Opening Atlantis

XXIV

T hey were breaking. Finally, after a running fight that had gone on all through the day, the English settlers in front of Roland Kersauzon's men had had as much as they could take. They'd managed to get across a creek running east to the ocean, and were still defending the fords, but Roland was sure his army could force a crossing.

He looked west, toward the Green Ridge Mountains. They were barely a smudge on the horizon, but, as usual, clouds piled high above them. The sun was setting in blood as it sank into those clouds. "Can we get over this miserable stream once night falls?" Roland asked his lieutenants.

They looked at one another. Nobody spoke right away. At last, one of the junior officers said, "I'm afraid I don't know where the shallow stretches are." Several other men nodded, as if he'd said what they were thinking.

"Nom d'un nom," Roland muttered. He dismissed the lieutenants and summoned sergeants and corporals. They made an older, more raffish group than the one he'd sent away. He put the same question to them.

"I can find a ford," a weathered sergeant said confidently. "I used to run traps up here. I know what's what."

He'd poached, in other words, since this was English territory. Roland grinned. "Good. That's what I wanted to hear. As soon as it's nice and dark, we'll get moving…"

But the English Atlanteans knew where the fords were, too. They started bonfires on their side of the creek at each one of them, to make sure Roland's men couldn't catch them unawares. Roland took the sergeant aside. "I know what you're going to ask me," the trapper said: "Did they miss any?"

"You're right-that's what I'm going to ask you," Roland agreed. "Did they?"

"No, damn them," the sergeant said. "Well, if you want to go five miles west, there's sort of a ford they may not have covered. I can't tell about that one from where we are now."

Reluctantly, Kersauzon shook his head. "We'd get scattered all over the landscape if we tried it. And there's no promise Radcliff's men don't have a fire burning at that ford, too, is there?"

"Monsieur, the only promise is, we're going to die sooner or later," the sergeant answered. "I want it to be later, in the arms of a beautiful woman. If her husband shoots me, even that's not so bad. But I know you don't always get what you want, not in this life you don't."

"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth? Her husband, eh?" Kersauzon shook his head. The sergeant grinned and winked and nudged him. In spite of himself, Roland laughed-for a moment. But the smile slid from his lips as he went on, "We'll have to pay more to cross that creek come morning."

The uncouth, backwoodsy French Atlantean shrugged a shrug a Paris boulevardier might have envied. "Every business has its costs," he said. "Since we aren't going to go tonight, shouldn't we grab what rest we can?"

"An excellent idea," Roland said briskly.

Even when he wrapped himself in his blanket, sleep didn't want to come. He knew he was keyed up. That accounted for some of his trouble-some, but not all. The English Atlanteans on the north side of the stream were godawful noisy. Raucous snatches of marching songs floated through the air. So did the sounds of tramping feet, as if large numbers of soldiers were on the march.

For a little while, Roland worried, there under that ratty, tattered blanket. Then he chuckled. Trying to bluff him, were they? Did they think he would believe they'd been reinforced, and hold off on account of that? If they did, they were making a bad mistake. Some of them were making their very last mistake. Chuckling once more, he slid headlong into sleep.

That veteran sergeant shook him awake. The earliest traces of morning twilight grayed the eastern horizon. "Time for the dance already?" Roland asked around a yawn.

"I think so." The sergeant jerked a thumb toward the north, across the creek. "But those noisy baboons keep tripping over their own clodhoppers."

"They want us to think every Englishman in Atlantis is hiding among those trees," Kersauzon said scornfully. "Well, I don't care what they want. I am not a four-year-old, to be fooled by such tricks. We'll get our men fed, we'll get them across the stream, and we'll get back together with Marquis Montcalm-Gozon."

Breakfast was less than he wished it were: stale hardtack and gamy sausage. But a little ballast in the belly was better than none. He took no more than any of his soldiers. As soon as the men were fed, he formed them in long columns, one in front of each ford. The troops at the head of each column would suffer. Not all of them would fall, though, as they charged through the waist-deep water. And they would drive the English Atlanteans before them once they got across.

