United States of Atlantis

Chapter 15

Habakkuk Biddiscombe not only went over to General Cornwallis and King George, he reveled in his treason. To him, of course, it seemed anything but. What man ever acted for any save the highest motives? None: not if you asked the actor himself.

A scout brought back a broadsheet from a village still under the redcoats' control. It was called "The True Relation of Colonel Habakkuk Biddiscombe, Formerly of the Rebel Cavalry."

"Huh," Blaise said when he saw that. "He won himself a promotion for running off, he did."

"Thirty pieces of silver," Victor said bitterly. "I wonder if he would have stayed had I granted him higher rank." He sighed. "We'll never know now."

Biddiscombe-or, more likely, some pro-English hack purporting to be Biddiscombe-characterized the Atlantean Assembly as "a witches' Sabbat of betrayal." He called the army that fought on behalf of the Assembly "a pack of starveling hounds, remarkable alike for savagery and cowardice," And he described Victor Radcliff as "the blackest traitor since Judas" (a man likely to be mentioned when anyone turned his coat) and "an oaf masquerading as a general: a leader utterly incapable of recognizing and acknowledging a clever stratagem." Remembering the cavalryofficer's scheme he'd turned down, Victor suspected that, at least, came straight from Biddiscombe.

"What do you aim to do about this-this arsewipe, General?" the scout inquired.

Victor felt of the paper. "I think I'd sooner use a handful of leaves," he said. The scout and Blaise both laughed. Victor went on, "What can I do about it? If the famous Colonel Biddiscombe should dare lead enemy horse against us, we shall try to shoot him out of the saddle Of that I have no doubt-he betrayed the soldiers he formerly commanded more foully than any others here, for he enjoyed more of their trust. Other than killing him first chance we find, I know not what course to take."

"Me, I'd sooner catch him alive," Blaise said. "Then I could roast him over a slow fire and turn him on a spit so he got done on all sides." He grinned evilly. "Easy enough to tell with a white man, eh? And that would give the dirty scut plenty of time to think on his mistakes before he gave up the ghost."

"Devil take me if I don't fancy the sound of that myself," the scout exclaimed.

"So long as we kill him, that will suffice," Victor said. Blaise was born a savage, of course. But men who favored the Atlantean Assembly and those who remained loyal to King George were roasting each other over slow fires: oh, not where the main armies marched and countermarched, but in the countless little ambushes and affrays that would never make the history books or change the war's result by one iota but went on nonetheless. And those men on both sides gleefully played the savage without Blaise's excuse.

"We'll go on," Victor said, as he had so many times. "If we can winkle them out of Hanover, that will be a great triumph for us and a great disaster to them. And if Habakkuk Biddiscombe has to sail off to England-on which he has never in his life set eyes-even that will be enough."

"Devil it will," Blaise muttered, but not loud enough for Victor to call him on it.

Victor was anything but sure they could squeeze Cornwallis out of Hanover. Even if they didn't, they might reach the sea and cut the English coastal holdings in half. That would be worth doing in and of itself.

Go on they did. Loyalists skirmished with them. Like King George's Atlantean Rangers, these men fought as soldiers, not in ambuscades. Sometimes redcoats stiffened their ranks; sometimes they managed well enough on their own. Victor ordered his own men to treat them as prisoners of war when they were taken. "If they meet us fairly, we must return the favor," he insisted.

And his troops obeyed him… more often than not. Even so, an unfortunate number of such captives were shot "trying to escape." He wondered whether he should issue harsher orders. In the end, he decided not to. Issuing orders that weren't likely to be obeyed only damaged the force of other commands.

Before long, a scout carried another broadsheet back into his encampment. This one announced the creation of something called "Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion." Volunteers in the Legion would "root out, eradicate, extirpate, and utterly exterminate the verminous rebels opposing in arms his brilliant Majesty, good King George."

Most printers worked in the coastal towns the English held. Victor found one back in Brandenburg who was loyal to the Atlantean Assembly. He had the man crank out a counterblast, one warning men who leaned toward King George that "no individual from the cavalry formation styled Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion who may be captured by the armies of the Atlantean Assembly shall under any circumstances hope for quarter."

