Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

W hen Victor Radcliff strode down the Inflexible's gangplank and onto the quays at Freetown, the clever English lieutenant-colonel who'd sent the flotilla into southern waters stood waiting for him. Victor threw the Englishman the snappiest salute he knew how to give. "Much obliged to your Excellency," he said.

"I thought you might need a hand, or at least find one, er, handy, so I did what I could," the officer replied.

"Now that we're back here, what did you have in mind doing with us?" Victor wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his sleeve-he had no kerchief. It was high summer, and as hot here as it had been in Spanish Atlantis.

"Montcalm-Gozon presses us hard," the lieutenant-colonel said. "He has proved himself an able and aggressive soldier, and of course he has a solid body of French regulars. He has, however, few settlers or other irregulars with him, not until Roland Kersauzon catches him up. This being so…"

Radcliff saluted again. He also grinned. "This being so, you want us to drive him as crazy as a honker in mating season."

"Whilst I should not have put it quite that way-yes." The English officer smiled, too.

"Well, I expect we can do that. I expect the boys will look forward to it, as a matter of fact, if I can get them out of town fast enough," Victor said.

"I'm sorry?" The officer's smile melted away. "I don't follow that."

"If we stay here long, some of them will get drunk, some will get poxed, and the more enterprising lads will manage both," Victor Radcliff told him.

"Oh. I see." The smile returned. "Why, they might almost be regulars."

"They're men, your Excellency." Victor wondered how much experience with soldiers the Englishman had had before King George-or, more likely, King George's ministers-ordered him across the sea. Less than he might have had: Victor was pretty sure of that.

Blaise and the other sergeants lined the green-jacketed settlers up in neat ranks. No one would escape to the fleshpots of Freetown, such as those were, if the underofficers had anything to say about it-and they did. "We got here ahead of the buggers from French Atlantis," one of the sergeants rasped. "The Frenchies who are up here'll be sorry we did, too."

As Victor walked out in front of the assembled irregulars, he reflected that the tough, pockmarked man with three chevrons sewn to his left sleeve had just given his speech for him. "Philip is right," he said, and watched the underofficer's chest expand and his shoulders rise and straighten. "Now we make the French regulars as sorry as Kersauzon's men made General Braddock. We owe 'em that much, don't we?"

Agreement came, loud and profane. The settlers had got caught along with Braddock and his redcoats. They would have if the English general wanted to listen. And if honkers could fly…

"Forward-march!" Blaise shouted. Bugles blared. Drums thumped. The men paraded through Freetown. Tavern owners came out of their establishments and stared wistfully at the stream of men who wouldn't be customers. Sergeants and lieutenants made sure the men didn't sneak off to taverns or to bawdy houses. A couple of plump, extremely well-dressed women who looked as disappointed as the publicans probably presided over those establishments.

More settlers and the surviving redcoats who hadn't got captured and paroled held Freetown against Montcalm-Gozon and his men. The French commander wasn't carrying on a formal siege with saps and parallels, but his campaign wasn't far removed from it. He'd been pushing the English lieutenant-colonel's forces back on the town. Had he had more artillery, he could have made things even worse. They were bad enough as it was.

The French marquis didn't have enough men to surround the town and keep his lines tight at the same time. The English lieutenant-colonel said, "Well, Major Radcliff, from here on I leave you to your own no doubt fertile devices. They seem to have met all requirements in French and Spanish Atlantis."

"Thank you, sir," Victor said in glad surprise. "I don't know if I can handle that much responsibility."

For a moment, the Englishman was nonplused. Then he realized Radcliff might not be altogether serious. He smiled thinly. "I dare hope you'll manage."

"So do I." Victor realized he was liable to find himself in the middle of warm work. He shrugged. He'd done that before. One more time couldn't be too much worse…could it?

Of course it could, you stupid fool, a voice inside him screeched. If you stop a musket ball with your chest, or with your face, you'll see how much worse it could be, too. Would Meg want anything to do with him if he came home with a patch over one eye or missing half his jaw? If she did, would it be from love or from pity?

At the English lieutenant-colonel's orders, the redcoats started a brisk dusk skirmish with Marquis Montcalm-Gozon's Frenchmen. They stirred up enough trouble to draw French reinforcements-and to let Victor and a large band of settlers break out through a weakly held stretch not far away.

"Who goes there?" a Frenchman asked. Victor shot him in the head with a pistol. Down went the enemy soldier, dead as a stone, a look of absurd surprise on his face. With the larger racket of musketry close by, no more Frenchmen came running to see what had happened to Pierre or Louis or Jean or whatever his name was.

Out. Away. Into the countryside. That was what Victor had in mind. "South!" he called to his men. "Quick! Quick! I want to get on their supply lines the way you bastards wanted to get on the whores back in Freetown."

Coarse, baying male laughter answered him. The settlers bumped into a few more Frenchmen as they hurried away from the lines around the town, but only a few. The French soldiers regretted it-but not for long, never for long. The settlers, urged on by sergeants and officers, put as much space as they could between themselves and the main body of their foes.

The French were foreigners here. Several of the settlers knew the roads and woods and streams the way they knew the hair and tendons and veins on the backs of their hands-and from equally long acquaintance. "Oh, sure, Major," one of them said. "I'd bet anything they'll bring their victuals and such up the Graveyard Road. It's a devil of a lot wider and straighter than the Honker's Beak."

"Cheerful name, Ned," Victor remarked. "They call it that because…?"

"It's the road that goes past the graveyard," Ned answered matter-of-factly. "Nice spot for an ambush not far from there."

"Now you're talking," Victor said.

It was a good spot for an ambush, too. Pine woods grew close to the road on both sides. One day before too long, Victor supposed, settlers would cut them down for fuel or timber, but it hadn't happened yet. Lush ferns growing under the trees would further screen the green-jacketed English settlers. At dawn the next day, Radcliff sent a spry youngster up a tree to keep an eye out for approaching wagons.

Inside of an hour, the lookout hallooed. Victor wasn't astonished. An army needed a lot of supplies to keep going…and the French officers farther south wouldn't know he'd broken out of Freetown. "Shoot the horses and oxen first," Victor told his men. "We want to make sure the wagons don't get through."

On came the wagons, oblivious to danger. Hooves thumped in the dirt of the roadway. Axles squeaked. Wheels rumbled. As the wagons got closer, Victor could make out the jingle of harness and the drivers laughing and talking to one another.

"Fire!" he shouted. The woods exploded in flame and smoke.

Down went most of the draft animals. Others, wounded but not slain, screamed and reared and tried to bolt. Some of the men in the wagons screamed, too. A handful had the presence of mind to grab for pistols and muskets and fire back. They even hit a couple of settlers as Victor's men swarmed out of the woods and over the wagon train.