Liberating Atlantis

XI

Rain on a cobblestoned road was a nuisance. If you rode a horse, you wore a broad-brimmed hat and an oilskin slicker to stay as dry as you could. Many of the roads east of the Green Ridge Mountains were cobblestoned. Some were even macadamized. Traffic moved on them the year around.

Jeremiah Stafford was discovering that cobblestones and macadam were sadly scarce on the far side of the mountains. One day, no doubt, they would come, but that day was not yet.

And rain on a dirt road was not a nuisance. Rain on a dirt road-especially the hard, driving semitropical rain that pelted down now-was a catastrophe. What had been a perfectly ordinary, perfectly decent, perfectly respectable road turned into a long strip of something with a consistency between soup and glue. Foot soldiers swore as mud sucked boots off their feet. Cannon and limbers and supply wagons bogged down. The foot soldiers had to shove them through the muck by brute force. Not surprisingly, that made the men swear more.

On horseback, Consul Stafford had it easier than most of the men in the Atlantean army. His mount struggled to move forward, but it was doing the struggling. He wasn't. Colonel Sinapis, also on horseback, said something to him.

Whatever it was, Stafford couldn't make it out. The rain was coming down too hard. "Eh?" The Consul cupped a hand behind his ear.

"When I was a subaltern, we could not fight in weather like this," Sinapis said, louder this time.

"Why not? What makes the difference?" Stafford asked.

"Percussion caps," the Atlantean officer answered. "A wet flintlock is nothing but a fancy club-maybe a spear if you have a bayonet on the end of it. But a percussion cap will still go off in the rain."

"Interesting how a mechanical device can change the way we wage war," said Stafford, who hadn't dwelt on the idea before.

"This always happens." For Sinapis, such things fell within his area of professional competence. "If you doubt it, ask the Terranovan natives how much they have enjoyed opposing muskets with bows and arrows."

"Mm-no doubt. The next question is, how well supplied with percussion caps are the damned insurrectionists?" Stafford said.

"Better than I would have thought," Colonel Sinapis said, which was not what Stafford wanted to hear. Sinapis continued, "They showed every sign of having plenty at the skirmish yesterday. They fought quite well, in fact. Their steadiness impressed me."

That was something else Stafford didn't want to hear. "They're nothing but lousy mudfaces and niggers," he growled.

"No man with a rifle musket in his hand is 'nothing but' anything, your Excellency," the officer warned. "No man who holds his ground till he sees himself outflanked and then draws back in good order is 'nothing but,' either… sir. You will get us in trouble if you think of the rebels as 'nothing but.' "

"I want to get them in trouble," Stafford said angrily. "We haven't had much luck with that, have we?"

Balthasar Sinapis looked up into the heavens. A raindrop splashed on the end of his long nose. "If you can persuade God to ease this downpour, your Excellency, you will have shown me something I did not know before."

"Even when the weather was good, we didn't have much luck shifting the black bastards." Yes, Consul Stafford was in a fine fury.

If that impressed Sinapis, the colonel's face didn't know it. "This campaign is just beginning, sir," he said. "We will do some splendid things-I am sure of it. And we will have some terrible things done to us, and to the rebels those will seem splendid. Such is war."

"It shouldn't be war, not against these-these damned ragamuffins," Stafford protested. "It should be like, oh, cleaning up broken crockery."

"Never judge a soldier by the kind of uniform he wears, or by whether he wears a uniform at all," Colonel Sinapis said. "Some of the most dangerous men I saw in Europe looked like farmers. They were farmers, till they picked up the guns they'd hidden in barns and sties and pigeon coops. After that, you would have thought they were devils straight out of hell."

"What happened to them?" Stafford asked, intrigued in spite of himself.

"My men hunted them down and killed them," the foreigner replied dispassionately. "We did, perhaps, too good a job. That was one of the reasons I… left that service and pledged my sword to Atlantis."

Too good a job? What kind of howling wilderness had Sinapis' men left behind? Stafford didn't much care. As long as the insurrectionists got what was coming to them, nothing else mattered.

