Liberating Atlantis

IV

Matthew blew the horn again the next morning. As Frederick came out to eat breakfast and go on to the fields, he looked at the overseer in a whole new way. He had to be careful not to let it show. Matthew took it for granted that he could hit or whip Frederick, or any other slave, without worrying about reprisal. If he realized Frederick didn't take it for granted, he would do his best to kill him right away. And he could, if he got any kind of chance. He had his switch and a knife with a blade long enough to gut a man like a hog. Frederick didn't think he was a coward, either. Life would have been simpler if he were, but no.

There was plenty to eat. Fewer and fewer field hands came out to work, but the cooks went on making as much as they always had. More than one slave patted his belly and grinned after he finished eating. Frederick was surprised Matthew hadn't noticed what was going on and done something about it, but the overseer hadn't. It wasn't as if he didn't have other things on his mind.

And so did Henry Barford. The planter looked like a man bathing in hellfire when he came out onto the front porch. Eyes wild, he pointed at one of the cavalrymen guarding the precious wagons. "Where's that lieutenant of yours, the God-damned son of a bitch bastard?"

"Sir, Lieutenant Torrance is sick. He's mighty sick," the trooper answered. "He can't see anybody right now. What's the matter?"

"What's the matter? What's the God-damned matter?" Barford howled. "My wife is puking up this horrible black gunk-looks like coffee grounds-and you ask me what's the matter? Your miserable, stinking lieutenant is what's the matter, that's what! Bringing the yellow jack to my plantation! I don't want to see the lousy bugger. I want to horsewhip him!"

"Well, sir, if it makes you feel any better, he's heaving up black stuff, too," the soldier said. "I don't think he's going to pull through."

"Too bad," Barford said, which surprised Frederick till he added, "I wanted to kill him with my own hands. But I reckon the yellow jack'll have to do. Though why a merciful God would take my sweet Clotilde, too…" He turned and lurched back into the big house.

Sweet? Frederick shook his head. Mistress Clotilde was about as sweet as vinegar. She was the one who'd wanted to give him more lashes than Master Henry. That was just like her, too. Did her husband really believe what he was saying, or was he trying to make the trooper feel worse?

From inside the house, Barford shouted, "I'll sue the government for every last eagle it's got! You wait and see if I don't!"

The cavalryman only shrugged. He scratched his nose, as if to say it was no skin off that organ. Unless the planter came out shooting-or unless the soldier got yellow fever-it wasn't his worry.

"Come on," Matthew called to the field hands. "Grab your tools. The work doesn't go away. The work never goes away. I know we're shorthanded, but we've got to keep at it. Otherwise, the harvest'll be bad, and then we'll all go hungry."

He wouldn't. Master Henry would yell at him, but that was all. The field hands really might go hungry in a bad year. Or Barford might have to sell some of them, which would be almost as rough. Frederick snorted quietly. He had other things on his own mind besides what the master might do after a bad harvest.

"You ain't said anything to anybody," Helen said as they walked out to the cotton field with tools on their shoulders. Hopefully, she added, "You gone and changed your mind?"

"Nope. Not me," Frederick answered. People said stubborn as a Radcliff. By that standard alone, he might have guessed he shared blood with one of the First Consuls. Even Henry Barford had sometimes seemed more proud than annoyed when calling him a hardheaded smoke. But Frederick also had other things than that on his mind. "Sometimes all the talking in the world doesn't do a cent's worth of good. Sometimes you got to show people instead."

Helen clicked her tongue between her teeth. "Oh, Fred, what are you gonna do?"

Burn my bridges, Frederick thought. But that wasn't what she wanted to hear. All he said was, "What I've got to do."

Helen shook her head, but she didn't say anything more, either. Maybe she hoped he would change his mind once they settled down to work. Part of him hoped the same thing: the part that had lived a quiet, pretty easy life all the way up into middle age. Well, his life wasn't quiet or easy any more. By all the signs, it never would be again. And if it wouldn't, why not act the way Sam-son had in the Philistines' temple? What did you have to lose?

He worked for a while, chopping and moving forward, chopping and moving forward. By now he had no trouble keeping up with the slaves working the rows of cotton to either side of him. He methodically weeded till Matthew came along to see how he was doing.

"Going all right, Frederick?" the overseer asked.

Frederick straightened and stretched, though he kept both hands on the hoe handle. "Not too bad, sir."

"Back easing up?"

"A bit." Frederick stretched again.

Matthew nodded, more to himself than to the Negro in front of him. "Told you it would. Whippings are like that."

Yes, he thought of them as nothing more than a rather unpleasant part of plantation routine. And so they were-if you held the whip. If you were on the other end… Frederick's hands tightened.

Some of what was going through his mind must have shown on his face at last. "You don't want to look at me that way," Matthew warned. "You don't want to look at me that way, by God!" He started to raise the switch, then seemed to realize it wouldn't be enough. He dropped it and grabbed for his knife instead.

Too late. Frederick swung the hoe in a deadly arc, an arc powered by a lifetime's worth of smothered fury. Smothered no more. The heavy blade tore away half the overseer's face. Blood gouted, astoundingly red in the bright sunshine. Matthew let out a gobbling shriek. The knife fell in the dirt as he clapped both hands to the ghastly wound.

He tried to stagger away from Frederick. Frederick hit him again, this time from behind. The heavy hoe blade bit into Matthew's skull. The overseer crumpled. He thrashed on the ground. Frederick hit him one more time. The thrashing slowed, then stopped. The white man's blood soaked into the thirsty soil.

The slaves working to either side of Frederick gaped at him in commingled astonishment, horror, and awe. "Lord Jesus!" one of them burst out. "What did you go and do that for?"

"We're all in trouble now!" the other one added. He stared at Matthew's huddled corpse. "Big trouble, I mean."

"Not if we grab those guns in the wagons," Frederick answered, more calmly than his drumming heart should have let him speak. "Not if we make all the white folks pay for what they've done to us."

Matthew's dying cries made more Negroes and copperskins hurry over to see what was going on. They all eyed the overseer's bloody corpse with the same look of disbelief, as if they'd never dreamt they might see such a thing. And yet how many of them would have wanted to slaughter him themselves?

"They're gonna kill you," a copperskin said. A moment later, he mournfully added, "They're gonna kill all of us."

"They will if we let 'em," Frederick said. "So let's not let 'em. Let's do some killing of our own-as much as it takes till we're free the way we're supposed to be. The United States of Atlantis are so damned proud of their precious Proclamation of Liberty. But they reckon it stops with white folks. Don't you think mudfaces and niggers deserve their share, too?"

He waited, still clutching the gore-spattered hoe. Their other choice was to kill him now. If they did that, they might convince Henry Barford they hadn't had anything to do with murdering Matthew. They might. Or the planter might decide they had had something to do with it, and were using Frederick's death to cover their own guilt.

