United States of Atlantis a-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Frowning, he passed the telescope to the cavalry officer who commanded the vanguard. "Tell me what you think they're up to, Captain Biddiscombe, if you'd be so kind."

  "All right, General." Habakkuk Biddiscombe raised the glass, slid the brass tube in ever so slightly, and peered ahead. Puzzlement in his voice, he said, "They don't seem to be up to… anything, do they?"

  "Well, I didn't think so," Victor answered. "I wanted to know how it looked to you. Maybe they're feigning this, to draw us on. Or maybe-who knows? We'll find out pretty soon, though."

  When his foot soldiers came up half an hour later, he pointed them at the fort. They knew what to do. Some would attack two sides. As soon as the defenders rushed to hold them out, the rest would assault the other two.

  And the fort at Pittman's Ferry fell as easily as the one at Halstead had-more easily than the one at Sudbury. The Atlanteans dragged the dejected English captain in charge of the place in front of Victor Radcliff. "Didn't you know we were on the way?" Victor demanded.

  "No, dammit," the redcoat said sullenly.

  "Why not, Captain? Didn't your pickets warn you? Our outriders thought some of them got away."

  "They did." The English officer made as if to spit in disgust, whether over himself or Victor the Atlantean didn't know. In any case, a growl from his captors dissuaded him. Angrily, he went on, "They came in, but I didn't believe 'em. Who would? A winter campaign? Pshaw!"

  "No wonder we surprised you," Victor murmured. "None so blind as those that will not see."

  "The Devil may quote Scripture to his purpose," the captain said.

  "I am not the Devil, sir, and neither is that Scripture," Victor said. "It is Reverend Henry's commentary on the Book of Jeremiah, but it is not the prophet speaking in his own person, you might say."

  "I don't care what it is, not to the extent of a fart in a thunderstorm," the redcoat said miserably. "You will eventually exchange me or parole me, will you not?"

  "That is the custom with prisoners of war, yes." Victor spoke as if to an idiot child. What else were they to do with prisoners? Knock them over the head? It was easier than holding them and feeding them, but otherwise had little to recommend it.

  So Victor thought, anyhow. The English captain saw things differently. "General Howe will skin me like an ermine when he finds out how I lost this fort. They'll cashier me and disgrace my family's name forever." Sudden hope flared in the man's eyes. "Will you uprisers take me on?"

  "Well… no." Victor needed to think about it, but not for long. True, the Atlantean army was short of trained, capable officers. But, while this fellow might be trained, he'd just proved himself incapable.

  "A pity," the captain said. "I don't know how I am to go on____________________

  Would you be kind enough to take me to some small room, lock me in, and lend me a loaded pistol, then?"

  "No, I won't do that, either," Victor said. "If you choose to dispose of yourself, sir, that is between you and God. If you seek to make me a party to your deed, however, I must decline."

  He made sure the unhappy officer marched off into captivity with the rest of the English garrison. Once the campaign ended, and the need for secrecy with it, they could be properly exchanged.

  Victor Radcliff couldn't have been more delighted with what his ragtag force had done. It wasn't so ragtag as it had been before the campaign began, either. The Atlanteans might have had a lean time of it during the winter, but their enemies were living well. Part of that came from supplies fetched across the ocean, part from plundering the countryside. Now the Atlanteans made some of the enemy's bounty their own.

  Still, what had he accomplished if he stopped here and drew back? Nothing that would last, and nothing that would more than annoy General Howe. Whereas, if he struck for the coast…

  If you do, you may lose your whole army. Normally, that thought would have been plenty to hold him back. Not here. Not now. After the series of defeats he'd suffered during the summer, didn't he have to remind the English that Atlantis remained a going concern? Didn't they need to see they couldn't march where they pleased whenever they pleased?

  He thought they did, and so he ordered, "Now we move on Weymouth."

