And every firearm became no more than a fancy club or a wet spear. If steel squelched when it struck flint, no spark flew. And keeping powder in the priming pan dry was a separate nightmare. Victor wished for a thousand armored knights all carrying lances. As long as the rain lasted, they might have driven the redcoats from the field.
But it wouldn't last. He knew that all too well. He set his men to work on field fortifications north and south of the Brede. If the English army wanted to try to bull through to New Hastings, he aimed to set as many obstacles in its path as he could.
No matter what a man aimed at, he commonly got less. Victor did here. Earthworks sagged to muddy lumps as soon as they were built. Trenches turned to moats just as fast. And rumbles of mutiny came from the soldiers.
"They think you're trying to drown them," Blaise reported. He eyed the general commanding. "Maybe they're right, too."
"No." Radcliff shook his head. "That is not so. I'm trying to keep them from getting shot when the fighting picks up again. But…" The rain drummed down on his tent. He was standing in mud. He had a cot, that being one of the privileges a general enjoyed. So he slept dry-except when the tent leaked. Too many of his men slept in the open if they slept at all. He sighed. "We'll give it up, then. Sooner or later, though, the sky will clear."
After a week and a half, it did. General Howe tried to get his army on the move as soon as he could, which turned out to be too soon. Wagons and guns bogged down in the gluey mud. The redcoats' advance stopped almost before it got started.
"If we could get at 'em, we could slaughter 'em," reported a scout charged with keeping an eye on the enemy. "Some of their oxen are in it up to their bellies."
"So are ours," Victor replied. "And what sort of time did you have coming back to bring your news to me?"
"Well…"The cavalryman grimaced. "It wasn't what anybody'd call easy-I will say that."
Victor didn't attack. The sun made everything from the grass to the soldiers' wet clothes steam. Victor wondered how much of their powder was dry. Enough to fight a battle? Enough to shoot at all? He had a few men fire their muskets. Most of the firelocks went off. That was about as much as he could have hoped for.
Even in the driest weather, misfires were all too common.
Scouts reported hearing musket fire from the redcoats, too, though they'd thought better for the moment of moving forward. No doubt General Howe was also making sure his soldiers could shoot if they had to.
Sergeants exhorted men to push oily rags through their musket barrels to hold rust at bay. Radcliff could only hope the stubbornly independent Atlanteans would listen. Over in the English army, other underofficers would be telling the men they led the same thing. The redcoats would obey-Victor was mournfully sure of that.
At last, slowly and cautiously, they did edge forward once more. Victor's men skirmished and sniped from behind fences and trees. The Englishmen caught a sniper who was wearing a green coat and cut his throat, leaving his body for his comrades to find.
"We ought to do that to the next redcoat we catch!" a rifleman raged. "If they want to fight filthy, we can fight filthy, too!" His comrades shook their fists and shouted agreement.
Do you intend this to be a war without quarter? Victor wrote to General Howe. If you do, sir, we shall endeavor to oblige you. But murdering men taken prisoner only adds cruelty to the conflict without in the least changing its likely result. He added details about the killing and sent oft* the note under flag of truce.
An English junior officer carrying a white flag brought the enemy general's response the next day. Please accept my apologies and my assurances that such distasteful incidents shall not be repeated, Howe wrote. The men responsible have been punished.
He didn't say how. Victor Radcliff muttered to himself. Was it enough? Victor used a penknife to trim a quill, then dipped the tip of the goose feather in a bottle of ink. So long as these assurances be respected and observed, we shall not reply in kind, he wrote. But if we meet with such barbarities again, you may rely on our ability and intention to avenge ourselves by whatever means seem fitting. Very respectfully, your most obedient servant… He signed his name.
The subaltern who'd brought General Howe's reply waited for Victor's. The young man saluted as he might have done for his own commanding officer. He took Victor's letter, performed a smart about-turn, mounted his horse, and rode off toward his own lines.
War's politesse, as formal as a gavotte's, Victor thought. It doesn't stop us from killing one another. It doesn't even slow us down much. But it does make sure we do it by the rules.