The rain came down harder. Stafford hadn't been sure it could. With a little luck, it would wash Frederick Radcliff and the rest of the insurrectionists out to sea. But that was bound to be too much to hope for. The Consul began to hope the downpour wouldn't wash him and the Atlantean army out to sea.

Every once in a while, a great storm would slam into southern Atlantis. Savage winds would tear off roofs and sometimes blow down buildings. The cyclones would roar inland till they finally weakened and petered out. This wasn't one of those. It wasn't blowing very hard at all. It was just raining and raining and raining.

Forty days and forty nights went through Stafford's mind. For hundreds of years, theologically inclined writers had wondered how Noah had put Atlantis' peculiar natural productions aboard the Ark, and how those productions had ended up here and nowhere else. That sort of writing seemed to have tapered off in recent times. The consensus was that nobody knew, except possibly God.

A junior officer came back to Colonel Sinapis from the vanguard. Stafford admired him. Moving against the tide had to be even harder than going with it. The officer spoke to Sinapis. Whatever he said-again, the drumming rain muffled it for the Consul-made Sinapis gnaw at his mustache. Stafford thought that a disgusting habit.

After gnawing, the colonel dipped his head. He might have been Zeus in the Iliad, which Stafford remembered from his college days. He said something to the junior officer, who looked relieved and sloshed forward again.

At last, Sinapis condescended to explain: "We stop here. We can't go forward any more. We will start killing animals if we do."

"Soldiers will start drowning, too," Stafford said.

"Well, so they will." Colonel Sinapis cared about losing his men when they faced the rebels. When it came to a downpour, he seemed to worry more about his horses and mules. Stafford almost called him on it. But the rain also drowned his urge for a brand new row.

Even making camp wasn't easy. Tent pegs didn't want to stick in the soggy ground. Once up, the tents leaked like billy-be-damned. All soldiers were supposed to have oilskin groundsheets so they could sleep dry. Some had never been issued them. Some had thrown theirs away. And even the ones who had them weren't happy, because muck slopped over the edges.

Cooking hot food-even boiling coffee-was impossible. Soggy hardtack made an uninspiring supper. Salt pork was next to indestructible, but in weather like this it was liable to start getting moldy, too.

Stafford's tent was bigger than the ones the soldiers used, but no drier. He sat inside glumly, wondering what would happen if the insurrectionists chose this moment to attack. Colonel Sinapis had posted sentries all around, but so what? How much could they see, and who would hear them if they yelled a warning? Then Stafford thought, If the rebels do attack now, they'll go over their heads in goo, and good riddance to them. He felt-a little-better.

Someone tugged at the tent flap. "Leland Newton. May I come in?" the other Consul asked.

"Why not? Everything else has gone wrong," Stafford said.

"Heh." Newton ducked inside and let the tent flap fall behind him with a wet, dismal splat. "You should take your comic turn on the stage. You'd make more than Atlantis pays us."

"Comic turn? Did you think I was joking? I am not glad to see you," Stafford said.

"Nor am I enamored of you, believe me. But we are in harness together, like it or not," Newton said. "And, one day soon, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, this army will start moving forward again."

"Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, indeed," Stafford muttered.

Newton pulled out a flask. "Here. Have a knock of this. It may improve your outlook. Something ought to."

"Maybe I'm glad to see you after all." Stafford swigged. Barrel-tree rum kicked him in the teeth and flamed down his throat. "By God, maybe I am!"

"Are you glad enough to answer a question for me?" Newton asked.

"I don't know. Let's see." Stafford almost drank again, but handed the flask back instead.

"Suppose the rebels decline pitched battles. Suppose they keep sniping and raiding and skirmishing, as they have been doing. Are you ready to post thousands of soldiers in little garrisons all through these parts for the next twenty or thirty years to try to hold down the countryside?"

"If that is what it takes, why not?" Stafford said. "The Terranovans do it on their frontiers, to keep the copperskins from sneaking in and detaching people's hair."

