When Victor was down, as he was now, he had to think they were right. But were they? Fighting had hardly touched the south-em settlements or the west coast of Atlantis. And, more to the point, it had barely reached into the interior. No English soldier had come within many miles of chasing Margaret off the Radcliff farm.
Maybe I'm not lying to these fellows after all, then, Victor thought. By God, I hope I'm not. England sees the coast, because thats what she trades with. But Atlantis is bigger than that.
Atlantis was, when you got right down to it, several times larger than England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland put together. One of these days, it would grow richer, stronger, and more populous than King George's realm. When you looked at things that way, how outrageous of George's soldiers to try to hold this land down by force!
For the moment, though, England was a man grown, Atlantis only a stripling. No matter how much promise Atlantis held, England was stronger-and better able to use the strength it had- now. Staying in the fight, wearing the enemy down… that was what Atlantis would have to do.
"Let's go, men," Victor called. "We need to get away. We need to make sure the damned redcoats can't catch us till we're ready for them." He respected Howe's engineers too much to imagine a blown bridge would keep them on the wrong side of the Brede very long. "And we need to get in touch with the Atlantean Assembly again, to find out what they require of us."
Did I just say that? he wondered. But he did, no doubt about it, even if he'd been at least half glad the Assembly wasn't telling him what to do every chance it got. If he had to decide everything on his own, he would turn into something closer to king than to general. The only thing he knew about kings was that he didn't want to be one.
Dark clouds blowing over the Green Ridge Mountains swept in front of the sun. The day got cooler in a hurry. All at once, the air tasted damp. More rain was coming. For that matter, fall was coming. How much longer would either side be able to campaign in any serious way?
One thing rain would do: as it had before, it would turn the roads to mud. The redcoats would have a devil of a time catching up to his army in bad weather. Their force would bog down worse than his, in fact, because they had more artillery and a bigger, more ponderous baggage train.
His horse snorted softly. Its nostrils flared. If that didn't mean it smelled rain, he would have been surprised.
If I have a winter's worth of time away from the English, a winter's worth of time to train my men, to turn them into proper fighters… Victor Radcliff nodded to himself. Even now, the Atlanteans proved they could confront hardened professional soldiers from across the sea. With drill, with discipline, wouldn't they be able to rout the redcoats? He hoped so. Sooner or later, Atlantis would likely need victories, not just hard-fought defeats.
Chapter 7
Victor Radcliff was a much-traveled man. All the same, he didn't think he'd ever been in Horsham before. He wasn't completely sure; if Atlantis had less memorable places than Horsham, he'd long since forgotten about them. A couple of taverns-one of which had a few rooms for benighted travelers and called itself an inn-a few shops, a gristmill, a smithy, a few streets' worth of houses… Horsham.
The Atlantean Assembly had come through the town. He heard that at least a dozen times as he ate half a greasy capon at the tavern that didn't put on airs. The men of the Assembly had kept on heading northwest, which only proved they had better sense than Victor had credited them for.
"They could have stayed here. I don't know why they didn't," said the girl who brought him the capon and fried parsnips and beer.
He could have told her. But she'd doubtless lived her whole life here, and so didn't know any better. Besides, she was blue-eyed, snub-nosed, and full-figured. That had more to do with his discretion.
Even with rain pattering down, he preferred his tent to anything Horsham's inn offered. He was about to blow out the candle when a sentry nearby challenged someone. Victor reached for a pistol. He'd told Blaise he didn't want to play the game of assassinations. He had no guarantee General Howe felt the same way.
A voice came out of the darkness. It was a vaguely familiar voice, but Victor couldn't place it, especially through the muffling raindrops. Then the sentry stuck his head into the tent. Despite a broad-brimmed hat, water dripped from the end of his nose He sneezed before he said, "Your cousin Matthew's here to see you, General"
"Bless you, Jack. And for God's sake tell him to come in before he drowns," Victor said. He and Matthew Radcliffe were cousins, but hardly more than in the sense that all men were brothers. Still, the Atlantean Assemblyman from Avalon wouldn't have come back from wherever the Assembly had gone unless something urgent was going on. Victor hoped he wouldn't have, anyway.
