The Beast of Mysore (Wellington Undead Book 1) Page 9

  “Bloody heathen bastards!” Nathaniel had roared, earning himself a vigorous smack on the back of his head from the stock of a cavalry carbine. He had stayed quiet after that.

  This man may have useful intelligence, Tamar Singh pondered. Even if he does not, the Sultan may have…other uses for the prisoners. Besides, after a brief but hopefully convincing show of force, he would be pulling his cavalry back up the western slope, daring the British to follow.

  “Secure the prisoners to your mounts,” he decided at last. “When the retreat from the village begins, be sure that you are among the first to leave. Take them directly to the Sultan.”

  “It shall be done, General.” The man offered a salute, which Tamar Singh returned, and then the two captors turned to drag the sergeant away towards their horses.

  Tamar Singh directed his attention back towards the advancing British. They were closer now, perhaps four hundred yards away. He could see the white cross-belts of each man, steadily brightening as the column drew nearer. A second column was peeling off to his right. They are trying to outflank us, Tamar Singh realized. They must think that we are fools.

  Two hundred of his dismounted cavalrymen stood brazenly in plain sight of the British at the south-eastern edge of the village, where a number of low mud-brick walls offered at least some small amount of cover. Their horses were being looked after by their comrades, and were waiting for them back in the village.

  Their carbines were smooth-bored weapons, shorter than the long-barreled muskets of the infantry, but with the great benefit that they could be conveniently fired and reloaded while on horseback. A skilled rider could even do it while his mount was still on the move.

  “Make ready!” Tamar Singh called, his voice carrying afar on the quiet night air. The two hundred carbines came up to the men’s shoulders. There was no point aiming at this range, the balls would scatter to the four winds over such a distance; nonetheless, Tamar Singh wanted to at least try to make it look convincing. He waited for the British to get close.

  Two hundred yards.“Aim!” The men tightened their grip, steadying their weapons and sighting on the center of those approaching white crosses.

  One hundred yards.

  “FIRE!”

  Two hundred balls exploded from the muzzles of the cavalry carbines. Each ball was subject to the vagaries of air temperature, the lightly gusting breeze, any deformities that had been cast into the cold iron barrels during manufacture or nicks that had worked their way in with repeated use, and a host of other factors that would rob them of any real accuracy.

  Many of the balls went either high, low, or wide, kicking up puffs of dirt and dust as they hit the ground. Not all, though – a handful struck enemy soldiers, usually in the thighs, shins, or feet. One unlucky private was wounded in the groin, squealing and yelping like a kicked animal as he sank to the ground with his hands cupping the bleeding ruin now hanging between his legs.

  “Keep bloody moving!” one of the sergeants growled. “Close those ranks there. Close ‘em up.”

  The British kept coming, as Tamar Singh had known they would. With that one single volley of fire, his demonstration attack was done. He had challenged the redcoats to a fight. As proud as he was of his tiger-striped horsemen, he was also a professional soldier, and not ashamed to admit that his dismounted cavalry wouldn’t last for long against the disciplined volley fire of veteran British redcoats.

  “Withdraw!” he bellowed. Without any semblance of order, his soldiers simply turned and ran, bolting for their mounts. Had he cut it too close? Would the British break into a charge?

  Apparently not. The column continued its implacable march towards the village, but Tamar Singh’s cavalrymen were well-practiced in leaping onto the backs of their mounts and making a fast getaway. Just before their commander turned his own horse to join the withdrawal himself, he caught sight of a large man riding alone on horseback off to one side of the British advance. The figure caught his eye not only because of its solitary position, but also due to the kilt that he wore instead of the more traditional long trousers. The man waved what looked to Tamar Singh like a very heavy sword which had a basketed hilt, high above his head, alternately circling the blade and bringing it down to point the tip in the direction of Mallavelly.

  I shall have to look out for this one, Tamar Singh decided. He has the look of the true warrior about him.