"It will cost us dear," Newton warned.

"What do you suppose not stopping the insurrectionists will cost us?" Stafford asked icily.

"Something," Newton said, which surprised Stafford-he hadn't expected the other Consul to admit even that much. Newton went on, "Change always costs something. But don't you see? We have to change either way. I fear trying to hold down slaves in southern Atlantis for the next generation will cost us our souls."

"I think we'd be fighting for them-and for our backbones," Stafford said.

"Maybe you're right, your Excellency. Maybe, but I wouldn't care to bet on it." Newton ducked back out into the rain, leaving Stafford alone, the taste of barrel-tree rum still on his lips.

Balthasar Sinapis pointed up into the sky. "Do you see that small, bright, yellow ball there?"

Squinting, Consul Newton nodded. "I do, Colonel. What of it?"

"If I remember rightly, in the old country we used to call that 'the sun.' "

The craggy colonel did have a sense of humor. Leland Newton wouldn't have bet a cent on it. Smiling to show he appreciated the joke, he said, "How long do you think the roads will take to dry out enough to let us travel on them?"

"They probably should be good enough for us to use just before it starts raining again," Sinapis answered. Newton started to smile again. Then he realized the colonel wasn't joking this time-merely expressing his faith in the innate perversity of nature. Since Newton had seen plenty of that perversity himself, he decided he couldn't very well disagree.

All around them, the encampment steamed. That hot sun drew vapor up from the drenched canvas of the tents. The grass and weeds and ferns on which those tents were pitched steamed. So did horses' backs. And so did soldiers' clothes. Every time Newton inhaled, he felt as if he were breathing soup.

As if picking that thought from his mind, Colonel Sinapis remarked, "No one would say the state of New Marseille has a Mediterranean climate."

"Avalon, farther north, is said to be quite pleasant the year around," Newton replied.

Sinapis only sniffed. "It would not be the same. Are you familiar with the notion of dry heat, your Excellency?"

"Only by reading of it." Leland Newton spread his hands. "Atlantis is surrounded by the sea, after all. And I believe it is a positive good that she is. Her position has gone far toward making her rich."

"No doubt," Sinapis said. "It has also gone far toward giving every citizen of this country rheumatism and lumbago. Or do your bones not creak when you get up of a morning? Till I came here, mine never did."

He was talking about New Hastings, where he'd spent the bulk of his Atlantean military career. The capital had a good climate-or Consul Newton had always found it so. It was certainly a better climate than chilly Croydon's. But Sinapis had different standards of comparison.

The colonel stuck a stogie in the corner of his mouth. Then he tried to strike a lucifer on the sole of his boot. The boot sole was wet, and the match wouldn't catch. Muttering an unpleasantry that wasn't in English, Sinapis pulled a small piece of shagreen from a tunic pocket. He scraped the lucifer against that. The rough sharkskin gave enough friction to touch off the match. Sinapis lit his cigar and puffed out pungent smoke to flavor the prevailing steam.

"You are ready for anything," Newton said as the colonel put the shagreen back in his pocket.

"I try to be," Sinapis answered. "If I may speak frankly, though, your Excellency, I was not ready for a war intended to be waged along political lines. I do not see how any army or any officer could be ready for such a thing."

"All wars are political, wouldn't you say?" Newton parried.

"In their goals, yes," Colonel Sinapis said. "A clever modern German called war the extension of politics by other means. I agree with this. Anyone who thinks about it is bound to agree, I believe. But when political affairs interfere with the way the war is fought, it becomes less likely to have a happy result. I believe anyone who thinks about it is also bound to agree with this."

Newton didn't need to think much about it to decide it seemed quite likely. All the same, he said, "When the war touches slavery in the USA, political affairs are bound to interfere. Half the country takes the institution for granted, while the other half hates it. We should count ourselves lucky not to have flown at one another's throats."

"Do you expect this fight to solve your problems for you?" Sinapis didn't sound as if he thought any fight could solve any problem.