Or Barford might be down with the yellow jack himself by now. The way things were going, nobody could guess anything he couldn't see.

"Do you want to stay slaves the rest of your days?" Frederick asked. "Wouldn't you sooner be free?"

They looked at him. They looked at Matthew's body. Flies with metallic bodies-blue, green, brass-were already buzzing above it. "Don't seem like we got much else we can do," a Negro said slowly. "They gonna kill us any which way. Might as well kill some of them before we's dead."

One by one, the other slaves nodded. It wasn't the grand war cry Frederick had dreamt of, but when did reality ever measure up to dreams? He'd made them move. That much, anyhow, he'd foreseen.

"Let's go," he said. "We got to get those guns."

Leaving the overseer's corpse where it lay (though Frederick took the dead man's knife), they marched on the big house.

Frederick did remember to plunge the hoe blade into the dirt to clean it, and to rub more dirt on the handle to hide the blood-stains. He didn't want to alarm the Atlantean soldiers till the slaves got in among them.

He also didn't want to alarm Henry Barford. He didn't hate his owner. He hadn't even particularly disliked Barford till he got shackled to the whipping post and then sent to the fields. But he saw no way to let the planter live, not in the middle of a slave rebellion. Too bad-but a lot of things that happened were too bad.

"What do we say when they ask us how come we're comin' back in the middle of the day?" the copperskin called Lorenzo asked.

"We'll tell 'em a snake bit the overseer," Frederick answered- he'd been wondering about that, too. "Tell 'em he's mighty bad off." He chuckled grimly. "An' he damned well is."

The squat red-brown man grinned in admiration. "You think of everything."

"If I'm gonna run this… whatever it is, I'd better, don't you reckon?" Frederick said. Lorenzo nodded. Nobody else challenged Frederick's right to lead the uprising. Maybe that meant all the field hands thought they could have no one better at their head. Perhaps more likely, it meant they figured he was the one on whom all the blame would land. And it would all land on him. But it would land on them, too. Whites had never shown any mercy to slaves who rose up. In their place, Frederick didn't suppose he would have, either.

There was the big house. There were the wagons with the precious rifle muskets. Without them, the revolt would be stillborn. A couple of troopers dug in the burial plot. If that didn't mean Lieutenant Torrance had died, Frederick would have been very surprised. Too bad, he thought, even though the slaves would have had to kill the officer had he pulled through. Torrance might personally disapprove of slavery, but Frederick had no doubt the Croydonite would have done his professional duty against any rising.

A soldier puffed on a pipe in front of one of the wagons. Sure enough, he became curious if not exactly alert when he saw the slaves straggling in from the cotton fields. "What're you doin' here so God-damned early?" he asked-the very question Lorenzo had foretold.

"You know anything about curin' snakebite?" Frederick asked in return. "Coral snake done bit the overseer, an' he's in a bad way."

"Son of a bitch!" the trooper exclaimed. "I bet he's in a bad way. Those bastards'll kill you deader'n shit."

He might be foul-mouthed, but he wasn't wrong. Coral snakes didn't go out of their way to bite people, as some of the bigger poisonous snakes did. But, like a good many frogs in the south of Atlantis, they wore bright colors to warn enemies that trying to make a meal off them wasn't a good idea. If a coral snake did bite you, you were much too likely to die.

"Whiskey or rum'll make his heart stronger," the cavalryman said as the slaves came up to him. "That and praying're about all I know that can help him."

No, he wasn't suspicious-certainly not suspicious enough. He let the slaves surround him; he couldn't believe they meant him any harm. But what you believed didn't always match what was real. Frederick got behind the trooper and stabbed him in the back.

The white man lurched. He groaned. He tried to draw his revolver, but another Negro clamped a hand on his wrist and didn't let him. When he screamed, more blood than noise came out of his mouth. His knees buckled. A sudden foul stench said his bowels had let go. Down he went.

Frederick grabbed his eight-shooter. "Get his knife, too," he said. One way you got to give orders was by coming out and giving them. If people followed them, you could give more, and they'd be more likely to follow those. Lorenzo took possession of the dagger.

"What do we do now?" someone else asked.

"Let's go get the ones who're digging in the graveyard," Frederick answered. "Doesn't look like they noticed anything goin' on here, and that's good." He stuffed the pistol into the waistband of his trousers and let his shirt droop down over it. "We'll try and do with them like we did with this fellow. Shooting's noisy-we don't start till we have to. Lorenzo, reckon you can let the air out of one while I do the other?"

"Turn me loose," the copperskin said confidently.

"All right." Frederick grinned. "But listen, everybody. If they look like they're gonna pull their guns, just jump on 'em any which way. If they start shootin', they can hurt us bad. Got me?" He waited for nods. As soon as he had them, he nodded at the troopers, who weren't digging much faster than slaves would have. "Soon as we bag them, Master Henry next."

That got everybody moving toward the Atlantean cavalrymen. Frederick might not especially dislike Henry Barford, but some of the field hands did.

"Your poor lieutenant die?" Frederick called as he and the slaves with him neared the sweating troopers.

They seemed willing enough to rest on their shovels for a while. "That's right," one of them said, mopping at his red face with a big cotton handkerchief-cotton that, for all Frederick knew, might have come from this plantation. "Once the fever got a grip on him, he went downhill quick. He was pissing blood and puking up black stuff…" His face twisted in disgust. Maybe in fear as well, for he had to know that could happen to him, too.

"It's a shame," Frederick said. "He was a good fellow."

"That he was," the soldier agreed. "Won't catch me saying it real often, not about officers, but it's the truth with Lieutenant Torrance. Was the truth, I mean."

"Hey," the other trooper said suddenly. "What're you, uh, people doing here, anyway? How come you ain't out there workin' like you have been?"

Frederick told the story about the snakebite again. This time, he didn't stumble even a little. Had he heard the tale from his own lips, without question he would have believed it. Some lies-inspired lies-sounded better than truth.

He thought so, anyhow. To his surprise and disappointment, the troopers didn't seem to. "How come you didn't send one fellow back while the rest of you stayed out there?" asked the one who'd wondered why they'd returned. He was the man Frederick was closer to, leaving the other soldier for Lorenzo.

Frederick answered the question as if replying to an idiot: "On account of the snake's still there."

"Huh," the trooper said scornfully. He looked around in alarm. "Why are you people crowdin' around us like this? Watch yourself, Stu! Somethin' funny's goin' on."

Things happened very quickly after that. Lorenzo knifed Stu as neatly as Frederick had killed the sentry by the wagons of guns. Frederick stabbed the other trooper less than a heartbeat later. But the man screamed like a hurt shoat and went for his revolver. One of the slaves tried to stop him, but he shook off the Negro. The pistol cleared the holster. Another slave grabbed his arm and dragged it down, so he fired a shot into the dirt at his feet.