Ferns rustled and quivered in the woods on the far side of the creek. Drums began to pound. Hearing those drums made the hair at the nape of Roland's neck quiver. "No," he whispered hoarsely. "It's not possible."

But it was. It was not only possible, it was true. Greencoats emerged from the greenery and formed up opposite his own men. There were more of them than he would have expected to find in a rear-guard detachment. That made one nasty surprise. Things got worse. As the drums continued to bray, redcoats broke cover and took their places beside the English Atlanteans. Their sergeants bellowed and swore till their alignment was perfect.

"What are those salauds doing here?" a soldier said. Maybe the question was meant for Roland, maybe for an uncaring God.

Roland feared he knew the answer. Only one seemed likely: somehow, Montcalm-Gozon's French regulars had come to grief. The English had broken the siege of Freetown, and now they intended to break the French settlers, too.

"Monsieur, should we not withdraw?" a lieutenant asked urgently. "There are a devil of a lot of Englishmen on the other side of the stream."

"Yes, there are." Roland heard the bleakness in his own voice. "And they know where the fords are as well as we do. If we pull back, what will they do next, eh?"

The junior officer's mouth twisted. He didn't have to be Elijah the prophet to foretell the future here. "They'll come after us."

"Too right they will." Kersauzon couldn't even tell his men to give the foe a volley. Oh, he could, but it wouldn't do much good. In his infinite wisdom, he'd ordered his force into an assault formation. Only the few soldiers at the head of each column could open fire. Whereas the English…

No sooner had Roland realized the English could open fire when and as they pleased than they did. The green-coated settlers simply started shooting as they saw fit. The English regulars delivered a volley under the direction of their officers and sergeants, then methodically reloaded for another one.

And Roland's men lurched back. Not only could they not reply effectively, but they were so bunched up that not even smoothbore muskets could miss. Some of them fell. Others-the ones who could-reeled away from the southern bank of the stream.

Crash! That second volley tore through the French settlers. They broke, running for any cover they could find. Roland was surprised to find himself still imperforate. He yelled himself hoarse, trying to stem the rout. He might as well have saved his breath, because none of that yelling did any good at all.

Victor Radcliff rode across Stamford Creek. Bodies lay on the far bank. Other French settlers, wounded but not dead, stretched imploring hands out toward him. He went on past them. Somebody on his side would take care of them sooner or later. He wasn't sure just how-maybe drag them off to the surgeons, maybe knock them over the head. If none of the wounded enemies pulled a pistol or tried anything else foolish, odds were most of them would survive.

The English lieutenant-colonel rode beside him. The young officer's face radiated enthusiasm. "By God, Major, I do believe we've really done it this time! We've broken them!" He waved happily. "And it's mostly because your men held the French regulars in place until we could come down on them from behind. Well done!"

"Much obliged, sir," Victor replied. "And much obliged to you for coming down on them when you did. We couldn't have held much longer. They would have broken through us in another hour."

"It was a bit of a near-run thing, wasn't it?" the lieutenant-colonel said. "No one knew who'd be the heroes and who the goats till it all played out, eh?" Just for a moment, his grin slipped. "Pity about Brigadier Endicott, though."

"Yes, sir," Victor agreed politely. Brigadier Daniel Endicott had commanded the English regulars who'd landed in Freetown and given the force there strength enough to break the French siege. He'd had the bad luck-certainly for him-to put his face in front of a musket ball a few days earlier. Not ten minutes afterwards, his second-in-command got shot in the leg. That left the young lieutenant-colonel the senior English officer able to serve in the field.

None of which broke Victor's heart. Endicott had looked to be even more of a book soldier than the late Major General Braddock, and Colonel Harcourt was no improvement. The lieutenant-colonel, by contrast, had begun to understand that war in Atlantis wasn't the same as war on the manicured fields of Europe. Coming right out and saying so seemed the opposite of useful.

Musketeers fired from the woods ahead. Sudden puffs of smoke marked their positions-or where they'd fired from, anyhow. Anybody with a grain of sense would go somewhere else to reload and shoot again.

