But Habakkuk Biddiscombe didn't have a military career to worry about. When the war ended-in victory or defeat-he would go back to whatever he'd done beforehand. And so he didn't worry about speaking his mind now.
"We could use a win," he told Victor, as if the general didn't know. "And I think we could get one without a great deal of trouble. The redcoats aren't within miles of being ready for us."
They don't mink we'd be stupid enough to do any serious campaigning in the wintertime, Victor thought. He hadn't expected the Atlanteans would, either. The younger officer's enthusiasm made him wonder if he was making a mistake by doing what the English looked for. They look for me to have an ounce of sense-maybe even two ounces.
Still, if he fought the kind of war General Howe would approve of, wasn't he bound to lose? Howe had the professional soldiers. The Atlanteans, by the nature of things, were amateurs. They had fire and dash to offer, not stolid obedience. Shouldn't he take advantage of that? If he could make the English react to him, instead of his having to respond to Howe's every carefully planned advance…
"Do you know" Victor said slowly, "I believe I shall hold an officers' council. If we decide the attack can go forward with some hope of success, I expect we'll put it in."
Captain Biddiscombe stared. "D'you mean that?" He answered his own question: "You do mean that! By God, General, I never dreamt I'd convince you, never in a thousand years."
"Life is full of surprises," Victor Radcliff said. "May King George's soldiers not enjoy the one they get soon." Officers' council or not, he'd made up his mind. Now, if he could bring it off…
The weather had gone from rain to freezing rain and sleet to snow. Victor hoped it would stay cold. He wanted the roads frozen so his men could make good time on them. If the Atlanteans had to slog through mud to get at the redcoats, they could come to the battle late and worn out.
His first target was a fort on the outskirts of a town named Sudbury. It was farther north than Weymouth, farther south than Hanover, and about thirty miles inland. General Howe had run up several such fortresses to try to keep the Atlantean army away from the prosperous and well-settled seacoast. The intrepid Biddiscombe's raid was one thing. An attack by all the force the Atlantean Assembly could muster would be something else again.
I hope, Victor thought.
He didn't let his men conceive that so much as a single, solitary worry clouded his mind. Much of the art of command consisted of acting unruffled even-or rather, especially-when you weren't. "Press on, lads! Press on!" he called. "Before long, we'll subsist ourselves on good English victuals. We'll wear good English boots on our feet."
Again, he hoped. Quite a few of the Atlanteans weren't wearing anything resembling good boots now. The men who'd served longest and done the most marching suffered worst. Some of them had wrapped cloth around their boots to hold uppers and soles together and to try to keep their feet dry. A few soldiers had only cloths-or nothing at all-on their feet. They tramped along anyhow. If they eagerly looked forward to a little plundering…well, who could blame them?
In earlier times, Sudbury had made turpentine from the conifers in the dense Atlantean forests. After some years of settlement, those forests were nowhere near so dense as they had been once upon a time. These days, wheat fields replaced woods. The Atlantean army marched past snow-covered stubble.
More snow swirled around them. Victor blessed it; it helped cloak them from the garrison inside the works on the western edge of town. The sentries the Atlanteans seized were too astonished to let out more than a couple of yelps that the wind drowned. They seemed almost relieved to be taken: it gave them the chance to go back to the Atlanteans' camp and get out of the cold.
"Forward! As fast as you can!" Victor called. "If we get ladders up against their palisade before they start shooting, the fort's ours."
He almost managed it. His men were throwing fascines into the ditch around the palisade when a redcoat on the wall fired at them and raised the alarm. Victor heard soldiers inside the fort yelling in dismay. He also heard their feet thudding on the wooden stairs leading up to the walkway.
"Hurry!" he shouted. "Hurry for your lives!"
Ladders thudded into place against the wall. Atlanteans swarmed up them. The redcoats tipped one, spilling soldiers into the ditch. An Englishman killed the first greencoat coming up another ladder. But the second Atlantean shot the defender in the face. The English soldier fell back with a howl, clutching at himself. By the time another redcoat neared the ladder, the Atlanteans were already on the walkway.
After that, taking the fort was easy. The attackers badly outnumbered the men who were trying to hold them back. Before long, white flags went up and the redcoats threw down their muskets.
"We never looked for you blokes," a sergeant complained to Victor. "Most of our officers are still in town, like."
"Are they?" Victor said tonelessly, and the underofficer nodded. The English officers probably had lady friends in Sudbury, Once the town was retaken, people who'd favored King George's soldiers were liable to have a thin time of it. Well, that was their lookout. Victor sent men into Sudbury with orders to capture any redcoats they found there. He added, "If you can, keep them all from getting away. With luck, we'll be able to roll up several of these forts. Maybe we will push all the way to the sea." The ease with which the fort by Sudbury fell made him think of grander things.
One English officer wearing a shirt and nothing more leaped onto a horse and made his getaway. Victor wouldn't have wanted to try that in warm weather; the Englishman's privates were going to take a beating. Several other officers and other ranks, less ins trepid, gave themselves up.
"What are you doing here?" a captured lieutenant asked with what sounded like unfeigned indignation.
"Fighting a war in the name of the Atlantean Assembly and of the Lord Jehovah," Victor told him. "What art you doing here, in this land you only oppress by your presence?"
"Obeying the orders of my king and my superiors." The lieutenant had nerve: he added, "He is your king, too, I remind you."
"My king would not send soldiers to invade his country. He would not arrest subjects who had done him no wrong. Neither would he tax subjects who have no say in his governing councils," Victor replied. "If King George stopped doing such things, he might be my king. As it is?" He shook his head. "As it is, you are welcome to him."
The English officer would have argued more. He might have surrendered, but he hadn't changed his mind. But Victor Radcliff took a winner's privilege and walked away from him. He didn't have to listen to nonsense if he didn't feel like it.
His men plundered the fort and their prisoners-and Sudbury, too, for it had lain quiet in enemy hands. They marched away better fed, better shod, better clothed, and better armed than they'd arrived. They marched away with silver and a bit of gold jingling in their pockets, too. After nothing to spend but Atlantean paper of shrinking value, hard money seemed doubly welcome to them.
Two days later, they fell on Halstead, fifteen miles south of Sudbury. The Englishman unencumbered with trousers had ridden north, so Victor dared hope the redcoats in Halstead didn't know his army was on the march. And so it proved; the fort there, which was weaker than Sudbury's, fell even more easily than the first one had.
And Halstead hadn't stayed quiet while occupied. Only a few days before the Atlanteans arrived, someone had knocked an English corporal over the head. And so the whole garrison there stayed in the fort. Victor thought he swept up every last redcoat in the neighborhood.