"Would you rather we gave you the bayonet instead?" Victor asked mildly. The farmer's bravado deflated like a pricked pig's bladder.
The real trouble was, a good many people who dwelt near the ocean were loyal to King George. Some farms the Atlantean army passed were bare of livestock and of people. The men, women, and children had fled their own countrymen's advance. That they should want to do such a thing was demoralizing. It was also dangerous; they would bring word to the redcoats in Weymouth that the Atlanteans were coming.
"No surprises any more," Victor said gloomily. "I wanted to descend on them before they knew I was there."
"Won't happen," Blaise said.
"I know," Victor answered. "When this war ends, we shall have to settle accounts with all the traitors still living amongst us. I fear it will prove neither quick nor easy." His mouth twisted. One way or another, he was bound to be right about that. But if the redcoats prevailed, the hunt would be on for everyone who'd risen against King George. On for me and mine, he thought, which made matters unmistakably plain.
On pressed the army, northeast toward Weymouth. They made good time. The roads were frozen hard, and the men better shod than they had been at the start of the campaign. If English captives with rags on their feet came down with chilblains… too bad. Victor's worst dread was a thaw that would turn the roads to mud. That would slow the army to a crawl.
Scouts reported an English detachment moving into place to block the Atlanteans. "How big a detachment?" Victor asked.
The men looked at one another. Almost in unison, they shrugged. "Don't rightly know, General," one of them answered. "They had horse out in front, so we couldn't push on and take a good gander at the foot."
"A pox," Victor muttered. Was he rushing into a trap? Or were the redcoats trying to bluff him out of a prize he could win? "Well, from which direction do they come? From the northeast? Or from the southeast?" he asked. If the former, the English force likely came out of Weymouth's garrison, which-he thought-was none too big. If the latter, then he might be heading toward the bulk of General Howe's army, sallying from New Hastings. He knew too well how poor his chances were of beating it in the open field.
One or two scouts pointed southeast, the rest northeast. After some shouting and name-calling, the minority swung to northeast like a compass swinging towards a lodestone.
Victor hoped they swung because they were persuaded and not, like the lodestone, because they had no choice. He turned to one of the young messengers who always rode beside him. "Tell the musicians to play Form line of battle, if you would be so kind," he said.
"Form line of battle. Yes, General." Eyes bright with excitement, the messenger set spurs to his horse and galloped away.
Atlantean evolutions were smoother than they had been the summer before. Compared to the redcoats, though, Victor's men still wasted too much time and motion deploying from column to line. Baron von Steuben's guttural obscenities helped chivvy them into place. With cavalry out in front and off to either flank, they tramped forward across frozen fields.
Horse pistols and carbines boomed up ahead of Victor. So did a field gun-obviously, one that belonged to the English. Snow and scattered trees kept him from seeing what was going on. When his men didn't come pelting back with enemy riders in pursuit, he took that for a good sign.
"Forward!" he ordered. "Double-time! We will support the horse with all the force at our disposal."
Urged on by their musicians, the Atlanteans hurried toward combat. Any sensible man, as a cynic like Custis Cawthorne would have been quick to point out, would have turned around and hustled off in the opposite direction. The most a soldier could hope for was not getting shot. All his other possibilities were much, much worse. When you looked at it like that, war seemed a mighty peculiar way to settle disputes.
And yet the men smiled and joked as they advanced. They'd just overrun three English forts in a row. They thought they could beat redcoats any time, anywhere. The summer's defeats seemed to lie as far behind them as Cr6cy and Agincourt. Quite a few of the men who'd lost those battles had gone home since. Maybe enthusiasm could make do for experience.
There stood the English line, drawn up at the top of a small swell of ground. "Well, God be praised," Victor murmured. Unless the enemy was hiding some huge force beyond the crest, this was only a detachment. And the Atlanteans handily outnumbered it.
The officer commanding the redcoats must have seen the same thing at about the same time. Too late for him-he had little choice now but to accept battle. The Atlanteans had drawn too close to let him pull back. They would have harried him all the way to Weymouth. His chances here might not be good, but they were better than the ones retreat offered.
"We'll lap round his flanks," Victor said. "If we can get in behind him, the game is up."
To keep the English soldiers from meeting that threat, he also threw in a frontal assault. Most of the greencoats who went straight at the enemy had captured bayonets tipping their flintlocks. The redcoats wouldn't have things all their own way in the hand-to-hand, as they so often did.
They gave the Atlanteans a volley. Victor's men-the majority still standing, at any rate-returned it. The redcoats reloaded with urgent competence. The Atlanteans closed on them, yelling like fiends. If they could turn it into a melee before the Englishmen recharged their muskets…
They did, or most of them did. Soldiers swore and screamed and stabbed at one another. The Atlanteans were bigger men than their foes. The English still had more experience and know-how. Had that frontal attack been the only string in Victor's bow, it would have failed.
But, with his superior numbers, he could outflank the redcoats to left and right. The foe couldn't stand and fight the Atlanteans directly in front of him, not when men to either side poured enfilading fire into his ranks. If the English held their ground, they might get cut off and surrounded. They wouldn't last long after that.
Common soldiers saw the danger-or simply panicked, depending on one's point of view-before their officers did. They started streaming away from their battle line. Some left by squads, in fair order, and kept firing at the Atlanteans who harried them. More simply tried to save their own skins. They went off every man for himself. When greencoats challenged them, they were quick to throw down their muskets-if they'd held on to them- and raise their hands.
About half the English force fell back toward Weymouth in a compact mass. Victor let them go. Wiping them out or forcing their surrender would have been more expensive than it was worth. He had another victory.
Crows and ravens and vultures spiraled down to feast on the bounty laid out for them. Surgeons did what they could for the wounded from both sides. They gave them bullets or leather straps to bite on as they probed for musket balls and sutured bayonet wounds. For amputations, the surgeons had a little opium and a lot of barrel-tree brandy to dull the torment. All that might have slightly softened the shrieks rising to the uncaring sky. It assuredly did no more. It might not even have done so much.
"Do we press on, General?" Habakkuk Biddiscombe asked.
Victor eyed the twisted bodies and the trampled, blood-splashed snow. He listened for a moment to the cries of the wounded. Then he did what he had to do: like Pharaoh, he hardened his heart and made himself nod. "Yes, Captain Biddiscombe. We press on."
The redcoats in Weymouth were as ready to receive Victor Radcliffs Atlanteans as they could be, given their usual practices and the weather. Their practices meant they were not in the habit of digging entrenchments under any circumstances. The weather, which froze the ground hard, meant they would have had trouble trying it even had it occurred to them.