The United States of Atlantis Read online

  “He can have the bastard who brought me over here, the white-toothed dealer who sold me, and the mangy hound who bought me,” Blaise said. “If anything in your religion is true, they’re all bound for hell.”

  “I am a Christian,” Victor said. So was Blaise . . . most of the time. But Victor had grown up with and in his faith, and took it as much for granted as the air he breathed. Coming to it first as an adult, Blaise enjoyed tinkering with it and trying to figure out how it worked, much as a watchmaker might enjoy disassembling a complicated clock and then putting it back together.

  Blaise looked at him now. “You are a Christian when it suits you. You are a Christian to white Atlanteans—even to white Englishmen. When will you be a Christian to niggers and mudfaces?” Only in southern Atlantis, a region with reddish dirt, would that have stuck as an insulting name for copperskins.

  Victor’s cheeks heated. “One thing at a time,” he said yet again. “Once we drive the English from this land, we can make it what we want it to be for everyone who lives. Everyone.”

  “How long will you and I be dead before that day comes?” Blaise asked.

  Victor wasn’t fifty yet, while Blaise wasn’t far from his age. He didn’t want to claim they’d see the day he’d talked about. Well, he wanted to, but Blaise would only mock him if he tried.

  He did say, “I think it will take longer if England wins. General Howe cares more about slaves because he can use them against us than for any other reason.”

  “And you are proud this is so because . . . ?” Blaise asked.

  Try as Victor might, he found no good answer for that. Blaise’s smug look said he hadn’t thought Victor would.

  Victor hadn’t seen the Blavet for a long time. The river was at least as important in the history of French Atlantis as the Brede was to English Atlantis. He’d crossed it several times during the war, and more than once before that. And he’d helped besiege and capture Nouveau Redon even though the French thought the fortress impregnable. Custis Cawthorne’s judgment on that had been An impregnable position is one in which you’re liable to get screwed: as usual, pungent and cogent at the same time.

  Since taking Nouveau Redon, Radcliff had assumed the French Atlanteans would love him better at a distance. No one from the south had ever told him he was wrong, either. That left him sad but unsurprised.

  But among the things war made you do were ones you’d stay away from in peacetime. And so here he was on the river again, peering across to the south bank to see if he could spy any sign of General Howe and the redcoats. No unusual plumes of smoke in the sky, no hanging dust that told of an army marching up a dirt road. Howe’s men were somewhere on the far side of the Blavet, but farther off than Victor had feared.

  Flapjack turtles swimming in the river stared, only their heads and long, snaky necks above water. They made good eating, but you had to treat them with respect: a big one could bite off a finger. Worse things than flapjack turtles lurked in the rivers down here, too. Spanish Atlanteans called them lagartos—lizards. English Atlanteans mostly used the Biblical word: crocodiles.

  Bridges still spanned the Blavet, a sure sign fighting in these parts hadn’t been going on for long. “Are we going to cross, General?” Habakkuk Biddiscombe asked.

  The cavalry officer sounded dubious, for which Victor could hardly blame him. All the same, he answered, “Yes, I think we are. We came down here to fight the enemy, not just to keep an eye on him.”

  “Yes, sir. But . . .” Sure enough, even the pugnacious Biddiscombe seemed unhappy. “If they get between us and the river after we go south of it . . .” His voice trailed off again.

  “If they get between us and our homes, you mean,” Victor said.

  Habakkuk Biddiscombe nodded gratefully. “Yes, sir. That is what I mean. If they do that, we’re in a pile of trouble.”

  “Then we’d be wise not to let them, don’t you agree?” Victor said.

  “We would, yes.” Biddiscombe nodded again. “But not everything in war happens the way you wish it would, if you know what I mean.”

  Victor would have been happier if he hadn’t had a similar thought not long before. “All we can do is our best,” he said. “I am confident every man here will do that. If you are not, I hope you will point out the likely shirkers to me so we can separate them from this force as soon as may be.”

  “Oh, no, General. I think everyone will fight hard,” Biddiscombe said hastily. “I just don’t know how much good it will do.”

