Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"You want lies, go home to your mistress," Red Rodney answered. Most of the chieftains laughed. A few glowered: the ones, he guessed, who feared their mistresses were filling their ears with lies. He swigged from his mug of rum and went on, "The sheep are starting to think they're wolves. The honkers are trying to grow eagles' wings. The bastards in Stuart aim to kill us all."

"And you know this because…?" Goldbeard Walter Kennedy inquired. He was an enormous man, several inches taller than Rodney, who was no stripling himself, and wider through the shoulders. The beard that gave him his sobriquet spilled halfway down his chest.

Radcliffe told exactly how he knew it, though he didn't name his spy in Stuart. "We can let them pick us off a ship at a time, the way they're bound to want to," he said. "Or we can stand together and show 'em we're not to be trifled with. Which would you rather?"

"How do we know you're not lying so you get to tell us what to do?" Caradeuc inquired.

"Because I won't lead us even if you bloody well ask me to," Red Rodney replied. The renunciation hurt, but he knew he had to make it. "Pick somebody else. In this fight, I'll follow him, whoever he is. If I have a quarrel with him, it can wait till later. Everything else can wait till later."

He impressed them with that. He'd thought he would. They weren't used to backing away from power. They were used to grabbing with both hands. They wrangled and shouted and swore, and finally chose Michel de Grammont to command. Fewer of them hated him than anyone else. That seemed a good enough reason to them. What kind of high captain he would make…They'd find out.

W illiam Radcliff was furious, in a cold-blooded Stuartish way. When he got command of a fleet to wipe the pirates of Avalon off the map, he rashly assumed the fleet would assemble some time before Judgment Day. Now he was wondering if he hadn't been unduly optimistic.

It wasn't as if Stuart lacked a fine harbor in which to assemble. Avalon boasted one as good, but assuredly no other anchorage in Atlantis came close. Two rivers and several islands met there, and Stuart lay at the heart of them all. No matter how the wind blew, ships could get in and out and find secure places to put up. William was hard pressed to think of a harbor in Europe or Terranova that could say the same.

He wondered why his several-times-great-grandfather hadn't settled here rather than down at New Hastings. The only thing he could think of was that Edward Radcliffe must have been content to put down roots wherever the wind happened to blow him ashore. That only proved the Founder wasn't so sly as people made him out to be.

And am I? William Radcliff wondered. He had authority to bind and to loose a whole fleet. The only difficulty was that, despite promises from both Elijah Walton and Piet Kieft, the fleet at the moment consisted of his own merchantmen and not one vessel more.

Merchantmen, by the nature of things, weren't warships. They weren't particularly fast: they were built to haul, not to sprint. And, most of the time, they weren't heavily armed. He'd done what he could to correct that, but guns heavier than twelve-pounders were impossible to lay hold of in a peaceful settlement. Walton had promised heavier cannon to turn merchantmen into reasonable facsimiles of ships of the line, but so far the promised guns were as chimerical as the promised ships.

"You will drive trade away and make your friends repent of their friendship if you curse everyone who comes near you," his wife remarked one afternoon, when his sarcasm curdled into blasphemy.

"I beg your humble pardon, Tamsin," William answered. "Still and all, I would take oath-"

"You have sworn too many profane oaths already," Tamsin Radcliff broke in.

"I would take oath," William repeated stubbornly, "that the Devil has in hell a special firepit he stokes extra hot, for the purpose of properly tormenting souls who make promises they do not purpose keeping."

"I am certain all will be as you wish in due course." Tamsin had a sunny nature. She needed it, or the master merchant's frequent glooms would have oppressed her more.

"If the promise be fulfilled in due course, that will not be as I wish," Radcliff said. "Do you suppose they are sitting idly by in Avalon?"

"By no means," his wife replied. "More likely than not, they are drinking and wenching and dicing and brawling. Why would they turn pirate, if not to do such things?"

She wasn't wrong. All the same, William said, "Also, without the tiniest bit of doubt, they are readying themselves for our onslaught against them. They will surely have learned of it by now. Had we moved against them sooner, we might have taken them unawares."

"You cannot move alone," Tamsin said.

William nodded heavily. "If I could have, I would have long since. No, for a sea war on such a scale, I needs must have confederates. And a man who must rely on others to see that certain things are done is a man who must resign himself to knowing they may never be done."

"And are the freebooters of Avalon better off in this regard?" Tamsin asked. "Can one man among 'em snap his fingers and have the others follow his whim like so many trained mastiffs? Or do they wait upon developments and quarrel over them the same way you and your friends do?"

He stared at her. Then he kissed her. She let out a startled squawk; that wasn't something he commonly did in the middle of the day. "You are a wonder," he said. "A wonder-do you hear me?"

"I hear you. I am glad to hear you," Tamsin Radcliff said primly. "But why do you say it?"

"Because you remind me of something I almost forgot," William answered. "I see all my own troubles, but none of my foes'. Yet they must have 'em, for are they not flesh and blood, even as am I?" He scowled. "Red Rodney, the mangy hound, is flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, as that fat toad of a Walton tires not of reminding me."

"You are not to be blamed for it." Tamsin was loyal to his branch of the family.

"Not by you, perhaps. In London and in Nieuw Haarlem, too many can't tell the difference between a Radcliffe and a Radcliff." He pronounced Red Rodney's version of the family name with three syllables, as no Radcliffe ever born had done. His wife nodded, so she saw his point. He went on, "If half of them blame me for what he does-"

"All the more reason to be rid of him for good," she said.

"All the more reason, yes-and all the less chance." William drummed his fingers on his thigh. "I want to be at sea, not tied here waiting."

"If the Dutchman and the Londoner fail you, you should put to sea by yourself," Tamsin said. "All our ships put together can beat Red Rodney Radcliffe." She pronounced the name with three syllables, too.

"We can beat Red Rodney, yes," William said. "We cannot beat all of Avalon banded together. And the freebooters will fight like cornered rats, for they know what awaits them if they lose. Without marines to stiffen them, I doubt my men would fight so well. Why should they? They put to sea to trade, not to war. They will fight if forced to it, yes, but not for the sport of it."

"They will fight for money-or some of them will," Tamsin said shrewdly. "A big enough price on the heads of the pirate captains-"

"They've had prices on their heads for years." William sounded as gloomy as he felt. "They're out there yet, robbing and stealing and murdering. They make us all look like jackasses." His hands balled into fists. "By God, Tammy, they trifle with us. I am no man to be trifled with, and anyone who thinks otherwise will to his sorrow discover himself mistaken."

"Have you any way to hurry Kieft or Walton?" his wife asked.

He shook his head. "They trifle with me, too, and they think I shall forget it because we are on the same side. You know me. Do I ever forget anyone who does me a bad turn?"