Off went the detachment that would make the noisy demonstration against the northern part of Cornwallis' fieldworks. Most of the ordinary guns went with it. It was also brave with banners, to fool the redcoats into thinking it held all the units whose standards waved above it.
Before long, the thunder of cannon fire and the fierce clatter of musketry-a sound much like rocks falling on sheets of iron- told him the demonstration was well under way. Some of those volleys from the muskets could only have come from perfectly trained and disciplined English regiments. If the redcoats hadn't taken the feint, they never would.
If they hadn't, a lot of his men would get shot soon. He was liable to get shot himself. He made himself shrug. He'd done the best he could.
"Come on, boys!" he called. "Hanover's got the prettiest women in Atlantis, people say. You'll see 'em for yourselves before long."
That won him a cheer, which he hushed as fast as he could. Fortunately, all the gunfire up ahead meant the redcoats weren't likely to notice it. He led the rest of the Atlantean army-including most of the mortar crews-south at a quick march. Their comrades had to keep the English troops in front of them busy for an hour, maybe a little longer…
Several of his men had grown up in these parts. They pointed out paths that ran east toward the weak spot in the works he thought he'd found. He sent mounted scouts ahead of his main force. With luck, they would scoop up any redcoat pickets or loyalist Atlanteans who might dash east and warn the main English force the Atlantean Assembly's army was on the way.
Without luck… Victor refused to dwell on that. We will be lucky, he told himself, as if telling himself something like that would make it come true.
No horse pistols boomed ahead of the advancing Atlanteans. Victor took that for a good sign. His scouts hadn't found a reason to shoot at anyone. Nor had they run into English cavalry-or into Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion, if it was real and not a figment of some Englishman with a quill pen and an overactive imagination.
"Almost to the enemy's line, General," said one of the men who'd come out from Hanover to give Victor Radcliff what news he had.
"So we are," Victor agreed. One more swell of ground, maybe two, and they'd be able to see what awaited them. Just as much to the point, the English soldiers in Cornwallis' fieldworks would be able to see them. Victor raised his voice: "Form line of battle!"
The Atlanteans deployed as if they'd been doing it for years. Well, a lot of them had. Baron von Steuben would have been proud. At the last council of war, Victor had realized his officers were veterans. So were many of the troopers. He was surprised to hear them cheer as they swung from column to line. They hadn't done that since the early days of the war. He'd assumed they knew better. Maybe they had, too. But they also knew what taking Hanover back would be worth. It was worth a cheer, evidently. "There!" The man from Hanover pointed. "I see," Victor said quietly. The forts and trenches scarred what had been fields of wheat and barley. They were well sited; Victor had never known English military engineers not to take what advantage of the countryside they could. His men would have to charge up a gentle slope to reach the English positions. If those positions were packed with redcoats… Well, in that case this wouldn't be one of those lucky days-not for his side, anyhow.
A musket thundered in the trenches. He watched the cloud of gunpowder smoke rise. That was a signal shot, warning the Englishmen up and down the line that the Atlanteans were here.
"Mortarmen!" Victor shouted. Then he drew his fancy sword and flourished it over his head. "Come on!" he cried to the Atlanteans whose bayonets glittered in the sun. "Hanover is ours!"
Not if the redcoats had anything to say about it. They started shooting from the trench. Cannon boomed from a redoubt. Several Atlanteans went down as a roundshot plowed through their ranks.
The men who served the mortars did what they could. They dropped mortar bombs on the soldiers in the trenches and on the enemy artillerists. They didn't take long to find the range. Hurting the foe was a different story. Mortar bombs had to be the most irksome weapons artificers had ever almost perfected. Their fuses proved much more art than science. Some dropped harmlessly to the ground without exploding. Some burst high in the air, which was frightening and distracting but not even slightly dangerous. A few, and only a few, actually did what they were supposed to do.
One of the English cannon abruptly fell silent. That was good, for Victor's troopers were scrambling through the stakes and felled trees set out in front of the enemy trench line. Then another well-placed mortar bomb blew several English soldiers to bloody rags, right in front of the gap the Atlanteans had cleared. Whooping, Victor's men rushed forward.