  “I see.” Victor fought to hide a smile. “Your concern is not for the common soldiers, but for the competence of their commanding general. That is a serious business. I worry about it myself.”

  Habakkuk Biddiscombe opened his mouth. Then he closed it again without saying anything. And then, sketching a salute, he jerked his horse’s head around and retreated in disorder. If beating the enemy proved as easy as routing Atlanteans, everything would go very well indeed.

  After crossing the Blavet, Victor thought about leaving a force behind to protect the bridge. In the end, he didn’t. No force of reasonable size would be able to stall the redcoats long. He decided the men would be better used with his main body. There, they might keep the English from approaching the bridge to begin with.

  He did send cavalrymen riding in all directions. The sooner he learned exactly where General Howe was, the better. If Major Biddiscombe—promoted after his winter heroics—seemed eager to get away, neither he nor Victor had to remark on that.

  An English Atlantean and his French-speaking wife—a soldier’s widow from the last war?—came into the army’s encampment to complain. “Why are you requisitioning from us?” the man asked. “What did we ever do to you?”

  “Would you go to General Howe the same way?” Victor asked.

  “By thunder, I sure hope so,” the prosperous farmer replied.

  “I suspect he’d clap you in irons if you tried, but never mind,” Radcliff said. “We need supplies. An army does not subsist on air. I wish mine did; it would make the quartermaster’s job easier. But until that day comes . . .” Victor spread his hands in apology.

  “How do you expect people to rally to the red-crested eagle if you plunder the countryside?” the farmer demanded.

  “Plunderers don’t commonly pay,” Victor said, as he had so often before.

  The English Atlantean’s wife proved she understood the language by letting out an unladylike snort. “And what is your paper good for?” she asked, before making an even more unladylike gesture to show what it was good for.

  “After the war is won, it will be as good as silver and gold,” Victor insisted—hopefully.

  “And on the twelfth of Never, they’ll put a crown on my head and feed me pudding all day long,” the farmer said.

  “Well, sir, you have got another choice,” Victor said.

  “Oh? What’s that?” The man perked up.

  “We could kill you both and burn the farmhouse over your heads,” Victor said with no expression in his voice or on his face.

  If he’d made it sound more like a threat, he might have frightened the farmer less. The man eyed him to judge whether he was joking. “We’ll take your paper,” he said quickly. Whatever he saw must have convinced him Victor meant every quiet word. That was wise on his part, for Victor did.

  “Should have killed him anyway,” Blaise said when Victor told the story back at camp. “Now he will take the Atlantean Assembly’s paper and then say bad things to his neighbors even so.”

  That struck Victor as all too probable. All the same, he said, “Our names would be blacker if we started killing everyone we didn’t trust.”

  After blacker came out of his mouth, he wished it hadn’t. So many phrases in English weren’t made to be used around free Negroes. To his relief, Blaise didn’t call him on it, instead saying, “Maybe better to lose reputation than to let some of those people hurt us.”

  “Maybe,” Victor said. Some loyalists would end up getting hurt—
he was sure of that. Some had already. He went on, “General Howe doesn’t hang people just for being on our side, either. I don’t care to give him the excuse to start.”

  “You white people.” Blaise shook his head. “You and your rules for war.”

  “It’s not quite so bad with them as without them,” Victor said.

  “Half the time, I still think you are crazy, every one of you,” Blaise said.

  “Why not all the time?” Victor inquired.

  “Because I remember you can make ships to sail from Africa to Atlantis. You can make guns. You can make whiskey and rum. You can make books.” Blaise named the things that impressed him most. “My people, they cannot do any of these. So if you are crazy, you are crazy in a clever way.”

  “Crazy like a fox, we’d say,” Victor replied.

  “Foxes. Little red jackals,” Blaise said, and Victor supposed they were. The Negro went on, “I hear tell these foxes don’t live naturally in Atlantis. I hear tell people bring them. Is this so?”

  Radcliff nodded. “It is. No four-legged beasts with fur but for bats lived in Atlantis before people brought them here.”