"I hope so. Expect may be too strong a word." Newton remained an optimist.

"Oh, well." By the way Sinapis sounded, he didn't. What had he seen, what had he done, in Europe to leave his attitude so curdled? Consul Newton realized he didn't know the details of the colonel's career before Sinapis got to Atlantis. He hadn't cared enough to find out. That might have been a mistake. But asking now would seem awkward, so he didn't.

In his own way, Consul Stafford was an optimist, too. Most Atlanteans-most white Atlanteans, anyhow-were. What were the United States of Atlantis if not a place where a man could build on his hopes? But Stafford's hopes were different from Newton's. The sun's return prompted only one thought in him. "Now we can go after the insurrectionists and finish them off!" he declared.

Maybe the sun's return prompted some thoughts among Frederick Radcliff's Negroes and copperskins, too. They weren't an army, or weren't exactly an army. They could, and did, move around by ones and twos and small bands, where Colonel Sinapis' men wouldn't have felt happy or safe doing any such thing. And they popped up here and there and started sniping at the Atlantean soldiers.

One bullet snarled through the air between Newton and Stafford. Both Consuls automatically ducked. They exchanged sheepish looks. Almost everybody ducked. It didn't mean a thing.

"We ought to hang every black bastard we catch sneaking around with a musket!" Stafford said after he straightened up.

"That will really make the rebels want to give up," Newton observed.

"I don't care whether they want to give up or not," Stafford said. "I want them dead. I want the ones who are left alive to be afraid to lift their hands against their masters for the rest of their days. I want the United States of Atlantis to be safe for decent, God-fearing white people again."

"You want things to go back to the way they were before the uprising started," Newton said.

"Yes. That is what I want," the other Consul agreed.

"How do you propose to get it, though?" Newton asked. "We've been over this ground before. Can you unscramble an egg? Can you make all the rain we've just had fall up into the sky?"

"The sun can dry out the rain," Stafford said stubbornly. "That makes it as if it had never been. The sun of justice can dry out the insurrection, too, enough to let us get by."

He meant it. He meant every word of it. Realizing as much alarmed Leland Newton, but he knew it was so. "When Pilate asked 'What is truth?' he didn't wait for an answer," Newton said. "Now I ask you, sir, what is justice? I will wait as long as need be for your reply."

"Justice is giving people what they deserve for what they have done." Jeremiah Stafford sounded as stern and certain as the Old Testament prophet whose name he bore.

Newton nodded. "We can take that for a beginning place. What do people who have held other people in bondage for centuries deserve? What do people-?"

"They deserve thanks and congratulations." Stafford still sounded certain. He had the courage of his convictions. "Compare the lot of those bondsmen here with that of their savage cousins in Terranova and Africa and you will see that I speak the truth."

"I had not finished," Newton said. "What do people who buy and sell other human beings at a whim, who take the fruits of others' labor, who violate their bondswomen whenever it strikes their fancy-what do those people deserve?"

"What do people who Christianize the heathen, who build a thriving country out of empty wilderness, who make the United States of Atlantis into the earthly paradise-what do those people deserve?" Stafford returned. "We are talking about the same people, you know. What justice is depends in some measure on the angle from which you view it."

"Well, I would agree with you there," Newton said. "You have a perspective different from mine about the planter class."

"I know them. You don't," Stafford said.

"Let it be as you say," Newton told him. Stafford raised an eyebrow; he hadn't expected even so much of a concession. Consul Newton went on, "What you will not see is that we also have a differing perspective on the rebels. You think of them as murderous, bloodthirsty wild beasts-"

"Which they are," Stafford broke in.

"To you, perhaps," Newton replied. "To me, they look more like men and women who, having been treated intolerably for generations, seek liberty so these abuses cannot go on. They seem very much like proper Atlantean patriots, in other words, even if their skins be dusky."

"That is a madman's perspective," the other Consul exclaimed.

"Oh, piffle! You know better. Do I caper? Do I gibber?" Newton said.

