The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Coda

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  The Beast of Mysore

  Wellington Undead: Book I

  By Richard Estep

  Copyright © 2015 Richard Estep

  All rights reserved.

  The author appreciates you reading this book, and thanks you for supporting his work.

  Please consider leaving a review of this book at the place of purchase.

  In memory of Minh Thai, who brought so much joy to the world, and for his loving wife, Stephanie.

  “You don’t choose the day you enter the world, and you don’t choose the day you leave it. It’s what you do in-between that makes all the difference.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  From the private memoirs of Colonel Arthur Wellesley,

  Inscribed February 27th, 1799.

  He has been called many things. To some, he is “The Beast of Mysore;” to others,“Tipu Sahib.” His own subjects have conferred upon him the singularly grandiose title of “the Lord of the Tiger Domain.” Naturally, it goes without saying that a man of true breeding puts little stock in such fripperies of language. For those of us upon whom it falls to deal with this man, he is simply referred to as “the Tipu Sultan,” or merely “Tipu.”

  The province of Mysore in Southern India remains almost entirely the Tipu’s fiefdom, and he fervently believes that he has been chosen by his god (Allah, as the Sultan is a Muslim, or at least claims to be) to cast out the invading forces of his Britannic Majesty King George, along with all representatives of the Honorable British East India Company, from his lands for all time.

  Such is the delusion under which he labors. It is a delusion from which we will soon release him.

  The man loathes us, as did his father, Hyder Ali, before him.

  We know that he has sought foreign support for his endeavors, and has approached the French in particular to beg not only military aid, but also for assistance of both a material and of a financial nature. If I know the French at all – and I flatter myself that few know them better than I – then Tipu shall find little but empty promises there, particularly after Nelson handed them such a drubbing at the Battle of the Nile last summer. However, he is an adroit player of the political game, this one, and he may still have cards that are as yet unplayed.

  Regardless, it shall avail him naught.

  My brother Richard shall have none of it, and as all of London knows, once the Earl of Mornington has made up his mind, nothing shall stand between him and the attainment of his desire. Richard has made no secret of his intention to lance this malodorous abscess once and for all, and is firmly convinced that General George Harris is the very man to apply the lancet. I for one have no doubt that he is correct, for Harris is a seasoned campaigner and a sound field general.

  And so, while a separate army under General Stuart approaches Mysore from its eastern border, we of what has come to be termed the “Grand Army” march west. Although our core force numbers but a handful of British soldiers (some 6,000 according to the Adjutant-General), our ranks are bolstered greatly by the presence of a much larger sepoy force, generously supplied by the Honorable East India Company, and a large contingent of cavalry, courtesy of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Between all three, we can muster some 50,000 fighting men…more than enough to deal with one provincial tyrant, no matter how high his walls.

  Never again shall this upstart find himself in a position to dictate peace terms to the Crown.

  The men of my brigade are ready and eager for the fight. I have been furnished with rather a few too many native regiments for my liking, though I do not wish to seem ungrateful. The Nizam has been most generous in that regard. With my beloved 33rd forming both the backbone and guts of this ad hoc formation, I sincerely believe that we could march to the very gates of hell itself and storm the place, if General Harris were but to command it so.

  But then again, hell isn’t quite as bad as some would make it out to be.

  I have, after all, been there and back.

  WELLESLEY

  Sunset on the plains of Mysore tended to be a calm and quiet time, but the typical peace and tranquility was broken this day by the presence of a huge military camp. Its lines were filled to capacity with bustling soldiers and their spouses, camp followers and animals of every description: camels, oxen, bullocks, mules, horses, and even a fair number of elephants could all be seen, if one observed the column from the front to its tail.

  Men in jackets of bright red stood guard around the camp perimeter, muskets at the ready in case any trouble should come, though none really expected that it would.

  The British had arrived.

  Despite the fact there there was nothing moving on the desolate plains, there was in fact no shortage of life out there, burrowing beneath the ground or nesting in the tops of what trees there were. Not a soul within the British camp had even the slightest idea that their every move was being watched by a woman - a naked woman.

  Jamelia was hidden in the deepest shadows within a stand of those trees. Such jungle-like growths could be found dotted almost everywhere throughout this part of southern India, and were known by the common name of tope. Tall, rangy, and possessed of lithe and graceful limbs which spoke of hard physical conditioning, Jamelia was currently squatting with her back resting lightly up against the bark of a baobab tree. She absently reached up and brushed a strand of long, dark hair away from where it had fallen across her eyes, before once more returning her attention to the object of her ire: the invaders of her homeland.

  She and her scouts had been shadowing the British column for the past few days, ever since it had entered the territory of Mysore. Evading the clumsy cavalry patrols had been child’s play.

