And if his imagination was working hard enough to see such things… If it was, maybe he could make it work hard other ways as well. "Do you think you could bridge the Pomphret by the light of the full moon?"
He made the engineers huddle again, anyhow. That was as much as he'd hoped for-he'd feared they would kill his scheme with genteel scorn. The graying senior man replied, "That is possible, Monsieur. Possible, I repeat. It is by no means assured."
"I understand," Victor said. "Here is what I have in mind____________________
"
He spoke for some little while.
This time, the French engineers didn't need to confer. Almost identical, slightly bemused, smiles spread across all their faces as near simultaneously as made no difference. "You have come up with something out of the ordinary, Monsieur le General. No one could deny it for a moment," their grizzled spokesman said. "Truly, I admire your original tenor of thought."
"And here I believed myself a baritone," Victor said. The engineers flinched, as if at musket fire. Ignoring that, Victor went on, "Do you think the plan is worth trying, then?"
"Why not?" the engineer said gaily. "After all, what is the worst that can happen?" He answered his own question: "We can get shot, fall into the river, and feed the fish and turtles and crayfish. Not so very much, eh?"
"One hopes not," Victor said dryly.
"One always hopes," the engineer agreed. "The fish, the turtles, the crayfish-they get fat regardless."
Against the dark blue velvet of the night, the moon glowed like a new-minted sovereign. Torches and bonfires blazed, turning night into day on this stretch of the Pomphret. Engineers shouted orders. Atlantean and French soldiers, most of them stripped to the waist, fetched and carried at the direction of the technically trained officers.
Bridging a river was not quiet work. Bridging a river by firelight at night was not inconspicuous work. It drew English scouts the way those soldiers' bare torsos drew mosquitoes. Some of the scouts fired horse pistols and carbines at the Frenchmen and Atlanteans out of the night. Others galloped away to bring back reinforcements. Victor heard their horses' hoofbeats fade in the distance despite the din of axes and saws and hammers and despite the Pomphret's gentler murmuring. He thought he heard those hoofbeats, anyhow. Maybe that was only his imagination
again. He could hope so.
Hope or not, though, he placed some field guns near the
Pomphret's west bank. If those reinforcements got here; no, dammit: when they did-they would have cannon with them. He wanted to be able to respond in kind.
But Cornwallis' artillerists would have every advantage in the world. His own guns had to try to wreck the carriages and limbers of enemy cannon hiding in the dark. The English gunners wouldn't even care about his, not unless his men got very lucky. A growing bridge, all lit up by flames and by the brilliant moon, made the easiest target any fool could think of. Sometimes there was just no help for a situation, worse luck.
Crash! A cannon ball tumbled six feet of bridge into the Pomphret. "Good thing nobody was standing on that stretch," Blaise said.
"So it was," Victor agreed. "But I'm afraid we can't play these games without losses." Hardly had he spoken before another cannon ball jellied a French engineer's leg. The man was carried off shrieking and bleeding to the surgeons. One quick, dismayed glance at the wound-even that was too much, because it made anyone who saw it want to look away-told Victor they would have to amputate to have any chance of saving the fellow's life. A couple of minutes later, the engineer screamed again, even louder.
"Poor devil," Blaise muttered.
Victor nodded; he was thinking the same thing himself. Then he rode out into the firelight to let the redcoats know he was there. It was important that they should understand he was personally supervising this operation.
They didn't need long to realize as much. Bullets cracked past his head. His horse sidestepped nervously. He didn't draw back into the darkness till after a roundshot skipped past, much too
HARRY TURTLEDOVE
close for comfort. And, thanks to the full moon, the darkness was less dark than it might have been. Enemy fire pursued him far longer than he would have wanted.
"That was foolish," Blaise told him after the English finally stopped trying to ventilate his spleen.
"It could be," Victor said. "But it was also necessary. Now they are certain this bridge has the utmost importance to our cause They will be so very proud of themselves for thwarting its construction.'' The Negro clucked reproachfully. "They would have been mighty damn proud of themselves for killing you. Oh, yes, that they would."
