“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!”
“Was sagen 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.
XXIII
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 reckoned 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.”
“They are Atlanteans,” Victor said again. “They have given aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States of Atlantis. They have tried to kill us. By God, sir, they have killed us, most recently at the start of this siege. How can you—how can your commander—reckon them anything but traitors?”
“They are not traitors to the king. Until this war began, all Atlanteans were, and saw themselves as, his Majesty’s subjects. How can you condemn these men for holding to their prior allegiance?”
“Aha!” Victor Radcliff aimed a finger at him as if it were
a sharpshooter’s rifle. “I have you now! I might be prepared to accept your claim for men who fought against us from the beginning. But you will know as well as I, sir, that Habakkuk Biddiscombe served in the army of the United States of Atlantis until, dissatisfied with his prospects amongst us, he suddenly discovered an undying loyalty to King George. He turned his coat, in other words. If that does not make him a traitor, I am hard pressed to imagine what would. The same holds true for most of his followers.”
“General Cornwallis sees the matter differently,” Grimsley said. “In his view, these men were but rediscovering their original allegiance.”
“That’s pretty,” Victor said. “It means nothing, but it’s pretty. You go tell him I want those men. If he should choose not to yield them, the siege will continue until we storm the breach. The cannonading from the ships offshore will also continue. How long before famine does our work for us?”
Grimsley bit his lip. He had no answer for that. Neither did Cornwallis, or he would not have asked for terms. At last, the English captain said, “May I beg a truce of twenty-four hours to take your words back to my superiors for their consideration?”
“Certainly,” Victor said. “But unless their answer suits me, I fear the conflict must continue.”
“I understand, sir. Please accept my assurances that I wish with all my heart circumstances were otherwise.” With that, Captain Grimsley took his leave.
Naturally, the line the Atlanteans and Frenchmen held around Croydon ran from sea to sea. As naturally, some parts of it were held with greater force than others. The redcoats manned their line the same way. They concentrated most of their strength against the saps and parallels that brought their foes up close to their works. And Victor Radcliff likewise kept most of his troops in and near those precious trenches. Anything else would have invited disaster.
Later, he realized he should have wondered when the redcoat asked for a truce stretching through the night. But that was later. At the time, the request seemed reasonable enough. Grimsley had refused a condition Victor saw as essential. Cornwallis and his leading officers might well need some time to decide whether to yield up the men who’d fought so ferociously on their side.
For that matter, Victor felt he needed his own council of war. “If they insist on our keeping Biddiscombe and his men prisoners of war like any other, how shall we respond?” he asked his officers. “Shall we allow it for the sake of the victory, or shall we say we must have the villains’ heads?”
“Let the pigdogs go,” Baron von Steuben said at once. “The surrender wins the war. That is the point of the business.”
“We can win the war even if the redcoats don’t surrender,” an Atlantean retorted. “The redcoats wouldn’t ask for terms if they weren’t at the end of their rope.”
“That’s where Biddiscombe and his buggers ought to be—at the end of a rope.” Another Atlantean officer twisted his head to one side, stuck out his tongue, and did his best to make his eyes bulge: a gruesomely excellent imitation of a hanged man.
The laugh that rose in the tent held a fierce, baying undertone. Victor wasn’t the only one there who wanted Habakkuk Biddiscombe dead. But did he want Biddiscombe dead badly enough to make it an issue that might disrupt Cornwallis’ surrender? Most of his officers certainly seemed to.
As councils of war had a way of doing, this one produced more heat than light. Several men had to get between a captain who favored flaying Biddiscombe and sprinkling salt on his bleeding flesh before hanging him and a major who thought letting him be treated as an Englishman was a reasonable price to pay for a surrender.
Wearily, Victor dismissed his subordinates. “What will you do, General?” one of them asked.
“Make up my mind come morning,” he answered.
“Then why did you call the council?” the man said.
“To learn whether I might be able to make up my mind tonight,” Victor told him. “But, as both sides have strong arguments in their favor, I need more time to decide what best serves us at this crucial hour.”
His officers had to be content with that. Muttering, they went off to their own tents. Victor turned to Blaise. “The man in me wants to see Biddiscombe at the end of a rope,” he said. “The general says I should do as von Steuben suggests and let him go for the sake of victory.”
“Chances are you get the victory anyway,” Blaise answered.
“I know,” Victor said. “But there’s also the chance that something may go wrong if I delay. I know not how badly those French ships worsted the Royal Navy. If an English fleet should suddenly appear off Croydon, all our work would of necessity commence again.”
“Not all of it,” the Negro said. “We have got close to the redcoats’ line now. When we break in, what can they do?”
