United States of Atlantis a-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Being a rude colonial himself, Victor didn't drag the captain off to the whipping post. "I want to put riflemen or musketeers behind every tree and bush along the enemy's line of march. I want to capture every man of his who goes off into the bushes to answer nature's call. I want to shoot the animals hauling his cannon and supplies. Let's see how much he enjoys an enemy with whom he cannot close. Does that satisfy you, sir?"

  "Reckon so," the captain answered. "But if that's how you aim to fight, seems a shame we wasted all that time on close-order drill."

  "Wasted!" Baron von Steuben roared-actually, "Vasted!"

  " 'Bout the size of it," the captain said-he didn't seem to care whom he antagonized. "Form square! and By the right flank march! and Deploy from column to line! and I don't know what all else. This here coming up sounds like a lot more fun."

  Before the German officer could murder the man, Victor said, "We need both styles. And our men are better soldiers because they can fight like regulars as well as guerrilleros. Close-order drill improves discipline generally. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

  "Hayfoot! Strawfoot!" the captain said reminiscently. He spread his hands. "All right, General. You've got me there."

  "Good." Victor smiled. "Now let's go get the damned redcoats."

  The portly English sergeant was almost beside himself with rage when three grinning Atlanteans marched him into Victor Radcliff's presence. "Hello, Sergeant," Victor said. "What seems to be your trouble? Are you not relieved to be captured rather than killed?"

  "Relieved, sir?" The word only infuriated the sergeant more. "I was taken with my trousers down! Is that any way to fight a war?"

  "Evidently," Victor answered.

  The Atlanteans went from grinning to laughing out loud. "You should've seen him jump when old Isaiah here went and yelled, 'Hands up or we'll blow your arsehole off!' " one of them said.

  Another-Isaiah, by the way he made as if to bow-added, "He didn't just jump, neither. He went and shat them fancy breeches. Had to try and clean 'em off with some leaves he tore off a bush."

  "General!" the English sergeant cried piteously. For how many years had he made his living tormenting the redcoats luckless enough to serve under him? And a good living it had been, too, judging by that bulging belly. But now others were giving it to him, and he was finding he didn't like it so well.

  "If you sniff, General, you can still smell him," Isaiah said. "He let go, all right-damned if he didn't."

  "That will be enough of that," Victor said. "Had his men taken you, you wouldn't want them gloating afterwards."

  "God bless you, sir," the sergeant said, knuckling his forelock. "You're a gentleman, sir, you are, a merciful gentleman."

  "Huh." The third Atlantean spoke up. "A great tun like him don't deserve nobody's mercy. He's the kind who loots and murders and takes the women upstairs whether they want to go or not."

  Victor thought the soldier had made a shrewd guess. The sergeant turned the color of paste, which said a lot about how shrewd it was. "I don't know anything about any of that," he said, but he didn't sound persuasive.

  "Maybe so. Then again, maybe not," Victor said. The Englishman went paler yet; Victor hadn't thought he could. But if he was sweating like that, why not sweat something out of him? "I'm sure the sergeant does know where General Cornwallis is going and what he intends doing once he gets there."

  Not only did the sergeant know, he was pathetically eager to tell. He sang like a nightingale. Victor had heard the birds in England; while European creatures like the wild hog and the rat flourished in Atlantis, all efforts to naturalize the nightingale had failed.

  After the Englishman spewed out everything he knew, the Atlantean troopers took him away. "He runs on at both ends, seems like," Isaiah remarked.

  By then, more confident he wouldn't be murdered out of hand, the sergeant had regained some of his spirit. "If you were my man, I'd cane you for speaking of me so," he said gruffly.

  Isaiah gave him a look as cold as the blocks of ice that sometimes drifted down near North Cape in winter. "Any man lays a finger on me without my leave-a finger, mind you, let alone a cane-I'll gutshoot him. And you, your God-damned Sergeant-ship, sir, you've got a devil of a lot of gut to shoot."

  Victor smiled as the sergeant, suddenly silenced again, trudged away with his captors. Anyone who thought he could use an Atlantean as he used an Englishman was liable to get a rude surprise. This underofficer had got a whole string of them.

