Opening Atlantis

XVII

A t Roland Kersauzon's order, French soldiers had seized a bridge over the Erdre, the river that formed the border between the French and English settlements (the English called it the Stour). They had to fight a brisk little skirmish to do it. Had they moved a couple of days later, enough enemy soldiers might have come south to forestall them.

"Do you see?" Roland said to anyone who would listen. "There is a lesson here. Speed counts. Even a small delay, and the English would hold a bridgehead on our soil, not the other way round."

Because he commanded the army, the other officers-and the sergeants, and the cooks, and the grooms, and anybody else who chanced to be within earshot-couldn't simply walk away from him. They had to listen to his words of wisdom. Some of them had to listen several times. He repeated himself without shame: most of the time, without noticing he was doing it.

Supply wagons rolled up from Cosquer and from Nouveau Redon. In days gone by, hunting could have kept a good part of the army fed. So old men insisted their fathers had told them, anyhow. But no one had seen a honker near the coast for many years. Oil thrushes hadn't vanished, but they were getting scarce, too. Even more ordinary ducks and geese had been heavily hunted.

And so Roland and his soldiers ate sausages and smoked pork and onions and hard cheese and biscuits baked almost hard enough to keep weevils out of them. They washed down the unappetizing food with vin tres ordinaire, and with beer that wasn't much better. Some of them drank from the Erdre instead. Roland discouraged that; it was more likely to lead to a flux of the bowels.

"There are towns upstream," he reminded the men-and reminded them, and reminded them. "Where do you think they empty their chamber pots? Into the river, naturellement. We ought to call it the Merdre, not the Erdre."

He was inordinately fond of the pun. Others who heard it smiled widely the first time, smiled politely the second time, and stopped smiling after that. Roland, who didn't keep track of who'd heard it and who hadn't, found his subordinates sadly lacking in a sense of humor.

Two drummer boys beat out a brisk tattoo as the main French force followed the skirmishers across the Erdre and into English territory. Roland Kersauzon rode across on a white horse. If a man was going to lead an army, he needed to be seen leading it. So thought Roland, along with every other European commander of the eighteenth century.

He paid a price. The gold braid and epaulets on his blue velvet jacket weighed almost as much as a back-and-breast of days gone by. More gold braid ornamented and weighed down his tricorn. The hat did shield his eyes from the sun, but it was heavy enough to make his neck sore. He sighed with relief every time he took it off.

He could have doffed it any time he chose. No one would have doubted who led the French settlers. He could have, but he didn't. He was as stern with himself as he was with the men in his charge.

They marched on, leaving a garrison at the bridge to make sure the English didn't nip in behind them and take it away. Roland felt very grand and martial. His soldiers seized livestock and supplies from the farms they passed. The army would eat better because of it.

Scouts rode in front of the main force. Kersauzon didn't want to get taken by surprise. He'd known for years that Englishmen weren't to be trusted. He didn't care to have them prove it against his army.

And so, when a sharp racket of musketry rang out up ahead, he called to the buglers: "Blow form line of battle. Then blow advance on the foe."

The horn calls rang out. The gap between the first and the second stretched longer than Roland would have liked. The French force was less thoroughly drilled than it might have been. Garrisons from several towns had been melded together to make an attacking force. They were brave enough-Kersauzon had no doubts about that-but they hadn't marched side by side for years. They'd be veterans by the time this campaign ended, but they weren't yet.

Roland rode forward with the advancing infantry to see what the trouble was. He didn't need long. The English had picked a spot where trees came close to the road on both sides and run up a barricade of logs and boulders there. They were shooting from behind it, which let a handful of men thwart a much larger number. Roland didn't think that was sporting, but the English settlers doubtless didn't care.

"We will give them a few volleys from the front," he said. "While we keep them busy, we will send men into the woods to either side. Once they flank the enemy out of his position, we will tear down the barricade and resume our advance."