The noise was horribly loud. And, if one shot had already rung out, two wouldn't make any difference. Frederick held the muzzle of his own pistol against the side of the struggling trooper's head and pulled the trigger.

He'd seen bullet wounds on animals. Henry Barford was proud of his skill as a hunter-and well he might have been, because he helped feed the plantation with it. But Frederick had never seen anything like this. If he was very lucky, he never would again, either. The trooper's head might have been a rotten melon dropped off a roof. It blew apart. Brains and blood and bits of bone splat tered Frederick and all the other slaves close by. The Atlantean cavalryman had fought despite a nasty knife wound, but now he dropped like a felled redwood.

Lorenzo already had the other man's pistol. Another copperskin had got his knife. Now a Negro took this trooper's eight-shooter. And Helen pulled the knife off his belt. Frederick smiled at that. It was good that his wife should have a proper weapon. They'd all have them as soon as they unloaded the wagons, but why shouldn't Helen take the lead?

The gunshots brought house slaves running out to see what was going on. To Frederick's heartfelt relief, they didn't bring out any more Atlantean cavalrymen. The rest of the troopers must have been either dead or too sick to care. The house slaves… Their eyes went wide with shock. Looking down at himself, Frederick saw why. The cavalryman's blood and brains splashed his shirt and trousers. He looked as if he'd just come from a hard day's work at a slaughterhouse.

"What… What happened?" a housemaid quavered, as if she couldn't see for herself.

In case she really couldn't, Frederick answered, "We're free now. We're really free now, and we're gonna stay that way."

"The hell you say!" That furious roar came from Henry Barford. His wife might be dying of yellow fever. For all Frederick knew, Mistress Clotilde might be as dead as Lieutenant Torrance. But the idea of a slave uprising brought the master out onto the back porch, a shotgun cradled in his arms, his over-and-under pistol stuck in his belt. "And hell is where I'll blast the lot of you, too!"

He started to raise the shotgun to his shoulder. Housemaids scattered, squealing. Frederick aimed his pistol, too. He knew he would have to be lucky to hit Master Henry at this range, while the master, with that shotgun, wouldn't have to be lucky at all to hit him.

Thunk! Speaking of slaughterhouses, that noise came straight out of one. Davey stood behind the master. The chief cook had buried a cleaver in the back of Henry Barford's head. Barford stood there a long moment, looking absurdly surprised. The shotgun slipped out of his hands. Then his knees buckled and he fell over. His feet drummed on the planking. That wouldn't last long. No one could hope to live with such a terrible wound.

Slowly, Frederick lowered his eight-shooter. "Obliged," he said, wishing his voice weren't so shaky.

Davey sketched a salute. "Any time." He stooped and picked up the shotgun. "Now I got me a piece, too. I know some folks who could use two barrels' worth of double-aught buck, I expect."

"Take Master Henry's pistol if you want, but don't worry about the shotgun," Frederick said. Davey frowned, not following. Frederick pointed to the wagons. "Those're full of guns that'll hit from four or five times as far away as any shotgun ever born, remember? Fancy government muskets, bound for New Marseille."

"That's right." The cook's heavy-featured face cleared. "Reckon we'll need 'em, too."

"Reckon we will," Frederick agreed. "But for now, this here plantation is ours."

What did generals call it when victory had been won but the fighting wasn't quite over? Mopping up-that was what they said. The slaves still had to mop up. Knocking the cavalrymen down with yellow fever over the head was quick and easy. A couple of them were near death anyway. Frederick told himself his people were doing the whites a favor by ending their suffering. He didn't have much trouble making himself believe it.

Clotilde Barford also still clung to life in the upstairs bedroom. Three housemaids got into a catfight about who would have the privilege of holding a pillow over her face till she quit breathing for good. It was a real brawl-their nails drew blood.

"Lord Jesus!" Frederick exclaimed after some of the men separated them-and got clawed in the process. "Let's settle this fair and square."

"How you gonna manage that?" one of the women asked, dabbing at her bleeding cheek with her apron.

Frederick dug out Henry Barford's deck of cards. "Here's how," he said. "You all draw one. High card does the job."

The housemaid who'd asked him won the draw. The other two swore at her as she proudly climbed the stairs to finish the last white person on the plantation. When she came down, she was grinning from ear to ear. "That bitch ain't gonna give nobody grief no more!" she declared.

Everyone cheered. Frederick held up his hands. "Listen to me!" he said. "You got to listen to me!" He wasn't sure they would. Some of them had already got into the master's-the dead master's-barrel-tree rum and whiskey.

"Listen to him, damn it!" That was Lorenzo. He seemed to be the one the copperskins on the plantation heeded most. And he had a fierce bass voice that made people pay attention to him.

Eventually, most of the field hands and house slaves looked in Frederick's direction. "We're free now," he said. Then he couldn't go on, because everybody started cheering again. He held up his hands once more, this time hoping for quiet. After a while, he got something close to it. He continued: "We're free-till the first white man-drummer or preacher or neighbor: doesn't matter which one-decides to pay a call on Master Henry. Then they'll find out what happened here, and they'll try and kill us all."

"Well, fuck 'em!" shouted a housemaid with a whiskey bottle in her hand. "Fuck 'em in the heart, the stinking shitsacks!" She got a cheer, too.

"Easy to say," Frederick said when he could get a word in edgewise. "Not so easy to do. Way it looks to me is, we got two choices. We can slip away by ones and twos, going every which way. Some of us'll get free if we try that, odds are-some of us, but not everybody."

"We could go off to the woods and the swamps," a copperskin said. Runaway slaves of all colors scratched out livings in places where whites judged pursuit more trouble than it was worth.

"Well, we could try," Frederick said. "When they find out we killed the whites here, though, they'll come after us a lot harder'n they'd chase ordinary runaways. Or does anybody reckon I'm wrong?"

No one said anything. If slaves killed white people, other whites would hunt them down no matter what. Every slave understood that. It was one of the pillars on which slavery rested.

"So slipping away doesn't look so good," Frederick said. "Only other chance I see is, we gotta fight, and we gotta win."

"We got the guns, by God!" Davey's voice was as deep as Lorenzo's.

"Anybody figure there ain't some white folks around these parts who still need killing?" Lorenzo himself added.

No one left alive on the plantation believed that. "And when we liberate a plantation, what happens to the mudfaces and niggers who were slaves on it?" Frederick answered his own question before anyone else could: "I'll tell you what happens to 'em. They join our army-the Liberating Army, that's what we'll call it. And then we go on and we free up the next plantation down the road."

"And the slaves there, they turn into soldiers, too!" That was one of the housemaids who'd lost the draw to kill Mistress Clotilde. By the excited way she said it, the possibility hadn't occurred to her till that very moment. It probably hadn't. Frederick had never thought she was long on brains.

Excitement surged through the assembled slaves-no, through the newborn Liberating Army. They had rifle muskets and ammunition for several plantations' worth of slaves. After that… Well, Frederick couldn't imagine any plantation without firearms, both for hunting and for keeping two-legged property in line. Those weapons would arm more Negroes and copperskins.