  “Some of your beasts—horses and cows and sheep and pigs—I see why you brought them. But why foxes? They kill chickens and ducks whenever they can.”

  “In England, hunting them is a sport,” Victor answered. “People wanted to do the same here.”

  “I take it back. You white people are crazy,” Blaise said. “You bring in beasts that cause so much trouble—to hunt them for sport?”

  “Well, I didn’t do it myself,” Victor said. “And I don’t suppose the lizards and snakes and oil thrushes here thank whoever did.”

  “I believe there were no four-legged furry beasts here before people brought them. They would have eaten up all the oil thrushes like this.” Blaise snapped his fingers. “We have no stupid birds like them in Africa.”

  As far as Victor knew, there were no such stupid birds in England or Europe, either—or in Terranova, come to that. “There were—what were they called?—dodos, I think the name was, on little islands between Africa and India.”

  “Were?” Blaise echoed.

  “Were. People ate them and ate them, and now none are left,” Victor said with a shrug. “I suppose the oil thrushes and honkers will go that way, too, before too many more years pass.”

  “All gone. How strange,” Blaise said.

  Before he could say anything more, a cavalryman rode into camp shouting, “General Radcliff! General Radcliff, sir!”

  Victor ducked out of his tent. “I’m here. What’s wrong?” The hubbub made him sure something was.

  “We found the redcoats, General,” the rider answered. He pointed southeast. “They’re headin’ this way.”

  XI

  “Well, we crossed the river to find them.” Victor Radcliff hoped he sounded calmer than he felt. The sun was sinking toward the Green Ridge Mountains. “How close are they? Will they get here before night falls, or can we fight them in the morning?”

  “In the morning, I’d say,” the rider replied. Then he shook his head. “Or maybe not, if they push their march. Hard to be sure.”

  “Damnation,” Victor muttered under his breath. He couldn’t stand people who couldn’t make up their minds. And he had to rely on what this fellow said, no matter how indecisive it was.

  He did the best he could. He sent out pickets to cover a fan-shaped arc from due south to northeast of his position. If General Howe did try a forced march, the Atlanteans would slow him down and warn the main body of his approach. Victor didn’t really anticipate it. Howe made a better strategist than a field commander. On campaign, he’d proved several times that he didn’t move as fast as he might have.

  Better to send out the pickets without need than to get an ugly surprise, though.

  “If we don’t fight the redcoats this afternoon, we will fight them on the morrow,” he told the men still in camp. “Clean your muskets. Riflemen, take especial care with your pieces—they foul worse than smoothbores. Cooks, ready supper now. If we do fight today, better to fight on a full stomach.”

  Thanks to their foragers, they would have enough to eat for the next couple of days. After that, they would need to shift again and take what they could from some other part of formerly French Atlantis.

  Victor wondered how the English troops were subsisting themselves. Did they have a wagon train from Cosquer and the ocean? Did boats bring their victuals up the Blavet? Or were they foraging like the Atlanteans?

  It didn’t matter now. It might if he routed them and fell on their baggage train. He laughed at himself. He was nothing if not ambitious. He had yet to beat the redcoats in a pitched battle, and now he was thinking about what might happen after he routed them? If he wasn’t ambitious, he’d slipped a cog somewhere.

  No sudden spatters of gunfire disturbed the rest of the afternoon. General Howe hadn’t eaten hot Terranovan peppers or anything else that made him break out in a sweat of urgency. More riders came in. Victor got a better notion of the enemy’s position.

  And an English Atlantean who’d settled south of the Blavet rode into camp just after sunset. He introduced himself as Ulysses Grigsby. “I hear the redcoats aren’t so far off,” he said.

  “I hear the same,” Victor agreed gravely.

  “You aim to fight ’em?” Grigsby asked.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Victor admitted. “Why do you wish to know?” If this stranger was some loyalist spy, he might imagine he could waltz away with the Atlanteans’ battle plans. If he did, he was doomed to a most painful disappointment.

