Opening Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  All of which left him some unpalatable choices. He could swing far inland, the drawback being that most of what was worth having lay close by the coast. Or he could turn around and retreat. He didn’t want to do that; it would only give the regulars from France the chance to mock him and take over from him.

  The best thing he could think of was staying where he was till the regulars caught up with him. He hadn’t cared to do that before—he’d thought he could just walk into Freetown and present them with a fait accompli. Well, it wouldn’t happen now, no matter how much he wished it would.

  “If you will forgive me, Monsieur, you run a curious campaign,” a sergeant told him. “Part of the time, you are more cautious than you need to be. The rest, you attack like a madman.”

  “If I think I can win, I will fight,” Roland replied. “If I don’t, I won’t. What is so curious about that?”

  “It could be that you push too hard when you push. It could also be that you don’t push too hard when you don’t push, if you take my meaning.” The sergeant was not too young and not too skinny. Roland couldn’t blight his military career; outside of this expedition, he had none. He was bound to be a baker or a miller or a carpenter or something else respectable: a solid tradesman who knew how to lead because he did it every day. And if he felt like speaking his mind, he would go ahead and do it.

  Roland did him the courtesy of taking him seriously. “Maybe you’re right. I can’t prove you’re not. But even if you are, wouldn’t you rather have a commander like me than one who doesn’t push when he should?”

  “Hmm.” The sergeant considered that as carefully as he would have considered an offer for an upholstered chair. “Well, you’ve got something there, sir—no doubt about it. How much you’ve got…we’ll just have to see.”

  “They aren’t coming, sir,” the scout reported.

  “Damnation!” Victor Radcliff said feelingly.

  “Sorry, sir,” the rider said. “They pulled back out of range of our earthworks, and they’re strengthening a position of their own.”

  “Oh, too bad,” Victor said. He’d hoped to lead the invaders into temptation and then trap them the way they’d trapped Braddock and the redcoats. The French settlers’ commander had seemed so intrepid. Why wasn’t he intrepid enough to stick his head in the noose?

  “I thought we’d poked and prodded them enough so they’d do something stupid, too,” the scout said. “Guess I was wrong, though.”

  That the scout was wrong was one thing. That Victor Radcliff turned out to be wrong was something else again. It had much more important consequences. He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “He must be waiting for the French regulars to come up. Then he’ll burst out of his fieldworks like an abscess and infect the whole damned countryside.”

  The scout pulled a face. “You’ve got a gift for the revolting phrase, don’t you—uh, sir?” The polite addition was plainly an afterthought. “May the Frenchies do him as much good as Braddock did us.”

  “Naughty, naughty.” Victor’s reproof was also insincere. “King George did everything he knew how to do for us.”

  “Did everything he knew how to do to us, don’t you mean?” the scout said. When Major Radcliff declined to rise to the bait (what went through his mind was Amazing how I think like a fisherman, even though my line hasn’t gone to sea for a while), the man sighed and tried a new tack (and again!): “Well, if the froggy buggers won’t come out and play, what do we do then?”

  “Have to think about that,” Victor answered. “Have to talk with the senior English officer, too.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Charlie. A lot he’ll know.” By his accent, the scout was a New Hastings man, and so especially likely to look down his nose at officials from the mother country. By his sarcastic tone, and by his casual use of the lieutenant-colonel’s given name, he lived up to—or down to—all the things people said about New Hastings men.

  Grinning, Radcliff made as if to push him away. “Go on, be off with you,” he said, for all the world as if he were an Irishman himself.

  Blaise had been quietly standing not far away. Sometimes people called him “Major Radcliff’s shadow.” He wasn’t quite black enough to fill that role, but he came close. The scout hadn’t hesitated to speak in his presence. Nobody did, not any more. “What will you do?” he asked Victor.

  “What I said I’d do,” Victor replied. “I’ll talk to the lieutenant-colonel, and we’ll decide together.”

