Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

The march resumed at first light the next morning: one more sign Braddock wanted to get things over with in a hurry. Yawning and grumbling profanely, the redcoats from England made up the core of the army. Green-coated Atlanteans were good enough for scouts and vanguard and rear guard. If there was a battle, their place would be on the wings. Again, the English regulars would take center stage.

Farmers waved as the soldiers marched by. They had, however, universally taken the precaution of driving their horses and cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens-yes, and turkeys, too-away from the army's line of progress. Victor wondered how they knew soldiers plundered as naturally as they breathed. Eastern Atlantis had been peaceful for many, many years.

However they knew, they were right. Chattels whose owners were rash enough to leave them on display disappeared: a chicken here, a hatchet there. And the English regulars weren't the only ones who stole. The Atlanteans lifted things as if they'd been soldiering and plundering for years. Victor Radcliff didn't know whether they were admirable or awful.

"Some of them could have had farms along this road," he said. "Then they'd be hiding, not stealing."

"That's so, M'sieu," Blaise agreed. "But they don't, so they aren't."

"Right," Victor said. Sometimes Blaise's English was as compressed as a semaphore signal. Victor wasn't sure whether that was a defect or the sign of a profound mind.

Blaise didn't worry about it. As far as Victor Radcliff could tell, Blaise didn't worry about anything. Most of what that proved was how little Victor really knew the retainer who doubled as an underofficer. A man snatched from his native land and sold into slavery among strange-looking people who spoke not a word of his language…Such a man might find a thing or two to worry about. Or maybe even three.

A farmer on horseback came up from the south to report that the French army was moving again. Major General Braddock took that as good news. "We shan't have to storm their field fortifications, then," he said. "That might possibly have proved tricky. If we meet them in the open, though, God hath delivered them into our hands." He used the old-fashioned verb form to show his confidence.

"If they had fieldworks, your Excellency, why would they move out of them?" Victor asked.

"If they spent so long in one place, why would they not have built fieldworks?" Braddock returned, and the Atlantean had no good answer for him.

Radcliff asked the same question of Blaise a few minutes later. "Maybe we find out," the black man said. That struck Victor as much too likely.

"Positions! Positions!" Roland Kersauzon felt like a director putting on a play. Unlike a director, he had a cast of thousands. And, unlike a director in a crowded little theater, he would have an audience of thousands, too. He had to keep that audience interested and intrigued just long enough.

The English regulars and their settler allies were coming. They'd be here soon. His own cavalry was skirmishing with the enemy's Atlantean horse, holding the scouts away so they couldn't divine what was going on here. No one was trying to hold back the main English force. On the contrary.

"Dress your lines!" Roland shouted to the ranks of musketeers who took their places athwart the road. They would stand and volley against Braddock's fearsome regulars for a while. And they would pay for it, too. He stood with them. He lacked the gall to order others to do what he dared not do himself. He would have been safer if he'd had it. He also would have been a stranger to himself.

When he looked north, he saw a cloud of dust against the sky. The redcoats and the English settlers were getting close, then. Well, good. Roland didn't want to stand out here in the meadow under the hot sun all day. He would have been cooler as well as safer in the trees behind his horribly exposed soldiers, or in the woods to either side of the meadow.

He wondered why European generals insisted on fighting battles in the open. They could control their armies better if they could see everything that was going on, true. It hardly seemed reason enough. But if Braddock was looking for a stand-up fight, the French settlers would give him one…for a while.

Pistols banged, not very far in the distance. His horsemen were falling back against the English Atlanteans, as they had orders to do. He didn't want to stop the enemy advance: only to channel it a little. As long as they kept the other side's cavalry away from the woods, they were doing their job.

Horses trotted toward him across the meadow. Those were his riders. They waved to the musketeers as they approached and then rode past to either side. Some of the musketeers were incautious enough to wave back. Their sergeants screamed at them. They wouldn't make that mistake again.

A few horsemen reined in and looked at his force from well out of musket range, then wheeled their mounts and rode back to the north. Those were the English Atlanteans' scouts getting a look at his dispositions. Roland knew what he wanted to look like. But in war as in the theater, you could never be quite sure that what the audience saw was what you wanted it to see.

Well, he'd know soon.

Here came the redcoats, already deployed in line of battle, advancing to the bleat of the horn and the tap of the drum. They wore tall hats to make themselves seem bigger and more fearsome than they really were. As they drew close, though, Roland realized most of them were shorter and skinnier than the green-clad Atlanteans who flanked them.

As long as they were shooting, that wouldn't matter. Everybody who aimed a loaded musket was the same size. But it might count against the English in the bayonet charge. Or, on the other hand, it might not. The redcoats approached the field with the professional arrogance of men who knew exactly what they were doing and had done it plenty of times before. Their matter-of-factness was daunting.

"Can we beat them, Monsieur?" a young lieutenant asked, so Roland wasn't the only one whose knees wanted to knock.

"They think we are going to play their game," the French commander said, more calmly than he felt. "If we do that, they…present certain difficulties." They'll slaughter us, he meant, and hoped the lieutenant didn't realize it. "This is the best arrangement for doing something else, n'est-ce pas?"

"Certainement," the youngster replied. He kept his eyes on the steadily advancing regulars. His thoughts were still on them, too, for he continued, "So long as they give us the chance to do something else…"

"Yes. So long as," Kersauzon agreed. "Nothing in war is certain. I would be the last to claim anything different. But I believe that fighting where we are, as we are, gives us the best chance of victory."

The redcoats marched right into musket range. Their sergeants went on dressing their lines even then. They could have started shooting. So could the French settlers. When the pause held, a heavyset, elderly Englishman-he was close enough to see clearly-rode out in front of his force and tipped his hat in the direction of Roland Kersauzon's army. Kersauzon gravely returned the courtesy. The Englishman rode off to one side of the line, so as not to get in the way of his side's musketry.

Bugle calls rang out: English and French. The front rank of soldiers in both armies dropped to one knee. The second rank stooped to shoot over their heads. The third rank stood straight to fire above the heads of the second.

"Now!" Roland Kersauzon shouted, at the same instant as his English opposite number yelled what had to be the same thing.

Fire rippled across both battle lines. Smoke clouded the air. Bullets flew. Oh, how they flew! One of them tugged at Roland's sleeve. Another knocked the hat off his head. He caught it before it fell. He needed a moment to be sure, but no, neither of those musket balls touched his tender flesh.