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

would not say joined, although the description is accurate, as far as it goes.” A thin, sardonic smile spread across the Sultan’s lips. He let the words hang between them for a moment. Finally, Wellesley took the bet.
    “And what would you say?”
    “She has not joined their ranks, my dear Arthur. No, my dearest daughter has been chosen to lead them.”
    Arthur’s eyes widened just a fraction at that. “Chosen? By whom?”
    Tipu did not answer, at least not verbally: instead, he simply looked upward, in the universal signal for something that was quite literally in the lap of the gods.
    “I see. That would be Kali, I presume.” There was just the slightest trace of a wince when Arthur named the goddess, and the vampire knew that he had hit the mark on his very first attempt. “She may frighten you, Tipu, but the so-called ‘Dark Mother’ holds no fear for me.”
    “And I had thought you so much wiser than that, vampire.” Tipu had suddenly turned somber. “You underestimate the goddess of the dead at your own peril. She has powers that you cannot possibly comprehend, and has favored my daughter with some of them.”
    “Such as…?”
    “Jamelia came close to death, thanks to the wounds that you inflicted, Wellesley. Very close. But Jamelia is instrumental to her plans, and is therefore not a piece that the Dark Mother would permit to be removed from the game board so easily.”
    “You are saying that she is a queen, rather than a knight or a bishop.”
    “Precisely.”
    Arthur rather appreciated the comparison of their current situation to the game of chess. It was a game that he loved to play, finding it a very useful analog to the art of strategic thinking that was his stock in trade during everyday life.
    “Which would make Berar and Scindia the king,” the vampire observed.
    “You have precious little chance of checkmating that particular king. They have a near-limitless supply of pawns, Irishman, whereas your precious red-coated minions are fast running out. Mathematics alone tells us that this game can end in only one way.”
    Arthur regarded him stonily for a moment, choosing his words with great care. “That would be correct, were this simply a war of attrition. But this is not such a war, Tipu. I would have thought that the outcome of Assaye should have made that abundantly clear.” The Sultan opened his mouth to respond, but Wellesley talked right over him. “War is about far more than the numbers, Tipu. Far more. Data is important, yes, I shall grant you that. I am something of an obsessive on that particular point, if the truth be told. But the wise man places his money on the better general, even if he is burdened with inferior numbers and resources, over the bloated and over-confident blusterer.
    “The living dead may outnumber my living redcoats and our allies, my dear Sultan, but you may rest assured of one thing: the king who finally prevails on this particular chess board shall be named George, and none other.”
    Arthur’s voice burned with the fires of conviction, never once wavering or displaying even the slightest trace of doubt. He knew that he was going to win, for no other outcome was conceivable. The vampire general was supremely self-confident – many thought him self-absorbed and arrogant – but it was backed up with hours of painstaking preparation and research: he knew the movement capabilities of his prime fighting men, for example, because upon first arriving in India he had carefully weighed them and then marched them over specific distances with full fighting kit, diligently recording the times in a log book that he carried with him to this day.
    Other than one incident several years prior – an ill-conceived attack on a stand of tope, during the Seringapatam campaign which had ended in the Sultan’s demise – Wellesley’s record of skirmishes and battles, though not yet particularly long, was a list composed entirely of victories. He knew with utter