Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

The black man figured that out in an instant. Had he been the natural-born coward Stafford assumed him to be because he was a Negro, he would have thrown himself down in the thick undergrowth or tried to run away. Instead, he clubbed his musket and rushed at the Consul.

Stafford did fire again. He didn't miss this time. The bullet caught the insurrectionist just to the left of the middle of his chest. Stafford couldn't have placed it any better aiming at a target with all the time in the world to shoot.

When you shot somebody-especially when you hit him right where you wanted to-you expected him to fall over. Stafford had done enough hunting to know that deer didn't always fall over as soon as you shot them. He'd thought it would be different with people, though. For one thing, no deer ever born had tried to smash in his skull with a reversed musket.

He ducked the stroke that would have scrambled his brains. Then he fired yet again-and hit the Negro yet again. The man still didn't fall over, though he did grunt in surprise and pain when the bullet bit into him. He also dropped the musket, but only to try to snatch the eight-shooter out of Stafford's hand.

"Why don't you die, damn you?" Stafford groaned.

"Fuck your mother, you white devil," the Negro said. He opened his mouth to add another unpleasantry, but blood poured out between his lips and from his nostrils. For a heartbeat or so, he looked astonished. Then-at last!-his eyes rolled up in his head and he slowly crumpled to the forest floor. A sudden nasty stench amid the forest's green odors said his bowels had let go.

He twitched a few times, but now he was plainly dying fast. Stafford stared down at him. He smelled the man's sweat and his blood as well as his shit. He'd never dreamt killing could be so dreadfully intimate-the Negro was the first man he'd ever known he'd slain. All at once, he doubled over and was sick. Some of his vomit splashed the black man, but it seemed more tribute than defilement.

"You all right, Consul?" a rough voice asked. A sergeant with grizzled side whiskers stood there. He jerked a thumb at the corpse. "Never done for anybody before, have you?"

"No," Stafford choked out. "Have you got anything I can rinse my mouth with?"

"Here you go." The sergeant handed him a tin canteen with a cloth cover.

"Thanks." Stafford undid the cover and gulped. He'd expected water. He got barrel-tree rum. He almost puked again, as much from surprise as for any other reason. Then he spat out some of it.

The sergeant nodded. "That's the way, friend. Gets rid of the taste better'n water would, doesn't it?"

"It does," Stafford agreed, a different kind of surprise in his voice. He took another swig, and swallowed this time. Then he handed back the canteen.

After putting it on his belt again, the sergeant said, "I don't think we're going to catch the son of a bitch."

"Neither do I, I'm afraid," Stafford said. "But even if we don't, we're making him run away. We're making the insurrectionists dance to our tune for a change." Potent excitement and even more potent rum were hitting him the way the Negro's musket ball would have had it connected. "That's got to be worth something, doesn't it?"

"Well, we can hope so, anyways," the veteran answered, and with such doubtful assurance Stafford had to be content. Leland Newton nodded to himself when the cavalry column came back without the rebel leader. Then he noticed that his fellow Consul was splashed with blood and distinctly green around the gills. "Are you all right, Jeremiah?" he asked, more real concern in his voice than he'd expected.

He watched as Stafford looked down at himself and noticed the blood for what seemed likely to be the first time. "Oh," Stafford said, and then, as if explaining everything in three words, "It isn't mine."

"Well, good," Newton said. "Ah, whose is it, then?"

"This nigger and I saw each other in the woods at the same time," Stafford answered. "I ended up shooting him."

Newton would have thought the Consul from Cosquer would sound proud of himself after doing something like that. Instead, Stafford seemed unwontedly subdued. Colonel Sinapis understood that before Newton did. "Your first time, your Excellency?" the officer asked.

"That's right." Stafford nodded jerkily. "You aren't the first one to ask me, either. It must stick out on me like spines. Is that the mark Cain wore?" He sounded altogether in earnest. Newton hadn't killed. He had no idea what it would be like, and wasn't anxious to find out. Whatever Stafford had learned about himself, it seemed to have come closer to shattering him than bucking him up.

Sinapis' gaze swung to the captain who'd commanded the raiders. "You did not capture the rebel chief. Did you kill him?"

"No, sir, not that I know of," the captain said. "My guess is that he was there, or somewhere close by. There were plenty of insurrectionists in those parts, and I can see no reason why there would have been if they weren't guarding something or someone important to them." He paused for a moment. "I wish we would have had a better description of the scalawag, and I wish someone would have told me we'd be squelching through a bog after him."

"Were you?" Sinapis said, his eyebrows leaping. The captain nodded-unhappily, if Newton was any judge. "We did not learn that from the prisoners who told us where Frederick Radcliff would be hiding?"

"We sure didn't, sir," the captain said. "Maybe they were holding out on us, or maybe we just didn't find the right questions to ask. Any which way, we got into something we weren't prepared for. The troops performed bravely. Not catching our man wasn't their fault. They did everything they could. They might have done better if they'd known what they'd be getting into."

"It must be the fault of the questioning," Colonel Sinapis said. "Had we asked the question we needed, we would have got the right answer. A bog? Malakas!" He didn't bother to translate that. He sounded splendidly disgusted. With the bog? With the questioner? With the captives, for not volunteering more? With the whole campaign? That last seemed most likely to Newton.

He put the best face he could on things: "On to New Marseille, then?"

Sinapis dipped his head. "On to New Marseille, your Excellency. We shall make sure the rebels cannot steal the place. "That would be"-he paused to look for words-"unfortunate. Yes, unfortunate. To say nothing of embarrassing." The ones he found seemed to fit altogether too well.

They roused Stafford from his sorrowful lethargy, too. "New Marseille already has a garrison! It has cannon!" he said.

"It has cannon," Sinapis agreed. "Most of them point out to sea, to protect the harbor from enemy bombardment. It has a garrison: a small one. So far as I know, it has not been reinforced by sea. These people we are fighting have already done several things I had not imagined they could do while I was still in New Hastings. If they should surprise us again, it would not surprise me."

Newton tried to parse that last sentence. Logically, it made no sense. Logic or no, he understood what Sinapis was talking about. So did his colleague. "Well, we'd better get there ahead of them, then," Stafford said. "Or, if we can't manage that, we'd better drive them out once we do get there."

"Indeed," Colonel Sinapis said. "I should not care to be remembered as the man who lost the city." His mouth tightened. He must have been remembered for some failures back in Europe; he'd made glancing allusion to at least one of them. Plenty of people came to Atlantis to try to redeem failure elsewhere. Some succeeded. They were the ones who wrote their names in life's book in large letters. Others went right on failing. Most of those, by the nature of things, were soon forgotten. But a soldier who failed might end up better remembered than one who triumphed.