"True enough, but they didn't." Victor Radcliff made himself shrug. "You have to take chances sometimes, that's all."
"We could have dragged you off to the surgeons, too," Blaise said. "They would have shot the horse, and then carved it into steaks and ribs and whatnot. They would not do the same for you, even if it would have been a mercy."
"It happens," Victor said. Horribly wounded men sometimes begged to die If their wounds were dreadful enough, kind friends or appalled strangers would put them out of their torment. As Blaise said, what was mercy for a horse could also be a mercy for a man.
He eyed the moon. It was starting the long, slow slide down toward the Green Ridge Mountains. After midnight, then. An English sniper shot an Atlantean running out to lay more wood on a bonfire. The wounded greencoat hopped away from the blaze. By the way he swore, he wasn't too badly hurt. If blood poisoning or lockjaw didn't carry him off, he'd probably be back in the fight in two or three weeks.
Time dragged on. Try as the French engineers would, they seemed unable to push a bridge very far across the Pomphret. The redcoats mocked them from the far side of the river. Most of the mockery was in English, which few of the Frenchmen understood. They were the lucky ones.
"Any man called me even a quarter of that, I'd kill him," Blaise said.
"We'll have our chance before long," Victor answered. "So I hope, at any rate."
At last, dawn began painting the eastern horizon gray and then pink. The engineers gave up. The redcoats jeered louder and more foully than ever. But now they were more visible to the French and Atlantean artillerists. The gunners answered with balls of iron.
Having made sure their foes wouldn't span the Pomphret here, Cornwallis' men drew back out of range. They left a few soldiers near the river, where the men could keep an eye on their opponents and make sure the French and Atlanteans wouldn't keep trying to bridge this stretch of the river.
Which didn't mean the French and Atlanteans wouldn't try to bridge the Pomphret somewhere else. It only meant the redcoats wouldn't expect them to bridge it anywhere else Cornwallis' troops made that unpleasant discovery a couple of hours after sunup.
Pistol shots and carbines announced cavalry coming down from the north. The bigger booms from field guns announced that artillery accompanied the horsemen. Before long, crashing volleys announced that solid blocks of infantry accompanied the cavalry and field guns.
General Cornwallis hadn't sent his whole army north from Pomphret Landing: nowhere near. He'd sent enough men to keep the engineers from bridging the Pomphret where his scouts discovered them making the effort. He'd succeeded in that. Meanwhile, a few miles farther north, more French engineers quietly did bridge the river… and the English had no idea they were doing it till after it was done.
Taken in the flank by the troops who'd unexpectedly crossed to the east side of the Pomphret, the redcoats fled south. Victor Radcliff crossed the river in a rowboat.
He shook the hand of the Marquis de la Fayette, who'd led the larger detachment of Frenchmen and Atlanteans over the Pomphret to the north. "My compliments to your engineers," Victor said. "They performed bravely here and splendidly in your position."
"My chief engineer, Major Flamel, extends his compliments to you, Monsieur le General," de la Fayette replied. "He assures me it was by your clever ruse alone that we gained passage over the
river."
"Having an idea is easy. Turning it into something useful is anything but," Victor said. "Major Flamel gets the credit for doing that."
"As I have seen before, you are a generous man," the French noble said. "I presume you now intend to drive the Englishmen out of Pomphret Landing?"
"That's what I have in mind, yes. I don't know what kind of works they've built north of town-it doesn't do to underestimate Cornwallis' engineers, either," Victor said.
"Sadly, I have also seen this for myself," de la Fayette agreed. "But even if their fieldworks prove strong, what prevents us from marching past them to the sea and trapping the redcoats between our lines to the east and the Pomphret to the west?"
"I'd like nothing better than to trap them inside Pomphret Landing," Victor said. "If we do that, we win the war. So it seems to me, anyhow. And if it seems the same to General Cornwallis, he won't let us do it. He'll fall back on Croydon before we can cut him off. Croydon has the best harbor north of Hanover, and it sits on a peninsula easy to fortify. I would much rather stand siege there than in Pomphret Landing, especially with the Royal Navy easily able to supply the garrison by sea."