Clearing trenches could be nasty, expensive work. Not this time-the redcoats here really were thin on the ground. Only a few of them fought when Victor's troopers bore down on them. More threw away their muskets and surrendered or ran from the Atlanteans.
"Keep moving!" Victor shouted. "On to Hanover!"
"On to Hanover!" his men roared.
English officers shouted, too, trying to get their men to form up in the open country behind their lines to slow the Atlantean advance. The redcoats were nothing if not game. But then Victor's mortar crews dropped several bombs on their lines. Stolid as the English soldiers were, they weren't used to that kind of bombardment. Along with sharp volleys from the Atlantean infantry, it disrupted them and kept them from putting up the kind of fight they might have.
Bit by bit, the Englishmen decided they'd had enough. They retreated to the north and south, toward Croydon and New Hastings. Church bells chimed in Hanover. People streamed out into the streets to welcome the Atlantean army. Tears stung Victor's eyes. If he could hold the city, he'd done one of the things he had to do to win the war.
Chapter 16
Hanover. Not the oldest city in Atlantis, but the largest and the richest. And now in Atlantean hands again! How Cornwallis had to be gnashing his teeth! How Thomas Paine would rejoice when word came to distant Terranova… if the redcoats hadn't caught him and jailed him or hanged him by now.
Cornwallis, of course, wasn't the only one gnashing his teeth as the Army of the Atlantean Assembly got ready to winter in Hanover. Quite a few Atlanteans who lived in Hanover felt the same way. Some of them were loyalists down to their toes. Others had made a lot of money providing the redcoats with food and drink and complaisant women.
One of the locals, a fat taverner named Absalom Hogarth, looked apprehensively at Victor Radcliff. Victor sat in the study that had once belonged to his great-grandfather and was now owned by his merchant cousin, Erasmus. A dusty honker's skull stared at him with empty eye sockets. Along with the antique brass sextant and leather-bound folios, it had sat in that study for a long, long time.
Absalom Hogarth didn't seem to see any of them, or the inquiring mind that had accumulated them. Hogarth's gimlet-eyed gaze was focused on Victor as sharply as the sun's rays brought together in a point by a burning glass.
Victor had already talked to a lot of people like the tavern-keeper. They depressed him, but he had to do the job. Steepling his fingers, he spoke in tones as neutral as he could make them: "You look to have done pretty well for yourself while the English ruled the roost here."
"Well, General, as a matter of fact I did," Hogarth said.
That was a response out of the ordinary. "Tell me more," Victor urged, still neutral.
The taverner shrugged broad shoulders. Chins bobbed up and down. "Not much to tell. The redcoats were here. I saw to their wants. I would've done the same for you and yours. By God, General, I will do the same for you and yours."
He looked as if he expected Victor to pin a medal on him for his selfless patriotism. Maybe he did. More likely, years of dealing with-and, no doubt, bilking when he saw the chance-other people had made him a better than tolerable actor. "Let me make sure I understand you," Victor said slowly.
"Please." Absalom Hogarth all but radiated candor.
"You say you will tre
at us the same way as you treated the English."
"So I do. So I shall." The taverner sounded proud of himself.
"You say you would have treated us as well as you treated them had we held Hanover in their place."
"I not only say it, General, I mean it."
"Then you must be saying that who rules Atlantis, whether she be free in the hands of her own folk or groaning under the yoke of English tyranny, is a matter of complete and utter indifference to you."
"I do say that… Wait!" Too late, Hogarth realized the trap had just dropped out from under him. He sent Victor an accusing stare. "You're trying to confuse me. Of course I'm an Atlantean patriot."
"Why 'of course,' Mr. Hogarth? Plenty of Atlanteans aren't. Plenty of Atlanteans in this very city aren't," Victor said. "I know for a fact that the so-called loyalists had little trouble recruiting their rabble here." Too many of the Atlanteans who fought for King George were anything but a rabble, and Victor knew it, however much he wished they were.
"None of them could recruit me," Hogarth said virtuously.
