United States of Atlantis

Chapter 5

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

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

And so… New Hastings again.

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

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

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

"Did you succeed in removing Weymouth itself?" an Assemblyman asked. His name, if Victor remembered rightly, was Hiram

Smith. He came from New Marseille, in the far southwest.

"Unfortunately, no," Victor answered.

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

A low ripple of laughter ran through the church. A split second later, it came echoing back from the high, vaulted ceiling

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

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

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

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

"It is so moved," Fenner said. "Do I hear a second?" He heard several. Cawthorne's motion swiftly passed. Fenner nodded to Victor Radcliff. "You see? We do not despair of you, and may you never have cause to despair of us."

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

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

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

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

"None surer," Smith said. "None quicker."

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

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

"That seems reasonable," Fenner said judiciously. "Try it anyway," Custis Cawthorne added. "As always, Mr. Cawthorne, your sentiments do you credit," Fenner said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I should hate to impose such terms on the illustrious members of the Atlantean Assembly, however tempting that might be," Victor said. Fenner grunted laughter. Victor added, "Do tell him. I don't want him haring out of town and risking his freedom for nothing."

"I shall do that." Fenner glanced off to the northwest, where General Howe's redcoats hung over New Hastings like a rain-filled thunderhead. "And I trust that, if the need for us to hare out of town should arise, you will tell us in good time so we can tend to it without undue difficulty."

"You have my word," Victor said. He wouldn't have minded if the Englishmen caught and hanged a few Atlantean Assemblymen. Nor would he have been surprised if Fenner also had a list of men he reckoned expendable. Comparing the two-and, say, Custis Cawthorne's-might have been interesting, to say nothing of entertaining. After the war is won, Victor told himself.

He smiled to himself. Doing anything at all after the war was won would be very fine.

Maybe rumors of disease in New Hastings gave the redcoats pause Maybe Howe would have gone after Bredestown any which way. The English commander seemed to like moving inland and then turning back toward the coast.

Word of the deployment toward Bredestown reached Isaac Fenner as soon as it reached Victor Radcliff. That was no great surprise: Fenner came from Bredestown, and people from the threatened city naturally appealed to the man who represented them.

Fenner came to the camp outside of New Hastings to confer with Victor. "Can you save Bredestown from the tyrant's troops?" he asked.

"I'm… not sure," Victor said slowly. "Even by trying to do so, I risk losing that town and New Hastings both."

"In what way?" Fenner asked, his tone leaving no doubt that anything Victor said would be used against him.

Sighing, Victor answered, "That Royal Navy flotilla still lies offshore. If we march up the Brede toward Bredestown, the enemy is bound to learn of it. What save the fictitious fear of the yellow jack then prevents him from landing a force of bullocks and sailors and seizing New Hastings before we can return? If the seaside forts fall, as they may well from a landward assault, nothing hinders the English warships from adding their weight of metal to the small arms the marines and sailors will have to hand. Under these circumstances, I fear nihil obstat, to use the Popish phrase."

"If we were to save Bredestown from the redcoats…" Like a lot of men from the city up the Brede, Fenner thought it was at least as important as New Hastings. Few people not Bredestown born and bred shared that opinion.

Victor didn't. Instead of coming out and saying so, which would have affronted the speaker of the Atlantean Assembly, he replied, "We have no assurance of holding Bredestown even with all our forces collected in it. And I would rather not do that if I can find any alternative."

"Why not?" Fenner asked sharply.

"Because it lies on the north bank of the Brede," Victor said. "I have never yet seen a manual of strategy advocating taking a position on a riverbank if there is danger of being pushed back, which would be the case there."

"What difference does it make?" Fenner said. "Several bridges span the stream at Bredestown."

"No doubt, sir. But if we have to try to cross them in a hasty retreat, under fire from the enemy's guns…" Victor's shudder was altogether unfeigned. "Meaning no disrespect, but I would prefer not to have to essay that."

"Would you prefer Bredestown to fall into the blood-dripping hands of King George's butchers, then?" Isaac Fenner's voice and the temperature of his rhetoric both rose dramatically, as if he were making a closing argument in a court of law.

