Opening Atlantis (45 page)

“Why, they are in our rucksacks, of course,” Roland replied. “We will keep them there until we quit Spanish Atlantis. And I promise you by God and all the saints that they will trouble you no more.”

“In your rucksacks?” The Spaniard frowned. Since his eyebrows grew together above the top of his nose, he looked fearsome—but since he had only a handful of men behind him, not nearly fearsome enough to intimidate Roland. “If I ride south and find them marauding—”

“If you do, you may track me down and do as you please to me,” Roland broke in. “But for now,
Monsieur,
you may get out of our way, for we are on the march.” He raised his voice: “
Forward!
”

His men rolled down on the Spaniards. The luckless officer and his squadron could get out of the way or get trampled. The Spaniards got out of the way. The road was muddy. The meadows to either side were muddier. The horses had to keep moving lest they start to sink. The officer looked daggers at Roland, who wondered if the fellow would draw his pistol and start a fight even if he was supposed to be an ally and even if he was hopelessly outnumbered. He seemed angry enough not to care.

But, no matter what he thought, he didn't do anything. Once the French settlers passed him by, would he get back on the road? Would he ride south and discover that the English really had vanished from Spanish Atlantis? And would he conclude from that that Kersauzon really did have them in their rucksacks?

When you were dealing with Spaniards, you never could tell.

When you were dealing with Englishmen, you never could tell, either. The French were the only sensible people in the world: Roland was convinced of it. And even among the French there were unfortunate gradations. Marquis Montcalm-Gozon, for example, though surely a good fellow, did not seem nearly so sensible as a man from French Atlantis.
They're going to seed over there in Europe,
Roland thought sadly.

The sound of gunfire ahead snapped him out of his musing. “Scouts forward!” he called. “We'll find out what that is. Then we'll put a stop to it one way or another. Fix bayonets and load your muskets!”

Before long, the scouts came back. It was a brawl—almost a battle—between slaves and Spanish settlers in what was no doubt usually a sleepy little town: about what Kersauzon had expected.

“Let's go!” he said. “If the blacks and copperskins run from us, well and good. If not, it's their funeral.”

They ran. He'd thought they would. They were brave enough, but had little in the way of organization. They could fight settlers who also didn't know what they were doing. Real soldiers advancing in neat ranks with bayonets gleaming under the subtropical sun? No. The slaves melted into the woods.

Cheers from the Spaniards failed to warm the cockles of the French settlers' hearts. The town was big enough for two cobbler's shops. The French settlers looted both of them. They cleaned out the taverns, too. Some unfortunate things probably happened to a few of the local women. Roland thought that was too bad, but he didn't intend to do anything about it as long as the soldiers followed orders when it came time to leave.

They did. Fewer cheers came to them when they left than when they'd arrived. Somebody fired an old fowling piece at them as they marched away. None of the junk in the gun barrel hit anybody. If some had, the French settlers probably would have turned around and done a proper job of wrecking the town. As things were, they just kept going.

“You know,
Monsieur,
the copperskins and blacks will come back as soon as we've gone a couple of miles,” a sergeant said.

“But of course,” Kersauzon replied. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, sir, the Spaniards said we could come in if we helped them with the slave uprising,” the underofficer pointed out.

Roland told him what the Spaniards could do about it. In the telling, he violated as many commandments as he could without having either a sculptor's tools or someone else's wife handy. The sergeant, a man as accustomed to harsh language as anyone of his rank, stared in goggle-eyed admiration. Having slowed down a little, Roland said, “I came down here to fight the damned English settlers. If I can't do that here, I'll go where I can do it, by God. Any questions?”

“
Mais non. Certainement pas,
” the sergeant said hastily, and went off to find somewhere to bathe his bleeding ears.

If the slaves got in the French settlers' way, Roland's men went through them. If the slaves didn't, the settlers ignored them. They took what they needed from the surrounding countryside, as if in hostile country. The locals took to running from them, and occasionally, as in that one village, shooting at them. The French made them sorry when they tried it.

A courier from
Don
José rode up to Roland when he and his men were once more nearing the border with French Atlantis. In accented French, the man cried, “His Excellency the governor demands to know why you have not performed the function he required of you, and why he has received reports that you are plundering the countryside.”

“We are plundering the countryside because we have to eat, and he never arranged to feed us,” Roland replied. “And we are now returning to the more important fight, the one against England.”

“But the slaves still torment us!” the Spaniard cried.

“If you can't put them down by yourselves, then it could be that they deserve to be the masters,” Roland said.

The courier's jaw dropped. He sputtered and fumed. Finally, after some effort, he got out, “This is intolerable!”

“If you do not care to tolerate it, you are welcome to attack my army,” Roland said. “So is his Excellency. I do not promise you the most hospitable of receptions, however.”

“You will pay for this—this insolence,” the courier said.

“We've already paid for Spanish insolence,” Kersauzon replied. “Without it, we would have been able to come to grips with the English settlers a long time ago. Instead, they got away. Should I thank you for that?”

“If you weren't already running away from our country, we would drive you out like the dogs you are,” the Spaniard said.

Roland looked at him. “Consider,
Monsieur:
you are, perhaps, not in the best position to throw insults about.”

How many muskets could point at a man on horseback at a shouted order, or even without one? The courier seemed to make the calculation, and not to like the answer he found. His hand slipped toward the dragoon pistol he wore on his right hip, then jerked away as if the pistol butt had become red-hot.

“You'll be sorry,” he warned.

“I'm sorry already,” Roland said: “sorry
Don
José doesn't know his own mind, sorry your slaves hate you so much—”

“What of yours?” the courier retorted.

“Not like that.”
I hope,
Roland added, but only to himself. “Most of all, I'm sorry this has been a chase after a wild goose, a wild goose that has flown. Since I can't follow by sea, I must go by land as best I can. And so I say farewell to Spanish Atlantis, and you had better pray your own folk here do not do the same.”

“God will punish you for this desertion,” the Spaniard said.

“He has—He sent me you, did He not?” Roland replied. His men laughed. The Spaniard glowered. The French settlers began to march, and the courier had to move aside or get trampled into the mud. “Onward!” Roland cried.

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.

“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
José refused to let him enter Spanish Atlantis. Well,
Don
José 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
José.