He'd never commanded troops in battle before. Everything seemed bright and clear and obvious. He gave his orders with confidence. The soldiers eagerly obeyed. Confidence in a leader brought out confidence in his men.

His men approached the barricade. A couple of English settlers popped up and fired at them. One bullet missed. The other grazed a soldier in the leg. He had to fall out, but called to his comrades as they marched past: "Go on! Go get them! Don't worry-I'll be with you again soon!"

They moved to within sixty yards or so: close enough for a decisive volley. Then two blunt, ugly little cannon muzzles poked through cunningly concealed openings among the logs. They were three-pounders: light field guns that could keep up with cavalry on any reasonable ground.

A man cried out in English. Both guns belched fire and smoke at the same time. They also belched canister. At that range, they couldn't have missed if they tried. Men from the first three or four rows of French settlers fell as if scythed. The ones still standing looked around in surprise, as if wondering where their friends had gone. Some of them shot at the enemy. Most were too startled or too appalled.

Roland Kersauzon was appalled, too. A man who stopped canister at close range wasn't picturesquely wounded, as the man pinked by a musket ball had been. He was blown to rags, to bloody fragments a butcher's shop would have been ashamed to sell. And, no matter how mutilated he was, he didn't always die right away. The shrieks from maimed soldiers chilled the blood.

"Where are our cannon, Monsieur?" a lieutenant asked.

"They're coming up," Roland said unhappily. The line of march had got longer than it should have. He hadn't tightened up, for he hadn't expected to do any serious fighting for a while. There was another lesson: if you didn't act as if a battle might break out any second, you were making a mistake.

And that one had a corollary. Mistakes in wartime could be fatal. This one had been, for too many of his men. Only luck none of those lead balls tore into his own belly or smashed his skull.

"What do we do now, Monsieur?" the lieutenant asked. "Shall we charge the barricade while they reload?"

Too late, Roland learned caution. He shook his head. "No. If they have another gun waiting, they'll murder us." He turned to the bugler. "Blow fall back."

Although that horn call wasn't particularly mournful in and of itself, it seemed so to Kersauzon because of what it ordered. Fall back the French settlers did, dragging their wounded with them. Dead men and pieces of men lay where they'd fallen. The hot iron stink of blood fouled the air.

Would the English come out to attack? Would their cannon start firing roundshot, which could kill from much farther than canister? Whatever they did, they wouldn't enjoy it for long. Once the outflankers got behind them, they would have a thin time of it.

The lieutenant pointed at the barricade. "Monsieur, I believe they're pulling out!"

Roland raised a spyglass to his eyes. Like a ship captain's glass, or an astronomer's, it inverted the image while magnifying it. Sure enough, the glimpses of enemy soldiers the barrier gave him showed they were withdrawing. Either they were cowards or (more likely, he decided with regret) they'd figured out his plan and wouldn't wait around to be trapped.

"So they are," Roland said heavily. "Well, we can let them go-this time. Then we'll tear down the barrier and advance again. We'll be more careful from now on." I'll be more careful from now on, he meant. The young lieutenant politely nodded.

Once in English Atlantis, Juan and Francisco went their own way. Francisco talked of traveling overland to Avalon and then crossing the Hesperian Gulf and going back to Terranova. How he would find his own clan again, Victor Radcliff had no idea. He was welcome to try, though.

Juan simply wandered off. Maybe he went looking for his own folk, too. Maybe he just went looking for work or a woman or whiskey or whatever else he might want. He was a free man here.

So was Blaise, but he seemed inclined to stick with Victor. "You do interesting things, Monsieur," he said in his oddly accented French. "I think I do more interesting things myself with you than without you."

Victor had never had-and never wanted-a body servant. He couldn't very well tell the Negro that staying with him was pointless, because he'd be spending so much time in the woods. Blaise could take care of himself there, at least as well as Victor and maybe better. And so…Victor found himself stuck.

His fiancee thought it was funny. Margaret Dandridge was a level-headed girl from a New Hastings trading family. "He's very sweet," she told Victor. "And he's sharp-he's already starting to pick up English."

