Harry Turtledove - United States of Atlantis

"If it makes you any happier, I felt the same way about you after you raised Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion," Victor said.

"It doesn't, not so much as a fart's worth," Biddiscombe replied. "Only one of us was going to get what he wanted, and I wish to heaven it were me." He scowled through the grating. "If you were any kind of gentleman, you'd pass me a pistol so I could end this on my own."

Victor shook his head. "The trial will go forward. The hounds baying outside wanted to end it on their own, too."

"Ah, but my way would finish it fast, and with luck it wouldn't hurt so bloody much," Biddiscombe said.

"When properly done, hanging slays quickly and cleanly," Victor said.

"Why bother with a trial when you already know the verdict?" jeered the man on the other side of the grate.

"So all the evidence comes forth. So the future can know you for the traitor you are," Victor answered.

Biddiscombe's mouth twisted. "A traitor is a man unlucky enough to end on the losing side. Past that, the word has no meaning."

"Not quite," Victor said.

"No? How not?" his onetime cavalry officer returned.

"A traitor is a man unlucky enough to choose the losing side in the middle of the war," Victor said. "You might have chosen otherwise. You would have done better if you had. And you will pay for what you chose."

Habakkuk Biddiscombe's sweeping gesture took in the whole of his sorry cell. "Am I not already paying?"

"You are," Victor said, and walked away.

Victor declined to serve on the three-officer panel that decided Biddiscombe's fate. "I doubt my ability to be just," he said. He doubted any Atlantean's ability to be just to Biddiscombe, but that was the turncoat's hard luck. At least Biddiscombe's blood would not directly soil his hands.

He was summoned to testify against Biddiscombe. The accused did have counsel, a Croydon barrister named Josias Rich. Outside the small meeting room in the town hall that served as a courtroom, Rich told Victor, "I do this not in the belief in the man's innocence, nor for the sake of my own advancement, God knows-people I thought my friends commence to cut me in the streets. I do it for the sake of Atlantis' honor. Even a dog should have someone to speak for it before it is put down."

"Your views do you credit, and I agree," Victor said. Josias Rich-whose worn linen and down-at-the-heels shoes belied his name-looked surprised and pleased.

In due course, a sergeant serving as bailiff called Victor into the room. He took his oath on a stout Bible. The judges elicited from him that Habakkuk Biddiscombe had commanded cavalry in the Atlantean army, had gone over to the English and formed Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion, and had led the Horsed Legion in combat against the forces of the United States of Atlantis.

Biddiscombe (who was burdened by manacles and by a ball and chain attached to his ankle) had muttered to Josias Rich all through Victor's testimony. The barrister rose. "Did Biddiscombe fight well and bravely while serving under your overall command, General?" he asked.

"He did," Victor said.

"Might he have continued to serve Atlantis well and bravely had you been more inclined to recognize and applaud his military merits?" Rich asked.

"I have no way to know that," Victor replied.

"What is your opinion?"

"My opinion is that, had I judged him worthy of more recognition and applause, I would have given them to him."

Rich tried again: "Do you now regret not having given them to him?"

"I regret that any man who once fought for us should have decided to cast his fate with King George, whatever his reasons may have been," Victor said carefully.

"In retrospect, do you wish now that you had been more inclined to heed his suggestions as to the Atlantean army's conduct of its campaign against the redcoats?"

"Do I think he might have been right, do you mean, sir?"

"Well-yes," Josias Rich said.

"Here and there, he might have been," Victor said. "But that is hard to say with any certainty now, looking back on it. And it would have been all the harder to say trying to look forward into an unsure future."

"Thank you, General." Rich sat down.

One of the captains who would decide Biddiscombe's fate asked, "Did other officers who sometimes disagreed with your orders remain loyal to the cause of the United States of Atlantis?"

"They did," Victor said. And there, in two words, was the essence of Biddiscombe's treason.

The panel excused Victor after that. He left the little room with nothing but relief. Baron von Steuben waited outside "Bad?" the German asked sympathetically.

"Well…" Victor didn't need to think long before nodding. "Yes. Plenty bad."

"Treason is a filthy business," von Steuben said. "Common where I come from-so many little kingdoms and duchies and principalities, so many divided loyalties-but filthy all the same Here you have but one country. If God loves Atlantis, no reason for treason again."

"May He grant it be so," Victor agreed.

The sergeant stepped out into the hallway. "Your turn, sir," he said to von Steuben, who sighed and shrugged and followed him in.

The trial was more than a drumhead, but less than something a civilian would have wanted to face The panel of judges called several more witnesses. Even so, they'd heard enough to satisfy themselves by the middle of the afternoon. And they delivered their verdict only an hour or so later Habakkuk Biddiscombe was guilty of treason against the United States of Atlantis, and should suffer the penalty of death by hanging.

Naturally, the news didn't need long to reach Victor, who sat in a tavern across the Croydon Meadow (on which a few sheep grazed) from the town hall drinking porter and eating a sausage and pickled cabbage stuffed into a long roll. He sighed and nodded to the man who'd brought word to him. "Well, no one expected anything else," he said.

"No, indeed," the man said. "You ask me hanging's too good for him. He should take a while to go so he has time to think about what he did to deserve it."

Victor shook his head. "He'll have plenty of time to think on that before the trap falls. If we once start putting men to death cruelly, how do we stop?"

"You must be a better Christian than I am, General," the man said. Victor was far from sure he meant it as praise Blaise had his own mug of beer and cabbage-shrouded sausage. "What will you do if Biddiscombe begs you for mercy?" he asked after the news-bringer had gone on his way.

As commanding general, Victor had the authority to set aside any court-martial's verdict. He had it, but he didn't think he wanted to use it. "Not much room for doubt about what he did, or about what treason deserves," he said, and let it go at that.

Trials for the men captured with Biddiscombe went even faster than the leader's. All of them were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging except one. No witnesses came forward to show he had actually fought against the Atlantean army. The officers who made up his court convicted him of aiding fugitives from justice, but nothing more. They sentenced him to thirty lashes well laid on, the punishment to be carried out immediately.

A whipping post stood in the middle of the Croydon Meadow. Excited townsfolk chased away the sheep, the better to enjoy the spectacle. The guilty man got a strip of leather to bite down on, as if he'd gone to the surgeons after a battle wound. The man with the whip had a French accent. Maybe he'd had practice whipping slaves south of the Stour. Victor wished he hadn't thought of that; it made him imagine his own son under the lash.

Crack! Crack! The strokes sounded like gunshots. Despite the thick strap, the guilty man soon screamed after each one. The crowd cheered almost loud enough to drown him out. After the last stroke, they loosed his shackles. He slumped to the ground at the base of the post like a dead man. Then a doctor came forward to smear ointment on his raw, bloodied back, and he started screaming all over again.