Opening Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  “They’ll have men defending the line of the river, then, if they be not utter fools.” The English lieutenant-colonel sighed wearily. “And utter fools they are not. They could not have caused us so much trouble if they were.”

  “We’ll get over the river,” Victor said. “Kersauzon’s on the run. He won’t leave enough soldiers behind to seriously hinder us.”

  The English officer’s eyebrow rose. For a moment, Victor wondered why. Then he realized he’d committed a solecism. He smiled. If the lieutenant-colonel could worry about his grammar as well as the campaign…more power to him. And, after a moment, the Englishman unbent enough to admit, “I think you make a good prophet.”

  Although the French settlers had burnt what they could, the stone towers supporting the bridges’ wooden superstructure still stood. And the redcoats had with them the usual contingent of military engineers, Victor hadn’t expected to need their services until and unless the English army besieged the French, but they proved valuable here at the border.

  One thing Atlantis had was an exuberant profusion of lumber. Axe blows rang out along the side of the river. The engineers did not try to re-create what the fleeing French settlers had destroyed. The redcoats cared only about making a way across. That they did. The Romans who’d bridged the Rhine for Julius Caesar would have approved.

  “Well, well,” the lieutenant-colonel said after riding across one of those improvised bridges. “So this is French Atlantis.” He looked around. “Doesn’t seem much different from English Atlantis, does it?”

  “No, sir—except it’s full of Frenchmen,” Victor replied. What had the English officer expected? Something that looked like France? In the towns, English Atlantis looked like England. Farms there grew European—and sometimes Terranovan—crops. But the countryside remained stubbornly Atlantean.

  If anything, French Atlantis seemed more Atlantean than the country farther north. Far fewer people actually lived here. That meant the landscape had changed less than it had where Englishmen settled. Pines and barrel trees stayed common right up to the very edges of towns. Victor’s soldiers had no trouble catching oil thrushes in the woods. They ate better than the redcoats, who relied on rations and viewed local foodstuffs with suspicion.

  “I ain’t gonna eat one of them funny-looking things,” an English sergeant declared. “Maybe if I was starving—but I ain’t.”

  Victor didn’t think oil thrushes were funny-looking. He’d grown up with them, as he had with the good-sized thrushes with dull red breasts that English Atlanteans called robins. To him, the small, bright robin redbreasts of the home island would have looked strange—had he ever seen one.

  Only men from Roland Kersauzon’s rear guard and occasional free-lance bushwhackers slowed the English army’s advance. When the redcoats caught a franc-tireur, they hanged him from the closest suitable tree as a warning to other locals. “If they want to fight us, let them put on uniforms and join an army,” the lieutenant-colonel said. “I would respect them then, and treat them as soldiers deserve to be treated. But this contemptible skulking must cease, and we shall make it cease by whatever means prove necessary.”

  Here and there, English Atlanteans had picked up guns and attacked the invading French forces. No doubt Montcalm-Gozon’s men had hanged the irregulars they caught. Did that stop the English Atlanteans from harrying them? Victor Radcliff doubted it, but he didn’t quarrel with the English officer. That worthy had tradition on his side, and didn’t seem inclined to listen to anyone who disagreed.

  Besides, what was wrong with hanging Frenchmen? After all the trouble they’d caused, Victor wouldn’t have shed a tear to see the lot of them strung up. Neither would Blaise. “Ought to hang everyone who buys and sells slaves,” he said.

  That would touch off a revolt in French Atlantis. Victor was sure of it. The locals might understand and forgive the execution of guerrillas. Anyone who went off and did something like that took his chances. But the French Atlanteans—and the Spanish Atlanteans farther south—were convinced they had the right to own human chattels. And…

  “Didn’t Africans sell you to the white slave traders?” Victor asked.

  Blaise nodded. “Hang them, too,” he said. “They serve it.” He made a face. “Deserve it.” His English got better by the day. It still had a long way to go, though.

  Before long, the direction in which Roland Kersauzon’s men were retreating grew obvious. “He’s going to stand siege in Nouveau Redon,” Victor told the English lieutenant-colonel.