  Baird preferred a weapon with a bit of a heft to it, which is why (like a number of Scottish officers) he favored the claymore over the more traditional slimmer blades favored by British officers. This particular sword had been in his family for generations, and it rarely left his side nowadays, even going with him into his coffin when he retired there for the day.

  In the days before he had accepted the Dark Gift of immortality, the young David Baird had relished the cleaving power of the weightier sword now sitting comfortably in his right hand; even today, when his strength was now supernaturally multiplied many times over from what it had been in the prime of his youth, he still maintained that affection for the sword. There was simply something that felt fundamentally right about a Scottish officer being kitted out with both kilt and claymore.

  Baird’s charger walked slowly but surely forwards, easily keeping pace with his proud lads of the 74th. The ground had turned from solid plains into mushy swamp, which kept the formation’s marching speed down. His vampire eyes swept the landscape ahead, seeing through the darkness as easily as if it were broad daylight. The General was easily able to pick out the skirmish line of enemy cavalrymen that was strung out across their present line of advance, and he wondered whether the Sultan’s men would actually stand and make a fight of it. He certainly hoped so. His mood grew even more ebullient when the first volley crashed from the barrels of their carbines, causing little more than minor irritation to the advancing columns of British infantry.

  Perhaps they are going to stand after all, he thought brightly. If so, it would be over in short order. Baird’s preference was for his men to fire just a single volley of musketry into the ranks of the enemy, then lower their bayonets and charge. Reloading a bayoneted musket could be a bit of a bastard even for experience troops in the face of the enemy, and one volley was usually sufficient to soften up the enemy formations – when followed up with a spot of liberally-applied cold steel, the enemy lines tended to shatter.

  Suddenly, the Tipu’s horsemen turned tail and ran, pouring cold water all over Baird’s good mood.

  Barry Close, who was Harris’s deputy adjutant-general, galloped up to General Baird’s side and fell into step with him. “They’re running, sir!” he said cheerfully. Close was a seasoned old campaigner too, a man who had made the army both his life and his undeath, and showed no signs of leaving it for anything else. He was that rarest of animals in the British army, a master in the art of getting things done. Baird rather liked him.

  “Thank you for pointing out the obvious,” Baird responded drily.

  “Are we to pursue at the charge, General?”

  Baird seriously considered it for a moment, finally decided against it. Extending a brass telescope, he had just taken his first proper look at the sheer amount of artillery that the Sultan had deployed on the ridgeline behind the town. “No,” he finally decided. “The enemy is arrayed in force at the top of that ridge, and at any moment now we shall be within range of his heavy guns. I suspect that the pathetic excuse for a volley that ye saw us receive just now was nothing more than an attempt to draw us into that killing ground.” Baird gestured towards the village with his claymore.

  Leading the men on a wild goose chase in pursuit of the cavalry would be a bloody stupid thing to do, Baird knew. It would serve only to take the wind from his soldiers, and their ordered ranks would be almost impossible to maintain if they actually passed through the village itself. True, the buildings of Mallavelly should provide some limited form of shelter (or at the very least, concealment) from the Sultan’s artillery fire, but it just wo
uld not be worth it in the long run.

  “We shall wheel to the right,” Baird decided, seemingly on impulse. “My compliments to the regimental commanders, and they are to swing their companies around the eastern edge of the village. Once clear of the outskirts, the division is to pivot back to the left, turning westwards once more to approach the enemy’s position from its left flank. Would you please arrange for the orders to be given, Close?”

  “You may depend upon me,” the vampire adjutant replied equably. Touching his spurs lightly to his horse’s flanks, he galloped off towards the closest regiment, in search of its commanding officer.

  The battle plan had changed on the spur of the moment, but Baird simply did not feel comfortable with leading his men directly into the mouths of that many guns. If the bastards load cannister, they’ll wipe the floor with us, he thought to himself, seeing in his mind’s eye the carnage that just one single cannon could wreak when firing the dreaded storm of metal balls into the enemy ranks at close range.