"You do not, as you must know. But you are more dangerous, not less, because you do not," Stafford answered. "An obvious lunatic ends up in jail or an asylum, where he can do others no harm. A lunatic who is not so obvious will deceive many others and persuade them to follow him. What is the name of that maniac minister?"

"Which one?" Newton asked. Atlantis permitted all faiths, which meant strange ones sometimes sprang up in the backwoods like weeds. Most flourished for a while and faded, but some seemed likely to last longer.

"The fellow who founded the-what do they call it?-the House of Universal Devotion," Stafford said. "I know there are others, but he's the one I had in mind."

"Oh. Him. Well, we have agreed twice in a few minutes-how strange. I think he's a maniac, too," Newton said. The House of Universal Devotion was indeed a backwoods sect, one with an unsavory reputation. People who didn't belong to it claimed that far too much of the devotion went to the founder, far too little to the Lord. Members kept to themselves as much as they could. There were rumors some of the rites were licentious, even lewd. Newton didn't know if those rumors were true, but he wouldn't have been surprised. Something else he didn't know… "I can't tell you what his name is. He goes by the Reverend or the Preacher."

"If I came out with nonsense like that, I wouldn't want my real name associated with it, either," Stafford said.

"People listen to him," Newton said. "He doesn't seem to do much harm." That was as far as he would go to praise the House of Universal Devotion.

It was too far to suit Jeremiah Stafford. "The devil!" the other Consul snapped. "The only reason you say that is, he rants against slavery along with his other ravings. That he does should make you ashamed to hold the same views."

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day," Newton said.

"That clock ought to be smashed, not broken," Stafford said.

"If the sect provably violates the laws, or if we find good reason to set aside the Charter, no doubt it will be," Newton said. "Until and unless that happens, tolerance seems the better policy."

"You will tolerate a tumor on the Atlantean body politic, which wants only growth before it can extinguish the Charter. But an institution long sanctioned by our laws? That, you oppose." Stafford sounded bitter as wormwood.

Consul Newton hadn't thought of things in such a light. Uncomfortably, he said, "The Reverend and his followers do not harm others-"

"Not where they get caught," Stafford retorted.

"Slavery does," Newton went on as if his colleague had not spoken. "That is why I oppose it, and why so many in the north do."

"Servile insurrection must be checked!"

Newton waved to the soldiers all around. "Well, here we are. What are we doing, if not trying to check it?" They were doing more along those lines than he'd had in mind when they set out from New Hastings.

"Whatever we're doing, it's not enough." Stafford plucked at his whiskers. "I wonder if we have any weak-minded House of Universal Devotion men in this army. If we do, I shouldn't be surprised to hear that they were discovering our plans to the niggers and mudfaces."

That hadn't occurred to Newton. He wanted to say the other Consul would be hearing voices next. He wanted to, but discovered he couldn't. What Stafford had suggested might be unlikely, but it was far from impossible. What did come out of his mouth was, "We shall have to find out about that."

"Yes. We shall." Even the soft answer failed to satisfy Stafford. "We should have done it a long time ago."

"Maybe we would have, had you suggested it then," Newton said. "If you bring it to Colonel Sinapis' attention, I am sure he will handle it."

"He does not favor slavery," Stafford said darkly. Newton wondered why that surprised the other Consul-few immigrants did. Stafford scowled. But then he unbent enough to add, "He will not care for the House of Universal Devotion, either: it is destructive of good discipline."

"Something else on which we agree," Leland Newton said. "We may have more in common than either of us would have believed."

"So we may. But so what?" Stafford had no more give to him than the rocks of North Cape. "We also know where we disagree, and we know which carries the greater weight."

"I am not your enemy," Newton said. "You mistake me if you judge me so."

"You are the enemy of things I hold dear, however," Stafford replied. "You oppose me there, and I will oppose you to see those things strengthened and protected. I do not see how we can make a friendship of that."

