Liberating Atlantis

X

Down the west side of the Green Ridge Mountains the train chugged… slowly. Coughing a little, Leland Newton peered out through the swirling smoke that belched from the locomotive's stack. "Well," he said, "I did think we would get to New Marseille faster than a horse can walk."

"So did I," Consul Stafford said fretfully.

Balthasar Sinapis coughed, too: a cough of correction, Newton judged, not one caused by smoke. "As a matter of fact," he said, "we are going at the speed a horse can trot."

So they were. Atlantean dragoons in their tall black felt hats trotted along to either side of the railroad track. They had eight-shooters, shotguns, and carbines. Their job was to keep the Negroes and copperskins who'd risen in these parts from attacking the train. The foot soldiers inside the cars carried loaded weapons. Sinapis had made it plain he didn't like doing that, but he recognized the need.

The dragoons had done their job up till now. No more bullet holes marred the battered railroad cars. No more screams rose as surgeons probed for musket balls. Newton missed them not at all.

But if the copperskins and Negroes thought of themselves as the army's enemies, as they seemed to, wouldn't the soldiers in the army think of those Negroes and copperskins the same way? If that wasn't what Consul Stafford expected, Consul Newton would have been astonished.

Setting out from New Hastings, Newton would have called Stafford's expectations so much foolishness. The Consul from Croydon wasn't so sure now. If a man was willing to lay his life on the line to try to kill you, you weren't going to love him on account of it. No: you were going to want to keep him away, or else to do unto him before he could do unto you.

And if the soldiers got off the train with the notion that they needed to kill any slave who looked at them sideways firmly fixed in their heads, they wouldn't be interested in interposing themselves between the rebels and the whites they were rebelling against. No: they'd want to join the local whites in slaughtering every insurrectionist they could catch.

Stafford had clearly seen that from the beginning. Why didn't I? Newton wondered. Like a lot of northern foes of slavery, he'd tended to romanticize the men and women who were the victims of the institution. It was much harder to romanticize someone who was trying to blow your head off. You were much more likely to make someone like that into a demon, there in the fortress of your mind.

Maybe that was why Stafford had foreseen so clearly what was coming. He didn't suddenly need to turn the uprisen slaves to demons inside his head. As far as he was concerned, slaves who rose against their masters demonized themselves.

Muttering to himself, Newton looked out through the swirling smoke again. He could imagine that it was the veil of time, and that he was looking back into the past. The tall trees, some of them with moss hanging from their branches, the understory of squat barrel trees, the ferns growing in green profusion below them… The only signs of modernity were the railroad line-and the dragoons.

"We might see a honker pulling up leaves somewhere," he remarked.

"I wonder if any honkers are left alive," Stafford said.

"A few years ago, that artist fellow set out from Avalon to find some, remember? And he did, too, in some hidden mountain valley." Newton scratched his head. "What was his name, anyhow?"

"Audubon." That wasn't Consul Stafford-it was Colonel Sinapis. "A very fine artist indeed."

"You know him?" Newton asked in surprise. Imagining the fierce and dour Sinapis with any interests beyond those of his sanguinary trade wasn't easy.

But he sighed now as he shook his head. "Alas, I did not have that privilege-he died last year. No one could match his paintings of viviparous quadrupeds and especially of birds for their accurate vivacity. No one came close. Even if honkers are no more, they will still live for us in his portrayal of them."

"I had not thought you such a friend of nature," Stafford said, so the colonel had surprised him, too.

"Time often hangs heavy in the Ministry of War," Sinapis answered. "Having a hobbyhorse to ride helps make the hours pass. One of my colleagues translates chronicles from the medieval Latin. Another has become an expert on the history of mining iron. Several drink or play cards. Me, I prefer nature."

A career soldier's life in Atlantis: one more thing Newton hadn't thought through. The country had no serious foreign threats. Lying where it did, how could it? And the navy, not the army, would deal first with any threats that did appear. In his time in Europe, Colonel Sinapis would have been used to adventure and upheaval. Sitting around gathering dust in the Ministry of War couldn't have been easy for him. No wonder he'd found something besides soldiering to interest him.

