De la Fayette favored him with a salute. "You accomplished almost everything you intended, Monsieur le General," the French nobleman said. "It is given to few to do so much for their country."
"I thank you," Victor replied, returning the salute. "If only I could have done a little more."
That made the marquis smile. "A man who has much but wants more is likely to acquire it."
"I wanted it today," Victor said, and cursed Habakkuk Biddiscombe again.
Night brought only a nervous, halfhearted break in the hostilities. The redcoats also encamped on the held, not far out of gunshot range. Men from both sides went out to rescue the moaning wounded and plunder the silent dead-and if a few wounded were suddenly silenced in the process, so what? Englishmen and Atlanteans sometimes stumbled over one another in the darkness. They would grapple or open fire-except when both sides ran away at once.
The redcoats seemed busier than the exhausted Atlanteans. Victor didn't need long to realize why: they were digging in in front of Croydon. Rising earthworks partly hid their fires. They would have a much shorter line to hold now, even if they would also have far fewer men with whom to hold it
When the sun rose again, Royal Navy ships were tied up at Croydon's piers. They were only frigates, but their guns outweighed and outranged anything the Atlanteans could bring against them. If Croydon fell, it would have to fall by siege.
Chapter 22
"Damn the Englishmen!" Victor said when he'd ridden around the redcoats' new lines in front of Croydon. "God butter them and Satan futter them, they dig like skinks."
"Comment?" inquired the Marquis de la Fayette, who'd ridden the circuit with him. "Like what do they dig?"
"Like skinks," Victor repeated. De la Fayette's question puzzled him: the simile was common enough in Atlantis. Then he decided it might be common only in Atlantis. He cast about for a European equivalent, which he found after a moment: "Like moles, you might say."
"Ah. I see." The French nobleman did indeed look enlightened. But then he asked, "What are these skinks?"
"Why, lizards, of course. Peculiar lizards, though-I will say that," Victor Radcliff answered. "They're short and stout as lizards go. They have no eyes, but their front feet are broad and strong and their tongues uncommonly long and clever. They dig through dirt after worms and bugs-only in summer in these northern lands, but year-around farther south, where the weather stays milder. They can be pests in gardens or on well-mown lawns, on account of the furrows they leave."
"They do sound like moles," de la Fayette said, "save that they are of the reptile kind rather than being furry. But has Atlantis no true moles?"
"No more than we have any other viviparous quadrupeds except bats," Victor replied. "We have now the usual domestic beasts, and rats and mice plague our towns and houses. Deer and foxes course the woods, along with wild dogs and cats. Settlers brought all those beasts, though: this was a land of birds and scaly things before they came."
"And yet Terranova, beyond Atlantis, has an abundance of productions much like Europe's," de la Fayette said. "How could this be so?"
"The first man who learns the truth there will write his name in large letters amongst those of the leading savants of his day," Victor said. "But what that truth may be, I have not the faintest idea. I am more interested in learning how to winkle General
Cornwallis out of Croydon."
"You do not believe we can storm this line?"
"Do you?" Victor didn't like answering a question with a question, but he wanted to find out what the Frenchman thought
De la Fayette's shrug held a certain eloquence. "It would be… difficult."
Victor sighed. Steam puffed from his mouth and nostrils: the day was chilly. "They do have good engineers." The new English line before Croydon took advantage of every little swell of ground. It was also far enough outside the town to keep Atlantean and French field guns from bearing on the harbor. That meant the attackers couldn't keep the Royal Navy from resupplying Cornwallis. "Heaven only knows what kind of butcher's bill we'll pay to break in."
"One larger than we should desire, without doubt," de la Fayette said, and Victor could only nod glumly. The marquis added, "Our best course, then, appears to be to proceed by saps and parallels."
Formal European siege warfare had had little place in Atlantis. Victor and Cornwallis had invested Nouveau Redon, but they hadn't advanced towards it a line at a time. Cornwallis' clever engineers had stopped the spring instead, which made the defenders abandon the town for a sally with scant hope of success.
"That will take some time," Victor said.
"Are you urgently required elsewhere?" de la Fayette inquired.
"Well, no," Victor admitted. "But if the English choose to reinforce their garrison while we dig, we shall have wasted considerable effort."
"So we shall. What of it?" de la Fayette said. "We shall also have wasted considerable effort-and just as much time-if we merely encircle the English position. Better to do our utmost to force a surrender, n'est-cepas?"
"Mm," Victor Radcliff said. "When you put it that way-"
"How else would you have me put it?" the marquis asked. "And, once we have demonstrated to the English commander that we are capable of making the approaches effecting a breach, how can he do anything but surrender?"
"Is that the custom in Europe?" Victor said.
"Most assuredly," de la Fayette replied. "Continuing the battle after a breach is made would be merely a pointless effusion of blood, don't you think?"
"If you say so," Victor replied. If de la Fayette thought that way, Cornwallis likely would, too: they fought in the same style Victor thought there were times when he would keep fighting as long as he had one man left who could aim a musket. But he was only an Atlantean bumpkin-in the eyes of Europeans, just a short step better than a copperskin-so what did he know?
"I do say so," de la Fayette insisted.
"Saps and parallels, then," Victor said, and the Frenchman nodded.
Saps and parallels were part of a soldier's jargon. Even Victor Radcliff, who'd never used them or even seen them used, knew of them. And they were always mentioned that way: always saps and parallels, never parallels and saps.
In the field, though, the parallel always came first. People could argue about the chicken and the egg, but not about the sap and the parallel. One evening, under the profane direction of their engineers, French soldiers began digging a trench aligned with the stretch of enemy works the army would eventually assail. That was how the parallel got its name.
The Frenchmen threw up the dirt they excavated on the side where it would protect them from English fire. At that range- four or five hundred yards-only a lucky shot could hit anyone, but the game had its rules. And, when the redcoats realized what was going on, so many shots would fly through the air that some were bound to be lucky.
Realization came at sunrise the next morning. Cornwallis knew the same tricks as de la Fayette. They might have sprung from different kingdoms, but it was as if they'd attended the same college As soon as Cornwallis saw that growing parapet protecting the first parallel, he did what any other commanding officer in his unpleasant position would have done: he started shooting at it with everything he could bring to bear.
Musketeers banged away. By the lead they expended, they might have been mining the stuff under Croydon. Most of the bullets either fell short or thumped into the dirt of the parapet. A few, more likely by luck than by design, just got over the top of the parapet and into the trench it warded. Wounded men went howling back toward the surgeons. One unfortunate fellow caught a musket ball in the side of the head and simply fell over, dead before he hit the ground.