And what happens when the Liberating Army goes up against the army of the United States of Atlantis? Frederick wondered. What do we do for cannon? What do we do for grapeshot?

Well, he didn't have to worry about that, not yet. And, as long as he didn't have to, he didn't intend to. Borrowing trouble never did anybody any good. And, if you were a slave-even more, if you were a slave trying to rise up against white masters-you already had plenty of troubles, and didn't need to borrow any more.

"Where do we go first?" That was Davey: trust the cook to come up with a good, practical question.

Frederick had been chewing that over, too. "Way it looks to me is, first place we ought to set free is Benjamin Barker's," he answered. "It's close, and he doesn't treat his slaves real well, so they'll be ready to swing our way, and-"

"And his wife, that Veronique, she's an even nastier cunt than Mistress Clotilde, an' that's really sayin' somethin'," interrupted the handmaid who'd just snuffed out Clotilde Barford's life.

From everything Frederick had seen and heard, she was right. He made himself nod. "She sure is," he said. "And that's one more reason the slaves on the Barker plantation will see things our way." They'd better, or this will be one of the shortest uprisings in a history that's seen a lot of short ones. He looked around. "Anybody got a better idea?"

The people who really counted were Lorenzo and Davey. If either of them thought the Liberating Army should pick a different direction, Frederick would have to listen carefully. He might have to change his mind.

They both paused thoughtfully, considering. At last, almost in unison, their heads went up and down. "Benjamin Barker deserves whatever happens to him," Davey said in the tones of a judge passing sentence.

"He does," Lorenzo agreed. And so it was decided.

They took the rifle muskets out of their crates. Then they had to figure out how to use the percussion caps that came with the cartridges: all of the firearms on the plantation were flintlocks. But several slaves had heard about the percussion system, and had a notion of how to fit the thin copper caps over the nipple on each musket.

Some of the field hands used beat-up old shotguns of their own to kill varmints and hunt small game. The fancy new muskets impressed them enormously. "See, the thing of it is, a flintlock'll misfire maybe one time in five," Lorenzo explained to Frederick. "And even when it doesn't, there's always that wait while the sparks set off the priming powder and the priming powder starts the main charge, so you miss what you were aiming at 'cause it's not there no more."

"Not like that with these guns," Frederick said. His shoulder was sore from a rifle musket's fierce kick. "Soon as you pull the trigger and the hammer comes down-bang!" His ears were still ringing, too.

"I hope to shit, it's not like that!" Lorenzo said enthusiastically. "We're gonna kill us a lot of white folks with 'em."

"That's right." Frederick saw the need, but he wasn't so eager. The color of his skin reminded him of the white blood that flowed in his veins. So did the thick beard that rasped under his fingers every time he rubbed his chin.

Lorenzo pressed ahead: "How are we gonna get there? We march down the road with guns on our shoulders, people'll figure out pretty damned quick there's a slave uprising."

"Think so, do you?" Frederick's voice was dry. "Looks to me like they'll figure it out pretty damned quick any which way."

Lorenzo grinned. He had strong white teeth, and his fierce expression made them seem uncommonly sharp. "Looks the same way to me. But do you want to let the whole world know right away, like we're some traveling medicine show?"

"Well…" Frederick didn't need long to think that over. "No."

And so they went cross-country-all but the precious rifle muskets they weren't using themselves and the even more precious ammunition. Those rolled down the road, guarded by slaves with eight-shooters taken from dead Atlantean cavalrymen. The Negroes and copperskins slapped paint on the wagons before setting out, so no one who saw them would think of the United States of Atlantis.

One of the slaves who took the lead wagon down the road pulled a black felt hat of Henry Barford's low on his forehead, so the brim was barely above his eyes. It was the perfect touch, especially since he was also smoking one of the dead master's cheroots. If he didn't look like a teamster, Frederick had never seen anybody who did.

"They'll get there ahead of us," Davey said in worried tones as the rest of the Liberating Army started tramping from one big house to the other.

Frederick shook his head. "Don't think so. Hope not, anyways. I told 'em to hold up by the side of the road a couple of times. White folks going by won't think anything of that. You know how they always go on about how lazy niggers and mudfaces are."

"Oh, hell, yes-usually while they're pilin' more work on our heads," Davey said. "Then they get mad on account of we don't finish as fast as they want." He muttered something under his breath; the look in his eyes went as dark as his skin. After a few seconds, though, his face cleared. He set a hand on Frederick's shoulder. "That's good, the way you set it up. Seems like you got a notion of what's likely to happen next. Fellow who's runnin' this show, he better do that."

"Yeah, I know. Right now, main thing I'm tryin' for is not to do anything out-and-out stupid," Frederick answered. Sooner or later, he would do something stupid, too. You couldn't help it, any more than you could help needing to piss every so often. He just hoped his mistakes wouldn't be too bad and wouldn't hurt the Liberating Army too much.

He was glad Davey seemed willing to let him lead. The head cook was one of a handful of men who might have wanted to run things himself. Lorenzo was another. He also seemed content with Frederick's leadership.

Well, of course they are, Frederick thought. Nothing's gone wrong yet, so they can't hang any blame on me.

A rail fence separated Master Henry's land from Benjamin Barker's. Maybe it was Frederick's imagination, but he thought the crops on the far side of the fence grew taller than they did on this side. Nothing, not even cotton plants, dared give Benjamin Barker a hard time.

He remarked on that as he clambered over the fence and came down on the other side. Now it's official. Now it's an invasion, he thought. Helen answered him before anyone else could: "We're gonna give Master Benjamin Barker a hard time, by Jesus! And his stuck-up bitch of a wife, too!"

"That's right!" Several Negroes and copperskins said the same thing at the same time. Women's voices were loud in the chorus. Frederick knew nobody liked Veronique Barker very much. Considering what was likely to happen to her, that might be just as well.

"Hey, now! What are you slaves doin' on Barker land?" an officious-sounding Negro demanded. "And"-the fellow's voice suddenly wobbled-"what are you doin' with guns in your hands?"

"This here is the Liberating Army," Frederick answered proudly. "We're here to clean things out, that's what we're here for. Are you with us or against us?"

"Lord Jesus!" the Negro yelped. If he said he was against them, he wouldn't live long. And maybe he didn't need much persuading. "You're gonna do for Master Benjamin?"

"His snooty ol' Veronique, too," Helen said.

"You really are!" Benjamin Barker's slave might have discovered it was Christmas in summertime. "Count me in! You got a spare gun I can shoot?"

"Not yet, but we will pretty quick," Frederick said. If Barker's Negro wanted to think that meant they aimed to plunder the big house, he was welcome to for the time being. Let him prove himself before he got a rifle musket of his own.

"Well, come on, then!" he said now, and he sure seemed enthusiastic. "I'll take you straight to him, I will!"