Well, Atlantis had its own share of adventure and upheaval now. The navy couldn't do much about it, either, not unless the rebels came close enough to the water's edge to be bombarded by sea. If any part of the national government was going to restore order, it would have to be the small, sleepy, much-maligned army.

"Can our soldiers do the job required of them?" Consul Newton asked the colonel.

"If you and Consul Stafford tell me what the job is and stick with it, they will do it, whatever it may be," Sinapis answered. "They do not have much experience fighting, but they are well-disciplined men. You can rely on them-if I know, and they know, what they must do. If the two of you cannot make up your minds, or if you change them more often than you change your drawers, we shall have trouble."

He looked melancholy, but then he usually looked melancholy. He sounded melancholy, too: as if he expected they would have troubles. But it was a peculiar kind of melancholy, because he also sounded as if he was looking forward to whatever troubles they found.

Leland Newton had been looking forward to whatever troubles they found when he set out from New Hastings. He wasn't so sure any more.

Jeremiah Stafford had always been a man of the Atlantic coast. In that, he was like most of his countrymen. Atlantis had been settled from the east, and remained most densely populated on the coast facing England and the European mainland. Only one real city-Avalon-lay on the Hesperian Gulf and looked toward Terranova. New Marseille gave itself airs, but wasn't in the same league.

During the fight for freedom, Victor Radcliff had marched an Atlantean army through western Atlantis to face the redcoats in New Marseille. The country on this side of the mountains had been a howling wilderness then. Now, a lifetime later, the pursuit of profits from cotton had turned much of it into an imitation of the plantations farther east. Much of it, but not all.

Here and there, the wilderness still howled. In stretches between plantations, only the railroad line proved that anyone had come this way before. Ferns and barrel trees and conifers got dull in a hurry. Like Consul Newton-and, no doubt, like Colonel Sinapis-Stafford wondered if he would see a honker, but he didn't.

Even market towns were fewer and farther between on this side of the mountains than in the longer-settled east. But people turned out to cheer the soldiers whenever the train stopped for fuel and water. Stafford couldn't resist pointing that out to his colleague in the Consulship.

"Well, some people do," Leland Newton allowed. "But I don't see any blacks or copperskins dancing in the streets and singing hosannas because we've come."

"Good God in heaven! Who cares about them?" Stafford said. "White people made Atlantis."

"They did indeed: on the backs of the colored people they fetched here to do the hard, dirty work they didn't care to do themselves," Newton answered.

"You're spewing that rubbish again," Stafford said. "If you think white people don't work in this country, you've been walking around with your eyes closed. Without white men and their work and their capital, slaves would have nothing to do."

"This part of Atlantis would be better off if it had been settled by small freeholders, the way the lands farther north were," Newton said.

"Better off how, pray?" Stafford retorted. "Would you rather come to this climate in a wool shirt, and sweat and itch nine months of the year? If you would, by God, you're welcome to it. But I see you are wearing cotton instead, the same as I am. Try growing cotton on one of your precious small freeholds. It takes too much labor to make that possible."

"I could wear linen in a pinch," Newton said in musing tones. "Linen is tolerably cool, or better than tolerably."

"And it wrinkles if you give it a hard look, and it costs far more than cotton does-all of which, I have no doubt, you understand perfectly well," Stafford said. "You are being difficult for the sake of being difficult."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Newton said. Stafford only snorted. He'd come to politics from the practice of the law, just as his colleague had. He knew a denial that wasn't a denial when he heard one.

While he and Newton bickered, Colonel Sinapis looked out the window. The Atlantean officer suddenly pointed. "There," he said. "This is part of the trouble of the countryside."