No Horsed Legion appeared. Victor wondered whether Cornwallis had had second thoughts-and, if he had, whether Habakkuk Biddiscombe was contemplating desertion from the English cause. Probably not, Victor decided-the cavalry officer had to know Atlantis would never take him back. Biddiscombe had made his bed. Now he had to lie in it, even if it proved uncomfortable.

Victor also wondered when the French declaration of war would produce soldiers on the ground in Atlantis. Indeed, he wondered if it ever would. In the last war, the French managed to convey one small army across the Atlantic, all their later efforts failing. Their navy was stronger now. Was it enough stronger? it had better be, he thought. His own men made vastly better soldiers than they had when they first enlisted. All the same, he could use some cynical, hard-bitten professionals to show them by example how the job was done.

Meanwhile, he used what he had. Redcoats and loyalists skirmished with his forces before falling back toward Hanover. Cornwallis seemed less interested in fighting big battles than General Howe had been before him. Maybe he was clever. Howe had tried to crush the Atlantean uprising. The only thing he'd proved was that he couldn't. Cornwallis, by contrast, seemed to want to force the Atlanteans to crush him. As long as he held the towns on the eastern coast, the United States of Atlantis were only wind and air. They weren't a nation, any more than a man deprived of his head was a man.

And then, to Victor's surprise, he got word that some of Cornwallis' garrison in Hanover was putting to sea and sailing away. When he heard the rumor the first time, he had trouble believing it. But it came to him again the next day, brought by a man who didn't know anyone else had carried word ahead of him.

"Why would he do that, when we're pressing him toward Hanover?" Victor asked. "I know the Englishmen make good soldiers, and I know Hanover has good outworks. All the same, if too many forts are empty of men, the place will fall."

"Well…" His second informant was a plump merchant named Gustavus Vasa Rand, who plainly enjoyed knowing things the commanding general didn't. The man steepled his fingers, then tugged at his ear before going on, "I hear tell the redcoats have themselves trouble somewheres else."

"Where?" Radcliff exploded. If it was anywhere in Atlantis, he thought he would have known about it. If the English had trouble anywhere in Atlantis, he hoped he would have helped foment it.

But Gustavus Vasa Rand replied, "Over in Terranova, is what folks say. Some of the settlements there, they've decided they don't fancy King George any more'n we do."

"Have they?" Victor breathed. "Well, well, well. Has anyone reported why they chose this moment to rise up?"

"Don't you know?" Yes, Gustavus Vasa Rand exuded the amiable scorn the man who's heard things feels for the poor, ignorant twit he aims to enlighten. "Why, this past year or so a demon pamphleteer's appeared amongst 'em. He's tossed so much red pepper into the stew, even the boring old Terranovans can't help breathing fire after they go and eat of it."

"I dare say he's caused King George's men in those parts a good deal of, ah, pain," Victor remarked with malice aforethought.

"Why, so he has." One of Rand's bristly eyebrows rose. "Funny you should put it so, General, for Paine's his family name."

"And Thomas his Christian name," Victor agreed. "I am acquainted with the gentleman, and with his qualities. Indeed, I sent him west across the Hesperian Gulf, hoping he would do exactly as he has done."

"Well, good on you, then," the merchant told him. "The more toes England has on the griddle, the more hopping she needs must do." Now the look he sent Victor was more speculative than pitying. A general who could work out a plot and have it come off the way he wanted wasn't some harmless bumpkin, but a man who might need some serious watching.

"I am grateful for the news, believe me," Victor said. "It will surely influence the way I conduct my campaign from this time forward."

"Ah? Influence it how, pray?" Gustavus Vasa Rand leaned forward, eager to be even more in the know than he was already.

But Victor Radcliff only laid a finger by the side of his nose. "By your leave, sir, I'll say no more. What you have not heard, no red-hot pokers or thumbscrews may tear from you should the redcoats decide they must learn all the secrets you carry under your hat."

