Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

All of which mattered not two pins to Roland. "What does the miserable thing say?" he demanded.

"Monsieur, I have no idea," the fellow replied. "Another fellow gave it to me and said, 'Here. Take it on to the French commander.'"

"Oh," was all Roland said to that. It sounded more deadly than an hour's worth of inspired profanity.

He got a little satisfaction from tearing off the ribbons and cracking all the seals. Then he unfolded the letter. Some secretary must have written it; the handwriting was improbably perfect. The French in which it was written was also perfect-even a governor on a distant shore needed a decent command of the language of diplomacy.

And the letter was perfectly infuriating. With all due respect to the French commander, the governor of Spanish Atlantis wrote, I am confident we shall be able to treat these English marauders as they deserve without requiring assistance from him or his men. Therefore, while appreciating his generous offer, I must decline it. I of course remain his most obedient servant… The fancy squiggle under the body of the letter probably came from Don Jose's own hand.

"What does it say, Monsieur?" the horseman asked.

"It says that the governor of Spanish Atlantis is a God-cursed fool, that's what," Roland answered. "If he hadn't used such rough paper, I would wipe my backside with it, and better than it deserves, too. As is…" He tore the letter in two and let it fall to the ground with the bits of ribbon and wax. Then he ground the pieces under his heel and stalked away.

His officers exclaimed in amazement and fury when he gave them the news. "The Spaniards couldn't catch the pox in a brothel!" one of them exclaimed. "How do they think they'll catch the English settlers? And why do they think they'll beat them even if they do catch them?"

"I have no answers for this," Roland said. "Sometimes, observing another man's stupidity, you find yourself compelled to admire it. You want to watch and see exactly how it leads him to disaster. This seems to me to be one of those times."

"What do we do now?" the captain asked.

Kersauzon made hand-washing motions, as if he were Pontius Pilate. "If Don Jose doesn't want our aid, he won't get it. I intend to leave some of our men here near the border. If the English settlers come back-no, when they come back-our soldiers can slow them down till we bring more troops to bear. With the rest, I aim to go north again. Montcalm-Gozon, at least, has the sense to know we men of French Atlantis are worth something."

"The Spaniard will find out," the captain said. "He'll also find out his own men have not the value of a counterfeit sou."

"Yes, I do believe he will." Roland Kersauzon spoke with the anticipation any man might show while contemplating the discomfiture of someone he despised. A slow smile spread across his face. "And soon, too."

A company of Spanish settlers formed a line of battle, ready to stop the English invaders if they could. Victor Radcliff didn't want to show all of his men at once, for fear of making the Spaniards run away. He brought them forward out of the woods a few at a time. After exchanging a volley or two with the enemy with roughly even numbers, he could show more of his hand.

"Will you look at those old-fashioned buggers!" he said, staring at the swarthy soldiers a couple of hundred yards away.

"How do you mean?" Blaise asked-a handy question that fit almost any situation.

"Why, their officers are wearing helmets," Victor answered. "A couple of them even have corselets-back-and-breasts. Armor."

"Good idea, no?" Blaise said.

"Good idea, yes-if you're fighting savages without guns," Victor said. The Spanish conquistadores had gone through the copperskinned natives of Terranova like a dose of salts. But that was a long time ago now. No European armies used armor any more-armor stout enough to turn bullets was also heavy enough to slow a man down and make him uncomfortable.

And in this weather…If those Spaniards weren't stewing inside their fancy ironmongery, he couldn't imagine why not. He wore linen and wool, and felt stuck in a pot waiting for a housewife to throw in the onions. The Spaniards really did encase themselves in metal.

His men started banging away at them without waiting to form a neat line. He doubted the enemy would find that sporting, but it wasn't his worry. And the gunpowder smoke screened the reinforcements he ordered out of the woods.

The Spaniards were brave. They tried to advance against his musketry, and didn't seem to understand why it kept getting heavier. More and more of them fell. They didn't break, though, till he sent horsemen around their flanks. That did it. Like a lot of inexperienced troops, they were as wary as so many virgins about flank attacks.

His men didn't pursue very far. They plundered the enemy dead and did what they could for the living. Victor was relieved to find the English hadn't lost more than a handful of soldiers. He couldn't afford heavy losses, because he couldn't imagine how the English settlements would reinforce him way the devil down here.

Way the devil down here…When the phrase first crossed his mind, it was more one of annoyance than anything else. But Old Scratch would have felt right at home in this part of Atlantis. If hell wasn't like this hot, steamy, swampy, snake-infested place, Satan was missing a trick.

Blaise had a furrow on his left arm where a bullet had grazed him. He hissed when a surgeon poured rum on the wound. "Stings, don't it?" the surgeon said cheerfully-his arm was fine.

"Yes," Blaise ground out through clenched teeth.

"Got to get it clean if I can," the white man said. "Down here, a wound'll fester easy as you please."

Victor hadn't thought of that. One more reason for Satan to set up shop in Spanish Atlantis. He went over to a prisoner. "You can't beat us, you know," he said in his bad Spanish.

The captive only shrugged. "God was against us," he said. A bloody bandage covered one ear, or more likely where the ear had been.

"You can go home if you want to," Radcliff told him. The Spaniard went from dejected to suspicious in one fell swoop. Victor went on, "You can. Tell people not to fight us any more, that's all. If they don't fight, we take what we want but we don't hurt people. If they do fight, we make them sorry."

"Even if I tell them, they won't listen to me," the Spaniard predicted with the gloom so common in his folk.

"They listen to our muskets. They listen to our bayonets," Victor said. A dead Spaniard lay on the ground not far away. He'd been gutted like a trout. A bayonet was the last thing he'd ever heard.

"If you are crazy enough to let me go, I will say what you want me to say," the prisoner said. He was eyeing the dead Spaniard, too. "But I promise nothing. If the fighting keeps on, no tengo la culpa."

"Yes, I know it won't be your fault," Victor said. "Go on, though. You won't be the only one we turn loose to spread the word."

Something shrewd glinted in the captive's dark, liquid eyes. "If we go, you don't have to feed us. You don't have to doctor us. You don't have to bring us along…or kill us if we get in the way or make trouble."

He was right on every count. Victor Radcliff smiled. "Yes? And so?" he said blandly.

"You are an Englishman. But you are not a stupid Englishman, are you?" the Spaniard said.

"I hope not," Victor replied. With a thoughtful nod, the prisoner got to his feet and left the field. An English settler looked back toward Victor, who nodded and waved for him to let the Spaniard go. With a shrug that might have matched the prisoner's earlier one for fatalism, the sentry did.

Radcliff preached the doctrine of nonresistance to other Spaniards and sent them off to the east, too. That done, he went back to see how Blaise fared. The Negro stood there opening and closing his fist, making sure all the tendons still worked the way they were supposed to.