  No, Baird decided, he and his men would mirror Wellesley’s attack but on the opposite flank, and hopefully buy the young colonel and his division enough time to stick a poker right up the Sultan’s heathen arse.

  This is a gamble, Baird acknowledged silently, but a reasonable one. Let us hope that the butcher’s bill which we must pay does not turn out to be too devilish expensive.

  He sighed, balefully eying the commanding heights which buttressed the village to its rear.

  Now it’s up to you, Wellesley. Show me that you’re more than the perfumed prince I have always taken you for. Give them hell and prove me wrong about you, my boy. Give them bloody hell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “The 33rd will form line! Smartly, now.”

  Arthur Wellesley had no need to employ any of the preternatural trickery granted to him by the Dark Gift in order to command his men. Even before his transition, the young officer was fortunate enough to have been blessed with that natural air of authority which was required of any good King’s officer.

  The redcoats, advancing steadily in column of march, began to peel off in their half-companies. It was a maneuver that they had practiced over and over again on the parade square back in England, and still more when they had arrived in India. Despite the rough, uneven ground beneath their feet, the line of battle took shape with a degree of smoothness that bore testament to the many hours of drilling which lay behind it.

  Seven hundred men had quickly and efficiently fanned out into two long lines, the bayonets tipping their still-shouldered muskets gleaming in the cold starlight.

  Some regiments sang or cheered their way across the battlefield, but not the 33rd. Although their Colonel approved of the fifes and drums which beat out a steady, reassuring cadence that bolstered the nerve of his men, he would allow no voice to arise from within the ranks. “It is too near an expression of opinion,” Wellesley had pointedly remarked once, when asked about the practice at the dinner table late one evening. “Allow them to cheer one minute, and you open the door for them to boo you the next, do you see?”

  Shee and Wellesley trotted alongside one another in companionable silence, looking for all the world as though they were doing no more than taking in the night air, rather than advancing upon a heavily-defended enemy position. Baird’s division had at first been making good time out there on their right flank, marching directly upon Mallavelly itself, where a host of the Sultan’s cavalry waited to greet them; but now his infantry were beginning to slow, the British line growing slightly uneven with each passing moment.

  “It would appear that General Baird’s men are getting bogged down in front of the village,” Wellesley observed with just a touch of concern in his voice.

  There came a volley of massed fire. Both officers recognized the distinct sound of carbines discharging, rather than the heavier muskets that were carried by the infantry.

  “They’ll never hit anything with carbines at that range,” Shee observed cheerfully.

  “Quite so,” Arthur agreed, his tone contemplative. “Which means one of two things. Either the commander of the Sultan’s cavalry is an incompetent—“

  “That’s not what the reports say.”

  Wellesley glanced sideways at Shee, the only outward expression of his annoyance at being interrupted. “—or, as seems more likely, he does not have the slightest intention of trying to hold the village at all. This is probably nothing more than a ruse, intended to try and draw our men into the village…and straight into the mouth of their artillery.”

  Major Shee opened his mouth to reply, and then stopped himself as the truth of Wellesley’s words became apparent. Their volley spent, the Sultan’s cavalrymen were fleeing for their mounts. “It appears that you are right sir,” he conceded at last. “They’re running, blast their eyes.”

  The paths of the two British formations were starting to seriously diverge, with Baird’s division swinging around to the east of Mallavelly and Wellesley’s hooking across to the west. That hadn’t been the plan that he and Baird had agreed upon, but Arthur was confident that he could already read the general’s reasoning for having deviated from it. Facing that many emplaced cannon head-on would be suicide for unsupported infantry, which had doubtless been the Tipu’s hope.