"I know," Victor answered. "He's learning to shoot, too. They wouldn't let him do that while he was a slave. He's good at it. I think he'd be good at anything he turned his hand to."

"You're lucky to have him, then," Meg said.

"I suppose so." Victor didn't sound so sure. After a moment's hesitation, he explained why: "Do I have him, or does he have me?"

He had plenty of other things to worry about. No one in the English settlements had looked for the French settlers to move so aggressively after war broke out. An English army was supposed to be on the way across the sea. Everyone had thought the French would do the same, so forces from the two mother countries fought it out.

But Roland Kersauzon had other ideas. English Atlantis had to dance to his tune, one way or another. Either the settlers had to recruit forces of their own, or they had to yield to Kersauzon without fighting and hope the professionals from the home island could rescue them.

They recruited, of course. Every farmer with a shotgun for bagging ducks and driving off wild dogs, every backwoodsman with a rifle, made a likely soldier. The men who joined on their own or were dragooned into the service of crown and settlements got green coats of several different shades, some of cotton, more of linen-cotton came from the French and Spanish south.

Because he was an experienced backwoodsman-and because he was a Radcliff-Victor acquired a major's commission, with gilt epaulets on the shoulders of his green coat. He didn't particularly like the emblems of his rank; they made him a better target. No one wanted to listen to him, so he wore the epaulets in camp. When he got to the field, he could take them off.

Somehow, Blaise acquired a sergeant's stripes. He wore them proudly. Victor hadn't asked for any rank for him. Maybe he got it by magic. Maybe he knew which palms to grease, though he had precious little money for greasing.

Victor thought the Negro's new status would cause trouble, and it did. A hulking young man named Aeneas Hand told him, "I'll be damned if I let a lousy nigger order me around."

Blaise was there to hear that. He tapped Hand on the shoulder. "You no like?" he asked in English flavored by both French and his African birthspeech-he was a quick study.

"No, I don't." The white man-who had perhaps four inches and forty pounds on Blaise-set himself. His hard hands balled into fists. "What are you going to do about it, you turd-colored monkey?"

Flat-footed, without changing expression or even seeming very interested, Blaise kicked him in the crotch. Aeneas Hand let out a startled grunt and folded up like a clasp knife. Blaise kicked him again, this time in the pit of the stomach. Hand couldn't have fought back after the first disaster. The second left him on the ground, desperately struggling to breathe. Blaise kicked him one more time, in the side of the head. Hand went limp.

"Did you kill him?" Victor asked.

"Nah." The Negro shook his head. He hadn't even broken a sweat. He continued in French: "Throw water on him. He wake up. Head hurt two, three days, same with balls and belly." He looked down at Aeneas Hand. "What he call me? I don't understand it."

"Never mind," Victor said in the same language. "If you knew, you would have killed him."

A couple of other recruits came over to stare at their fallen comrade. "Godalmighty!" one of them said. "What happened to him?"

"He offended the sergeant here." Victor pointed to Blaise. "And he found out that wasn't such a good idea, didn't he?"

"Sure did." The man looked from Aeneas Hand to Blaise and back again. "Offended him, did he? If he really went and got him mad, I reckon he'd be in pieces."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Victor Radcliff agreed. "Fetch a pail of water and souse Aeneas with it. He's learned a lesson. I hope nobody else in this company has to."

Hand had begun to stir by the time the water cascaded over him. Sure enough, it revived him. Blearily, he looked up at Blaise. "You don't fight fair," he said.

"Fight fair? Fight fair?" That startled the black man out of English and into profane French: "Sacre merde!" Blaise thought for a moment before going on, in English again, "You right. I no fight fair. I fight, I win. Only way to fight. I sergeant." He tapped his stripes. "You mess me again, I kill you. Understand?"

Aeneas Hand nodded, then winced and looked as if he wished he hadn't. Water dripped off his chin and from the end of his pointed nose. "Reckon I do."

