Free The Company of Shadows (Wellington Undead Book 3) by Richard Estep Page A

further and handed their own loaded muskets to the men who had just fired, exchanging the discharged Brown Besses for fresh ones. While their comrades took their next shot, they patiently reloaded, and so on, and so on, until the threat was vanquished.
    The Marathas did indeed seem to be long gone, and General Wellesley had not ordered his remaining cavalry to pursue them. There was, however, a definite method to his madness. While the camp was being struck, Rice had dispatched as many cavalry patrols as he could spare. A few – and they really were too few, Rice knew, but what choice did he really have? – formed a thin screen between the camp and the retreating enemy. The remainder had an equally important job, done at Caldwell’s urging: that of keeping the dead from walking once more.
    “Look old chap,” Caldwell had said reasonably, lighting one of his precious few remaining cigars and blowing out a long stream of smoke in the captain’s general direction, “try to think of it like this: would you rather deal with the buggers now, while they’re still at their most vulnerable, or deal with them later, when they’re back on their feet again and hungry for blood?”
    It had to be said that Rice hadn’t taken much persuading. Collecting up what precious few combat-effective horsemen could still be found, a mixture of both native and British cavalrymen, the captain had directed them to make sure that each and every corpse that lay sprawled across the battlefield stayed well and truly dead this time. This basically entailed the horsemen riding from body to body, and then employing a saber or lance point to pierce the brain or spinal cord.
    Unfortunately, the soldiers had ridden hard and then fought for everything they were worth for most of the night before. All were tired, with most of them being pushed to the very edge of exhaustion. Tired men make mistakes, and the more tired the man is, the more serious the mistakes tend to be. Today was to be no exception.
    The mens’ backs ached, along with their arms, legs, and pretty much everything else. Fatigued muscles screamed in protest when even the smallest exertion was demanded of them, and so their owners inevitably began to rein themselves in. Where at first the horsemen had leaned gracefully down to skewer a skull and sever a spine, their aches, pains, and stiffness had soon gotten the better of them, and so now each cut and thrust was pulled just a little here, softened just a little there, as body mechanics triumphed over duty.
    To say that the job was done in a quick and dirty fashion would be something of an understatement, yet Captain Rice made no comment when the cavalrymen reported back in just half an hour later, stating that their assigned task had been completed. He too had fought all night, and was struggling simply to keep his eyes open long enough to get the huge British column moving.
    “Good job,” Rice nodded curtly to the commander of his native cavalry, intending the compliment as a dismissal. “Now take your men out one half mile to either side of the main body and screen our flanks, if you please.”
    Rice rode at the head of the long column of march. Turning in his saddle, he shielded his eyes from the sun’s merciless glare with the flat of a hand and looked back along the length of the slightly crooked red snake that stretched from horizon to horizon. Half of the infantry marched first – they looked fit to drop after their exertions of the night before – followed by the camp followers and the artillery train, with the remainder of the foot bringing up the rear. As their temporary commander, Captain Rice had but one goal: to join up with Colonel Stevenson’s column, and thereby unify the army.
    To that end, he had sent a handful of his precious light dragoons on ahead, with orders to make contact with Colonel Stevenson’s force and to convey his intentions to its commander. The chances were good that Stevenson was already marching