Liberating Atlantis (36 page)

XVI

A supply column that came northeast from New Marseille brought fairly recent papers from the West Coast city and older ones from New Hastings. Leland Newton wasn’t delighted at the headlines, but he also wasn’t much surprised. No one anywhere seemed happy with the army’s progress—or rather, lack of progress—against the insurrectionists.

New Marseille reporters and editors found a simple explanation for the failure: as far as they were concerned, the army was a bunch of bunglers led by idiots. The
New Hastings Chronicle
—the one daily in the capital that took a pro-slavery line—had a similar opinion. The other papers from the capital took a different tack, one Consul Newton enjoyed more.

“Here. Listen to this,” he said to Jeremiah Stafford, holding a month-old
New Hastings Daily War Whoop
out at arm’s length so he could read it without his spectacles. “ ‘ The way the blacks and copperskins in southern Atlantis have succeeded in resisting government forces for so long proves the point Atlanteans from the north have been making for many years: men are men regardless of color. Courage is not the exclusive property of whites. The sooner this is recognized by all, of every hue, the sooner peace will return to our republic.’ ”

“I’m glad they sent it,” Stafford said. Before Newton could show his surprise at such a sentiment, his colleague explained, “It will wipe my backside better than a handful of old leaves.”

Patiently, Newton said, “You can use the paper however you please. That doesn’t make what’s printed on it any less true.”

“Lies! All lies! Every single word!” Stafford’s voice was too loud, and sounded like a cracked bell. Little drops of spittle flew from his lips as he spoke. One of them landed on Newton’s sleeve.

Newton eyed it with distaste, distaste leavened by alarm. “Jeremiah, I mean no offense, but you are talking like a fool, or maybe like a madman. You may not care for everything the papers say, but much of it is true whether you care for it or not. This rebellion
is
more difficult and intractable than you dreamt it would be when the campaign against it began. And the rebels
are
different from what you thought they would be. Can you blame the papers for noticing what you must have seen, too?”

“Yes!” Stafford said, which was not what Newton hoped to hear. “If things are the way they say they are—if they are the way you say they are—then dickering with the insurrectionists becomes the only practicable course. I tell you frankly, sir, I should rather die a thousand deaths.”

Leland Newton believed that, believed it beyond a fragment of a doubt. His own voice gentled as he replied, “Would you rather Atlantis died a thousand deaths? What else lies ahead on the track you have chosen for the country?”

“I want the insurrectionists to die a thousand deaths,” Stafford said savagely. “That might begin to repay them for their atrocities. It might.”

“It might also be beyond our power to arrange,” Newton said. “If that is not the lesson of the past few weeks, they have none.”

“We have not done what we wish we would have. It does not follow that we cannot do it,” Stafford said.

“How?” Newton asked.

For the first time since seeing the newspapers, some of the other Consul’s dreadful certainty leached out of him. He no longer looked as if he were going to give the Preacher a run for his money. His mouth sagged unhappily. So did his shoulders. His answer came in a much smaller voice: “I don’t know.”

“Well, we are on the same trail there, anyway, because I don’t know how to do that, either,” Newton said.

“But we must!” Pain filled Stafford’s words.

“What do we name someone who insists we must do something that cannot be done?” Newton answered his own question: “If he is lucky enough to be young, we name him a child. Otherwise, we call him a fool. If he keeps on insisting . . . we have asy lums for such people.”

Stafford turned the color of a sunset. But before he could come out with whatever he’d been about to say, musketry started up off to the north. The encampment boiled like coffee in a tin pot. Soldiers ran this way and that. Before long, quite a few of them purposefully trotted north.

“We have another chance now to do what we came here for,” Stafford did say at last.

“What do you think the chances are that this next battle will settle the insurrection once for all?” Newton asked.

“I don’t know,” the other Consul said, “but I do know they’re better if we win than if we lose.”

“Are they what a man might call betting odds?” Newton persisted.

“I don’t know that, either.” Stafford sounded as if he wanted to change the subject, or else drop the whole conversation. Which he did, for he went on, “I am going up to the front, to see what our brave soldiers and militiamen
can
do. You are welcome to accompany me, if you care to.”

