"Well?" Victor said.
"Well, it's like this, your Honor," the corporal said in a clotted London accent. "General 'Owe, 'e's moving inland, around your bloody flank. 'E aims to get between you and New 'Astings, 'e does."
"Sweet suffering Jesus!" Victor said. That would put him-and the Atlantean Assembly-in a very nasty spot… if it was true. He eyed the deserter. "And you came in to tell me this because…?"
Flash! Boom! Flying roundshot. Crash! The redcoat hardly seemed to notice, let alone get excited. "Why, your Honor? I'll bloody well tell you why." He brushed his chevrons with a scarred hand. "On account of over there I'll be an old man by the time I make sergeant, if I ever do. I took the king's shilling to keep from starving. Well, I've done that, any road. But if I want to make sum-mat of myself, if I want to be a lieutenant, say"-like a lot of Englishmen, he pronounced it leftenant-"I've got a better chance 'ere than I ever would've there. And so I lit out, I did."
Lots of Englishmen came to Atlantis because they thought they could do better here than in the cramped, tradition-filled mother country. This corporal wasn't the first deserter from Howe's army: nowhere near. But none of the others had brought such important news. "What's your name?" Victor asked him. "Pipes, your Honor," he answered. "Daniel Pipes."
"All right, Pipes. I'm going to send out riders to check what you've said." Victor feared he knew what they would find. The deserter's news had a dreadful feel of probability to it. He went on, "If they show you're telling the truth, you're Sergeant Daniel Pipes on the spot. How high you climb after that is up to you."
The redcoat stiffened to rigor mortis-like attention. His salute might have been turned on a lathe. A couple of watching Atlantean soldiers sniggered. That kind of stern discipline was what they were righting against. But Victor knew it had its merits in winning wars.
"Much obliged, your Honor!" Pipes said. Hash! Boom! Victor watched the cannon ball come in. Crash! "I think we're the ones obliged to you," he said. How big a march had General Howe stolen? How much bigger would it have been if not for Daniel Pipes?
Radcliff sent out the riders. He'd let the ships distract him, but he wouldn't make that mistake any more. What other mistakes he might make… he would discover only by making them.
A new question rose in his mind. How often could he count on help from English deserters? That brought up another new question. How often would Atlantean deserters help the enemy? He knew he'd already lost some men to desertion. He hadn't thought till now about how much it might mean.
Hash. Boom! Pause. Crash! Screams followed this shot-it must have come down on a building with people inside. Victor swore. No wonder the Royal Navy had been able to mesmerize him for a while.
The next roundshot missed him by only about twenty feet. "Nasty thing" Pipes observed. He hadn't flinched as the big iron ball bounded by. Neither had Radcliff. It wasn't the same as a bullet snapping past. Victor didn't know why it wasn't, but he was sure of the fact.
A couple of hours went by. The bombardment went on. He thanked heaven the cannonading hadn't started a fire in Weymouth. That was nothing but luck, as he knew too well. Fire was any town's biggest nightmare. Once it took hold, it was next to impossible to quell.
Hoofbeats clopped on dirt as a horseman trotted in. "Well?" Victor called.
"They're moving, all right," the scout answered. "Heading around our left flank. But I think you can still pull out all right."
"That's what she said," Victor remarked, and the horseman laughed.
His men weren't sorry to leave Weymouth. Who in his right mind would have been? He marched away from the little seaside town as quietly as he could. The longer the Royal Navy took to realize he was gone, the better. Boom!… Crush! (He couldn't see the flash or the flight of the ball any more. The sound, though, the sound pursued.)
"Can those ships do this at New Hastings, too?" Blaise asked.
"We do have forts there, but I don't know if they would stop them," Victor answered.
"Mm-kmtn," the Negro said, a fraught noise if ever there was one. "How are we ever going to win the war, then?"
That was a better question than Victor Radcliff wished it were. "Most of Atlantis is out of the range of the Royal Navy's guns," he said. That was true. He was less sure how helpful it was. If the Atlantean Assembly's army couldn't safely stay by the coast, the enemy gained an important advantage.
