The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 2

  The twilight sky was starting to turn a darker shade of purple, with an pale moon riding high above the desolate landscape. Thomas kept walking, his only guide being to keep the British camp roughly at his back. He increased his stride to one typical of the marching infantryman, leather boots beating out a rhythmic cadence as they crunched on the sun-baked ground. The dry, dusty air was beginning to freshen and to grow cooler, at least as much as ever it did out here on the plains. Above him, the first stars were coming out. He continued to march, but allowed himself the luxury of a couple of swigs from his canteen, letting the brackish water at least moisten his parched mouth and throat a little.

  Thomas estimated that he had gone no more than a couple of miles further before it was fully dark. The light of the full moon cast a cold, pale glow over the landscape, rendering long black shadows in stark contrast to the surrounding terrain. Peering into the distance ahead of him, he could dimly make out what appeared to be a jumble of low huts and similarly crude structures that could only be some kind of village or settlement.

  Maybe I can get some help here, Thomas thought eagerly, subconsciously picking up his pace. They probably hate the English. Everybody hates the English here. Might be able to get some more food and drinkable water for the journey west, if I’m really lucky.

  Coming to the first building in his path, Thomas worked his way around to what must have been the front door, a rickety wooden affair that rattled in its frame when he knocked gently upon it.

  A low voice from inside hissed something in what he assumed was the native dialect. He knew only a handful of words, and whatever was being said wasn’t among them.

  “English…er, English deserter,” he tried desperately, raising his voice as though the increased volume alone would help the inhabitant better understand his plight. “I just want some water…you know, water, and perhaps a bit of food—“

  This time, the reply sounded not only angry, but also more than a little bit desperate, infused with an urgency the cause of which Thomas did not understand. The meaning was plain, however, even if the words were not. They wanted him gone, and quickly.

  Thomas opened his mouth to ask again, but the next sound which came from behind the door was quite unmistakable; it was the distinctive sound of the hammer being dragged back on a musket or some similar large firing piece, locking into place with an audible click. He gulped, imagining the yawning black muzzle pointing at his chest from just feet away, the only barrier between the killing ball and his soft flesh being one flimsy wooden door. There was no way they could miss at this range, even firing blind.

  “Easy, mate. Easy does it.” He tried to inject a note of reassurance into his voice, stupidly raising his hands up slowly to show that he meant no harm. What the bloody hell are you doing that for? It’s not like they can see you, is it?

  “Alright…alright. I’m going, I’m going, alright?” Thomas always repeated himself when he was nervous. It was an old childhood habit that he had picked up in the foundlings’ home, and he had never been able to break it. His imagination was working overtime now, picturing the God-almighty flash that he would probably never even see, when the nervous local pulled the musket’s trigger. He could already feel the agony as the heavy lead ball tore through his chest and snatched the life from him, in what he hoped would be a mercifully quick end to his existence.

  Incredibly, the fatal shot never came. Although the villager continued to jabber at him in a low voice that bordered almost on the frantic, Thomas was able to back slowly away and then dart sideways, out of the direct line of fire. He collapsed into a shadowy corner formed where the side of the dwelling nestled against a low mud-brick wall. Taking the tall black shako from his head, Thomas ran a trembling hand through his lank, greasy brown hair, which he had just powdered and greased first thing yesterday morning. His hand came away slick with sweat, not all of it due to the Indian heat.

  Then came the growl.

  It was more of a low rumble at first, much like that of a feral dog protecting its territory; but Thomas had heard dogs growling before, and no canine throat that he could ever imagine was capable of generating a noise like that. It sparked another jolt of fear in him, something so deeply primal that Thomas was instantly sweating once more, this time from every single pore of his body; the cold, clammy sort of sweat that only accompanied real terror. He could feel his heartbeat thud-thud-thudding away deep inside his chest.