That didn't impress Victor Radcliff. "I know who the enemy is," he said. "I surely fought alongside a good many of the redcoats now opposing us when we conquered French Atlantis. They are not fiends in human form-although I may have to qualify that opinion if they import certain copper-skinned mercenary bands from Terranova."

"Do you suppose they would?" Fenner asked anxiously.

"If they use mercenaries at all, I think them more likely to bring in German troops: Braunschweigers and Hessians and the like. Germans are better disciplined and better armed." Victor paused. "On the other hand, copperskins cost less. That will matter to his Majesty's skinflint ministers, even if not so much to him."

"Confound it!" Fenner said. "You are telling me Bredestown will fall, and we can do damn all to stop that. If we can't beat the damned Englishmen, why did we go to war against them?"

"Because the other choice was submitting to tyranny and oppression," Victor said.

"It looks as though we must submit to them anyhow," Fenner said.

"You gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly determined to take arms against King George. You summoned me from a peaceful life as farmer and author to lead them," Victor said. "If now you repent of your determination or you would sooner have some other commander, you need but say the word. I assure you, I will return without complaint and without regret to the life that late I led."

"We entrusted you with command on the belief that you would lead our troops to victory against the redcoats," Fenner said. "Instead, we have suffered two sanguinary defeats. We face the loss of Bredestown. The safety even of New Hastings is far from assured."

"Your Excellency, I will say two things in response to that" Victor Radcliff ticked them off on his fingers: "First, I strongly believe General Howe's victories to have been far more bloody than our defeats. He held the ground after both encounters, but paid a high price for it. And second, sir, mark this and mark it well-the only assured safety's in the grave. Anything this side of it is subject to time and chance"

The speaker of the Atlantean Assembly sniffed loudly. "If you made as good a general as you do a philosopher, Mr. Radcliff, I would face the coming struggle with the utmost confidence"

"I, on the other hand, knowing my limits as a philosopher, would face it with trepidation verging on terror," Victor replied.

"Your limits as a general are what concern me," Isaac Fenner said. "We cannot simply abandon Bredestown to the redcoats. The Atlantean Assembly deplores the moral effect such an abandonment would have on Atlanteans and on Terranovans and Europeans favorable to our cause"

"For the reasons I just outlined to you, your Excellency, holding it seems unlikely, and all the more so unless you intend to risk New Hastings," Victor said. "Or has the Assembly some clever stratagem in mind by which both towns may be preserved in our hands?"

"We hope and trust, sir, that you are the repository of such stratagems," Fenner answered. He scratched his chin, then leaned close to Victor. "May I rely on your discretion here?"

"If you may not, sir, you chose the wrong general."

Fenner grunted. "A point-a distinct point. Very well, then. This is for your ears and your ears alone, do you understand?"

"Say on," Victor told him.

"If Bredestown must be lost, then it must." Fenner looked like a man with something sour in his mouth. Visibly pulling himself together, he continued, "But Bredestown must not be seen to be cravenly lost. We must not appear incapable of fighting for it even if we prove incapable of holding it. Does that make any sense to you at all, General?"

"Whatever our weaknesses may be, you do not care to advertise them to the world," Victor said slowly.

"That is the nub of it, yes." Isaac Fenner sounded relieved. Victor got the feeling that, had he failed to divine it, he would have returned to the retirement of which he'd spoken. The head of the Atlantean Assembly went on, "So-can you bloody Howe's men before you pull away?"

"I can try, sir," Radcliff answered.

"That is my home, you know. I shall rely upon you to make them pay a high price for it," Fenner said.

"I'll do what I can, sir," Victor said. That satisfied Fenner, which was fortunate, because Victor knew (whether the speaker did or not) he'd promised nothing.

Bredestown lay twenty miles up the river from New Hastings. Victor thought it was the second-oldest English settlement in Atlantis, but wasn't quite sure-Freetown might have been older. He knew some restless Radcliffe had founded it In those long-vanished days, twenty miles inland were plenty to get away from your neighbors. If only that were still true now!