  There came a distant bang, only a dull thump to the men of the rank and file, but heard quite clearly by their vampire officers. Then there came another, almost directly on the heels of the first. Although the smoke wasn’t visible in the darkness, it began to wreathe the far ridgeline, pushing out in a plume from the barrels of the larger-bore cannon.

  “That’s a long shot for artillery,” Shee observed critically. “What did you see up there when you reconnoitered, sir?”

  “Mostly eighteen pounders, some twelves, a few nines, and a pair of twenty-fours. I would hazard a guess that those are what we are now hearing.”

  It was sometimes possible to actually see a cannonball mid-flight, at least during the daytime, and assuming that the ballistic arc was such that the projectile was silhouetted against the clear blue sky. Some optimistic soldiers tried to dodge them, with varying degrees of success. The same wasn’t true at night, and so there was nothing to be done but receive the incoming fire.

  The first round fell well short of Baird’s formation, slamming into the ground some fifty feet ahead of the front rank of the 74th Regiment of Foot. Muddy water fountained into the air as the heavy ball plowed a furrow through the swampy ground, finally coming to a halt off to the left of the British line.

  The crew of the second 24-pounder appeared to have a much better eye for the range. Their ball blasted through the ranks of one of the few outlying sepoy companies which had not yet formed into line from their column of march, tossing three of the unfortunate native soldiers into the air, their packs and muskets cartwheeling away. So brutal was this sudden mauling that none of the dead men even had time to scream, although the same could not be said for their comrades in the ranks below, who began to yell in revulsion when they were caught beneath a sudden rain of blood, viscera, and dismembered body parts.

  One soldier was knocked unconscious by a falling severed leg, the boot of which landed squarely on the crown of his turbaned head. Although the muddy ground started to rob the cannonball of its power, two more sepoys lost their lower legs to the projectile as it skittered its way out through the rear of their ranks. Both men lay dying on the cold ground, squealing with unbridled agony and hemorrhaging blood from the jagged, ruined stumps of flesh that had once been their shins and feet.

  “Close it up. Close it up there!” It was a British sergeant’s voice, all business and professionalism despite the sudden welter of gore that now splattered almost forty of his men. The sepoys knew better than to drop out and try to tend to the two wounded men. At best, they would be flogged or perhaps even tied to a wooden post and shot by a firing squad for dereliction of duty. At worst, they might be given over to the British officers...

  “We must
pick up the pace,” Wellesley declared, having witnessed the entire bloody spectacle at first hand. “Tipu’s gunners have chosen General Baird’s division as the recipients of their special attention.” He raised his voice. “Press on, 33rd. Press on! The enemy awaits us at the top of that hill, and we are not going to disappoint them.”

  Impatiently, the young Colonel spurred Diomed into a faster trot. His company commanders and NCOs, sensing that their commanding officer was champing at the bit, dutifully obliged and began to move at a faster clip themselves. The ground beneath their feet was beginning to steepen, slowly at first, but after a few moments it began to show itself in the form of hoarse, rasping breath on the part of some of the less fit soldiers.

  Ahead of them, Wellesley could now see the low, boxy outline of cannons on the ridge, their silhouettes standing out clearly against the night sky beyond. Formations of enemy infantry were interspersed between cannons, providing some measure of security against a direct assault.

  The bulk of their infantry must still be behind the ridge, he thought quickly. Not to mention the war elephants, of all things, and who knows quite what else forms their reserve?

  The 18-pounders were opening up now, the first few shots failing to hit their targets due to the copper barrels still being cold. As the barrels warmed up, their accuracy would steadily improve, which should only take three or four rounds. Fortunately for the British, Baird’s division was crossing their sights at an oblique angle, and would have presented a much fatter target had they stayed in column rather than line. The redcoats soaked up the cannon fire as they came on, losing handfuls of men to each one of the remorseless missiles, but still they kept going, straightening their axis of advance when they had made it past the eastern edge of the village, and then cutting left onto a more westerly facing. They left a steadily increasing trail of dead and maimed soldiers in their wake.