“I should hate to impose such terms on the illustrious members of the Atlantean Assembly, however tempting that might be,” Victor said. Fenner grunted laughter. Victor added, “Do tell him. I don’t want him haring out of town and risking his freedom for nothing.”
“I shall do that.” Fenner glanced off to the northwest, where General Howe’s redcoats hung over New Hastings like a rain-filled thunderhead. “And I trust that, if the need for us to hare out of town should arise, you will tell us in good time so we can tend to it without undue difficulty.”
“You have my word,” Victor said. He wouldn’t have minded if the Englishmen caught and hanged a few Atlantean Assemblymen. Nor would he have been surprised if Fenner also had a list of men he reckoned expendable. Comparing the two—and, say, Custis Cawthorne’s—might have been interesting, to say nothing of entertaining. After the war is won, Victor told himself.
He smiled to himself. Doing anything at all after the war was won would be very fine.
Maybe rumors of disease in New Hastings gave the redcoats pause. Maybe Howe would have gone after Bredestown any which way. The English commander seemed to like moving inland and then turning back toward the coast.
Word of the deployment toward Bredestown reached Isaac Fenner as soon as it reached Victor Radcliff. That was no great surprise: Fenner came from Bredestown, and people from the threatened city naturally appealed to the man who represented them.
Fenner came to the camp outside of New Hastings to confer with Victor. “Can you save Bredestown from the tyrant’s troops?” he asked.
“I’m . . . not sure,” Victor said slowly. “Even by trying to do so, I risk losing that town and New Hastings both.”
“In what way?” Fenner asked, his tone leaving no doubt that anything Victor said would be used against him.
Sighing, Victor answered, “That Royal Navy flotilla still lies offshore. If we march up the Brede toward Bredestown, the enemy is bound to learn of it. What save the fictitious fear of the yellow jack then prevents him from landing a force of bullocks and sailors and seizing New Hastings before we can return? If the seaside forts fall, as they may well from a landward assault, nothing hinders the English warships from adding their weight of metal to the small arms the marines and sailors will have to hand. Under these circumstances, I fear nihil obstat, to use the Popish phrase.”
“If we were to save Bredestown from the redcoats . . .” Like a lot of men from the city up the Brede, Fenner thought it was at least as important as New Hastings. Few people not Bredestown born and bred shared that opinion.
Victor didn’t. Instead of coming out and saying so, which would have affronted the speaker of the Atlantean Assembly, he replied, “We have no assurance of holding Bredestown even with all our forces collected in it. And I would rather not do that if I can find any alternative.”
“Why not?” Fenner asked sharply.
“Because it lies on the north bank of the Brede,” Victor said. “I have never yet seen a manual of strategy advocating taking a position on a riverbank if there is danger of being pushed back, which would be the case there.”
“What difference does it make?” Fenner said. “Several bridges span the stream at Bredestown.”
“No doubt, sir. But if we have to try to cross them in a hasty retreat, under fire from the enemy’s guns . . .” Victor’s shudder was altogether unfeigned. “Meaning no disrespect, but I would prefer not to have to essay that.”
“Would you prefer Bredestown to fall into the blood-dripping hands of King George’s butchers, then?” Isaac Fenner’s voice and the temperature of his rhetoric both rose dramatically, as if he were making a closing argument in a court of law.
That didn’t impress Victor Radcliff. “I know who the enemy is,” he said. “I surely fought alongside a good many of the redcoats now opposing us when we conquered French Atlantis. They are not fiends in human form—although I may have to qualify that opinion if they import certain copper-skinned mercenary bands from Terranova.”
“Do you suppose they would?” Fenner asked anxiously.
“If they use mercenaries at all, I think them more likely to bring in German troops: Braunschweigers and Hessians and the like. Germans are better disciplined and better armed.” Victor paused. “On the other hand, copperskins cost less. That will matter to his Majesty’s skinflint ministers, even if not so much to him.”