Once inside the tent, Matthew shook himself like a wet dog. He was as soaked as the sentry, or maybe worse. He sneezed, too. Victor produced a flask of barrel-tree brandy. "Here," he said. "A restorative"
"You're a good man, General. Damned if you're not." Matthew Radcliffe took a hearty nip. "Ahh! That'll warm me up, or I hope it will. I hope to Jesus something will."
"Did you see Noah's Ark when you rode back here?" Victor asked gravely after his own pull at the flask.
He didn't faze the man from the west. "See it? The old man dropped me off just outside your camp."
"Generous of him." Victor wasn't about to let anybody out-calm him. But small jests went only so far, especially by the dim light from a candle. "Why did you need to see me in weather like this?"
"Because in Honker's Mill-which is where the Assembly is right now, and may stay a while-I met a man who'd come over the mountains with news from Avalon." Matthew Radcliffe punctuated that with another sneeze
"God bless you." Victor drank from the flask again. "I don't suppose the news is good. If it were, it could have waited. The bad is what they have to tell you as soon as they can."
"Too right," his distant cousin agreed. "And I have bad news to give you, all right. The English, damn their black hearts, landed a band of coppers kin warriors from Terra nova south of our town. They've got hatchets and bows and arrows-and muskets and powder and ball the Englishmen gave 'em-and they're robbing and killing and burning and raping as they please. To tell you the truth, they're having a rare old time."
"Good Lord!" Victor had talked about copper-skinned mercenaries with Isaac Fenner, but he'd really expected to have to deal with Germans. Terranova's east coast, across the Hesperian Gulf from Atlantis, was dotted with Dutch and English and Spanish settlements. There had been French settlements there, too, but King Louis lost those along with the ones he'd ruled here in Atlantis.
White men were spreading into the interior of northern Terranova, but more slowly than they were in Atlantis. The barbarous copperskins fought against them-or sometimes, as here, fought for them.
"What can we do. General?" Matthew Radcliffe asked. "Can you spare men to send over the mountains or around the coast by sea? The Avalon militia is trying its best, but a lot of our men have already come east to right the redcoats."
Traveling across Atlantis' mountainous spine still wasn't easy. Small bands could make it, living off the land as they went. With farms and villages few and far between, a real army was liable to starve on the way west.
Most of the time, sailing would have been a better bet, in merchantmen or in fishing boats. Now… Now the Royal Navy was much too likely to snap them up like a cat killing mice that tried to sneak past it. "If I send a hundred men, most of them ought to get to Avalon," Victor said slowly. "And most of the ones who do ought to be able to fight. How many copperskins did the English turn loose over there?"
"I don't know exactly," Matthew Radcliffe replied. "I'm not sure anyone does know-except the savages and the damned sea captain who brought 'em, may the Devil fry his soul as black as his heart is already."
"Well, are a hundred soldiers and your militiamen enough to put paid to them?" Victor asked. "If they aren't, I fear you have more trouble than I know what to do
with."
"Me, I fear the same thing," Matthew said. "But God bless you, General. I'll take your hundred men, and gladly. They're a hundred more than I reckoned you'd give me."
"We have to hold Avalon. It's our window on Terranova," Victor Radcliff said. "One of these days, travel across Atlantis will be easier. The west will be more settled. Avalon's the best harbor there, far and away-New Marseille doesn't come close. If the Royal Navy ties up in Avalon Bay, if the Union Jack flies on the hills there, they've got us by the bollocks. And they'll squeeze, too. They'll squeeze like anything."
"God bless you," Matthew Radcliffe said again. "Too many easterners can't see any of that. We ought to pay King George back for trying to bugger us this way." That wasn't quite the figure of speech Victor had used, but it got the Atlantean Assemblyman's meaning across. Matthew turned the subject: "Anything left in that flask?"