  But Ulysses Grigsby said, “On account of if you do, I know a damned good place to do it at.” He was between forty and fifty, skinny and weathered: if he hadn’t seen a good many out-of-the-way places, Victor would have been surprised. He smelled of sweat and pipeweed.

  “Oh, you do?” Victor said. Grigsby nodded. Victor eyed him. “If you try to put us in a bad spot, or in a good one where General Howe knows of some weakness and can use it, I promise you it will be your final mistake.”

  “And if I tell you nothing but the plain truth?” the other man returned.

  “Then Atlantis will have cause to be grateful,” Victor said. “We are not in an ideal position to show our appreciation at the moment, things being as they are. But, once we prove to England we are not to be defeated and she leaves off trying to subjugate us, we shan’t forget our friends. If that is not enough for you, sir, I will tell you good evening.”

  “And be damned to me?” Grigsby suggested.

  “You said it, not I,” Victor answered.

  “Heh.” Grigsby’s chuckle was dry as dust in an August drought. “Well, I’ll take you there now, if you like.” He chuckled again. “Bring as many guards as you please. You don’t need to—it’s inside your picket line. But I expect you’ll bring ’em anyhow. You’ve no reason to trust me . . . yet.”

  “You got past the pickets unnoticed, I gather?” Victor said.

  “I sure did. But don’t fret yourself.” That dry chuckle came out once more. “I expect they’d likely spy an army as tried the same.”

  “One may hope.” Radcliff wasn’t about to let anybody he’d just met outdry him. Ulysses Grigsby laughed yet again. Between the two of them, they could probably evaporate the Blavet.

  “Well, let’s get going,” said the English Atlantean who’d settled south of the old dividing line. “Sooner you see I’m not a prevaricating son of a whore, sooner you can commence to ciphering out how to steer General Howe into your jaws.”

  “Prevaricating,” Victor echoed, not without admiration. He would have bet Grigsby was self-taught. He’d known several Atlanteans like that: they would trot out the proofs of their learning whenever they could. Well-built women often wore décolleté dresses for similar reasons of display.

  He took along half a company’s worth of soldiers. If that force couldn’t let him get away from an ambush . . . then it could
n’t, and he and Atlantis would have to lump it. He watched Grigsby out of the corner of his eye. The other man gave no sign of wanting to betray him to the enemy. Of course, if he was worth anything at all in this game, he wouldn’t.

  As twilight deepened, a poor-bob somewhere under the trees loosed its mournful two-note call. It sang once more, then fell silent as the riders got closer. If redcoats skulked nearby, the night bird likely wouldn’t have called at all. More than a few people reckoned hearing a poor-bob unlucky. This once, Victor took it for a good sign.

  “Not much farther,” Grigsby said a few minutes later. “Still ought to be enough light to let you see what I’m going on about.”

  “That would be good,” Victor said, which got one more chuckle out of his guide.

  Grigsby reined in and gestured. “This here is the place. You’re the general. Expect you’ll see what I’ve got in mind.”

  Victor looked east: the direction from which Howe’s army would advance. He eyed the ground on which his army would fight if things went well. Slowly, thoughtfully, he nodded. “Promising, Mr. Grigsby. Promising,” he said. “But I am going to keep you under guard till after the fighting’s over even so.”

  He waited to see whether the leathery settler got angry. Grigsby only nodded back. “Didn’t reckon you’d tell me any different,” he replied. “Doesn’t look like I’ll have to wait real long any which way.”

  “You’re right,” Victor said. “It doesn’t.”

  The Atlantean soldiers grumbled when their sergeants and officers routed them from their bedrolls well before sunup the next morning. The sergeants and officers, having been awakened earlier still so they could rouse the men, had already done their own grumbling. Stony-hearted, they ignored the honking from the common soldiers.

  Tea and coffee and breakfast helped reconcile the troops to being alive. The eastern sky went gray, then pink, then gold as sunrise neared. Stars faded and disappeared; the third-quarter moon went from gleaming mistress of the heavens to a pale gnawed fingernail in the sky.