“Confound it!” Fenner said. “You are telling me Bredestown will fall, and we can do damn all to stop that. If we can’t beat the damned Englishmen, why did we go to war against them?”
“Because the other choice was submitting to tyranny and oppression,” Victor said.
“It looks as though we must submit to them anyhow,” Fenner said.
“You gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly determined to take arms against King George. You summoned me from a peaceful life as farmer and author to lead them,” Victor said. “If now you repent of your determination or you would sooner have some other commander, you need but say the word. I assure you, I will return without complaint and without regret to the life that late I led.”
“We entrusted you with command on the belief that you would lead our troops to victory against the redcoats,” Fenner said. “Instead, we have suffered two sanguinary defeats. We face the loss of Bredestown. The safety even of New Hastings is far from assured.”
“Your Excellency, I will say two things in response to that.” Victor Radcliff ticked them off on his fingers: “First, I strongly believe General Howe’s victories to have been far more bloody than our defeats. He held the ground after both encounters, but paid a high price for it. And second, sir, mark this and mark it well—the only assured safety’s in the grave. Anything this side of it is subject to time and chance.”
The speaker of the Atlantean Assembly sniffed loudly. “If you made as good a general as you do a philosopher, Mr. Radcliff, I would face the coming struggle with the utmost confidence.”
“I, on the other hand, knowing my limits as a philosopher, would face it with trepidation verging on terror,” Victor replied.
“Your limits as a general are what concern me,” Isaac Fenner said. “We cannot simply abandon Bredestown to the redcoats. The Atlantean Assembly deplores the moral effect such an abandonment would have on Atlanteans and on Terranovans and Europeans favorable to our cause.”
“For the reasons I just outlined to you, your Excellency, holding it seems unlikely, and all the more so unless you intend to risk New Hastings,” Victor said. “Or has the Assembly some clever stratagem in mind by which both towns may be preserved in our hands?”
“We hope and trust, sir, that you are the repository of such stratagems,” Fenner answered. He scratched his chin, then leaned close to Victor. “May I rely on your discretion here?”
“If you may not, sir, you chose the wrong general.”
Fenner grunted. “A point—a distinct point. Very well, then. This is for your ears and your ears alone, do you understand?”
“Say on,” Victor told him.
“If Bredestown must be lost, then it must.” Fenner looked like a man with something sour in his mouth. Visibly pulling himself together, he continued, “But Bredestown must not be seen to be cravenly lost. We must not appear incapable of fighting for it even if we prove incapable of holding it. Does that make any sense to you at all, General?”
“Whatever our weaknesses may be, you do not care to advertise them to the world,” Victor said slowly.
“That is the nub of it, yes.” Isaac Fenner sounded relieved. Victor got the feeling that, had he failed to divine it, he would have returned to the retirement of which he’d spoken. The head of the Atlantean Assembly went on, “So—can you bloody Howe’s men before you pull away?”
“I can try, sir,” Radcliff answered.
“That is my home, you know. I shall rely upon you to make them pay a high price for it,” Fenner said.
“I’ll do what I can, sir,” Victor said. That satisfied
Fenner, which was fortunate, because Victor knew (whether the speaker did or not) he’d promised nothing.
Bredestown lay twenty miles up the river from New Hastings. Victor thought it was the second-oldest English settlement in Atlantis, but wasn’t quite sure—Freetown might have been older. He knew some restless Radcliffe had founded it. In those long-vanished days, twenty miles inland were plenty to get away from your neighbors. If only that were still true now!
Victor marched his field artillery, his riflemen, and a regiment’s worth of musketeers up the Brede from New Hastings. He left the rest of his force behind to make the Royal Navy think twice about landing marines. The enemy admiral wouldn’t be sure he hadn’t left the whole army behind. The enemy general wouldn’t be sure he hadn’t brought everyone along. Neither of them would be able to talk to the other, not quickly or conveniently. And so, taking advantage of their uncertainty, Victor could do what Isaac Fenner wanted.
Whether that was a good idea . . . he’d find out.