This was a rude encampment alongside the railroad tracks. Tents and lean-tos sheltered white people who were dirty and wore ragged clothes. A few of them waved to the train. More just sat or sprawled where they were, too apathetic to salute the men who had come to rescue them.

"You see." Stafford rounded on Newton and made the words an accusation. "This is what the insurrection does. These poor innocents got away with their necks, nothing more. All they worked for through their lives is gone now."

"Yes, it's very sad," the other Consul said. But that was at best a barbed agreement, for Newton went on, "They seem to have it as hard as the slaves did before the uprising."

The monstrous unfairness of that almost choked Jeremiah Stafford with rage. "Every time you open your mouth, all you prove is that you don't know what you're talking about. Any master who housed his slaves like that would get a quick talking-to from his neighbors, or maybe a horsewhipping. Putting mudfaces and niggers in such miserable quarters would be begging for an insurrection."

"I see," Newton said, nodding wisely. "You house your slaves better than this for the sake of your own safety, not on account of their comfort."

He doubtless thought that would make Stafford angrier. If so, he was doomed to disappointment. Stafford only laughed at him. "And I suppose the factory owners in Croydon pay their workers even one cent more than the least they could give while still keeping the workers alive. We were talking about freedom and the freedom to starve not long ago, if I recall rightly."

By Leland Newton's sour expression, the other Consul did. "We are not perfect paragons, either," Newton said. "But we hire our workers' labor. We don't buy it and sell it. Our workers are free to-"

"Starve in a different job if they don't like the one they have," Stafford interrupted. That probably wasn't what Newton had been about to say, which didn't mean it wasn't true.

"To change jobs as they please," Newton went on, as if the other Consul hadn't spoken. "They can move about as they please. They can marry as they please, and raise their own legitimate children."

"They can watch them starve, too, you mean, or waste away from consumption," Stafford shot back. "And who gives a damn whether mudfaces and niggers have legitimate children?"

"They do," Newton said. "Do you suppose they enjoy it when the father is sold to one plantation, the mother to another, and the children, maybe, to a third?"

Jeremiah Stafford's snort was full of exasperation. "You have been reading sensational novels again. That rarely happens, and is always condemned when it does."

"But the law allows it, which is the point," Newton said.

"Only if you make it the point," Stafford replied. "And how often do women in Croydon have to sell themselves on the streets to survive? How often are the children they bear legitimate?" He laced the word with scorn.

By the way his colleague grimaced, that happened more often than Newton would have wanted. Before the other Consul could answer, Colonel Sinapis said, "Whether these slaves are legitimate or not, we are going to have to try to deal with them. The two of you are in command here." That plainly disgusted him, but he couldn't change it. He continued, "You had better figure out a way to work together, because you will get my men killed, and pretty likely yourselves with them, if you go on like this."

"You know what we need to do, Colonel," Stafford said. "I know what we need to do. I think even Consul Newton knows what we need to do. The question is, is he willing to do it?"

Newton didn't say anything. He did look like a man who knew what needed doing. But whether what he knew was the same as what Stafford knew was liable to be a different question.

Leland Newton eyed Crocodile Flats with distaste. It was bigger than a village, smaller than a town. It had got carved out of the primeval Atlantean wilderness on the banks of the Little Muddy River, a name that struck Newton as perfectly accurate. Once upon a time, crocodiles had laid their eggs there-hence the name. Now the crocodiles were gone. A more deadly species raised its broods in Crocodile Flats.

A militia captain in homespun, a broad-brimmed, floppy hat all but covering his eyes, told Colonel Sinapis, "You can't go no further by railroad. It's all niggers and mudfaces from here on out."

"They have spread this far?" Sinapis muttered to himself. "This is not what we were told when we left New Hastings."

"Yeah, well, it's so anyways," the captain said.

"Can we force our way through the rebel pickets to get to the heart of the insurrection?" Sinapis asked.

"Not by train, you can't," the militia captain answered. He paused to spit a stream of pipeweed juice into the dust, shifted a chaw to the other cheek, and went on, "Bastards have torn up as much track as they could."

