The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) (31 page)

Besides, the dawn was coming, the men were tired, and a siege beckoned. A siege that heralded the arrival of the endgame, when the final cards would be played, and the Maratha war would be settled once and for all.

“Now we put a blade through the skull of every dead man on this battlefield, Colonel, whether ours or theirs, it matters not. We must make sure that they are incapable of rising again.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll see to it. My lads have a little fight left in them yet.” Connolly looked proudly at his red-jacketed men of the 33rd, once Wellesley’s own regiment, and still very much the apple of their commanding general’s eye, although he would never dare to admit it publicly.

“Very good, Colonel. Please also consult the roster and see who is the designated mortal captain of the day. Have him supervise the making of our camp, if you please, and the employment of adequate security screens.”

“Sir,” Connolly nodded, idly wondering which human officer would be assigned the task of resting the army and, more importantly, seeing to the defense of the vampire officers while they slept.

“Tomorrow night, we march for Gawilghur. I would see an end to this damned business, Connolly, once and for all.” Wellesley looked down at the corpse now laying limply at his feet. “Apart from the courage of the British soldier and his East India Company allies, we have proven one other thing this night. Something that I have long suspected, but did not know for sure until this instant.”

“And what might that be, sir?” The vampire colonel sounded genuinely interested.

“Why, simply this…” Wellesley paused, then amplified his voice subtly so that the ranks of the 33rd could all hear him. “Even a goddess can be made to bleed.”

A ragged cheer went up from those ranks. Normally Wellesley would have stopped them in their tracks. “Let them cheer you one instant and they’ll be booing you the next,” he had once remarked casually. But he was feeling expansive, and allowed the men to express their good morale.

It would disappear soon enough when they laid eyes upon the nightmare that was Gawilghur.

The army marched all through the night and on into the harsh light of day. It never stopped. It never tired. For this was an army of the dead.

For the handful of captured mortals and the single were-tiger that it held prisoner, bone-weary exhaustion was a constant companion. They were not bound or gagged, for where could they run to, here in the midst of thousands upon thousands of shambling corpses? When a man finally dropped, unable to take even a single step, Jamelia would simply close her eyes and psychically command a pair of the creatures to bend down and pick him up, dragging him by the arms until he regained his senses.

She did not want them to die, for then they would be of no value to her. Jamelia steered the army with unerring accuracy to rivers, streams, and pools of standing water, where the Shadows were permitted to slake their thirst while the horde waited patiently. Then it was time to move again. The army was constantly in motion. It passed a number of villages, and on these the corpses fell with a savage, almost gleeful abandon, each time adding new members to swell their ranks.

A huge dust cloud rose into the sky behind them, so great was their number now.

Still they marched, into the rising sun at dawn, marching ever onward as it passed high above them at mid-day, before settling down behind their backs at the onset of night.

They moved with a singular purpose, bound by the iron will of the were-tigress that controlled them.

To death. To slaughter. To revenge.

To Gawilghur.

THE END

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

As this series progresses, so does the timeline and nature of the events in the
Wellington Undead
universe diverge ever further from historical fact.

The Battle of Argaum happened much as described in the book, however. Wellesley’s forces (and also those of Bappoo) advanced in a very similar fashion. Colonel Stevenson was considerably more sickly than his vampire counterpart, and is said to have directed the left wing of the British army from a platform atop his elephant.

When the dust had settled at Argaum, the Maratha army had been handily beaten, and at relatively little cost to the British. All that remained for the Maratha leadership now was to retreat to their stronghold, the vaunted impregnable fortress of Gawilghur, and hope that the mighty walls would prove stronger than the will of Major General Arthur Wellesley.

Of course, “Old Nosey” did not have to contend with a plague of zombies or the enmity of the goddess of death, Kali. In our fictional universe, his die has well and truly been cast. We shall see the outcome in the forthcoming fourth book of this series,
Fortress of the Damned.

It is my fervent hope that you have enjoyed this book. If so,
please
consider rating the book on Amazon.com. Doing so will help to ensure that there will be future books in the
Wellington Undead
series.

Some special thanks are due to Kevin Wolf of Devious Wolf Photography, and Nathan Ball of the 33rd Regiment of Foot (yes, they do still march today!) for generously providing some of the images for the cover. Thank you, gentlemen!

Thanks are also due to my proof-reader, Laura Sutcliffe, for poring over the manuscript and rooting out grammatical errors. Any that remain are the fault of the author.

And lastly but by no means least, my heartfelt appreciation goes to you, dear reader, for parting with your hard-earned money in order to read this book. On behalf of the vampire general and myself — thank you! Please drop me a line over at www.richardestep.net and let me know what you thought of it.

— Richard Estep

August 2016

Longmont, Colorado