  One of these days, Victor supposed, Atlantis would be thickly settled north and south, east and west. That day wasn't here yet. He was reminded it wasn't with every mile toward the coast his army gained. General Howe wasn't so foolish in trying to confine the

  rebels to the interior. Howe skimmed the fat off the rich, populous seaside regions that way, and left his foes with whatever they could gather from the rest.

  Farms clustered close together here. Even though the English had occupied these parts for a while, plenty of livestock remained. Victor requisitioned what he needed, paying with the Atlantean Assembly's banknotes.

  "What makes you think I want these arsewipes?" a furious farmer howled. "They'll never be worth more than the dingleberries they leave behind."

  "Would you rather we gave you the bayonet instead?" Victor asked mildly. The farmer's bravado deflated like a pricked pig's bladder.

  The real trouble was, a good many people who dwelt near the ocean were loyal to King George. Some farms the Atlantean army passed were bare of livestock and of people. The men, women, and children had fled their own countrymen's advance. That they should want to do such a thing was demoralizing. It was also dangerous; they would bring word to the redcoats in Weymouth that the Atlanteans were coming.

  "No surprises any more," Victor said gloomily. "I wanted to descend on them before they knew I was there."

  "Won't happen," Blaise said.

  "I know," Victor answered. "When this war ends, we shall have to settle accounts with all the traitors still living amongst us. I fear it will prove neither quick nor easy." His mouth twisted. One way or another, he was bound to be right about that. But if the redcoats prevailed, the hunt would be on for everyone who'd risen against King George. On for me and mine, he thought, which made matters unmistakably plain.

  On pressed the army, northeast toward Weymouth. They made good time. The roads were frozen hard, and the men better shod than they had been at the start of the campaign. If English captives with rags on their feet came down with chilblains… too bad. Victor's worst dread was a thaw that would turn the roads to mud. That would slow the army to a crawl.

  Scouts reported an English detachment moving into place to block the Atlanteans. "How big a detachment?" Victor asked.

  The men looked at one another. Almost in unison, they shrugged. "Don't rightly know, General," one of them answered. "They had horse out in front, so we couldn't push on and take a good gander at the foot."

  "A pox," Victor muttered. Was he rushing into a trap? Or were the redcoats trying to bluff him out of a prize he could win? "Well, from which direction do they come? From the northeast? Or from the southeast?" he asked. If the former, the English force likely came out of Weymouth's garrison, which-he thought-was none too big. If the latter, then he might be heading toward the bulk of General Howe's army, sallying from New Hastings. He knew too well how poor his chances were of beating it in the open field.

  One or two scouts pointed southeast, the rest northeast. After some shouting and name-calling, the minority swung to northeast like a compass swinging towards a lodestone.

  Victor hoped they swung because they were persuaded and not, like the lodestone, because they had no choice. He turned to one of the young messengers who always rode beside him. "Tell the musicians to play Form line of battle, if you would be so kind," he said.

  "Form line of battle. Yes, General." Eyes bright with excitement, the messenger set spurs to his horse and galloped away.

  Atlantean evolutions were smoother than they had been the summer before. Compared to the redcoats, though, Victor's men still wasted too much time and motion deploying from column to line. Baron von Steuben's guttural obscenities helped chivvy them into place. With cavalry out in front and off to either flank, they tramped fo
rward across frozen fields.

  Horse pistols and carbines boomed up ahead of Victor. So did a field gun-obviously, one that belonged to the English. Snow and scattered trees kept him from seeing what was going on. When his men didn't come pelting back with enemy riders in pursuit, he took that for a good sign.

  "Forward!" he ordered. "Double-time! We will support the horse with all the force at our disposal."

  Urged on by their musicians, the Atlanteans hurried toward combat. Any sensible man, as a cynic like Custis Cawthorne would have been quick to point out, would have turned around and hustled off in the opposite direction. The most a soldier could hope for was not getting shot. All his other possibilities were much, much worse. When you looked at it like that, war seemed a mighty peculiar way to settle disputes.

  And yet the men smiled and joked as they advanced. They'd just overrun three English forts in a row. They thought they could beat redcoats any time, anywhere. The summer's defeats seemed to lie as far behind them as Cr6cy and Agincourt. Quite a few of the men who'd lost those battles had gone home since. Maybe enthusiasm could make do for experience.

