What were the redcoats doing behind Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion? Victor knew too well what he would be doing while such an outsized forlorn hope bought him time. Without a doubt, Cornwallis’ men were doing the same thing: everything they could to hold their foes as far away from Croydon as possible.
After what seemed a very long time, the survivors from the Legion galloped back toward the town. They’d bought the redcoats—King George’s fellow subjects, they would have said—enough of that precious, impalpable substance to form a line across the neck of the peninsula on which Croydon sat. And, whether from out of the town or from their abandoned fieldworks, the Englishmen had half a dozen cannon in the line.
“Don’t like the looks of those,” Blaise said.
“Nor do I,” Victor agreed. No Atlantean artillery was anywhere close by. He didn’t think the French had brought guns forward, either. Which meant . . . We’re going to catch it, he thought sorrowfully.
The field guns spoke. Cannon balls and canister tore through the Atlanteans and Frenchmen. Two quick volleys from the dreadfully proficient foot soldiers followed. Men and pieces of men lay where they had fallen. The wounded staggered back when they could. When they couldn’t, they thrashed and wailed and clutched at hale men, hoping to be helped away from the killing fire.
They got less help than they would have wanted. The Atlanteans were proficient in the craft of slaughter themselves by now, and gave back the redcoats’ musketry as best they could. And more Frenchmen hurried forward to stiffen them should they require stiffening—and to shoot at the English any which way.
When the redcoats’ cannon spoke again, one of their balls knocked a musketeer near Victor right out of his shoes. The musketeer howled—mercifully, not for long. At the start of the war, the Atlanteans never could have endured such carnage. Now they took it in stride, as sailors took the chance of being drowned. It was a hazard of the trade, no less and no more.
Regardless of how calm and brave they were, one thing seemed only too clear to Victor. “We shan’t break into Croydon after all,” he said bitterly. “God fling Habakkuk Biddiscombe into hell for ever and ever. May Satan fry him on a red-hot griddle for all eternity, and stab him with a fork every so often to see if he’s done.”
“Maybe it is happening even now,” Blaise said. “Maybe he was killed in the fight at the front.”
“Maybe he was. If God is merciful, he was,” Victor said. “But then, if God were merciful, Biddiscombe would have died of the pox long ago.”
With no hope of seizing Croydon, Victor reluctantly pulled his men out of musket range. The English guns kept banging away at them. But, by the same token, Atlantean riflemen picked off artillerists one after another.
Victor looked back over his shoulder. They’d forced the redcoats out of their lines, forced them to give up the field fortifications on which they’d expended so much time and labor. It was a victory: no doubt of that. If it wasn’t quite the overwhelming victory he’d wanted when he set things in motion . . . well, what man this side of Alexander or Hannibal or Julius Caesar won such an overwhelming victory? For an amateur general with a formerly amateur army, he’d done pretty well.
Looking back over his shoulder also reminded him how close to sunset it was. His long-stretching shadow, and his horse’s, should have told him as much already, but he’d had other things on his mind. He wondered if he had the nerve to fight a large night action, and regretfully decided he didn’t.
“We’ll camp here,” he ordered, and then, to sweeten it as best he could, he added, “Here, on the ground we’ve won.”
De la Fayette favored him with a salute. “You accomplished almost everything you intended, Monsieur le Général,” the French nobleman said. “It is given to few to do so much for their country.”
“I thank you,” Victor replied, returning the salute. “If only I could have done a little more.”
That made the marquis smile. “A man who has much but wants more is likely to acquire it.”
“I wanted it today,” Victor said, and cursed Habakkuk Biddiscombe again.
Night brought only a nervous, halfhearted break in the hostilities. The redcoats also encamped on the field, not far out of gunshot range. Men from both sides went out to rescue the moaning wounded and plunder the silent dead—and if a few wounded were suddenly silenced in the process, so what? Englishmen and Atlanteans sometimes stumbled over one another in the darkness. They would grapple or open fire—except when both sides ran away at once.