"They wouldn't do that." Rand's voice lacked conviction. Victor refrained from mentioning one other possibility: that the trader from Hanover might tell the English what he knew under no compulsion whatsoever. Some men tried to work both sides at once, or pretended to serve one while actually on the other. He had spies in Hanover; he had to assume Cornwallis played the same game.

"Whilst the Hesperians make England divide her forces, you may be sure I shall do my best to keep the occupiers, ah, occupied here in Atlantis," Victor said. "And, sir, you may publish that abroad as widely as you please."

"I'll do it, General. You can count on me," Rand said.

Victor Radcliff smiled and nodded. Maybe the man from Hanover would. Then again, maybe he wouldn't. If he didn't, the world wouldn't end; nor would the Atlantean uprising.

And if he did, Victor hadn't said a word about strategy. Of course Cornwallis would expect him to try to take advantage of what England had to do to try to put down the new rebellion far to the west. Cornwallis would be right, too. But how Victor would try to exploit the new situation…

Cornwallis won't know, Victor thought. He can't possibly, for I haven't the faintest idea myself. He didn't believe that was what the military manuals meant when they talked about "the advantage of surprise," but it was what he had. Now he needed to figure out how to make the most of it.

Several rivers met at or near Hanover, which helped make it Atlantis' most important harbor. (Some of the people who argued about such things argued that Avalon had a better site. They might well have been right. But Hanover raced towards Europe, Avalon toward Terranova. When it came to ships and cargoes heading in and out, that made all the difference in the world.)

These days, cargoes heading in and out of Hanover did so for England's benefit, not Atlantis'. Oh, dribs and drabs of what came into Hanover got smuggled out to the lands that owed the Atlantean Assembly allegiance, but only dribs and drabs. As General Howe had before him, General Cornwallis hoped that keeping his opponents poor would detach them from the United States of Atlantis and make them take another look at King George.

What worried Victor Radcliff was that Cornwallis might be right. A patriot without a ha'penny in his pocket was only one long step-sometimes not such a long step-from discovering he was really a loyalist after all.

The most important river that flowed into Hanover, the Severn, ran down from the north. Victor led his own army along the north bank of a smaller stream, the Blackwater, that approached from the west.

"Why did they name it the Blackwater?" Blaise asked. "What's in there looks like any other water to me."

"To me, too-now," Victor answered. "But when we get a little closer to Hanover… Well, you'll see."

Before they came that close to Hanover, they had to deal with a hastily run-up English stockade that blocked their approach to the city. One of the popguns inside the stockade boomed defiance at the Atlantean army. The roundshot it fired fell far short of Victor's men. After the ball stopped rolling, one of his gunners picked it up. If it fit an Atlantean gun-and it probably would-it would fly back toward some redcoats one of these days.

Instead of assaulting the little fortress right away, Victor marched his troops past it before halting. Maybe the soldiers inside hadn't sent anyone east toward Hanover to warn Cornwallis of his advent. But if they had, the redcoats in the seaside city might sally forth to see if they could smash the Atlantean army between themselves and the garrison.

"They may think they can get away with that, but I don't aim to let them," Victor told his assembled officers-and, inevitably, Blaise, whom everyone took for granted by now.

"How will you stop 'em. General?" one of his captains asked. "I'll tell you how, in the name of the Lord God Jehovah," Victor said. "We shall attack the stockade at midnight tonight-that's how. Once it has fallen, all their hopes of playing hammer and anvil against us fall with it."

The officers buzzed like bees. "Can we do it?" one of them asked.

He might not have meant for Victor Radcliff to hear him, but Victor did. "We can, sir, and we shall," he declared. "The idea may surprise you, but I intend that it shall flabbergast the poor foolish Englishmen mured up behind those pine and redwood logs. Flabbergast 'em, I say!"

To that end, the Atlanteans encamped as they would have done at the end of any ordinary day's march. They pitched tents. They built up cook fires. They ambled back and forth in front of and around those fires. Victor had learned his lessons watching the redcoats abandon positions they could hold no longer. If the enemy commander inside the stockade was watching the encampment through a spyglass, he would notice nothing peculiar.

