Chapter 9
Victor Radcliff admired his splendid new sword. The blade was chased with silver, the hilt wrapped in gold wire. The Atlantean Assembly had given it to him in thanks for his winter campaign that-briefly-brought the rebels back to the sea.
Blaise admired the weapon, too. "You going to fight with that?" he asked.
"I can if I have to," Victor said. "They gave it to me as an honor, though, and because it's worth something."
How much that last would matter was anyone's guess. Yes, if things went wrong he might be able to eat for several months on what he got from selling the sword. But, if things went wrong, odds were the English would catch him, try him for treason, and hang him. What price fancy sword then?
Blaise changed the subject: "Not going to snow any more, is it?"
"I don't think so," Victor answered. "Can't be sure, not here, but I don't think so." The west coast of Atlantis, warmed by the Bay Stream (Custis Cawthorne had christened the current in the Hesperian Gulf), already knew springtime. The lands on the east side of the Green Ridge Mountains had a harsher climate.
"By God, I hope it isn't!" The Negro shivered dramatically. "I never knew there was such a thing as cold weather, not like you get here." He shivered again. "The language I grew up talking, the language I talk with Stella, has no word for snow or ice or hail or sleet or blizzard or anything like that. In Africa, we didn't know there were such things. Frost? Frostbite? No, we never heard of them."
"Spring seems better after winter," Victor said. Blaise, who'd grown up in endless summer, looked unconvinced. Victor tried again: "And winter has its advantages. Do you like apples?" He knew Blaise did.
"What if I should?" Blaise asked cautiously.
"Apple trees will grow where there's no frost. They'll flower, but they won't bear fruit. They need the frost for that. So do pears."
Blaise considered. "If I had to give up apples or give up snow, I would give up snow," he said. "What about you?"
"Well… maybe."' Victor had seen lands without snow. It rarely fell on Avalon, and never on New Marseille. But he didn't hate cold weather the way Blaise did. "Depends on what you're used to, I suppose. I wouldn't want it hot and sticky all the time-I know that."
"Neither would I. It should be hot and dry sometimes," Blaise said. "One or the other was all I knew till I came here."
"Before long, it will be hot and sticky again," Victor said. The Negro nodded and smiled in anticipation.
They could talk about the weather forever without doing anything about it. One of the reasons to talk about the weather was that you couldn't do anything about it. Before long, Victor would have to decide what he could do about the English invaders. Even now, they might be trying to decide what to do about him.
He stepped out of his tent. Blaise followed. Everything was green, but then everything in Atlantis was green the year around unless covered in snow or imported from Europe or Terranova. Fruit trees and ornamentals did lose their leaves. Along with rhymes and songs, they let Atlanteans imagine what winters were like across the sea.
Greencoats marched and countermarched. They would probably never grow as smooth in their evolutions as the professionals they faced, but they were ever so much better than they had been.
A robin perched in a pine burst into song. Englishmen said Atlantean robins behaved and sang just like the blackbirds they knew back home. Atlantis had birds the people here called blackbirds, but they weren't much like Atlantean robins-or the smaller, redder-breasted birds that went by the same name in England, or even English blackbirds. It could get confusing.
The war could get confusing, too. Both sides had got some unpleasant surprises the first year. Victor hadn't imagined King George's government would send so many men to Atlantis, or that they would secure the coast from Croydon down to New Hastings. And General Howe hadn't looked for the kind of resistance the Atlanteans had put up. So deserters assured Victor, anyhow.
He wondered what Atlantean deserters told the English general. That Atlantean paper money lost value by the day? That morale went up and down for no visible reason? That equipment left a lot to be desired? All true-every word of it.
But if the deserters told Howe the Atlantean army didn't want to fight, he had to know they were liars. They couldn't match the redcoats' skills or their stoicism, but they didn't lack for spirit.
And how were the English soldiers' spirits these days? Victor's best measure of that was also what he learned from deserters. If what the Englishmen who came into the Atlanteans' lines said was true, their countrymen were surprised and unhappy the war had gone on this long. Before they crossed the ocean, their officers told them they would put down the rebellion in weeks if not days.
Radcliff discounted some of what he heard from them. They had to be discontented, or they wouldn't have deserted in the first place And they wouldn't have been human if they didn't tell their captors what they thought the Atlanteans wanted to hear.
Still, he did think they were having a harder time than they'd expected. He wanted them to go on having a hard time. If they had a hard enough time for long enough, they would give up and go home.
Or they might decide they weren't doing enough and send in more soldiers. As far as Victor knew, the mother country was righting nowhere else at the moment. England had more men than Atlantis. She could raise more troops-if she had the will.
And if she stayed untroubled elsewhere. Victor wondered how Thomas Paine was doing among the English settlements of northeastern Terranova. If those towns and their hinterlands also rose in rebellion, King George's ministers wouldn't be able to focus all their attention on-and send all their redcoats to-Atlantis.
If Paine had turned the Terranovan settlements all topsy-turvy, word of it hadn't come back to Atlantis. Victor shook his head after that thought crossed his mind. Word of whatever Paine was doing hadn't reached him. That wasn't necessarily the same as the other. News crossed the Green Ridge Mountains only slowly. And, if Terranova did have trouble, word of it might have reached English officers in Croydon or Hanover or New Hastings without spreading any farther. Those officers certainly wouldn't want him to find out.
He pulled a small notebook and pencil from a waistcoat pocket. More spies in cities-Paine? he scribbled. One of these days, if and as he found the time, he would do something about that or tell off someone else to do something about it.
He started to put the notebook away, then caught himself. He jotted another line: Copperskins around Atlantis? He'd heard next to nothing since sending his hundred men against the Terranovan savages the English had landed south of Avalon to harry the west coast.
If anyone on this side of the mountains knew more about that than he did, it was his distant cousin, Matthew Radcliffe. Victor sent a rider off to the Atlantean Assembly with a letter for him.
The man came back a few days later with a letter from Matthew. My dear General-I regret to state I can tell you nothing certain, the Assemblyman wrote. Only rumor has reached me: or rather, conflicting rumors. I have heard that our men have routed the Terranovan
barbarians. Contrariwise, I have also heard that the copperskins have
slaughtered every Atlantean soldier sent against them, afterwards denuding the corpses of hair and virile members as souvenirs of their triumph. Where the truth falls will, I doubt not, emerge, but has yet to do so. I remain, very respectfully, your most obedient servant. His signature followed.
"Drat!" Victor folded the letter as if washing his hands of it.
"Is the news bad, General?" Like any messenger, the fellow who'd brought the letter wanted to be absolved of its contents.
"Bad?" Victor considered. He had to shake his head. "No. The principal news is that there is no sure news, and that is bad-or, at least, I wished it to be otherwise."