Victor marched his field artillery, his riflemen, and a regiment's worth of musketeers up the Brede from New Hastings. He left the rest of his force behind to make the Royal Navy think twice about landing marines. The enemy admiral wouldn't be sure he hadn't left the whole army behind. The enemy general wouldn't be sure he hadn't brought everyone along. Neither of them would be able to talk to the other, not quickly or conveniently. And so, taking advantage of their uncertainty, Victor could do what Isaac Fenner wanted.

Whether that was a good idea… he'd find out As the redcoats advanced on Bredestown, riflemen harassed them from trees alongside the road. Victor made sure all the snipers he sent forward wore the green coats that marked uniformed Atlantean rebels. General Howe had started hanging snipers captured in ordinary coats. He'd sent the Atlanteans a polite warning that he intended to treat such men as franc-tireurs. Victor's protest that not all Atlanteans could afford uniforms and that green coats were in short supply fell on deaf ears.

Under the laws of war, Howe was within his rights to do as he did. And Victor knew some of the snipers were plucky amateurs.

not under his command or anyone else's but their own. He also knew hanging them was more likely to make Atlanteans hate England than to make them cower in fear. If General Howe couldn't see that for himself, he watered the rebellion with the blood of patriots. The more he did, the more it would grow.

The redcoats came on despite the snipers. The riflemen who obeyed Victor Radcliff's orders fell back into Bredestown. They went on banging away at the enemy from the houses on the northern outskirts of town. If the Atlantean Assembly wanted Victor to fight for Bredestown, he would do his best to oblige that august conclave.

General Howe went on learning from some of his earlier battles. He didn't send his men against Bredestown in neat rows, but in smaller, more flexible storming parties. If this is the game you're playing, he seemed to say, I can play, too.

And so he could… up to a point. But Victor had posted more riflemen in some of the houses closer to the Brede. As the redcoats pushed deeper into Bredestown after cleaning out the first few houses there, they got stung again.

English field guns unlimbered. A couple of them set up too close to their targets. Riflemen started picking off the gunners before the cannon could fire. The redcoats hastily dragged the guns farther away.

Cannon balls could knock houses down. A roundshot smashing into a wall sounded like a pot dropped on cobbles. Through his spyglass, Victor watched the redcoats cut capers when their artillerymen made a good shot. After a while, the riflemen fell silent.

That had to be what General Howe was waiting for. Satisfied he'd beaten down the opposition, he finally formed his men in neat lines and marched them into Bredestown.

Closer and closer they came. At Victor's orders, the surviving riflemen-a larger fraction than Howe would have guessed-held their fire. He wanted the redcoats to draw near. General Howe might have learned something from his earlier fights, but he hadn't learned enough.

Several houses in Bredestown concealed not riflemen but the meager Atlantean field artillery. The guns were double-shotted with canister. Half a dozen musketeers standing near Victor fired in the air to signal the field guns to shoot.

They roared as near simultaneously as made no difference The blasts of lead balls tore half a dozen great gaps in the English lines. Even from close to half a mile away, Victor heard the screams and moans of the wounded and dying.

He'd hoped such a disaster would give the redcoats pause He knew it would have given him pause. But he'd reckoned without the English soldiers' doggedness. They stepped over their dead and injured comrades, re-formed their lines, and trudged forward once more.

Two or three of the Atlantean guns fired again. Fresh holes opened in the ranks of General Howe's men. Again, the redcoats re-formed. Again, they came on. Teams of horses pulled some of the field guns back toward the Brede. Victor realized he would lose the rest-and lost guns were an almost infallible mark of a lost battle.

"Dammit, I didn't intend to win this one," Victor muttered.

But he hadn't intended to lose cannon, either. "What's that, sir?" Blaise asked.

"Nothing," Victor said, which wasn't quite true. Up till now, everything had gone the way he'd planned it. The field guns had taken such a toll among the redcoats, he'd started to hope they would cave in. If you let your hopes take wing like that, you commonly ended up sorry afterwards.