Not far from Victor, an English Atlantean swore, clutched his calf, and sat down in the dirt. He drew a knife and cut at his hose to get cloth for a bandage. "I'm out of the fight for a while," he said matter-of-factly.

"You'll do fine. The surgeons will fix you up in nothing flat." Victor wondered how big a liar he was.

The English lieutenant-colonel shouted orders. Redcoats advanced on the wood. A few more shots came from it. One or two English regulars fell. The rest went on in among the trees. No doubt some French Atlanteans escaped from the southern edge of the forest. But when the redcoats emerged, several of them held up their bayonets to show the blood on them.

"Good show," the lieutenant-colonel said. "We've dealt with the one bunch-now all we have to do is finish rounding up the other, and the war here is as good as over. Then we see where it all ends up at the peace table."

That brought Victor Radcliff up short. To him, Atlantis was the world. But the English officer reminded him things didn't work that way. England and France and their allies were also fighting in Europe, on the Terranovan mainland, and in India. A stroke of the pen, a swap of this settlement for that, could annul everything won here with blood and bullets.

"They wouldn't trade away everything we've done…would they?" Those last two hesitant words showed that Victor knew they might.

"It's not up to me, Major. Nor is it up to you," the lieutenant-colonel replied. "The diplomats make those choices. Our task here is to ensure that they can bargain from a position of strength."

More redcoats came out of the pine woods. They'd taken a couple of prisoners. They prodded the disgruntled French settlers along with their bayoneted muskets. One of the captives had a hole in his breeches and was bleeding, but not too badly. Victor guessed his prodding had been more forceful than he would have liked. The English Atlantean wondered what the prisoner had done to deserve it. Then he wondered if the man had done anything. The fellow likely counted himself lucky to be alive, even if he was injured. Victorious troops were supposed to take prisoners, yes. But in battle all kinds of things that were supposed to happen didn't, and just as many things that weren't supposed to did.

"We've smashed up Montcalm-Gozon's regulars," Victor said. "If we can do the same to Kersauzon's settlers, we'll be in about the strongest position we can-in Atlantis, anyhow. I hear the rest of the war is going pretty well."

"I hear the same," the lieutenant-colonel said. "By what the regulars newly come to Freetown tell me, we've smashed the French and their native nabobs in India."

"That's good news," Victor said.

"It is indeed. They put up a better fight than we thought they could: I know that for a fact," the English officer said. "And as for the remnants of the French forces here…Well, we should be able to settle them without too much trouble, I expect." He might have been the picture of confidence.

"Sir," Victor Radcliff said gently, "I do want to remind you that the late General Braddock said the same thing."

"Oh, yes. Of course." The Englishman's tone was indulgent. "But, whilst I don't care to speak ill of the dead, General Braddock committed some serious tactical blunders. I hope we can avoid those."

"Yes, sir." Major Radcliff nodded. "So do I."

Had the English pressed their pursuit harder, they might have bagged all the retreating French settlers. Roland Kersauzon was only too bitterly aware of that. Even as things were, he had to fight a couple of sharp rear-guard actions. He sacrificed men he couldn't afford to lose to keep from losing everybody. There were bad bargains, and then there were worse ones.

"We'll have a better chance inside French Atlantis," he said again and again, trying to hearten the men he had left and trying to keep retreat from turning to rout. "If we have to, we can stand siege at Nouveau Redon. I'd like to see the damned Englishmen try to take it."

"I wouldn't," someone behind him said. Roland's head whipped around. He wanted to know who sounded so hopeless. But all the men close by tramped along with their heads down. None of them seemed ready to single out the fellow who'd spoken what probably lurked in all their minds.

It lurked in Roland's mind, too, however much he wished it didn't. No matter how he tried to cheer up his troops, his own spirits were at low ebb. How could it be otherwise? Discovering that the English settlers had escaped him in Atlantis was bad. Discovering that the settlers and redcoats together had put paid to Montcalm-Gozon's proud regulars wasn't just bad. It was catastrophic. He'd beaten redcoats once, when they obligingly marched into his trap. Trying to cross the creek to attack Victor Radcliff's men, he'd stumbled into theirs.