  “And if you don’t like his ideas?”

  Victor shrugged. “He’s senior to me—but I may be able to get around that.”

  “I hope so, sir,” Blaise said.

  “Oh, there are ways.” Victor didn’t go into detail. He didn’t know what the details were, not yet. But he knew there would be ways. If you were determined enough, you could always find them.

  When he approached the young English lieutenant-colonel (Don’t think of him as Charlie, or else you’ll call him that, and then the sky will fall, Victor told himself), that worthy said, “As I see things, Major, we have two choices. We can wait for the French regulars to join the settlers and then receive them on ground of our choosing. Or we can try to defeat the settlers before the regulars arrive, the disadvantage being that we should have to move against their fortified position. Does that seem to you an accurate summation?”

  “Those are two things we can do, certainly, sir,” Radcliff replied. “I can think of others that might serve us better.”

  “Can you indeed?” The English officer raised an elegant eyebrow. He’d have a title of nobility one day, if he didn’t already. “Would you be so good as to expatiate on them?”

  As to what? Victor wondered. He was damned if he’d inquire, though. And he thought he knew what the Englishman had to mean. “We could send a raiding party into French territory by land through the backwoods,” he said. “That way, we’d make the enemy dance to our tune instead of dancing to theirs.”

  “And who would command such a party?” the lieutenant-colonel asked. “You?”

  “If you like, sir,” Victor said. “I have done a lot of exploring in the interior. I know I could find plenty of men who wouldn’t starve in the woods.”

  “Very well. That’s one thing,” the Englishman said. “You told me there were others, so I presume you have at least one more in mind.”

  “I do, sir,” Victor Radcliff agreed. “We could take boats and land down the coast in French territory, do our raiding, and then either come back the way we went or go into the interior, depending on which seemed best.”

  The English officer studied him. “Again, I presume you would command this mission?”

  “I’m suited for it. I don’t know anyone who has a better chance of making it work,” Victor said.

  “Which would you do if you had the choice?”

  “I believe I’d go in by land, sir,” Victor said. “That way, we start giving the enemy a hard time all the sooner.”

  “You wouldn’t take so large a party as to hurt our chances of defending against the French here?”

  “Oh, heavens, no, sir! We couldn’t victual that kind of party, anyhow,” Victor said. “A relative handful of men, moving swiftly and raising havoc—that’s what I’ve got in mind.”

  “I see.” The lieutenant-colonel nodded. “Well, why don’t you recruit such a party and set it in motion? I think you will do the French some harm with it, and I also suspect you won’t be sorry to have me out of your hair.” He gave the Atlantean a crooked grin.

  Victor Radcliff grinned back. “That cuts both ways, unless I’m sadly mistaken. You won’t be sorry I’m not nagging you any more.”

  “Who, me?” The English officer gave back a look of exaggerated innocence. “Ah, if only we were on the same side!” They both laughed. Radcliff stuck out his hand. The lieutenant-colonel took it. What began as a clasp ended up a trial of strength. They were still laughing when they broke it off, neither sure who had won or if anybody had.

  Wha
tever Roland Kersauzon had been expecting in a French general, Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm-Gozon, wasn’t it. He had fair, curly hair, blue eyes, a cupid’s-bow mouth, and the beginnings of a double chin. He also had an illustrious pedigree on both sides of his family. With shortcomings like those, Roland should have hated him on sight.

  He should have, but he didn’t. Despite the marquis’ failings of appearance and birth, two things were plain. He was an honest man: if he weren’t, he wouldn’t have been a soldier, and he wouldn’t have let himself get sent to Atlantis. And he was a soldier, all the way down to the tips of his elegantly manicured fingers.

  “You did well to beat them once,” he told Roland. “Pitting raw troops against regulars is a dangerous business, but you got by with it. Now there are regulars on your side as well. We should take advantage of it.”