  “Well, we’ll just have to winkle him out of there, in that case.” The English officer certainly didn’t lack for aggressiveness.

  Whether he lacked for brains might be a different question. “It’s a formidable place,” Victor warned. “It won’t be easy to take.”

  “He’s never come up against proper engineers, either,” the lieutenant-colonel said.

  “How much can engineers do against solid rock?” Victor asked.

  The English lieutenant-colonel’s smile was indulgent, almost sweet. “I believe you’ve got the question backwards, Major. You should ask, how much can solid rock do against engineers?”

  Back where he started. Roland Kersauzon hadn’t expected to return to Nouveau Redon except in triumph. He hadn’t imagined the English Atlanteans stood a chance against brave French soldiers. He’d thought he could beat them with settlers. By God, he had beaten the redcoats with settlers! That should have decided things.

  It should have, but it didn’t. He failed to count on English tenacity. The enemy kept fighting. Their raiding band made Roland separate from Montcalm-Gozon—but he never did catch up with Victor Radcliff. He damned Don José all over again. He could deal with his enemies, but God protect him from people who claimed to be his friends.

  And English tenacity also meant sending more redcoats across the ocean. No more French regulars came to Atlantis. Maybe the English wouldn’t let them. But maybe King Louis and his ministers simply couldn’t be bothered with sending reinforcements. Roland wouldn’t have been surprised either way.

  Ordinary people streamed out of Nouveau Redon. Roland wanted no one there who couldn’t carry a musket. The fewer mouths he fed, the better. As long as he had soldiers on the walls and supplies in the storerooms, he was ready to defy the world—or, at least, those parts of it that spoke English.

  One good thing sprang from the wreckage of his hopes: he worried a little less about disease than he had before. You couldn’t catch smallpox or measles more than once. So the learned doctors promised him, and for once he was pretty sure they were right. The ones who could catch them already had, and had got better or died.

  He posted a strong garrison of reliable soldiers around the storehouses. That didn’t seem so important now, which was why he hastened to take care of it. If the garrison was in place before people started fretting about hunger, it would stand a better chance of stopping trouble—or making sure trouble didn’t start—than if he put it in place after soldiers started tightening their belts. He hoped it would, anyhow.

  For now, his men’s fighting spirit was strong. “We’ll whip those English cochons right out of their boots, won’t we, sir?” said a youngster on the wall. He shook his fist at the north. “Just let them come!”

  “But of course we’ll beat them.” Roland wouldn’t have weakened such enthusiasm for the world. As for letting the English settlers and redcoats come…He and the force he had left couldn’t very well stop them. He knew that too painfully well. If he could have, he would have.

  He made a point of checking the artillery. “We will dismay them with our range,” a grizzled gunnery sergeant said. “We’re up much higher than they are, you comprehend. It gives us the advantage.”

  “Yes, I comprehend perfectly,” Roland said. “They will be sorry that they have tried to rob us of the jewel in the crown of French Atlantis.”

  The gunner’s face lit up. “That is well said, Monsieur!”

  “I’m glad you think s
o.” Roland Kersauzon had never particularly believed he had a knack for the telling phrase. If he came up with one now, it was bound to be as much by luck as for any other reason.

  And how much would it matter one way or the other? If the enemy seized the rest of the crown, of course he would start prying at the jewel. Someone would have to come to its rescue. Someone would have to—but would anyone do it?

  No one from French Atlantis was likely to come to his aid. Such force as these lands could provide, he had. Oh, there would still be armed men among the settlers, but there was no other army of settlers. And there would be none, not to relieve him. If any army formed, it would be to quell servile uprisings. He was bitterly sure of that. What would the enslaved Negroes and Terranovan natives here be doing now? What they’d done in Spanish Atlantis? It seemed much too likely.

  What hope from across the sea, then? Would the mother country send another force of regulars to help its Atlantean settlements? Even if King Louis wanted to do just that—something of which Roland had no assurance—what connection lay between desire and ability?

