English cannon thundered. Blaise coughed to draw Victor's notice. When Victor glanced his way, the Negro said, "The redcoats are going, 'Here come those Atlantean madmen again. Don't they ever learn their lessons?' "
"Heh," Victor Radcliff said uncomfortably. "Just wait a bit. Pretty soon, they'll find out how mad we are in truth."
"No." Blaise pointed at him. "Pretty soon you find out how mad we are in truth." Since that was what Victor was afraid of, he grimaced and shook his head and kept his mouth shut.
He wanted to go up and fight alongside the men in the striking force. Only one thing held him back: if Cornwallis' troops recognized him there, they would be sure that second column was the one they needed to concern themselves with. The general commanding started to swear.
"What now?" Blaise asked.
"Bugger me blind, but I should have gone in at the head of the feint," Victor said. "If anything would have made the Englishmen sure that was our principal column, my presence at its head was the very thing."
"And also the very thing to get you killed," Blaise observed. Atlanteans were more pragmatic than Europeans about such things: less likely to get themselves killed over pointless points of honor. Blaise was far more pragmatic than most white Atlanteans. He added, "Besides, the fellow leading it don't want you up there. If you are up there, the men pay attention to you, not to him."
Once more, Victor would have liked to find some way to tell him he was talking nonsense. Once more, he found himself unable. Major Porter was as much in charge of the feint as Baron von Steuben was in charge of the striking column. Both officers would do everything they could with what they had… and wouldn't want anyone else in position to joggle their elbow.
The feint went in. The racket of gunfire-and of shouts of rage and agony-grew and grew. So did the shouts of Englishmen rushing to their comrades' aid. By the noise they were making they thought the Atlanteans were hitting the place where they'd bluffed before. After all, no one could be stupid enough to try the same thing twice in a row.
So de la Fayette had assured Victor, anyhow. It all sounded so lucid, so reasonable, so rational when the noble spelled it out. Then again, Frenchmen had a knack for sounding lucid, reasonable, rational. If they were as sensible as they seemed, why wasn't France in better shape?
Victor found himself cocking his head toward the left. He'd committed the feint. The redcoats were already responding to it. Baron von Steuben could get close to their line without their knowing it, as the luckless Major Hall had been doing when the heavens opened up.
"When?" Blaise asked.
"If I were up there with them, we'd go in-" Victor had wondered if he was nervous and fidgety and inclined to jump the gun. But he couldn't even get now out of his mouth before von Steuben put in the attack.
This cacophony made the other one small by comparison. Victor clenched his fists till his nails-which weren't long-bit into his callused palms. If they broke through… If they broke through, de la Fayette's Frenchmen would go in behind the striking column. They'd tear a hole in Cornwallis' line that you could throw a honker through.
And then what? Croydon? Victory? True victory at last? Cornwallis handing over his sword in token of surrender? Cornwallis admitting that the United States of Atlantis were here to stay?
Till this moment, the fight for Atlantean freedom had so consumed Victor, he'd had scant opportunity to wonder what would come afterwards. If Cornwallis and the redcoats had to sail away from Atlantis forever, where would they go? Back to England? Or west across the broad Hesperian Gulf to fight the rebels on the Terranovan mainland? Suppose they won there. How would the United States of Atlantis cope with being all but surrounded by the unloved and unloving former mother country? Victor had no idea.
There were worse problems to have. Losing the war against England instead of winning it, for instance. Not so long before, that had looked much too likely. Then, still unloved and unloving, the mother country would have set its boot on Atlantis' neck and stomped hard.
Which she might do yet. Victor knew he'd been building castles in the air. Any number of things could all too easily go wrong. He called to one of his young messengers-one who spoke fluent French. "My compliments to the Marquis de la Fayette, and please remind him to be ready to lead his men forward the instant the situation warrants."
"Right you are, General," the messenger agreed. One of the usual slipshod Atlantean salutes, and away he went at a good clip. Victor smiled at his back. That kind of response would have earned the puppy stripes from Cornwallis-and, very possibly, from de la Fayette as well. Atlanteans did things their own way. It might not be pretty, but it worked… or it had so far.
Victor had talked himself hoarse making sure Baron von Steuben understood he was to send word back as soon as he thought it likely he would penetrate the redcoats' defenses. And the German officer did, but not quite the way the Atlantean commandant had expected. Instead of telling Victor what was going on in the middle of that cloudbank of black-powder smoke, von Steuben sent a runner straight back to de la Fayette.
That runner and Victor Radcliff's messenger must have reached the French noble at almost the same time. The first Victor knew about it was when de la Fayette's soldiers surged forward, musicians blaring out their foreign horn and drum calls
For a heartbeat, Victor was mortally offended. Then he realized what must have happened. He also realized von Steuben had been absolutely right. If de la Fayette's troops were the ones who were going to move, de la Fayette was the man who most needed to know when they were to move. If Victor's laugh was rueful, it was a laugh even so. "Why doesn't anyone ever tell me anything?" he said.
"What's that?" Blaise asked.
"My own foolishness talking," Victor said, which probably made less of an answer than Blaise would have wanted. Victor climbed up onto his horse. His factotum also mounted. Urging his gelding forward, Victor went on, "If we are driving them, I will see it with my own eyes, by God!"
"And if by some mischance we are not driving them, you will ride straight into something you could have stayed away from," Blaise was always ready to see the cloud to a silver lining.
The firing ahead hadn't died out. The redcoats were still plainly doing all they could to hold back the Atlanteans-and, now, de la Fayette's Frenchmen as well. But, as Victor rode past the woods that had sheltered his striking column till the moment it struck, he realized their best wouldn't be enough.
"By God!" he said again, and this time he sounded like a man who really meant it.
Baron von Steuben's men had punched a hole through the English line better than a furlong wide. Victor had hoped they might be able to break through so splendidly, but hadn't dared count on it. Counting on something ahead of time in war too often led but to disappointment.
And the Atlanteans had done what they were supposed to do after breaking through, too. They'd swung out to left and right and poured a fierce enfilading fire into the redcoats in the trenches to either side. Arrows on a map couldn't have more precisely obeyed the man who drew them. And if that wasn't von Steuben's doing, whose was it? The German deserved to be a colonel, if not a brigadier general.
De la Fayette's French professionals poured through the gap Atlantean ardor had torn. They too methodically volleyed at the Englishmen who tried to plug that gap. Victor was just riding into what had been the English position when the redcoats, every bit as competent as their French foes, realized they were playing a losing game and started falling back toward Croydon.