Victor eyed his bulk. "There, sir, I believe you. You are not made for marching, and every horse in Atlantis must also know relief that you did not choose the cavalryman's life."
"Heh," Hogarth said. Were his position stronger, he might have added a good deal more. He tried a jolly fat man's chuckle instead. It came off well, but perhaps not quite well enough. He must have sensed as much, for he sounded nervous when he asked, "Ah, what do you aim to do with me?"
"I've been wondering the same thing, Mr. Hogarth," Victor replied. "If I treated you as you deserve, you-or your heirs-would have scant cause to love me thereafter." He waited for that to sink in. By the way Hogarth gulped, it did. "On the other hand, you cannot expect me to love you for playing the weather vane."
"You have a way with words, you do." The taverner kept trying.
"Here is what I will do," Victor Radcliff said after more thought, "I will fine you a hundred pounds, payable in sterling, for giving aid and comfort-chiefly comfort, or it would go harder for you- to the enemy."
"A hundred pounds!" This time, Hogarth's yelp of anguish seemed altogether unrehearsed.
"A hundred pounds," Victor repeated. "Be thankful it's not more, for I doubt not you have it. After that, you shall do as you offered, and serve us in the fashion to which the redcoats became accustomed. And if I hear any complaints of cheating or gouging… But I won't… will I?"
"No, indeed, General. I am an honest man-not a, a political man, but an honest man," Hogarth said.
Victor Radcliff didn't laugh in his face, judging him humiliated enough. A world that held such oddities as cucumber slugs and flapjack turtles might also hold an honest taverner or two. It might, but Victor didn't think he'd ever set eyes on one before. He didn't think he was looking at one now, either.
"Just pay your assessment," he said wearily. "Pay your assessment, and try to remember you're an Atlantean, not a damned Englishman."
"I'll do it," Absalom Hogarth declared. And maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn't. Chances were he didn't know yet himself, or care.
There were plenty more in Hanover like Hogarth: men who were loyal, or at least obedient, to whoever'd paid them last And there were others who'd unquestionably leaned toward King George and who didn't care to lean away. Some were silent; others spat defiance at him. They called themselves patriots. He hated the word in their mouths, but had trouble denying the justice of their using it.
Justice… The worst offenders (no, the worst enemies, for they thought they were doing the Lord's work, and in no way offending) had fled with Cornwallis' men, knowing what was likely to await them if they found themselves in Atlantean hands. Victor didn't hang anyone who remained behind. He did send a handful of men out of his lines with no more than the clothes on their backs. Whatever they held in Hanover he confiscated in the name of the Atlantean Assembly.
"I reckoned your horde a pack of thieves before you broke in," one of the men who was to be expelled told him. "You do nothing to make me believe myself mistaken."
"You love us not," Victor said. "If you war against us, do you doubt we shall love you not in return?"
"A Christian man loves his enemies," the loyalist returned.
"Well, then, we show our love as you showed yours," Victor said. He pointed north, in the direction of Croydon and, much closer, the nearest English lines. "Now get you gone."
"Maybe you should have been rougher," Blaise said after the last of the expulsions and confiscations. "Our men would like to see some of those scoundrels go to the gallows."
"Scoundrels, is it?" Victor managed a twisted smile. "Sometimes the words you know surprise me. Sometimes it's the ones you don't know."
"Did I go wrong? Is scoundrels not what they are?" Blaise asked seriously.
"Scoundrels is what they are," Victor assured him. "It's a fancy word for what they are, but not a wrong one."
"Scoundrels." Blaise said it again, with relish. "I like the sound It makes them seem like dogs."
"Like dogs?" Victor was briefly puzzled. Then he realized what the Negro had to mean. "Oh, I see. Like spaniels."
"Those dogs, yes. With the floppy ears," Blaise said. Maybe he told the joke to a printer, or maybe someone else had the same idea, for a few days later a newspaper had a front-page woodcut of several prominent men leaving the city with sorrowful expressions and big spaniel ears, let the dogs go! it said beneath the cartoon. Custis Cawthorne showed more wit-and hired more talented engravers-but Custis was in Paris these days. Artistic or not, the woodcut struck Victor as effective. That would do.