Victor Radcliff smiled. “Yes, there is that. You know as much of siege warfare these days as any Atlantean officer.”
“More than a stupid nigger would, eh?” Blaise said, not without an edge to his voice.
“Do I maltreat you or reckon you less than a man because your skin is black?” Victor asked. He waited. At last, Blaise shook his head. “All right, then,” Victor said. “Where, before you came to Atlantis, would you have learned of saps and parallels? It is not a matter of stupidity, my friend—only inexperience. Set me amongst your folk, and I should make the most useless of spearmen.”
“Ah.” Blaise considered that. “Yes, it could be. But you would be able to learn.”
“I hope so. You have certainly learned a good deal here,” Victor said.
“Not always things I want to learn,” Blaise said.
“I shouldn’t wonder.” Victor followed the words with a yawn. He stepped out of the tent and looked over toward Croydon. Most windows in the town were dark or showed only the dim sunset glow of banked embers. Firelight did pour from two or three buildings. In one of those, Cornwallis and his officers were probably still hashing out what to do. Victor wished he could have been a fly on the wall at that conclave.
His breath smoked. His ears started to tingle. He would have been a chilly fly on the wall—he was glad to duck back under canvas. It wasn’t warm inside the tent, but it was warmer.
“You’ll sleep on it, then?” Blaise said.
“Yes, I’ll sleep on it.” Victor nodded. “Maybe I’ll be wiser come morning. Or maybe I’ll seem wiser, at any rate.”
He pulled off his boots and shed his hat. Other than that, he lay down on the cot fully dressed. Even with two thick woolen blankets, he was glad for every extra bit of cloth between him and winter. Would he really be, or at least seem, wiser after the sun came up? He could hope so, anyhow. He closed his eyes. Before long, he slept. “General! General!” Shouts pierced dreams of an earthquake. No, the world wasn’t falling down around him. Someone was shaking—had shaken—him awake.
It was still dark. “What’s gone wrong?” Victor asked blurrily. Something must have, or they would have left him alone till dawn.
“There’s fighting, General, over in the northeast, on the far side of the line,” answered the man who’d been doing the shaking.
“A pox!” Victor groped for his boots, found them, and tugged them on. The far side of Croydon from the encampment was also the weakest-held part of his lines. “Are the redcoats breaking out?” If they were going to do it anywhere, they were most likely to try there.
“Somebody sure as hell is,” the Atlantean soldier said.
Victor hurried outside. He could hear muskets boom from that direction, and could see muzzle flashes piercing the night like fierce fireflies. Not all the booms came from muskets. Even at this distance, a trained ear like his could tell pistol shots from musketry. There were quite a few of them. . . .
He suddenly thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Biddiscombe!” he exclaimed, and it was as much a howl of self-reproach as a naming of the man likely leading that attack. “The Horsed Legion!”
What had been going on all night in Croydon? Why, Ge
neral Cornwallis and his officers were trying to decide whether to throw Habakkuk Biddiscombe and his troop of horsemen over the side to keep the French ships and the Atlantean and French armies from pounding them to jelly. Captain Grimsley had insisted that Cornwallis would never abandon Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion. But if the redcoats would never abandon their local allies, why were they talking deep into the night about doing exactly that?
Why indeed?
Now, too late, Victor could read Habakkuk Biddiscombe’s thoughts. If the English army changed its mind and decided to give him and his men to the rebel Atlanteans, they were all as good as dead. And if the redcoats refused to cough up the Horsed Legion and the rebel Atlanteans and the French broke into Croydon—which seemed all too likely—he and his followers were also as good as dead.
Breaking out offered more hope than either of those chances.
Or maybe Cornwallis had gone to Biddiscombe and said something like, I wish things were otherwise, but they are as they are. I have no way to protect you. Flight seems your best hope. If you attempt it, I shall look the other way whilst you ready yourselves.
Cornwallis was bound to deny any bargain like that. So was Habakkuk Biddiscombe. Victor doubted he would ever be able to prove a thing. But he could see the scene in his mind’s eye all the same.
“What do we do, sir?” asked the soldier who’d wakened him.
“Try to stop them, of course,” Victor snapped.
But some of them would break through—no, some of them had already broken through. Victor could see that by the places from which the gunfire was coming. They’d hit the weakest point in his line, all right. Was that good generalship? Was it fool luck? Or had someone gone over and told them where to strike? In a fight like this, with so much betrayal on both sides, could you be sure of anything?
Victor was sure of one thing. “From this moment on, those men are outlaws, to be run down like wild dogs. They will leave tracks in the snow. As soon as we have light by which to follow them, we shall hunt them to destruction.”
The United States of Atlantis Page 40
