Blaise would quibble with anyone. "No, that was the end of nowhere-and the wrong end, too."
"Well, maybe you've got something there," Victor admitted, remembering the swamps they'd splashed through on the way up to the Stour. He changed the subject and lowered his voice at the same time: "What do you think of our French general now?"
Also quiedy, Blaise answered, "I wonder what he'll be like when he grows up."
Victor laughed loud enough to make de la Fayette glance his way with a raised eyebrow. Victor looked back as imperturbably as he could. Eventually, seeing that he wouldn't get an explanation, de la Fayette gave it up as a bad job. Victor wasn't sure just how fluent in English he was, but suspected he understood more than he let on. "You are a rascal,'' he said to Blaise.
"Me?" The Negro shook his head. "You must be thinking of someone else, General." Victor laughed again, not so raucously this time. The marquis eyed him once more, but soon shrugged and went back to talking with his own officers.
"I wonder what Baron von Steuben will make of him." By now, Victor took the German soldier's pretensions to nobility for granted.
So did Blaise, who asked, "Which is higher, a baron or a marquis?"
"A baron. No-a marquis. I think. I'm not sure." Victor scowled. "No one has much use for fancy titles of nobility in Atlantis. There are a few knights here-men you're supposed to call Sir-and maybe a baron or two, but not many. If we win the war, if we cast off King George's rule, I don't believe we shall have any nobles left at all. Everyone will be the same, at least in law."
"Everyone white," Blaise said pointedly.
"Everyone free," Victor corrected. "Or what would you be doing with those stripes on your sleeve?"
Blaise grunted, acknowledging the point without wholly conceding it. "Can this work, with everyone the same? Even in my tribe back in Africa-other tribes, too-we have the chief, and other men you have to respect because of who they are… How do you say that in English?"
"Nobles?" Victor suggested.
"Maybe." Blaise didn't seem happy with the way the word tasted. "Not the same, I don't think. But we have those folk, and then we have the ordinary people, too. Law not the same for chief and respectable people" -no, he didn't like nobles-"and ordinary folk. Chief makes law. How can it stick on him?"
"Well, King Louis of France would say the same thing," Victor answered. "So would King George, even if Parliament told him he didn't know what he was talking about. How will it work withouta king or nobles? I don't know. It seemed to go all right in Athens in ancient days, and in Rome."
"Ancient days," Blaise muttered to himself. "Idea seems silly to me. You win this war against England, you should be King of Atlantis."
That thought had crossed Victor's mind once or twice. Who could stop him if he decided to put a crown on his head after he won this war? Who would want to stop him? Not many people. He could, in fact, think of only one. "I don't want to be King of Atlantis, Blaise."
"Why not?" The Negro eyed him in honest perplexity. "What could be better? Then I would be one of the king's-what do you say?-the king's ministers, that's it. You would be very rich, and I would be rich enough. Margaret would be Queen of Atlantis, and Stella her, uh, lady-in-waiting."
"Why fight to take down one king if all you do is set up another one in his place?" Victor returned. "Why-?"
Before he could go on, one of the few French horsemen galloped back toward the head of the Marquis de la Fayette's column. "Soldiers! English soldiers!" he shouted. "English soldiers at the bridge over the Brede!"
What the devil are they doing there? Victor wondered. But the question answered itself. If the redcoats knew the French army was on its way, of course they would do what they could to slow it down.
"Shall we dislodge them?" de la Fayette asked gaily. "We'd better, if we aim to get up toward Hanover," Victor answered.
"Then let us be about it." The marquis started shouting orders. Like the English, like the Atlanteans, the French used bugles and fifes and drums to maneuver their soldiers. Their calls were different, though, and more musical, at least to Victor's ears. The troopers in their bluejackets moved into line of battle as smoothly as redcoats might have done.
No more than a platoon of English soldiers guarded the bridge. They had one field gun: a little three-pounder. "Surrender!" Victor shouted to them. "You haven't a prayer of holding us off!"
"Be damned to you, sir!" the youngster in charge of them shouted back-he had to be around de la Fayette's age, "Come and get us!"
"Be careful what you ask for, son," Victor said, not unkindly.
"Someone may give it to you."
"I am no son of a rebel dog, nor son of a foul Frenchman, neither." The redcoat shook his fist at Victor, at the Marquis de la Fayette, and at the soldiers deploying behind the marquis. "Come
on, then, if you've got the stomach for it!"
"What does he say?" de la Fayette asked as Victor rode back to the French army.
"He defies us." Victor whistled sourly; that didn't seem strong enough. "He casts his defiance in our teeth."
"He is brave." The marquis paused for a moment. "It could be that he is also a fool. He seems quite young." Of his own age de la Fayette said not a word.
Methodically, the French troops advanced to the attack. The Englishmen's fieldpiece boomed. Its ball-a plaything to look at- knocked over four Frenchmen. One got up again. One never would. The cries from the other two filled the air.
Just before the French opened up on them, the redcoats fired a volley. More men in blue fell. The French returned fire. Several Englishmen went down. The others retreated to the north bank of the Brede, hauling their popgun after them.
"Rush the bridge," Victor urged. "They're going to burn it or blow it up."
De la Fayette shouted the order. The Frenchmen broke ranks and surged forward at a run. A couple of them were on the bridge when the powder charge under it went off. Timbers flew every which way. One of them speared the leading French soldier. He screamed like a damned soul as he toppled. The blast flung the other Frenchman on the bridge into the Brede. He half swam, half splashed back to the south bank of the river. The charge blew a fifteen-foot hole in the bridge: too far for any soldier to hope to jump.
With a mocking salute, the junior English officer led his surviving men off to the east. "Damn him," Blaise said quietly.
Victor Radcliff nodded. "He did everything a man in his place could hope to do-and rather more besides, I should say."
"He shall not delay us long, despite his arrogance," de la Fayette said. Sure enough, French military engineers-pioneers, they called them-were making for the nearest trees. They would have the bridge repaired soon enough: a few hours, a day at the most. All the same, the redcoats were costing them that time. A platoon facing an army couldn't do much better.
"Hello, General." The Atlantean courier touched a finger to his hat in a not very military salute. "Good to see you again, damned if it ain't."
"How did you find me? There've been times lately when I wasn't sure Old Scratch knew where I was, let alone anybody else," ¦Victor said.
"You ask me, it ain't so bad if the Devil don't know where you're at," the courier replied, and Victor could hardly disagree The leathery horseman went on, "Devil or not, General, there's ways." He laid a finger by the side of his nose and didn't elaborate