The redcoats seemed busier than the exhausted Atlanteans. Victor didn’t need long to realize why: they were digging in in front of Croydon. Rising earthworks partly hid their fires. They would have a much shorter line to hold now, even if they would also have far fewer men with whom to hold it.
When the sun rose again, Royal Navy ships were tied up at Croydon’s piers. They were only frigates, but their guns outweighed and outranged anything the Atlanteans could bring against them. If Croydon fell, it would have to fall by siege.
XXII
“Damn the Englishmen!” Victor said when he’d ridden around the redcoats’ new lines in front of Croydon. “God butter them and Satan futter them, they dig like skinks.”
“Comment?” inquired the Marquis de la Fayette, who’d ridden the circuit with him. “Like what do they dig?”
“Like skinks,” Victor repeated. De la Fayette’s question puzzled him: the simile was common enough in Atlantis. Then he decided it might be common only in Atlantis. He cast about for a European equivalent, which he found after a moment: “Like moles, you might say.”
“Ah. I see.” The French nobleman did indeed look enlightened. But then he asked, “What are these skinks?”
“Why, lizards, of course. Peculiar lizards, though—I will say that,” Victor Radcliff answered. “They’re short and stout as lizards go. They have no eyes, but their front feet are broad and strong, and their tongues uncommonly long and clever. They dig through dirt after worms and bugs—only in summer in these northern lands, but year-around farther south, where the weather stays milder. They can be pests in gardens or on well-mown lawns, on account of the furrows they leave.”
“They do sound like moles,” de la Fayette said, “save that they are of the reptile kind rather than being furry. But has Atlantis no true moles?”
“No more than we have any other viviparous quadrupeds except bats,” Victor replied. “We have now the usual domestic beasts, and rats and mice plague our towns and houses. Deer and foxes course the woods, along with wild dogs and cats. Settlers brought all those beasts, though: this was a land of birds and scaly things before they came.”
“And yet Terranova, beyond Atlantis, has an abundance of productions much like Europe’s,” de la Fayette said. “How could this be so?”
“The first man who learns the truth there will write his name in large letters amongst those of the leading savants of his day,” Victor said. “But what that truth may be, I have not the faintest idea. I am more interested in learning how to winkle General Cornwallis out of Croydon.”
“You do not believe we can storm this line?”
“Do you?” Victor didn’t like answering a question with a question, but he wanted to find out what the Frenchman thought.
De la Fayette’s shrug held a certain eloquence. “It would be . . . difficult.”
Victor sighed. Steam puffed from his mouth and nostrils: the day was chilly. “They do have good engineers.” The new English line before Croydon took advantage of every little swell of ground. It was also far enough outside the town to keep Atlantean and French field guns from bearing on the harbor. That meant the attackers couldn’t keep the Royal Navy from resupplying Cornwallis. “Heaven only knows what kind of butcher’s bill we’ll pay to break in.”
“One larger than we should desire, without doubt,” de la Fayette said, and Victor could only nod glumly. The marquis added, “Our best course, then, appears to be to proceed by saps and parallels.”
Formal European siege warfare had had little place in Atlantis. Victor and Cornwallis had invested Nouveau Redon, but they hadn’t advanced towards it a line at a time. Cornwallis’ clever engineers had stopped the spring instead, which made the defenders abandon the town for a sally with scant hope of success.
“That will take some time,” Victor said.
“Are you urgently required elsewhere?” de la Fayette inquired.
“Well, no,” Victor admitted. “But if the English choose to reinforce their garrison while we dig, we shall have wasted considerable effort.”
“So we shall. What of it?” de la Fayette said. “We shall also have wasted considerable effort—and just as much time—if we merely encircle the English position. Better to do our utmost to force a surrender, n’est-ce pas?”
“Mm,” Victor Radcliff said. “When you put it that way—”
“How else would you have me put it?” the marquis asked.