He wouldn't be able to see, for instance, that the men silhouetted in front of the fires were always the same men: a group left behind to make the camp appear normal from a distance, even when it wasn't.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Atlanteans took care to stay out of the firelight. Victor Radcliff led them against the English works. The night was moonless and cloudy and dark. "Move as quietly as you can," he called-quietly. "If you fall, pick yourself up with no loud, profane swearing."

"Indeed, for such vileness offends against God," said a voice out of the blackness.

"Well, so it does," Victor agreed. "But it's also liable to mark our advance against the foe. Unless you have such a clean conscience that you can meet your Maker sooner than you might have had in mind, keep your lips buttoned."

The Atlanteans did… for the most part. No cries of alarm rang out from the stockade ahead. The redcoats inside the log palisade kept big bonfires blazing. The red-gold light shone through chinks between one log and another, and also lit up the buildings inside the stockade: barracks that could double as a redoubt in time of need.

Motte and bailey, Victor thought. The Normans used that scheme in England, and it's still a good one. Would it be good enough to hold up against complete surprise? He had to hope not. He also had to hope he could bring off a complete surprise. That, at the moment, remained what barristers called a Scotch verdict: not proven.

Those bonfires made advancing against the enemy position easier than it would have been otherwise. On a night this dark, Victor might have had trouble finding an unilluminated fort-and tramping past it would have been embarrassing, to say the least No risk of that, not now.

With so much light behind them, with their eyes not accustomed to gloom, the redcoat sentries up on the walls might also have a harder time spotting the Atlanteans moving up on them. Again, Victor dared hope so.

No one raised the alarm as his men drew near. "Scaling ladders forward!" he hissed urgently. Forward they came. He pointed toward the fortress. "Do you see where to place them?"

"We do that, General," replied a soldier who'd surely been born in Ireland.

"Then advance against the palisade-slowly till you're discovered, and after that quick as you can."

Off went the ladders, one by one. Storming parties-he hoped they weren't forlorn hopes-followed them. If everything went well, the fort would fall to the Atlanteans almost before the enemy inside realized it was under attack. But how often did everything go well? Not often enough, as Victor had seen… too often.

Tonight, though, the scaling ladders were about to thud into place against the palisade before a redcoat up there let out a startled yelp: "Bloody 'ell! It's the bleedin' Atlanteans!"

A moment later, a rifle barked. The sentry yelped again, this time in pain. He had been a dark blotch against the lighter background of the barracks hall. Now that blotch disappeared.

"Atlantis!" Victor's men cried as they swarmed up the ladders, and "The Proclamation of Liberty!" and "Down with King George!"

Down with King George it was, at least in that one spot. So many men in green jackets got up onto the palisade and dropped down into the courtyard behind it, the defenders never had a chance. Only a few shots were fired before the gates swung open. Someone sang out in an Atlantean accent: "All yours, General!"

"Well done," Victor said as he walked into the little fortress. "Very well done indeed, boys!"

The English captain who'd commanded the garrison didn't think so. "A night attack? Not sporting," he said sourly.

"If you show me where Hoyle's rules state I'm not allowed to make one, perhaps I'll march away," Victor said. "Or perhaps I won't."

His men jeered. The captain glared, and then tried a different tack: "Another thing-one of your blighters lifted my pocket watch."

"Can you tell me which one?" Victor asked.

"No, dammit." The English officer shook his head. "He was tall. He was skinny. He had an evil leer and foul breath."

"Well, sir, as a matter of fact, so do you," Victor said, which won him another glare. Taking no notice of it, he continued, "You do realize you're describing more than half of my army?" He wasn't exaggerating; most Atlanteans seemed tall to their shorter English cousins.

"I shouldn't wonder if more than half your army consists of thieves." The captain didn't lack for nerve.

But Victor only laughed. "And you think yours doesn't? By God, sir, I've served with redcoats before. I know better."

"We may be thieves, but we aren't foul rebels," the captain said.