  “Oui, Monsieur,” was all Roland could manage, as if he were a raw recruit himself. A general from the mother country who actually wanted to fight! No, Roland hadn’t expected that. Oh, Braddock had wanted to fight, but he’d made a hash of it. Kersauzon didn’t think this much younger Frenchman would.

  “We’d better win soon,” Montcalm-Gozon added. “If we don’t, I doubt we shall win later. The trouble we had getting men across the sea once…I doubt we’ll try it again. If we do, I doubt we’ll succeed. The English are alert now. They have more ships than we do, and better sailors. They can bring more soldiers to Atlantis any time they choose. We are not so lucky.”

  “They have more settlers, too,” Roland said. “It seems strange, and most unfair. France is a larger country than England. But England has more ships and more folk who want to live here. Where is the justice in that, I ask you?”

  “France is more sufficient unto herself than England,” said the general from the mother country. “England needs to draw more things from the sea, and from across the sea. And her poor peasants come here or go to Terranova to find something better than they have at home. Try to convince a French peasant that there is anything better than what he has at home. He will laugh in your face for your trouble.”

  “It is a pity,” Roland said.

  “Many things are,” Montcalm-Gozon agreed. “Now—I understand a fieldwork ahead troubles your line of advance. I should like to go forward with you and reconnoiter, if you don’t mind.”

  “But of course, Monsieur.” To say anything else would have left Kersauzon open to an imputation of cowardice. “May I offer one suggestion first?”

  “I would be delighted to hear it.”

  “Put on the habiliments of a common soldier. Drawing attention to yourself without reason is the height of foolishness, and some of the riflemen in this fort can hit a target at a startling range.”

  The marquis frowned. “I mislike doing such a thing. After all, I am who I am. Do you intend to do the same?”

  “I do. It is not lack of courage that provokes me, Monsieur. But I do not care to entrust the campaign to my second-in-command. If you feel otherwise…Well, in that case you will do as you please.”

  They approached the makeshift earthwork in ordinary clothes. Louis-Joseph proved a fine horseman. Roland might have known he would. The nobleman eyed the countryside with keen interest. “Such curious plants! My botanical friends in Paris would be most intrigued.”

  “I believe it, your Excellency,” Roland replied. “I have heard that the natural productions of Terranova are more like Europe’s than are those of Atlantis.”

  “I have heard the same,” Montcalm-Gozon said. “I believed it before I came here. Now I am convinced of it.”

  “I wonder why it should be so. Terranova is farther from Europe than Atlantis is,” Roland said.

  The marquis shrugged. “You ask the wrong man. Perhaps the savants I mentioned might find an explanation for you. Me myself, however? No, I regret to say. I am but a simple soldier.”

  A soldier he was, indubitably. Simple? Roland Kersauzon smiled to himself. He’d heard men mock themselves before. He knew the peril of taking one of them seriously when he did.

  Montcalm-Gozon would have ridden right up to the fort if a musketeer inside hadn’t fired a warning shot in his direction. That was only a smoothbore piece, and didn’t come particularly close. It did say the green-coated men inside would pay more attention if the French officers didn’t desist.

  “Well sited, well made,” Montcalm-Gozon murmured, more than half to himself. “Yes, I can see that it would be an obstacle.”

  “How do we get around—or get through?” Roland asked.

  “They seem light on artillery,” the French general replied. “If we cannonade them, it could be that soldiers might break in under cover of the bombardment. It seems to me worth a try, in any case. My own artillery train is considerably more extensive than yours.”

  “Let’s prepare, then.” Roland Kersauzon was glad French regulars would share the butcher’s bill with his men. It would be high if things went wrong. He caught motion from the corner of his eye. “A messenger! I wonder what he wants.”

  He didn’t wonder long. The man delivered his news in a staccato burst: “The damned English have sent a raiding party—or maybe an army—over the border to the west. They are stealing and burning and committing God only knows what other outrages besides.”