Atlantis had ships of its own, as befit a land that made much of its living from fishing and whaling and slaving and trading with the mother country (and, when the mother country wasn't looking, trading with other people, too). Some of them went armed. Piracy wasn't what it had been in the wild days of Avalon, more than a hundred years before, but it wasn't dead, either. How many carried enough guns to face a Royal Navy frigate? Any? Victor knew too well none could face a first-rate ship of the line.
"If Howe comes at us and the ships come at us, can we hold New Hastings?" Blaise persisted.
"We can try," Victor said. That didn't sound strong enough even to him, so he added, "We have to try," Blaise nodded and didn't say anything more. It was less of a relief than Victor had thought it would be.
General Howe's skirmishers pushed toward the coast. The Atlantean army's skirmishers pushed them back and took a few prisoners. They hauled one of them in front of Victor Radcliff. The redcoat acted more aggrieved that he'd been caught.
"What are you buggers doing marching along down here?" he said. "They told us you were still back in bloody Weymouth."
"Well, you've learned something, then, haven't you?" Victor answered.
The prisoner scowled at him. "What's that?"
"Not to believe everything you hear," Victor said blandly. What the redcoat said then wasn't fit for polite company. The Atlanteans gathered around him laughed. He seemed even less happy about that. The Atlanteans thought he got funnier as he got louder.
General Howe began pressing harder on the Atlantean army's flank. That was a problem Victor could deal with, though. A small rear guard sufficed to slow down the redcoats and let the rest of his men get ahead of them on the road down to New Hastings.
He wondered what would happen when he got there. By now, the Atlantean Assembly would know he hadn't held Weymouth. Would they take his command away from him? He shrugged. If they did, they did, that was all.
The next interesting question would be whether he could hold New Hastings. It certainly had better works than Weymouth did. But, like Weymouth, it was a seaside town. If the Royal Navy wanted to lie offshore and bombard it, Victor didn't know how he could respond.
He shook his head. That wasn't true. He knew how: he couldn't. He didn't like that, but he knew it.
And if he lost New Hastings, the echo of its fall would reverberate throughout Atlantis. If New Hastings came under the redcoats' boots… Would the rest of the land think the fight was still worth making? Victor really had no idea about that.
Nor did he want to find out. The best way to keep from finding out would be to hold New Hastings. He hoped he could.
Another rider came in from the west. "They're starting to turn in on us for true, sir," he reported.
"They would," Victor said, and then, "Did you see any fence or stone wall that runs more or less north and south? Something we could fight behind, I mean?"
"Plenty of 'em," the man answered. "These New Hastings folk, they're as bad as the people up by Croydon for walling themselves away from their neighbors." By the way he talked, he came from somewhere close to Freetown, well to the south of New Hastings. He could sneer at New Hastings folk as much as he wanted, but his own settlement held a far higher proportion of men loyal to King George.
He wasn't, though-and he'd given Victor Radcliff the answer the Atlantean commander wanted to hear. "Good," Victor said. "If they want to charge us across open country, they're welcome to pay the butcher's bill."
They'd done that north of Weymouth, and come away with a victory anyhow. Victor hoped General Howe didn't care for what h
e'd paid to get his victory. He shouted orders, swinging the Atlantean army out of its retreat and off to the west to face the redcoats again.
He also sent more horsemen out ahead of his infantry. He wanted them to lead the English army straight toward his. That way, he wouldn't-he hoped he wouldn't-get taken in the flank.
Once he'd set things in motion, he turned back to the courier who'd brought word of Howe's swing. "Take us to one of these fences."
"Glad to do it, General." The man brushed the brim of his tri-corn with a forefinger-probably as close to a salute as Victor would get from him.
The first fence to which he led the Atlanteans wasn't long enough to let all of them deploy behind it. Victor didn't want them out in the open trading volleys with the redcoats. The English were better trained than the settlers. They could shoot faster, and could also take more damage without breaking. And, if it came down to a charge and hand-to-hand fighting, all the redcoats had bayonets.