"Not yet, perhaps. You would be surprised, though, at how many in the Atlantean army took the King's shilling first," Victor responded.

He couldn't down the English officer, who said, "And what of Habakkuk Biddiscombe? Will you tell me he is the only Atlantean who at last came to see where his true loyalty should lie?"

"All I'll tell you of Biddiscombe is that sooner or later-likely sooner-he'll quarrel with his English superiors, as he quarreled with me," Victor said tightly. "And I wish them joy of him when he does."

That actually made the captain thoughtful. "Mm… I've met the man, and I must say I shouldn't be astonished if you prove right. But, having antagonized both sides in this struggle, where can he go next?"

"He can go to the Devil, for all of me," Victor said. "I'll tell you where I'm going next, though. I'm going to Hanover."

More often than not, the wind blew down from the Green Ridge Mountains toward the sea. When it did, it carried the spicy, resinous scents of Atlantis' vast evergreen forests with it. Victor took that odor for granted. He noticed it only when it changed.

As his army neared Hanover, it did. The breeze swung around to come off the Atlantic for a while. The ocean's salt tang seemed to quicken Victor's pulse. Was that because all Radcliff's and Radcliffes sprang from fishermen, and so naturally responded to the smell of the sea? Or did Victor's excitement grow because the oceanic odor reminded him how near his goal he was? Some of each, he guessed; a man's reasons were rarely all of one piece.

Blaise pointed to the river beside which the army marched. "It did turn black, General, like you said. Why?"

"Because it flows through peat beds under the meadows," Victor answered. "You know peat?"

"You can burn it," Blaise said. "Like God was trying to make coal but didn't know how yet."

Victor laughed in surprise. He wouldn't have come out with anything so blasphemous, but he probably wouldn't have come out with anything so apt, either.

Before long, the breeze from the east brought more than the odor of the Atlantic to his nostrils. It carried the smell of smoke with it-and also, less attractively, the reek of sewage. That combination always proclaimed a large settlement not far away.

"Cities stink," Blaise complained.

"Well, so they do," Victor said. "Do your African villages smell any sweeter?"

Blaise clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Er-no."

"I didn't think so," Victor said. "When I use the privy, it's not angels that come out. No reason your folk should differ there." The colored sergeant changed the subject, from which Victor concluded that he'd made his point: "How do you propose to take Hanover away from Cornwallis?"

"I can't answer that yet. I shall have to see just where the English have placed their lines and their forts, and how many men they can put into them now that they're dealing with trouble in Terranova, too," Victor said.

"Ah," Blaise said. "You do make fighting more complicated than it needs to be."

More complicated than you were used to in Africa, Victor translated. But anyone-black, white, or, he supposed, copper-skinned-took what he'd grown up with as the touchstone for what was right and proper the rest of his days.

Before long, Victor had a pretty good notion of the lie of the English works outside Hanover, and of how many redcoats Cornwallis had in them. The enemy commander did his best to keep the locals inside his lines. Cornwallis didn't want them bringing Victor such news.

Cornwallis' best wasn't good enough. His lines leaked. The English captain at the fort had been right: there were plenty of loyalists and royalists in land held by the forces following the Atlantean Assembly. Sometimes they did go over to King George's army, as Habakkuk Biddiscombe had done.

But that coin had two sides. Hanover was a fair-sized city by anybody's standards-not London, not Paris, but a fair-sized city. Of course it had its share of people who cheered behind closed doors when the United States of Atlantis were proclaimed. And of course some of those men, seeing liberation as one of Victor Radcliff's outriders, would leave the city to tell him what they knew of its defenses and the soldiers who manned them.

He made a point of separating his informants one from another. He interviewed them one at a time, and made a sketch map of what each described. If one of them told a tale different from the others'… He wouldn't put it past Cornwallis to try to lead him into a trap. He knew he would have done the same thing to the English general had he found the chance.