  Roland swore. So did Montcalm-Gozon. Expecting the English to sit around waiting for trouble would not do. They wanted to go out and cause it instead. Now locals and regulars had to figure out what to do about that.

  XX

  War was wicked and evil and woeful. So the Good Book insisted. War brought pain and misery and suffering. So anyone with an eye to see could tell. War ruined hopes and buried young men and sent years of patient toil up in smoke.

  And when everything that went up in smoke belonged to the enemy, when he hurt and was miserable and suffered, war could be a devil of a lot of fun. So Victor Radcliff discovered as his band of brigands swooped down on one plantation after another.

  No border guards tried to keep them out of the French settlements in Atlantis. Maybe there were guards farther east, but not where he broke in. It wasn’t far from the place where he and Blaise and the two copperskins from Terranova had escaped the untender welcome of the French settlers. Victor wondered what had happened to the Frenchmen who’d been here then. They were probably with the army south of Freetown.

  “Your old master anywhere around here?” he asked Blaise.

  The Negro shook his head. “No, sir. Farther south.”

  “We’re far enough south already. Too far, by God,” a raider said, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve. By his accent, he came from Croydon or one of the other towns north of Hanover. No, he wouldn’t be used to weather like this, especially not in November. Ferns here sprouted from the sides of stone fences—sometimes from the sides of stone buildings. Barrel trees grew in abundant profusion. Lizards as long as a man’s leg scurried through the undergrowth. Some of the snakes were big enough to eat men.

  And Victor asked, “Are there crocodiles in the rivers down where you were?”

  “Oh, yes.” Blaise nodded matter-of-factly. “But crocodiles in Africa, too. Be careful, mostly no trouble.”

  “Mostly?” The man who came from somewhere near Croydon didn’t sound reassured.

  “Life is life,” Blaise said with a shrug. “Mostly no trouble as good as it gets. The French now, they has mostly got trouble.”

  His grammar stumbled—on purpose?—but he wasn’t wrong. Barns and plantation houses went up in flames. The raiders hadn’t come to set black and copperskinned slaves free, but they didn’t stop them from plundering and taking off for the north.

  “Why do you do this?” an old woman asked Victor as a stately home where her family might have lived for generations burned to the ground. “Have I ever done anything to you, Monsieur?”

  He bowed. “By no means. But an army of French settlers—and, by now, I daresay, French regulars as well—has invaded lands that belong to my king and my
countrymen. Shall we let them get by with that without repaying it where and as we can?”

  “Go fight these other soldiers, then. They have wronged you, it could be. I have done you no harm.” The old woman started to cry. “Ruins! Everything ruins!”

  Victor didn’t know whether the redcoats and English settlers below Freetown were strong enough to fight the French straight up. He knew the force he commanded wasn’t strong enough to do anything of the sort. But he knew some other things, too. “If we make your settlements howl,” he said, “your generals will have to leave the land they invaded and come back to defend their own.”

  “What good does that do me?” the woman howled as the roof on the house collapsed in a shower of sparks.

  It did her no good at all, as Victor knew. But that wasn’t his worry. He aimed to make all the French settlements howl the way she did. With the small force at his disposal, that might have been more than he could reasonably expect to do. If you thought small, though, you wouldn’t end up with much.

  “March on!” he shouted to his men, and march they did.

  Some of the plantations had young women on them, as well as or instead of old ones. Some unfortunate things happened—the young women would surely have agreed. Victor tried a couple of soldiers at drumhead courts-martial, and hanged them when they were convicted. Afterwards, those kinds of outrages stopped…or, if they didn’t, the offenders got more careful. As Blaise said, mostly no trouble was about as much as you could hope for.

  “Why you slay them?” the Negro asked. “They hurt enemy, too.”

  “Rape is a crime even when a soldier does it,” Radcliff said.

  “You think the French, they don’t fuck English women?” With a limited vocabulary, Blaise could be very blunt.