He wished for more rain. The sun smiled down from a bright blue sky. The small, puffy clouds drifting across it only mocked his hopes. He had to fall back two or three miles closer to New Hastings and try to set up new positions from which to withstand the English advance.
One of his captains asked, "What's to keep that bastard Howe from doing the same thing all over again?"
Victor Radcliff gave him a bleak look. "Nothing I can see."
He did set his riflemen to sniping at the English artillerists. If the redcoats had trouble serving their guns, they wouldn't be able to hurt his men so much the next time around. He could also hope they wouldn't be able to intimidate the Atlanteans so much.
And he sent a message back to New Hastings, warning the Atlantean Assembly he might not be able to hold the town. You must prepare yourselves to leave expeditiously, he wrote. Much as I regret to state it, I cannot promise New Hastings' security nor your safety in the event the city falls.
He was watching the redcoats get ready to assault his newest makeshift defensive works when a horseman leaned down and thrust a folded sheet of paper into his hand. "From the Atlantean Assembly, General," he said.
"Thank you," Victor said, though he didn't want his elbow joggled at just that moment.
No matter what he wanted, he unfolded the paper. He had to hold it a little farther from his eyes than he would have liked; his sight was beginning to lengthen. But Isaac Fenner's hand was large and clear. Thank you for alerting us to what may come, Fenner wrote. If need be, we shall evacuate confident the fight will continue even without this town and expecting you to bloody the tyrannous foe here as you did at Bredestown.
"Is everything all right, sir?" Blaise asked, and then, a moment later, "Is anything all right?"
"Now that you mention it," Radcliff replied, "no." Isaac Fenner was a very clever man-no doubt about it. No doubt, also, that he would never make a soldier. The Atlanteans had had an easy retreat from Bredestown. If they were driven into New Hastings, where would they go once driven out again? Yes. Where? Victor asked himself. He might need an answer soon.
"Anything I can do?" the colored sergeant inquired. "Can you make the redcoats disappear? Can you give the Atlantean Assembly a dose of common sense?" Victor said.
"Let me have a rifle, sir, and I'll see what I can do about General Howe." Blaise never lacked for confidence.
Marksmen with rifles did their best to pick off enemy officers. Deliberately trying to assassinate the English commander, however, struck Victor as surpassing the limits of decency. Moreover, the redcoats were altogether too likely to try to return the disfavor. He hoped that consideration didn't influence him too much when he replied, "I'm not sure how much point there would be. His second-in-command is said to be a skillful officer."
"Kill him, too." Blaise was ready to be as ruthless as the situation required-or a bit more so.
"If the opportunity arises," Victor said, and not another word. Blaise snorted; he knew Victor wouldn't do anything along those lines.
Victor did send out more snipers to try to discourage the redcoats from advancing. They picked off a few Englishmen. Maybe they slowed the enemy's movements a little. Victor knew too well they didn't slow them much.
General Howe methodically formed his men for the assault on the Atlanteans' positions in front of New Hastings. He put most of his strength on the right Watching that, Victor realized what it meant: if the English attack succeeded, Howe would try to pin the Atlanteans against the Brede and pound their army to pieces.
It had better not succeed, then, "Victor thought. He shifted men to shore up his own left, and moved cannon to cover that part of the field, too. He also posted a couple of companies to try to hold the road east to New Hastings in case his army had to retreat down it By holding them out of the battle, he made it a little more likely that the army would need to retreat. But he also made it more likely that the force as a whole would survive. To him, that counted for more.
Howe opened with a cannonading like the one that had frightened the Atlanteans out of their lines farther west This time, to Victor's vast relief, his men seemed less alarmed. Atlantean guns tired back at the English troops. Every so often, a roundshot would knock down a few men. The redcoats stolidly re-formed and held their ground. Victor hated and admired them at the same time. They were too damned hard to beat.
On they came, advancing to the music of fife, drum, and horn. Sunfire flashed from their bayonets. The inexperienced soldiers facing them feared cold steel almost as much as they feared artillery. They had reason to fear it, too: it gave the redcoats the edge in the hand-to-hand.
Atlantean muskets thundered. The volley was sharper than it would have been when the uprising began. Victor's men couldn't match Howe's in drill or discipline, but knew more of the soldier's trade now than they had when the fighting started.
A great cloud of grayish smoke obscured the field… and Victor's view of the oncoming Englishmen. Not even his spyglass helped. He swore How could he know what was going on through that manmade fogbank?
Here and there, fresh shots rang out from the Atlantean position. Some musketeers, having fired once, could reload fast enough to send another three-quarter-inch ball against the redcoats before the foe reached them. Most men, unfortunately, weren't so skilled-or so lucky.
For a few seconds, Victor let hope run away with him. Maybe the insurrectionists' fearsome volley had knocked Howe's men back on their heels. Some storms of lead were too much to bear. He'd seen that himself, fighting against the French settlers in the last war and in the fight north of Weymouth only a few weeks before.
Some storms were… but not this one. The English soldiers burst through the smoke and began jumping down into the trenches that sheltered the Atlanteans. Not only were the redcoats' muskets bayoneted, they were also all loaded, while too many of Victor's men still struggled with powder charge and wad and ball and ramrod.
The Atlanteans fought hard. Victor had seldom seen his summer soldiers do anything else. If courage and ferocity were all it took to win the day… But cold-hearted professional competence also had its place. And the redcoats had more of that than his men did, while they also didn't lack for courage.
Fighting and cursing, the Atlanteans fell back. One well-sited gun loaded with canister shredded half a dozen redcoats. No matter how perfectly disciplined the Englishmen were, that horrific blast slowed down their pursuit. Victor wouldn't have wanted to storm forward when he was all too likely to get blown to cat's meat, either.
Half an hour later, seeing that Howe's infantry would let his battered army escape again, he said the best thing he could: "Well, we're still in the fight, by God."
"Yes, sir," Blaise agreed. "And we still stand between the enemy and New Hastings."
"So we do." But for how much longer? Victor wondered. He didn't care for the answer he foresaw. Because he didn't, he called for a messenger.
A young man on horseback rode up and touched two fingers of his right hand to the brim of his shapeless straw hat. It might have been a salute; it was more likely nothing but a friendly wave "What do you need, General?" the youngster asked.
"Take word to the Atlantean Assembly," Victor said. "Tell them they'd better get out of New Hastings while the going is still good."
By the time Victor's battered force limped into New Hastings, the Atlantean Assembly was already gone. Some people claimed the leaders of the rising against King George had fled north across the Brede and then west, towards Atlantis' sparsely populated interior. Others said they'd gone south, in the direction of Freetown and the formerly French settlements beyond.
Victor had no sure way to judge which report was true. When he rode into New Hastings from the west, men who had reason not to desire the return of English rule were abandoning the city in both directions. Had the Royal Navy not lain offshore, he suspected plenty of people would also have fled by sea.