Neither did Consul Newton, however much he might have liked to. Jeremiah Stafford scowled at Lorenzo. The copperskinned emissary from the Free Republic of Atlantis stared back impassively. Whatever Lorenzo was thinking, he didn't tell his face about it: a useful quality in an envoy. Only the flag of truce he carried kept Stafford from ordering him seized and hanged from the closest tree. The Consul was tempted to do it despite the white flag.

"Here I am again. Now you start to see you can't hope to beat us," Lorenzo said. Even his voice grated on Stafford's nerves. He talked like what he was: a slave, and likely a field hand at that. A pig in an archbishop's robes would have made a more unlikely diplomat than Lorenzo, but only a little.

"We haven't seen anything of the kind," Stafford growled. "If your precious Frederick Radcliff is such a wonderful general, why doesn't he come out and fight instead of skulking around like a coward?"

Lorenzo still didn't change expression, though something might have flickered in his eyes. "If you are such a wonderful general, Consul Stafford, why don't you make him come out and fight when he doesn't want to?"

Beside Stafford, Leland Newton snickered, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Colonel Sinapis coughed, which might have been even more embarrassing. Stafford's ears felt ready to burst into flame. He couldn't even show his fury, lest he hand Lorenzo another point. "That," he ground out, "can be arranged."

"So you say, your Excellency." By his tone, Lorenzo didn't believe a word of it.

"I also say you deserve lashes for your insolence," Stafford told him.

Lorenzo only shrugged. "If you want, I will take off my shirt and show you my stripes. I have tasted the lash before. Have you?"

"No, and I have not deserved it, either," Stafford said.

"Oh? Deserved!" Lorenzo's face might not show much, but he had an expressive voice. "Well, I did not deserve my whippings, either. But that did not stop the overseer. And many of the people in the Free Republic's army will tell you the same story. That is why we keep fighting. That is why you will never make us give up, no matter what."

"In a pinch, killing the lot of you will do," Stafford said.

The copperskin started to laugh. Then he took another look at Stafford's face and thought twice. He hadn't realized Stafford might mean it. After a considerable pause, he said, "Well, you can try. Giving us the freedom we want, the freedom we deserve, would come cheaper, though."

"You don't think you have earned punishment for your insurrection? Punishment for your treason?" Stafford asked.

"Your Excellency, any man with stripes on his back who does not rise up against the folk who gave them to him deserves punishment for not having any balls," Lorenzo said. "That is how it seems to me, and I have tasted the lash. Let us be free men and citizens, and we will trouble you no more. Say we have no right to that, and we will fight you forever."

"Go fight, then, because we will do just that," Stafford said.

"You say so now. Will you say so in five years' time, or ten, or fifteen?" Without waiting for an answer, Lorenzo raised his flag of truce and strode away from the white men who led the army opposing him.

"You should know you were speaking for yourself there," Consul Newton told Stafford. "Certainly not for me, and I would say not for the Atlantean government, either."

"Well, so what?" Stafford said. "Today is my day in command. You let that Lorenzo get above himself when it was your turn. High time the insurrectionists understand that we will not put up with their insolence. And, whether I speak for the government of Atlantis or not, you may rest assured that I do speak for the government of every state with a servile population. This kind of thing cannot be allowed to spread, or it will consume us all." He turned to Colonel Sinapis. "We ought to shadow that rogue of a Lorenzo, see where he goes. With any luck at all, he will lead us straight to Frederick Radcliff. If we take off the insurrection's head, the body ought to die."

"Interesting you should say so, your Excellency," Sinapis answered. "I tried it the last time he called. I lost two men and gained nothing. The rebels may be many different things, but naive they are not."

"Oh," Stafford said on a deflated note. "Too bad."

"It would not have worked in Europe," Sinapis said. "Here, I thought, perhaps the enemy is not so clever, so I might learn something worthwhile. But no." He spread his hands, as if to say, What can you do?

What Stafford wanted to do was dispose of every slave who had risen. He still wasn't convinced it was impossible. The will was there-or it would be, if it wouldn't cost the slaveowners so dear. The means were the harder part.

