Once all the Atlantean soldiers made it to the Brede's south bank, Victor dealt with the bridges. Gunpowder charges blew gaps in a couple of stone spans. His men poured tubs of grease on the wooden bridges and set them afire. Without boats, General Howe's troops wouldn't cross here. The closest ford was another twenty miles upstream. He sent a detachment to hold it for a while.
"Well," he said to no one in particular, "we did what we came here to do." He would have felt happier about things if the moans of the wounded didn't make him wonder if it was all worthwhile.
Chapter 6
General Howe's army did not pursue Victor's as the Atlanteans fell back toward New Hastings. The redcoats seemed content- for the moment-with Bredestown. Victor Radcliff was not content to yield it to them. His men had fought well, but, again, not well enough.
A messenger from the Atlantean Assembly rode out to meet him halfway between Bredestown and New Hastings. Victor eyed the man with (he hoped) well-hidden apprehension. What new disaster had the Assemblymen sent him out to report?
"General, I am told to inform you-"
"Yes? Out with it!" Maybe Victor's apprehension wasn't so well hidden after all.
"Several hundred new recruits await your attention on your return, sir. I am also told to let you know that more than a few of them gave as their reason for volunteering the strong opposition the forces under your command have offered against the English tyrant's murderers."
"You are? They do? The Atlantean Assembly sent you to me for that?" Victor couldn't hide his surprise. Bad news usually traveled faster than good. And with reason: bad news was the kind you had to do something about right away… if you could. Most of the time, good news could wait.
But the courier nodded. "That's right, sir. Mr. Fenner and Mr. Cawthorne both told me to tell you they know you are doing the best you can, and the rest of Atlantis seems to know it, too."
"Well, well," Victor said. That didn't seem enough somehow, so he said it again: "Well, well." The splutters bought him a few seconds to think. "Please convey my gratitude to the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly, and particularly to Mr. Cawthorne and Mr. Fenner."
"I'll do that, sir," the messenger said. "Thank you. I'll thank the recruits myself when I get back to the coast," Victor said. "The Assembly has been gracious enough to note that I did not despair of the republic. The same holds true for these volunteers, and in rather greater measure. If I fall, finding a new general will be easy enough. But if no one chooses to fight for Atlantis, our cause is dead, dead beyond any hope of resurrection."
"That's a fact." Now the man who'd come out from New Hastings sounded surprised. "Not a fact you think about every day, though, is it?"
"Maybe not." Victor knew damn well it wasn't. The powers that be didn't want potential fighting men to realize how the shape of the future lay in their hands. If they sat on those hands, no war could go on for long.
The messenger sketched a salute. "Well, then, I'm off. I'll pass things on like you said, and I know your sergeants will whip the new chums into shape pretty damn quick." His chuckle held a certain amount of anticipation. Gloating? That, too, Victor judged.
He felt better the rest of the way back to New Hastings. He wondered why. Nothing had changed. General Howe had still seized Bredestown, the, second- or third-oldest city in English Atlantis. The redcoats were still likely to move on New Hastings. A regiment's worth of raw volunteers wouldn't slow them down, much less hold them back.
But the spirit that brought forth a regiment's worth of raw volunteers would… eventually. If Atlantis didn't lose the war before England got sick of fighting it. That could happen. It could happen much too easily, as Victor knew much too well.
"I have to make sure it doesn't, that's all," he murmured. Easy enough to say something like that. Keeping the promise might prove rather harder.
Small bands of Atlantean cavalry still roamed north of the Brede. Every so often, they managed to cut off and cut up a column of supply wagons coming down to General Howe. Some of what they took supplied the Atlantean army instead. Some they kept And some they sold. They thought of it as prize money, as if they were sailors capturing enemy ships.
Prize money, though, was a long-established official custom. Theirs was anything but. Victor didn't complain. He wouldn't complain about anything that made his men fight harder.
They didn't just loot. He would have complained if they were nothing but brigands. He'd been back in New Hastings only a few hours when a troop of horsemen brought in a glum-looking prisoner.
"We caught him in civilian clothes, General, like you see," one of the troopers said. No wonder their captive looked glum-the laws of war said you could hang an enemy soldier caught in civilian clothes. What else was he then but a spy?
"How do you know he's a soldier at all?" Victor asked the Atlanteans who'd brought in the captive.
"We found this here on him, sir." One of the men handed him a folded letter.
Radcliff unfolded it and read it. It was a letter from General Howe to the officer in charge of the Royal Navy detachment that was harrying New Hastings. "You were going to give some kind of signal from the shore, and they'd send a boat for you so you could deliver this?" Victor asked the captive.
The man stood mute-for a moment. Then one of the Atlanteans who'd brought him in shook him like a dog shaking a rat. "Answer the general, you silly bugger, if you want to go on breathing."
"Uh, that's right," the captive said unwillingly. "Did you men read this?" Victor asked the Atlanteans who'd caught him.
"Enough to see what it was," one of them answered. "Enough to see that you needed to see it right away."
"And I thank you for that," Victor Radcliff said. "But I'd like to read you one passage in particular. General Howe writes, As before, the resistance offered by the Atlanteans in Bredestown was unsettling, even daunting. They withdrew in good order after inflicting casualties we are barely able to support. This rebellion has a character different from and altogether more serious than what we were led to believe before we embarked upon the task of suppressing it.' " He folded the paper. "That's you he's talking about, gentlemen!"
"Think he'll pack up and go home, then?" asked the big man who'd shaken the prisoner. "If he thinks he can't win, why keep fighting?"
Reluctantly, Victor shook his head. If Howe kept advancing in spite of his losses, Victor wasn't sure he could keep him out of New Hastings. He didn't tell that to the Atlanteans, lest they be captured in turn or infect their comrades with the doubt they'd caught from him. What he did say was, "No, I think we need to give him a few more sets of lumps before he's ready to do that."
"Well, we can take care of it," the big Atlantean said. The others nodded. They knew less than Victor. They didn't worry about things like why they didn't have more bayonets or where the gunpowder for the battle after the battle after next would come from. That made them more hopeful than he was. Maybe their hope would infect him.
Plaintively, the Englishman they'd captured asked, "What will you do to me?"
"Ought to knock you over the head and pitch you into the Brede. Better than you deserve, too," one of the Atlanteans said. The prisoner turned pale.
"No, no," Victor said. "Can't have that, or Howe's soldiers will start knocking our men over the head after they catch them. I'll fight that kind of war if I must, but I don't want to. We'll keep him as a prisoner till he's properly exchanged, that's all."