His chuckle held a distinctly wry edge. Blaise had never got used to those rules. He thought they were nothing but white men's foolishness. He might have been right. Still and all, though, the whole business might have ended up even worse without them.
A few days later, Victor was wondering how the whole business could end up any worse. The redcoats probed at the lines he'd tried to set up to hold them away from New Hastings. They probed, and they found that the lines weren't nearly so solid as he'd wished they were.
Too many of his men hadn't learned how to stand up under an artillery bombardment. Most cannon balls harmlessly buried themselves in wet earth or went skipping over the landscape, dangerous only if you were rash enough to try to stop one with your foot. Every so often, though, a roundshot would mash a man-or two or three men-into a crimson horror not usually seen outside a slaughterhouse. It was worse when the cannon ball didn't kill right away. Then the luckless soldier's shrieks spread his agony to every man who heard them.
And when the Atlanteans, having seen a few red horrors and heard a few agonized shrieks, streamed out of a length of trench, their opponents, ruthlessly competent, went in and took it away from them. That threatened more Atlantean companies with enfilading fire. Clever enough to see as much, the men from those companies would pull back, too. And so, little by little, Victor's defensive position dissolved like a salt statue in the rain.
He wished for more rain. The sun smiled down from a bright blue sky. The small, puffy clouds drifting across it only mocked his hopes. He had to fall back two or three miles closer to New Hastings and try to set up new positions from which to withstand the English advance.
One of his captains asked, "What's to keep that bastard Howe from doing the same thing all over again?"
Victor Radcliff gave him a bleak look. "Nothing I can see."
He did set his riflemen to sniping at the English artillerists. If the redcoats had trouble serving their guns, they wouldn't be able to hurt his men so much the next time around. He could also hope they wouldn't be able to intimidate the Atlanteans so much.
And he sent a message back to New Hastings, warning the Atlantean Assembly he might not be able to hold the town. You must prepare yourselves to leave expeditiously, he wrote. Much as I regret to state it, I cannot promise New Hastings' security nor your safety in the event the city falls.
He was watching the redcoats get ready to assault his newest makeshift defensive works when a horseman leaned down and thrust a folded sheet of paper into his hand. "From the Atlantean Assembly, General," he said.
"Thank you," Victor said, though he didn't want his elbow joggled at just that moment.
No matter what he wanted, he unfolded the paper. He had to hold it a little farther from his eyes than he would have liked; his sight was beginning to lengthen. But Isaac Fenner's hand was large and clear. Thank you for alerting us to what may come, Fenner wrote. If need be, we shall evacuate confident the fight will continue even without this town and expecting you to bloody the tyrannous foe here as you did at Bredestown.
"Is everything all right, sir?" Blaise asked, and then, a moment later, "Is anything all right?"
"Now that you mention it," Radcliff replied, "no." Isaac Fenner was a very clever man-no doubt about it. No doubt, also, that he would never make a soldier. The Atlanteans had had an easy retreat from Bredestown. If they were driven into New Hastings, wher
e would they go once driven out again? Yes. Where? Victor asked himself. He might need an answer soon.
"Anything I can do?" the colored sergeant inquired. "Can you make the redcoats disappear? Can you give the Atlantean Assembly a dose of common sense?" Victor said.
"Let me have a rifle, sir, and I'll see what I can do about General Howe." Blaise never lacked for confidence.
Marksmen with rifles did their best to pick off enemy officers. Deliberately trying to assassinate the English commander, however, struck Victor as surpassing the limits of decency. Moreover, the redcoats were altogether too likely to try to return the disfavor. He hoped that consideration didn't influence him too much when he replied, "I'm not sure how much point there would be. His second-in-command is said to be a skillful officer."
"Kill him, too." Blaise was ready to be as ruthless as the situation required-or a bit more so.
"If the opportunity arises," Victor said, and not another word. Blaise snorted; he knew Victor wouldn't do anything along those lines.