Maybe we should see what kind of terms we can get. Had anyone else suggested that, Roland Kersauzon would have been furious. But he could make the suggestion to himself: he knew he wouldn't follow through on it.

"They're going to try to take away everything we've got left," a sergeant said with weary cynicism.

Roland nodded. "That's right-they will. That's how greedy they are, the English cochons. So we won't let them, eh? If you bother a turtle, what does it do? It pulls back into its shell. And good luck making it come out again."

"You aim to pull us back into our shell, Monsieur?" the underofficer asked.

"If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it," Kersauzon replied. A lot of commanders might have said that for form's sake. He meant it. But the sergeant only shook his head. Roland went on. "The longer we hold out, the better the chance something good will happen somewhere else. If it does…"

"We're saved," the sergeant said when he paused.

He nodded again, though what went through his mind was, Well, we may be saved, anyhow. If the English seized all of French Atlantis but for Nouveau Redon, things were unlikely to go back to the status quo ante bellum no matter how long a siege the town withstood. And the enemy might do just that-there wasn't much resistance except for his settler army.

That raised another question: how long could the fortress hold out? Roland didn't know the exact answer, not in days. But he knew the form the answer would take. Nouveau Redon would stay free as long as the food held out and as long as there was no treachery. Munitions were not an issue; the fortress had plenty. A spring near the center of town ensured the fortress wouldn't run short of water.

The food could last a very long time, especially if his army expelled civilians so it fed no useless mouths. Roland had overseen the victualing of Nouveau Redon himself. Hardtack and sauerkraut and smoked meat and dried fruit were uninspiring; anyone who said anything else was a damned liar. They could keep body and soul together a long time, though.

Treachery…Roland gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. The longer the siege went on, the more he'd have to worry about it. If someone decided relief was hopeless but thought he might cut a deal with the army investing the fortress…If that happened, Nouveau Redon was in danger.

As Roland rode south-back toward the border between English and French Atlantis-one other possibility occurred to him. If the plague broke out inside the fortress, he might have to surrender whether he wanted to or not. Disease was a roll of the dice. If the pestilence or dysentery or typhus struck the invaders, they would have to give up the siege.

"They deserve a pestilence, don't they, God?" He aimed what was half a prayer, half a suggestion toward the sky. Maybe God would listen; maybe He wouldn't. Any which way, Roland figured he'd made the effort.

Had the bridges over the Erdre been down, he probably wouldn't have been able to get back to Nouveau Redon to stand siege. But they still stood. Roland and his men had come north over them…come north over them more than once, in fact. After crossing back into French Atlantis, he ordered the spans fired. He didn't like that, but saw no other choice. Right now, slowing the enemy down was almost as good as beating him.

Almost. Roland and his survivors kept on retreating.

Victor Radcliff watched smoke rise up over the Stour. "They're burning their bridges behind them," he said: for once, literal truth and no cliche.

"They'll have men defending the line of the river, then, if they be not utter fools." The English lieutenant-colonel sighed wearily. "And utter fools they are not. They could not have caused us so much trouble if they were."

"We'll get over the river," Victor said. "Kersauzon's on the run. He won't leave enough soldiers behind to seriously hinder us."

The English officer's eyebrow rose. For a moment, Victor wondered why. Then he realized he'd committed a solecism. He smiled. If the lieutenant-colonel could worry about his grammar as well as the campaign…more power to him. And, after a moment, the Englishman unbent enough to admit, "I think you make a good prophet."

Although the French settlers had burnt what they could, the stone towers supporting the bridges' wooden superstructure still stood. And the redcoats had with them the usual contingent of military engineers, Victor hadn't expected to need their services until and unless the English army besieged the French, but they proved valuable here at the border.

One thing Atlantis had was an exuberant profusion of lumber. Axe blows rang out along the side of the river. The engineers did not try to re-create what the fleeing French settlers had destroyed. The redcoats cared only about making a way across. That they did. The Romans who'd bridged the Rhine for Julius Caesar would have approved.

