The United States of Atlantis Read online

  Victor didn’t much like what he saw. He hoped the enemy general was even less happy with what his spyglass showed him.

  Field guns unlimbered and deployed to either flank of the redcoats. English artillerymen opened fire. Maybe they hoped the cannonading would terrify their raw opponents. A couple of balls slammed against the stone wall but didn’t break through. Then one took off the head of a tall soldier who was looking out at the martial spectacle in front of him. His corpse stood upright, fountaining blood, for several seconds before it finally fell.

  Even Victor thought that might be plenty to frighten his men. But it didn’t seem to. “Did you see Seth there?” one of them exclaimed.

  “Didn’t know he had so much blood in him,” another replied.

  “Sure went out in style, didn’t he?” the first man said, nothing but admiration in his voice. In spite of himself, Victor Radcliff smiled. The Atlanteans were turning into veterans in a hurry.

  General Howe’s men were already veterans. Without fuss or wasted motion, they swung from column to line of battle, staying out of range of both muskets and rifles as they took their places. Victor ordered his handful of field guns into action. They knocked over a few redcoats. The rest kept on with their evolutions as if nothing had happened.

  Drums and fifes moved the Englishmen forward. The field guns cut swaths in their advancing ranks. They closed up and kept coming. Victor wondered if they would charge with the bayonet again. He hoped so. He didn’t think they would be able to stand the gaff if they tried.

  But Howe proved able to learn from experience. Having suffered from one charge, he had the redcoats halt about eighty yards from the fence that sheltered the Atlanteans. The first rank went to one knee. The second stooped to fire over their shoulders. The third stood straight.

  “Fire!” Victor yelled, and the Atlantean volley went in before the English soldiers could start shooting. Redcoats crumpled. Redcoats writhed.

  And redcoats opened fire. Musket balls smacked the stone fence. And they smacked soft flesh. Atlanteans screamed. Atlanteans reeled back, clutching at themselves.

  The first three ranks of redcoats retired and began to reload. The next three stepped forward. The first of them went to one knee. The second stooped. The third stood straight. They all fired together. Then they retired and also began to reload. Three more ranks of English soldiers delivered another volley. By that time, the first three ranks were ready to fire again. They did. Then the regulars charged.

  They’d taken casualties all through their volleys—the Atlanteans had blazed away at them, too. And Victor’s men—those of them still on their feet—delivered a couple of more ragged volleys as the redcoats rushed at them. A few fieldpieces fired canister into the English soldiers. The sprays of lead balls tore holes in the redcoats’ ranks. They came on regardless.

  At the wall, they stabbed with their bayonets, driving the Atlanteans back. Then the Englishmen started scrambling up and over. More of them got shot doing that. Once they dropped down on the east side, they lashed out with those bayoneted muskets. Again, at close quarters Victor Radcliff’s men had no good answer for them. Guts spilled out onto the trampled, bloodstained grass.

  “Back!” Victor shouted. “Back! Form lines! Give them a volley!”

  He wondered if the farmers and cobblers and millers and ropemakers and horse dealers would listen to him. They’d faced the redcoats twice now, and been forced from strong positions both times. Why wouldn’t they want to break and run after that?

  They didn’t. Not so neatly as their foes would have done it, they drew back fifty yards, formed up, and gave Howe’s men a volley. Fire rippled up and down their ranks. Any English sergeant worth his stripes would have screamed at them for such ragged shooting. Some of the Atlantean sergeants did scream at them.

  Victor was just glad they’d fired at all. “Give them one more!” he yelled. “One more, and then fall back again!”

  This volley was even more ragged than the one before had been. The Atlanteans remained in order, though: a force in being. They’d hurt the redcoats, too. Victor could see a lot of dead and wounded English soldiers on both sides of the wall. He could also see a lot of dead and wounded Atlanteans.

  The army that held the field was the one that won the battle. So it had been in ancient days, and so it was still. General Howe’s army would hold this field, as it had held the one north of Weymouth—as it now held Weymouth itself.

