United States of Atlantis a-2

by Harry Turtledove

  "Only a snake could look at things in a more cold-blooded way," de la Fayette said-not quite the insult direct, but close. A touchy officer might have called him out for it.

  Von Steuben only smiled and bowed. "Do not down your nose at snakes look, your Grace," he said. "There are in this world of them a great many, and most of them seem uncommonly well fed."

  "I should rather fight like a man," de la Fayette said. "No one says to on your belly crawl to the redcoats' lines and bite in the leg an English sergeant. This is more likely you than him to poison," von Steuben replied. The Atlantean officers laughed right away. After the joke was translated, so did most of the Frenchmen. Even de la Fayette smiled. Von Steuben went on, "Yes, you should like a man fight. But you should also like a smart man, not like some dumbhead, fight, is it not so?"

  Plainly, de la Fayette wanted nothing more than to tell him it was not so. Just as plainly, the Frenchman couldn't, not unless he wanted to make a liar of himself. All but choking on the words, de la Fayette said, "It is so."

  "Good. Very good." Von Steuben might have been patting a puppy on the head, not talking to his nominal superior. "You can things learn. Give yourself a chance longer to live, and you will more things learn."

  De la Fayette looked more affronted than von Steuben had when the French noble-the genuine French noble, Victor reminded himself-called him cold-blooded. But all von Steuben had accused him of was being young. Time would cure that… unless he did something foolish enough to get himself killed before it could.

  The council of war went on a while longer after the exchange between von Steuben and de la Fayette. As Victor soon saw, though, men on both sides of the question were only kicking it back and forth in the same track.

  That left it up to him. Well, it had always been up to him, but now he had to look the fact square in the face. "We'll wait," he said. "We'll go on digging, as best we can. If matters develop differently from the way we now expect… Well, in that case, chances are Croydon will see another blizzard before winter's out."

  "You took that German cochon's word over mine," de la Fayette said hotly as the council broke up.

  "I will take good advice wherever I can find it," Victor replied. "He was right: failure would cost more than we can afford, whilst success is apt to come down without the attack, if rather more slowly."

  "Are you a general or a bookkeeper?"

  "I've been both," Victor said. "One is not the opposite of the other."

  De la Fayette's response was funny, sad, and pungently obscene all at once: very French, in other words. Then he added, "I wish I could change your mind."

  "A lot of people have said that down through the years," Victor answered, with a shrug far more resigned than the ones he'd got from Saul Andrews. "Not many of them have done it, though. Radcliff's are good at going straight ahead or stopping short, not so good at turning."

  "Good at stopping short when you should go straight ahead," de la Fayette observed, and walked off with the last word if not with what he wanted.

  Bright sunshine greeted Victor when he got up the next morning. Squinting against its glare off snow, he knew his men would have got slaughtered had they tried to storm the English works. Even had he agreed to the attack the night before, he would have had to call it off now. Sometimes what a man wanted or didn't want had nothing to do with anything: he simply had to make the best of the hand he got dealt.

  Victor set his men to shoveling snow out of the entrenchments that worked toward the redcoats' lines. Once they'd thrown out enough so they could move around fairly freely, they started hacking away at the frozen ground. The parallel advanced again.

  Cornwallis' soldiers shoveled snow out of their trenches, too. They made it as plain as they possibly could that they wouldn't give up without a fight. They went right on shooting at the diggers in the parallel. Every so often, they hit somebody. Being able to go back to Croydon when they weren't on duty, they had better quarters than the Atlanteans and Frenchmen investing their lines. English ships kept coming into port, too, which meant the redcoats were bound to be better supplied than their foes.

  But the English soldiers remained shut up in one tiny corner of Atlantis. Cornwallis didn't seem to think they had the strength to break out against Victor's army. If they could be beaten here, they would have to try some massive new invasion to make the war go on. If…

  In due course, the French engineers pronounced themselves satisfied with the second parallel. A new sap angled toward the English line. With muskets and mortars, the redcoats showed how little they appreciated the compliment.

