Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"Don't let any of them get away to the south!" Victor shouted. "We don't want the enemy to know what we're doing."

This time, with surprise so complete, obeying his order was easy. The settlers rounded up the luckless drivers and guards. They put wounded animals out of their misery. Some of them started butchering dead ones. Roast ox would be tough, and horse steak would be gluey, but Victor had eaten plenty worse. So had many of his men.

They also plundered the wagons, and came away with everything from wine and brandy to pigs of lead. "Burn what we can't use," Victor said. "Don't leave anything Montcalm-Gozon's men would want."

Maybe the fires would draw French regulars. If they did, the French would find that the settlers had got loose. The enemy settlers wouldn't find the settlers themselves, though. Victor had them marching down the Graveyard Road less than an hour after horror descended on the wagon train.

And they rounded a bend that afternoon and almost ran into another northbound wagon train. "Get 'em!" Victor commanded: not the most precise order ever issued, maybe, but one that told what he wanted done.

He got it, too. The Frenchmen, outnumbered twenty to one, never had a chance. They couldn't turn around, and they couldn't fight back. He feared one or two of them did manage to escape from the rear of the train. If someone there jumped on a horse and galloped south as fast as the beast would take him, he could get out of musket range before any settlers came close to him.

"It won't be so easy next time," Radcliff told Blaise as the wagon train's funeral pyre rose into the sky.

The Negro only shrugged. "We can still do it."

Victor nodded. "Yes, I think we can, too."

They came across no more wagons before they camped for the night. Victor sent a company led by locals cross-country to the road called the Honker's Beak. If the French aimed to use the poorer road to sneak past him, they'd be doomed to disappointment.

He also told off some men to bury the lead they'd taken. His force had plenty for its needs. More important now was denying it to Montcalm-Gozon. The settlers to whom he gave the order grumbled, but he'd expected nothing else. Somebody had to do it.

"A good day's work," he said just before rolling himself in a blanket. "A mighty good day's work."

"Can't you go any faster?" Roland Kersauzon called to his men. "The marquis will need us. I only hope he doesn't need us already."

"Begging your pardon, Monsieur, but you're up there on a horse," one of the French Atlanteans replied. "Easier to go from here to there on a fine gelding than it is on shank's mare." He was gaunt and poorly shaven. He'd done about as much marching as a man could do. All he had with him were a musket and a bullet pouch and a powder horn. When he got the chance, he could fight. What more did you want from a soldier?

Roland sketched a salute. "You shame me. Would you rather ride for a while? I can walk."

The settler shook his head. "No. What difference does it make now? And I suppose you need to be up there so you can give orders and make people pay attention to you."

No doubt he was right. All the same, for the rest of the day Roland felt guilty about riding.

He also fumed, as he'd fumed ever since he reached the southern shore of Spanish Atlantis just too late and found the English fled. No, he'd been fuming longer than that: ever since Don Jose refused to let him enter Spanish Atlantis. Well, Don Jose had paid for his stupidity. But the French cause was paying, too.

What was Montcalm-Gozon doing now? What were the English regulars-and the English Atlanteans, damn them-doing against him? What were they doing to him? Messengers had told Roland all was well with the French regulars up in English Atlantis…but he hadn't had any messengers from Montcalm-Gozon the past couple of days.

Maybe that didn't mean anything. Maybe the marquis had nothing new to report. Or maybe he was too busy attacking Freetown to have time to deal with anything less important. Maybe. Kersauzon had a hard time believing it. The other maybe was that maybe something up north had gone wrong.

"Keep moving!" Roland called again the next morning. "Pretty soon we'll be over the border. Then we'll be living off the enemy, not our own countryside."

Before they got to the border between French and Spanish Atlantis, they found out some of what had happened up toward Freetown. A man riding what was obviously a cart horse reined in in front of them and shouted, "It's all buggered up!"

"What's all buggered up?" Roland demanded.

"Everything!" The teamster seemed bound and determined to give as little information as he could.

"What happened to you? What happened to your friends?" Roland asked.

Little by little, he teased the story from the man. The English were waylaying supply trains. How long could Montcalm-Gozon go without food and munitions? How had the English broken out of Freetown? When the teamster said the attackers wore green jackets, Roland got his answer to that. Those were Victor Radcliff's men, the men he hadn't caught in Spanish Atlantis. Like quicksilver-like his own troops-they could slip through any tiny opening. He wasted a few seconds swearing at them again, and at Don Jose.

"Well, it's up to us, then," he said. "If we can break through and open the supply lines, the regulars will take care of the English." As long as the army holed up in Freetown doesn't get more reinforcements by sea, he thought uneasily. The Royal Navy was stronger than the French sea forces, just as the English Atlanteans had more ships than their French and Spanish counterparts.

But he couldn't do anything about that. He could only fight on land. And if the English settlers lay athwart his path, he was ready-no, eager-to bull them out of the way. The sooner he did it, the better, too. He could see that all too plainly.

"How much trouble is the French general in?" he asked.

"Monsieur, I have no idea," the teamster said. "We never got close enough to find out."

"Nom d'un nom," Roland muttered. He wanted to order double time. No matter what he wanted, he didn't do it. Even if he'd ridden more than he'd marched, he had a good idea of how much his men had left. If he exhausted them before they ran into the English settlers, his fight was lost before it started.

How much did the enemy have left? They'd done a lot of marching and fighting, too. Yes, they'd sailed back from Spanish Atlantis, but ocean voyages didn't build a man's strength. Considering the horrible food aboard ship, even a forced march cross-country might be easier.

Or it might not. Pretty soon, he wouldn't have to wonder any more. One way or the other, he would know. So would Victor Radcliff.

If my ancestor hadn't sold your ancestor the secret of Atlantis for a mess of salt cod… Kersauzon shook his head. Three hundred years too late to fret about that now. The first Kersauzon, the one from Brittany, made the mistake. Everyone else had been paying for it ever since.

"What will you do, Monsieur?" The teamster sounded uncommonly worried. Roland blamed him not a bit. Uncommon worry just proved the man understood the situation. Roland was uncommonly worried himself.

He gave the only answer he could: "Go forward. Find the foe, wherever he is. Fight him. Beat him. What else is there?"

"Nothing." The teamster hesitated. "I only hope the stinking greenjackets don't pop up out of nowhere on you, the way they did with us. If I hadn't been on one of the last wagons in the train, I never would have got away."

"You didn't know what you were running into. Thanks to you, we do," Roland said. "They won't surprise us. If they beat us, they will have to beat us when we know where they are. By God, my friend, I don't believe any Englishmen ever born, on this side of the sea or the other, can do that."