  “They aren’t so tough,” somebody not far from Victor said as the settlers withdrew. “Give us big old knives on the end of our firelocks and we’ll make ’em sorry—just see if we don’t.”

  “Damn right, Lemuel,” the fellow next to him replied. They both nodded, as if to say, Well, that’s settled. Victor had lost two battles and one town. All of a sudden, he didn’t feel nearly so bad.

  V

  New Hastings again. Victor Radcliff had hoped he wouldn’t see it so soon. He’d hoped he wouldn’t see it at all. He’d dreamt of driving the redcoats before him as if he embodied the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Why not drive them back to Hanover? Why not drive them out of Hanover? Out of Atlantis altogether?

  Well, now he knew why not. General Howe’s soldiers were better trained than his. The Royal Navy had cost him more trouble than he’d expected, too.

  And so . . . New Hastings again.

  He went to the ancient redwood church to report his two failures to the Atlantean Assembly. Those worthy patriots would already know he’d lost two battles. If anything outran the wind, it was rumor.

  But the forms had to be observed. The Assemblymen were his superiors—the only superiors he had. They were as much of a government as the rebellious settlements had. Here and there, English governors persisted. Nobody said much about that to Custis Cawthorne.

  Stolidly, Victor told the Assembly what had happened. “We did succeed in removing the munitions from Weymouth before English forces reached the town,” he said.

  “Did you succeed in removing Weymouth itself?” an Assemblyman asked. His name, if Victor remembered rightly, was Hiram Smith. He came from New Marseille, in the far southwest.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Victor answered.

  Smith went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “I think you did, sir. You removed it from free Atlantis and returned it to King George.”

  A low ripple of laughter ran through the church. A split second later, it came echoing back from the high, vaulted ceiling. “Mr. Smith, you may have your sport with me if it please you,” Victor answered, not showing the rage that griped his belly. “We did, I believe, what we could do with what we had. The men showed themselves to be uncommonly brave. They fought hard and spiritedly, holding their ground well against professional soldiers and retaining their morale even when fortune failed to smile on them. True, they did not triumph, but even in defeat they cost the enemy dear, and they remain both willing and able to fight again when called upon to do so. Any deficiencies in their conduct must accrue to me, not to them.”

  Custis Cawthorne rose and straightened. He made something of a production of it, as he made something of a production of most things. Looking out over the tops of his spectacles at the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly, he said, “My friends, I should like to propose a resolution concerning General Radcliff.”

  “Say on, Mr. Cawthorne,” said redheaded Isaac Fenner, who held the gavel. “You will anyhow.”

  “Your servant, sir.” Cawthorne dipped his head in Fenner’s direction. “Be it resolved, then, that we imitate the Roman Senate. After the Battle of Cannae, the worst defeat Rome ever knew, the Conscript Fathers voted their official thanks to the surviving consul, Caius Terrentius Varro, because he had not despaired of the Roman Republic. Let us confer the same honor upon General Radcliff for the same reason.”

  “It is so moved,” Fenner said. “Do I hear a second?” He heard several. Cawthorne’s motion swiftly passed. Fenner nodded to Victor Radcliff. “You see? We do not despair of you, and may you neve
r have cause to despair of us.”

  “Thank you. And thank you all.” Victor was more moved than he’d imagined he would be. “Let me also say I hope and pray we suffer no defeat worse than these two, for they truly were close, hard-fought struggles.”

  “We have shown King George and his ministers that we can confront their minions in arms,” Custis Cawthorne said.

  “We have not shown that we can beat them,” Hiram Smith put in.

  “That may not prove necessary,” Cawthorne said. “As long as we stay in the field, as long as we fight, as long as we annoy, we drain England’s treasury and make her people despair of victory. Sooner or later—God grant it be sooner—they will tire of trying to force us to an allegiance we detest. There are more ways to win a war than by gaining glory on the battlefield.”

  “None surer,” Smith said. “None quicker.”

  Isaac Fenner nodded to Victor. “What are your views in this regard, General?”