"Well, well," the lieutenant-colonel said after riding across one of those improvised bridges. "So this is French Atlantis." He looked around. "Doesn't seem much different from English Atlantis, does it?"

"No, sir-except it's full of Frenchmen," Victor replied. What had the English officer expected? Something that looked like France? In the towns, English Atlantis looked like England. Farms there grew European-and sometimes Terranovan-crops. But the countryside remained stubbornly Atlantean.

If anything, French Atlantis seemed more Atlantean than the country farther north. Far fewer people actually lived here. That meant the landscape had changed less than it had where Englishmen settled. Pines and barrel trees stayed common right up to the very edges of towns. Victor's soldiers had no trouble catching oil thrushes in the woods. They ate better than the redcoats, who relied on rations and viewed local foodstuffs with suspicion.

"I ain't gonna eat one of them funny-looking things," an English sergeant declared. "Maybe if I was starving-but I ain't."

Victor didn't think oil thrushes were funny-looking. He'd grown up with them, as he had with the good-sized thrushes with dull red breasts that English Atlanteans called robins. To him, the small, bright robin redbreasts of the home island would have looked strange-had he ever seen one.

Only men from Roland Kersauzon's rear guard and occasional free-lance bushwhackers slowed the English army's advance. When the redcoats caught a franc-tireur, they hanged him from the closest suitable tree as a warning to other locals. "If they want to fight us, let them put on uniforms and join an army," the lieutenant-colonel said. "I would respect them then, and treat them as soldiers deserve to be treated. But this contemptible skulking must cease, and we shall make it cease by whatever means prove necessary."

Here and there, English Atlanteans had picked up guns and attacked the invading French forces. No doubt Montcalm-Gozon's men had hanged the irregulars they caught. Did that stop the English Atlanteans from harrying them? Victor Radcliff doubted it, but he didn't quarrel with the English officer. That worthy had tradition on his side, and didn't seem inclined to listen to anyone who disagreed.

Besides, what was wrong with hanging Frenchmen? After all the trouble they'd caused, Victor wouldn't have shed a tear to see the lot of them strung up. Neither would Blaise. "Ought to hang everyone who buys and sells slaves," he said.

That would touch off a revolt in French Atlantis. Victor was sure of it. The locals might understand and forgive the execution of guerrillas. Anyone who went off and did something like that took his chances. But the French Atlanteans-and the Spanish Atlanteans farther south-were convinced they had the right to own human chattels. And…

"Didn't Africans sell you to the white slave traders?" Victor asked.

Blaise nodded. "Hang them, too," he said. "They serve it." He made a face. "Deserve it." His English got better by the day. It still had a long way to go, though.

Before long, the direction in which Roland Kersauzon's men were retreating grew obvious. "He's going to stand siege in Nouveau Redon," Victor told the English lieutenant-colonel.

"Well, we'll just have to winkle him out of there, in that case." The English officer certainly didn't lack for aggressiveness.

Whether he lacked for brains might be a different question. "It's a formidable place," Victor warned. "It won't be easy to take."

"He's never come up against proper engineers, either," the lieutenant-colonel said.

"How much can engineers do against solid rock?" Victor asked.

The English lieutenant-colonel's smile was indulgent, almost sweet. "I believe you've got the question backwards, Major. You should ask, how much can solid rock do against engineers?"

Back where he started. Roland Kersauzon hadn't expected to return to Nouveau Redon except in triumph. He hadn't imagined the English Atlanteans stood a chance against brave French soldiers. He'd thought he could beat them with settlers. By God, he had beaten the redcoats with settlers! That should have decided things.

It should have, but it didn't. He failed to count on English tenacity. The enemy kept fighting. Their raiding band made Roland separate from Montcalm-Gozon-but he never did catch up with Victor Radcliff. He damned Don Jose all over again. He could deal with his enemies, but God protect him from people who claimed to be his friends.

And English tenacity also meant sending more redcoats across the ocean. No more French regulars came to Atlantis. Maybe the English wouldn't let them. But maybe King Louis and his ministers simply couldn't be bothered with sending reinforcements. Roland wouldn't have been surprised either way.

