He wondered which way to take the army. He was tempted to make his best guess about which way the Atlantean Assembly had gone, then head in the opposite direction. That way, he could fight General Howe without the useless advice and even more useless orders the Assembly gave him.
Reluctantly, he decided that wasn't the proper course. This wasn't his solo struggle against the redcoats; it was Atlantis' fight. If anybody represented Atlantis, the Assembly did. And if it was cantankerous and confused… it accurately portrayed the people it served.
After some thought, he took his own force north over the Brede once more. In the French settlements, his men might be thought of as invaders no less than General Howe's. They would also be reckoned no less English than the redcoats, at least by the inhabitants who'd dwelt in those parts longer than ten or fifteen years.
He sent messengers to the seaside forts, ordering their garrisons away with the rest of his force. They were precious far beyond their numbers. In Atlantis, skilled artillerists didn't hatch from honkers' eggs. (Or maybe they did, for the big flightless birds and their eggs were regrettably scarce these days, especially in the better-settled eastern regions.)
The artillerists also brought out their lighter guns, the ones that could keep up with the army. They drove spikes into the touch-holes of the heavier cannon and broke up their carriages, doing their best to deny them to the enemy.
Some of his men carried bits of this and that with them as they crossed the bridge over the Brede: loot from New Hastings shops. Victor kept quiet about it. Many of those shops had been abandoned. The proprietors who stayed behind were mostly men who favored King George. Radcliff would lose no sleep to see them plundered.
Fires broke out in the old town even before the Atlantean army finished evacuating it. Victor did hope the ancient redwood church would survive. It had already seen two wars and three centuries. Losing it now would be like losing a piece of what made Atlantis the way it was.
Such considerations didn't keep him from blowing up the stone bridge after his army was over it. The artillerymen from the forts did a first-rate job, dropping part of the elliptical arch into the Brede. General Howe's men would take some time to repair it. With luck, that would mean they'd have a hard time pursuing the battle-weary Atlanteans.
Victor hoped for luck. As far as he could see, his side hadn't had much up till now. He was sure the English commander would laugh at him and complain that the redcoats hadn't caught a break since the fighting started. No general since Sulla had ever thought of himself as a lucky man.
"Come on! Come on!" Victor called. "We can stand here gawping while New Hastings falls, but we can't stop it. What we can do is get away and keep fighting. We can-and we'd better. So get moving, boys! We'll beat them next time-see if we don't!"
He wondered if they would laugh at him or jeer at him or just ignore him and go their separate ways. If they did, he didn't know what he could do about it. He didn't have much in the way of coercion ready to hand right now. Armies sometimes fell apart, and damn all you could do about it.
To his surprise-no, to his slack-jawed amazement-the soldiers raised a cheer. He doffed his tricorn to them. The cheers got louder. "We'll whip 'em yet, General!" somebody shouted. "You see if we don't!"
"Damned right!" somebody else yelled.
"Huzzah for General Radcliff and the National Assembly!" someone else said. That won him three cheers, each louder than the one that had gone before.
The Assembly had voted him their thanks because he hadn't despaired of the cause after a defeat. The men he led seemed to deserve those praises more than he did. He doffed his hat again, and waved it, and waited for the cheering to subside.
"Thank you, men. Thank you-friends," he said huskily.
"Thank you for the faith you show in me, and thank you for the faith you show in Atlantis. As long as Atlantis has faith in you, I know we cannot possibly lose this war. The redcoats have more training, but you are fighting for your country, for your homes. In the end, that will make all the difference in the world."
Over on the other side of the Brede, General Howe's soldiers would be marching into New Hastings. They already held Hanover and Croydon farther north, and most of the smaller towns along the coast in those parts, too. They had to think they were strangling Atlantis' freedom, the way Hercules strangled the serpents in his cradle.
When Victor was down, as he was now, he had to think they were right. But were they? Fighting had hardly touched the south-em settlements or the west coast of Atlantis. And, more to the point, it had barely reached into the interior. No English soldier had come within many miles of chasing Margaret off the Radcliff farm.
Maybe I'm not lying to these fellows after all, then, Victor thought. By God, I hope I'm not. England sees the coast, because thats what she trades with. But Atlantis is bigger than that.
Atlantis was, when you got right down to it, several times larger than England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland put together. One of these days, it would grow richer, stronger, and more populous than King George's realm. When you looked at things that way, how outrageous of George's soldiers to try to hold this land down by force!
For the moment, though, England was a man grown, Atlantis only a stripling. No matter how much promise Atlantis held, England was stronger-and better able to use the strength it had- now. Staying in the fight, wearing the enemy down… that was what Atlantis would have to do.
"Let's go, men," Victor called. "We need to get away. We need to make sure the damned redcoats can't catch us till we're ready for them." He respected Howe's engineers too much to imagine a blown bridge would keep them on the wrong side of the Brede very long. "And we need to get in touch with the Atlantean Assembly again, to find out what they require of us."
Did I just say that? he wondered. But he did, no doubt about it, even if he'd been at least half glad the Assembly wasn't telling him what to do every chance it got. If he had to decide everything on his own, he would turn into something closer to king than to general. The only thing he knew about kings was that he didn't want to be one.
Dark clouds blowing over the Green Ridge Mountains swept in front of the sun. The day got cooler in a hurry. All at once, the air tasted damp. More rain was coming. For that matter, fall was coming. How much longer would either side be able to campaign in any serious way?
One thing rain would do: as it had before, it would turn the roads to mud. The redcoats would have a devil of a time catching up to his army in bad weather. Their force would bog down worse than his, in fact, because they had more artillery and a bigger, more ponderous baggage train.
His horse snorted softly. Its nostrils flared. If that didn't mean it smelled rain, he would have been surprised.
If I have a winter's worth of time away from the English, a winter's worth of time to train my men, to turn them into proper fighters… Victor Radcliff nodded to himself. Even now, the Atlanteans proved they could confront hardened professional soldiers from across the sea. With drill, with discipline, wouldn't they be able to rout the redcoats? He hoped so. Sooner or later, Atlantis would likely need victories, not just hard-fought defeats.
Chapter 7
Victor Radcliff was a much-traveled man. All the same, he didn't think he'd ever been in Horsham before. He wasn't completely sure; if Atlantis had less memorable places than Horsham, he'd long since forgotten about them. A couple of taverns-one of which had a few rooms for benighted travelers and called itself an inn-a few shops, a gristmill, a smithy, a few streets' worth of houses… Horsham.