V

They hadn't gone very far before they came upon a work gang weeding in the fields. Frederick's back and shoulders twinged sympathetically. He'd been doing the same thing himself a couple of days earlier. And making sure the gang actually worked, of course, was Benjamin Barker's overseer.

He was older and tougher-looking than Matthew had been. Matthew had been a man who wanted to rise, the kind who dreamt of owning a plantation himself one day. This fellow was out of dreams. All he wanted was to go on doing what he was doing already. He'd never rise higher than overseer, and he knew it.

Instead of a switch, he carried a lash in his right hand. And, where Matthew had had a knife on his belt, a pistol rode this overseer's right hip.

His hand dropped to that pistol as soon as he saw strange slaves. "All right, you bastards!" he growled. "You've got three shakes of a lamb's tail to tell me what the hell you're doing on Master Barker's land. C'mon! Make it snappy!"

He had to die. Frederick wasn't the only one who realized it. Half a dozen rifle muskets rose as one and trained on the overseer's chest and head. It wasn't anything personal-but, then again, it was. Frederick had trouble imagining a field hand who didn't want to shoot an overseer.

"Son of a bitch!" this white man exclaimed. "You lousy, stupid idiots are trying to rise up!" With startling speed, his pistol cleared the holster.

With startling speed-but not fast enough. Before the overseer could pull the trigger, those rifle muskets spoke together. A couple of the conical bullets the longarms spat might have missed him, but most struck home. A round that caught a man square in the face drastically rearranged his looks, and not for the better. Scarlet flowers blossomed on the overseer's shirtfront, too. He pitched forward and lay facedown in the dirt.

Benjamin Barker's slaves gaped at him, and at the men and women of the Liberating Army. Frederick paid no attention to them for a little while; he was reloading as fast as he could. Only after a new percussion cap sat on the nipple and a new powder charge and bullet were rammed down and firmly seated in the barrel did he start to notice their exclamations.

"What'd you go and do that for?" a mulatto woman asked shrilly, her knuckles pressed against her mouth.

Davey laughed. "You gonna tell me an overseer didn't have it coming? Not likely!"

"But…" The woman's gaze traveled to the blood soaking into the ground under the dead white man, then quickly jerked away. "You went and shot him. Just like that, you went and shot him."

Lorenzo laughed at her. "Nothing gets by you, does it, sweetheart?" He'd also reloaded before worrying about anything else. Gunfire might bring Benjamin Barker at the run, intent on finding out what had happened.

"What you gonna do with us?" a copperskinned man asked.

"Set you free. Give you guns," Frederick answered. "Nobody's gonna sell us any more, not ever again. Nobody's gonna horsewhip us any more, neither, not ever again. This here is the Liberating Army. From now on, we're our own people, not anybody else's, not ever again."

The copperskin looked at him as if he'd just declared himself God Almighty. "You're gonna get us all killed, is what you're gonna do." Several of Benjamin Barker's other slaves nodded somber agreement.

Frederick also knew that was possible-and feared it was probable. Even so, he said, "Best thing we can do is whip all the planters around us and make our army bigger. The more people we've got fighting, the better our chances."

"Maybe we can lick some of the planters," a Negro field hand here said. "We ain't never gonna lick the Atlantean army."

Frederick brandished his rifle musket. The long sword bayonet glittered in the sun. "We got these from Atlantean soldiers," he said proudly. He didn't mention that most of them were down with the yellow jack. He also didn't mention that the Liberating Army might have brought the sickness with it. Instead, he added, "Now-who wants to see Master Benjamin dead?"

No matter what Barker's field hands thought about the ultimate fate of the uprising, they did want to see their master dead. "And Mistress Veronique, too!" one of the women said-the one who'd been so horrified when they shot the overseer. Yes, Benjamin Barker's wife had found a way to make herself remembered, all right.

"Well, let's go get 'em," Frederick said, and then, "Scouts forward!" He wasn't going to run into any nasty surprises, not if he could help it.

He could see the big house in the distance. It was larger and fancier than Henry Barford's place. Veronique Barker had always thought herself above Mistress Clotilde. Now Frederick saw why. The Barkers had more money, and with money came status. It was that simple.

No-it had been that simple. Now there was a new game, complete with new rules. One of the new rules was, a white man couldn't get rich off the labor of Negroes and copperskins. Benjamin Barker was about to be taken to school by the Liberating Army. He would remember his lessons for the rest of his life, however long that was.

Here he came toward the fields: a big, sturdy man with streaks of gray in his black hair. He cradled a rifle or shotgun in his arms. Behind him strode his son, who was thinner and not yet graying but otherwise a good copy of the planter. The younger man was also armed.

Seeing strange copperskins and blacks heading his way, Benjamin Barker shouted in a great voice: "What kind of riffraff is this?" He sounded more disbelieving that such people could invade his land than angry.

His son reached out to pluck at his shirtsleeve. Frederick couldn't hear what the younger Barker said. It wasn't meant for him anyhow. But Benjamin's response to it left Frederick in no doubt about what it was.

"Drop those guns this minute, or it'll go even harder for you than it would otherwise!" the planter bellowed.

Frederick almost started to lay down his rifle musket. The habit of obedience to whites-especially to whites who gave orders in a loud voice-was deeply ingrained in him, as it was in all Atlantean slaves. One of Barker's men send back an answer: "We don't got to listen to you no more! You're gonna git what you deserve!"

"That's what you think, Ivanhoe!" Barker yelled. He raised the longarm he carried to his shoulder. The gun roared. Ivanhoe screeched and fell over, clutching his side.

"Give it to him!" Frederick said urgently. All the slaves turned their rifle muskets on Barker and his son. The guns stuttered out a ragged volley. The younger Barker clapped both hands to his breast, as if he were in a stage melodrama. But the blood on the front of his shirt was real. As the overseer had before him, he fell facedown in the dirt.

Somehow, all the bullets in the volley missed Benjamin Barker, the man at whom they were aimed. He reloaded with almost superhuman speed and fired again. This time, he hit one of his own copperskins. Unlike Ivanhoe, the second slave didn't make a sound. He simply crumpled, shot through the head.

More bullets flew at Benjamin Barker. These didn't bite, either. As slaves went, Frederick wasn't superstitious. He had more education-and more sense-than most bondsmen. But even he wondered if the planter didn't have a snakeskin or a rabbit's foot in his pocket.

Shaking his fist, Barker turned and ran back toward the big house. Another volley pursued him. Yet again, every shot missed. If that wasn't uncanny, Frederick couldn't imagine what would be.

He also couldn't imagine letting the planter get away. That would be… whatever was worse than a disaster. About as bad, say, as tripping over a floorboard that had come loose. Maybe even worse.

"Come on!" he said. "We've got to do for him!"

