Trenches and covered ways let English soldiers move from one fort to another without exposing themselves to Atlantean riflemen and cannoneers. The enemy was as ready as anyone could reasonably be.
So was Victor Radcliff. He thought he was, anyhow. In Europe, mortars-guns firing explosive shells at steep angles so they topped the walls of a fort and came down inside-had given attackers at least a fighting chance when assaulting works. The Atlanteans had a few iron and brass mortars smuggled in despite the English blockade. They had a few more their smiths had made, imitating the European models. And they had quite a few improvised from hollowed-out tree trunks bound with iron bands. Because a mortar's barrel was so short, it didn't have to withstand anything like the pressure an ordinary cannon did. The wooden mortars seemed to perform about as well as their stubby metal counterparts.
No one came out to warn Victor the English had learned of his plans. He suddenly wished he would have established a homing-pigeon connection with Hanover. More than a century before, back in the days when Avalon was the wickedest city in the world, one of the piratical Radcliffes had done something like that. Victor consoled himself by remembering that the pirate-not a close kinsman of his-had gone down to defeat despite his pigeons
All the same… Finding a scrap of paper, Victor scribbled Croydon and Pigeons on it. Would he find that scrap again? Would he remember what the cryptic note meant if he did find it? Even if he did come across it and did recall, would it matter? He couldn't know now. All he could do was give later the best chance he could.
Off went the detachment that would make the noisy demonstration against the northern part of Cornwallis' fieldworks. Most of the ordinary guns went with it. It was also brave with banners, to fool the redcoats into thinking it held all the units whose standards waved above it.
Before long, the thunder of cannon fire and the fierce clatter of musketry-a sound much like rocks falling on sheets of iron- told him the demonstration was well under way. Some of those volleys from the muskets could only have come from perfectly trained and disciplined English regiments. If the redcoats hadn't taken the feint, they never would.
If they hadn't, a lot of his men would get shot soon. He was liable to get shot himself. He made himself shrug. He'd done the best he could.
"Come on, boys!" he called. "Hanover's got the prettiest women in Atlantis, people say. You'll see 'em for yourselves before long."
That won him a cheer, which he hushed as fast as he could. Fortunately, all the gunfire up ahead meant the redcoats weren't likely to notice it. He led the rest of the Atlantean army-including most of the mortar crews-south at a quick march. Their comrades had to keep the English troops in front of them busy for an hour, maybe a little longer…
Several of his men had grown up in these parts. They pointed out paths that ran east toward the weak spot in the works he thought he'd found. He sent mounted scouts ahead of his main force. With luck, they would scoop up any redcoat pickets or loyalist Atlanteans who might dash east and warn the main English force the Atlantean Assembly's army was on the way.
Without luck… Victor refused to dwell on that. We will be lucky, he told himself, as if telling himself something like that would make it come true.
No horse pistols boomed ahead of the advancing Atlanteans. Victor took that for a good sign. His scouts hadn't found a reason to shoot at anyone. Nor had they run into English cavalry-or into Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion, if it was real and not a figment of some Englishman with a quill pen and an overactive imagination.
"Almost to the enemy's line, General," said one of the men who'd come out from Hanover to give Victor Radcliff what news he had.
"So we are," Victor agreed. One more swell of ground, maybe two, and they'd be able to see what awaited them. Just as much to the point, the English soldiers in Cornwallis' fieldworks would be able to see them. Victor raised his voice: "Form line of battle!"
The Atlanteans deployed as if they'd been doing it for years. Well, a lot of them had. Baron von Steuben would have been proud. At the last council of war, Victor had realized his officers were veterans. So were many of the troopers. He was surprised to hear them cheer as they swung from column to line. They hadn't done that since the early days of the war. He'd assumed they knew better. Maybe they had, too. But they also knew what taking Hanover back would be worth. It was worth a cheer, evidently. "There!" The man from Hanover pointed. "I see," Victor said quietly. The forts and trenches scarred what had been fields of wheat and barley. They were well sited; Victor had never known English military engineers not to take what advantage of the countryside they could. His men would have to charge up a gentle slope to reach the English positions. If those positions were packed with redcoats… Well, in that case this wouldn't be one of those lucky days-not for his side, anyhow.
A musket thundered in the trenches. He watched the cloud of gunpowder smoke rise. That was a signal shot, warning the Englishmen up and down the line that the Atlanteans were here.
"Mortarmen!" Victor shouted. Then he drew his fancy sword and flourished it over his head. "Come on!" he cried to the Atlanteans whose bayonets glittered in the sun. "Hanover is ours!"
Not if the redcoats had anything to say about it. They started shooting from the trench. Cannon boomed from a redoubt. Several Atlanteans went down as a roundshot plowed through their ranks.
The men who served the mortars did what they could. They dropped mortar bombs on the soldiers in the trenches and on the enemy artillerists. They didn't take long to find the range. Hurting the foe was a different story. Mortar bombs had to be the most irksome weapons artificers had ever almost perfected. Their fuses proved much more art than science. Some dropped harmlessly to the ground without exploding. Some burst high in the air, which was frightening and distracting but not even slightly dangerous. A few, and only a few, actually did what they were supposed to do.
One of the English cannon abruptly fell silent. That was good, for Victor's troopers were scrambling through the stakes and felled trees set out in front of the enemy trench line. Then another well-placed mortar bomb blew several English soldiers to bloody rags, right in front of the gap the Atlanteans had cleared. Whooping, Victor's men rushed forward.
Clearing trenches could be nasty, expensive work. Not this time-the redcoats here really were thin on the ground. Only a few of them fought when Victor's troopers bore down on them. More threw away their muskets and surrendered or ran from the Atlanteans.
"Keep moving!" Victor shouted. "On to Hanover!"
"On to Hanover!" his men roared.
English officers shouted, too, trying to get their men to form up in the open country behind their lines to slow the Atlantean advance. The redcoats were nothing if not game. But then Victor's mortar crews dropped several bombs on their lines. Stolid as the English soldiers were, they weren't used to that kind of bombardment. Along with sharp volleys from the Atlantean infantry, it disrupted them and kept them from putting up the kind of fight they might have.
Bit by bit, the Englishmen decided they'd had enough. They retreated to the north and south, toward Croydon and New Hastings. Church bells chimed in Hanover. People streamed out into the streets to welcome the Atlantean army. Tears stung Victor's eyes. If he could hold the city, he'd done one of the things he had to do to win the war.
Chapter 16
Hanover. Not the oldest city in Atlantis, but the largest and the richest. And now in Atlantean hands again! How Cornwallis had to be gnashing his teeth! How Thomas Paine would rejoice when word came to distant Terranova… if the redcoats hadn't caught him and jailed him or hanged him by now.