Adding all the sketch maps together… By the time he called a council of war, he had a pretty good notion of what wanted doing. "We will feint here," he told his assembled officers-and Blaise-pointing with the fancy-hilted sword the Atlantean Assembly had presented to him. "A good portion of our field artillery will accompany the feint, to make it seem the more persuasive. Having drawn Cornwallis' notice thither, we strike here." He pointed again, farther south this time.

Blaise held up his right index finger. Victor nodded to him. "What do we do if Cornwallis hears of this plan?" the Negro asked.

He did come up with cogent questions. "Well, that depends," Victor said. "If I find out ahead of time that he's heard of it, the real thrust becomes the feint and the feint the real thrust."

"What if you don't find out, General?" a colonel inquired.

Victor spread his hands. "In that case, we walk into a snare." He waited for the startled laughter to die down, then added, "I shall endeavor to extricate the army from it with losses as small as possible."

At the beginning of this fight, the mere thought of losing a battle would have filled his officers with a curious blend of rage and panic. Now they took the possibility in stride. They would do everything they could to win. If that turned out not to be enough, they would pull back and try something else later.

What did the Bard say about such coarsening? Victor tried to remember his Hamlet. And he did-the line was Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. Shakespeare was talking about grave-digging, but he might as well have meant war, the proximate cause of so much gravedigging. The Atlantean officers had that properly of easiness now. They were veterans.

The redcoats had worked the transformation. And now- Victor hoped-they would pay for it.

General Cornwallis warded Hanover with a ring of forts. These weren't timber palisades, like the one that had tried to bar the way down the Blackwater. Their outwalls were of thick earth. A roundshot wouldn't demolish them, as it would smacking into wood or stone. Instead, it would sink deep and disappear without doing any harm.

Trenches and covered ways let English soldiers move from one fort to another without exposing themselves to Atlantean riflemen and cannoneers. The enemy was as ready as anyone could reasonably be.

So was Victor Radcliff. He thought he was, anyhow. In Europe, mortars-guns firing explosive shells at steep angles so they topped the walls of a fort and came down inside-had given attackers at least a fighting chance when assaulting works. The Atlanteans had a few iron and brass mortars smuggled in despite the English blockade. They had a few more their smiths had made, imitating the European models. And they had quite a few improvised from hollowed-out tree trunks bound with iron bands. Because a mortar's barrel was so short, it didn't have to withstand anything like the pressure an ordinary cannon did. The wooden mortars seemed to perform about as well as their stubby metal counterparts.

No one came out to warn Victor the English had learned of his plans. He suddenly wished he would have established a homing-pigeon connection with Hanover. More than a century before, back in the days when Avalon was the wickedest city in the world, one of the piratical Radcliffes had done something like that. Victor consoled himself by remembering that the pirate-not a close kinsman of his-had gone down to defeat despite his pigeons

All the same… Finding a scrap of paper, Victor scribbled Croydon and Pigeons on it. Would he find that scrap again? Would he remember what the cryptic note meant if he did find it? Even if he did come across it and did recall, would it matter? He couldn't know now. All he could do was give later the best chance he could.

Off went the detachment that would make the noisy demonstration against the northern part of Cornwallis' fieldworks. Most of the ordinary guns went with it. It was also brave with banners, to fool the redcoats into thinking it held all the units whose standards waved above it.

Before long, the thunder of cannon fire and the fierce clatter of musketry-a sound much like rocks falling on sheets of iron- told him the demonstration was well under way. Some of those volleys from the muskets could only have come from perfectly trained and disciplined English regiments. If the redcoats hadn't taken the feint, they never would.

If they hadn't, a lot of his men would get shot soon. He was liable to get shot himself. He made himself shrug. He'd done the best he could.

"Come on, boys!" he called. "Hanover's got the prettiest women in Atlantis, people say. You'll see 'em for yourselves before long."

That won him a cheer, which he hushed as fast as he could. Fortunately, all the gunfire up ahead meant the redcoats weren't likely to notice it. He led the rest of the Atlantean army-including most of the mortar crews-south at a quick march. Their comrades had to keep the English troops in front of them busy for an hour, maybe a little longer…

Several of his men had grown up in these parts. They pointed out paths that ran east toward the weak spot in the works he thought he'd found. He sent mounted scouts ahead of his main force. With luck, they would scoop up any redcoat pickets or loyalist Atlanteans who might dash east and warn the main English force the Atlantean Assembly's army was on the way.

