Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

He hoped.

When he woke up the next morning…Well, he did wake up the next morning. Nothing else mattered.

Off in the distance, a hound bayed, and then another and another. "They're after me!" Juan blurted, his blunt-featured face going as pale as it could.

"After all of us," Francisco said sensibly.

Although Victor suspected they were after him in particular, he didn't say so. It might alarm his new companions, or they might decide he was lying. They were runaway slaves, after all. People trying to hold on to an expensive investment had good reason to hunt them with dogs. Why would anyone do such a thing to a white man, though?

The French had their reasons. Victor knew that too well. Mentioning those reasons struck him as unwise. Francisco, Juan, and Blaise might decide they could sell him to the French for their liberty. They might prove right, too.

Amazing how many people couldn't keep their mouths shut, even when their lives depended on it. Victor had never had that trouble, anyhow. "Well, we have to get away, no matter whom they're chasing," he said.

"Easy to say," Blaise replied. "Not so easy to do." As if to back him up, the hounds bayed again, on a different, more excited note. "They have our scent."

"Best thing to do, then, is to make sure they don't keep it," Victor said.

"Here there is water," Juan said. "This makes it harder for them. But harder is only harder, si?" He sounded worried.

"Let them come," Victor said. The runaway slaves stared at him. He pulled a small leather pouch and an even smaller bottle from a larger pouch on his belt. Sprinkling fine black powder from the small pouch, he explained, "This is ground pepper." He also dabbed a few drops from the bottle on the ground and the nearby leaves.

"And that?" Francisco asked.

"That is the gall from the snake called the lancehead," Victor said. "Dogs do not like it." He'd committed a serious understatement.

Francisco and Juan might not have understood how large the understatement was. Blaise did. The Negro burst out laughing. Then he took Victor Radcliff's face in his two large hands and kissed him first on the right cheek, then on the left. Sure enough, he'd had a French master.

"And now," he said, "we should get out of here. We will know when the hounds are…confused."

"We'd better," Juan said.

They hurried off to the north. The dogs' howls grew louder no matter how they hurried-four legs moved faster than two. Before too long, though, the hunting howls changed without warning to sudden, frantic yips. All the runaways laughed then. Blaise kissed Victor again. Victor could have done without the familiarity, but found he couldn't blame the black man for it.

Roland Kersauzon rode down to the coast to see how the muster was going. Cosquer might have belonged to a different world. Roland hadn't seen the sea for years, or missed it. He was, and was proud to be, a man of Atlantis, not one who looked back to Europe. He'd never been to Europe, nor did he care to go there.

When he got to the coastal settlement, he found a new reason to be unhappy. At the quays, along with ships from France and Spain and Portugal and their settlements in Atlantis and on the Terranovan mainland farther west, lay others from England and from her Atlantean colonies. War declared? No one in Cosquer worried about that, not when there was money to be made.

In high dudgeon, Roland repaired to the harbormaster's office. "War? Yes, indeed. A great pity," that worthy declared. "Would you care for a cigar, Monsieur?"

"No, thank you," Roland said icily. He had his vices, but pipeweed wasn't one of them. "I would care to know, however, why we tolerate ships of the enemy. For all you know, they are full of spies."

"Oh, I doubt it, mon vieux," the harbormaster replied. He lit his own cigar at a candle, then puffed out a cloud of aromatic smoke. "What would they need to learn of our city that they do not already know?"

"How many troops we have in it, how many ships of war, the state of our shore batteries…I could go on." Roland Kersauzon scowled at the lackadaisical official. "I am charged with defending the settlements and with carrying the war to the enemy in the north. How can I do that, pray tell, if he learns everything we aim to do before we do it?"

The harbormaster let fly with more cigar smoke. "Forgive me, but I think you are getting excited over nothing-it could be over less than nothing. If they want to fight in Europe, they are welcome to. But why should that foolishness trouble us, eh? Bad for trade, leaves hard feelings, and doesn't really settle anything anyhow. They'll just fight another stupid war in twenty years' time to fix up what they didn't get right this go-round."

Roland had the uneasy feeling that that might be so. Nevertheless, he said, "I am charged with doing as well as I can this time. That means seizing enemy ships in the harbor and preventing them from sailing to enemy ports."

"But it will cause such a disruption!" the harbormaster protested. "And the English will only do the same to our ships, so what do we gain?"

"It is a necessary military measure," Roland said. "See to it at once."

"And if I refuse?" the harbormaster asked.

"I have the authority to demand your obedience," Roland Kersauzon said softly. Perhaps because he didn't shout and carry on, the harbormaster looked stubborn and shook his head. With a sigh, Kersauzon drew one of the flintlock pistols he wore on his belt. The click when he cocked it filled the harbormaster's office. The man's eyes crossed fearfully as he stared down the bore of the weapon, which could not miss from a range of less than a yard. Still in a low voice, Roland continued, "And I will blow your stupid head off if you give me any more back talk. Is that plain enough for you?"

"You are a madman!" the harbormaster gasped, sweat starting out on his face.

"Very much at your service, sir," Roland said with a polite nod. "I am also a patriot. Can you say the same?"

"But of course!" With that pistol aimed an inch above the bridge of his nose, the harbormaster would as readily have confessed to being a Chinaman. "In the name of God, put up your gun!"

"And will I see action if I do?" Roland amended his words: "Action of the proper sort, I should say? Not foolishness. If you summon someone and try to have me arrested, he will be sorry and you will be sorrier. Do you understand? And, even more to the point, do you believe me?"

"Oui, Monsieur," the harbormaster choked out. "The pistol is most persuasive."

"I thought it might be. That is one of the reasons I carry it," Roland said complacently. He swung the flintlock aside and eased the hammer down. "Very well. No duress. Let's see how you do now."

The harbormaster didn't disappoint him. The functionary exploded into motion, shouting and waving his arms. Roland Kersauzon followed him to make sure all the shouting was to the point. It was. People stared at the harbormaster-he probably hadn't moved so fast in years. But, once they stopped staring, they did what he said. They did it with more enthusiasm than he seemed to expect, too. They swarmed aboard one ship from England or English Atlantis after another.

If they did some private pillaging while they were aboard, Roland intended to lose no sleep over it. This was war. And if he had to remind people what that meant, well, he would.

Victor Radcliff stared in dismay through the screening of ferns to the ford ahead. The French soldiers at the ford had no idea he and the three runaways were there. But the soldiers' presence was what dismayed him.

"You said no soldados this time." Francisco didn't sound happy with him.

"I didn't think there would be," Victor answered.

"You say no soldats last time, too." Blaise used bad French instead of bad Spanish.