  There stood the English line, drawn up at the top of a small swell of ground. "Well, God be praised," Victor murmured. Unless the enemy was hiding some huge force beyond the crest, this was only a detachment. And the Atlanteans handily outnumbered it.

  The officer commanding the redcoats must have seen the same thing at about the same time. Too late for him-he had little choice now but to accept battle. The Atlanteans had drawn too close to let him pull back. They would have harried him all the way to Weymouth. His chances here might not be good, but they were better than the ones retreat offered.

  "We'll lap round his flanks," Victor said. "If we can get in behind him, the game is up."

  To keep the English soldiers from meeting that threat, he also threw in a frontal assault. Most of the greencoats who went straight at the enemy had captured bayonets tipping their flintlocks. The redcoats wouldn't have things all their own way in the hand-to-hand, as they so often did.

  They gave the Atlanteans a volley. Victor's men-the majority still standing, at any rate-returned it. The redcoats reloaded with urgent competence. The Atlanteans closed on them, yelling like fiends. If they could turn it into a melee before the Englishmen recharged their muskets…

  They did, or most of them did. Soldiers swore and screamed and stabbed at one another. The Atlanteans were bigger men than their foes. The English still had more experience and know-how. Had that frontal attack been the only string in Victor's bow, it would have failed.

  But, with his superior numbers, he could outflank the redcoats to left and right. The foe couldn't stand and fight the Atlanteans directly in front of him, not when men to either side poured enfilading fire into his ranks. If the English held their ground, they might get cut off and surrounded. They wouldn't last long after that.

  Common soldiers saw the danger-or simply panicked, depending on one's point of view-before their officers did. They started streaming away from their battle line. Some left by squads, in fair order, and kept firing at the Atlanteans who harried them. More simply tried to save their own skins. They went off every man for himself. When greencoats challenged them, they were quick to throw down their muskets-if they'd held on to them- and raise their hands.

  About half the English force fell back toward Weymouth in a compact mass. Victor let them go. Wiping them out or forcing their surrender would have been more expensive than it was worth. He had another victory.

  Crows and ravens and vultures spiraled down to feast on the bounty laid out for them. Surgeons did what they could for the wounded from both sides. They gave them bullets or leather straps to bite on as they probed for musket balls and sutured bayonet wounds. For amputations, the surgeons had a little opium and a lot of barrel-tree brandy to dull the torment. All that might have slightly softened the shrieks rising to the uncaring sky. It assuredly did no more. It might not even have done so much.

  "Do we press on, General?" Habakkuk Biddiscombe asked.

  Victor eyed the twisted bodies and the trampled, blood-splashed snow. He listened for a moment to the cries of the wounded. Then he did what he had to do: like Pharaoh, he hardened his heart and made himself nod. "Yes, Captain Biddiscombe. We press on."

  The redcoats in Weymouth were as ready to receive Victor Radcliffs Atlanteans as they could be, given their usual practices and the weather. Their practices meant they were not in the habit of digging entrenchments under any circumstances. The weather, which froze the ground hard, meant they would have had trouble trying it even had it occurred to them.

  He sent a messenger into town, calling on the English commander to surrender. "Tell him I am not sure I can answer for my men's behavior if they take Weymouth by storm," he instructed the man. "If he thinks us no better than a pack of bloodthirsty copperskins, it may frighten him into yielding."

  "I get you, General." The messenger tipped him a wink. "I'll make us out to be most especially frightful."

  He rode in under flag of truce. When he came back that afternoon, he handed Victor a note from the English commanding officer. I must respectfully decline your offer, the man wrote, and I fear I cannot answer for the conduct of my soldiers once they have a pack of rebels in Mr sights. I'm, sir, your most obedient servant. Major Henry Lavery.

  "He won't quit. General," the messenger said.

  "So I gather," Victor Radcliff replied. This Major Lavery did not lack for nerve or style. "Well, if they won't do it of their own accord, we shall have to make them."