"Reckon I do, what?" Blaise touched the chevrons again.

"Reckon I do, Sergeant," the big recruit allowed.

"Good." Blaise allowed himself a smile. He reached down and hauled Hand upright. "We get on now."

And they did. Having been so thoroughly beaten, Aeneas Hand spread the word that Blaise was sudden death on two legs. A couple of smaller incidents with other recruits did nothing to show he was wrong. Victor Radcliff began to wonder whether he or his man would have worn the epaulets had Blaise been born with a white skin.

Gravediggers' spades tore into the soft brown earth. Dirt thudding on dirt had an ominously final sound. Roland Kersauzon watched as a priest gabbled quick Latin over the shrouded corpse, then jumped away. A sickly-sweet stench rose from the body. It wasn't because the young soldier had stayed unburied too long; he'd died that night, only a few hours before this dawn. But smallpox had its own fetor.

Roland muttered to himself. Too many soldiers were dying of smallpox and measles. Men who grew up on farms out in the countryside and spent their lives alone in the woods missed the diseases in childhood, when they were most often milder. Catch them then and you were immune forever after. Catch them as an adult…

He rubbed his arm. He had smallpox scars there, but nowhere else. He'd missed the sickness as a boy himself. He'd been inoculated with it at Nouveau Redon and taken a light case. Now he was as immune as if he'd been through a harsh bout caught by accident.

Inoculation had come to the French settlements from the English, to Atlantis from England, and to England, he'd heard, from Turkey. He wondered how widely it was practiced in English territory here. Were the English settlements' recruits less likely than his own men to come down sick? He hoped not-that could decide who won the war.

The gravediggers tipped the corpse into the hole they'd made. Both of them had smallpox-slagged faces; they feared no contagion. The priest was unmarked. No wonder he didn't want to stay by the body a moment longer than he had to. But a dying man, or a dead one, needed a hope of heaven. If a priest wouldn't shrive him, he'd surely go to hell instead.

If a priest died after shriving a few men, what then?

Then you find another priest, Roland thought, with luck a man who carries the scars on his own face. That would be more…economical. Till this moment, Kersauzon had never thought of priests as expendable munitions of war, but they were. That they were also other things didn't mean they weren't.

A veteran sergeant-one who bore the marks on his face-came up to Roland and saluted. Voice as mechanical as an artisan's automaton, he said, "Monsieur, I'm sorry to have to report to you that in my company alone we have another half a dozen sick. Two of them, I fear, aren't at all well."

If a veteran sergeant said something like that, the priest would perform his office again before long. "Nom d'un nom!" Roland burst out. "So many, and just from your company?"

"Oui, Monsieur." Who would have imagined the underofficer's voice could become even more colorless than it was already?

"And other companies will be reporting similar calamities?" Kersauzon persisted.

"If they are honest, I think they will."

"How are we to go forward with so much sickness?"

The sergeant didn't answer that, not in words. His eyebrows said, You're the commander. Why are you troubling me with that? It's your worry. And it was. Kersauzon sighed. "Thank you for letting me know. You're dismissed." He received another precisely machined salute, and the underofficer made his exit.

Other sergeants and lieutenants did report sickness in their men. One lieutenant reported himself unwell. The hectic flush on his face and a bright glitter in his eye said he'd be worse before long. Roland said nothing of that past telling him to lie down and take it easy.

"But we're in English territory, Monsieur," the young officer protested. "We should move forward."

"We will-in a while," Roland said. "But we need to have a healthy army if we are to fight with any hope of victory, n'est-ce pas?"

"Oui," the lieutenant said, and argued no more.

More and more reports came in. "This is a disaster!" Kersauzon cried. He'd expected the bloody flux among his men. But so many casualties from smallpox and measles took him by surprise.

The corporal who'd brought the latest word of men down with smallpox-and of others afraid to get anywhere near them-shrugged then. The marks on his face said he'd been through the disease and come out the other side. "It's war, Monsieur," he replied.

