The uncouth, backwoodsy French Atlantean shrugged a shrug a Paris boulevardier might have envied. "Every business has its costs," he said. "Since we aren't going to go tonight, shouldn't we grab what rest we can?"
"An excellent idea," Roland said briskly.
Even when he wrapped himself in his blanket, sleep didn't want to come. He knew he was keyed up. That accounted for some of his trouble-some, but not all. The English Atlanteans on the north side of the stream were godawful noisy. Raucous snatches of marching songs floated through the air. So did the sounds of tramping feet, as if large numbers of soldiers were on the march.
For a little while, Roland worried, there under that ratty, tattered blanket. Then he chuckled. Trying to bluff him, were they? Did they think he would believe they'd been reinforced, and hold off on account of that? If they did, they were making a bad mistake. Some of them were making their very last mistake. Chuckling once more, he slid headlong into sleep.
That veteran sergeant shook him awake. The earliest traces of morning twilight grayed the eastern horizon. "Time for the dance already?" Roland asked around a yawn.
"I think so." The sergeant jerked a thumb toward the north, across the creek. "But those noisy baboons keep tripping over their own clodhoppers."
"They want us to think every Englishman in Atlantis is hiding among those trees," Kersauzon said scornfully. "Well, I don't care what they want. I am not a four-year-old, to be fooled by such tricks. We'll get our men fed, we'll get them across the stream, and we'll get back together with Marquis Montcalm-Gozon."
Breakfast was less than he wished it were: stale hardtack and gamy sausage. But a little ballast in the belly was better than none. He took no more than any of his soldiers. As soon as the men were fed, he formed them in long columns, one in front of each ford. The troops at the head of each column would suffer. Not all of them would fall, though, as they charged through the waist-deep water. And they would drive the English Atlanteans before them once they got across.
Ferns rustled and quivered in the woods on the far side of the creek. Drums began to pound. Hearing those drums made the hair at the nape of Roland's neck quiver. "No," he whispered hoarsely. "It's not possible."
But it was. It was not only possible, it was true. Greencoats emerged from the greenery and formed up opposite his own men. There were more of them than he would have expected to find in a rear-guard detachment. That made one nasty surprise. Things got worse. As the drums continued to bray, redcoats broke cover and took their places beside the English Atlanteans. Their sergeants bellowed and swore till their alignment was perfect.
"What are those salauds doing here?" a soldier said. Maybe the question was meant for Roland, maybe for an uncaring God.
Roland feared he knew the answer. Only one seemed likely: somehow, Montcalm-Gozon's French regulars had come to grief. The English had broken the siege of Freetown, and now they intended to break the French settlers, too.
"Monsieur, should we not withdraw?" a lieutenant asked urgently. "There are a devil of a lot of Englishmen on the other side of the stream."
"Yes, there are." Roland heard the bleakness in his own voice. "And they know where the fords are as well as we do. If we pull back, what will they do next, eh?"
The junior officer's mouth twisted. He didn't have to be Elijah the prophet to foretell the future here. "They'll come after us."
"Too right they will." Kersauzon couldn't even tell his men to give the foe a volley. Oh, he could, but it wouldn't do much good. In his infinite wisdom, he'd ordered his force into an assault formation. Only the few soldiers at the head of each column could open fire. Whereas the English…
No sooner had Roland realized the English could open fire when and as they pleased than they did. The green-coated settlers simply started shooting as they saw fit. The English regulars delivered a volley under the direction of their officers and sergeants, then methodically reloaded for another one.
And Roland's men lurched back. Not only could they not reply effectively, but they were so bunched up that not even smoothbore muskets could miss. Some of them fell. Others-the ones who could-reeled away from the southern bank of the stream.
Crash! That second volley tore through the French settlers. They broke, running for any cover they could find. Roland was surprised to find himself still imperforate. He yelled himself hoarse, trying to stem the rout. He might as well have saved his breath, because none of that yelling did any good at all.
Victor Radcliff rode across Stamford Creek. Bodies lay on the far bank. Other French settlers, wounded but not dead, stretched imploring hands out toward him. He went on past them. Somebody on his side would take care of them sooner or later. He wasn't sure just how-maybe drag them off to the surgeons, maybe knock them over the head. If none of the wounded enemies pulled a pistol or tried anything else foolish, odds were most of them would survive.
The English lieutenant-colonel rode beside him. The young officer's face radiated enthusiasm. "By God, Major, I do believe we've really done it this time! We've broken them!" He waved happily. "And it's mostly because your men held the French regulars in place until we could come down on them from behind. Well done!"
"Much obliged, sir," Victor replied. "And much obliged to you for coming down on them when you did. We couldn't have held much longer. They would have broken through us in another hour."
"It was a bit of a near-run thing, wasn't it?" the lieutenant-colonel said. "No one knew who'd be the heroes and who the goats till it all played out, eh?" Just for a moment, his grin slipped. "Pity about Brigadier Endicott, though."
"Yes, sir," Victor agreed politely. Brigadier Daniel Endicott had commanded the English regulars who'd landed in Freetown and given the force there strength enough to break the French siege. He'd had the bad luck-certainly for him-to put his face in front of a musket ball a few days earlier. Not ten minutes afterwards, his second-in-command got shot in the leg. That left the young lieutenant-colonel the senior English officer able to serve in the field.
None of which broke Victor's heart. Endicott had looked to be even more of a book soldier than the late Major General Braddock, and Colonel Harcourt was no improvement. The lieutenant-colonel, by contrast, had begun to understand that war in Atlantis wasn't the same as war on the manicured fields of Europe. Coming right out and saying so seemed the opposite of useful.
Musketeers fired from the woods ahead. Sudden puffs of smoke marked their positions-or where they'd fired from, anyhow. Anybody with a grain of sense would go somewhere else to reload and shoot again.
Not far from Victor, an English Atlantean swore, clutched his calf, and sat down in the dirt. He drew a knife and cut at his hose to get cloth for a bandage. "I'm out of the fight for a while," he said matter-of-factly.
"You'll do fine. The surgeons will fix you up in nothing flat." Victor wondered how big a liar he was.
The English lieutenant-colonel shouted orders. Redcoats advanced on the wood. A few more shots came from it. One or two English regulars fell. The rest went on in among the trees. No doubt some French Atlanteans escaped from the southern edge of the forest. But when the redcoats emerged, several of them held up their bayonets to show the blood on them.
"Good show," the lieutenant-colonel said. "We've dealt with the one bunch-now all we have to do is finish rounding up the other, and the war here is as good as over. Then we see where it all ends up at the peace table."
That brought Victor Radcliff up short. To him, Atlantis was the world. But the English officer reminded him things didn't work that way. England and France and their allies were also fighting in Europe, on the Terranovan mainland, and in India. A stroke of the pen, a swap of this settlement for that, could annul everything won here with blood and bullets.