  King George had reinforced his redcoats. That argued England was winning the war at sea. So did Victor Radcliff’s mortifying escape. The best will in the world might not let France ship soldiers across the Atlantic. If it didn’t…

  In that case, why am I still fighting? Why not surrender now? Roland wondered. He would save his own skin, and he would save the lives of so many settlers who had already suffered so much for French Atlantis and for France.

  But he could not make himself yield while still able to fight. If they want me so much, let them come and get me, he thought. He didn’t know what was going on in the wider world; he could only guess. And even if his guesses were right now, fortune might reverse itself while he held out.

  He could hope so. And he was too damned stubborn to quit. “Here I stand,” he murmured. If a German Protestant had said the same thing once upon a time…Roland knew little of Protestants, and even less of Germans.

  “Oh,” the English lieutenant-colonel said when he got his first good look at Nouveau Redon.

  “Yes, sir,” Victor Radcliff replied, in lieu of I told you so. “The nut won’t be easy to crack, I’m afraid.”

  “So it would seem,” the English officer said. After a moment, though, his chin came up. “The meat inside will be all the sweeter, then.”

  “Once we get at it, it will.” Victor didn’t want to say, If we can get at it. The lieutenant-colonel might think he lacked confidence. He also might think the same thing himself.

  “First things first,” the Englishman said. “We’ll surround them, cut them off. We’ll offer battle. If they come out to engage us, so much the better.”

  “Roland Kersauzon’s not that foolish,” Victor said. “I wish he were.”

  “Well, we can hope he will be,” the lieutenant-colonel said. Radcliff only shrugged. You could always hope. But hoping for something and counting on it were very different. He hoped the Englishman understood that.

  Up on the walls of Nouveau Redon, a cannon boomed. The ball fell far short of the settlers and redcoats. The gunners must have known it would. Victor recognized the shot for what it was: defiance. A breeze from the Green Ridge Mountains blew the black-powder smoke toward the ocean.

  “They won’t act so bold when we cut them off from the river,” the English lieutenant-colonel said.

  Victor stared at him. Didn’t he know anything about this place he aimed to besiege? “They don’t depend on the Blavet for water, sir,” the Atlantean said carefully.

  “No, eh? Well, cisterns go dry, even if it takes longer.”

  “They don’t depend on cisterns, either,” Victor said. No, the Englishman really didn’t know anything about Nouveau Redon. “They have a spring, and it’s never been known to fail. We may be able to starve them out. We may be able to take the town with saps and parallels—”

  “Won’t be easy,” the lieutenant-colonel said. Victor nodded. The ground rose sharply toward the citadel, and grew stonier the higher it got: not promising terrain for digging trenches.

  “I’m afraid we’ll be here quite a while,” Victor said. “We just have to pray we can keep our own men supplied—and that sickness doesn’t break out. If it does…” He spread his hands, as if to say, What can you do?

  “We are going to take that fortress.” The English lieutenant-colonel might have been an Old Testament prophet. He sounded utterly sure he was telling the truth. Radcliff envied him his certainty. The Old Testament prophets had had God on their side. Victor hoped his army did, too. He hoped so, yes, but he was less sure of it than people like Elijah had been.

  The lieutenant-colonel shouted orders. Horns blared. Drums thumped. Soldiers moved out to encircle Nouveau Redon. The opening steps in a siege were as formal as those in a gavotte.

  Then the Englishman gave his attention back to Victor. “Tell me, Major—have you read Caesar’s Gallic War?”

  “Yes, sir.” Victor wondered why on earth the other officer chose this moment to ask that question. A bit touchily, the Atlantean added, “We aren’t all barbarians on this side of the ocean. I can give you All Gaul is divided into three parts or talk about the aurochs and the other curious animals of the German forest. If you happen to have a copy with you, I can even make a stab at construing sentences, though I confess my Latin isn’t what it was fifteen years ago.”

  “Don’t fret. Don’t fret,” the lieutenant-colonel said, which only left Victor more fretful than ever. The English officer continued, “Upon my honor, Major, I meant no slight by the question. Please accept my assurances on that score.”

  “Very well, sir.” Victor’s voice stayed stiff.