  These British have quite the nerve, Jamelia thought in disgust. They take all that we have, and yet still want more. And when the Sultan refuses to bend the knee to them, what do they do? They manufacture the most trivial of excuses to make war upon him, upon all of us; and all so that men with fat purses, in London and Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, can make those purses even fatter – can swell them further, and all at our expense. She spat, not averting her eyes from the hated redcoats.

  The British would live to regret their greed, Jamelia promised herself, though they would not necessarily do so for very long.

  The column of soldiers had barely begun to break camp for that evening’s march when Private Thomas Gilman saw his opportunity, and decided on the spur of the moment to run. As soon as the officers had dismissed them, the red-coated men of the 33rd Regiment of Foot set about t
heir well-established routine of rounding up their wives, children, camp followers and animals. The colonel would doubtless want them to be moving before the moon had risen above the horizon.

  Sergeant Belton was being his usual efficient self, personally overseeing the process of loading the regiment’s property back onto the carts and wagons. Ever the opportunist, the nineteen year-old Gilman saw his chance, and seized it. He didn’t actually run, as that would have drawn far too much attention; no, Thomas simply shouldered his pack, rolled blanket and musket, and then strode nonchalantly towards the rear of the camp lines, where the wives and other camp followers would tag along in the wake of the main body of fighting men. Slipping out of the ranks had been no problem – he’d told Corporal Higgins that he was nipping away for a quick piss, which excuse had been accepted with a distracted nod from the senior man.

  Thomas was sick to his back teeth of the bloody army, an attitude that had not been helped in the slightest by his having spent most of the afternoon on guard duty, watching little more than the wind blowing across the desolate, dusty plains. The 33rd was the finest King’s regiment on the continent (and in the whole damned army, if you asked Thomas), which was why General Harris had chosen it specifically to spearhead his assault into the territory of the Tipu Sultan; and what did this crack regiment do? March all night, and stand guard most of the day, while the officers slept.

  Thomas didn’t pretend to understand much about the big picture. He was just a foot-soldier, which was exactly how he liked it. He was aware that the British force in which the 33rd marched was one of three armies that had been dispatched on the orders of Lord Mornington, the Governor-General of all India, to oust the Sultan from his heavily fortified palace at Seringapatam. One British army, under the command of General Stuart, was coming eastwards from the west coast, while the second, a force of native troops supplied by the Nizam of Hydrabad, marched down towards Seringapatam from their lands in the north.

  Having marched westward from their point of assembly at Vellore, General Harris’s Grand Army had now left friendly territory and had entered the land of Mysore. They were now well and truly in the enemy’s back yard, Thomas knew, which was the only reason he had kept a sharp eye out during his turn on watch this afternoon.

  Not that General Harris hadn’t taken other precautions; a cavalry screen had been deployed directly in front of the column’s line of march, along the anticipated axis of attack by any enemy forces which might be lurking in ambush out there. So far, the outriders had reported little more than some very minor skirmishes, which amounted to posturing by the horsemen on both sides and perhaps the odd carbine being discharged. On Colonel Wellesley’s orders, a sizable force of the Nizam’s native cavalry had been posted to watch the column’s northern and southern flanks, with still more deployed to guard the column’s rear.

  Wellesley. Thomas almost spat his distaste for the man as he walked. That perfumed little prince ought not to be in charge of so many men. He was just a boy, that one, and a boy born with a silver spoon shoved right up his arse to boot, the precious little bastard.

  Thomas was far from alone in his distaste for Arthur Wellesley. Having gained a colonelcy before he had even turned thirty had enamored him of no-one, and the fact that a mere colonel had achieved such a prominent position in the army of General Harris had not helped matters in the slightest. Whispers of nepotism followed young Wellesley wherever he went, fueled no doubt by the unfortunate truth that his brother, Richard Wellesley, happened to be the Governor-General.

  Mornington had to have pulled some bleeding strings. How else would his baby brother have ended up in charge of a plum regiment like ours, not to mention a horde of bloody black soldiers into the bargain?

  That bastard Nosey – Thomas preferred to use the soldiers’ nickname for their colonel, which had come about because of the man’s prominently hooked nose – was one of the reasons he was running from the army. Truth be told, he was the main reason. The man was a flogger, one of that breed of hated disciplinarians whom the line soldiers both feared and despised in equal measure. A lot of British officers were cut from that same cloth. They’d as soon hang a man as listen to his side of the story.