As the redcoats advanced on Bredestown, riflemen harassed them from trees alongside the road. Victor made sure all the snipers he sent forward wore the green coats that marked uniformed Atlantean rebels. General Howe had started hanging snipers captured in ordinary coats. He’d sent the Atlanteans a polite warning that he intended to treat such men as francs-tireurs. Victor’s protest that not all Atlanteans could afford uniforms and that green coats were in short supply fell on deaf ears.
Under the laws of war, Howe was within his rights to do as he did. And Victor knew some of the snipers were plucky amateurs, not under his command or anyone else’s but their own. He also knew hanging them was more likely to make Atlanteans hate England than to make them cower in fear. If General Howe couldn’t see that for himself, he watered the rebellion with the blood of patriots. The more he did, the more it would grow.
The redcoats came on despite the snipers. The riflemen who obeyed Victor Radcliff’s orders fell back into Bredestown. They went on banging away at the enemy from the houses on the northern outskirts of town. If the Atlantean Assembly wanted Victor to fight for Bredestown, he would do his best to oblige that august conclave.
General Howe went on learning from some of his earlier battles. He didn’t send his men against Bredestown in neat rows, but in smaller, more flexible storming parties. If this is the game you’re playing, he seemed to say, I can play, too.
And so he could . . . up to a point. But Victor had posted more riflemen in some of the houses closer to the Brede. As the redcoats pushed deeper into Bredestown after cleaning out the first few houses there, they got stung again.
English field guns unlimbered. A couple of them set up too close to their targets. Riflemen started picking off the gunners before the cannon could fire. The redcoats hastily dragged the guns farther away.
Cannon balls could knock houses down. A roundshot smashing into a wall sounded like a pot dropped on cobbles. Through his spyglass, Victor watched the redcoats cut capers when their artillerymen made a good shot. After a while, the riflemen fell silent.
That had to be what General Howe was waiting for. Satisfied he’d beaten down the opposition, he finally formed his men in neat lines and marched them into Bredestown.
Closer and closer they came. At Victor’s orders, the surviving riflemen—a larger fraction than Howe would have guessed—held their fire. He wanted the redcoats to draw near. General Howe might have learned something from his earlier fights, but he hadn’t learned enough.
Several houses in Bredestown concealed not riflemen but the meager Atlantean field artillery. The guns were double-shotted with canister. Half a dozen musketeers standing near Victor fired in the air to signal the field guns to shoot.
They roared as near simultaneously as made no difference. The blasts of lead balls tore half a dozen great gaps in the English lines. Even from close to half a mile away, Victor heard the screams and moans of the wounded and dying.
He’d hoped such a disaster would give the redcoats pause. He knew it would have given him pause. But he’d reckoned without the English soldiers’ doggedness. They stepped over their dead and injured comrades, re-formed their lines, and trudged forward once more.
Two or three of the Atlantean guns fired again. Fresh holes opened in the ranks of General Howe’s men. Again, the redcoats re-formed. Again, they came on. Teams of horses pulled some of the field guns back toward the Brede. Victor realized he would lose the rest—and lost guns were an almost infallible mark of a lost battle.
“Dammit, I didn’t intend to win this one,” Victor muttered. But he hadn’t intended to lose cannon, either.
“What’s that, sir?” Blaise asked.
“Nothing,” Victor said, which wasn’t quite true. Up till now, everything had gone the way he’d planned it. The field guns had taken such a toll among the redcoats, he’d started to hope they would cave in. If you let your hopes take wing like that, you commonly ended up sorry afterwards.
Victor did, in short order. His riflemen and musketeers fought from house to house, but they were outnumbered. And, he discovered, the redcoats didn’t seem inclined to take prisoners in this fight. Anyone they caught, they shot or bayoneted. He didn’t like the reports he got on that, but he also didn’t know what he could do about it.
Some of the smoke that rose from Bredestown had the fireworks smell of black powder. More and more, though, brought a fireplace to mind. Dry timber was burning. How much of Bredestown would be left by the time the fight for the place was over?