"How?" a copperskin asked. "If bullets won't-"

"If bullets won't, we'll burn down the God-damned big house," Frederick said savagely. "I don't want to do that, on account of the smoke'll draw a crowd where we don't need one, but I will if I got to. We ain't gonna let that man get away!"

His determination pulled the rest of the slaves after him. He realized it didn't have to be a white man giving orders in a loud voice. Anyone would do, as long as he sounded sure of himself. Being right plainly wasn't essential, or slaves would have stopped obeying masters hundreds of years ago. Being-or seeming-sure just as plainly was.

Benjamin Barker got inside. He fired at the oncoming Liberating Army, and dropped a second copperskin. A moment later, another gun spoke from upstairs. Veronique Barker didn't aim to sit around and let herself get slaughtered-or suffer the proverbial fate worse than death. Frederick didn't think she hit anybody, but she was making the effort.

"I need five or six men to come into the house with me," Frederick said. "The rest can go on shootin', make the white folks keep their heads down."

"I'm with you," Lorenzo said at once.

"Me, too," Davey said. "Got to finish that fucker."

Frederick soon had his volunteers. As the rest of the Liberating Army banged away, they rushed toward the front door. Benjamin Barker appeared in a window like an angry ghost. He fired and vanished again. The bullet cracked past Frederick's head, much too close for comfort. Involuntarily, he ducked. He hoped that wouldn't make his comrades think him a coward. Whether it did or not, he couldn't help it.

His shoulder hit the door. "Oof!" he said, and bounced off. He might have known it would be locked.

"Here-I'll settle it." Lorenzo fired two shots from a captured revolver into the lock. Then he rammed it with his shoulder. He fell down as it flew open.

Davey sprang over him and dashed into the big house. He took a shotgun blast full in the chest, and sank without a sound. Benjamin Barker howled laughter. "Thought it would be easy, did you?" He fired again, this time with a pistol. A copperskin beside Frederick screeched and clutched his leg.

Frederick had never thought it would be easy. If slave uprisings were easy, one of them would have succeeded before this. But he thought it might be possible. And one of the things that would make it possible was killing planters who got in the way.

He shot Benjamin Barker in the neck. Barker gobbled like a turkey. He clapped a hand to the bleeding wound. Why doesn't he fall over? Frederick wondered. But the answer to that was only too obvious. Because you only grazed him, that's why.

He ran forward. Sure as the devil, Barker wasn't badly hurt. He pulled a knife off his belt-no, a razor, the edge glittering even in the dimness inside the big house-and slashed at Frederick.

But a razor in a desperate man's right arm couldn't match the reach of an eighteen-inch bayonet at the end of a five-foot rifle musket. What Frederick had was a spear, and he used it so. He stuck Barker in the chest. The bayonet grated off a rib before sinking deep.

That finishes him, Frederick thought. But it didn't. Benjamin Barker went right on fighting. Killing a man wasn't so easy as it looked: it was a horrible, messy business. Frederick stuck the planter again and again, and still almost got his own throat slashed. Only when Lorenzo brought his pistol up against the back of Barker's head and pulled the trigger did the white man quit struggling.

"Whew!" Frederick said. "That man had no quit in him." Barker was still thrashing on the floor, but he plainly wouldn't get up again.

"Who cares?" Lorenzo answered. "Long as you can make him quit, that's all that counts."

Another shot rang out from upstairs. If Veronique had fired on the invaders from the landing, she could have done a lot of harm. Frederick looked around to make sure his surviving companions were all right. Then he said, "We better find out what that was all about."

Cautiously, they climbed the stairs. The door to the Barkers' bedroom stood open. Veronique Barker lay on the bed, the muzzle of a pistol still in her mouth. The back of her head was a red ruin that soaked into the bedclothes.

Lorenzo grunted when he saw the corpse. "Huh," he said. "She must've known what she had comin'. I never stuck it into a white woman before, but I sure would have. Serve her right, you know-pay her back for all the shit she done piled on her slaves."

Frederick hadn't wanted the Liberating Army to do things like that. What would Helen have said had he joined in the gang rape of the planter's wife? Would she have screamed at him, or would she also have thought Veronique Barker got what was coming to her? Frederick didn't know, and he wasn't altogether sorry not to find out.

"One way or the other, she's done for now," he said. "This whole plantation's done for. Let's drag the bodies out of the house, let the Barkers' slaves know they're free for sure."

Veronique Barker's corpse left a trail of gore down the stairs. Her blood and Benjamin's stained the rugs on the floor of their front room. Frederick pushed the bodies off the front porch with his foot. They rolled bonelessly down the stairs and came to rest in the dirt.

"See?" Frederick said. "They're really and truly dead. We done killed 'em. They won't ever trouble you any more."

The Barkers' slaves stared at the corpses with terrible avidity. Frederick hadn't particularly hated the Barfords-he'd just hated being anyone's piece of property. Things were different here: how very different, he didn't realize till the newly freed Negroes and copperskins surged forward and took their own vengeance on the bodies.

It wasn't pretty. They kicked them and beat them and hacked at them with gardening tools. A couple of men undid their flies and pissed on the bodies. The rest of the Barkers' slaves-no, the new recruits to the Liberating Army-whooped and cheered. They hung the corpses up by their heels. Veronique Barker's skirts fell down over her head. That drew more whoops, and some lewd jokes.

Moving faster than they would have under an overseer's glare, the copperskins and Negroes piled firewood into a pyre for the Barkers. Someone poured lamp oil on the wood to help it catch. As soon as it was burning well, the newly freed slaves cut down their late masters and threw them on the fire. They cheered again, loud and long, as the stink of charred meat joined the cleaner odor of wood smoke.

"In a way, this is good," Lorenzo said, watching the Barkers' people caper and cavort. "After they do somethin' like this, they can't say they didn't mean it and we made 'em join up with us."

"Who would they say that to?" Frederick asked.

Lorenzo looked at him as if his wits could have worked better. "To the white folks, of course," he answered. Sure enough, he might have been speaking to an idiot child.

He might have been, but he wasn't. Patiently, Frederick said, "Only way the white folks'll get a chance to ask 'em questions like that is if we lose. I don't aim to lose. I been waiting my whole life to get free. White Atlanteans, they take it for granted. They don't know how lucky they are. They've got no idea. But I do, on account of I've seen it from the other side. Nobody's gonna stop me from being free, not any more. How about you?"

By the look on Lorenzo's face, Frederick had startled him. That saddened Frederick, but it didn't much surprise him. "I don't want to go back to being a slave, no," Lorenzo said after a pause, "but I don't know what kind of chance we've got of really winning, either."

"If we don't, they'll kill us all," Frederick said, wishing the copperskin hadn't come out with his own worst fear.

"If we do, we've got to kill them all," Lorenzo said. "Otherwise, they ain't gonna let slaves who rose up live. They never have, and I figure they never will."