  And yet a flogging, or even a relatively quick death by hanging, was almost a blessing when you compared it to what the officers would do to you when they caught you doing something wrong, whether you were actually guilty or not. Thomas shuddered involuntarily. What they do to you was downright unholy. He’d seen it happen to others members of the regiment, good lads like himself who had been hungry and stolen a little food from the local populace. If they were lucky, they only ended up with a striped back, their flesh cut to bloody ribbons by the lash. For infractions deemed more serious…

  Best not to think about it. Thomas refocused his attention on the here and now, on making good his escape and leaving all of that behind. Army regulations laid the regimental lines out in a very specific way. The infantry went first by order of half-companies, capable of shaking out quickly into line of battle or forming square, depending on whether they had run into enemy infantry or cavalry. Next came the artillery, both the lighter horse-drawn galloper guns and the heavier cannon and siege guns, which had to be drawn by teams of oxen and bullocks. The gunners were the filling in an infantry sandwich, as the remaining battalions of foot-soldiers marched behind them, also by order of half-companies.

  All of this was followed by the immense logistical tail of human beings and beasts of burden that trudged along behind every modern army when it took to the field. This was the biggest gaggle of hangers-on that Thomas had ever seen, though. One of the lads from the Fifth Company had told him that there were over 100,000 bullocks, oxen, mules, and other animals accompanying the Grand Army, dragging along everything you could possibly think of, from cannon-balls to barley, spare boots to bottles of brandy. Each and every bit of it had to be driven across the plains, including enough forage to feed the massive herd of animals which were used to carry it all.

  Ahead of them, the sun was slowly descending towards the western horizon. The column would soon begin their evening march, once the officers had been roused from their daytime slumber. Throughout the long, hot Indian day, the British redcoats remained in camp, sleeping, eating, and resting. Some of the more unfortunate soldiers such as Thomas drew the short straw and ended up pulling a stretch of guard duty. When darkness fell, the army resumed its march, which was something of a boon as the air usually began to cool off significantly in the later part of the day, reaching almost tolerable levels by late evening.

  Theirs was an army led mostly by vampires, as were those of most of their enemies in this modern day and age. The soldiers pushed on beneath the light of the moon and stars, always moving steadily westward towards their ultimate destination: the fortified island-city of Seringapatam.

  After yet another in what seemed like countless interminable nights spent marching across the dusty plains, broken only at sporadic intervals by the green, leafy tope, the army had halted earlier that morning on an expanse of flat and almost completely open plain. It afforded clear lines of sight in all directions, and therefore a beautifully clear field of fire in the event that it should be needed. Although the army was now well within the Sultan’s territory, he had thus far shown little inclination towards challenging the invasion, seeming content instead to sit, fat and comfortable, behind the strong walls of Seringapatam, and allow the British to come to him.

  By happenstance, Thomas’s company had been marching at the very rear of the infantry portion of the column. As soon as he had casually put two hundred paces between himself and Sergeant Belton without raising any sort of uproar, the cocky young private simply ducked behind a canvas-covered ammunition wagon, and then merged with the carts and pack animals of the greater baggage train. Despite there being so many civilian camp followers and hangers-on, there were enough red jackets to be found back here that he didn’t stand out from the crowd in the slightest.

&nbs
p; Holding the slung musket loosely in the crook of one arm, Thomas moved deeper into the crowded expanse of the baggage train. Looking back the way he had come, when he could no longer see the indistinct figures of the men of his own company off in the distance, Thomas felt safe enough cut across the camp and to strike out onto the open plain. So involved were the men,women, and children surrounding him in the business of breaking down the camp, that he drew little in the way of curiosity, this lone redcoat who was trudging away into the sun-bleached wilderness.

  His plan was simple: evade the laughably-inefficient native cavalry patrols, hunker down during the hottest hours of the day, traveling only under the cover of darkness. Rumor had spread like wildfire among the British troops that the Tipu Sultan was willing to pay top coin for any foreign mercenaries that were willing and eager to join his private army, and that went double for any deserters who could bring him useful information concerning the disposition of his enemies.

  Thomas was not a greedy man, but neither was he a stupid one. This was something which he had thought about at great length. Even assuming for a moment that he should survive the coming battle with the Tipu Sultan’s forces, could survive storming the walls of his bastion, which every man in India believed to be nigh impregnable…then the most that he could reasonably expect as a reward was a soul-crushing seven more years of Indian service, all the time risking death from disease, an aggrieved native, or one of the many animal predators which were so prevalent throughout this harsh and barren land.

  Even if he did survive all that, and did not fall victim to the crazed blood-lust of Arthur bloody Wellesley and his fellow officers, the most he could expect in the long run was to attain the rank of Sergeant, and the meager increase in pay which came along with getting three stripes up.

  Bugger that, Thomas thought emphatically. King George can find some other bleeding mug to die in his name, because Thomas Gilman is no man’s fool.