"Maybe so. Then again, maybe not," Victor said. The Englishman went paler yet; Victor hadn't thought he could. But if he was sweating like that, why not sweat something out of him? "I'm sure the sergeant does know where General Cornwallis is going and what he intends doing once he gets there."
Not only did the sergeant know, he was pathetically eager to tell. He sang like a nightingale. Victor had heard the birds in England; while European creatures like the wild hog and the rat flourished in Atlantis, all efforts to naturalize the nightingale had failed.
After the Englishman spewed out everything he knew, the Atlantean troopers took him away. "He runs on at both ends, seems like," Isaiah remarked.
By then, more confident he wouldn't be murdered out of hand, the sergeant had regained some of his spirit. "If you were my man, I'd cane you for speaking of me so," he said gruffly.
Isaiah gave him a look as cold as the blocks of ice that sometimes drifted down near North Cape in winter. "Any man lays a finger on me without my leave-a finger, mind you, let alone a cane-I'll gutshoot him. And you, your God-damned Sergeant-ship, sir, you've got a devil of a lot of gut to shoot."
Victor smiled as the sergeant, suddenly silenced again, trudged away with his captors. Anyone who thought he could use an Atlantean as he used an Englishman was liable to get a rude surprise. This underofficer had got a whole string of them.
And yet, quite a few Englishmen found they liked Atlantean ways once they got used to them. Maybe the sergeant would be one of those. He'd make a good drillmaster… as long as he left his cane behind.
Redwood Hill must have held the name for a long time. No redwoods grew on it now, or for miles around. It was crowned by a rank tangle of second growth. Ferns and bushes and saplings, some Atlantis' native productions and others imported from Europe or Terranova, warred for space and sunlight.
Redwood Hill was also crowned by an English observation post. An alert man with a spyglass up there could see for a long way. He could easily keep an army under observation.
He might have much more trouble spotting greencoats armed with rifles as one by one they slipped through the second growth toward him. Victor hoped that would be so, and set about finding out empirically. Rifles banged, up near the hilltop. Before long, the greencoats sent a messenger down to Victor to report that Redwood Hill now lay in Atlantean hands. "We've even got the bugger's spyglass," the man reported.
"Capital!" Victor said. The art of grinding lenses was further advanced in England than in Atlantis. "Now we shall spy upon Cornwallis, not conversely."
Cornwallis must have foreseen that possibility, too. It pleased him less than it did Victor Radcliff. He promptly despatched a good-sized force of English regulars to dislodge the Atlanteans from the hilltop. He also sent a small troop of loyalist riflemen to match wits and weapons with the sharpshooters in green.
When the Atlanteans found themselves hard-pressed to hold the crest of Redwood Hill, Victor sent more men forward. They drove the redcoats down the western slope of the hill… until Cornwallis fed more Englishmen into the fight.
That meant Victor had to reinforce again or yield the crest. After he'd already done so much fighting for it, he wasn't willing to let that happen. And, plainly, the English commander wasn't willing to let him keep it.
"I did not purpose fighting our battle here," he told Blaise. "Nor do I believe Cornwallis purposed any such thing. But this fight has taken on a life of its own."
"It is war. It has its own purposes." The Negro spoke as if war were a live thing, and one at least as much in control of its own destiny as either of the opposing generals. Well, maybe he wasn't so far wrong. He finished, "If it wants a fight at Redwood Hill, a fight at Redwood Hill there shall be."
Victor couldn't contradict him. A fight at Redwood Hill there was: a most cursed irregular fight, mostly because of the terrain. The Atlanteans were used to fighting from cover whenever they got the chance. They'd harried the redcoats' looping march down from the north in just that way.
On overgrown Redwood Hill, not even the English regulars or their officers could dream of advancing in neatly dressed ranks. They made their way forward as best they could. Some came up the narrow paths that led to the top of the hill. They could move quickly, but they also exposed themselves to a galling fire from the Atlanteans lurking in the undergrowth. Others pushed through the bushes, fighting Atlantean-style themselves. That might not have been what they were used to, but they managed. Or maybe they just had a strong disinclination to retreat. It amounted to the same thing either way: a harder fight than Victor would have looked for.
He also would have guessed that the Englishmen's red uniform jackets made them better targets. But when he inquired of a man who came back from the crest with a minor wound, the Atlantean shook his head. "Don't hardly seem to matter. What with the ferns and the shrubs and suchlike, and what with the powder smoke, them bastards spy us about as quick as we set eyes on them." He held up his right hand, which was missing the last joint of the fourth finger. "I never did see the English son of a bitch who done gave me this."
"Go get it bandaged up," Victor said, and then, to one of his artillerists, "Can we get our guns up to the top of the hill?"
"Well, General, we can try," that worthy answered. "I'm not so sure how much good it'll do, though. Doesn't seem like anybody's all drawn up in rows for us to shoot at, does it?"
"No," Victor answered. "But send a fieldpiece up there anyhow, if you'd be so kind. Try to command the biggest path coming up from the west. If Cornwallis does seek to rush our position, that's how he'll essay it."
The artillerist sketched a salute. "If that's what you want. General, that's what you'll get. Warm work, it's liable to be, but what can you do?" He gave his own orders to his crew. They limbered up their four-pounder and started for the crest.
Victor hoped he hadn't sent them off to be killed. When a soldier talked about warm work, he commonly meant he didn't think he'd come back from it. But even one gun at the top of Redwood Hill might mean the difference between victory and defeat. Sometimes a general had to move the pieces across the board knowing they might be taken.
But the analogy with chess broke down too soon. A taken chess piece went into the box to wait for the next game, where it would start out fine. A dead soldier sprawled in the dirt, waiting for a raven to flutter down and peck out his eyes. A wounded soldier, especially one hurt worse than the fellow with whom he'd talked not long before, went screaming back to the surgeons, who might spare him a swallow of whiskey and a leather strap to bite on before they started carving. He might fight again if he was lucky (unlucky?), but he would never be the same afterwards.
And yet you would assuredly lose if you didn't place your men where some of them would get hurt or killed. If you didn't care for that unhappy certainty… you should never have tried the general's trade in the first place.
"Rather too late to worry about that," Victor muttered. "Worry about what?" Blaise asked-the mutter hadn't been low enough.
"About whether this cup will pass from me," Victor said. "It won't."
"Cup?" Blaise briefly looked blank. Then his face cleared. "Oh. The Bible." He was Christian enough to observe the forms of the majority's religion. How much he truly believed, Victor often wondered. But that was between Blaise and his God, if any- not for anybody else.
He had more urgent things to worry about than Blaise's relationship to his God, too. The rattle of musketry from the top of Redwood Hill grew fiercer and fiercer. That alarmed Victor, for he knew the redcoats could load and fire faster than his men. And then his little four-pounder boomed: once, twice. After the second shot, it fell silent.