If you aren’t yellow
, he meant. Stung, Newton said, “There is not a place on this campaign where you have gone and I have not.” If the other Consul tried to quarrel with that, Newton was ready to box his ears.

But Stafford said only, “Come on, then,” and hurried off toward the sound of the firing. He drew his eight-shooter as he went.

Sighing, so did Newton. The idea of shooting insurrectionists did not delight him, as it did his colleague. All the same, he could not believe the copperskins and Negroes would spare him for the sake of his belief in individual liberty. So many bullets flew almost at random; no one could do anything about those. If someone at close quarters aimed at him in particular, he intended to fire first. He might favor individual liberty, yes, but not at the price of his own survival.

That thought made him miss a step and almost stumble. The insurrectionists
were
risking their lives for individual liberty. No wonder they made such difficult foes!

By the time he and Stafford got to the scene of the firing, it was already dying away. They’d passed a couple of parties of stretcher-bearers taking wounded men back to the surgeons, and one foul-mouthed corporal going back under his own power cradling a bleeding wrist in the crook of his other arm.

“Only a skirmish, your Excellencies,” said the middle-aged first lieutenant who seemed to be in command of the Atlantean soldiers thereabouts. “They probed to see if we were ready to receive ’em, they found out we were, and then they faded off into the woods again.”

“Didn’t much care for the reception, eh?” Stafford said, still holding his revolver at the ready.

“No, sir.” The lieutenant scratched at his graying side whiskers. Was this the kind of glorious action he’d imagined when he joined the Atlantean army in the flower of his youth? Leland Newton had trouble believing it. But then, the difference between what you imagined and what you got was one of the yardsticks by which you measured your passage into adulthood.

Out in the ferns and barrel trees from which the insurrectionists had opened up, a wounded man screamed his guts out. One thing Newton had noticed: all badly hurt men sounded the same. Maybe that said something in favor of the basic equality of the races. Hoping so, Newton proposed it to Stafford.

His colleague snorted. “Huzzah,” he said sourly. “If I shoot this horse here, it’ll make pretty much the same noises, too. Shall we pick it for Consul next term, the way Caligula did with Incitatus?”

“Well . . . no,” Newton said. Stafford was just the kind of man who would remember the name of the mad Roman Emperor’s cherished charger and trot it out when it did him the most good.

“All right, then. Don’t waste my time with foolishness,” he snapped, and turned away. Had the injured Negro or copperskin lain out in the open, Stafford probably would have tried to finish him off, or to hit the fellows who came out to pick him up and do what they could for him. Newton didn’t think that was a sporting way to make war. He also didn’t think Stafford cared a cent’s worth for sport.

 

Something in Colonel Sinapis’ long, sad face told Jeremiah Stafford the army’s senior officer didn’t want to listen to him.
Too damned bad, Colonel
, Stafford thought. A colonel who didn’t listen to a Consul wouldn’t stay the army’s senior officer for long.

“We need a decisive victory over the insurrectionists,” Stafford declared. “We need to break their fighting force, and we need to break their spirit.”

“Such a victory would be desirable—yes, your Excellency.” Was that resignation in Sinapis’ voice?
It had better not be
, Stafford thought.

“We need to go after that kind of victory more aggressively,” he said.

“I shall certainly be as aggressive as seems advisable,” Colonel Sinapis said.

“Be more aggressive than that,” Stafford told him.

One of the colonel’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “Do you want me to lead the army into a trap, sir?”

“No, damn it! I want you to trap the insurrectionists—trap them and smash them,” Stafford said.

“If you smash a glob of quicksilver, all you have are smaller globs here, there, and everywhere,” Sinapis said.

“Fine,” Stafford said. The Atlantean officer gave him a look—that wasn’t the answer Sinapis had expected. Consul Stafford went on, “After we smash the big glob, we can destroy the smaller bits one by one at our leisure.”

“Ah.” Sinapis relaxed fractionally.
He hasn’t gone round the bend after all
. The colonel didn’t say that, but Stafford saw it in his eyes. A beat slower than Sinapis might have, he resumed: “That may be possible. I hope it is, but I would be lying if I said I was sure.”