Slosh. "A little." Victor handed it to him. "Here."
"God bless you one more time" His cousin tilted his head back. His throat worked. He set the flask down. "Not any more, by Christ!" He bared his teeth in something more snarl than smile "But what the Devil can we do to England in Terranova? The settlements there are quiet. Quiet as the grave, if you ask me Quiet as the tomb. Those bastards don't give a farthing for freedom. If they'd risen with us. King George would have a harder time of it, to hell with me if he wouldn't. Am I right or am I wrong. General?"
"Oh, you're right-no doubt about it. I wish you weren't, but you are" Victor stared sorrowfully at the empty silvered flask, which gave back what candlelight there was. He wished he had another nip of his own. Well, no help for it: not right now, anyway.
"We ought to send missionaries to them, the way the Spaniards send missionaries to the copperskins they've conquered."
Matthew Radcliffe said. "If they can turn nasty savages into Papists, can't we turn nasty Englishmen into freedom-lovers?"
"Missionaries." For a moment, Victor chuckled at the other man's conceit. Then his gaze focused and grew more intense, like the sun's rays brought together into a point by a burning glass. "Missionaries," he said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice.
"You've got some kind of scheme," Matthew said. "Tell me what it is."
Instead of answering him directly, Victor clapped on a hat and stuck his head out into the pouring rain. He spoke with Jack for a minute or two. The sentry let out a resigned sigh. Then he squelched off into the darkness.
"You have got some scheme." Matthew Radcliffe sounded half curious, half accusing.
"Who, me?" Victor, by contrast, did his best to seem innocence personified. By the look Matthew sent him, his best came nowhere close to good enough. The Assemblyman kept shooting questions at him. Victor ducked and dodged and finally said, "You'll find out soon, I hope." That also failed to leave Matthew Radcliffe serene.
In due course. Jack returned. Thanks to the rain's steady hiss, he almost got back to the tent by the time Victor made out his soggy footfalls. And he came closer yet before Victor-and Matthew-could hear that he wasn't alone.
"Who's he got with him?" Matthew asked. "Our very own Jesuit, panting to bring the heathen English settlers of Terranova to the true faith of freedom?"
Ignoring the sarcasm, Victor Radcliff nodded. "As a matter of fact, yes."
Right on cue, the tent flap opened. The man who stumbled inside didn't look like a Jesuit, or any other kind of missionary. He looked like a drowned rat-an angry drowned rat. "Whatever this is, couldn't it wait till the bloody morning?" he asked, his accent strongly English.
Matthew Radcliffe glanced toward Victor. "You have your own pet spy?" he inquired.
The newcomer glared at Matthew. "You have your own pet idiot?" he asked Victor.
"Matthew, let me present to you Master Thomas Paine," Victor said before things went beyond glances and glares. "Master Paine, this is Matthew Radcliffe, member of the Atlantean Assembly from Avalon. He-and all Atlantis-can use your persuasive abilities."
"What persuasive abilities?" Matthew Radcliffe looked unpersuaded.
So did Paine. "What does he need from me that I can't give as a soldier? I did not come to Atlantis for any reason but to seek my own freedom and some way to make a tolerable living-which I could not do in the mother country."
"Tell him what's happened by Avalon, Matthew," Victor said, and his distant cousin did. Victor went on, "If we can stir England's Terranovan towns to rebellion, she won't be able to do things like this to us again, and she will have to divide her attention, fighting two wars at once."
Matthew still seemed dubious. "Meaning no disrespect to Master Paine, but why should he be able to rouse England's settlements on the far side of the Gulf when we've had no luck at it up till now?"
"Because he is the best speaker-and especially the best writer-who backs our cause," Victor answered. "You give me too much credit," Paine murmured. "I'd better not," Victor told him.
"Better than Uncle Bobby? Better than Isaac Fenner? Than Custis Cawthorne, for God's sake?" Matthew Radcliffe shook his head. "I don't believe it."