Without luck… Victor refused to dwell on that. We will be lucky, he told himself, as if telling himself something like that would make it come true.

No horse pistols boomed ahead of the advancing Atlanteans. Victor took that for a good sign. His scouts hadn't found a reason to shoot at anyone. Nor had they run into English cavalry-or into Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion, if it was real and not a figment of some Englishman with a quill pen and an overactive imagination.

"Almost to the enemy's line, General," said one of the men who'd come out from Hanover to give Victor Radcliff what news he had.

"So we are," Victor agreed. One more swell of ground, maybe two, and they'd be able to see what awaited them. Just as much to the point, the English soldiers in Cornwallis' fieldworks would be able to see them. Victor raised his voice: "Form line of battle!"

The Atlanteans deployed as if they'd been doing it for years. Well, a lot of them had. Baron von Steuben would have been proud. At the last council of war, Victor had realized his officers were veterans. So were many of the troopers. He was surprised to hear them cheer as they swung from column to line. They hadn't done that since the early days of the war. He'd assumed they knew better. Maybe they had, too. But they also knew what taking Hanover back would be worth. It was worth a cheer, evidently. "There!" The man from Hanover pointed. "I see," Victor said quietly. The forts and trenches scarred what had been fields of wheat and barley. They were well sited; Victor had never known English military engineers not to take what advantage of the countryside they could. His men would have to charge up a gentle slope to reach the English positions. If those positions were packed with redcoats… Well, in that case this wouldn't be one of those lucky days-not for his side, anyhow.

A musket thundered in the trenches. He watched the cloud of gunpowder smoke rise. That was a signal shot, warning the Englishmen up and down the line that the Atlanteans were here.

"Mortarmen!" Victor shouted. Then he drew his fancy sword and flourished it over his head. "Come on!" he cried to the Atlanteans whose bayonets glittered in the sun. "Hanover is ours!"

Not if the redcoats had anything to say about it. They started shooting from the trench. Cannon boomed from a redoubt. Several Atlanteans went down as a roundshot plowed through their ranks.

The men who served the mortars did what they could. They dropped mortar bombs on the soldiers in the trenches and on the enemy artillerists. They didn't take long to find the range. Hurting the foe was a different story. Mortar bombs had to be the most irksome weapons artificers had ever almost perfected. Their fuses proved much more art than science. Some dropped harmlessly to the ground without exploding. Some burst high in the air, which was frightening and distracting but not even slightly dangerous. A few, and only a few, actually did what they were supposed to do.

One of the English cannon abruptly fell silent. That was good, for Victor's troopers were scrambling through the stakes and felled trees set out in front of the enemy trench line. Then another well-placed mortar bomb blew several English soldiers to bloody rags, right in front of the gap the Atlanteans had cleared. Whooping, Victor's men rushed forward.

Clearing trenches could be nasty, expensive work. Not this time-the redcoats here really were thin on the ground. Only a few of them fought when Victor's troopers bore down on them. More threw away their muskets and surrendered or ran from the Atlanteans.

"Keep moving!" Victor shouted. "On to Hanover!"

"On to Hanover!" his men roared.

English officers shouted, too, trying to get their men to form up in the open country behind their lines to slow the Atlantean advance. The redcoats were nothing if not game. But then Victor's mortar crews dropped several bombs on their lines. Stolid as the English soldiers were, they weren't used to that kind of bombardment. Along with sharp volleys from the Atlantean infantry, it disrupted them and kept them from putting up the kind of fight they might have.

Bit by bit, the Englishmen decided they'd had enough. They retreated to the north and south, toward Croydon and New Hastings. Church bells chimed in Hanover. People streamed out into the streets to welcome the Atlantean army. Tears stung Victor's eyes. If he could hold the city, he'd done one of the things he had to do to win the war.