A runner came back to him. “Colonel Whiting’s compliments, sir,” the man panted, “but he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to hold his position. The redcoats are pressing pretty hard.”
When Dominic Whiting said the enemy was pressing pretty hard, any other officer would have reported disaster some time earlier. From what Victor had seen, Whiting liked his rum, but he also liked to fight. Not only that, he was good at it, which not all aggressive men were.
“My compliments to the colonel, and tell him he’s done his duty,” Victor said. “I don’t want him getting cut off. He is to retreat to the bridges over the Brede. Tell him that very plainly, and tell him it is an order from his superior.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll make sure he understands.” The runner sketched a salute and hurried away.
Victor Radcliff sighed. When General Howe told one of his subordinates to do something, he could be confident the man would jolly well do it. Discipline in the English army wasn’t just a matter of privates blindly obeying their sergeants. It ran up the whole chain of command.
An Atlantean officer would obey his superior . . . if he happened to feel like it, if he thought obeying looked like a good idea, if Saturn aligned with Jupiter and Mars was in the fourth house. He wouldn’t do it simply because he’d got an order. If Atlanteans didn’t love freedom and individualism, they never would have risen against King George. They wanted to go on doing as they pleased, not as someone on the other side of the ocean wanted them to do. A lot of the time, they didn’t want to do as someone on this side of the ocean wanted them to do, either.
How were you supposed to command an army full of dedicated freethinkers, anyway? Carefully, Victor thought. It would have been funny—well, funnier—if it didn’t hold so much truth. You could tell a redcoat what to do. He’d do it, or die trying. If an Atlantean didn’t see a good reason for an order, he’d tell you to go to hell.
To Victor’s relief, Dominic Whiting did see a reason for the order to fall back. So did his subordinate commanders. If he couldn’t get his majors and captains to obey, he had as much trouble as Victor did with him. The order to retreat must have looked like a good idea to everybody—one more proof that Howe’s men were pressing Whiting hard.
An old man leaning on a stick came up to Victor. “Look what they’ve done to our town!” he shouted in a mushy voice that proclaimed he’d lost most of his teeth.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Victor said. The old man cupped his left hand b
ehind his ear. Victor said it again, louder this time.
“Sorry? Sorry! Why didn’t you stay away from Bredestown, then?” the graybeard said. “They would have, too, and everything would have been fine.”
Things didn’t work that way, no matter how much Victor wished they did. Explaining as much to the old man struck him as more trouble than it was worth. And he had other things to worry about. He’d picked troops to get his men back over the bridges in good order. The retreating soldiers didn’t want to listen to them. Atlanteans seldom wanted to listen to anybody—one more demonstration of the thought that had occurred to him not long before.
He had hoped to have a cannon firing across every bridge to make sure English soldiers couldn’t swarm after his own men. Losing some of the guns at the north end of Bredestown ruined that scheme. He posted three- and six-pounders where he could, and squads of musketeers where he had no guns.
The redcoats didn’t push toward the bridges with great élan. They might have suspected he had something nasty waiting for them. Again, he’d lost the battle but mauled the enemy while he was doing it. He had, he supposed, met Isaac Fenner’s requirements.
Once all the Atlantean soldiers made it to the Brede’s south bank, Victor dealt with the bridges. Gunpowder charges blew gaps in a couple of stone spans. His men poured tubs of grease on the wooden bridges and set them afire. Without boats, General Howe’s troops wouldn’t cross here. The closest ford was another twenty miles upstream. He sent a detachment to hold it for a while.
“Well,” he said to no one in particular, “we did what we came here to do.” He would have felt happier about things if the moans of the wounded didn’t make him wonder if it was all worthwhile.
VI
General Howe’s army did not pursue Victor’s as the Atlanteans fell back toward New Hastings. The redcoats seemed content—for the moment—with Bredestown. Victor Radcliff was not content to yield it to them. His men had fought well, but, again, not well enough.
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