"God damn them to hell!" That wasn't Colonel Sinapis-it was Jeremiah Stafford. The news made his temper burst like a mortar bomb. "Have they got any notion how much money they're costing the USA? Why, without a railroad connection New Marseille will wither on the vine!"

Newton wasn't sure whether he meant the state or the town that gave it its name. The town still had all its sea commerce, of course. The colored rebels weren't likely to turn pirate and harry that. A couple of hundred years before, Avalon had been a famous pirates' roost, but times were different now. Newton looked to Sinapis and asked, "What do you recommend, Colonel?"

"That we disembark and advance," Sinapis answered. "High time we discover what we are up against."

"I couldn't agree more!" Consul Stafford declared.

Whether he agreed didn't matter… today, because it was Newton's turn to command. But tomorrow the southern man would lead. Unless Newton marched east, away from the Little Muddy, they would go into action then in any case. Newton saw little point to putting things off a day. "Very well," he said. "Prepare the advance as you think best, Colonel."

Balthasar Sinapis saluted crisply. "Just as you say, your Excellency."

He turned away to start giving orders to his subordinates. Before he could, the militia captain tugged at his sleeve. "You'll want our men to go along, won't you? We know the countryside like you know the shape of your wife's… Well, hell, you know what I mean."

"They may come." If the prospect pleased Sinapis, he hid it very well. "But if they do, they will find themselves under the command and under the discipline of the army of the United States of Atlantis."

The captain shifted the wad of pipeweed from cheek to cheek again. "What does that mean exactly?" he asked.

"To give you a basic example, if they kill prisoners or torture them for the sport of it, I shall hang them from the closest strong tree branch," Sinapis answered calmly. "Is that plain enough, or do you need further illustration?"

"But-" The captain broke off. He might have said several different things, but he wasn't stupid enough to imagine that any of them would have done him any good. "All right, Colonel. Have it your way. We'll play along."

We'll play along till we don't think you'll catch us. So Newton judged his meaning, anyhow. Did Sinapis judge it the same way? Newton expected he did. The colonel might be a good many things, but he was neither foolish nor naive.

The bridge across the Little Muddy remained in the militia's hands. They had pickets on the west side of the river. Those men seemed mighty glad to see regular Atlantean troops come join them.

"Now we get down to business," Stafford said, ferocious anticipation in his voice, as Newton and he crossed the plank bridge together.

"So we do-whatever the business turns out to be," Newton said. His shoes and Stafford's thudded on the timbers. So did those of the soldiers they led. The men broke step as they crossed, lest rhythmic vibrations from marching in unison shake the bridge down. It wasn't likely, but it could happen. They took no chances.

Colonel Sinapis sent pickets-some militiamen, others regulars-out ahead of his main force and into the woods west of the river. Newton waited a little queasily for the sound of gunfire. Consul Stafford looked to be waiting for the same thing, and to be looking forward to it. The more the army fought the insurrectionists, the less inclined it would be merely to keep the peace.

A corporal came back to Colonel Sinapis. "There's a copperskin up ahead carrying a flag of truce, sir," he said. "What do we do about him?"

Sinapis looked a question to Newton. "Honor it," Newton said at once. "Let's find out what they have to say." Stafford made a disgusted noise, but he couldn't do anything about it-not today he couldn't, anyhow. The colonel told the corporal what to do. The two-striper saluted and went off to do it.

He came back fifteen or twenty minutes later with a strong, stocky copperskin who still carried his white flag. Newton had expected the rebels' emissary to be wearing stolen white men's finery, but he still had on homespun wool trousers and an undyed, unbleached cotton shirt: slave clothes.

"My name is Lorenzo," the fellow said. "I speak for Frederick Radcliff, the Tribune of the Free Republic of Atlantis."

"There is no such place!" Consul Stafford exploded. "There is no such title! And slaves haven't got the right to last names!"

