He said not a word about that. He didn't ride away to visit Meg. Blaise didn't go off to see Stella, either. The French might have followed them. A visit from the allies' officers would have been tolerable. A visit from the whole French army? No. Victor knew too well what happened to countryside with soldiers on it. He'd ordered his men to subsist themselves on the countryside often enough. He didn't want to watch his own land stripped bare by locusts in blue jackets.
Instead, the French troops foraged south of Hooville. That was unfortunate. Victor had spent a lot of years building up his own land. Having it plundered, even by friends, would have felt catastrophic.
"Somewhere east of Hooville," Victor told the Marquis de la Fayette, "the English will wait for us in force."
"So I should think, yes," the nobleman said. "That is also the direction in which Hanover lies, is it not so? Hanover and the main Atlantean army?"
"It is," Victor said. "We ought to join forces with them if we can. And even if we can't, I ought to go back and take charge of
them again. I've been away longer than I thought I would."
De la Fayette thought for a moment. "And you would perhaps wish my force to make a demonstration to allow you to slip past the English lines?"
"That would be excellent. Merci beauamp" Victor said. The Frenchman might or might not be able to lead men in the field. On that, Victor as yet held no strong opinion either way. But de la Fayette was not without strategic insight. Maybe he really would make an officer.
English cavalrymen-actually, riders from a loyalist troop, perhaps even Habakkuk Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion-collided with the French scouts about halfway between Hooville and Hanover ("Between Noplace and Someplace," as Blaise elegantly put it). They pushed the outnumbered French horsemen back on de la Fayette's main body. French field guns boomed. A roundshot felled an enemy rider's mount as if it were a redwood. From several hundred yards away, Victor couldn't make out what happened to the man whose nag so abruptly departed this world.
French foot soldiers in loose order-skirmishers-advanced on the enemy cavalry. The loyalists with carbines banged away at the Frenchmen. They had their own field gun. It unlimbered and fired a couple of shots. Then, sedately, as if to say they had a luncheon appointment somewhere else and weren't withdrawing in the face of superior forces, the loyalists wheeled their horses and rode away.
"They performed tolerably well. No great discipline, perhaps, but they are well mounted and brave." De la Fayette spoke in the clinical tones of a doctor assessing a case of smallpox.
"Oh, no denying they're brave," Victor said. "I only wish they weren't, or that they were brave in a better cause."
"No doubt they feel the same about your men," de la Fayette observed.
"No doubt," Victor said. "Or they had better, at any rate. If the English weren't worried about us, they wouldn't have to recruit these salauds." That wasn't fair, and he knew it. The loyalists weren't-or most of them weren't-men who deserved to be sworn at. They were only men who had different notions of how Atlantis should be ruled. Not men who deserved to be sworn at, no: just men who needed to be killed.
Well, one or two of them had died here, along with one or two Frenchmen. The foot soldiers came up to the horse the cannon ball had killed. They butchered it with as much enthusiasm as if it had been a cow. Victor had eaten all sorts of strange meats, but he didn't remember ever eating horse before.
It wasn't bad. A little chewy-a little gluey, as a matter of fact- and a little gamy, but not bad. The Frenchmen seemed to find it delicious. Victor wouldn't have gone that far. Neither would Blaise, but he said, "A bellyful of horse is a lot better than a bellyful of nothing."
"Isn't it just!" Victor replied.
The French went on skirmishing with loyalists. After the cavalrymen reported their position, loyalist foot soldiers harried them from behind trees and rocks, as Victor's men had harried the redcoats. But the French were less rigid than the English, and quick to fight back the same way. The loyalists melted away before them.
Victor waited for General Cornwallis to commit his own troops against the French. When the English commander did, Victor took his leave of de la Fayette, saying, "I hope we shall meet again. I expect we shall, and with luck the meeting will not be long delayed."
"May it be so," de la Fayette said. "We will keep them busy here. They will never think to look for you as you fare east. Good fortune go with you."
To help good fortune along, Victor and Blaise split up, as they'd done more than once before. They were known to travel together, so each of them headed toward Hanover alone.
Chapter 19
"Halt!" the sentry shouted. "Who comes?"
Victor Radcliff reined in. Answering that question was always interesting-and sometimes much too interesting. He thought the man had an Atlantean accent. Even if he turned out to be right, it might not do him any good. Loyalist positions weren't likely so close to Hanover, but they weren't impossible, either.
"I am a friend," he answered carefully.
"No doubt, but whose?" the sentry said, advancing with purposeful strides. "Are you the Atlantean Assembly's friend, or King George's? In times like these, you cannot be friend to both."
How right he was! And, damn him, he gave no clue as to whose friend he was. An answer he misliked, and he would shoot. And he was too close to be likely to miss, even with a smoothbore musket.
"I am the Atlantean Assembly's friend." Victor's hand moved stealthily toward his pistol. If he had to fight for his life, he would.
But the sentry-whose clothes, rough homespun of linen and wool, also refused to declare his allegiance-didn't fire right away. "And which friend of the Atlantean Assembly are you?" he demanded.
Had the English or the loyalists captured Blaise? Had fire and sharp metal torn from him word that Victor was also bound for Hanover? If they had, the sentry was just waiting to be sure before he killed. Sometimes a man had to roll the dice. "I am Victor Radcliff," Victor said. He could-he hoped he could-make sure the enemy didn't take him alive.
"You are?" the sentry said. "Well, how do I know you're him, and not some braggart with more mouth than brains?"
"Take me into Hanover," Victor replied. "If they decide I am an impostor there, they will assuredly hang me for my presumption, and you may have the pleasure of watching me dance on air."
After thinking that through, the sentry nodded. "I'd have to be dumb as a honker to tell you no," he said.
"That would not stop, nor even slow, a great many men I have met," Victor said.
"I do believe it." The sentry raised his voice: "Abraham! Calvin! One of you come down! I got to go into town, I do."
A man did appear from an ambush position. Victor decided he was lucky they were on his side. He would not have had much luck assailing the one fellow who showed himself, not when the sentry had friends.
The soldier-he called himself Jeremiah-did not have a horse. He walked toward Hanover beside Victor, and didn't complain about it. "Got to make these boots fit my feet a little better anyways," he said.
"Very fine boots," Victor said-and so they were. But they weren't perfecdy new, so he added, "How did you come by them?"
"Bushwhacked a redcoat," Jeremiah said matter-of-factly. "He was a bigger fellow than I am. I reckoned I could stuff the boots with rags if I had to. But it turned out our feet were just about the same size."