  And yet, quite a few Englishmen found they liked Atlantean ways once they got used to them. Maybe the sergeant would be one of those. He'd make a good drillmaster… as long as he left his cane behind.

  Redwood Hill must have held the name for a long time. No redwoods grew on it now, or for miles around. It was crowned by a rank tangle of second growth. Ferns and bushes and saplings, some Atlantis' native productions and others imported from Europe or Terranova, warred for space and sunlight.

  Redwood Hill was also crowned by an English observation post. An alert man with a spyglass up there could see for a long way. He could easily keep an army under observation.

  He might have much more trouble spotting greencoats armed with rifles as one by one they slipped through the second growth toward him. Victor hoped that would be so, and set about finding out empirically. Rifles banged, up near the hilltop. Before long, the greencoats sent a messenger down to Victor to report that Redwood Hill now lay in Atlantean hands. "We've even got the bugger's spyglass," the man reported.

  "Capital!" Victor said. The art of grinding lenses was further advanced in England than in Atlantis. "Now we shall spy upon Cornwallis, not conversely."

  Cornwallis must have foreseen that possibility, too. It pleased him less than it did Victor Radcliff. He promptly despatched a good-sized force of English regulars to dislodge the Atlanteans from the hilltop. He also sent a small troop of loyalist riflemen to match wits and weapons with the sharpshooters in green.

  When the Atlanteans found themselves hard-pressed to hold the crest of Redwood Hill, Victor sent more men forward. They drove the redcoats down the western slope of the hill… until Cornwallis fed more Englishmen into the fight.

  That meant Victor had to reinforce again or yield the crest. After he'd already done so much fighting for it, he wasn't willing to let that happen. And, plainly, the English commander wasn't willing to let him keep it.

  "I did not purpose fighting our battle here," he told Blaise. "Nor do I believe Cornwallis purposed any such thing. But this fight has taken on a life of its own."

  "It is war. It has its own purposes." The Negro spoke as if war were a live thing, and one at least as much in control of its own destiny as either of the opposing generals. Well, maybe he wasn't so far wrong. He finished, "If it wants a fight at Redwood Hill, a fight at Redwood Hill there shall be."

  Victor couldn't contradict him. A fight at Redwood Hill there was: a most cursed irregular fight, mostly because of the terrain. The Atlanteans were used to fighting from cover whenever they got the chance. They'd harried the redcoats' looping march down from the north in just that way.

  On overgrown Redwood Hill, not even the English regulars or their officers could dream of advancing in neatly dressed ranks. They made their way forward as best they could. Some came up the narrow paths that led to the top of the hill. They could move quickly, but they also exposed themselves to a galling fire from the Atlanteans lurking in the undergrowth. Others pushed through the bushes, fighting Atlantean-style themselves. That might not have been what they were used to, but they managed. Or maybe they just had a strong disinclination to retreat. It amounted to the same thing either way: a harder fight than Victor would have looked for.

  He also would have guessed that the Englishmen's red uniform jackets made them better targets. But when he inquired of a man who came back from the crest with a minor wound, the Atlantean shook his head. "Don't hardly seem to matter. What with the ferns and the shrubs and suchlike, and what with the powder smo
ke, them bastards spy us about as quick as we set eyes on them." He held up his right hand, which was missing the last joint of the fourth finger. "I never did see the English son of a bitch who done gave me this."

  "Go get it bandaged up," Victor said, and then, to one of his artillerists, "Can we get our guns up to the top of the hill?"

  "Well, General, we can try," that worthy answered. "I'm not so sure how much good it'll do, though. Doesn't seem like anybody's all drawn up in rows for us to shoot at, does it?"

  "No," Victor answered. "But send a fieldpiece up there anyhow, if you'd be so kind. Try to command the biggest path coming up from the west. If Cornwallis does seek to rush our position, that's how he'll essay it."

  The artillerist sketched a salute. "If that's what you want. General, that's what you'll get. Warm work, it's liable to be, but what can you do?" He gave his own orders to his crew. They limbered up their four-pounder and started for the crest.