"There is such a place, because that's where I come from. Frederick Radcliff is the Tribune there," Lorenzo answered calmly. "And he's not a slave-he's a free man. And so am I. Wouldn't be much point to talking if we weren't, would there?"

"What do you want? What do you expect from us?" Leland Newton asked.

"Leave us alone, and we'll do the same for you," the copperskin said. "The Free Republic of Atlantis is a place where anyone can live in peace. A lot of whites have run away from us, but they didn't need to. As long as they don't try to make anybody into a slave any more, we won't give them any trouble."

"Likely tell!" Stafford jeered.

"You've already killed a lot of people and done a lot of damage," Newton said. "Why shouldn't we treat you as so many rebels and criminals?"

"Because this is a war, and wars mean fighting, and fighting means killing," Lorenzo replied-the same answer Newton had given to Stafford back in New Hastings. "And because Frederick Radcliff is fighting for the same thing his grandfather fought for a long time ago-the chance to be free."

"Mudfaces and niggers have no business being free!" Stafford shouted, his face purpling with fury.

"Easy, Jeremiah, easy," Newton said. He turned back to the rebels' emissary. "You are not going to be allowed to form a nation apart from the United States of Atlantis. If you think that can happen, you are only fooling yourselves. Your commander is only fooling himself."

"By God, that's the first sensible thing I've heard you say all day," Stafford told him.

Newton ignored him. If Lorenzo was fazed, he didn't let on. Nodding to the Consul, he said, "Give us our rights inside the United States of Atlantis, then, and we'll be happy enough to stay."

"You have no more rights than a cow," Stafford said. "You have no more rights than a chair, damn you!"

"What rights do you have in mind?" Newton asked the emissary. Ignoring his colleague seemed best.

"The same rights white folks have," Lorenzo answered. "The right to be free. The right to a last name. The right to marry and raise a family. The right to buy and sell things. The right to learn reading and ciphering. Frederick, he can do that, but not many slaves can. The right to vote, even."

"You want to become citizens." Consul Newton summed it up in a handful of words.

Lorenzo nodded gratefully. "Yes, sir. That is just what we want."

"Will you let the whites who have run away return to their land?"

"As long as they don't try to buy us or sell us or order us around," the copperskin said. "Some of us want land of our own, too, so we can farm. If the white folks take everything back, nothing's left for us."

Stafford clapped a hand to his forehead. "They're as Red as the crazy radicals in Paris! They probably preach free love, too."

"You weren't listening," Newton said. "He told you one of the things they wanted was the right to get married."

"Yes, he said that," Stafford answered. "Why do you believe him? They're full of savage animal lust."

Lorenzo stretched out his arm and looked at his hand. Then his eyes went to Stafford's hand. "My skin is darker than yours," he said, "but it is lighter than Frederick Radcliff's. Past that, I do not see much difference between us."

"No, eh? Well, you will," Stafford said.

"Tell your principal that, if you put down your guns and petition peaceably for the redress of grievances, something may come of it," Newton said. "It is hard for Atlantis to talk with men in arms against us."

This time, the copperskin looked Stafford in the face. He shook his head. "If we put down our guns, you will slaughter us," he said. Stafford didn't waste time denying it. Lorenzo went on, "Better we should fight."

"If you do, we will slaughter you anyway," Newton warned.

"Well, you can try," Lorenzo said.

The corporal took him back past the pickets then. "You tried it your way. See what it got you," Stafford said to Newton.

"You didn't help," Newton said.

"Let me understand," Colonel Sinapis said. "It is to be war now?"

"For the moment, yes," Newton answered regretfully.

War against slaves who'd risen against their masters! Jeremiah Stafford could imagine no more noble cause. He must have done something right, or God wouldn't have been so generous to him.

