"Me, I'd sooner catch him alive," Blaise said. "Then I could roast him over a slow fire and turn him on a spit so he got done on all sides." He grinned evilly. "Easy enough to tell with a white man, eh? And that would give the dirty scut plenty of time to think on his mistakes before he gave up the ghost."
"Devil take me if I don't fancy the sound of that myself," the scout exclaimed.
"So long as we kill him, that will suffice," Victor said. Blaise was born a savage, of course. But men who favored the Atlantean Assembly and those who remained loyal to King George were roasting each other over slow fires: oh, not where the main armies marched and countermarched, but in the countless little ambushes and affrays that would never make the history books or change the war's result by one iota but went on nonetheless. And those men on both sides gleefully played the savage without Blaise's excuse.
"We'll go on," Victor said, as he had so many times. "If we can winkle them out of Hanover, that will be a great triumph for us and a great disaster to them. And if Habakkuk Biddiscombe has to sail off to England-on which he has never in his life set eyes-even that will be enough."
"Devil it will," Blaise muttered, but not loud enough for Victor to call him on it.
Victor was anything but sure they could squeeze Cornwallis out of Hanover. Even if they didn't, they might reach the sea and cut the English coastal holdings in half. That would be worth doing in and of itself.
Go on they did. Loyalists skirmished with them. Like King George's Atlantean Rangers, these men fought as soldiers, not in ambuscades. Sometimes redcoats stiffened their ranks; sometimes they managed well enough on their own. Victor ordered his own men to treat them as prisoners of war when they were taken. "If they meet us fairly, we must return the favor," he insisted.
And his troops obeyed him… more often than not. Even so, an unfortunate number of such captives were shot "trying to escape." He wondered whether he should issue harsher orders. In the end, he decided not to. Issuing orders that weren't likely to be obeyed only damaged the force of other commands.
Before long, a scout carried another broadsheet back into his encampment. This one announced the creation of something called "Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion." Volunteers in the Legion would "root out, eradicate, extirpate, and utterly exterminate the verminous rebels opposing in arms his brilliant Majesty, good King George."
Most printers worked in the coastal towns the English held. Victor found one back in Brandenburg who was loyal to the Atlantean Assembly. He had the man crank out a counterblast, one warning men who leaned toward King George that "no individual from the cavalry formation styled Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion who may be captured by the armies of the Atlantean Assembly shall under any circumstances hope for quarter."
No Horsed Legion appeared. Victor wondered whether Cornwallis had had second thoughts-and, if he had, whether Habakkuk Biddiscombe was contemplating desertion from the English cause. Probably not, Victor decided-the cavalry officer had to know Atlantis would never take him back. Biddiscombe had made his bed. Now he had to lie in it, even if it proved uncomfortable.
Victor also wondered when the French declaration of war would produce soldiers on the ground in Atlantis. Indeed, he wondered if it ever would. In the last war, the French managed to convey one small army across the Atlantic, all their later efforts failing. Their navy was stronger now. Was it enough stronger? it had better be, he thought. His own men made vastly better soldiers than they had when they first enlisted. All the same, he could use some cynical, hard-bitten professionals to show them by example how the job was done.
Meanwhile, he used what he had. Redcoats and loyalists skirmished with his forces before falling back toward Hanover. Cornwallis seemed less interested in fighting big battles than General Howe had been before him. Maybe he was clever. Howe had tried to crush the Atlantean uprising. The only thing he'd proved was that he couldn't. Cornwallis, by contrast, seemed to want to force the Atlanteans to crush him. As long as he held the towns on the eastern coast, the United States of Atlantis were only wind and air. They weren't a nation, any more than a man deprived of his head was a man.
And then, to Victor's surprise, he got word that some of Cornwallis' garrison in Hanover was putting to sea and sailing away. When he heard the rumor the first time, he had trouble believing it. But it came to him again the next day, brought by a man who didn't know anyone else had carried word ahead of him.
"Why would he do that, when we're pressing him toward Hanover?" Victor asked. "I know the Englishmen make good soldiers, and I know Hanover has good outworks. All the same, if too many forts are empty of men, the place will fall."
"Well…" His second informant was a plump merchant named Gustavus Vasa Rand, who plainly enjoyed knowing things the commanding general didn't. The man steepled his fingers, then tugged at his ear before going on, "I hear tell the redcoats have themselves trouble somewheres else."
"Where?" Radcliff exploded. If it was anywhere in Atlantis, he thought he would have known about it. If the English had trouble anywhere in Atlantis, he hoped he would have helped foment it.
But Gustavus Vasa Rand replied, "Over in Terranova, is what folks say. Some of the settlements there, they've decided they don't fancy King George any more'n we do."
"Have they?" Victor breathed. "Well, well, well. Has anyone reported why they chose this moment to rise up?"
"Don't you know?" Yes, Gustavus Vasa Rand exuded the amiable scorn the man who's heard things feels for the poor, ignorant twit he aims to enlighten. "Why, this past year or so a demon pamphleteer's appeared amongst 'em. He's tossed so much red pepper into the stew, even the boring old Terranovans can't help breathing fire after they go and eat of it."
"I dare say he's caused King George's men in those parts a good deal of, ah, pain," Victor remarked with malice aforethought.
"Why, so he has." One of Rand's bristly eyebrows rose. "Funny you should put it so, General, for Paine's his family name."
"And Thomas his Christian name," Victor agreed. "I am acquainted with the gentleman, and with his qualities. Indeed, I sent him west across the Hesperian Gulf, hoping he would do exactly as he has done."
"Well, good on you, then," the merchant told him. "The more toes England has on the griddle, the more hopping she needs must do." Now the look he sent Victor was more speculative than pitying. A general who could work out a plot and have it come off the way he wanted wasn't some harmless bumpkin, but a man who might need some serious watching.
"I am grateful for the news, believe me," Victor said. "It will surely influence the way I conduct my campaign from this time forward."
"Ah? Influence it how, pray?" Gustavus Vasa Rand leaned forward, eager to be even more in the know than he was already.
But Victor Radcliff only laid a finger by the side of his nose. "By your leave, sir, I'll say no more. What you have not heard, no red-hot pokers or thumbscrews may tear from you should the redcoats decide they must learn all the secrets you carry under your hat."
"They wouldn't do that." Rand's voice lacked conviction. Victor refrained from mentioning one other possibility: that the trader from Hanover might tell the English what he knew under no compulsion whatsoever. Some men tried to work both sides at once, or pretended to serve one while actually on the other. He had spies in Hanover; he had to assume Cornwallis played the same game.