"With Cornwallis having so much of his force here, the enemy will not easily be able to bring in foodstuffs from elsewhere in Atlantis," de la Fayette said. "Most of the land is under the control of the United States of Atlantis in your person." He bowed.
"There is some truth in that," Victor said. "Some, but less than I would wish. True, most of the redcoats are here. But England could still land more Terranovan savages near Avalon, or a force of German mercenaries down by New Hastings. And forces loyal to King George-native Atlantean forces, I mean-still hold too much of the countryside."
"Custis Cawthorne and your other representatives in Paris spoke little of that," de la Fayette observed. "They talked always of the war against oppressive England, not of the civil war against your own folk."
"Should that surprise you?" Victor said. "Don't French diplomatists also paint the best picture they can of your kingdom's situation and needs?"
De la Fayette bowed again, this time in amusement mingled with rue. "No doubt they do. But one does not expect the vices of civilization from the folk of a land so new and vital. Eh bien, perhaps one should."
You aren't stun bumpkins as we thought. The marquis couldn't very well mean anything else. Now Victor bowed to him. "Serving one's country to the best of one's ability is surety no vice, your Grace."
"Well, no." De la Fayette seemed faintly embarrassed. "But so many of us were charmed by your seeming rusticity. Monsieur Cawthorne gives a masterly portrayal."
Victor had all he could do not to laugh himself silly over that Could any man be compelled to enjoy himself more than Custis Cawthorne enjoyed playing such a role? While that might be possible, Victor found it most unlikely. "And how many pretty little French girls has Monsieur Cawthorne sweet-talked into his bed by playing the poor chap who needs to be instructed in such arts? And how many of them ended up astonished that he turned out to know so much already?"
The Marquis de la Fayette looked astonished himself. "How could you know that?"
This time, Victor did laugh; if he hadn't, he would have exploded. "I've known Monsieur Cawthorne many years. I have some notion of how his beady little mind works. Does he ask people to teach him card games, too, and take away their money with what he calls beginner's luck?"
"Mm d'un nom!" de la Fayette said, and not another word on that score, from which Victor concluded that Custis had some of the nobleman's money in his pocket Well, good for Custis, Victor thought. It was high time the United States of Atlantis turned a profit on something.
The field fortifications north of Pomphret Landing were as strong as the talented English engineers could make them. All the same, Cornwallis used them to shield his withdrawal to the east, not to try to hold the town. "It turned out as you foretold," de la Fayette said. "It could be that I should ask you to read my palm."
"I'm sure we both have better things to do with our time," Victor said. After the Atlanteans and French rode into Pomphret Landing, he found one of those things: he sent a letter to General Cornwallis, urging him to surrender. Surely you can see your force is reduced to no more than a red-coated carbuncle on the fair face of Atlantis, he wrote.
Before sending the letter to Croydon under a flag of truce, he showed it to de la Fayette. "A carbuncle on the face of Atlantis?" the Frenchman said after working his way through the English. "You prove yourself to be possessed of a noble heart, Monsieur le General. Me, I would call him a boil on Atlantis' arse."
Victor smiled. "That is what I was thinking, as a matter of fact. Whether I have a noble heart or not, I would not presume to say. But I am sure General Cornwallis has one. This being so, I am confident he will divine my meaning even if I state it obliquely."
"Obliquely?" The marquis savored that. "Not a word I would have used, which does not keep me from understanding you. As you speak English with me more often, I discover in it subtleties of which I would not previously have suspected it was capable."
"You are generous, your Grace," Victor Radcliff said, more sincerely than not. For anyone from France to allow that English might be subtle was no small concession.
Having received de la Fayette's approbation, the letter did go off to Croydon. Victor didn't think he would have to wait long for Cornwallis' reply, and he didn't. The courier who'd taken Victor's missive also brought back the English commander's response. "I didn't get to read it, General, on account of it was upsy-down to me while he was a-writing it, and he sealed it up as soon as it was done, but I don't reckon he's ready to chuck in the sponge," the courier said.
