The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (10 page)

“Please, my dear vampire – leave now. While you still can.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

It would have been possible, Colonel Stevenson supposed, to send a strong detachment of cavalry to the plain of Assaye in order to recover Major General Wellesley and his fellow vampire officers; yet such a course of action came with a number of drawbacks.

For starters, he could use only his own limited supply of cavalry; the bulk of the army’s horse had been attached to the main body, and had fought themselves to the point of exhaustion during the previous evening’s battle. When the column commanded by Captain Rice had finally intercepted Stevenson’s own, it was already dusk; the colonel and his senior officers were being awoken from their daytime slumber, their coffins stowed neatly beneath canvas sheets by redcoats. Unlike the commanding general, Colonel Stevenson had no personal guard force dedicated to caring for the needs of himself and his vampire comrades. The rank and file soldiers took care of burying and exhuming them each morning and evening. This duty was always fulfilled by redcoats, however. Native soldiers, no matter how well-regarded, were never entrusted with such a…delicate task. Certain proprieties had to be maintained, after all.

It didn’t take an experienced soldier’s eye to notice that the incoming mounts were tired. Still screening the main body of marching troops, the horses and their riders alike had fatigue written in every motion. They trudged rather than trotted, grinding out step after weary step, heads down and hanging limply from their necks, bouncing in rhythm to the rolling motion of their hooves.

Standing up straight and smoothing his uniform jacket absently, Stevenson exchanged a salute with Rice and accepted the man’s report. The vampire officer listened patiently, not interrupting his mortal subordinate as he poured out the tale of blood and fire that had engulfed the plain of Assaye one night before.

The general has won a great victory…at a terrible price. Stevenson watched as the first ground troops began to come in. They were tired, it was apparent, yet they still marched proudly with straight backs and heads held high, their muskets carried vertically like a forest of ancient Greek spears. A part of him wished fervently that the general had waited one more night, that he had sent a messenger to have Stevenson undertake a forced march in order to join him before attacking the much larger Maratha army; a unified British force would almost certainly have sustained fewer casualties. But then, Wellesley had essentially stumbled upon the Maratha position by chance. Had he held his ground, even retreated – essentially done anything other than go directly into the attack – the consequences for he and his men could have been disastrous.

The sun was already beneath the western horizon and a slight chill was creeping into the air. Stevenson dismissed Captain Rice, leaving him with a hearty “well done!” and instructions to bivouac his people down for a few precious hours of much-needed sleep. The army usually rested during the daylight hours and marched through the night, but in the aftermath of Assaye, the usual way of doing things had fallen by the wayside. The men and camp followers of Rice’s column had been on their feet for more than twenty-four hours, maneuvering and fighting since before sunset the day before, and every one of them looked fit to drop.

There were two pressing tasks at hand now. One was to recover Major General Wellesley and his officers, for though they would be able to break out of their graves without assistance if need be, their precious coffins would be destroyed in the process. Much good that would do them tomorrow morning, when it was time to return to the safety of the earth once more. The second critical task was to establish a defensive perimeter, in case the Marathas suddenly found themselves in possession of their faculties once more, executed an about-face, and decided to counter-attack the British force before it was fully rested and combat effective once more.

Thinking with a speed born of years of soldiering experience as both mortal officer and as a vampire, Stevenson gathered his staff officers to him and began to rattle off orders. Fully a third of his cavalry was already deployed to the north and east, serving as a screen against a surprise attack. He ordered that screen to be bolstered by thirty percent, keeping the remainder in reserve to replace them later on that coming night.

“There’ll be no march tonight,” Stevenson told his assembled officer cadre, drawing murmurs of surprise from quite a few. To a man, they had expected to march east in order to link up with the main body and then take the fight directly to the enemy. The colonel briefly outlined the events of last night’s battle, turning the expressions of surprise to grunts and nods of quiet satisfaction. “Major General Wellesley’s men will need this night to rest and recuperate, and we must be their shield. A strong guard force is being put into place, and shall be rotated throughout the night and again tomorrow morning.”

“What of Major General Wellesley and his men, sir?” asked Captain John Cadderly, one of his mortal officers. The tousle-haired young officer somehow contrived to look both concerned and eager at the same time.

“A mission to rescue them shall be launched the instant that this meeting is adjourned. Which is now, by my reckoning, unless there are further questions?” Looking around at the sea of expectant faces, Stevenson could see that there were none. “Very well, let us be about it then. Officers – fall out to your duties, if you please.”

Flying at five hundred feet above the ground, fifteen vampire officers cut their way silently through the early evening sky. Each held a shovel clutched loosely in their left hand, leaving their dominant arm free to draw a sword should necessity dictate it. Adhering to the principles of discipline that were so highly prized by the British Army, they flew in a tight arrowhead formation with Colonel Stevenson in the van. In this, as in all things, the colonel believed in leading from the front.

Night had fallen properly, leaving little but the moon and stars to light their way. It mattered not one whit to the vampires, whose preternaturally-enhanced vision enabled them to see as clearly at night as most creatures saw during the daytime. Stevenson assumed the role of navigator, steering them unerringly in an east-nor’-eastward direction. The other fourteen used him as their marker, a fixed reference point for their phalanx formation, and maintained a heightened sense of alertness; all knew only too well that the enemy had a number of European vampire officers in his employ – nothing but mere mercenaries, serving for pay rather than honor, they sniffed haughtily whenever the subject arose – and none wanted to be ambushed this night.

As things turned out, they need not have worried. The enemy must have better things to do, because their flight reached the plains of Assaye unmolested by anything more than a light breeze. Rather than leap immediately onto the field, the officers took their lead from their Colonel, who circled three times in a descending spiral, surveying the terrain carefully before setting down in an open space some five hundred yards from the river.