But it wasn't the kind of war he'd had in mind when he set out from New Hastings with the army. The gray-clad soldiers owned the ground where they marched, but not another square foot of soil in the so-called Free Republic of Atlantis. Any man who left the line-say, to go behind some ferns and answer nature's call-was liable not to come back again. A Negro with a dagger or a copperskin with a bayonet might cut his throat and sneak off with his rifle musket and boots.

Any time the soldiers came within a quarter-mile of trees or ferns or fences or buildings, they were in danger. Enemies would pop out or pop up, fire, and then run off as fast as they could. The Atlanteans would shoot back, but it took uncommon marksmanship and uncommon luck to hit a single man at that range, even if he didn't disappear. Firing at large masses of soldiers, the mudfaces and niggers had much better luck.

No, it wasn't the way Stafford had imagined it. In his mind's eye, he'd seen dramatic pitched battles, like the ones Victor Radcliff had fought against the redcoats. Paintings of those-or woodcuts, sometimes colored, copied from paintings of those-hung in every government building from the Senate House down to the lowliest village post office. He didn't suppose the actual battles were just like the paintings, but the art gave him his most vivid notions of what war was like.

Colonel Sinapis didn't seem surprised at how things were going. "In charge of raw men like that, I would fight the same way," he said as the army encamped two evenings after crossing the Little Muddy. "Why should they risk a big battle? All the advantage would lie with us."

"What better reason?" Stafford said.

Sinapis gave him a crooked smile. "And do you also look for your chicken to climb up onto your plate already fried, your Excellency?"

"Well… no," the Consul admitted.

"Then do not expect the enemy to do what is convenient for you," Sinapis said.

Reluctantly, Stafford nodded. "All right. I can see the sense in that. How do we go about forcing the damned insurrectionists to fight on our terms, then?"

"That is a better question." Balthasar Sinapis plucked at his shaggy mustache. "In Europe, I would say the way to do this is to attack some place the enemy feels obliged to defend."

"In Europe? Why not here?" Stafford said.

"Because I see no place in these parts that the enemy would feel he had to hold," the colonel replied. "Where is the capital of the so-called Free Republic of Atlantis? Wherever Frederick Radcliff happens to be, unless my guess is wrong. Where are the rebels' manufactories? As far as I know, they have none. This being so, what position must they hold to the death?"

He waited. By all the signs, he really wanted an answer. Stafford opened his mouth, then closed it again when he realized he had no good one to give.

"You see the difficulty," Sinapis said. Even more reluctantly, Stafford nodded again. The Atlantean officer continued. "Do you intend that we should kill every Negro and copperskin within the area the rebels claim?"

"If that is what it takes to put down the insurrection, yes!" Stafford said.

"Those who own these persons under current Atlantean law would not thank you for destroying their property," Sinapis warned. "And what better reason to give the rebels still in the field to keep fighting instead of yielding?"

He might be nothing but a damned foreigner, but he was a shrewd damned foreigner. Slaveholders didn't want their human property destroyed; they wanted it restored to them. As far as Stafford was concerned, they hadn't thought things through. "How far will they be able to rely on slaves experienced in rebellion?" he asked. "Would you trust such a man to shave your face, Colonel?"

"Me? Not a bit of it," Sinapis answered. "But if a man can get no use from this form of property, what point to having it?"

It wasn't so simple. House slaves had to be trusted. They gave personal service and cooked; if you couldn't be sure they wouldn't turn on you, you couldn't keep them around. Field hands were different. All you needed from them was work, and even before the uprising overseers had had to watch their backs. Plantations could stay profitable after the insurrection. But even if they did, white planters' lives on them would have to change. Colonel Sinapis saw that clearly. So did Stafford.

"We shall burn that bridge when we come to it," the Consul said after what he hoped wasn't too awkward a pause. "First we have to win this war one way or another. If we lose it, nothing else matters any more. Or do you disagree?"

"No, your Excellency," Sinapis answered. "As you say, winning comes first. Maybe not even winning, though, will solve all our troubles here. What do we do in that case?"