Victor did, in short order. His riflemen and musketeers fought from house to house, but they were outnumbered. And, he discovered, the redcoats didn't seem inclined to take prisoners in this fight. Anyone they caught, they shot or bayoneted. He didn't like the reports he got on that, but he also didn't know what he could do about it.

Some of the smoke that rose from Bredestown had the fireworks smell of black powder. More and more, though, brought a fireplace to mind. Dry timber was burning. How much of Bredestown would be left by the time the fight for the place was over?

A runner came back to him. "Colonel Whiting's compliments, sir," the man panted, "but he doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to hold his position. The redcoats are pressing pretty hard."

When Dominic Whiting said the enemy was pressing pretty hard, any other officer would have reported disaster some time earlier. From what Victor had seen. Whiting liked his rum, but he also liked to fight. Not only that, he was good at it, which not all aggressive men were.

"My compliments to the colonel, and tell him he's done his duty," Victor said. "I don't want him getting cut off. He is to retreat to the bridges over the Brede. Tell him that very plainly, and tell him it is an order from his superior."

"Yes, sir. I'll make sure he understands." The runner sketched a salute and hurried away.

Victor Radcliff sighed. When General Howe told one of his subordinates to do something, he could be confident the man would jolly well do it. Discipline in the English army wasn't just a matter of privates blindly obeying their sergeants. It ran up the whole chain of command.

An Atlantean officer would obey his superior… if he happened to feel like it, if he thought obeying looked like a good idea, if Saturn aligned with Jupiter and Mars was in the fourth house. He wouldn't do it simply because he'd got an order. If Atlanteans didn't love freedom and individualism, they never would have risen against King George. They wanted to go on doing as they pleased, not as someone on the other side of the ocean wanted them to do. A lot of the time, they didn't want to do as someone on this side of the ocean wanted them to do, either.

How were you supposed to command an army full of dedicated freethinkers, anyway? Carefully, Victor thought. It would have been funny-well, funnier-if it didn't hold so much truth. You could tell a redcoat what to do. He'd do it, or die trying. If an Atlantean didn't see a good reason for an order, he'd tell you to go to hell.

To Victor's relief, Dominic Whiting did see a reason for the order to fall back. So did his subordinate commanders. If he couldn't get his majors and captains to obey, he had as much trouble as Victor did with him. The order to retreat must have looked like a good idea to everybody-one more proof that Howe's men were pressing Whiting hard.

An old man leaning on a stick came up to Victor. "Look what they've done to our town!" he shouted in a mushy voice that proclaimed he'd lost most of his teeth.

"I'm sorry, sir," Victor said. The old man cupped his left hand behind his ear. Victor said it again, louder this time.

"Sorry? Sorry! Why didn't you stay away from Bredestown, then?" the graybeard said. "They would have, too, and everything would have been fine."

Things didn't work that way, no matter how much Victor wished they did. Explaining as much to the old man struck him as more trouble than it was worth. And he had other things to worry about. He'd picked troops to get his men back over the bridges in good order. The retreating soldiers didn't want to listen to them. Atlanteans seldom wanted to listen to anybody-one more demonstration of the thought that had occurred to him not long before.

He had hoped to have a cannon firing across every bridge to make sure English soldiers couldn't swarm after his own men. Losing some of the guns at the north end of Bredestown ruined that scheme. He posted three- and six-pounders where he could, and squads of musketeers where he had no guns.

The redcoats didn't push toward the bridges with great elan. They might have suspected he had something nasty waiting for them. Again, he'd lost the battle but mauled the enemy while he was doing it. He had, he supposed, met Isaac Fenner's requirements.

Once all the Atlantean soldiers made it to the Brede's south bank, Victor dealt with the bridges. Gunpowder charges blew gaps in a couple of stone spans. His men poured tubs of grease on the wooden bridges and set them afire. Without boats, General Howe's troops wouldn't cross here. The closest ford was another twenty miles upstream. He sent a detachment to hold it for a while.

"Well," he said to no one in particular, "we did what we came here to do." He would have felt happier about things if the moans of the wounded didn't make him wonder if it was all worthwhile.