Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Plantation owners and overseers hunted slaves with hounds and with guns and sometimes even with fist-trained eagles. Runaways fought back with mantraps and anything else their ingenuity could devise. Some of them-the Terranovans especially-were good bowmen. Victor Radcliff knew the first English settlers in Atlantis had been formidable archers. That was three centuries gone by, though. These days, any white who wanted to shoot something did it with a gun.

Victor thought about giving the campfire or whatever it was a wide berth and going on his way. Regretfully, he shook his head. He couldn't be sure he'd be able just to go on his way. If he knew those strangers were out there in the swamp, one of them was liable to know he was here, too. All the undergrowth was made for snipers and bushwhackers. Maybe somebody was drawing a bead on him right now…

When you had a thought like that, your first instinct was to duck. If you had any brains, you followed that instinct, too. It might save you. Victor pulled in his head like one of those flapjack turtles. He ducked down so the ferns all around did a better job of hiding him. Then he crawled away.

Maybe he was crawling away from nothing. He didn't know for sure. He didn't mind making a fool of himself in front of turtles and frogs and oil thrushes and parrots. In fact, he ended up making a fool of himself in front of a mouse. It twitched its whiskers and vanished under a drooping frond a couple of inches above the ground.

"Damned things are everywhere," Victor muttered to himself. There hadn't been a mouse or a rat or a dog or a cat in Atlantis before settlers started coming. Now you found them even in the wilderness.

By contrast, honkers had grown scarce, especially in long-settled districts. Before long, they might all be gone. Victor shrugged. That wasn't his worry.

He sniffed again, then crawled toward the fire. Follow your nose, he thought. Well, what else could he do when he couldn't see the campfire or hear the people who gathered around it?

And then he could hear them. He froze, then moved forward even more slowly and carefully. Yes, the bad French and Spanish said they were runaway slaves. One Negro and two copperskins, he thought; they had distinctively different accents. His own French was nothing special, though he could make himself understood.

Another sniff brought him the scent of roasting meat. His stomach growled. He winced-a noise like that could betray him, and it was nothing he could do anything about.

There they were, dimly seen through the screen of multiply lobed little leaves. Victor stayed very still. He saw a Negro and one copperskin. They were cooking a turtle and a couple of big frogs over their fire. One of them said something and held up his supper. The other laughed.

Runaways, all right, Victor Radcliff thought. They wouldn't go out hunting him unless they thought he was hunting them. Since he wasn't…Best just to slide away after all.

He was about to do exactly that when someone jumped him from behind. While he'd scouted the camp, someone had sneaked up on him. A large, strong, muscular someone, too. And as silently deadly as a crawling snake-Victor had had no idea anybody was there till the instant before he found himself fighting for his life.

The fight didn't last long. When the sharp edge of a knife kissed Victor's throat, he went limp. His assailant laughed, low and hoarse. "Figured that'd make you get smart," the man said in copperskin-accented French. The knife dug a little deeper. "Now, you come along with me."

Numbly, Victor came.

Roland Kersauzon peered out from the walls of Nouveau Redon. He was not quite the lord of all he surveyed, but he was the lord of a good deal of it. And he was named for one famously stubborn man, and descended from another. Roland the warrior might have saved everything but his pride if he'd blown his horn sooner and summoned Charlemagne back against the Spanish Mussulmen. And Francois Kersauzon remained a legend in these parts even if he was three centuries dead and gone.

Francois had never set eyes on Nouveau Redon, not in all the years he'd dwelt in Atlantis. It lay only fifty miles inland from Cosquer on the Blavet. He'd never gone fifty miles inland or, probably, even twenty miles inland. That would have meant turning his back on the sea. Francois Kersauzon was too mulish a fisherman to want to do any such thing.

Slowly, Roland made a fist and brought it down on the gray stone of the battlement. Nouveau Redon, everyone said, was the strongest fortress in all of Atlantis, French, English, or Spanish. And it needed to be. Roland muttered something a quarter Breton, three-quarters French, and all irate.

If only Francois hadn't sold the God-cursed Englishmen the secret of Atlantis for a load of salt cod! (Or, even more humiliating, for part of a load of salt cod. Some of the stories put it that way.) Then the Bretons would be happy over here, the English would be happy over there, and…

"Merde," Roland said. That kind of thinking was bound to be foolish. Sooner or later, the English would have found these shores on their own. But it would have been later than it was, which would have been better-certainly as far as a Breton was concerned.

Nouveau Redon sat atop a knob overlooking the Blavet. The river approach was difficult. The landward approach, except for a narrow road hacked out of rock, was harder yet. Roland didn't see how anyone could storm Nouveau Redon as long as it had a few soldiers inside the walls.

He did see a horseman urging his mount up that narrow road. Even though the rider was alone and unable to move fast, muskets and cannon loaded with grapeshot covered his approach. Nouveau Redon was ready for anything.

By the time the rider reached the narrow plain in front of the town, he was sweating and fanning himself with his hat. His horse was lathered and blowing. He seemed glad to rein in before the main gate. After yelling back and forth with the guards at the gate, he rode into Nouveau Redon.

Before long, more shouts rang out: "Lord Roland!" "Come down, Lord Roland!" "Lord Roland, this man's here to see you!"

Roland Kersauzon said, "Merde!" again, louder this time. This was the moment he'd been waiting for. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was the moment he'd been dreading. He hurried down the stairs-hurried with what the lawyers called deliberate speed. The stairway attached to the wall was narrow and steep; if a man on it fell, he might break a leg-or his neck.

Reaching the ground without mishap, Roland rushed to the gate. A man could break an ankle-or his neck-if he tripped on the cobbles, too. Old men grumbled and wished the streets were still unpaved. Roland didn't miss the stinking mud one bit. Cobbles made his city as modern as any in Europe.

"Lord Kersauzon," said the horseman when Roland came up. "I bring news just here from France." He held out a paper folded and sealed with ribbon and wax.

"News." Kersauzon's mouth tightened as he took the letter. "Do you know what it says?"

"Formally, no," the rider replied. "Informally…Well, the word's all over Cosquer. Gossip flies faster than the wind."

"All right." It wasn't, but Roland couldn't do anything about it. He scraped off the seal and cut through the ribbon with a small, sharp knife he pulled from his belt. Then he unfolded the paper and read it. His sight was beginning to lengthen, but he didn't need spectacles for reading yet. Sadly, he nodded to himself, as if learning that an aged and long-infirm uncle had finally died.

"Is it-?" One of the gate guards couldn't hold in the question.

With a sigh, Roland nodded again. "War," he said. "War against England."

"But why?" The gate guard checked himself. He sketched a salute. "Forgive me, sir. I know the English-they are dogs and sons of dogs. I know most of them are godless Protestant heretics, bound for hell."