He found out just how hard it might be a couple of days later. To his surprise, and even more to his dismay, he found out not from Consul Newton or Colonel Sinapis-men he'd come to see as obstacles in his own path-but from a messenger who galloped in out of the east.

The news the man brought was particularly unwelcome. The slave uprising had broken out in earnest behind the army. The railroad line over the Green Ridge Mountains was cut. No supplies would get through any time soon.

Balthasar Sinapis' long face got even longer when he heard that. He said several choice things in English, then several more that sounded even juicier in what seemed like three or four other languages. Once the thunder and lightning stopped crashing down, he said, "This presents us with a serious problem. Two serious problems, in fact: food and munitions."

"If the God-damned insurrectionists can live off the countryside, so can we," Consul Stafford declared.

"But they have already been living off this countryside for some little while," Sinapis said. "That makes it more difficult for us to do the same."

"Hard to get more meat off bones the vultures have already picked clean," Consul Newton agreed.

"Vultures is right," Stafford snapped. "That's just what they are, and high time you admitted it, too." Having put the Consul from Croydon in his place-or so it seemed to him-he gave his attention back to the colonel. "We have enough ammunition to keep fighting, don't we?"

"For a while," Sinapis answered dubiously. "If we should run dry without getting any more… In that case, our troubles get worse."

"Translated into English, that means we get massacred shortly thereafter, doesn't it?" Newton asked. Put in his place he might be, but he refused to stay there.

Colonel Sinapis didn't tell him he was wrong, either. Of course, that was because Consul Stafford beat him to the punch: "Oh, rubbish. The insurrectionists are bound to run dry before we do. And if we aren't better men with bayonets in our hands, then something is dreadfully wrong with the way the drillmasters train our soldiers." He turned back to Sinapis again-no, he rounded on him this time. "Or will you tell me I'm wrong?" You'd better not, his voice warned.

And Colonel Sinapis didn't. "No, both those points hold considerable truth," he said.

"Then why were you panicking a moment ago?" Stafford asked.

"I was not," the officer replied with dignity. "I would be remiss in my duty if I did not point out difficulties."

He was right, which didn't make Stafford love him any better. Growling deep in his throat, the Consul said, "Well, sir, things being as they are, what do you recommend we do?"

"March for the town of New Marseille," Colonel Sinapis answered at once. "We establish a secure base, and we secure a supply route by sea-all the more important now that the land route has failed. We also prevent the insurrectionists from seizing the place, which would be a disaster for us."

He was right again. Leland Newton promptly nodded. Even Stafford could find nothing to quarrel at, not this time. He nodded, too. "Very well," he said. "And we should do that as quickly as we can, before the niggers and mudfaces hereabouts find out what's happened farther east and try to steal a march on us."

"Assuming they don't already know," Newton said.

"Yes. Assuming." Stafford contrived to make the innocent word sound more than a little obscene.

"All right, your Excellencies. For once, we find ourselves in complete accord. If only we did not require misfortune to cause it," Sinapis said. He waved to his junior officers, who stood in a knot off to one side, waiting to learn what had happened.

After their commander explained, they seemed no happier-which was putting it mildly. "Sweet suffering Jesus!" one of them exclaimed. "We're supposed to push the savages around. They aren't supposed to push us!"

"War is not about what is supposed to happen, Captain," Colonel Sinapis replied in tones so wintry, they should have frozen the subtropical landscape all around. "War is about what does happen, and about responding to it as best one can."

"Er-yes, sir," the captain said. That was one answer that was never out of place.

Not even Consul Stafford could complain about the way Sinapis and his officer corps got the men moving. The soldiers grumbled and swore, but soldiers always grumbled and swore. They marched along the muddy roads, which was what mattered. And the insurrectionists did not seem inclined to do more than harry them. Maybe that meant Frederick Radcliff didn't aim to attack New Marseille himself. Stafford hoped so, anyhow.