  Whatever it was, it now growled again. The animal was much closer than before, somewhere off to his left if his ears were to be believed. It was hidden from sight by the rising dark shape of the dwelling, and Thomas was sure that he could hear the owner’s voice rising plaintively now, though whether it was imploring Thomas or the animal itself to leave, he could not rightly say.

  Get a hold of yourself, lad, Thomas told himself sternly. It’s likely just a bloody jackal, or something like that. It’s not like it’s going to be a man-eating—

  As if on cue, the lithe tiger-shaped silhouette plodded slowly into view. The beast was huge, Thomas saw in amazement; at least eight feet long if it was an inch, and practically rippling with lean muscle and sinew. Long, curved teeth gleamed menacingly in the moonlight, and it was to those that his gaze was drawn first, taking in every detail of the powerful jaws and wickedly sharp enamel blades in horrified fascination.

  It was the eyes which seized his attention next. Thomas frowned. In spite of his fear, he could see that there was a definite intelligence there, hiding somewhere in the depths of those twin yellow orbs. The eyes twinkled with an amused malevolence, seeming to regard the young British deserter as though he was there purely for the beast’s own entertainment, nothing more than an object of sport or a toy to be played with. There was something about those eyes, something strangely…human wasn’t quite the proper word, because it implied the capacity for compassion, and those eyes were utterly devoid of that; but they were most certainly self-aware.

  Thomas could clearly read the murderous intent written there, and saw his own death staring right back at him.

  Slowly, he unslung the unloaded musket from his right shoulder and brought it to lay across his lap. There was no time to load the damned thing now, he knew. It would take just one wrong move, or maybe even no move at all, and the tiger would be upon him. He dare not risk beginning the laborious process of dropping a ball into the muzzle, thrusting it down with the ramrod, biting the powder container open and priming the pan with the contents. No, any of those things might spook the beast and cause it to pounce. There was just one chance left to him, and a desperate one at that.

  With trembling fingers, Thomas eased out his bayonet. If you look away, it’s going to have you. Don’t look away, son. Don’t. Look. Away. Without breaking eye contact with the tiger for even an instant, he fumbled the bayonet into place at the end of the barrel, snapping it home with a wince-inducing click.

  The tiger growled menacingly and took another step towards him. It’s smiling at me. I swear it’s bloody smiling at me. The bayonet was shaking in front of his face, and Thomas realized that in fact his hands were shaking like those of a drunk who had been made to go without for too long. He let out a tiny sob without even realizing it.

  Yet another step forward. The beast’s tail swished languidly from side to side.

  Something told him that it was now or never. Thomas’s left hand flew up to the barrel of the musket, his right to its usual resting place just above the stock. Letting out a scream that was born half in triumph and half in terror, Thomas lunged at the tiger, thrusting the bayonet out ahead of him for all that he was worth.

  The tiger swatted at the barrel of the musket with one enormous paw, batting the weapon aside with almost contemptuous ease. The great cat roared in his face, deafening the terrified private, drenching him with spittle and pouring waves of hot, rancid breath straight up his nose.

  Thomas suddenly felt an unexpected warmth spread across his crotch, realized that he must have just soiled
himself in fear. Bugger this. He dropped the musket and bolted. Arms pumping hard, legs working like pistons, Thomas ran as though all the hounds of hell were at his back, fueled by the sure and certain knowledge that each passing moment could easily be his last. His heartbeat was pounding so loudly in his ears that he could barely hear the sound of the tiger pursuing him, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the beast was back there, that it had to be back there.

  Cutting left into a darkened alleyway that ran between two more dwellings, Thomas reached the end and vaulted over a waist-high mud-brick wall. There was no grace in the move, but at least he had cleared the top of the wall with ease. Landing as lightly as a man burdened with a soldier’s pack and uniform possibly could, he ran on, ducking beneath what he assumed was a low-hanging clothes-line before darting towards the rear of the house.