  Then a fresh snowstorm shrieked down from the north. The digging had to stop for several days. Victor Radcliff swore and fumed, but he could do no more about the weather than Blaise or Sergeant Saul Andrews or any other mortal. All he could do was hope the storm blew itself out before long-and hope his troops stayed healthy long enough to let them attack the Englishmen. He could do no more about that than he could about the weather.

  "At least the weather is cold," Victor said to Blaise. "There seem to be fewer sicknesses at this season than in warmer times."

  "What about chest fever?" the Negro retorted. "What about catarrh? What about tire-what do you call it?-the grippe?"

  "Well, those are troublesome," Victor admitted. "But I was thinking of fluxes of the bowels, and of the plague, and even of smallpox and measles. They are seen more often in spring and summer-especially the first two."

  "They probably stay frozen in this snow and ice, the way meat does." Blaise rolled his eyes. "Who would have thought you could keep meat fresh as long as you froze it? In the country I come from, we have to smoke it or salt it or dry it or eat it right away. I never saw ice-I never imagined ice!-till you white men dragged me here."

  "Kind of you to admit ice is good for something," Victor said. "You are not always so generous."

  "If you could keep it in a box and use it for what it is good for, that would be fine," Blaise said. "When it lies all over the countryside and tries to freeze off your fingers and your toes and your prong, then that is too much." His shiver was melodramatic and sincere at the same time.

  "We will be warmer once we break into Croydon," Victor said. "I have said the same to the men advancing the sap. I can think of nothing better calculated to inspire them to dig."

  "It would inspire me, by the Lord Jehovah!" Blaise exclaimed. "But some of you white men like this weather. I have heard some of you say so. If you tell me now that these men are not mad, I will not believe you."

  "I also think they are." Victor could take it no further than that, as he knew too well. Some Atlanteans-and some Frenchmen, too-did relish winter for its own sake. He liked cold weather himself, he liked coming in out of it, warming himself in front of a roaring fire, and sipping from a flagon of mulled wine or flip, the tasty concoction of rum and beer. Spending much time in it was a different story, as far as he was concerned.

  Time dragged on. The sap moved closer to the redcoats' line, which meant they sent all the more musket balls and mortar shells and roundshot at the men digging it. The third parallel would be very close indeed. The sap that led out from it would break into the English works. After that, and after a clash and a show of resistance, General Cornwallis could yield with honor.

  He could, yes. But would he? In a fight to the finish, his men had at least some hope of beating the Atlanteans and Frenchmen opposing them. Since he led the last English force in Atlantis, mightn't he feel obligated to fight as hard as he could? If he did win, he kept the war alive.

  Every time Victor tried to decide what Cornwallis would do, he came up with a different answer. The English general certainly was conscious of his honor; Victor had seen that in the fight against the French settlers. Was he also conscious of the political demands his position imposed on him? How could he fail to be? And yet people weren't always sensible or clever-far from it. There was no sure way to judge till attackers swarmed into the breach.

  Then t
he Atlantean commander found something new to worry about, for a courier from Hanover brought him a letter in a hand he found far too familiar. He'd never dreamt he would recognize Marcel Freycinet's script so readily. No matter what he'd dreamt, he did.

  The letter was cheerful enough. Freycinet assured him that Louise was doing well, and that the slave and her owner both anticipated her safe passage through birthing time. Take heart, Monsieur le General, and be of good cheer, Freycinet wrote. Such things have happened since the days of Adam and Eve. You have nothing to be ashamed of; rather, pride yourself on your virility.

  Victor would have been happier to do that had any of the children Meg gave him lived to grow up. He could not wish for Louise's baby to die untimely… but neither could he wish his sole descendant to be sold on the auction block like a cow or a sheep. Nor could he buy the child himself, not when doing so would show his wife he'd been unfaithful.

  That left… Victor burned Monsieur Freycinet's letter on the brazier in his tent. It left nothing he could see. Nothing at all. He'd been scrabbling for a way out since he first learned his bedwarmer was with child. He had yet to find one, scrabble as he would.