Victor did send out more snipers to try to discourage the redcoats from advancing. They picked off a few Englishmen. Maybe they slowed the enemy's movements a little. Victor knew too well they didn't slow them much.
General Howe methodically formed his men for the assault on the Atlanteans' positions in front of New Hastings. He put most of his strength on the right Watching that, Victor realized what it meant: if the English attack succeeded, Howe would try to pin the Atlanteans against the Brede and pound their army to pieces.
It had better not succeed, then, "Victor thought. He shifted men to shore up his own left, and moved cannon to cover that part of the field, too. He also posted a couple of companies to try to hold the road east to New Hastings in case his army had to retreat down it By holding them out of the battle, he made it a little more likely that the army would need to retreat. But he also made it more likely that the force as a whole would survive. To him, that counted for more.
Howe opened with a cannonading like the one that had frightened the Atlanteans out of their lines farther west This time, to Victor's vast relief, his men seemed less alarmed. Atlantean guns tired back at the English troops. Every so often, a roundshot would knock down a few men. The redcoats stolidly re-formed and held their ground. Victor hated and admired them at the same time. They were too damned hard to beat.
On they came, advancing to the music of fife, drum, and horn. Sunfire flashed from their bayonets. The inexperienced soldiers facing them feared cold steel almost as much as they feared artillery. They had reason to fear it, too: it gave the redcoats the edge in the hand-to-hand.
Atlantean muskets thundered. The volley was sharper than it would have been when the uprising began. Victor's men couldn't match Howe's in drill or discipline, but knew more of the soldier's trade now than they had when the fighting started.
A great cloud of grayish smoke obscured the field… and Victor's view of the oncoming Englishmen. Not even his spyglass helped. He swore How could he know what was going on through that manmade fogbank?
Here and there, fresh shots rang out from the Atlantean position. Some musketeers, having fired once, could reload fast enough to send another three-quarter-inch ball against the redcoats before the foe reached them. Most men, unfortunately, weren't so skilled-or so lucky.
For a few seconds, Victor let hope run away with him. Maybe the insurrectionists' fearsome volley had knocked Howe's men back on their heels. Some storms of lead were too much to bear. He'd seen that himself, fighting against the French settlers in the last war and in the fight north of Weymouth only a few weeks before.
Some storms were… but not this one. The English soldiers burst through the smoke and began jumping down into the trenches that sheltered the Atlanteans. Not only were the redcoats' muskets bayoneted, they were also all loaded, while too many of Victor's men still struggled with powder charge and wad and ball and ramrod.
The Atlanteans fought hard. Victor had seldom seen his summer soldiers do anything else. If courage and ferocity were all it took to win the day… But cold-hearted professional competence also had its place. And the redcoats had more of that than his men did, while they also didn't lack for courage.
Fighting and cursing, the Atlanteans fell back. One well-sited gun loaded with canister shredded half a dozen redcoats. No matter how perfectly disciplined the Englishmen were, that horrific blast slowed down their pursuit. Victor wouldn't have wanted to storm forward when he was all too likely to get blown to cat's meat, either.
Half an hour later, seeing that Howe's infantry would let his battered army escape again, he said the best thing he could: "Well, we're still in the fight, by God."
"Yes, sir," Blaise agreed. "And we still stand between the enemy and New Hastings."
"So we do." But for how much longer? Victor wondered. He didn't care for the answer he foresaw. Because he didn't, he called for a messenger.
A young man on horseback rode up and touched two fingers of his right hand to the brim of his shapeless straw hat. It might have been a salute; it was more likely nothing but a friendly wave "What do you need, General?" the youngster asked.
"Take word to the Atlantean Assembly," Victor said. "Tell them they'd better get out of New Hastings while the going is still good."
By the time Victor's battered force limped into New Hastings, the Atlantean Assembly was already gone. Some people claimed the leaders of the rising against King George had fled north across the Brede and then west, towards Atlantis' sparsely populated interior. Others said they'd gone south, in the direction of Freetown and the formerly French settlements beyond.