  “Winning in the field is victory,” Radcliff replied. “Not losing in the field . . . may eventually be victory, depending on our continued resolve and England’s eventual impatience. I prefer to win. If forthright victory eludes me, I will do what I can to maintain the fight.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Fenner said judiciously.

  “Try it anyway,” Custis Cawthorne added.

  “As always, Mr. Cawthorne, your sentiments do you credit,” Fenner said.

  “Credit is all very well, but cash is better,” the printer replied. “As we are discovering to our dismay.”

  Isaac Fenner’s large ears twitched. Cawthorne had struck a nerve. The Atlantean Assembly had no sure power to tax. It could ask the parliaments of the several settlements for cash, but they were under no obligation to give it any. If they didn’t—which happened much too often—the Assembly paid with promissory notes, not gold or silver. The war was still young, but merchants already traded those notes at a discount.

  “Have you gentlemen any further need of me?” Victor asked. “I thank you for the great honor you have conferred upon me, but I believe it would be best if I returned to my troops and saw to the defenses of this city.”

  “I think we’ve finished with you.” Custis Cawthorne looked around the Assembly. Seeing no dissent, he went on, “And I am glad today’s resolution pleases you. It is, after all, worth its weight in gold.”

  The full force of that didn’t strike Victor till he’d left the old church. Then, belatedly, it hit him like a ball from a forty-two-pounder. He staggered in the street and almost bumped into a woman in a lacy bonnet. She sent him a reproachful glare as she sidestepped.

  “Your pardon, ma’am,” Victor said. The woman only sniffed and hurried away. Victor shook his head, still chuckling under his breath. “That old reprobate! He ought to be ashamed—except he has no shame at all.”

  Blaise looked at his hands. They hadn’t been soft before. Even so, they were blistered and bloody now. “I dug in front of Nouveau Redon,” he said. “Since then, I forgot how much of soldiering is pick and shovel work.” Missing one finger couldn’t have made things any easier. He rubbed grease on his abused palms. By his expression, it didn’t help much.

  A privilege of being a general was not having to imitate a mole. Victor Radcliff clucked when that figure of speech crossed his mind. England had moles. So did the mainland of Europe, and so did Terranova. Atlantis had none, nor any other native viviparous quadrupeds but for bats. In their place, burrowing skinks went after worms and underground insects here.

  His ancestors had left England more than three centuries before. Habits of speech from the mother country still persisted, though. He wondered why.

  “Sometimes the spade is as useful as the musket,” he said, trying to clear his mind of moles.

  “Sometimes being on the wrong end of the one hurts almost as much as with the other,” Blaise replied tartly.

  He might have been right about that. Whether he was or not, fieldworks would help the Atlanteans hold General Howe’s army away from New Hastings. Victor worried less about the Royal Navy here than he had up at Weymouth. Unlike the smaller town, New Hastings already had seaside works to challenge warships. They’d been built to hold off the French, but no law said they couldn’t fire at men-of-war flying the Union Jack.

  Afterwards, Radcliff remembered he’d had that thought only a few minutes before the distant thunder of cannon fire from the coast made him jump. “Big goddamn guns,” Blaise remarked.

  “Aren’t they just?” Victor said, and ran for his horse. The beast stood not far away. He untied it, sprang up onto its back, and rode for the shore as fast as it would carry him.

  Sure as the devil, English frigates and men-of-war tried conclusions with the coast-defense batteries. If they could smash the forts and silence the guns, they would be able to bombard New Hastings at their leisure. The men-of-war carried bigger guns than any the forts mounted.

  But the star-shaped forts had walls not of oak but of bricks backed by thick earth. Their long twelve-pounders could shoot as far as any warship’s guns. And they could fire red-hot shot, which was too dangerous to use aboard ship. If a red-hot ball lodged in a man-of-war’s planking . . .

  Somewhere right around here, all those years ago, Edward Radcliffe and his first party of English settlers had landed. They’d killed honkers and fought against red-crested eagles. Now, reckoning themselves Englishmen no more, their descendants fought against redcoats and Royal Navy alike.