  Since he couldn't do anything about what was going on far to the south, he threw his energy into the siege of Croydon. Even in the snow, he kept digging parties hacking away at the hard ground. A thaw came just after New Year's Day. As the last one had, it turned saps and parallels into morasses and made parapets slump.

  No doubt the redcoats were similarly discommoded. But their works were already in place. They weren't trying to extend them and trying not to drown at the same time.

  "Confound it, there has to be something between ground that's rock and ground that's soup!" Victor complained.

  "What you want for it to be is summer again," Baron von Steuben said. "And soon enough it will be."

  "It will be, yes, but not soon enough," Victor said.

  "For fighting? Maybe not. For anything else… Summer comes sooner every year," the German said. "So does winter."

  He wasn't much older than Victor was himself, which didn't mean he didn't have a point. Victor had noticed the same thing himself. Years used to stretch out deliciously ahead of him. Now each one seemed shorter than its predecessor. Before he had time to get to know it, it disappeared. And once time was gone, could even God call it back again?

  Before long, Louise's light brown baby would be born. Before long, the boy-or would it be a girl?-would be sold. Marcel Freycinet would pocket considerably more than thirty pieces of silver. Everyone would be happy… except Victor, and probably the little child who was flesh of his flesh.

  Baron von Steuben said something. Whatever it was, Victor missed it. "Crave pardon?" he murmured.

  The German pointed out to sea. "Here come more English ships," he repeated. "May the woodworms eat them all below the waterline."

  "That would be splendid," Victor agreed. "Devil take me if those be not first-rate ships of the line, too. From close in to shore, their guns may even reach the spot where we hope to breach Cornwallis' lines. A ball from a long twenty-four-pounder can do horrid things to a man."

  "So can a ball from a musket," von Steuben said, which was true but had scant flavor to it. His hard, weathered features folded into a frown. "It does not seem as if they hope to tie up."

  "So it doesn't," Victor replied. "I wonder why not."

  "They have to be more stupid than you would expect, even from an Englishman," von Steuben said. Victor Radcliff wondered what kind of opinion General Cornwallis' held about the German soldiers of fortune from Hesse and Brunswick and other petty states who took King George's silver and fought for England. Similarly low? He wouldn't have been surprised.

  He watched the men-of-war working their way toward Croydon against mostly contrary breezes. When all of them presented their broadsides to the town at the same time, a sudden mad hope caromed through him. He ducked back into his tent for the spyglass. Aiming the long brass tube out into the Atlantic, he drew out the slimmer part to bring the warships into focus. And when he saw them clear…

  When he saw them clear, he began to caper like a fool, or like a man possessed. "They're French ships!" he shouted. "French, I tell you! French!"

  "Wassagen Sie?" von Steuben demanded, though Victor didn't know how he could have made himself any clearer. A moment later, all the ships fired together. Tons of hot flying iron crashed down on Croydon.

  Chapter 23

  It had snowed again, blanketing the ground with white. While the flakes flew, the French ships refrained from bombarding Croydon. Maybe they didn't want to shoot at what they couldn't see Victor Radcliff didn't know how much difference it made They'd already gone a long way toward smashing the town, and started several fires.

  And they'd captured three English merchantmen that tried to sneak into Croydon under cover of the snowfall. It hadn't screened them well enough. The French ships of the line might not have wanted to fire at Croydon through the swirling snow, but they weren't shy about shooting at the blockade-runners. All the merchantmen struck their colors in short order.

  Somehow, the French warships must have won a battle against the Royal Navy out on the open sea. Victor could imagine nothing else that accounted for their presence here That wasn't quite a miracle from On High, but it came closer than anything else he'd seen lately.

  "General! General!" Several excited men shouted outside his tent. One outdid the rest: "An Englishman's coming out with a white flag!"

  "God bless my soul!" Victor murmured. He hurried out to see for himself, Blaise at his heels.

