Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"We'll have a better chance inside French Atlantis," he said again and again, trying to hearten the men he had left and trying to keep retreat from turning to rout. "If we have to, we can stand siege at Nouveau Redon. I'd like to see the damned Englishmen try to take it."

"I wouldn't," someone behind him said. Roland's head whipped around. He wanted to know who sounded so hopeless. But all the men close by tramped along with their heads down. None of them seemed ready to single out the fellow who'd spoken what probably lurked in all their minds.

It lurked in Roland's mind, too, however much he wished it didn't. No matter how he tried to cheer up his troops, his own spirits were at low ebb. How could it be otherwise? Discovering that the English settlers had escaped him in Atlantis was bad. Discovering that the settlers and redcoats together had put paid to Montcalm-Gozon's proud regulars wasn't just bad. It was catastrophic. He'd beaten redcoats once, when they obligingly marched into his trap. Trying to cross the creek to attack Victor Radcliff's men, he'd stumbled into theirs.

Maybe we should see what kind of terms we can get. Had anyone else suggested that, Roland Kersauzon would have been furious. But he could make the suggestion to himself: he knew he wouldn't follow through on it.

"They're going to try to take away everything we've got left," a sergeant said with weary cynicism.

Roland nodded. "That's right-they will. That's how greedy they are, the English cochons. So we won't let them, eh? If you bother a turtle, what does it do? It pulls back into its shell. And good luck making it come out again."

"You aim to pull us back into our shell, Monsieur?" the underofficer asked.

"If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it," Kersauzon replied. A lot of commanders might have said that for form's sake. He meant it. But the sergeant only shook his head. Roland went on. "The longer we hold out, the better the chance something good will happen somewhere else. If it does…"

"We're saved," the sergeant said when he paused.

He nodded again, though what went through his mind was, Well, we may be saved, anyhow. If the English seized all of French Atlantis but for Nouveau Redon, things were unlikely to go back to the status quo ante bellum no matter how long a siege the town withstood. And the enemy might do just that-there wasn't much resistance except for his settler army.

That raised another question: how long could the fortress hold out? Roland didn't know the exact answer, not in days. But he knew the form the answer would take. Nouveau Redon would stay free as long as the food held out and as long as there was no treachery. Munitions were not an issue; the fortress had plenty. A spring near the center of town ensured the fortress wouldn't run short of water.

The food could last a very long time, especially if his army expelled civilians so it fed no useless mouths. Roland had overseen the victualing of Nouveau Redon himself. Hardtack and sauerkraut and smoked meat and dried fruit were uninspiring; anyone who said anything else was a damned liar. They could keep body and soul together a long time, though.

Treachery…Roland gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. The longer the siege went on, the more he'd have to worry about it. If someone decided relief was hopeless but thought he might cut a deal with the army investing the fortress…If that happened, Nouveau Redon was in danger.

As Roland rode south-back toward the border between English and French Atlantis-one other possibility occurred to him. If the plague broke out inside the fortress, he might have to surrender whether he wanted to or not. Disease was a roll of the dice. If the pestilence or dysentery or typhus struck the invaders, they would have to give up the siege.

"They deserve a pestilence, don't they, God?" He aimed what was half a prayer, half a suggestion toward the sky. Maybe God would listen; maybe He wouldn't. Any which way, Roland figured he'd made the effort.

Had the bridges over the Erdre been down, he probably wouldn't have been able to get back to Nouveau Redon to stand siege. But they still stood. Roland and his men had come north over them…come north over them more than once, in fact. After crossing back into French Atlantis, he ordered the spans fired. He didn't like that, but saw no other choice. Right now, slowing the enemy down was almost as good as beating him.

Almost. Roland and his survivors kept on retreating.

Victor Radcliff watched smoke rise up over the Stour. "They're burning their bridges behind them," he said: for once, literal truth and no cliche.

"They'll have men defending the line of the river, then, if they be not utter fools." The English lieutenant-colonel sighed wearily. "And utter fools they are not. They could not have caused us so much trouble if they were."

"We'll get over the river," Victor said. "Kersauzon's on the run. He won't leave enough soldiers behind to seriously hinder us."

The English officer's eyebrow rose. For a moment, Victor wondered why. Then he realized he'd committed a solecism. He smiled. If the lieutenant-colonel could worry about his grammar as well as the campaign…more power to him. And, after a moment, the Englishman unbent enough to admit, "I think you make a good prophet."

Although the French settlers had burnt what they could, the stone towers supporting the bridges' wooden superstructure still stood. And the redcoats had with them the usual contingent of military engineers, Victor hadn't expected to need their services until and unless the English army besieged the French, but they proved valuable here at the border.

One thing Atlantis had was an exuberant profusion of lumber. Axe blows rang out along the side of the river. The engineers did not try to re-create what the fleeing French settlers had destroyed. The redcoats cared only about making a way across. That they did. The Romans who'd bridged the Rhine for Julius Caesar would have approved.

"Well, well," the lieutenant-colonel said after riding across one of those improvised bridges. "So this is French Atlantis." He looked around. "Doesn't seem much different from English Atlantis, does it?"

"No, sir-except it's full of Frenchmen," Victor replied. What had the English officer expected? Something that looked like France? In the towns, English Atlantis looked like England. Farms there grew European-and sometimes Terranovan-crops. But the countryside remained stubbornly Atlantean.

If anything, French Atlantis seemed more Atlantean than the country farther north. Far fewer people actually lived here. That meant the landscape had changed less than it had where Englishmen settled. Pines and barrel trees stayed common right up to the very edges of towns. Victor's soldiers had no trouble catching oil thrushes in the woods. They ate better than the redcoats, who relied on rations and viewed local foodstuffs with suspicion.

"I ain't gonna eat one of them funny-looking things," an English sergeant declared. "Maybe if I was starving-but I ain't."

Victor didn't think oil thrushes were funny-looking. He'd grown up with them, as he had with the good-sized thrushes with dull red breasts that English Atlanteans called robins. To him, the small, bright robin redbreasts of the home island would have looked strange-had he ever seen one.

Only men from Roland Kersauzon's rear guard and occasional free-lance bushwhackers slowed the English army's advance. When the redcoats caught a franc-tireur, they hanged him from the closest suitable tree as a warning to other locals. "If they want to fight us, let them put on uniforms and join an army," the lieutenant-colonel said. "I would respect them then, and treat them as soldiers deserve to be treated. But this contemptible skulking must cease, and we shall make it cease by whatever means prove necessary."