"But if I attack now, it will be like trying to strike with a broken hand," Roland said.

Another shrug from the corporal. "Then don't attack, Monsieur. Wait for the English to come to you. Chances are their army will have as much sickness as ours."

Fifty years earlier, that assuredly would have been true. But, if the English inoculated more than his own side did, smallpox would trouble them less. And he knew they did inoculate more. The procedure had its risks; every once in a while, someone came down with a bad case of smallpox instead of the mild dose that gave immunity. Most of the time, though, a wild case was far more dangerous.

He consoled himself by remembering that the English couldn't inoculate for measles or fluxes of the bowels. And not all of their soldiers would have had pus from a smallpox sore rubbed into a cut on the arm. Some would still catch the disease on their own. Some, yes, but how many?

Fewer than were catching it among his own troops. Roland Kersauzon was glumly sure of that. He dismissed the corporal with more respect than he usually gave underofficers. The man had helped him make up his mind, which was more than that miserable lieutenant had done.

He stood on English territory. He decided he would stand for a while, till the sickness burned through his army and burned itself out. Freetown could wait.

Victor Radcliff rode into New Hastings from the north. Blaise rode with him. The Negro had never ridden a horse till he escaped from bondage. No one would ever mistake him for a polished equestrian now, but he stayed on the gelding and didn't complain about being saddlesore…though he did walk with the bowlegged gait of a man with rickets.

New Hastings' narrow, winding streets and half-timbered houses made Victor wonder if the Tudor age really had passed away. He laughed at himself as that went through his mind. The town was older than the Tudors; its founding lay in Plantagenet times. Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts-all gone. New Hastings went on.

"English ships, they come?" Blaise asked.

"That's what the semaphore said," Victor answered. "Word passed from fishing boats still out to sea."

"It is clever, the semaphore." Blaise lapsed into French to say that, and went on in the same language: "In Africa, we have fires that go from hill to hill to pass messages."

"Beacon fires," Victor said in English.

"Beacon fires." Blaise repeated the phrase. "I remember." And he would, too. "But the semaphore, it is better than the beacon fires. It can say more of things."

"Just more things," Victor told him.

"More things." Blaise also said that again. He shrugged. "It is a peculiar language, English."

Victor found French and Spanish peculiar when they differed from the tongue he'd grown up speaking. To what strange African language was Blaise comparing English? Radcliff wondered how much trouble he would have learning it.

He had more important things to worry about. Those ships would carry English regulars to stiffen the ranks of the raw Atlantean troops. Victor assumed the redcoats wouldn't have to worry about the sicknesses that had weakened the colonial force. The regulars would already have lived through them by now.

He and Blaise rode past the big all-planked warehouses that stood near the harbor, and then out toward the quays. Their timing couldn't have been better if they were on the stage in Hanover. A first-rate man-of-war was just tying up, with several smaller, beamier transports right behind.

"Ahoy!" Victor called to the men on the ship of the line. He descended from fishermen, but the nautical word felt strange and unnatural in his mouth. "May I come aboard?"

"Who are you?" a mate asked. He pointed at Blaise. "And who's the monkey?"

A low growl from Blaise's throat said he understood that. Radcliff had hoped he wouldn't. The Atlantean officer answered, "I am Major Victor Radcliff, of the local militia. With me is my man, Blaise." He stressed man more than he might have otherwise.

The mate stayed unimpressed. "And why should the general want to see the likes of you, eh?"

"Because his men and ours will be fighting the French?" Victor suggested.

"Well, 'is will," the mate said. But then, just before Victor might have drawn his pistol, the fellow grudgingly nodded. "All right. I suppose you can see 'im. Won't do too much 'arm."

He shouted orders. A gangplank thudded down. Victor came aboard, Blaise at his heels. Everything aboard the man-of-war spoke of order, discipline, restraint, confinement. At home in the wide woods of Atlantis, Victor immediately mistrusted the atmosphere.