"Worry about it after we win," Stafford said at once. "If we don't win, we'll have a pile of other things to worry about. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

"About that? No," Sinapis said.

He does think I'm wrong about other things, Stafford realized angrily. About what? About slavery? Well, the Devil take him if he does.

By the map, the Gunston plantation lay only a couple of days' march to the west. Leland Newton had studied maps till he was sick of them. What difference did they make if the enemy wouldn't stand and fight? He didn't like thinking of the insurrectionists as enemies, but he couldn't think of people who'd shot at him as friends.

This stretch of countryside had belonged to the rebels till the Atlantean army marched in to reclaim it. Signs of that were everywhere. Big houses stood empty. Doors gaping open and smashed windows said they'd been plundered. Every so often, the army would march past one that had burnt to the ground.

Fields went untended. Ripening maize and wheat stood forgotten. So did acres and acres of cotton and pipeweed. No livestock was in sight. Even if surviving white plantation owners reclaimed this land, they would have lost a fortune. Consul Stafford couldn't open his mouth without going on about that.

Consul Newton didn't need long to get sick of listening to his colleague. "You didn't care while whites were taking everything away from blacks and copperskins," he pointed out. "Why do you bellow so loud when the shoe is on the other foot?"

"Because I am a white man, damn it," Stafford snapped. "And so are you, if you take the time to remember it. The United States of Atlantis are a white man's country, in case you hadn't noticed."

"I thought we were a free man's country," Newton said mildly.

"Same thing," Stafford insisted.

"Come to Croydon and you'll see how wrong you are," Newton said.

"If I came to Croydon, I would see all kinds of things I don't care to see: free niggers and mudfaces, screeching bluestockings, trade unionists, free lovers, and every other sort of crackpot under the sun," Stafford said. "Since I already know as much, I have the sense to stay away."

Before Newton could come up with the retort that would leave the other Consul gasping for air, a brisk racket of gunfire broke out ahead. "I wonder what that's in aid of," he said.

"It's a demonstration of patriotism," Stafford said. "What else would it be?"

"I'm sure the people shooting at our men would agree with you," Newton said. "I own myself surprised, though, that you of all people would say such a thing." Sometimes the worst thing you could do to sarcasm was take it literally.

This skirmish seemed sharper than the Atlantean army was used to fighting. Maybe the insurrectionists held no vital strong-points. Maybe they could melt off into the woods whenever they chose. But they could also fight whenever they chose, and they seemed to have chosen to fight here.

Newton rode forward to get a better look at what was going on. That made him a target: something he didn't realize till he came close to the fighting. When he did belatedly figure it out, he wasn't sorry to dismount and hand the horse's reins to an ordinary soldier. He continued on foot.

As they usually did, the rebels fought from the edge of a stretch of forest. If things went wrong, they could melt away in a hurry. Not only that, but they'd dug themselves holes and trenches from which to shoot. They made much smaller targets than they would have had they stood up and volleyed the way the Atlantean regulars did.

A grizzled sergeant near Newton knew exactly what he thought of that. "Yellow dogs!" he growled, the stub of a stogie shifting in his mouth as he spoke. "Well, we can shift 'em even if they want to play silly games."

Soldiers went forward in neat lines. Every so often, one would fall. Sometimes he would get up and stagger toward the rear on his own. Sometimes medical orderlies would carry him to the rear. Sometimes, ominously, he would lie where he fell, not to rise again till Judgment Day.

Those neat lines did not wash over the dug-in rebels. They couldn't get close, not in the face of that galling musketry. Some men fell back. Others lay down themselves and returned fire. Then a flanking column went in off to one side of the insurrectionists' line.

That shifted them where the frontal attack couldn't. The Negroes and copperskins saw they were about to get enfiladed. They didn't wait around to let it happen, but slid away into the woods. And they kept on sniping at the men who came up to look at their trenches and the handful of bodies in them.

"Well, we licked 'em," an Atlantean soldier said. It was true, Newton thought-but only if you didn't count the cost.