Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

Leland Newton pointed to the slope and the wall. "They're getting up to it," he said, and then, diminishing that, "Some of them are, anyhow." Yes, a lot of bodies dotted the slope.

"Once they get over it and in amongst the damned insurrectionists, the fight is as good as won," Stafford said.

"You hope," the other Consul said.

"Yes. I do," Stafford agreed. "And if you do not, I should like to know why."

"Oh, no-I won't fall into that trap. Now that we are in the field, you will not be able to accuse me of failing to support our soldiers in every way," Newton said.

"I suppose you also wish to pretend you did not do everything in your power to keep them from taking the field," Stafford growled.

"My dear fellow, had I done everything in my power to prevent it, the army never would have left New Hastings," Newton replied easily. My dear fellow, here, had to mean something like You silly son of a bitch. He wasn't wrong, either. But he certainly had delayed the army's departure.

Stafford might have pointed that out. Instead, he peered toward the fight at the stone fence. Some of the Atlantean soldiers were scrambling over it. Through the spyglass, he could see soldiers and insurrectionists stabbing at one another with bayonets. The copperskins and blacks weren't giving much ground. Were they giving any ground at all? He had trouble being sure.

Over on the wing, the flanking party had reached the barricade. Not many white men had got past it, though. The gunfire from the woods alongside the road was too intense to let the flankers ignore it. They had to turn and respond, which meant they had trouble going forward.

"The insurrectionists planned this battle well," Colonel Sinapis remarked. "I do not think I could have improved on their dispositions."

Hearing that did nothing to improve Stafford's disposition. "We can beat them?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes, we can beat them," Sinapis said. "But they can also beat us, which I had not counted on before we set out."

If enough Atlanteans got over the wall, they would win. But the enemy had more men, and more determined men, back there than Stafford had dreamt possible. Colored fighters, savages, couldn't be that brave… could they?

Sinapis' spyglass also surveyed the front. Under it, his mustache-framed mouth twisted. He lowered the telescope. "I am very sorry, your Excellency. I do not think we shall succeed this day."

"Dear God in heaven!" Stafford cried. "Can that-that rabble beat our finest soldiers?"

"It would seem so, yes," the colonel answered impassively.

"They must not!" Stafford said. "Do you hear me? They must not!"

"It is war," Sinapis said. "There are no musts in war. There are only ares."

Consul Stafford almost hit him. One thing alone made the Consul hesitate: the likelihood that he would lie dead on the ground a moment after he did such an unwise thing. He groaned instead, watching everything he held dear crumbling before his eyes.

Eight shots in one weapon were wonderful. Reloading the pistol after firing eight shots at the Atlantean infantry was a son of a bitch bastard, as Frederick Radcliff discovered to his sorrow. Put a bullet in each chamber. Measure a charge of black powder and stuff each charge into a chamber without spilling it. Fix a percussion cap for each chamber. Do all that while your hands trembled because you'd just come as near as dammit to getting killed.

Doing it seemed to take about a year. But Frederick methodically went on. He couldn't afford to stay unarmed. Seven more bullets for the white men-some of them would probably hit, anyhow. One more bullet for himself, just in case.

They'd got over the wall. He hadn't dreamt they could do that. He'd also assumed that, if the white soldiers did get over the wall, the battle was as good as lost. But it turned out not to be. The Negroes and copperskins he led didn't flinch, even from the soldiers' most savage bayonet work. They rushed toward the white men in gray, not away from them. They might be less skilled with the bayonet themselves, but they were every bit as plucky.

And they turned the wall to an advantage. They pinned the soldiers who'd got over against it and started killing them there. It was madness. It was mayhem. Neither side asked for quarter, and neither side offered it. For longer than Frederick thought possible, neither side gave ground, either.

A white man's voice, furious and astonished, rose above the din of shrieks and gunfire: "You nigger assholes can't do this!"

"Hell we can't!" Frederick shouted back. He had no idea whether the soldier heard him. He'd finally got that damned eight-shooter reloaded. As he raised it, he breathed a small prayer that it wouldn't explode in his hand. If you didn't do a good enough job cleaning off excess powder, more than one chamber would fire when you pulled the trigger. Only one bullet could get out, of course. The rest… the rest would probably blow off the hand that held the revolver.

More whites scrambled up over the wall to try to help their comrades. Frederick fired at one of them. The man clutched his ribs and tumbled back on the far side of the stone fence. Only after that did Frederick realize the gun had hurt the enemy, not him.

Then-and the thought within him warred between all at once and at last!-more Atlantean soldiers were climbing over the fence to get away than to come to their friends' rescue. "We licked 'em!" Lorenzo cried exultantly. He asked, "Shall we go after 'em?"

"If we do, their cannon will murder us." Frederick unbent enough to follow that with a question of his own: "Or do you think I'm wrong?"

"Nooo." The way Lorenzo stretched the word showed his reluctance. But he didn't try to talk Frederick out of the decision. He might not like it, but he saw it was right. A moment later, he brightened: "When word of what we done here gets around, every copper man and black man in these parts is going to come running to join our army."

"Expect you're right." Frederick hoped he sounded more enthusiastic than he felt. That would bring his army more men-men he mostly didn't have weapons for, and men he would have trouble feeding.

Lorenzo went on, "Planters around here'll have to light out for the tall timber, too, unless they want to get their big houses burned down while they're layin' in bed asleep."

"That's a fact." Now Frederick could sound happy without reservation. "The Free Republic of Atlantis just got bigger."

"Damned right it did," Lorenzo agreed. "Those white sons of bitches'll run back to New Marseille with their tails between their legs. Everything outside the city limits, I reckon that's ours from now on."

Half an hour later, a Negro who'd been a butler before the uprising and served as the rebels' quartermaster these days came up to him. "You know where we can get more percussion caps, boss?" he asked. "We're mighty low on 'em, mighty low. We're short on powder and bullets, too, but we can come up with some of those, anyways. Percussion caps, though… You know how to make 'em?"

"Not me." Frederick shook his head. "They got mercury in 'em-I know that. Mercury fulmisomethin'."

"Know where we can get our hands on some this mercury whatever-the-devil-you-called-it?" the quartermaster persisted. "Can you dig it out of the ground?"

"Don't think so. I think you've got to make it some way, like they make sugar out of sugar cane," Frederick answered.

"But you don't know how." It wasn't a question. But, by the way the other Negro said it, Frederick should have known how. The quartermaster set his hands on his hips. "How are we supposed to keep fighting if we can't get no more percussion caps?"

"I never said we couldn't do that," Frederick replied. "I just said we couldn't make 'em ourselves. But we can steal 'em from the Atlantean soldiers. We're getting more from the men we killed at the wall, right?"