As soon as spring came, the redcoats would try to recapture Hanover. Victor was as sure of that as he was of the Resurrection and the Second Coming, and it struck him as rather more immediately urgent than either of those. He set his men to digging trenches and throwing up earthworks to keep the enemy from getting past them.
His soldiers concealed their enthusiasm for all that cold-weather pick-and-shovel work very well. The most he ever heard any of them say in its favor was a remark from one tired Atlantean to his comrade as they both piled up an earthen rampart: "Maybe all this slaving means we ain't so likely to get shot."
"Maybe." The man's friend seemed unimpressed. "But it's near as bad as if we were, eh?"
"Well…" The first soldier weighed that. Then he nodded. "Afraid so," he agreed mournfully.
But neither of them stopped working. Victor didn't mind grumbling. William the Conqueror's soldiers must have grumbled, and Augustus Caesar's, and King David's as well. As long as they did what wanted doing, they could grumble all they pleased.
Grumbling only turned dangerous when it started swallowing work.
English scouts rode down to see what Victor's men were up to. Atlantean riflemen fired at the scouts to make them keep their distance. Every so often, a rifleman would knock a scout out of the saddle. Then the others would stay farther away for a while.
Sometimes patriotic Atlanteans would sneak down from the north to tell Victor what Cornwallis' men were up to. Sometimes Victor wasn't so sure whether the Atlanteans who sneaked down from the north were patriotic or not. But he had soldiers from all over the northern settlements. States, he reminded himself. They're states now. We're states now. More often than not, he could find somebody who knew his would-be informants, either by name or by reputation.
He didn't seize the men he reckoned untrustworthy. No: he thanked them for what they told him, and then threw it on the mental rubbish heap. He sent them back to the north with as much misinformation as he could feed them. Maybe Cornwallis would realize Victor realized he was being fooled, or maybe not. The chance to confuse King George's commander seemed worth taking
As spring approached, Victor wondered whether the enemy would let him hold Hanover undisturbed till summer. He wouldn't have done that himself, but Howe and Cornwallis had already tried several things he wouldn't have done himself. Some of them had worked, too, worse luck
.
But then three reliable men in quick succession came down to warn him the redcoats were moving at last. He put men into his north-facing works. He also sent horsemen out beyond those works to shadow the English army.
Cornwallis, naturally, had his own spies. Just as patriots hurried south to warn the Atlantean army, so loyalists galloped north to tell the English what Victor Radcliff was up to. They must have given him a good report of Victor's field fortifications. Instead of trying to bull through them, Cornwallis slid around them to the west.
"He wants to fight it out in the open," Victor told a council of war. "He thinks his regulars will smash our Atlantean fanners."
The officers almost exploded with fury. He'd never heard so many variations on "We'll show him!" in his life. He got a stronger reaction than he really wanted, for he retained a solid respect for the men who filled the ranks of the English army. They were miserably paid, they were trained and handled harshly enough to make a hound turn and snap, but they were deadly dangerous with musket and bayonet to hand.
If he marched out of Hanover and lost a battle in the open field, he wasn't sure he could fall back into the city and hold on to it. And he wanted to keep Hanover-no, he had to. An Atlantean presence on the east coast was visible proof the United States of Atlantis were a going concern. Not only that: the harbor gave France a perfect place to land troops-if France ever got around to sending them.
And so Victor temporized: "First, let's see how mad we can drive him. Most of you remember how bad the mosquitoes were down in the south." He waited till the other officers nodded. Anyone who'd forgotten what the mosquitoes were like had to have an iron hide. Victor said, "I aim to make us into mosquitoes, the way we were when the war began."
"Sounds pretty, General," a captain said. "What's it mean?"
What would Cornwallis have done after a question like that? Had the luckless questioner flogged? Cornwallis was a good-natured man, as Victor had cause to know, but…Most likely, the question would never be asked in an English council. Unlike rude colonials, English junior officers knew their place.
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