Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"English ships, they come?" Blaise asked.

"That's what the semaphore said," Victor answered. "Word passed from fishing boats still out to sea."

"It is clever, the semaphore." Blaise lapsed into French to say that, and went on in the same language: "In Africa, we have fires that go from hill to hill to pass messages."

"Beacon fires," Victor said in English.

"Beacon fires." Blaise repeated the phrase. "I remember." And he would, too. "But the semaphore, it is better than the beacon fires. It can say more of things."

"Just more things," Victor told him.

"More things." Blaise also said that again. He shrugged. "It is a peculiar language, English."

Victor found French and Spanish peculiar when they differed from the tongue he'd grown up speaking. To what strange African language was Blaise comparing English? Radcliff wondered how much trouble he would have learning it.

He had more important things to worry about. Those ships would carry English regulars to stiffen the ranks of the raw Atlantean troops. Victor assumed the redcoats wouldn't have to worry about the sicknesses that had weakened the colonial force. The regulars would already have lived through them by now.

He and Blaise rode past the big all-planked warehouses that stood near the harbor, and then out toward the quays. Their timing couldn't have been better if they were on the stage in Hanover. A first-rate man-of-war was just tying up, with several smaller, beamier transports right behind.

"Ahoy!" Victor called to the men on the ship of the line. He descended from fishermen, but the nautical word felt strange and unnatural in his mouth. "May I come aboard?"

"Who are you?" a mate asked. He pointed at Blaise. "And who's the monkey?"

A low growl from Blaise's throat said he understood that. Radcliff had hoped he wouldn't. The Atlantean officer answered, "I am Major Victor Radcliff, of the local militia. With me is my man, Blaise." He stressed man more than he might have otherwise.

The mate stayed unimpressed. "And why should the general want to see the likes of you, eh?"

"Because his men and ours will be fighting the French?" Victor suggested.

"Well, 'is will," the mate said. But then, just before Victor might have drawn his pistol, the fellow grudgingly nodded. "All right. I suppose you can see 'im. Won't do too much 'arm."

He shouted orders. A gangplank thudded down. Victor came aboard, Blaise at his heels. Everything aboard the man-of-war spoke of order, discipline, restraint, confinement. At home in the wide woods of Atlantis, Victor immediately mistrusted the atmosphere.

Behind him, Blaise muttered in his incomprehensible native tongue. He would have crossed from Africa to Atlantis in the hold of a slave ship. Mistrust, Radcliff realized, was bound to be the least of what he felt here. But for those mutters and a hooded glance toward the mate, though, Blaise held his feelings in check.

"Ahh…Where do I find the general?" Victor asked.

"Lubber," the mate muttered. Radcliff felt as offended, and as ready to punch him, as Blaise would have if the man had said nigger in the same tone of voice. With a resigned sigh-what could one do about the ignorant?-the mate pointed and said, "'Is cabin's on the poop deck, back at the stern."

"Thank you," Victor replied, meaning anything but.

Then the mate pointed again. "'Ere 'e comes now, so you don't 'ave to go back there. Wouldn't want you getting lost, would we?" Before Victor could rise to that sarcasm, the mate raised his voice: "Your Excellency! General, sir! This officer from the settlements"-his tone, and the way he jerked his thumb at Victor, showed he was giving him the benefit of the doubt-"would like to 'ave the honor of speaking to your Excellency for a moment."

"Yes, yes." The general commanding the English expeditionary force was refulgent in scarlet and gold. If the uniform made the man, he was a made man indeed. Personally, he was less prepossessing: about sixty, jowly, with a pinched mouth that said he'd lost most of his teeth. When he nodded to Victor, the wattles under his chin wobbled. "I am Major General Edward Braddock. And you, sir…?"

Victor saluted. "Major Victor Radcliff, your Excellency. I am pleased to welcome you to Atlantis."

"More pleased than I am to be here, I shouldn't wonder," Braddock replied. "I hoped they would give me a command on the Continent, but…" He shrugged, and that loose flesh swung back and forth again. "A man goes where he is ordered, not where he would. Tell me something of the French dispositions."

"Sir, they are halted in our territory, about thirty miles below Freetown," Victor said. No light of intelligence kindled in the general's eye, from which Victor concluded he did not know exactly where Freetown lay. With a mental sigh, the Atlantean added a gloss: "About a hundred ten miles south of where we are now."

"I see." Edward Braddock nodded, perhaps in wisdom. His next questions were cogent enough: "Why are they halted? Why didn't they go on to assail this place?"

"Deserters say there's sickness among them, your Excellency," Victor answered.

"Ah." Braddock nodded again. "That would come of using raw troops, wouldn't it? You needn't worry about my lads coming down sick, by God! If they didn't catch the great pox-let alone the small-years ago, they weren't half trying." His chuckle held a curious mix of contempt and affection.

"Your Excellency, I had that very thought as I was riding down here. It should help us."

"Indeed. We'll come ashore, march down to wherever it is that the froggies got stuck in the mud, drive them out of our settlements, and then go on into theirs," Braddock said. "Should be a straightforward enough job of work. You'll be able to keep us victualed, I expect?"

"I think so, sir." Radcliff paused. "If I may say…" He paused again.

"Yes? Well? Out with it, man. I don't bite," the English officer said gruffly.

"The only thing I wanted to say, sir, is that it may not prove quite so easy as you make it sound," Victor told him. "Atlantis is a different place from Europe."

"Don't I know it!" Braddock had said he would rather have fought on European soil. Now Radcliff saw how true that was. Scowling, Braddock went on, "Still and all, soldiering is soldiering. What works in France works in Prussia and Russia and India. We've seen that. I daresay it will work here, too."

"I hope so, your Excellency," Victor replied.

A horseman rode into the French encampment from the north. He shouted Roland Kersauzon's name. Roland ducked out of his tent. "I am here," he said. "What have you learned?"

The rider dismounted. A young groom led the horse away. "English soldiers have landed at New Hastings, sir," the rider said.

"How many? Do you know?"

"No, sir. But the rumor is that they have a general in command, so they are not a small force." The scout spoke fluent English, one reason Roland had chosen him. He continued, "And the rumor is, they are marching this way."

"Is it?" Kersauzon said tonelessly. It was a rumor he would rather not have heard. "English regulars, under a general?"

"Major General Edward Braddock." The scout pronounced the name with a certain somber satisfaction. Emboldened by Roland's silence, he pressed on: "Is it that we shall also have soldiers coming from the mother country?"

"If it is, I have heard nothing of it," Roland replied. "I am what we have. We are what we have." At least the man hadn't asked whether a general was coming from France, which bespoke a certain basic courtesy. Kersauzon realized he'd answered the question regardless of whether it was asked.

"What shall we do?" the scout asked. "The English regulars, they are said to be men of extraordinary discipline. Of extraordinary ferocity, as well. How can we hope to stand against such soldiers?"