Frederick also feared that was much too likely to be true. Even so, he answered, "Main reason white folks didn't is that, when slaves rose up before, they just wanted to murder all the masters they could."

"And you don't?" Lorenzo pointed to the fire consuming the mortal remains of Benjamin and Veronique Barker.

"Got to do some," Frederick admitted. "But the white folks, even the ones without slaves, live pretty damned well in Atlantis. How come we can't live the same way? Proclamation of Liberty set this country free from England. Don't you reckon it's about time Atlantis lived up to all the fancy promises it made itself a long time ago?"

"Don't I reckon so? Of course I do," Lorenzo said. "That ain't the question, though. Question is, will the white folks reckon so? I've got to tell you, friend, it looks like long odds to me."

"You'd better run off now, then, on account of that's the only hope we got," Frederick said.

"If it is, we've got no hope at all," Lorenzo said. "But I ain't runnin', neither, 'cause that's no hope. Skulking in the woods the rest of my days like a damned honker?" He shook his head. "I don't think so. Shit-who knows? Maybe we can lick the white folks. Maybe." He didn't sound as if he believed it, though.

Frederick didn't believe it, either. Sometimes you had to rise up whether you believed you could possibly win or not. If that wasn't the measure of a slave's damnation, Frederick had no idea what would be.

The Liberating Army had plenty of rifle muskets to arm Benjamin Barker's slaves. Barker's own arsenal would give several more slaves weapons. He'd kept far more guns in his big house than Henry Barford had in his. "Why does one man need so much firepower?" Lorenzo asked. "He couldn't shoot 'em all off at the same time."

"Not at the same time, no," one of Barker's men, a Negro, answered. "But if he needed to shoot himself a snake or a hawk or a fox or a deer or one o' them big ol' lizards in a river, he had the right piece for it."

"Or if he needed to shoot himself a nigger or a mudface, he had the right piece for that, too," Frederick said with a shudder.

"Or one of them," the black man agreed. His former owner had put up much too good a fight.

A halloo made Frederick break off the conversation. A warning shout followed the halloo: "Somebody comin' up the path!"

"Oh, good God!" Frederick exclaimed. That was the last thing he wanted to hear. No one had called at the Barford plantation, even before the rebellion broke out. Maybe neighbors knew the yellow jack was loose there. Or maybe it was just that Henry Barford wasn't what you'd call sociable, even if Clotilde was.

Such musings blew out of Frederick's head when Lorenzo asked, "What do we do now?"

That was a fine question. Show the visitor the pyre where Benjamin and Veronique Barker had burned? He'd surely want to see that, wouldn't he? And what about the corpse of the Barkers' son? And the dead overseer? Oh, yes-plenty to show off.

On the other hand, if the slaves chased the caller away, he would ride off and let the outside world know they'd taken over the plantation. If they killed him, more outsiders would come looking for him. That might buy a few hours-maybe even as much as a day-but it would also let the cat out of the bag in short order.

Before Frederick could decide what to do, his sentries went and did it. Two gunshots rang out, one after the other. The first provoked a startled shriek; the second abruptly ended it.

A Negro trotted back to Frederick with a big grin on his face. "We got us a new eight-shooter, jus' like the ones the cavalry soldiers use," he said proudly. "An' that fella was ridin' a mighty fine horse."

"Well, good," Frederick said, hoping it was. By the nature of things, you couldn't keep an uprising secret very long. He made up his mind: "We go after the Menand plantation next. We move out tomorrow morning-early tomorrow morning. And, between now and then, we post extra-strong watches all around this place."

Lorenzo nodded. He understood what was going on. Davey would have, too. Frederick worried about how much he'd miss the chief cook in the days ahead. But the field hand who'd brought word of the visitor's demise scratched his head. "How come?"

Frederick sighed quietly. You liked to think the people on your side, the people you were leading into the sunlight of freedom, were all clever and filled with natural nobility. You liked to think so, yes, but they would disappoint you in a hurry if you did. They were people, no better and no worse than any others. For too long, masters had judged them worse than others. That would have to change. But they were no better, either.

And so Frederick had to explain: "Somebody's gonna miss the fellow you shot. Somebody'll come and try to find out what happened to him."

"Oh." The other Negro contemplated that. He didn't need long to find an answer that satisfied him: "Then we plug that son of a bitch, too."

That could work… for a little while. "They won't keep coming one at a time, you know," Frederick said gently. "They may not even come one at a time when this poor, sorry bastard doesn't ride home."

"Oh," the field hand said again. He nodded, with luck in wisdom. "Reckon you're right. I didn't think of that."

"Why am I not surprised?" Frederick murmured. Lorenzo's shoulders shook with suppressed mirth. The field hand didn't get it. Frederick wasn't surprised at that, either. A swallowed sigh almost gave him the hiccups.

He gave his orders. One of the new recruits to the Liberating Army, a copperskin from the Barker plantation, said, "I don't want to do no more fighting. Long as I'm rid of the dirty snake who was crackin' the whip on us, I'd just as soon take it easy for a while."

Several others, copperskins and Negroes, made it plain they felt the same way. No, not everybody in the uprising was as bright as he might have been. "Well, you can do that," Frederick said.

"I can? All right!" The new recruit sounded amazed and delighted. He hadn't expected things to be so easy.

And they weren't. "Yeah, you can do that," Frederick repeated. Then he went on, "You can do that if you don't mind the white folks catching you tomorrow-if you're real lucky, maybe the day after. Don't you get it, you God-damned fool? We've killed masters. White folks grab us now, they'll kill us as slow and filthy as they know how. Only way we can stay alive is to keep on fightin' and keep on winnin'. Only way. You got that through your thick head?"

Were the just-freed slave white himself, would he have turned pale from rage or red with anger? Since he was not much lighter than Frederick, he didn't show what he was feeling that way. His scowl said he was angry. "I got it," he answered. "But who d'you think you are, to play the white man talkin' to me like that?"

"I ain't playin' the white man. I'm playin' the general," Frederick said. "Liberating Army's just like any other kind-it needs somebody in charge. Right now, that's me."

"If I'm in this here army, I'm still a slave, then," the copperskin said.

"If you ain't in this here army, you're a dead man walkin'," Frederick said.

Behind him, Lorenzo cocked his revolver. The click of the hammer going back sounded much louder than it really was. "If you ain't in this here army, you're a dead man-period," he declared.

The man who'd been complaining gave back a sickly grin. "I was just funnin', like," he said. "Can't you take a joke?"

"It's like Frederick said-this here is an army. When the general tells you to do somethin', you don't make no shitty jokes," Lorenzo growled. "You do it right away, no matter what the hell it is. Some other stuff you don't know nothin' about may depend on it. And somebody may blow your fuckin' head off if you fart around. Me, for instance. Understand what I'm talkin' about?"