  The Atlanteans out there all pointed at once. Victor needed none of those outthrust index fingers. The enemy soldier's flag of truce might be scarcely visible against the snow on the ground, but his scarlet uniform tunic stood out like spilled blood.

  Too much blood spilled already, Victor thought. "Bring him to me at once," he ordered aloud. "Show him every courtesy. Unless I should be very much mistaken, this war is about to end here." That was plenty to send his own soldiers dashing off toward the parallel closest to the enemy's works.

  By the time they got there, men already in the parallel had taken charge of the redcoat. They offered him no abuse; they too could see he had but one likely reason for coming forth. By the time he'd made his way back through the trenches to Victor's tent, he had close to a company's worth of Atlanteans and Frenchmen escorting him.

  "You are General Radcliff, sir?" he asked formally, after lowering the flag of truce and delivering a precise salute.

  "None other," Victor said. "And you would be…?"

  "Captain Horace Grimsley, sir," the English officer replied. "General Cornwallis' compliments, and he has sent me to ask of you the terms you require for the cessation of hostilities between our two armies. Under the present unfortunate circumstances"- he couldn't help looking out to sea, where the French warships bobbed in the waves with their recent prizes-"he feels we have no reasonable expectation of successfully resisting the forces in arms against us."

  "My compliments back to the general, Captain, and to yourself as well," Victor said. "By all means tell him that I am pleased to treat with you, and that the forces under his command have fought bravely and well."

  "Thank you. He told me you would show yourself to be a gentleman." By the way Grimsley spoke, he hadn't believed a word of it. "And your terms would be…?"

  Victor had been thinking about them since the moment the French men-of-war appeared off Croydon. "Your men will stack their arms and surrender. Officers may keep their swords, in token of your brave resistance."

  "A gentleman indeed," Captain Grimsley said under his breath.

  "No surrendered soldier or officer will take up arms against the United States of Atlantis until he shall have been properly exchanged," Victor continued.

  "Agreed," Grimsley said.

  "Weapons excepted, men may keep one knapsack's worth of personal effects apiece," Victor said. "Property above that amount shall be reck
oned spoils of war, and will be divided amongst Atlanteans and Frenchmen in a manner we shall determine. We shall undertake to preserve your men's lives and the aforesaid personal effects unharmed, so long as you continue to comply with the terms of the surrender."

  "Agreed," Grimsley repeated. But then he asked, "By 'weapons,' sir, do you mean to include common eating knives, dirks, daggers, and bayonets?"

  "Upon surrender, your men will no longer need their bayonets, which will prove a useful accession to our own stocks." Victor paused a moment to think. "They may retain knives with blades shorter than, hmm, twelve inches. Is that satisfactory to you?"

  After his own brief consideration, Captain Grimsley nodded. "It will do."

  "Very well." Victor Radcliff's tone hardened. "One thing more: our promise of safety and property does not apply to the individuals enrolled in what is commonly termed Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion. Those men are traitors against the United States of Atlantis, and shall be used accordingly."

  "Oh, dear. General Cornwallis feared you would say something to that effect, sir," Grimsley replied. "He instructed me to tell you that singling them out for oppressive treatment is in no way acceptable to him."

  "No, eh?" Victor growled. "Why the devil not?"

  "Because they are King George's subjects, in the same way as his Majesty's other soldiers in and around Croydon."

  "They're Atlanteans. They're traitors," Victor said. "Were General Cornwallis now besieging rather than conversely, you would all be reckoned traitors against the king," Captain Grimsley reminded him.

  "Maybe so. And do you think he wouldn't single out redcoats who'd chosen to fight for the Atlantean Assembly?" Victor said. "We have a good many of them in our ranks, including some of our best drillmasters."

  "I shouldn't wonder at that," Grimsley said. To the English eye, Atlantean soldiers still fell woefully short on spit and polish: nothing Victor didn't already know. Cornwallis' plenipotentiary went on, "My principal will not permit any English subjects to be unjustly mistreated."