Have to keep them from finding out, then. But how? He could wait for Montcalm-Gozon. Or he could wait for Kersauzon. He couldn't wait for both of them at once. If he tried, they would smash him between them.
All at once, he started to laugh. Then he summoned his officers-and several sergeants who had their wits about them. He didn't name Blaise, but no one said anything when the black man joined the council. Radcliff found he was glad to have him there. No one could say Blaise couldn't take care of himself, and help others do the same. No one tried to do any such thing, either, which Victor found interesting.
He spent a couple of minutes summing up the evening's news. "Bread on both sides of us, and we're the meat in the middle," he finished. That kind of quick meal struck him as a damned good idea.
"How do we make sure we aren't dead meat in the middle?" asked the sergeant named Philip, puffing on his pipe. The English settlers had lifted plenty of pipeweed on their raid through French and Spanish Atlantis.
"Well, that's why I called you together. Here's what I've got in mind." Victor spoke for another couple of minutes, then asked, "What do you think?"
Philip puffed again. The pipe jerked up and down against his teeth as he said, "We will be dead meat if you're wrong…sir."
"Now tell me something I didn't know," Victor answered dryly, which drew a chuckle of sorts from the veteran underofficer. Victor went on, "But we can't stay where we are and let them grind us to powder. Does anyone think I'm wrong?" No one admitted it. Thus encouraged, Victor went on, "And we can't slide off to the west and let the two French groups get together again. That would cost us more trouble than we want, now and later." He waited again. Again, nobody contradicted him. He spread his hands. "This looks to me to be the best we can do."
Off to one side, Blaise nodded. In the fading firelight, his dark skin should have left him next to invisible. Somehow, it didn't. People noticed Blaise. Were he an actor, he would have upstaged the others in the company at every turn. And it wouldn't have been because he was a ham; it was because he was who he was.
A lieutenant said, "Well, if it doesn't work out the way you think it will, chances are we can get away from regulars."
Blaise nodded again. So did several other sergeants. So did the officers at the council. With that lukewarm approval, Victor's plan went forward.
A rifle banged. The report was distinctly sharper and louder than a smoothbore musket's. Something seemed to tug at Roland Kersauzon's hat. He took it off. It had two neat holes through the crown, perhaps an inch-perhaps less than an inch-above the top of his head.
Another rifle spoke. A lieutenant riding a few feet away from him swore and clutched at his left thigh.
"Skirmishers forward!" Only on the second word did Roland's voice break like a boy's. He'd needed a moment to realize just how close a brush with death he'd had.
French settlers trotted north. More gunfire greeted them. A little more slowly than he should have, Roland realized those weren't mere snipers harrying his force. Somebody didn't want his men going forward. Somebody, here, could only be the English.
Redcoats or settlers? he wondered. By the way the foe fought, he guessed he faced settlers. They didn't come out into the open in neat lines. No-they fought from under cover of ferns and from behind trees. They fought like his men, in other words. Now…How many of them barred the way?
Only one way to find out. He'd had more men than Victor Radcliff when he was chasing the English leader. He thought he still did. He sent soldiers forward on the open ground and through the woods. If the enemy wanted to stop them, he was welcome to try.
Here and there, French settlers going forward fell. But not very many of them went down, and they didn't fall across a broad front. Roland smiled to himself. Bluff, as he'd thought. They couldn't stop him. They were just trying to slow him down.
He sent more settlers up against Radcliff's men. He also sent orders for runners to come back and keep him informed about what was going on. They told him the English weren't standing and fighting. In his mind, that confirmed that they were nothing but a harassing band.
"Press them!" Roland shouted. "Break them! Close in behind them and wipe them out!" He rode forward himself, though he stayed in the open so runners could find him at need. He fired a pistol at a man in a green jacket. The English settler stayed on his feet. Roland swore and pulled his other pistol from his belt. By then, the enemy soldier had vanished among the pines.
Roland's men couldn't quite break the English settlers. They forced them into headlong retreat-but only so much of it. Wherever the woods grew thicker, the foe fought harder. There turned out to be more of them than Roland had thought at first, too. They weren't just a thin skirmishing line to be thrust back and then broken or shoved aside. They had reserves cunningly placed to make life difficult for an advancing opponent.
Another bullet snapped past Roland's head. He ducked without even thinking. People did when someone shot at them. You couldn't help it, no matter how much you wished you could. Only a handful of men seemed immune to the reflex.
Darkness came down at last. The French settlers had pushed the enemy back several miles. Roland was pleased with himself. All the French settlers seemed pleased with themselves-all but the wounded. Surgeons worked on them by firelight. Their cries split the night.
But those heartbreaking shrieks weren't what killed Roland Kersauzon's pleasure. He suddenly wondered how and why so many English settlers stood between him and Montcalm-Gozon's army. How had Victor Radcliff got past or got through the French regulars? Whatever he'd done, it couldn't be good news for the Frenchmen from across the sea.
Which immediately brought up the next question: what to do about it? His first impulse was to order his men forward right away. Regulars barely even thought about night advances. Too many things could go wrong with carefully dressed lines. Roland's men, though, could play bushwhacker as well as their foes.
In the end, he waited for dawn. As he rolled himself in his blanket, he wondered whether he'd regret it later.
Victor Radcliff wished for artillery. He might as well have wished for the moon while he was at it. His men couldn't very well have carried cannon as they sneaked through the French lines.
But now Montcalm-Gozon's men were trying to blast his force out of the way. The Frenchmen had plenty of fieldpieces. And, listening to the roar of guns from behind them, so did the redcoats who'd pushed them out of their lines and were driving them south.
If the English settlers could hold, the French regulars were trapped. If Victor's men had to retreat…well, he didn't want to do that, not with the French settlers coming up from the south. One of these days, historians would understand exactly how this campaign worked. They would walk the fields and forests. They would read accounts from survivors on both sides and in all four groups of combatants. They would issue learned, dispassionate judgments. For anyone actually going through the fight, confusion and fear reigned.
Regulars without guns of their own could never have withstood the cannonading the French were giving to Victor's men. Regulars would have stood out in the open in neat ranks and let themselves get butchered. Victor had watched it happen to the redcoats.
His own men knew better-or fought differently, anyhow. They sprawled on the ground and hid in back of whatever cover they could find. Some of them had even dug scrapes with bayonets and belt knives, piling up dirt in front of the shallow holes to stop or deflect bullets. Here and there, cannon balls killed. More often than not, they harmlessly shot past Victor's settlers, who weren't packed together anywhere near so tightly as regulars would have been.
As long as the Frenchmen kept cannonading his soldiers, he couldn't do much to reply. They stayed out of musket range. Even his few riflemen had trouble reaching them. He shouted encouragement to the English settlers. As long as they didn't break, they made Montcalm-Gozon sweat.