  The English officer pointed toward Nouveau Redon. France’s fleurs-de-lys flag still fluttered defiantly up there. “Can you give me precise bearings on where inside the town that spring rises?”

  “I can’t—no, sir. But I’m sure you can find out if you inquire among my greencoats. Some of them will have spent more time inside than I have.” Radcliff’s curiosity roused. “Why, if I may ask?”

  “Perhaps we can match the famous fate of Uxellodunum,” the Englishman replied.

  Whatever Uxellodunum’s fate had been, it wasn’t famous to Victor. He presumed it was set forth in the Gallic War. If it was, he didn’t remember it. Suppressing a sigh, he said, “I fear you must enlighten me, sir.”

  Enlighten him the English officer did, finishing, “No guarantees, of course—there never are in warfare. But it strikes me that this is our best—and quickest—chance of securing a victory at reasonable cost.”

  Victor Radcliff did something he’d thought he would never do: he doffed his hat to the lieutenant-colonel. “If we can bring that off…If we can, I’d give twenty pounds to be a fly on the wall and see the look on Roland Kersauzon’s face.”

  “He is a difficult man,” the lieutenant-colonel said.

  “I’m sure he thinks the same of you—and of me,” Victor replied. “And chances are he’s right—and so are you. All things considered, I would sooner lay siege out here than stand siege in there.”

  “As would I,” the Englishman agreed. “Montcalm-Gozon had me mured up in Freetown, which was…less than pleasant. But my position was still open to the sea. Your settlers returned, and then we were reinforced from England. Only the angels could reinforce Kersauzon now.”

  “He won’t ask for them, even if God would give them. He’s a proud man,” Victor said. “If you don’t know that, you don’t know him at all.”

  XXV

  Roland Kersauzon hadn’t thought a lot about what being besieged might be like. He’d never imagined it could bore him. But it did. One day seemed the same as another. He’d started losing track of how long he’d been shut up here. How much longer could he stay?

  Till the storehouses emptied, and then a little while after that. But when they would had no simple answer. If he kept his men on full rations as long as the food held out…he was
an idiot, or a man who expected to be relieved soon, assuming those two weren’t one and the same.

  Three-quarters rations? Half rations? When to swing from one to the other? Those were the worries that weighed on his mind. But what difference did it make if he decided tomorrow, not today? Not much, and he knew it.

  Had he worried about water…He didn’t, though. The spring was what it had always been, what it always would be. God had loved Nouveau Redon when He sent the cold, pure water bubbling up through the rock. He’d also loved the settler who first realized what that spring meant: an impregnable fortress for French Atlantis.

  The English weren’t even trying to take it, or not trying very hard. Oh, they were advancing their saps and parallels little by little. They had yet to bring cannon within range of the walls, though. Roland doubted whether they could. The ground rose steeply and grew rocky in a hurry. Every new move forward would get harder and go slower.

  Once in a while, guns on the wall would fire. A cannon ball killed a team of oxen hauling something toward the closest trenches. The gunners whooped and capered, proud of their shooting.

  “Magnifique,” Roland said dryly when he learned what the celebration was about. “Now the damned Englishmen will have themselves a supper of beef.”

  That made the cannoneers’ faces fall. They hadn’t had a supper of beef for a while now. Oh, some beef went into the sausages they gnawed on, but no one in his right mind inquired too closely about what all went into sausages. Better not to know; better just to eat…as long as the sausages held out.

  And Roland proved right. The redcoats and greencoats butchered the murdered oxen and roasted the carcasses. Mother Nature was in a cruel mood; the wind carried the savory smell of the cooking meat straight into Nouveau Redon. Roland’s supper was a hard cracker, some barley mush, and a chunk of tough, stale sausage not quite so long as his thumb. His stomach growled enormously at the wonderful aroma wafting over the walls.

  Also once in a while, riflemen—commonly settlers in green coats, which made them harder to spot—would sneak forward from the enemy lines and snipe at the defenders. A rifleman had a chance of hitting a man from more than a furlong. The surgeons got reminded they were there for a reason.