And so they went a little farther northwest, and found a stone wall that seemed perfect. It was more than a mile long, and almost chest high. If the musketeers steadied their firelocks on top of it as they shot, they were likely to do better than smoothbores commonly could, too.
Sheep grazed in a broad meadow on the far side of the fence They looked up in mild surprise as the Atlanteans took their places. They didn't know enough to run. If General Howe declined this engagement, Victor Radcliff suspected a good many of his men would enjoy a mutton supper tonight.
But Howe did not decline. Victor saw the rising cloud of dust that marked the redcoats' approach. He listened to occasional pistol shots: those would come from the two sides' horsemen skirmishing with one another. Some of the Atlantean mounted soldiers wore green coats. Others were in homespun, and had only weapons and determination to mark them as fighting men.
They took refuge at either side of the Atlantean position. The English horsemen, by contrast, recoiled when they saw the enemy in arms in front of them. They didn't push the attack-nor would Victor have in their place. Instead, they rode back to give their commander the news that the rebels were waiting for them.
Howe's infantry came out onto the meadow not quite half an hour later. Victor peered at them through a brass spyglass. A golden reflection caught his eye. He had to smile. There stood an English officer-General Howe himself?-staring back through a telescope almost identical to his own.
Victor didn't much like what he saw. He hoped the enemy general was even less happy with what his spyglass showed him.
Field guns unlimbered and deployed to either flank of the redcoats. English artillerymen opened fire. Maybe they hoped the cannonading would terrify their raw opponents. A couple of balls slammed against the stone wall but didn't break through Then one took off the head of a tall soldier who was looking out at the martial spectacle in front of him. His corpse stood upright, fountaining blood, for several seconds before it finally fell.
Even Victor thought that might be plenty to frighten his men. But it didn't seem to. "Did you see Seth there?" one of them exclaimed.
"Didn't know he had so much blood in him," another replied.
"Sure went out in style, didn't he?" the first man said, nothing but admiration in his voice. In spite of himself, Victor Radcliff smiled. The Atlanteans were turning into veterans in a hurry.
General Howe's men were already veterans. Without fuss or wasted motion, they swung from column to line of battle, staying out of range of both muskets and rifles as they took their places. Victor ordered his handful of field guns into action. They knocked over a few redcoats. The rest kept on with their evolutions as if nothing had happened.
Drums and fifes moved the Englishmen forward. The field guns cut swaths in their advancing ranks. They closed up and kept coming. Victor wondered if they would charge with the bayonet again. He hoped so. He didn't think they would be able to stand the gaff if they tried.
But Howe proved able to learn from experience. Having suffered from one charge, he had the redcoats halt about eighty yards from the fence that sheltered the Atlanteans. The first rank went to one knee. The second stooped to fire over their shoulders. The third stood straight.
"Fire!" Victor yelled, and the Atlantean volley went in before the English soldiers could start shooting. Redcoats crumpled. Redcoats writhed.
And redcoats opened fire. Musket balls smacked the stone fence And they smacked soft flesh. Atlanteans screamed. Atlanteans reeled back, clutching at themselves.
The first three ranks of redcoats retired and began to reload. The next three stepped forward. The first of them went to one knee. The second stooped. The third stood straight. They all fired together. Then they retired and also began to reload. Three more ranks of English soldiers delivered another volley. By that time, the first three ranks were ready to fire again. They did. Then the regulars charged.
They'd taken casualties all through their volleys-the Atlanteans had blazed away at them, too. And Victor's men-those of them still on their feet-delivered a couple of more ragged volleys as the redcoats rushed at them. A few fieldpieces fired canister into the English soldiers. The sprays of lead balls tore holes in the redcoats' ranks. They came on regardless.
At the wall, they stabbed with their bayonets, driving the Atlanteans back. Then the Englishmen started scrambling up and over. More of them got shot doing that. Once they dropped down on the east side, they lashed out with those bayoneted muskets. Again, at close quarters Victor Radcliff's men had no good answer for them. Guts spilled out onto the trampled, bloodstained grass.
