Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Up on the walls of Nouveau Redon, a cannon boomed. The ball fell far short of the settlers and redcoats. The gunners must have known it would. Victor recognized the shot for what it was: defiance. A breeze from the Green Ridge Mountains blew the black-powder smoke toward the ocean.

"They won't act so bold when we cut them off from the river," the English lieutenant-colonel said.

Victor stared at him. Didn't he know anything about this place he aimed to besiege? "They don't depend on the Blavet for water, sir," the Atlantean said carefully.

"No, eh? Well, cisterns go dry, even if it takes longer."

"They don't depend on cisterns, either," Victor said. No, the Englishman really didn't know anything about Nouveau Redon. "They have a spring, and it's never been known to fail. We may be able to starve them out. We may be able to take the town with saps and parallels-"

"Won't be easy," the lieutenant-colonel said. Victor nodded. The ground rose sharply toward the citadel, and grew stonier the higher it got: not promising terrain for digging trenches.

"I'm afraid we'll be here quite a while," Victor said. "We just have to pray we can keep our own men supplied-and that sickness doesn't break out. If it does…" He spread his hands, as if to say, What can you do?

"We are going to take that fortress." The English lieutenant-colonel might have been an Old Testament prophet. He sounded utterly sure he was telling the truth. Radcliff envied him his certainty. The Old Testament prophets had had God on their side. Victor hoped his army did, too. He hoped so, yes, but he was less sure of it than people like Elijah had been.

The lieutenant-colonel shouted orders. Horns blared. Drums thumped. Soldiers moved out to encircle Nouveau Redon. The opening steps in a siege were as formal as those in a gavotte.

Then the Englishman gave his attention back to Victor. "Tell me, Major-have you read Caesar's Gallic War?"

"Yes, sir." Victor wondered why on earth the other officer chose this moment to ask that question. A bit touchily, the Atlantean added, "We aren't all barbarians on this side of the ocean. I can give you All Gaul is divided into three parts or talk about the aurochs and the other curious animals of the German forest. If you happen to have a copy with you, I can even make a stab at construing sentences, though I confess my Latin isn't what it was fifteen years ago."

"Don't fret. Don't fret," the lieutenant-colonel said, which only left Victor more fretful than ever. The English officer continued, "Upon my honor, Major, I meant no slight by the question. Please accept my assurances on that score."

"Very well, sir." Victor's voice stayed stiff.

The English officer pointed toward Nouveau Redon. France's fleurs-de-lys flag still fluttered defiantly up there. "Can you give me precise bearings on where inside the town that spring rises?"

"I can't-no, sir. But I'm sure you can find out if you inquire among my greencoats. Some of them will have spent more time inside than I have." Radcliff's curiosity roused. "Why, if I may ask?"

"Perhaps we can match the famous fate of Uxellodunum," the Englishman replied.

Whatever Uxellodunum's fate had been, it wasn't famous to Victor. He presumed it was set forth in the Gallic War. If it was, he didn't remember it. Suppressing a sigh, he said, "I fear you must enlighten me, sir."

Enlighten him the English officer did, finishing, "No guarantees, of course-there never are in warfare. But it strikes me that this is our best-and quickest-chance of securing a victory at reasonable cost."

Victor Radcliff did something he'd thought he would never do: he doffed his hat to the lieutenant-colonel. "If we can bring that off…If we can, I'd give twenty pounds to be a fly on the wall and see the look on Roland Kersauzon's face."

"He is a difficult man," the lieutenant-colonel said.

"I'm sure he thinks the same of you-and of me," Victor replied. "And chances are he's right-and so are you. All things considered, I would sooner lay siege out here than stand siege in there."

"As would I," the Englishman agreed. "Montcalm-Gozon had me mured up in Freetown, which was…less than pleasant. But my position was still open to the sea. Your settlers returned, and then we were reinforced from England. Only the angels could reinforce Kersauzon now."

"He won't ask for them, even if God would give them. He's a proud man," Victor said. "If you don't know that, you don't know him at all."

R oland Kersauzon hadn't thought a lot about what being besieged might be like. He'd never imagined it could bore him. But it did. One day seemed the same as another. He'd started losing track of how long he'd been shut up here. How much longer could he stay?

Till the storehouses emptied, and then a little while after that. But when they would had no simple answer. If he kept his men on full rations as long as the food held out…he was an idiot, or a man who expected to be relieved soon, assuming those two weren't one and the same.

Three-quarters rations? Half rations? When to swing from one to the other? Those were the worries that weighed on his mind. But what difference did it make if he decided tomorrow, not today? Not much, and he knew it.

Had he worried about water…He didn't, though. The spring was what it had always been, what it always would be. God had loved Nouveau Redon when He sent the cold, pure water bubbling up through the rock. He'd also loved the settler who first realized what that spring meant: an impregnable fortress for French Atlantis.

The English weren't even trying to take it, or not trying very hard. Oh, they were advancing their saps and parallels little by little. They had yet to bring cannon within range of the walls, though. Roland doubted whether they could. The ground rose steeply and grew rocky in a hurry. Every new move forward would get harder and go slower.

Once in a while, guns on the wall would fire. A cannon ball killed a team of oxen hauling something toward the closest trenches. The gunners whooped and capered, proud of their shooting.

"Magnifique," Roland said dryly when he learned what the celebration was about. "Now the damned Englishmen will have themselves a supper of beef."

That made the cannoneers' faces fall. They hadn't had a supper of beef for a while now. Oh, some beef went into the sausages they gnawed on, but no one in his right mind inquired too closely about what all went into sausages. Better not to know; better just to eat…as long as the sausages held out.

And Roland proved right. The redcoats and greencoats butchered the murdered oxen and roasted the carcasses. Mother Nature was in a cruel mood; the wind carried the savory smell of the cooking meat straight into Nouveau Redon. Roland's supper was a hard cracker, some barley mush, and a chunk of tough, stale sausage not quite so long as his thumb. His stomach growled enormously at the wonderful aroma wafting over the walls.

Also once in a while, riflemen-commonly settlers in green coats, which made them harder to spot-would sneak forward from the enemy lines and snipe at the defenders. A rifleman had a chance of hitting a man from more than a furlong. The surgeons got reminded they were there for a reason.

And the whole garrison got reminded they were in the middle of a war. "I'm almost grateful to the English," Roland remarked to a sergeant after a man took a flesh wound. "They make sure we don't go slack."

"Oui, Monsieur." The underofficer nodded. Then he pointed out toward the river. "They stay busy themselves, too. See how much dirt and filth they dump into the clean water."

Sure enough, the Blavet had been clear enough to reflect the sky's blue till it came alongside the English works encircling Nouveau Redon. But it ran brown and turbid as it flowed on toward the Atlantic.