  Victor hoped he hadn't sent them off to be killed. When a soldier talked about warm work, he commonly meant he didn't think he'd come back from it. But even one gun at the top of Redwood Hill might mean the difference between victory and defeat. Sometimes a general had to move the pieces across the board knowing they might be taken.

  But the analogy with chess broke down too soon. A taken chess piece went into the box to wait for the next game, where it would start out fine. A dead soldier sprawled in the dirt, waiting for a raven to flutter down and peck out his eyes. A wounded soldier, especially one hurt worse than the fellow with whom he'd talked not long before, went screaming back to the surgeons, who might spare him a swallow of whiskey and a leather strap to bite on before they started carving. He might fight again if he was lucky (unlucky?), but he would never be the same afterwards.

  And yet you would assuredly lose if you didn't place your men where some of them would get hurt or killed. If you didn't care for that unhappy certainty… you should never have tried the general's trade in the first place.

  "Rather too late to worry about that," Victor muttered. "Worry about what?" Blaise asked-the mutter hadn't been low enough.

  "About whether this cup will pass from me," Victor said. "It won't."

  "Cup?" Blaise briefly looked blank. Then his face cleared. "Oh. The Bible." He was Christian enough to observe the forms of the majority's religion. How much he truly believed, Victor often wondered. But that was between Blaise and his God, if any- not for anybody else.

  He had more urgent things to worry about than Blaise's relationship to his God, too. The rattle of musketry from the top of Redwood Hill grew fiercer and fiercer. That alarmed Victor, for he knew the redcoats could load and fire faster than his men. And then his little four-pounder boomed: once, twice. After the second shot, it fell silent.

  Why? Victor wondered-and worried. Were all the gunners dead on the field? The fight went on. It sounded as ferocious as ever. Had the fieldpiece knocked in the head of an enemy column advancing up that path from the west? Or had something else, something incalculable from back here, happened instead?

  Victor decided he had to know. He swung up onto his horse. "I'm riding up to the hilltop," he told Blaise.

  "You don't want to stop a bullet," the Negro observed.

  "Who does?" Victor said.

  Blaise exhaled sharply. "Not what I meant. Atlantis don't- doesn't-want you to stop a bullet."

  "Atlantis doesn't want me to lose this battle, either, not when I might win it by giving orders without delay from messengers rushing back and forth," Victor replied. He started to trot off toward the hill.

  "Wait!" Blaise called. Victor reined in. His not-quite-aide never sounded so imperious without good cause. Blaise mounted and came after him. "If you're going to play the fool, you should have some other fool beside you."

  "Honored." Victor tipped his tricorn.

  "Honor," Blaise said. "White men's madness." They'd gone round that barn before. Instead of starting around it again, Victor urged his horse forward with the reins and the pressure of his knees. Blaise followed. His elbows flapped as he rode. He bobbed up and down far more than a smooth horseman would have. All that might-and probably did-make better riders look down their noses at him. It didn't stop him getting from hither to yon, or even slow him much.

  Wounded men staggered and limped down the east side of Redwood Hill, bound for the surgeons. Litter-bearers carried moaning soldiers too badly hurt to get down by themselves. One of the walking wounded waved to Victor. "You should've seen 'em, General!" he called.

  "Seen whom? Seen them doing what?" Victor asked. But by then his horse had carried him past the injured Atlantean. He didn't want to slow down, even to find out more about mm, whoever they were.

  Blaise understood, as Blaise commonly did. "You'll know soon enough, one way or the other," he said. Victor nodded.

  Redwood Hill didn't look like much till you rode up it Atlantean soldiers trudging up the path toward the crest didn't seem sorry to stop for a moment and wave to their general as he went by. "Will we lick 'em?" a man asked.

  "Of course we will," Victor answered, hoping he was right But a general who let his men see he had doubts didn't deserve his epaulets. If a general doubted, how could ordinary soldiers do anything else? And soldiers who doubted weren't men who would stand fast when a general most needed them to. A general had to seem confident, even-especially-when he wasn't.