"Back!" Victor shouted. "Back! Form lines! Give them a volley!"
He wondered if the farmers and cobblers and millers and ropemakers and horse dealers would listen to him. They'd faced the redcoats twice now, and been forced from strong positions both times. Why wouldn't they want to break and run after that?
They didn't. Not so neatly as their foes would have done it, they drew back fifty yards, formed up, and gave Howe's men a volley. Fire rippled up and down their ranks. Any English sergeant worth his stripes would have screamed at them for such ragged shooting. Some of the Atlantean sergeants did scream at them.
Victor was just glad they'd fired at all. "Give them one more!" he yelled. "One more, and then fall back again!"
This volley was even more ragged than the one before had been. The Atlanteans remained in order, though: a force in being. They'd hurt the redcoats, too. Victor could see a lot of dead and wounded English soldiers on both sides of the wall. He could also see a lot of dead and wounded Atlanteans.
The army that held the field was the one that won the battle.
So it had been in ancient days, and so it was still. General Howe's army would hold this field, as it had held the one north of Weymouth-as it now held Weymouth itself. "
"They aren't so tough," somebody not far from Victor said the settlers withdrew "Give us big old knives on the end of our firelocks and we'll make em sorry-just see if we don't"
"Damn right Lemuel," the fellow next to him replied They both nodded, as if to say, Well, that's settled. Victor had lost two bat ties and one town. All of a sudden, he didn't feel nearly so bad.
Chapter 5
New Hastings again. Victor Radcliff had hoped he wouldn't see it so soon. He'd hoped he wouldn't see it at all. He'd dreamt of driving the redcoats before him as if he embodied the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Why not drive them back to Hanover? Why not drive them out of Hanover? Out of Atlantis altogether?
Well, now he knew why not. General Howe's soldiers were better trained than his. The Royal Navy had cost him more trouble than he'd expected, too.
And so… New Hastings again.
He went to the ancient redwood church to report his two failures to the Atlantean Assembly. Those worthy patriots would already know he'd lost two battles. If anything outran the wind, it was rumor.
But the forms had to be observed. The Assemblymen were his superiors-the only superiors he had. They were as much of a government a
s the rebellious settlements had. Here and there, English governors persisted. Nobody said much about that to Custis Cawthorne.
Stolidly, Victor told the Assembly what had happened. "We did succeed in removing the munitions from Weymouth before English forces reached the town," he said.
"Did you succeed in removing Weymouth itself?" an Assemblyman asked. His name, if Victor remembered rightly, was Hiram
Smith. He came from New Marseille, in the far southwest.
"Unfortunately, no," Victor answered.
Smith went on as if he hadn't spoken: "I think you did, sir. You removed it from free Atlantis and returned it to King George."
A low ripple of laughter ran through the church. A split second later, it came echoing back from the high, vaulted ceiling
"Mr. Smith, you may have your sport with me if it please you," Victor answered, not showing the rage that griped his belly. "We did, I believe, what we could do with what we had. The men showed themselves to be uncommonly brave. They fought hard and spiritedly, holding their ground well against professional soldiers and retaining their morale even when fortune failed to smile on them. True, they did not triumph, but even in defeat they cost the enemy dear, and they remain both willing and able to fight again when called upon to do so. Any deficiencies in their conduct must accrue to me, not to them."
Custis Cawthorne rose and straightened. He made something of a production of it, as he made something of a production of most things. Looking out over the tops of his spectacles at the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly, he said, "My friends, I should like to propose a resolution concerning General Radcliff."
"Say on, Mr. Cawthorne," said redheaded Isaac Fenner, who held the gavel. "You will anyhow."
"Your servant, sir," Cawthorne dipped his head in Fenner's direction. "Be it resolved, then, that we imitate the Roman Senate. After the Battle of Cannae, the worst defeat Rome ever knew, the Conscript Fathers voted their official thanks to the surviving consul, Caius Terrentius Varro, because he had not despaired of the Roman Republic Let us confer the same honor upon General Radcliff for the same reason."
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