As soon as spring came, the redcoats would try to recapture Hanover. Victor was as sure of that as he was of the Resurrection and the Second Coming, and it struck him as rather more immediately urgent than either of those. He set his men to digging trenches and throwing up earthworks to keep the enemy from getting past them.
His soldiers concealed their enthusiasm for all that cold-weather pick-and-shovel work very well. The most he ever heard any of them say in its favor was a remark from one tired Atlantean to his comrade as they both piled up an earthen rampart: "Maybe all this slaving means we ain't so likely to get shot."
"Maybe." The man's friend seemed unimpressed. "But it's near as bad as if we were, eh?"
"Well…" The first soldier weighed that. Then he nodded. "Afraid so," he agreed mournfully.
But neither of them stopped working. Victor didn't mind grumbling. William the Conqueror's soldiers must have grumbled, and Augustus Caesar's, and King David's as well. As long as they did what wanted doing, they could grumble all they pleased.
Grumbling only turned dangerous when it started swallowing work.
English scouts rode down to see what Victor's men were up to. Atlantean riflemen fired at the scouts to make them keep their distance. Every so often, a rifleman would knock a scout out of the saddle. Then the others would stay farther away for a while.
Sometimes patriotic Atlanteans would sneak down from the north to tell Victor what Cornwallis' men were up to. Sometimes Victor wasn't so sure whether the Atlanteans who sneaked down from the north were patriotic or not. But he had soldiers from all over the northern settlements. States, he reminded himself. They're states now. We're states now. More often than not, he could find somebody who knew his would-be informants, either by name or by reputation.
He didn't seize the men he reckoned untrustworthy. No: he thanked them for what they told him, and then threw it on the mental rubbish heap. He sent them back to the north with as much misinformation as he could feed them. Maybe Cornwallis would realize Victor realized he was being fooled, or maybe not. The chance to confuse King George's commander seemed worth taking
As spring approached, Victor wondered whether the enemy would let him hold Hanover undisturbed till summer. He wouldn't have done that himself, but Howe and Cornwallis had already tried several things he wouldn't have done himself. Some of them had worked, too, worse luck.
But then three reliable men in quick succession came down to warn him the redcoats were moving at last. He put men into his north-facing works. He also sent horsemen out beyond those works to shadow the English army.
Cornwallis, naturally, had his own spies. Just as patriots hurried south to warn the Atlantean army, so loyalists galloped north to tell the English what Victor Radcliff was up to. They must have given him a good report of Victor's field fortifications. Instead of trying to bull through them, Cornwallis slid around them to the west.
"He wants to fight it out in the open," Victor told a council of war. "He thinks his regulars will smash our Atlantean fanners."
The officers almost exploded with fury. He'd never heard so many variations on "We'll show him!" in his life. He got a stronger reaction than he really wanted, for he retained a solid respect for the men who filled the ranks of the English army. They were miserably paid, they were trained and handled harshly enough to make a hound turn and snap, but they were deadly dangerous with musket and bayonet to hand.
If he marched out of Hanover and lost a battle in the open field, he wasn't sure he could fall back into the city and hold on to it. And he wanted to keep Hanover-no, he had to. An Atlantean presence on the east coast was visible proof the United States of Atlantis were a going concern. Not only that: the harbor gave France a perfect place to land troops-if France ever got around to sending them.
And so Victor temporized: "First, let's see how mad we can drive him. Most of you remember how bad the mosquitoes were down in the south." He waited till the other officers nodded. Anyone who'd forgotten what the mosquitoes were like had to have an iron hide. Victor said, "I aim to make us into mosquitoes, the way we were when the war began."
"Sounds pretty, General," a captain said. "What's it mean?"
What would Cornwallis have done after a question like that? Had the luckless questioner flogged? Cornwallis was a good-natured man, as Victor had cause to know, but…Most likely, the question would never be asked in an English council. Unlike rude colonials, English junior officers knew their place.
Being a rude colonial himself, Victor didn't drag the captain off to the whipping post. "I want to put riflemen or musketeers behind every tree and bush along the enemy's line of march. I want to capture every man of his who goes off into the bushes to answer nature's call. I want to shoot the animals hauling his cannon and supplies. Let's see how much he enjoys an enemy with whom he cannot close. Does that satisfy you, sir?"
"Reckon so," the captain answered. "But if that's how you aim to fight, seems a shame we wasted all that time on close-order drill."
"Wasted!" Baron von Steuben roared-actually, "Vasted!"
" 'Bout the size of it," the captain said-he didn't seem to care whom he antagonized. "Form square! and By the right flank march! and Deploy from column to line! and I don't know what all else. This here coming up sounds like a lot more fun."
Before the German officer could murder the man, Victor said, "We need both styles. And our men are better soldiers because they can fight like regulars as well as guerrilleros. Close-order drill improves discipline generally. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"
"Hayfoot! Strawfoot!" the captain said reminiscently. He spread his hands. "All right, General. You've got me there."
"Good." Victor smiled. "Now let's go get the damned redcoats."
The portly English sergeant was almost beside himself with rage when three grinning Atlanteans marched him into Victor Radcliff's presence. "Hello, Sergeant," Victor said. "What seems to be your trouble? Are you not relieved to be captured rather than killed?"
"Relieved, sir?" The word only infuriated the sergeant more. "I was taken with my trousers down! Is that any way to fight a war?"
"Evidently," Victor answered.
The Atlanteans went from grinning to laughing out loud. "You should've seen him jump when old Isaiah here went and yelled, 'Hands up or we'll blow your arsehole off!' " one of them said.
Another-Isaiah, by the way he made as if to bow-added, "He didn't just jump, neither. He went and shat them fancy breeches. Had to try and clean 'em off with some leaves he tore off a bush."
"General!" the English sergeant cried piteously. For how many years had he made his living tormenting the redcoats luckless enough to serve under him? And a good living it had been, too, judging by that bulging belly. But now others were giving it to him, and he was finding he didn't like it so well.
"If you sniff, General, you can still smell him," Isaiah said. "He let go, all right-damned if he didn't."
"That will be enough of that," Victor said. "Had his men taken you, you wouldn't want them gloating afterwards."
"God bless you, sir," the sergeant said, knuckling his forelock. "You're a gentleman, sir, you are, a merciful gentleman."
"Huh." The third Atlantean spoke up. "A great tun like him don't deserve nobody's mercy. He's the kind who loots and murders and takes the women upstairs whether they want to go or not."
Victor thought the soldier had made a shrewd guess. The sergeant turned the color of paste, which said a lot about how shrewd it was. "I don't know anything about any of that," he said, but he didn't sound persuasive.