The plain was liberally littered with pockets of scattered undead, roaming aimlessly about. Stevenson put their number at somewhere around three hundred, by rough estimation. No sooner had the aerial formation of vampires touched down lightly on the hard-packed ground, than the closest clutches of the creatures began to turn their way and shamble toward them. Drawing swords from scabbards with a throaty rasp of silvered steel, the vampire officers formed a ring of blades about their leader.

For his part, Stevenson tilted his head back and called out in a loud, clear voice, “General Wellesley! It is I – Colonel Stevenson.”

In response, there came three sharp raps, as of knuckles upon thick wood. A human being would never have heard them, but to the augmented hearing of a vampire, they rang out as clearly as church bells on a Sunday morning.

“Over there.” Stevenson set off to his right, moving some hundred paces before coming to a halt and tapping his foot three times, as though impatient to be done with this night’s first task. Three raps answered him smartly, seeming to come from directly beneath his feet. Nodding in satisfaction, Stevenson said simply, “Here.” He moved backward a few steps, indicating the place where he had just stood with a nod of the head.

Breaking out of the circle, three of the officers sheathed their swords and began to attack the hard-packed ground with their shovels. The vampires worked silently but with great gusto, their hands moving so quickly that a mortal man would have seen only a blur of motion and a dirt fountain composed of soil clods. It took only seconds for them to reach the thick wooden lid of a coffin.

It bore the seal of Major General Arthur Wellesley.

“Carefully, now!” Stevenson said, as two of his majors worked to widen their excavation on either side of the coffin. He knew that there would be hell to pay if one of them inadvertently scratched the almost-priceless lacquered wood. Once ample room had been cleared, the majors dropped down to stand abreast the coffin, and with a single deliberate nod, lifted it up and out of the temporary grave, placing it gently on the ground beside it.

Stevenson removed the lid himself, setting it down to the right of the coffin. There, laying in apparent repose, was the immaculately-dressed figure of Major General Wellesley himself. As soon as the cooling night air touched his face, Arthur’s eyelids flickered open, the red orbs beneath them roving until they finally settled upon his rescuer’s face.

“Why Colonel Stevenson,” Arthur said with just the merest hint of a smile, “how truly good of you to have come.”

CHAPTER NINE

His nerves were on fire.

No, scratch that. Not just his nerves: those were simply the conduits through which the agony was transmitted. Every cell in his body, from the tips of his toes to the follicles on his scalp, felt as though it was ablaze.

Jamming the knuckles of one hand into his mouth in an effort to stifle the cry that he knew must come, Colin Campbell bit down into the meaty flesh hard enough to draw blood. Despite his best efforts, a low moan somehow worked its way out past his clenched jaws.

“He’s burning up, the poor bugger,” said the medical orderly as he leaned over Campbell’s squirming form, carefully restrained with thick leather straps on each extremity. The orderly’s voice wasn’t entirely devoid of sympathy, something that Dr. Caldwell picked up on and heartily approved of. Compassion seemed to be in short supply these days.

“A fringe benefit of his not being dead,” the physician snapped back archly. The response was harsher than he had intended, and so he leavened it with an awkward pat on the man’s arm. Not his fault. Not mine either, really. We’re all just so damnably tired.

It was fully dark outside the newly-erected hospital tent. The last time that Caldwell had stepped outside for a breath of fresh air some twenty minutes ago, a glorious canopy of stars stretched overhead, a speckled band running from horizon to horizon. He was reminded of the fact that, with the exception of a few precious nodding minutes snatched here and there, he and most of his staff had not slept since the previous afternoon, some thirty-six hours ago. Tempers were starting to fray. They would have to watch that. If they turned upon each other, then they would all be well and truly done for.

“He might not be dead, sir, but he looks like he’s halfway there.”

Caldwell couldn’t help but agree. The worst of the internal bleeding seemed to have stopped (how could it not, he reasoned, for otherwise the captain would already be dead) and until perhaps a quarter of an hour ago, his patient’s skin had been as cold as ice. The wounded Scotsman had begun to tremble and shiver, his body wracked with great spasms that rippled beneath his skin. Feeling utterly powerless and searching for something to do, Caldwell had covered him with several blankets, working on the premise that there was little more that he could do in the way of treatment than watch and wait for Campbell to ride out whatever it was that ravaged his body.

He had exchanged a grim look with the orderly. Both of them were thinking the same thing: Campbell had been bitten or clawed by one of the creatures, and was now turning into one of them. But upon reflection, the doctor was beginning to change his mind about that. Campbell’s skin temperature had suddenly turned from freezing cold to boiling hot, breaking out in a wash of sweat that coated his entire body. Placing the flat of one hand on his brow, the orderly had declared that he could probably fry an egg there.

The fever had sparked and taken hold so very quickly, it had taken him totally by surprise. Campbell wasn’t trying to bite anybody that came within range, something that every single one of the turned had done. Caldwell placed two fingers at his wrist and found a strong, bounding pulse that galloped like the hooves of a cavalry mount – a far cry from the almost imperceptibly weak, thready pulse that it had apparently just replaced.

“He appears to be perfusing once more,” Caldwell said, for the first time sounding cautiously optimistic. Then he qualified it with, “But he’s not out of the woods quite yet.”

Straining against his bonds, Campbell threw back his head and screamed. The candle-light threw a sinister shadow against the far canvas wall of the tent, looking for all the world as though he was more beast than man. There was something feral about the man as he arched his back and strove to get his wrists and ankles free of the straps that bit remorselessly into his flesh, chafing so badly that blood was drawn.