  He never saw just what it was that finally tripped him, but Thomas felt his right foot strike something hard and solid. Before he could find out exactly what had happened, he was suddenly sprawled face-down in the dirt, with skinned knees and palms to show for where he had tried instinctively to break his unexpected fall.

  Scrambling over onto his back, Thomas looked up and saw that the striped predator was stalking towards him from no more than ten feet away. It was advancing slowly, its every movement reeking of a terrifying, calculated deliberation. The deserter’s breaths came in fast, gasping sobs, but the tiger did not appear to even be breathing hard. The great cat gave another low growl, whiskers spreading as the creature bared its teeth once more.

  Working his way frantically backwards by shuffling on elbows and feet, Thomas suddenly felt something firm and unyielding press up against his back.

  A wall.

  Still the tiger kept coming. Eight feet. Seven feet. Six.

  And then, unbelievably, it spoke.

  “Enough of this game, Englishman,” the animal growled. Its voice was low and menacing, and Thomas could have sworn that the heavily-accented tone also contained an undercurrent of the feminine. You must be dreaming, he thought. What other answer could there be? Vampires he could believe in, had seen them with his own eyes; his uncle Norman had even seen a werewolf once - but talking tigers? It was beyond surreal for him to hear human words coming from such an inhuman throat. “You should never have come here, and I am afraid that it is time for you to pay the price.”

  With its claws unsheathed and fully extended before it, the great beast pounced upon its thrashing, screaming prey.

  Excerpt from the private correspondence of Arthur Wellesley:

  Draft of the Description of our March.

  The British grand army and the Nizam’s army had joined previous to our entering Mysore, and marched together. The former consisted of about 3000 excellent cavalry, five strong regiments of European infantry, all good, and eleven battalions of sepoys, with about fifty pieces of cannon.

  The Nizam’s army, under my command, consisted of the 33rd, six excellent battalions of the Company’s sepoys, four rapscallion battalions of the Nizam’s, which, however, behaved well, and really about 10,000 (which they called 25,000) cavalry of all nations, some good and some bad, and twenty-six pieces of cannon.

  The British cavalry generally led the British column, about 500 of the best of the Nizam’s led that of the Nizam; these two generally closed towards each other.

  We brought forward from Madras to Seringapatam a battering train, and in fact a moving arsenal. The former consisted of 50 pieces of iron cannon, for each gun of which were brought forward 1200 rounds of shot and immense quantities of powder, and every kind of small stores which are used in our arsenal.

  You may have some idea of the thing when I tell you that when all were together, there was a multitude in motion which covered about eighteen square miles.

  Our march was usually as long as those made by large armies in Europe, from ten to twelve miles; we always started at six, and we arrived at our ground about twelve, sometimes later if there were difficulties on the road. We encamped in two lines fronting different ways, and this heap of baggage between us.

  WELLESLEY

  CHAPTER TWO

  Twilight was fading rapidly into night. Two red-jacketed guards stood stiffly at attention outside the large, sun-bleached tent which formed the centerpiece of the British camp. Their muskets were shouldered smartly, but were both primed and loaded, just in case the situation were to require it.

  It took a train-within-a-train of some twenty assorted beasts of burden in order to furnish the structure and contents of this particular marquee, which served not only as the officers’ mess for General George Harris and his command staff, but also as the main headquarters for his Grand Army.

  Candles which had been placed at strategic locations throughout the tent interior created overlapping pools of golden radiance, chasing away most of the gloom. In what was something akin to a well-rehearsed dance, the mess-servants bustled swiftly and efficiently around the large wooden table which occupied the center of the mess, laying out an expansive array of ornate silver plates, dining-ware, and cutlery in a manner that was both painfully precise and in exact accordance with the current conventions of British high society.

