a force under the auspices of his younger brother with the obvious intent of shattering that alliance into pieces once and for all.

“Peace?” Berar’s head snapped round to face him, making the gold-crusted feather in his turban flap madly to and fro. “What is there to be at peace about? The British have beaten us!”

The two potentates rode together at the center of a phalanx made up of their personal guard, some five hundred elite fighting men dressed in cream-colored tunics and trousers. Each wore a pale yellow sash over the right shoulder that was belted at the hip, and a scarlet turban that seemed almost to mock the uniform of their most hated enemy: the British redcoat. The men did not quite march in step, for the terrain was too uneven to allow it, but their ordered, leisurely pace was something that Scindia found rather reassuring. They marched confidently, kicking up a small cloud of dust about their sandals with every step. Their commander, a subadar by the name of Romesh, had practically begged Scindia for the opportunity to join the battle last night, to take their scimitars and muskets against the vile British. For his part, Scindia had actually been tempted: it seemed to him that the presence of five hundred superbly-disciplined men might sway the battle in their favor once more. But he had been overruled by Berar, who had vehemently dismissed the idea with a chop of one richly-bejeweled hand.

“Absolutely not! I forbid it. Our safety is of paramount importance. All else is secondary!”

These men were lions, and one did not keep a lion on the leash for too long…not without irretrievably blunting its spirit, at any rate. Romesh had obeyed, just as Scindia had known he would, for the man was a professional fighting soldier. But that look in his eyes…it plainly rankled. What manner of true fighting man would willingly stand by and watch his brothers in arms be slaughtered, in order to protect a fat, perfumed prince? Even Scindia’s lip had curled at the refusal to let them help.

It was at that moment that Scindia had first known, with an utterly cold-blooded certainty, that Berar would have to die.

What was left of their army now marched to Gawilghur, Berar’s fortress, located high up in the mountains to the north-east. It was said to be impregnable, and in all the generations since it had first been hewn out of the rock, it had never once been taken by either siege or by storm.

He and Berar were counting on that impregnability now.

As a strongpoint, Gawilghur was of almost incalculable strategic importance, its sphere of control encompassing all of the plains and roads for miles around, in every direction. Wellesley would not – no, could not – bypass the fortress. He simply dared not, for the Maratha forces entrenched there would act as a dagger at his back, ever-vigilant and ready to cut his supply lines if he chose to do anything other than retreat. Half-drunk on blood one night, Pohlmann had insisted that he knew precisely how Wellesley thought and planned. Gawilghur had to be taken, the Hanoverian went on. There was simply no other way. And now that the first engagement at Assaye had proven indecisive, Gawilghur is where the Marathas would finally break the British.

“The British have most assuredly not beaten us,” Scindia retorted mildly, his attention drifting back to the here and now. “And while we have most assuredly not beaten them either, we still hold the upper hand.”

“The upper hand?” Berar sounded scornful. “Our army is broken. We are in retreat. Please explain to me how we hold the ‘upper hand.’”

Leeting out a long sigh, Scindia said, “The breaking of our army is temporary. To borrow a metaphor: We have been mauled, yes, but the bleeding as stopped and we shall soon heal. Remember, the British have been weakened also.” He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “And unlike us, they do not have the men to spare.”

Berar considered that for a moment, and seemed slightly mollified. “There were a great many red jackets among the fallen,” he ultimately conceded.

“Indeed there were. Our losses can be made up, given a little time. Whereas the British are far from home, and at the far end of a very long chain of supply. Every redcoat that falls is a redcoat not easily replaced…not to mention a recruit for Kali’s special army.”

The army of the dead had occupied much of Scindia’s thoughts of late. Speaking to them through the mediumship of Jamelia’s possessed body, Kali the Dark Mother had promised them that the horde of resurrected corpses would somehow be led to victory against their mutual enemy, the British. If this is what victory looks like…had been his first thought, but he squashed it quickly. The Dark Mother had a proven ability to eavesdrop on the thoughts of mortal beings, and she was not known to be a merciful deity.

No, he had little choice but to take Kali at her word, and trust that everything would ultimately turn out for the best. She wanted the British ousted from the Maratha lands every bit as much as he and Berar did, and while Scindia recognized that he and his fellow potentates were little more than pawns in a much larger game in which she was one of the players, he still felt genuinely confident that he had fallen in with the winning side.

There was a sudden commotion at the edge of the column, out on the far right. Scindia looked over in that direction, and was surprised to see a woman – at least, based upon the dark-colored sari that the figure wore, he thought that it must be a woman, but it was hard to tell at this distance – staggering toward them. Her hands were both outstretched, grasping for the closest soldier. She tottered drunkenly on uncertain, stick-thin legs. From the way in which she moved, Scindia knew that they had encountered yet another victim of Kali’s enchanted blood-plague.

A keening wail carried to his ears over the baking late-morning air. Without prompting, one of the white-garbed guards broke ranks. Drawing his curved sword from its scabbard in a single fluid motion, he raised it above his right shoulder, paused for a second as though sizing the creature up, and then brought it down again in a smooth and graceful stroke. Scindia squinted to make out more detail, admiring the swordsman’s economy of movement. The keenly-honed blade split the creature’s head in two, slicing it along a diagonal that ran from the left temple down through the right corner of the mouth. As soon as the weapon bit deep, its wielder turned away, shielding his eyes and mouth from the inevitable splatter of black liquid, just as he had been trained. Viscous drops spattered against the side of his face and darkened the scarlet turban.

It was difficult not to be impressed by the guardsman’s professionalism. The thing’s mostly-headless body took two more halting steps, operating primarily on momentum, before sinking to the ground without ever reaching the column of marching troops. Seemingly satisfied, the swordsman ducked down into a crouch and cleaned his blade front and back on the dead woman’s sari, before returning it to its sheath and running to resume his place back in the order of march once more.

“They continue to attack us, and yet they are supposed to be on our side,” Berar hissed, jerking his head toward the fallen body.

Fool, thought Scindia, though he said nothing of the sort. Pray that the Dark Mother is not reading your thoughts at this very moment. “The Dark Mother has a plan,” he said instead, “and it is not for such lowly creatures as we to know its every intricacy and connotation.”