Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

He refused to send a messenger south to ask where the regulars were. If they wanted to hurry, that was their business. His…His had stalled. He didn't care to admit it, even to himself. But it seemed pretty plain that he couldn't drive the English-speaking Atlanteans out of their fort. He couldn't go on and leave it in his rear, either.

All of which left him some unpalatable choices. He could swing far inland, the drawback being that most of what was worth having lay close by the coast. Or he could turn around and retreat. He didn't want to do that; it would only give the regulars from France the chance to mock him and take over from him.

The best thing he could think of was staying where he was till the regulars caught up with him. He hadn't cared to do that before-he'd thought he could just walk into Freetown and present them with a fait accompli. Well, it wouldn't happen now, no matter how much he wished it would.

"If you will forgive me, Monsieur, you run a curious campaign," a sergeant told him. "Part of the time, you are more cautious than you need to be. The rest, you attack like a madman."

"If I think I can win, I will fight," Roland replied. "If I don't, I won't. What is so curious about that?"

"It could be that you push too hard when you push. It could also be that you don't push too hard when you don't push, if you take my meaning." The sergeant was not too young and not too skinny. Roland couldn't blight his military career; outside of this expedition, he had none. He was bound to be a baker or a miller or a carpenter or something else respectable: a solid tradesman who knew how to lead because he did it every day. And if he felt like speaking his mind, he would go ahead and do it.

Roland did him the courtesy of taking him seriously. "Maybe you're right. I can't prove you're not. But even if you are, wouldn't you rather have a commander like me than one who doesn't push when he should?"

"Hmm." The sergeant considered that as carefully as he would have considered an offer for an upholstered chair. "Well, you've got something there, sir-no doubt about it. How much you've got…we'll just have to see."

"They aren't coming, sir," the scout reported.

"Damnation!" Victor Radcliff said feelingly.

"Sorry, sir," the rider said. "They pulled back out of range of our earthworks, and they're strengthening a position of their own."

"Oh, too bad," Victor said. He'd hoped to lead the invaders into temptation and then trap them the way they'd trapped Braddock and the redcoats. The French settlers' commander had seemed so intrepid. Why wasn't he intrepid enough to stick his head in the noose?

"I thought we'd poked and prodded them enough so they'd do something stupid, too," the scout said. "Guess I was wrong, though."

That the scout was wrong was one thing. That Victor Radcliff turned out to be wrong was something else again. It had much more important consequences. He drummed his fingers on his thigh. "He must be waiting for the French regulars to come up. Then he'll burst out of his fieldworks like an abscess and infect the whole damned countryside."

The scout pulled a face. "You've got a gift for the revolting phrase, don't you-uh, sir?" The polite addition was plainly an afterthought. "May the Frenchies do him as much good as Braddock did us."

"Naughty, naughty." Victor's reproof was also insincere. "King George did everything he knew how to do for us."

"Did everything he knew how to do to us, don't you mean?" the scout said. When Major Radcliff declined to rise to the bait (what went through his mind was Amazing how I think like a fisherman, even though my line hasn't gone to sea for a while), the man sighed and tried a new tack (and again!): "Well, if the froggy buggers won't come out and play, what do we do then?"

"Have to think about that," Victor answered. "Have to talk with the senior English officer, too."

"Oh, yes, sir. Charlie. A lot he'll know." By his accent, the scout was a New Hastings man, and so especially likely to look down his nose at officials from the mother country. By his sarcastic tone, and by his casual use of the lieutenant-colonel's given name, he lived up to-or down to-all the things people said about New Hastings men.

Grinning, Radcliff made as if to push him away. "Go on, be off with you," he said, for all the world as if he were an Irishman himself.

Blaise had been quietly standing not far away. Sometimes people called him "Major Radcliff's shadow." He wasn't quite black enough to fill that role, but he came close. The scout hadn't hesitated to speak in his presence. Nobody did, not any more. "What will you do?" he asked Victor.

"What I said I'd do," Victor replied. "I'll talk to the lieutenant-colonel, and we'll decide together."

"And if you don't like his ideas?"

Victor shrugged. "He's senior to me-but I may be able to get around that."

"I hope so, sir," Blaise said.

"Oh, there are ways." Victor didn't go into detail. He didn't know what the details were, not yet. But he knew there would be ways. If you were determined enough, you could always find them.

When he approached the young English lieutenant-colonel (Don't think of him as Charlie, or else you'll call him that, and then the sky will fall, Victor told himself), that worthy said, "As I see things, Major, we have two choices. We can wait for the French regulars to join the settlers and then receive them on ground of our choosing. Or we can try to defeat the settlers before the regulars arrive, the disadvantage being that we should have to move against their fortified position. Does that seem to you an accurate summation?"

"Those are two things we can do, certainly, sir," Radcliff replied. "I can think of others that might serve us better."

"Can you indeed?" The English officer raised an elegant eyebrow. He'd have a title of nobility one day, if he didn't already. "Would you be so good as to expatiate on them?"

As to what? Victor wondered. He was damned if he'd inquire, though. And he thought he knew what the Englishman had to mean. "We could send a raiding party into French territory by land through the backwoods," he said. "That way, we'd make the enemy dance to our tune instead of dancing to theirs."

"And who would command such a party?" the lieutenant-colonel asked. "You?"

"If you like, sir," Victor said. "I have done a lot of exploring in the interior. I know I could find plenty of men who wouldn't starve in the woods."

"Very well. That's one thing," the Englishman said. "You told me there were others, so I presume you have at least one more in mind."

"I do, sir," Victor Radcliff agreed. "We could take boats and land down the coast in French territory, do our raiding, and then either come back the way we went or go into the interior, depending on which seemed best."

The English officer studied him. "Again, I presume you would command this mission?"

"I'm suited for it. I don't know anyone who has a better chance of making it work," Victor said.

"Which would you do if you had the choice?"

"I believe I'd go in by land, sir," Victor said. "That way, we start giving the enemy a hard time all the sooner."

"You wouldn't take so large a party as to hurt our chances of defending against the French here?"

"Oh, heavens, no, sir! We couldn't victual that kind of party, anyhow," Victor said. "A relative handful of men, moving swiftly and raising havoc-that's what I've got in mind."

"I see." The lieutenant-colonel nodded. "Well, why don't you recruit such a party and set it in motion? I think you will do the French some harm with it, and I also suspect you won't be sorry to have me out of your hair." He gave the Atlantean a crooked grin.

Victor Radcliff grinned back. "That cuts both ways, unless I'm sadly mistaken. You won't be sorry I'm not nagging you any more."