Behind him, Blaise muttered in his incomprehensible native tongue. He would have crossed from Africa to Atlantis in the hold of a slave ship. Mistrust, Radcliff realized, was bound to be the least of what he felt here. But for those mutters and a hooded glance toward the mate, though, Blaise held his feelings in check.

"Ahh…Where do I find the general?" Victor asked.

"Lubber," the mate muttered. Radcliff felt as offended, and as ready to punch him, as Blaise would have if the man had said nigger in the same tone of voice. With a resigned sigh-what could one do about the ignorant?-the mate pointed and said, "'Is cabin's on the poop deck, back at the stern."

"Thank you," Victor replied, meaning anything but.

Then the mate pointed again. "'Ere 'e comes now, so you don't 'ave to go back there. Wouldn't want you getting lost, would we?" Before Victor could rise to that sarcasm, the mate raised his voice: "Your Excellency! General, sir! This officer from the settlements"-his tone, and the way he jerked his thumb at Victor, showed he was giving him the benefit of the doubt-"would like to 'ave the honor of speaking to your Excellency for a moment."

"Yes, yes." The general commanding the English expeditionary force was refulgent in scarlet and gold. If the uniform made the man, he was a made man indeed. Personally, he was less prepossessing: about sixty, jowly, with a pinched mouth that said he'd lost most of his teeth. When he nodded to Victor, the wattles under his chin wobbled. "I am Major General Edward Braddock. And you, sir…?"

Victor saluted. "Major Victor Radcliff, your Excellency. I am pleased to welcome you to Atlantis."

"More pleased than I am to be here, I shouldn't wonder," Braddock replied. "I hoped they would give me a command on the Continent, but…" He shrugged, and that loose flesh swung back and forth again. "A man goes where he is ordered, not where he would. Tell me something of the French dispositions."

"Sir, they are halted in our territory, about thirty miles below Freetown," Victor said. No light of intelligence kindled in the general's eye, from which Victor concluded he did not know exactly where Freetown lay. With a mental sigh, the Atlantean added a gloss: "About a hundred ten miles south of where we are now."

"I see." Edward Braddock nodded, perhaps in wisdom. His next questions were cogent enough: "Why are they halted? Why didn't they go on to assail this place?"

"Deserters say there's sickness among them, your Excellency," Victor answered.

"Ah." Braddock nodded again. "That would come of using raw troops, wouldn't it? You needn't worry about my lads coming down sick, by God! If they didn't catch the great pox-let alone the small-years ago, they weren't half trying." His chuckle held a curious mix of contempt and affection.

"Your Excellency, I had that very thought as I was riding down here. It should help us."

"Indeed. We'll come ashore, march down to wherever it is that the froggies got stuck in the mud, drive them out of our settlements, and then go on into theirs," Braddock said. "Should be a straightforward enough job of work. You'll be able to keep us victualed, I expect?"

"I think so, sir." Radcliff paused. "If I may say…" He paused again.

"Yes? Well? Out with it, man. I don't bite," the English officer said gruffly.

"The only thing I wanted to say, sir, is that it may not prove quite so easy as you make it sound," Victor told him. "Atlantis is a different place from Europe."

"Don't I know it!" Braddock had said he would rather have fought on European soil. Now Radcliff saw how true that was. Scowling, Braddock went on, "Still and all, soldiering is soldiering. What works in France works in Prussia and Russia and India. We've seen that. I daresay it will work here, too."

"I hope so, your Excellency," Victor replied.

A horseman rode into the French encampment from the north. He shouted Roland Kersauzon's name. Roland ducked out of his tent. "I am here," he said. "What have you learned?"

The rider dismounted. A young groom led the horse away. "English soldiers have landed at New Hastings, sir," the rider said.

"How many? Do you know?"

"No, sir. But the rumor is that they have a general in command, so they are not a small force." The scout spoke fluent English, one reason Roland had chosen him. He continued, "And the rumor is, they are marching this way."