  The fact that the vampire officers even dared to use the silver tableware said something of their eccentric (some said bizarre) mindset. During regimental dinners and functions, mortal officers would use the silver utensils without giving them a second thought. The undead had no need to eat, of course, but custom dictated that each vampire officer be afforded his own personal set of silverware at the table regardless of the lack of utility involved. Blood was drunk from silver cups to no ill-effect, but even the smallest stroke of a silver knife would scar the vampire permanently, if the blade happened to break the skin. To the vampires, the officers’ dining table was an antiquated but still highly-respected regimental tradition, which served the purpose of providing a regular and much-needed reminder that they were not, in fact, truly immortal. All that it would take to prove such a point to everyone’s satisfaction would be one mutinous soldier snatching up a knife.

  Much like the two soldiers standing solemn guard outside, the mess servants wore the standard British Army uniform of red coat, white cross-belt, and gray trousers. A closer inspection, however, would reveal subtle differences to the trained eye. Upon each man’s black shako, a small skull motif was placed squarely in the center of the King’s regimental insignia. A single horizontal black stripe bisected each man’s right sleeve at about the level of his bicep, signifying that the wearer was a special man, one who had been hand-selected for a set of additional duties which were, to say the least, quite above and beyond those required of the average British redcoat.

  Unlike most regiments of the line, the 33rd did not have a light company, composed of skirmishers and sharpshooters who were highly adept at reconnaissance and picking off the enemy officers during an engagement. This particular oddity of organization was entirely due to the preference of their colonel, Arthur Wellesley. It was he who had taken the decision to establish an elite fighting force within the ranks of what many already considered to be an elite regiment of the line. Colonel Wellesley’s special force was informally known as the ‘Shadow Company’ when spoken of in the collective sense, and its individual members were more simply referred to as Shadows.

  Wellesley’s rationale for his creation of Shadow Company actually made a great deal of sense to some of the more progressive officers serving on this campaign, and had been a subject of much debate around the mess tables of other regiments.

  The British Army faced a wide array of threats on the modern battlefield, and each had to be countered in an appropriate manner, at least where possible. Enemy cavalry were best dealt with by a screen of friendly cavalry, for example; but failing that, the correct response was for the infantry to form square and either fight them off or wait them out. There was precious little that an infantry battalion could do in the face of an enemy artillery battery, other than to withd
raw, or if circumstances did not permit withdrawal, they had little choice but to stand there and simply suffer the pummeling.

  And then there were the vampires.

  Although the origins of vampirism were still a point of heated debate among historians to this very day, what was known was that the vampire was at least as old as humanity itself. Ever since humans had first walked the face of the earth, the undead had walked alongside them; or perhaps more accurately, had stalked them from the darkness and preyed upon them whenever it took their fancy.

  Physically superior to their flesh-and-blood counterparts, and with relatively little in the way of an Achilles’ heel to be exploited, it is hardly surprising that the vampire species soon found itself at the top of the natural food chain; which was why vampires of both sexes now formed the social and cultural elites of most civilized nations. This also included the command of their armies and navies, which – although it caused a number of difficulties to have officers who would burst into flame if they were inadvertently exposed to concentrated sunlight – was seen as one of the few occupations outside of either government or the monarchy, that might be worthy of a vampire’s time.

  Usually content to exert control over their companies, battalions, regiments, and armies from horseback, the modern breed of vampire officer could still be an absolute terror upon the battlefield if the situation required it. Anecdotal reports were commonplace of just a single, well-trained vampire officer having cut down hundreds of mortal soldiers, if the circumstances turned out to be right.

  Colonel Wellesley had found it most disagreeable that his own regiment had no better response to the threat of an enemy vampire officer than to counter it with a friendly vampire officer, and therein lay the genesis of the Shadow Company. Handpicking only the very best men from within the ranks of the 33rd, Wellesley had instituted a specialized training regimen that he had developed personally. It was most definitely a work-in-progress, but had undeniably turned out some of the most disciplined and motivated soldiers ever to step foot on the battlefield. This special company also famously had no captain to command it; that honor had been claimed exclusively by Wellesley himself, making them something of a dedicated personal guard.