He pulled off his boots and shed his hat Other than that, he lay down on the cot fully dressed. Even with two thick woolen blankets, he was glad for every extra bit of cloth between him and winter. Would he really be, or at least seem, wiser after the sun came up? He could hope so, anyhow. He closed his eyes. Before long, he slept.
"General! General!" Shouts pierced dreams of an earthquake. No, the world wasn't falling down around him. Someone was shaking-had shaken-him awake.
It was still dark. "What's gone wrong?" Victor asked blurrily. Something must have, or they would have left him alone till dawn.
"There's fighting, General, over in the northeast, on the far side of the line," answered the man who'd been doing the shaking.
"A pox!" Victor groped for his boots, found them, and tugged them on. The far side of Croydon from the encampment was also the weakest-held part of his lines. "Are the redcoats breaking out?" If they were going to do it anywhere, they were most likely to try there.
"Somebody sure as hell is," the Atlantean soldier said.
Victor hurried outside. He could hear muskets boom from that direction, and could see muzzle flashes piercing the night like fierce fireflies. Not all the booms came from muskets. Even at this distance, a trained ear like his could tell pistol shots from musketry. There were quite a few of them…
He suddenly thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Biddiscombe!" he exclaimed, and it was as much a howl of self-reproach as a naming of the man likely leading that attack. "The Horsed Legion!"
What had been going on all night in Croydon? Why, General Cornwallis and his officers were trying to decide whether to throw Habakkuk Biddiscombe and his troop of horsemen over the side to keep the French ships and the Atlantean and French armies from pounding them to jelly. Captain Grimsley had insisted that Cornwallis would never abandon Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion. But if the redcoats would never abandon their local allies, why were they talking deep into the night about doing exactly that?
Why indeed?
Now, too late, Victor could read Habakkuk Biddiscombe's thoughts. If the English army changed its mind and decided to give him and his men to the rebel Atlanteans, they were all as good as dead. And if the redcoats refused to cough up the Horsed
Legion and the rebel Atlanteans and the French broke into Croydon-which seemed all too likely-he and his followers were also as good as dead.
Breaking out offered more hope than either of those chances. Or maybe Cornwallis had gone to Biddiscombe and said something like, I wish things were otherwise, but they are as they are. I have no way to protect you. Flight seems your best hope. If you attempt it I shall look the other way whilst you ready yourselves.
Cornwallis was bound to deny any bargain like that. So was Habakkuk Biddiscombe. Victor doubted he would ever be able to prove a thing. But he could see the scene in his mind's eye all the same.
"What do we do, sir?" asked the soldier who'd wakened him.
"Try to stop them, of course," Victor snapped.
But some of them would break through-no, some of them had already broken through. Victor could see that by the places from which the gunfire was coming. They'd hit the weakest point in his line, all right. Was that good generalship? Was it fool luck? Or had someone gone over and told them where to strike? In a fight like this, with so much betrayal on both sides, could you be sure of anything?
Victor was sure of one thing. "From this moment on, those men are outlaws, to be run down like wild dogs. They will leave tracks in the snow. As soon as we have light by which to follow them, we shall hunt them to destruction."
"What if the whole English army goes after 'em?" the soldier said.
"Look at Croydon." Victor waved toward the town, which was quiet, and even darker now than it had been before he went to bed. "Not the slightest sign of that. No, it's Biddiscombe, trying to get away while the getting is good."
And Cornwallis, glad to rid himself of an embarrassment, he added, but only to himself. He couldn't prove that now. Odds were he would never be able to. Which didn't mean he didn't believe it, and didn't mean he didn't respect and even admire the English commander for so neatly disposing of his problem.
Captain Horace Grimsley gave Victor another of his precise salutes. "General Cornwallis' compliments as before, sir, and he bids me tell you no outstanding reason remains that he should not accept the terms of surrender you proposed yesterday."
"My compliments to your commander in return," Victor said. "You may also tell him we have slain or captured a good many members of Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion, and that we hope to be rid of every one of the villains before too long. It was… convenient for your principal that they chose to decamp under cover of darkness."
The English officer looked back at him with no expression whatever. "General Cornwallis wishes me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of Colonel Biddiscombe's intentions, and that neither he nor anyone else in our force assisted or abetted the Horsed Legion in any way."
"I bet he wants you to assure me of that!" Victor said.
"Do you presume to doubt his word, sir?" Grimsley asked coldly.
"Damned right I doubt it," Victor answered. "Whether I doubt it enough to throw away the truce and tell those French ships to start firing again… That is another story. Once we've disarmed your lot, we'll be able to send more of our men after Biddiscombe. With the war as good as won, not so many people will care to help or hide him."
"It could be so," Captain Grimsley admitted. Then he said, "If you have truly cast off his Majesty King George's rule, shall we now commence to style you King Victor the First?"
"No," Victor said, and then again, louder, "No! We shall endeavor to make do without kings from here on out."
"Foolishness," Grimsley said.
"Perhaps it is. But it is our own foolishness, which is the point of the matter," Victor said. "And we reckon it a worse one to owe attachment to a sovereign across the broad sea, a sovereign who knows little of us and cares less, a sovereign in whose Parliament we are suffered to have no members. Better no sovereign at all, we think, than such a sovereign as that."
He wondered if he would get through to the redcoat. But Captain Grimsley only shrugged. "Sometimes it's better to have a king who pays you no heed than one who pays too much. Look at Frederick of Prussia-you can't walk into a backhouse there without paying a turd tax to some collector."
Victor smiled. All the same, he said, "Better not to have to worry that the next King of England will take after Frederick, then. And from this day forth, Captain, no King of England, good, bad, or indifferent, shall tell us what to do."
"I cannot speak to that, sir," Grimsley said. "Have you the terms of surrender properly written out for me to convey them to General Cornwallis?"
"I do," Victor said. "You will note I have lined through the provision pertaining to Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion and initialed the deletion. I should be grateful if General Cornwallis did likewise, along with signing the document as I have done"
"Your courtesy is appreciated," Grimsley said. "If all proves satisfactory to the general, shall we set the formal ceremony of surrender for noon tomorrow? Should any questions arise before then, you may be certain I shall come out to confer with you concerning them."
"Noon tomorrow. That is agreeable to me" Victor held out his hand. After momentary hesitation, Captain Grimsley shook it.
The Englishman also saluted after the handclasp. "When I came here, I never dreamt it would end this way," he remarked.