Ordinary people streamed out of Nouveau Redon. Roland wanted no one there who couldn't carry a musket. The fewer mouths he fed, the better. As long as he had soldiers on the walls and supplies in the storerooms, he was ready to defy the world-or, at least, those parts of it that spoke English.

One good thing sprang from the wreckage of his hopes: he worried a little less about disease than he had before. You couldn't catch smallpox or measles more than once. So the learned doctors promised him, and for once he was pretty sure they were right. The ones who could catch them already had, and had got better or died.

He posted a strong garrison of reliable soldiers around the storehouses. That didn't seem so important now, which was why he hastened to take care of it. If the garrison was in place before people started fretting about hunger, it would stand a better chance of stopping trouble-or making sure trouble didn't start-than if he put it in place after soldiers started tightening their belts. He hoped it would, anyhow.

For now, his men's fighting spirit was strong. "We'll whip those English cochons right out of their boots, won't we, sir?" said a youngster on the wall. He shook his fist at the north. "Just let them come!"

"But of course we'll beat them." Roland wouldn't have weakened such enthusiasm for the world. As for letting the English settlers and redcoats come…He and the force he had left couldn't very well stop them. He knew that too painfully well. If he could have, he would have.

He made a point of checking the artillery. "We will dismay them with our range," a grizzled gunnery sergeant said. "We're up much higher than they are, you comprehend. It gives us the advantage."

"Yes, I comprehend perfectly," Roland said. "They will be sorry that they have tried to rob us of the jewel in the crown of French Atlantis."

The gunner's face lit up. "That is well said, Monsieur!"

"I'm glad you think so." Roland Kersauzon had never particularly believed he had a knack for the telling phrase. If he came up with one now, it was bound to be as much by luck as for any other reason.

And how much would it matter one way or the other? If the enemy seized the rest of the crown, of course he would start prying at the jewel. Someone would have to come to its rescue. Someone would have to-but would anyone do it?

No one from French Atlantis was likely to come to his aid. Such force as these lands could provide, he had. Oh, there would still be armed men among the settlers, but there was no other army of settlers. And there would be none, not to relieve him. If any army formed, it would be to quell servile uprisings. He was bitterly sure of that. What would the enslaved Negroes and Terranovan natives here be doing now? What they'd done in Spanish Atlantis? It seemed much too likely.

What hope from across the sea, then? Would the mother country send another force of regulars to help its Atlantean settlements? Even if King Louis wanted to do just that-something of which Roland had no assurance-what connection lay between desire and ability?

King George had reinforced his redcoats. That argued England was winning the war at sea. So did Victor Radcliff's mortifying escape. The best will in the world might not let France ship soldiers across the Atlantic. If it didn't…

In that case, why am I still fighting? Why not surrender now? Roland wondered. He would save his own skin, and he would save the lives of so many settlers who had already suffered so much for French Atlantis and for France.

But he could not make himself yield while still able to fight. If they want me so much, let them come and get me, he thought. He didn't know what was going on in the wider world; he could only guess. And even if his guesses were right now, fortune might reverse itself while he held out.

He could hope so. And he was too damned stubborn to quit. "Here I stand," he murmured. If a German Protestant had said the same thing once upon a time…Roland knew little of Protestants, and even less of Germans.

"Oh," the English lieutenant-colonel said when he got his first good look at Nouveau Redon.

"Yes, sir," Victor Radcliff replied, in lieu of I told you so. "The nut won't be easy to crack, I'm afraid."

"So it would seem," the English officer said. After a moment, though, his chin came up. "The meat inside will be all the sweeter, then."

"Once we get at it, it will." Victor didn't want to say, If we can get at it. The lieutenant-colonel might think he lacked confidence. He also might think the same thing himself.

"First things first," the Englishman said. "We'll surround them, cut them off. We'll offer battle. If they come out to engage us, so much the better."

"Roland Kersauzon's not that foolish," Victor said. "I wish he were."

"Well, we can hope he will be," the lieutenant-colonel said. Radcliff only shrugged. You could always hope. But hoping for something and counting on it were very different. He hoped the Englishman understood that.