  "We still hold the crest." Blaise pointed to the line of greencoats ahead. They reloaded and fired at the enemy as fast as they could.

  "We do." Victor fought to keep surprise from his voice, too. He wanted the words to convey that he'd been sure of it all along.

  He dismounted before reaching the crest. After tying his horse to a sapling on the reverse slope, he finished the climb on foot. No point to giving the enemy a large target that shouted Here's the Atlantean general! His gaudy officer's uniform would take care of that well enough, or maybe too well.

  The field gun stood ready and waiting. Most of its crew still stood, too. It had done what Victor hoped, not what he feared. Those two rounds he'd heard, loaded with canister, had torn the heart out of an English rush toward the crest. Dead and wounded redcoats lay in heaps in front of the gun, but they'd never reached it.

  "Right warm work it was, General," said the artilleryman in charge of the piece.

  "I see," Victor said. He heard, too. Few sounds raised more sorrow and pity than the cries of men who'd been hurt. Aristotle called sorrow and pity the essence of tragedy. He must have seen his share of battlefields, too. Even in the days before villainous saltpeter, they were no place for the faint of heart.

  A musket ball cracked past his head. He and the gunner both gave it an automatic genuflection. They grinned sheepishly at each other as they straightened. Even the bravest man's flesh was less heroic than he might wish it.

  Not many unwounded Englishmen and loyalists were visible. If nothing else did, their failed charge taught them not to show themselves, not on this field. And black-powder smoke and the dust both sides had kicked up helped mask everyone's movements.

  A lieutenant held a rifle that, with its bayonet, was almost as long as he was tall. He sketched a salute. Victor returned it. At least half the time, nobody gave him proper military courtesy. A sketched salute seemed ever so much better than none. "How do we fare?" Victor enquired.

  "Well, General, we're still here on the crest. With a spot of luck, the redcoats won't be able to take it away from us."

  "Luck?" Victor didn't like the word. "We need to hold, come what may."

  "Sure enough. But I won't turn luck down, either," the rifleman said. "That field gun got to the top just at the right time, fry me for an oil thrush if it didn't. Knocked the redcoats' charge clear down to the bottom of the hill again. If it ran late, we might be down at the bottom ourselves, over on the other side." He jerked a thumb back toward the east.

  "So we might," Victor said uncomfortably. And if they were, Cornwallis would hurl the English regular
s at them again, driving them in the direction of Hanover-or maybe driving them away from Atlantis' leading city so the Union Jack could fly there once more. Amazing to think how much a couple of rounds of canister could do.

  One of these days, historians would write blow-by-blow accounts of the grand and furious Battle of Redwood Hill. Would the learned scholars and soldiers give the canister its due? Or would it fade into the general chaos of battle? Victor had been through several battles against the French Atlanteans and the French that the historians had got their hands on afterwards. The descriptions of the fights he'd read bore precious little resemblance to the fights he thought he remembered.

  Which meant… what, exactly? Even now, Victor wasn't sure. Maybe the men who'd done their best to rival Thucydides and Tacitus knew better than he did. They'd questioned men from both sides; some of them had got access to French and English and even Atlantean officers' papers-including his own. But if what they wrote differed from his memories, he didn't have to take them seriously. He didn't intend to, either.

  Three British fieldpieces unlimbered near the base of Redwood Hill. The gunners aimed them with fussy precision. Victor had never seen a muzzle pointed up so high, not even at the siege of Nouveau Redon. What he would have done for some mortars in his baggage train then! English and Atlantean long guns had tried to reach the French fortress, and hadn't had much luck. Now… "They're going to try to blow us off the crest," the lieutenant of riflemen said.

  "So they are," Victor agreed. "The next interesting question is, can they do it?" He eyed the cannon apprehensively. Somehow, a gun's bore always seemed two or three times as wide when it pointed straight at you. "They don't look to have any mortars close by, anyhow, for which I'm duly grateful. I was just thinking about that."

  "Mm-yes," the younger officer said. "I wouldn't want those nasty bursting shells coming down on my head, and that's a fact." He paused thoughtfully. "Of course, like as not the fusing'd leave somewhat to be desired."