"The worst he can tell me is no," Victor said, breaking the seal. "Even if he should, how am I worse off than I would have been without making the attempt?"
He unfolded the letter. Sure enough, the missive was in Corn-walks' own hand, with which Victor had been familiar since the last war, when they fought on the same side. Always a pleasure to receive even the smallest communication from you, my dear General Radcliff, Cornwallis wrote. If he was not a man with a noble heart, he certainly was one who flaunted his urbanity.
Because this pleasure is so great, it pains me doubly to find myself compelled by circumstance to refuse you in anything, the English general 'continued. None the less, I am so compelled on this occasion. I do not believe our situation hopeless: very much the reverse, in fact. Whilst we do at present find ourselves occupying only Croydon, this may change at any moment, as you must be aware. The Royal Navy may come with orders for our embarkation, in which case we should land at some spot not well prepared to resist us. Or, contrariwise, ships may bring us reinforcements from across the sea. Should mat come to pass, you and your foreign allies would soon have reason to look to your laurels. These things being so, continued struggle seems far preferable to craven surrender. I have the honor to remain your most obedient servant… Cornwallis appended his signature, complete with a fancy flourish below his name.
The courier had been watching Victor's face. "He says no, eh?"
"He does indeed. He has reasons he finds good for going on with the fight."
"Are they good reasons?" the courier asked.
"They… may be." Victor didn't like to admit even so much He imagined the Royal Navy taking Cornwallis' redcoats down to Freetown or Cosquer. Their arrival would indeed come as a complete and most unwelcome surprise in those parts. And if transports brought five or ten thousand more English soldiers-or even mercenaries from Brunswick or Hesse-to Croydon, Cornwallis could sally forth against the Atlanteans and French with every hope of success.
"What do we do, then?" the courier inquired.
"I'm still ciphering that out," Victor said slowly. It seemed a better answer than Damned if I know, even if they meant about the same thing. What really bothered him was that he would have trouble laying proper siege to Croydon. The Royal Navy didn't have to take the redcoats down the coast or reinfor
ce them to aid them against his army and the Frenchmen. As long as food and powder and shot came into Croydon, Cornwallis' army was and would remain a going concern. And the Atlanteans could do very little to stop the Royal Navy from supplying the enemy.
Victor Radcliff took Cornwallis' reply to de la Fayette. The marquis read it with grave attention. "What he says is very much what I should say if I found myself in his position."
"And I," Victor agreed. "Is there any chance the French navy might interpose itself between Croydon and the ships of the Royal Navy? Prevent Cornwallis from revictualing himself and he becomes vulnerable to all the usual hazards of a siege. That failing he is in almost as enviable a position as the defenders of Nouveau Redon before the spring was put out of commission."
"I could wish you had chosen a different comparison," de la Fayette said.
"My apologies," Victor said, "but you will, I trust, understand why it sprang to mind. Not only was I there, but so was General Cornwallis-Lieutenant-Colonel Cornwallis, as he was then."
"Indeed." De la Fayette's tone showed him to be imperfectly appeased. With an effort, he brought his wits back to the matter at hand. "As for our navy… I must confess, I know not whether that may be within its capacity."
"We should find out." Victor's enthusiasm spurred him on. "We truly should, your Grace. If we can cork up the Englishmen in Croydon, the war is ours, and the United States of Atlantis indisputably free. For what other purpose did you and your brave men leave France?"
"For no other purpose," the marquis admitted… reluctantly? He also found a notable difficulty with Victor's scheme, and proceeded to note it: "How do you propose to inform the French navy that its services in these parts are desired? I have not the faintest idea where in the broad Atlantic-or even the not so broad
Mediterranean-its ships of the line and frigates may be."
Enthusiasm or no, Victor Radcliff found himself compelled to contemplate the cogent question. Having contemplated, he delivered his verdict: "Damnation!"
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