Opening Atlantis

"Well, maybe you'll get another chance," Victor said.

"Not one that good, dammit." Still disgruntled, the other settler stomped away.

He turned out to be right, too. At least, he didn't come ru

Then, one day, the engineers digging far below the fortress ran out of the tu

"By God!" Victor said. He solemnly clasped hands with the English lieutenant-colonel.

"What do you do now?" the English officer asked his men. "How do you ruin the spring without drowning yourselves?"

Three of them went back into the shaft they'd evacuated. Each man rolled a hogshead of black powder ahead of himself and trailed fuse out behind. After what seemed a very long time, the engineers emerged from the tu

"I should be delighted." The Englishman lit a twig at a small fire that crackled nearby. He touched it to each of the three fuses in turn. One by one, they hissed to life. With three, Victor thought, one of them will surely reach the powder.

And at least one did. Boom! The ground shook under Victor's feet. He shook hands with the English lieutenant-colonel again. "How long before we know whether we did what we wanted to do?" he asked.

"Shouldn't be long, Major," one of the engineers replied.

A few minutes later, water started flowing out of the tu

Boom! Roland Kersauzon was on the wall when the ground shuddered under his feet. A lot of gunpowder had gone off all at once…somewhere. But where? He looked back at his town. No great cloud of smoke rising there. His men hadn't done their best to blow themselves up, then.

The English? Not anywhere Roland could see. The bulk of Nouveau Redon hid some of their line from him, but he would have thought any explosion big enough to make things jump like that would have produced a sizable cloud of smoke. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe being up on the wall made the explosion seem bigger than it really was. A crew of ca

Half an hour or so later, people started shouting his name. "Here I am!" he called. "What is it?"

"The spring!" somebody called from the narrow, winding streets. "The spring's gone dry!"

"What?" Roland yelped. "That's impossible!"

"It may be impossible," the man down there replied. "But it's true."

"Merde!" Roland said. "Nom d'un nom d'un nom!" He hurried down off the wall. Going down stairs shouldn't have made his heart pound like that. In fact, going down stairs didn't make his heart pound like that. Fear did.

Sure enough, no water gurgled from the mouth of the gargoyle who capped the spring. "It just-stopped," a still-plump cook said. "A few minutes after the ground shook, it…stopped."

Roland cursed again, this time even more vilely than before. The cook gaped at him. Roland hardly noticed. He was seeing men far belowground, men working with spades and adzes and picks. He'd never dreamt they could penetrate to the living heart of his mountain. Underestimating what the English could do did not pay.

"What now, Monsieur?" the cook asked. "Nouveau Redon has no cisterns. Who would have imagined we needed them?"

"Who indeed?" Roland said dully. He looked up to the sky. A few white clouds lazily drifted across the blue. He wanted gray sweeping away the sun. He wanted rain, downpour, deluge. No matter what he wanted, God wasn't going to give it to him.

Men could live on half-rations for months, maybe even years. They could go with no food at all for a month. Take away their water and they were helpless inside a week.

Not all the water inside Nouveau Redon had vanished, of course. But if no more came in, if the weather stayed fair, the way it looked like doing…What could the defenders do then?

He saw only one answer. It wasn't a good answer, but it wasn't an impossible answer, either. Drawing himself very straight, he said, "We fight, by God!"

Having decided to do that, he wasted no time. He sent ru

As his men gathered near the northern gate, he rose till he stood in the saddle and told them what they needed to know: "I am sorry to say it, my ducks, but the English have pulled the rug out from under our feet. They have murdered our spring-we have no more water coming into the town. But we are not without hope. Plenty of water flows down there, right below our feet. All we have to do is go take it. We've fought Englishmen before-and we've beaten them before, too. One more win, and the war is over. We can do it!"

A great cheer rose. The French settlers certainly thought they could do it. Believing a thing possible went a long way toward making it so. Roland had a pistol on his belt, a pistol in each boot, and a slashing sword loose in the scabbard.

"You will follow me," he said. "You will not turn back till I give the order. And I will never give that order!"

Another cheer rang out. "Forward!" a sergeant shouted in a great voice. In an instant, the whole army was crying out the word: "Forward! Forward! FORWARD!"

The gates opened. The men streamed out of them and formed a line of battle. Enemy rifles began firing as soon as the French settlers came into sight. Here and there, a man fell. The settlers were veterans by now, and acted as stolid about losses as regulars could have.

Roland pointed down toward the river. "Let's go!" he cried. Cheering, the army went.

Ca

A coward's way to fight, or else a tradesman's: so Roland saw it. Which didn't make it ineffective. Oh, no. More soldiers came ru

A musket ball caught his horse in the neck. Blood fountained, impossibly red in the sunshine. The horse let out a bubbling shriek and staggered. Roland sprang clear before it went down. He brandished one of his pistols-the sword would have been more dramatic, but he could do more with the pistol-and shouted, "I'm still fine! Let's go on and give them what they deserve!"

His good sense proved itself a moment later. A redcoat swung a musket toward him. But Roland fired first. He missed, but he made the Englishman duck. The enemy's shot went wild. Roland threw the pistol at the next closest redcoat, then drew his sword and jumped down into the trench.

The sword got blood on it in short order. Roland got blood on himself, too, but it wasn't his. An English regular almost spitted him with a bayonet, but got shot in the side before he could thrust again. The redcoat sank with a groan. Roland's blade flickered like a viper's tongue. It was quicker than any bayoneted musket, but the bayonets had more reach.