  Crash! A big cannon ball from one of the English ships smashed bricks in a fort’s outer wall. But the earth behind the bricks kept the ball from breaking through.

  Cannon inside the fort bellowed defiance. Gray smoke belched from their muzzles. They might well be using the powder saved from Weymouth. At least one ball struck home. Victor could hear iron crashing through oak across close to half a mile of water. He hoped it was a red-hot roundshot, and that the English warship would catch fire and burn to the waterline.

  None of the Royal Navy vessels out there did. He might have known they wouldn’t. That would have been too easy. They went right on exchanging murder with the seaside forts.

  And one of them noticed the lone man on the strand. Maybe a seagoing officer turned a spyglass on Victor and noticed he was dressed like an officer. Any which way, two or three cannon balls whizzed past him and kicked up fountains of sand unpleasantly close to where he stood.

  He wasn’t ashamed to withdraw. One man armed with sword and pistol was impotent against a Royal Navy flotilla.

  Or was he? One man with sword and pistol was, certainly. One man armed with a working brain? Victor smiled to himself. He could almost hear Custis Cawthorne asking the question in just those terms.

  More than a hundred years before, the pirates of Avalon had discommoded a fleet of Atlantean, English, and Dutch men-of-war with fireships. A few fishing boats were tied up at the piers that jutted out into the sea. The wind lay against them, though. Whatever Victor came up with, that wouldn’t work.

  Despite the cannonading, Atlantis’ flag still flew defiantly over the forts: the Union Jack, differenced with a red-crested eagle displayed in the canton. From a distance, it hardly looked different from the flag the enemy flew. We need a better banner, Victor thought, one that says right away who we are.

  He suddenly started to smile again. “By God!” he said. Better banners came in all sorts—or they might.

  Victor shouted for runners and sent the young men to the forts. Before long, a new flag went up over them, as well as over the city as a whole. No doubt the officers of the flotilla could make out what that flag meant: it warned that yellow fever was loose in New Hastings.

  That flag told a great, thumping lie. The yellow jack hardly ever came this far north. It broke out in Freetown now and again, and more often down in what had been French Atlantis. But, while Atlanteans knew that, Englishmen might well not. The warning of flags wouldn’t keep the Royal Navy from bombarding the forts. It might prevent a landing
by Royal Marines.

  And it might make General Howe think twice about assailing New Hastings. No general in his right mind would want to expose his troops to yellow fever. Howe would think the Atlantean rebels were welcome to a town stricken by the disease. He might even think it God’s judgment upon them. Whatever he thought, he would think staying away was a good idea.

  That much Victor foresaw. He didn’t tell the men of the Atlantean Assembly that the flags lied. Sometimes the less you told people, the better—or more secret. Some of them rapidly discovered pressing business well away from New Hastings. They preferred risking capture by General Howe to the yellow jack.

  Isaac Fenner came up to Victor and said, “I had not heard this plague was among us.”

  “Neither had I.” Victor didn’t care to use the lie direct, even if the lie indirect troubled him not at all.

  The current speaker of the Atlantean Assembly raised a gingery eyebrow. “I . . . see. So the wind sits in that quarter, does it?”

  “It does,” Radcliff replied. “And I will add, sir, that your discretion in this regard may keep it from swinging to some other, less salubrious, one.”

  “Salubrious, is it?” Fenner’s eyebrow didn’t go down. “You’ve been listening to Custis again.”

  “Better entertainment there than in most of the taverns,” Victor said, “and less chance of coming away with a chancre or anything else you don’t want. You may tell him, sir. I rely on his discretion.”

  “Then you must believe all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” Fenner said.

  “I do believe that, candidly,” Victor said, and the speaker winced. Victor went on, “Whether the same may be said for the world in which we find ourselves may be a different question.”

  “So it may,” Isaac Fenner agreed. “Cawthorne’s experience, as he will tell you at any excuse or none, is that three may keep a secret—if two of them are dead.”