Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"No. But, contrariwise, you never forget anyone who does you a good turn, either. Had you not the one quality to go with the other, I could not love you-and I do."

"A good thing, too. I'd go on the rocks without you. But unless we lance this abscess on our western coast"-William's mind kept coming back to what lay uppermost within it-"all of Atlantis will go on the rocks. And, regardless of what Piet Kieft and the sainted Elijah Walton may say, I do not intend to let that happen."

Black Hand Fort had a crow's nest. That was a funny name for it, but served well enough. It was a big wooden bucket mounted high atop a redwood trunk thicker than a mainmast. Red Rodney Radcliffe and his lookouts could go there, clambering up the lines nimble as monkeys, and see for miles in every direction.

Ethel could, too, and she loved to do it. Red Rodney wished she wouldn't. He told her she mustn't. He paddled her behind when she did-and he still found her in the crow's nest when he went up one morning to look around.

She flinched when he scrambled over the edge and into the bucket. "I'm sorry, Father," she said, and then, her spirit reviving, "I'm sorry you caught me."

"Not as sorry as you will be soon," he said, but his heart wasn't in the threat. He had too many other things on his mind.

When he looked down at Avalon's harbor, he didn't like what he saw. Too many brigs and brigantines. Too many sloops. Too many shallops. A few race-built galleons, but only a few. Most of the pirates' ships were small and swift, able to put up a great spread of sail and run after their prey or run away from danger. They could fight when they had to, but only when they had to.

How would the fleet of pirate ships stand up against a new English or Dutch ship of the line? Pirate ships rarely mounted anything bigger than twelve-pounders. They were made to take merchantmen and to flee from naval vessels. What if they couldn't flee? What if they had to defend their home port?

He muttered under his breath. Even in the twenty-odd years he'd roamed the seas, ships of the line had grown larger and more deadly. A first-rate man-of-war could mount thirty forty-two-pounders, thirty twenty-four-pounders, twenty twelve-pounders, and twenty more smaller guns. A broadside from a ship like that would turn a brigantine to kindling and splinters in the blink of an eye.

In a fight out on the open sea, it wouldn't matter, because brigantines and sloops and shallops could run away from any ship of the line ever built. But if the men-of-war were bearing down on Avalon…If they were doing that, the corsairs couldn't very well run, not unless they wanted to run away from their town and their harbor and start fresh somewhere else.

Red Rodney didn't want to do that. Neither did the other chieftains, or they wouldn't have agreed to fight. But agreeing to fight wasn't the same as knowing how to go about it. Another long look at the ships that lay at anchor inside Avalon Bay said as much.

"Pa?" That was Ethel. By the way she called to him, she'd been trying to get his attention for some little while. "Why aren't you thumping me, Pa? You always do when you catch me up here." Getting a thumping seemed better to her than seeing the regular order of things overturned. Some people were like that.

He gave her a straight answer, thinking her due one: "I'm trying to figure out how our little ships can beat the big ones our enemies are going to throw at us."

"Well, that's not so hard," Ethel said with a child's boundless confidence. "If they're bigger, we've got to be faster and smarter, so we hit them and they can't hit back."

"Easier to say than to do," Rodney warned.

"You say that? You?" Ethel sent him a reproachful look. "Don't they call you the Horror of the Hesperian Gulf?" Pride at being a Horror's daughter rang in her voice.

"They do," Rodney agreed. "And I am what they call me." He had pride of his own, plenty of it. He also had worries of his own, plenty of them. "If it were just the sea fight, I'd not worry. But those buggers back in Stuart want to close our shop down. They want Avalon, is what they want. The town can't put on topgallants and spankers and sail away from their bloody fleet." He could be more open about his fears with his daughter than with his henchmen or his fellow corsair captains. Come what might, Ethel wouldn't call him coward.

She did point north, to the fort warding Avalon's northern tip, to the galleys guarding the Gateway, and to the other fort on the northern spit that helped form the bay. "We can keep them out," she said, confident still. "Red-hot rounds and chainshot will make the bally blighters sorry they ever tried to poke their noses in."

Radcliffe grinned. His daughter not only thought like a pirate, she talked like one, too. He tousled her hair. "Well, chick, maybe you're right," he said. I hope to Christ you are, he thought, but that didn't pass his lips.

Marcus Radcliffe was a lean, dark, weather-beaten man who wore a honkerskin rain cloak, feathered side out, above his shirt and breeches. He seemed out of place in settled Stuart, and especially out of place in William Radcliff's elegant study.

Radcliff poured Radcliffe a glass of sherry. "Your health, cousin," he said, smiling.

"And yours, coz," Radcliffe said to Radcliff. They both drank. Marcus Radcliffe thoughtfully smacked his lips. "Not bad, not bad. I'm more used to ale and beer myself."

"Well, you're not the only one. I drink them a lot of the time myself," William allowed. "But I try to serve my guests something finer."

"Kind of you." Marcus Radcliffe sipped again, and then again. By the way the level of the wine in his glass sank, he thought it fine enough.

William poured the glass full again. "Though the name is the same, or near enough, we are not close cousins, are we?"

"Not hardly." Marcus had a harsher accent than William. "You come down through Henry, and I through Richard. My father would always say your line wanted money, and got it. My line wanted freedom, and we're still looking for it. The more Atlantis fills up, the harder it is to come by."

"Money buys freedom," William Radcliff said. "Freedom from want, freedom from trouble…"

"You haven't got troubles?" Marcus Radcliffe laughed. "Why'd you ask me here, then?"

"Because I have a question, and you seem the man best suited to answer it," William replied.

"Long way from New Grinstead to Stuart, just for the sake of a question," Marcus said.

To William's way of thinking, it was a long way from New Grinstead to anywhere. The little town sat far back in the woods west of New Hastings, more than halfway to the Green Ridge Mountains. As far as William knew, no towns lay farther from the coast. From New Grinstead, Marcus Radcliffe and others like him could plunge into the Atlantean wilderness, with no one to tell them where to wander or when to come home.

And that was what made William's distant cousin valuable to him. "Here is that question, and make of it what you will," he said. "Do you believe you could lead an army of a thousand men, with all the necessities they would need for fighting upon their arrival, across Atlantis to Avalon by a date to be agreed upon?"

"Ha!" Marcus said, and then, "You really have it in for Red Rodney, don't you? And he's closer kin to you than I am."

"In a word, yes," William said tightly. "Well?"

"It's not like Terranova." Marcus Radcliffe seemed as thoughtful now as he had tasting the sherry. "We wouldn't have to fight our way through tribes of copperskins. There'll be a few in the woods, and a few runaway niggers from down in the south, but not many. And they'd run from an army that size. They wouldn't try to fight. So that would be all right, anyhow, or I think it would."

"Then you can do it?" William heard the eager hunger in his own voice.