  He wondered if he could, and what the butcher's bill would be. He wondered all the more because a pair of Royal Navy frigates lay just offshore. Bombardment from the sea had hurt him when he held Weymouth. How much more would it hurt him while he was trying to retake the town?

  Instead of trying to storm Weymouth, he sent his riflemen forward to take up positions as close to the outskirts as they could. "Whenever you see a redcoat's head, I want you to put a bullet through it," he told them. "Don't let the enemy move in the streets by day."

  The riflemen nodded. But one of them asked, "What if they come out after us? We can shoot straighter than they can, but musketeers put a lot of lead in the air."

  "If they come out, fall back" victor answered. "I do not ask you to personate the Spartans at Thermopylae. You are there to make their lives miserable, not to sell your own dear."

  That satisfied the marksman and his comrades. They worked their way forward from tree to fence to woodpile. Before long, the rifles' sharp, authoritative reports began to ring out, now singly, now two or three at a time. The men would, Victor supposed, shift their positions after every shot or two. He wondered how the redcoats liked them.

  He got his answer when a cannon inside Weymouth boomed. The roundshot smashed a pile of wood. But the sniper who'd fired from behind it had moved on ten minutes earlier. Victor was more than pleased to see the English waste such a good shot.

  Atlantean rifles went on barking as long as the light lasted. They would take until the day before forever to wipe out the enemy garrison. But they made the redcoats shun the streets and slink around like weasels. One of the marksmen came back to Victor at sundown and said, "I shot me a major, or maybe even a colonel."

  "How can you be so sure?" Victor asked.

  "Well, General, if he wasn't a big officer, he must've been one of those what-do-you-call-'ems-peacocks-like, on account of he sure did have some fancy feathers," the Atlantean answered.

  "All right. That's good news. Maybe it will stir the English out of their lair come tomorrow." Radcliff listened to himself Once he said that out loud, it struck him as much too likely. And he hadn't done anything about it. In the fading light, he ordered his musketeers and his fieldpieces forward. If the redcoats did come out, he wanted to be ready to receive them.

  They didn't emerge right away. As soon as the eastern sky paled enough, his riflemen started shooting into Weymouth again. A horsefly couldn
't do a horse much real damage, but could drive it wild anyhow. Victor hoped for the same effect.

  And he got it. The redcoats in Weymouth sallied forth just after the church bells in town rang ten. As soon as they left the cover of houses and shops, the marksmen began to fire at their officers. As the sniper had said the evening before, those splendid uniforms made them stand out. They fell one after another, and so did the common soldiers unlucky enough to be stationed near them.

  The English troopers advanced anyhow. Victor might have known they would. They barely needed officers to tell them what wanted doing. They went after the riflemen with professional competence and perhaps unprofessional fury.

  Victor's marksmen fired and fell back, fired and fell back. Some of them didn't fall back fast enough. The ones the redcoats caught had a hard time surrendering.

  Then the English force came into range of the Atlantean artillery, which lurked just inside an orchard. Cannon balls tore bloody tracks through the enemy's ranks. The attackers swung toward the guns. Victor wanted nothing more than for them to charge. Canister and grape would do worse than roundshot ever could.

  But, even if many of their officers had fallen, the redcoats knew better than to expose themselves to that kind of murderous fire. They swung away again, and went back to chasing the riflemen.

  "Forward!" Victor shouted, and the main body of the Atlantean army moved up to support the marksmen.

  They outnumbered the soldiers who'd sallied from Weymouth. Their lines hadn't been thrown into disarray by a long pursuit. Encouraged by three easy wins and a successful skirmish, they thought they could do anything. That went a long way toward making them right.

  The redcoats dressed their ranks faster than Victor would have dreamt possible. They thought they could do anything, too. They'd fought in Europe, in India, in Terranova. Some of them would have fought in Atlantis against the French. They'd also had good luck facing the rebellion from their own kinsmen here. No wonder they thought they could win again.