"Uh-huh. Sure do," the younger copperskin said. He took the prospect of getting shot by his own people seriously, anyhow, even if he didn't have the brains to imagine that white folks might do it. Copperskins were supposed to be fierce and savage. Lorenzo used that to his own advantage, even against one of his own kind. And who could say for sure? He might have shot the new recruit as a lesson for the others. Frederick almost asked him, then decided not to. Some things he didn't need to know. Again, the Liberating Army advanced on a new plantation cross-country. Surprise still mattered, even if it wouldn't for much longer. The rifle muskets and their accouterments all fit in one wagon now. It also went cross-country. If the whites in the neighborhood were alerted to the rising, Frederick didn't want them taking back a big chunk of his weaponry all at once.

Whether the whites were alerted to the rising or not, the slaves on the Menand plantation knew something was up. "You gonna set us free?" they asked eagerly when they met the fighters from the Liberating Army in their cotton fields.

"Not exactly," Frederick answered. Their faces fell till he explained: "You're gonna set yourselves free."

He and Jacques Menand's slaves had been talking in low voices. When they heard that, they let out whoops of delight. Not nearly far enough away, a white man demanded, "What's that stupid commotion all about?"

"Your overseer?" Frederick whispered.

"That's right," answered a man who looked to be of mixed copperskin and Negro blood. "Sooner that God-damned son of a whore gets what's coming to him, happier we'll all be."

"Amen!" added a man who looked like a pure-blooded copperskin.

"I don't reckon you've got long to wait," Frederick said. "Can you lure him here?"

They didn't even need to do that. The overseer came forward of his own accord, to see what was going on. Rifle-musket butts, bayonets, and knives soon finished him off-though perhaps not soon enough to suit him. His screams rose up into the uncaring air. Frederick didn't worry about that. They wouldn't reach the big house, where gunfire might have.

Menand's slaves proved hot to join the Liberating Army. "First we kill this bastard here who's been fucking us," the copperskin said savagely. "Then we kill all the other white bastards, too." The rest of the field hands nodded.

The men who'd got the rifle muskets to the plantation passed them out. By now, they seemed as attached to the guns as any ordnance sergeants in the Atlantean army. "You take care of this piece, keep it clean, or we'll take it away from you and shove it up your ass," one of them warned the wide-eyed copperskin to whom he gave the weapon. "You got that?"

"You bet," the man answered. "I'll do whatever I have to do, long as I get the chance to kill me some white folks."

"Oh, I reckon we can take care of that," the Negro said grandly, as if he were personally responsible for it.

Drill sergeants would have despaired at the way the Liberating Army advanced on the Menands' house. The copperskins and Negroes kept no kind of order. One of these days, we'll have to fight real soldiers, Frederick thought. We'd better learn how to do those things, or they'll murder us. But that day wasn't here yet. At least the men advanced with high spirits. As long as they kept doing that, anything was possible.

No one fired at them from inside the big house. Everything was quiet-too quiet to suit Frederick. "What's wrong with them?" he said. "They must've seen us coming. They reckon we're here for a dance?"

Then one of the house slaves came out. He was wearing a boiled shirt, black jacket, and cravat like the ones Frederick had put on every day for so many years. "Menands done run off," he said. "You ain't gonna catch 'em now."

"How'd they know in time to do that?" Frederick answered his own question: "Somebody came and told them!"

"You're a clever fellow, ain't you?" the house slave said. "A field hand, he came runnin' back here an' palavered with Master Jacques. When they hightailed it, he went with 'em."

"I bet he did!" Frederick said. "Stinking Judas must know what we'd do to him if we got our hands on him. Who was the son of a bitch?"

"His name is Jerome. He's a copperskin." The house slave didn't try to hide his distaste. Frederick understood every bit of it. House slaves always sneered at field hands. And Negroes and copperskins sneered at each other. Masters exploited all those differences. If this uprising was going to get anywhere, Frederick would have to find a way to plaster them over.

"Menands tell you why they were going?" he asked the house slave.

"Master Jacques said he didn't aim to wait around and get killed," the other Negro answered. "He asked if I wanted to go along, but I told him no. I reckoned I'd be safe enough." He brushed two fingers over the back of his other wrist, showing off his own dark skin.

"But they got away," Lorenzo said. "That ain't so good. That ain't even a little bit good."

"Tell me about it," Frederick said. "Word's gonna be out. And that means the white folks'll come after us. No more surprises, not now."

"What are we gonna do?" Lorenzo asked.

"I've said it before-we could try splitting up and disappearing into the woods and the swamps, but you'd best believe they'll come after us," Frederick replied. "Slaves start killin' masters, the white folks don't forget about it. Only other choice-only one-we've got is fighting 'em and whipping 'em."

"We do that?" Three or four anxious slaves, Negroes and copperskins both, said the same thing at the same time.

"Damned right we can." Frederick didn't say they would, only that they could. He hoped they wouldn't notice the distinction. They didn't seem to. "Damned right we can," he repeated, sounding more confident than he felt. "First thing is, we know what happens if we lose."

He waited. Men's and women's heads bobbed up and down. They knew, all right. It wouldn't be pretty. It would be as ugly as vengeful whites could make it. Masters had to be harsh with slaves who rebelled, or they'd face uprisings every day of the week. They understood that as well as the slaves did.

Frederick held up a hand to show he hadn't finished. "Other thing is, with a little luck they won't know we got our hands on these fine guns. They'll come along like we're a bunch of no-accounts. They'll figure they can lick us easy as you please. Are they right?"

"No!" the copperskins and Negroes shouted.

"I can't hear you." Frederick cupped a hand behind his ear, the way he'd seen preachers do when they were riling up their flocks. "Tell me again, people-are they right?"

"No!" the men and women of the Liberating Army howled.

"That's right. They're gonna stub their toes. They're gonna fall on their faces. We are free niggers. We are free mudfaces. And we don't aim to let anybody take that away from us, not ever again," Frederick said.

They shouted loud enough to make sure the trees and the rocks heard. Frederick's ears rang. They had the spirit, all right. Whether they would keep it once the white men started shooting at them…

"Reckon we can win one fight the way you said-we'll take 'em by surprise, like," Lorenzo said quietly. "But what do we do after that?"

"If we win one fight, we get us more guns and more bullets," Frederick said. "That'll make us stronger. It'll give the white folks somethin' to worry about. And if word of the uprising spreads amongst 'em, it'll spread amongst the slaves, too. What you want to bet this won't be the only hot spot the whites got to pour water on?"

"Hmm." Lorenzo contemplated that. "Well, maybe," he said at last. "It better not be, or we're all as dead as honkers."

"They say some of them big dumb things're still alive, way off in the back country," Frederick said.

"They say all kinds of stupid things," Lorenzo replied. "And even if it's true, not enough of 'em are left to do anybody any good-not even themselves."

"Anybody who doesn't want to stay here can run off on his own. I've told folks that before," Frederick said.

"I want to be here. I want to win," Lorenzo said.

"Good," Frederick answered. "So do I."