“And, once we have demonstrated to the English commander that we are capable of making the approaches effecting a breach, how can he do anything but surrender?”
“Is that the custom in Europe?” Victor said.
“Most assuredly,” de la Fayette replied. “Continuing the battle after a breach is made would be merely a pointless effusion of blood, don’t you think?”
“If you say so,” Victor replied. If de la Fayette thought that way, Cornwallis likely would, too: they fought in the same style. Victor thought there were times when he would keep fighting as long as he had one man left who could aim a musket. But he was only an Atlantean bumpkin—in the eyes of Europeans, just a short step better than a copperskin—so what did he know?
“I do say so,” de la Fayette insisted.
“Saps and parallels, then,” Victor said, and the Frenchman nodded.
Saps and parallels were part of a soldier’s jargon. Even Victor Radcliff, who’d never used them or even seen them used, knew of them. And they were always mentioned that way: always saps and parallels, never parallels and saps.
In the field, though, the parallel always came first. People could argue about the chicken and the egg, but not about the sap and the parallel. One evening, under the profane direction of their engineers, French soldiers began digging a trench aligned with the stretch of enemy works the army would eventually assail. That was how the parallel got its name.
The Frenchmen threw up the dirt they excavated on the side where it would protect them from English fire. At that range—four or five hundred yards—only a lucky shot could hit anyone, but the game had its rules. And, when the redcoats realized what was going on, so many shots would fly through the air that some were bound to be lucky.
Realization came at sunrise the next morning. Cornwallis knew the same tricks as de la Fayette. They might have sprung from different kingdoms, but it was as if they’d attended the same college. As soon as Cornwallis saw that growing parapet protecting the first parallel, he did what any other commanding officer in his unpleasant position would have done: he started shooting at it with everything he could bring to bear.
Musketeers banged away. By the lead they expended, they might have been mining the stuff under Croydon. Most of the bullets either fell short or thumped into the dirt of the parapet. A few, more likely by luck than by design, just got over the top of the parapet and into the trench it warded. Wounded men went howling back toward the surgeons. One unfortunate fellow caught a musket ball in the side of the head and simply fell over, dead before he hit the ground.
English field guns also opened up on the parallel. The parapet swallowed some cannon balls, but others got through. Some skipped harmlessly between soldiers. That was uncommon luck; a cannon ball could knock down three or four men, and too often did.
Cornwallis stayed busy back in Croydon, too. His men soon found or made mortars, as the Atlanteans had outside of Hanover. Mortars had no trouble at all throwing their shells over the parapet and down into the parallel. At least as often as not, that didn’t matter. English fuses were as unreliable as the ones Victor Radcliff’s artillerists used. Sometimes the mortar bombs burst in the air. Very often, they failed to burst at all.
Every once in a while, though, everything would go as the artillerists wished it would all the time. Then the shell would go off just when the gunners had in mind, and the exploding powder would work a fearful slaughter. But it didn’t happen often enough to keep men out of the trench.
When the first parallel got long enough to satisfy de la Fayette’s engineers, they—or rather, French soldiers (and now Atlanteans with them)—began digging a zigzag trench toward the English outworks: a sap. Because of the way the sap ran, it was harder to protect than the parallel had been. More mangled men went off to the surgeons. Some would get better after their ministrations—although a good many of those, no doubt, would have got better without those ministrations. Others would get wounds that festered, and would slowly and painfully waste away. So war was; so war had always been; so, as far as Victor Radcliff could tell, war would ever be.
“Are the redcoats likely to sally?” Victor asked as the sap snaked closer to the enemy line.
“I don’t think so, not yet,” de la Fayette answered. “Look how much open ground they would have to cross before they could interrupt us. Our musketeers and your fine riflemen and the cannon would slaughter too many of them to make it worthwhile. When we draw closer . . . That may prove a different story.”
