Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Sure enough, the English officer approached Victor later that afternoon. "I hear the French settlers are on the march," he remarked. He was a few years younger than Victor-in his early twenties, probably-and, with fresh features and baby-fine skin, looked younger still.

"Yes, your Excellency. I hear the same," Victor said.

"If at all possible, we should stop their taking Freetown. Losing it would be a black eye," the young Englishman said.

"Yes, sir. I quite agree," Radcliff said.

"How do we go about doing that?" the lieutenant-colonel asked. "All too likely that they'll outnumber us. The result of another stand-up fight would be worrisome, to say the least."

Victor nodded. "So it would, sir. I'm not sure about the numbers"-he wouldn't call the English officer wrong, not to his face-"but they're bound to have the advantage of morale."

"What, what are we going to do, then? What can we do, then?" Raised in the traditions of continental European warfare, the young lieutenant-colonel thought standup battles were the only possible way two armies could meet. Seeing as much, Victor understood better how General Braddock had come to grief.

"Your Excellency, if I might make a suggestion…" No, Victor wasn't in command. He couldn't start throwing orders around. But if he could gently steer this overbred but willing youngster in the right direction…He talked for a while, hoping the Englishman would see reason.

"Well, well," the young man said at last. "You wouldn't see such an approach taken in France or the Low Countries or the Germanies. Of that I am quite certain. Still and all, though, the so-called klephts in the Balkans might attempt an undertaking of this sort…"

Victor Radcliff would have had a better notion of whether the lieutenant-colonel approved or not had he ever heard of klephts before. Since he hadn't, he made do with the question directly: "Shall we go ahead and try it, then, your Excellency?"

The Englishman looked quite humanly surprised. "I thought I said so, Major."

Maybe he had, but not in any language Victor understood. No matter, though. Saluting, Victor said, "Now it's so very plain, sir, that even a settler can understand it." The lieutenant-colonel nodded. Victor had bet himself a shilling that the man wouldn't notice irony, and sure enough…Now he had to collect. I'll take it out of the Frenchmen's hides, he thought.

Muskets banged from bushes by the side of the road. Roland Kersauzon's horse snorted and sidestepped. He brought it back under control without even noticing what he was doing. Keeping the horse in line was no problem. Keeping his army in line was proving a much harder job.

A couple of his soldiers were down from this latest bushwhacking. One clutched his leg and swore a blue streak. The other, shot through the head, lay still. The poor fellow wouldn't rise again till Judgment Day.

A troop of French settlers plunged into the bushes after the assassins. The whole army stopped, which was undoubtedly what the English skulkers had in mind. This wasn't the first time they'd disrupted his march, or the fifth. They were doing it every chance they got. And why not? It worked. It worked much too well.

Half an hour later, the pursuers-who'd gone after the bushwhackers without orders: indeed, against orders-returned, proudly carrying the corpse of one green-jacketed raider. The wretch or his friends had managed to wound two more of them before they caught him. Roland wondered whether he'd been dead when they did. If he hadn't been, they'd taken care of it immediately afterwards. It did not behoove an officer to inquire too closely into some questions. The only thing Roland said was, "Let's go on now."

On they went. An hour later, they came to another likely spot for an ambush. Roland Kersauzon ordered troops into the trees that came down too close to the road. Before the Frenchmen could get into the woods, they were fired upon. Two of them went down. Neither wound seemed serious, but even so…They lashed the trees with musketry. Then, satisfied they'd done what they could, they approached again-and were fired upon again.

"These miserable English wretches are like mosquitoes!" a lieutenant exclaimed in exasperation. "Their bites are almost harmless, but they can drive a man mad."

"And sometimes you can sicken from the bite, too," Roland said sadly. Learned doctors would have laughed at him. When they talked of malaria, they spoke of miasmas and fetid exhalations. To him, that only meant they didn't know what caused the sickness.

Well, neither did he, or not exactly. But he did know there had been no malaria in Atlantis when his multiply great-grandfather founded Cosquer three hundred years before. It came here about the same time as African slaves did, and soon spread from them to whites. How did it spread? Through the air? Or, perhaps, through mosquito bites?

Some illnesses-syphilis, gonorrhea-needed contact to spread from one person to another. Some-unfortunately including measles and smallpox-didn't. Maybe malaria fell into an in-between category.

Or maybe you don't know what the devil you're nattering about, Roland thought. It wouldn't have been the first time.

He had other, more urgent things to worry about. That lieutenant was worrying right along with him, too. "How are we going to stop the English from harassing us like this, Monsieur?" he asked.

It was an uncomfortably good question. Since Kersauzon had no good answer for it, he picked nits instead: "Those aren't redcoats, Lieutenant. English regulars don't know how to fight like this. They're Atlanteans: settlers doing the work in place of men from overseas."

"Very well, sir," the junior officer said. "How do we stop the English Atlantean settlers from harassing us, then?" He spoke with admirable-truly French-precision.

Roland Kersauzon wished he didn't. Now the commander had no excuse not to answer the question-no excuse except for his utter lack of a good response. "We cannot keep dancing to their measure," he said at last.

Well, how do we keep from doing that? He could see the question in the junior officer's eyes. It would have been in his eyes, too, if someone had tried to palm that reply off on him. But the lieutenant was more polite than he likely would have been, and didn't ask the question out loud.

Eventually-after much too long-the French settlers did manage to drive away the bushwhackers. Roland hoped they did, anyhow. By then, it was about time to encamp for the night. Roland ordered an early halt, hoping to fortify the position well enough to make sure no one could assail it during the hours of darkness.

Things got no better the next morning. A couple of batteries of horse artillery came out of the woods to the west, unlimbered, and fired one quick roundshot per gun at the French settlers' line of march before tearing away again. Some of the iron balls flew high. Others tore holes in the settlers' files. One luckless fellow tried to stop a rolling cannon ball with his foot. That sent him off to the surgeons, who had to cut off the shattered appendage. His shrieks, and those of the other wounded men, set Roland Kersauzon's teeth on edge.

Then the French settlers came to a veritable fortress made from logs and mud. Cannon inside the fieldwork fired on them. Musketeers defended the artillerymen. When Roland's own field guns returned fire, the mud and dirt smothered the balls' impacts.

"Are we going to have to put on a regular siege, with saps and parallels, the way we would in Europe?" a sergeant asked.

"By God, I hope not," Roland answered. It wasn't even a proper siege, because they hadn't surrounded the enemy's work. The English had no trouble supplying and reinforcing the fort.

Somewhere south of here, the regulars from France were slogging forward. Roland had hoped to win glory without them. Now he wished they would get here to lend a hand. Cosquer had never seemed farther away.