Victor had no sure way to judge which report was true. When he rode into New Hastings from the west, men who had reason not to desire the return of English rule were abandoning the city in both directions. Had the Royal Navy not lain offshore, he suspected plenty of people would also have fled by sea.
He wondered which way to take the army. He was tempted to make his best guess about which way the Atlantean Assembly had gone, then head in the opposite direction. That way, he could fight General Howe without the useless advice and even more useless orders the Assembly gave him.
Reluctantly, he decided that wasn't the proper course. This wasn't his solo struggle against the redcoats; it was Atlantis' fight. If anybody represented Atlantis, the Assembly did. And if it was cantankerous and confused… it accurately portrayed the people it served.
After some thought, he took his own force north over the Brede once more. In the French settlements, his men might be thought of as invaders no less than General Howe's. They would also be reckoned no less English than the redcoats, at least by the inhabitants who'd dwelt in those parts longer than ten or fifteen years.
He sent messengers to the seaside forts, ordering their garrisons away with the rest of his force. They were precious far beyond their numbers. In Atlantis, skilled artillerists didn't hatch from honkers' eggs. (Or maybe they did, for the big flightless birds and their eggs were regrettably scarce these days, especially in the better-settled eastern regions.)
The artillerists also brought out their lighter guns, the ones that could keep up with the army. They drove spikes into the touch-holes of the heavier cannon and broke up their carriages, doing their best to deny them to the enemy.
Some of his men carried bits of this and that with them as they crossed the bridge over the Brede: loot from New Hastings shops. Victor kept quiet about it. Many of those shops had been abandoned. The proprietors who stayed behind were mostly men who favored King George. Radcliff would lose no sleep to see them plundered.
Fires broke out in the old town even before the Atlantean army finished evacuating it. Victor did hope the ancient redwood church would survive. It had already seen two wars and three centuries. Losing it now would be like losing a piece of what made Atlantis the way it was.
Such considerations didn't keep him from blowing up the stone bridge after his army was over it. The artillerymen from the forts
did a first-rate job, dropping part of the elliptical arch into the Brede. General Howe's men would take some time to repair it. With luck, that would mean they'd have a hard time pursuing the battle-weary Atlanteans.
Victor hoped for luck. As far as he could see, his side hadn't had much up till now. He was sure the English commander would laugh at him and complain that the redcoats hadn't caught a break since the fighting started. No general since Sulla had ever thought of himself as a lucky man.
"Come on! Come on!" Victor called. "We can stand here gawping while New Hastings falls, but we can't stop it. What we can do is get away and keep fighting. We can-and we'd better. So get moving, boys! We'll beat them next time-see if we don't!"
He wondered if they would laugh at him or jeer at him or just ignore him and go their separate ways. If they did, he didn't know what he could do about it. He didn't have much in the way of coercion ready to hand right now. Armies sometimes fell apart, and damn all you could do about it.
To his surprise-no, to his slack-jawed amazement-the soldiers raised a cheer. He doffed his tricorn to them. The cheers got louder. "We'll whip 'em yet, General!" somebody shouted. "You see if we don't!"
"Damned right!" somebody else yelled.
"Huzzah for General Radcliff and the National Assembly!" someone else said. That won him three cheers, each louder than the one that had gone before.
The Assembly had voted him their thanks because he hadn't despaired of the cause after a defeat. The men he led seemed to deserve those praises more than he did. He doffed his hat again, and waved it, and waited for the cheering to subside.
"Thank you, men. Thank you-friends," he said huskily.
"Thank you for the faith you show in me, and thank you for the faith you show in Atlantis. As long as Atlantis has faith in you, I know we cannot possibly lose this war. The redcoats have more training, but you are fighting for your country, for your homes. In the end, that will make all the difference in the world."
Over on the other side of the Brede, General Howe's soldiers would be marching into New Hastings. They already held Hanover and Croydon farther north, and most of the smaller towns along the coast in those parts, too. They had to think they were strangling Atlantis' freedom, the way Hercules strangled the serpents in his cradle.
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