Victor took a rumpled, damp, poorly printed flyer from New Hastings out of a jacket pocket." 'Men are born, and always continue, free-in respect of their rights" he read. " 'The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural rights of man, and these are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression. The exercise of every man's natural rights has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other man the tree exercise of the same rights. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to society. What is not prohibited by the law should not be hindered; nor should any one be compelled to that which the law does not require.' " He looked up; reading by candlelight was a trial. "You will have heard that, I am sure. Who do you suppose wrote it?"
"Isn't it from Custis' pen? I always thought so," Matthew said.
Victor set a hand on Thomas Paine's wet shoulder. "Meet the author. If he can't set Terranova alight, no one will make it catch."
"Well… maybe," Matthew Radcliffe said.
"You want me to go to Terranova, General?" Paine sounded less than delighted at the prospect. "You want me to put aside everything I have in Atlantis, cross to Avalon and sail over the Hesperian Gulf?"
Matthew Radcliffe started to make apologetic noises. Victor cut him off. "Master Paine, you are at the moment a common soldier in the Atlantean army. What precisely is it you have to give up, pray tell?"
Thomas Paine opened his mouth to answer. Then he closed it again before a single word crossed his lips. He gave Victor a crooked grin instead. "Put it that way, General, and you've got a point."
"Can he really fire the Terranovans?" Matthew asked.
Victor Radcliff nudged Paine. "What was it you said about William the Conqueror, and about how little hereditary monarchy means? Better Matthew should hear it from you than from me-I wouldn't get it right."
"All I said was that a French bastard who landed with armed bandits and established himself as King of England against the consent of the natives was in plain terms a very paltry and rascally original." Paine quoted himself with obvious relish.
"You see?"
"victor said to Matthew. "All they have to do is listen to him even a little, and he's bound to infect them."
"You make me sound like the smallpox," Paine observed.
"No. You inoculate men with freedom-and there's no inoculation against you," Victor said. "As for Terranova, better to inoculate than never, by God."
Paine and Matthew Radcliffe both winced. The latter still seemed to need convincing. "Maybe…" he said again.
"Give him something else," Victor told Paine.
"Am I then auditioning for the stage?" Paine asked.
"For the most important stage of all: the stage of the world," Victor Radcliff replied.
That seemed to get home to the wet incendiary from England. His voice grew lower, deeper, and altogether more impressive as he said, "Call to mind the sentime
nts which nature has engraved in the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognized by all. For a nation to have liberty, it is enough that she knows liberty. And to be free, it is enough that she wills it."
"You see?" Victor said to Matthew once more. "He can do it!"
"And do you propose to command me to make Terranova free?" Thomas Paine asked. "I trust you note the irony involved?"
"I note it, yes," Victor answered. "But, having joined the Atlantean army, you do leave yourself open to command, you know."
"If you command me in any soldierly way, I will obey you," Paine said. "But if you command me to play the politico, do you not agree that that takes me out of the soldier's province?"
"Master Paine, you are a weapon of war, no less than a six-pounder," Victor Radcliff said. "I hope you can harm the enemy more than any mere cannon might, even one double-shotted with canister. Will you tell me I may not aim you and fire you where you will have the greatest effect?"
"We need you, Master Paine," Matthew Radcliffe added. "The general-and yourself-have persuaded me. If Terranova rises against King George, too, that all but guarantees the safety of Avalon and the rest of western Atlantis. It ensures that the redcoats cannot carry copperskins across the Hesperian Gulf to harry our western settlements."
Thomas Paine sneezed. "Bless you," Victor said.
Paine waved that aside. He rounded on Matthew. "They're carrying savages across the sea to assail us? I had not heard that."
"Nor had I, till he brought me word of it," Victor put in.
"It is the truth, damn them," Matthew Radcliffe said.
"Then I must do-must do-everything in my power to oppose them. I had not thought they would stoop so low as to loose the copperskins against their own kith and kin." Thomas Paine turned back to Victor. He sneezed again. Then he said, "If I am your weapon, General, aim me and fire me as you think best. This king's wicked minions must be checked."
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