"Is it?" Kersauzon said tonelessly. It was a rumor he would rather not have heard. "English regulars, under a general?"

"Major General Edward Braddock." The scout pronounced the name with a certain somber satisfaction. Emboldened by Roland's silence, he pressed on: "Is it that we shall also have soldiers coming from the mother country?"

"If it is, I have heard nothing of it," Roland replied. "I am what we have. We are what we have." At least the man hadn't asked whether a general was coming from France, which bespoke a certain basic courtesy. Kersauzon realized he'd answered the question regardless of whether it was asked.

"What shall we do?" the scout asked. "The English regulars, they are said to be men of extraordinary discipline. Of extraordinary ferocity, as well. How can we hope to stand against such soldiers?"

That only angered Kersauzon-angered him more, perhaps, because similar doubts flitted through his own mind. "Do you piddle down your leg when you hear 'An Englishman is coming!'?" he demanded.

"Monsieur, I should hope that I do not," the scout replied with dignity. "But when many Englishmen come, with an English major general commanding them, I confess I am not altogether easy in my mind."

"Very well," Roland said. It wasn't, but it also wasn't anything he could do anything about. He gestured sharply. "You may go." It wasn't quite You've brought me bad news-get out of here, but it wasn't so far removed from that, either.

Rather to his surprise, the scout did remember to salute before leaving. That left Roland there by himself: also an uncomfortable place to be. He had nothing to do but brood about what lay ahead.

His army had shown it could stand against whatever the English settlers of Atlantis threw at it. Against regulars from across the sea? He wasn't nearly so sure. Those men were trained to stand in line, to load and fire, to step forward and take their wounded or slain comrades' places, and then to charge home with the bayonet, all without regard for their own safety. Unlike them, his troops were not such fools. They wanted to fight, yes, but they also wanted to live.

Kersauzon scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his nails-a man could not stay properly shaved in the field. He frowned. If he fought this Braddock's fight, line against line, what could he do but lose? But what other kind of fight was there?

The kind where his men's fighting style had the advantage and that of the English regulars did not, of course. Put so, it seemed obvious. But how to turn an obvious abstraction into reality?

He called the scout back.

The man came with ill grace. He was gnawing on some meat stuffed between two slices of bread: an English fashion that seemed to be spreading. And why not? It was fast and convenient and filling. Mouth full, the scout mumbled, "Monsieur?"

"I wish you to tell me of the land ahead," Roland said. "I am seeking a particular kind of terrain."

After a heroic swallow and another equally heroic bite, the scout mumbled again: "And that would be?"

"Something on this order." Roland described it as minutely as he could. "Have you seen anything like that?"

Another swallow. Another bite. More muffled talk-the man suddenly seemed capable of speech only with his mouth full: "Well, now, Monsieur, I think I just may have." He swallowed again, and-miracle of miracles!-emitted several clear words: "When I was coming back here, you understand?"

"Yes." Roland Kersauzon quivered with eagerness. "How far distant?"

"Not too," the scout replied. Or so Roland thought, at any rate; the fellow was eating again. Had he fasted all through his mission? Would he starve to death unless he stuffed his face with meat and bread now?

"Not too," Roland repeated hopefully. The scout nodded; that let him eat and communicate at the same time, and lessened his risk of choking to death. Roland tried to get more out of him: "Could we establish ourselves there-wherever this place is-before the English come across it?"

He'd timed things as well as he could. He finished the question just as the scout swallowed. That didn't stop the man from taking another bite before answering. Roland supposed nothing short of a lightning stroke from God could have. He looked up toward the heavens. Nothing. God might have been Baal in the Old Testament: He was talking, or pursuing, or on a journey, or maybe He was sleeping, and needed to be awakened.

At last-and as indistinctly as ever-the scout said, "Oui, Monsieur. I think we can do it without much trouble."

"Good," Roland said: and it was good. "Then we shall."