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Three British fieldpieces unlimbered near the base of Redwood Hill. The gu
"So they are," Victor agreed. "The next interesting question is, can they do it?" He eyed the ca
"Mm-yes," the younger officer said. "I wouldn't want those nasty bursting shells coming down on my head, and that's a fact." He paused thoughtfully. "Of course, like as not the fusing'd leave somewhat to be desired."
Victor Radcliff only grunted in response to that. Atlantis' mortars, improvised and otherwise, had done yeoman duty in breaking the English lines outside of Hanover. But, as the lieutenant said, they would have done even more had the gu
The field guns thundered. Victor watched roundshot speed toward him. Then he watched the ca
One of the gu
Even before the riflemen opened up on the English fieldpieces, that Atlantean four-pounder started throwing roundshot at them. An iron ball smashed the wheel of a field gun's carriage. That one wouldn't move up any farther.
Then the riflemen did go to work. They couldn't fire nearly so fast as musketeers. But, unlike musketeers, they had some hope of hitting what they aimed at out to three or four hundred yards. Several English gu
As the sun sank behind his troopers, Cornwallis gave up the assault. He sent a man to Victor under flag of truce, asking leave to gather his wounded and withdraw. Victor gave it. Glumly, the Englishman went back down the hill. He could see as well as Victor that the Atlanteans would hold on to Hanover.
Chapter 17
Denis was a small coastal town south of Cosquer, in what had been French Atlantis. Cosquer was an important place, and had been for three hundred years. St. Denis wasn't, and never had been. A few fishing boats went in and out. Every once in a while, a merchantman would put in at its rickety quays-as often as not, a badly navigated merchantman that had been bound for somewhere else.
Victor didn't know what made some towns thrive and others falter. Down in Spanish Atlantis, farther south yet, Gernika flourished… as much as any town in lackadaisical Spanish Atlantis flourished, anyhow. Not far away, tiny St. Augustine, also on the coast, drowsed under the semitropical sun. Yes, Gernika was older, but so what? New Hastings was older than Hanover, too, but Hanover had been the biggest, most bustling town in English Atlantis-in all of Atlantis-for a long time.
Now St. Denis was about to reappear in the history books, or at least in the footnotes. Victor looked down at the note on his desk (well, Erasmus Radcliff's desk, but Victor was using it these days).
That note still said the same thing it had when he first opened it a few minutes earlier. He read it again, just to make sure. French men-of-war and transports had evaded the Royal Navy and disgorged an army at St. Denis. He'd hoped that army would come to
Hanover. It was in Atlantis, but____________________
It was now moving north up the Atlantean coast. Its commander hoped to effect a meeting with the Atlanteans in the not too indefinite future.
"I will be damned," Victor murmured, reading the missive from St. Denis yet again. It still hadn't changed-not a single word of it.
The last time French troops landed in Atlantis, Victor and Cornwallis (then major and lieutenant-colonel, respectively, neither having yet acquired the exalted rank of general) beat them in a series of alarmingly close battles and forced the surrender of those who survived. Now Radcliff would be working with the French commander, whatever sort of officer this Marquis de la Fayette turned out to be, against the man who'd been his friend and ally in the last war.
Which proved… what, exactly? Only that life could turn bloody peculiar sometimes.
"Oh, yes," Victor muttered. "As if I didn't already know that."
He got to his feet and stretched. Something in his back made a noise like the cork exploding from a bottle of sparkling wine. He blinked, then slowly smiled; whatever'd happened in there, he felt better because of it.
He walked over and picked up the big honker skull William Radcliff had acquired back in the last century. "Alas, poor Yor-ick…" he began, holding it in the palm of his left hand.
Blaise came in. Confronted with the spectacle of the commander of the Atlantean army spouting Shakespeare at the cranium of a long-defunct bird, the Negro could hardly have been blamed for beating a hasty retreat. But Blaise was a tough fellow. Giving the honker skull no more than a raised eyebrow, he addressed Victor as if the latter had never heard of Hamlet. "Are the Frenchmen really and truly throwing in with us?"
"They are," Victor answered automatically. Only then did he set down the skull and send Blaise a startled stare. "How did you know about that, by God? The letter telling me of it only came just now." He pointed to the paper still sitting on the desk.
"No doubt." Blaise might have been i
"Oh."
"Victor could see what would spring from that. "You're telling me all of Hanover will know of it by this o'clock tomorrow, and Cornwallis will know of it by this o'clock day after tomorrow."
"Not me." Blaise shook his head. "I don't need to tell you any such thing, since you already know it as well as I do."
Victor sighed. He wanted to start talking to the honker skull again. There was at least some hope it wouldn't turn around and repeat gossip as fast as it got it. Instead, he looked up toward the heavens and the God he hopefully believed in. "Dear Lord, will we ever be able to do anything or even plan anything without letting our foes learn of it almost before we do?"
"If ever you want to get ahead of the English," Blaise said, "go tell all and sundry you're about to do this, make as if you're about to do this, but then at the last moment, without telling anyone but the few who needs must know, turn about and do that instead. It will be their ruination. Ruination." He smiled as he repeated the word. "I do fancy the sound of it."
"Ruination." Victor also savored the word. And he savored the conception that had led up to it. "Maybe I should give you my epaulets. Or maybe I should just remember never to let the fox guard the chicken coop."