Up on the walls of Nouveau Redon, a cannon boomed. The ball fell far short of the settlers and redcoats. The gunners must have known it would. Victor recognized the shot for what it was: defiance. A breeze from the Green Ridge Mountains blew the black-powder smoke toward the ocean.

"They won't act so bold when we cut them off from the river," the English lieutenant-colonel said.

Victor stared at him. Didn't he know anything about this place he aimed to besiege? "They don't depend on the Blavet for water, sir," the Atlantean said carefully.

"No, eh? Well, cisterns go dry, even if it takes longer."

"They don't depend on cisterns, either," Victor said. No, the Englishman really didn't know anything about Nouveau Redon. "They have a spring, and it's never been known to fail. We may be able to starve them out. We may be able to take the town with saps and parallels-"

"Won't be easy," the lieutenant-colonel said. Victor nodded. The ground rose sharply toward the citadel, and grew stonier the higher it got: not promising terrain for digging trenches.

"I'm afraid we'll be here quite a while," Victor said. "We just have to pray we can keep our own men supplied-and that sickness doesn't break out. If it does…" He spread his hands, as if to say, What can you do?

"We are going to take that fortress." The English lieutenant-colonel might have been an Old Testament prophet. He sounded utterly sure he was telling the truth. Radcliff envied him his certainty. The Old Testament prophets had had God on their side. Victor hoped his army did, too. He hoped so, yes, but he was less sure of it than people like Elijah had been.

The lieutenant-colonel shouted orders. Horns blared. Drums thumped. Soldiers moved out to encircle Nouveau Redon. The opening steps in a siege were as formal as those in a gavotte.

Then the Englishman gave his attention back to Victor. "Tell me, Major-have you read Caesar's Gallic War?"

"Yes, sir." Victor wondered why on earth the other officer chose this moment to ask that question. A bit touchily, the Atlantean added, "We aren't all barbarians on this side of the ocean. I can give you All Gaul is divided into three parts or talk about the aurochs and the other curious animals of the German forest. If you happen to have a copy with you, I can even make a stab at construing sentences, though I confess my Latin isn't what it was fifteen years ago."

"Don't fret. Don't fret," the lieutenant-colonel said, which only left Victor more fretful than ever. The English officer continued, "Upon my honor, Major, I meant no slight by the question. Please accept my assurances on that score."

"Very well, sir." Victor's voice stayed stiff.

The English officer pointed toward Nouveau Redon. France's fleurs-de-lys flag still fluttered defiantly up there. "Can you give me precise bearings on where inside the town that spring rises?"

"I can't-no, sir. But I'm sure you can find out if you inquire among my greencoats. Some of them will have spent more time inside than I have." Radcliff's curiosity roused. "Why, if I may ask?"

"Perhaps we can match the famous fate of Uxellodunum," the Englishman replied.

Whatever Uxellodunum's fate had been, it wasn't famous to Victor. He presumed it was set forth in the Gallic War. If it was, he didn't remember it. Suppressing a sigh, he said, "I fear you must enlighten me, sir."

Enlighten him the English officer did, finishing, "No guarantees, of course-there never are in warfare. But it strikes me that this is our best-and quickest-chance of securing a victory at reasonable cost."

Victor Radcliff did something he'd thought he would never do: he doffed his hat to the lieutenant-colonel. "If we can bring that off…If we can, I'd give twenty pounds to be a fly on the wall and see the look on Roland Kersauzon's face."

"He is a difficult man," the lieutenant-colonel said.

"I'm sure he thinks the same of you-and of me," Victor replied. "And chances are he's right-and so are you. All things considered, I would sooner lay siege out here than stand siege in there."

"As would I," the Englishman agreed. "Montcalm-Gozon had me mured up in Freetown, which was…less than pleasant. But my position was still open to the sea. Your settlers returned, and then we were reinforced from England. Only the angels could reinforce Kersauzon now."

"He won't ask for them, even if God would give them. He's a proud man," Victor said. "If you don't know that, you don't know him at all."