Victor grunted. Like so many things de la Fayette said, the Frenchman’s explanation made such good sense, Victor wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. Of course Cornwallis would wait till they’d dug another parallel or two before trying to disrupt the excavations with his foot soldiers. Victor would have done the same thing himself.
He rode back to a high point so he could survey Croydon and his harbor with his spyglass. The Royal Navy frigates were gone, but several tubby merchantmen had taken their place. Tiny in the distance even through his lenses, stevedores carried sacks of grain off the ships and into the town. Victor swore under his breath. Atlanteans and Frenchmen would have to break through the defenses in front of Croydon, for they would never starve the redcoats out.
“No big guns there, then. No nasty warships, neither,” Blaise said when Victor gave him that bit of intelligence. He added, “Where did the Royal Navy go? When will it come back?”
“If I knew, I would tell you,” Victor replied. “And, if you are about to ask me why the frigates set sail, I also know that not.”
Blaise chuckled. “I could have done that well myself.”
“So could any man here,” Victor said. “Perchance, those frigates may return. Or first-rate ships of the line may take their place. Or, then again, the English may prove content with wallowing scows like the ones now tied up in Croydon. They give Cornwallis and his redcoats their necessary victuals and, no doubt, a copious supply of powder and lead.”
“They have been shooting enough of it,” Blaise agreed.
“Too much!” Victor said. “Damn me if they have not. Well, we did not think this war would be easy when we began it. Most Atlanteans, I daresay, failed to believe we could win it.”
“You did not always believe that yourself,” Blaise reminded him. “You went around preaching that we must not lose, that so long as we stayed in the fight England would tire of it sooner or later.”
“I did?” Victor Radcliff had to think back to what now seemed very distant days indeed. After a sheepish chuckle, he found himself nodding. “I did, sure enough. It may yet come to that, you know. Even if we beat them here, the English can mount another invasion—if they have the will to attempt it.”
“What if they do?” the Negro asked.
Victor shrugged. “We fight on. We stay in the field. We refuse to own ourselves beaten, come what may. You see? The same song I sang before. We Radcliffs are a stubborn clan, say whatever else you will of us.”
“Then you need someone stubborn enough to stay beside you,”
Blaise said, and tapped the chevrons on his arm. Smiling, Victor slapped him on the back.
The second parallel. As before, the soil went up on the side facing Croydon’s defenses. This trench being closer to the redcoats’ works, the Frenchmen and Atlanteans who manned it took more casualties. The English artillerists got as good with their mortars as anyone could with those balky weapons. The besiegers dug shelters into the sides of the trench, and dove into them when the shells came hissing down.
Then it rained—not so hard as it had on the day when Victor’s attack went awry, but hard enough. The rain softened the dirt, which should have made digging easier . . . but who wanted to dig when he sank ankle-deep in mud if he tried? The parapet in front of the trench displayed an alarming tendency to sag, too.
Firing from the English trenches slackened, but it didn’t stop. The redcoats had had plenty of time to strengthen their works while their foes dug. Some of their men fired from shelters adequate to keep their powder dry. Some of their mortars still tossed hate into the air.
One shell splashed down into a puddle that doused its fuse. “Drown, you son of a bitch!” shouted the closest Atlantean infantryman. Within a day, half the Atlanteans were telling the story. So were a quarter of de la Fayette’s French soldiers—it was easy enough to translate.
The rain changed to sleet, and the sleet changed to snow. The ground went from too soft to work with conveniently to too hard to work with conveniently, all in the space of a couple of days. Atlanteans and Frenchmen shivered in huts and tents. No doubt the redcoats were chilly, too, but they had Croydon’s snug houses in which to lodge.
Watching smoke rise from chimneys in town, Victor said, “Sooner or later, they’ll run short of firewood.”
“Soon enough to do us any good?” Blaise asked.
“I don’t know,” Victor admitted. “How much wood did they have before the siege began? How cold will the winter be? How many of the Croydonites’ chattels will the redcoats burn to keep from coming down with chilblains?”
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