“If we don’t make the effort, Colonel, why the devil did we ever leave New Hastings?” Stafford asked, and answered his own question: “We came to fight the insurrectionists. We came to beat them. Let’s do that, then.”

Balthasar Sinapis sketched a salute. “Very well, your Excellency.”

Stafford had learned that
Very well, your Excellency
could mean anything—or nothing. When Colonel Sinapis got an order he didn’t fancy, he saluted, promised to obey, and then sat on his hands. Stafford didn’t aim to let him do that this time. Sinapis’ fingers wouldn’t be warm under his behind—they’d be flaming in the fire.

But Stafford didn’t have to hold Sinapis’ hands to the fire this time. The colonel sent his men against the insurrectionists with what struck the Consul as almost a devil-take-the-hindmost enthusiasm. Sinapis might have been thumbing his nose at Stafford, in effect saying,
Well, this was your idea. If it goes wrong, blame yourself, because it’s not my fault
.

If it went wrong, Stafford supposed he would have to do that. If he didn’t blame himself, Leland Newton damned well
would
blame him . . . and would make sure all the papers back in the more civilized parts of Atlantis blamed him, too. He could see headlines in his mind’s eye. They would scream about his recklessness—and about his fecklessness, too. They would ask why he overrode a professional soldier’s judgment. That would make a painfully good question, too.

No one was happier than he, then, when it didn’t go wrong. The Atlantean soldiers fell upon and routed a good-sized force of copperskins and blacks. The insurrectionists hardly formed a line of battle. They fired a few shots and fled. The soldiers killed over a hundred of them, and captured close to a hundred more. Casualties among the whites were seven dead and seventeen wounded.

“You see?” Stafford said exultantly, eyeing the unhappy prisoners. “We really can do this. We just have to push hard.”

“It worked this time,” Sinapis said, and not another word.

The Consul jerked a thumb toward the captives. “We ought to hang the lot of them, is what we ought to do.”

“You agreed we would not, your Excellency,” Colonel Sinapis reminded him. “Harming prisoners is a game both sides can play. Nor would your colleague approve of breaking the agreement.”

Stafford backtracked: “I didn’t say we would. I said we ought to. And I still believe that. After this war is won, there will be a great reckoning. Slaves have to learn they cannot rise against their masters.”

“What comes afterwards is politics.” As Sinapis was in the habit of doing, he spoke the word as if it tasted bad. “That is your province. I have nothing to say about it. While the fight goes on . . . there, I am obliged to tell you what I think.”

“Yes, yes.” Jeremiah Stafford made himself nod. Sinapis could croak as much as he pleased. If he wanted to think he was obliged to imitate a chorus of frogs, he could do that, too. But, if he thought Stafford was obliged to listen to him, he needed to think again. Stafford did some more talking of his own: “Keep on pressing them, I tell you. It is our best hope of victory.”

“You are one of the men in a position to give me orders.” By the way Sinapis said that, he didn’t care for it, either. Even his salute, though technically perfect, felt somehow reproachful. “Of course I shall obey them . . . and then, your Excellency, we will see what comes of that.”

 

Frederick Radcliff didn’t like falling back before the white soldiers. During his life, though, he’d had to do any number of things he didn’t like. He couldn’t imagine a slave who hadn’t. And so he retreated, and retreated again. The Atlantean regulars and the militiamen who reminded him of hyenas skulking along next to lions came after his men.

Lorenzo fancied retreating no more than he did. “We’ve got to pin their ears back,” the copperskin said.

“That would be good,” Frederick agreed. “But how do we make sure they don’t pin ours back instead?”

“Ambush ’em,” Lorenzo answered at once. “Only way to teach ’em respect. Only way to make ’em keep their distance, too. Bastards have been eating pepper—they’re right on our heels.”

“If we can, I want to give them a jolt,” Frederick said. “My only worry is that they’ll slide around our flank the way they did before.”

“We need to find a place where the ground won’t let ’em,” Lorenzo said. “Plenty of people carrying guns on our side who’ll know about places like that.”