There they were, dimly seen through the screen of multiply lobed little leaves. Victor stayed very still. He saw a Negro and one copperskin. They were cooking a turtle and a couple of big frogs over their fire. One of them said something and held up his supper. The other laughed.
Runaways, all right, Victor Radcliff thought. They wouldn't go out hunting him unless they thought he was hunting them. Since he wasn't…Best just to slide away after all.
He was about to do exactly that when someone jumped him from behind. While he'd scouted the camp, someone had sneaked up on him. A large, strong, muscular someone, too. And as silently deadly as a crawling snake-Victor had had no idea anybody was there till the instant before he found himself fighting for his life.
The fight didn't last long. When the sharp edge of a knife kissed Victor's throat, he went limp. His assailant laughed, low and hoarse. "Figured that'd make you get smart," the man said in copperskin-accented French. The knife dug a little deeper. "Now, you come along with me."
Numbly, Victor came.
Roland Kersauzon peered out from the walls of Nouveau Redon. He was not quite the lord of all he surveyed, but he was the lord of a good deal of it. And he was named for one famously stubborn man, and descended from another. Roland the warrior might have saved everything but his pride if he'd blown his horn sooner and summoned Charlemagne back against the Spanish Mussulmen. And Francois Kersauzon remained a legend in these parts even if he was three centuries dead and gone.
Francois had never set eyes on Nouveau Redon, not in all the years he'd dwelt in Atlantis. It lay only fifty miles inland from Cosquer on the Blavet. He'd never gone fifty miles inland or, probably, even twenty miles inland. That would have meant turning his back on the sea. Francois Kersauzon was too mulish a fisherman to want to do any such thing.
Slowly, Roland made a fist and brought it down on the gray stone of the battlement. Nouveau Redon, everyone said, was the strongest fortress in all of Atlantis, French, English, or Spanish. And it needed to be. Roland muttered something a quarter Breton, three-quarters French, and all irate.
If only Francois hadn't sold the God-cursed Englishmen the secret of Atlantis for a load of salt cod! (Or, even more humiliating, for part of a load of salt cod. Some of the stories put it that way.) Then the Bretons would be happy over here, the English would be happy over there, and…
"Merde," Roland said. That kind of thinking was bound to be foolish. Sooner or later, the English would have found these shores on their own. But it would have been later than it was, which would have been better-certainly as far as a Breton was concerned.
Nouveau Redon sat atop a knob overlooking the Blavet. The river approach was difficult. The landward approach, except for a narrow road hacked out of rock, was harder yet. Roland didn't see how anyone could storm Nouveau Redon as long as it had a few soldiers inside the walls.
He did see a horseman urging his mount up that narrow road. Even though the rider was alone and unable to move fast, muskets and cannon loaded with grapeshot covered his approach. Nouveau Redon was ready for anything.
By the time the rider reached the narrow plain in front of the town, he was sweating and fanning himself with his hat. His horse was lathered and blowing. He seemed glad to rein in before the main gate. After yelling back and forth with the guards at the gate, he rode into Nouveau Redon.
Before long, more shouts rang out: "Lord Roland!" "Come down, Lord Roland!" "Lord Roland, this man's here to see you!"
Roland Kersauzon said, "Merde!" again, louder this time. This was the moment he'd been waiting for. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was the moment he'd been dreading. He hurried down the stairs-hurried with what the lawyers called deliberate speed. The stairway attached to the wall was narrow and steep; if a man on it fell, he might break a leg-or his neck.
Reaching the ground without mishap, Roland rushed to the gate. A man could break an ankle-or his neck-if he tripped on the cobbles, too. Old men grumbled and wished the streets were still unpaved. Roland didn't miss the stinking mud one bit. Cobbles made his city as modern as any in Europe.
"Lord Kersauzon," said the horseman when Roland came up. "I bring news just here from France." He held out a paper folded and sealed with ribbon and wax.
"News." Kersauzon's mouth tightened as he took the letter. "Do you know what it says?"
"Formally, no," the rider replied. "Informally…Well, the word's all over Cosquer. Gossip flies faster than the wind."
"All right." It wasn't, but Roland couldn't do anything about it. He scraped off the seal and cut through the ribbon with a small, sharp knife he pulled from his belt. Then he unfolded the paper and read it. His sight was beginning to lengthen, but he didn't need spectacles for reading yet. Sadly, he nodded to himself, as if learning that an aged and long-infirm uncle had finally died.
"Is it-?" One of the gate guards couldn't hold in the question.
With a sigh, Roland nodded again. "War," he said. "War against England."
"But why?" The gate guard checked himself. He sketched a salute. "Forgive me, sir. I know the English-they are dogs and sons of dogs. I know most of them are godless Protestant heretics, bound for hell."
"Everybody knows that," another guard put in.
"But of course. Everybody does," the first soldier agreed. "Still, the English have always been dogs and sons of dogs. They've been godless Protestants for a very long time, anyhow. So why do we have to go to war with them now?"
"It's the fighting in Europe," said the courier who'd brought the message to Nouveau Redon.
Roland Kersauzon nodded. "It is indeed. We have joined with Austria and Russia to give Frederick of Prussia the thumping he deserves. The English-dogs and sons of dogs that they are-have sided with Frederick. And so we shall punish him and England as they deserve."
The courier and the guards clapped their hands. One of the soldiers tossed his hat in the air. Then he made a frantic grab to keep it from landing on a lump of horse manure. With an embarrassed grin, he set the tricorn back on his head. Another gate guard said, "We'll whip them." Everyone cheered again. Nobody threw a hat this time, though. The guard pointed to the paper Roland Kersauzon still held. "Does that just tell you the war is here, sir, or has it got orders for us, too?"
"Orders," Kersauzon answered. "First, we are to make sure Nouveau Redon is in the proper condition to defend itself, should it have to."
"Won't be hard." Two or three men spoke together, with almost identical words. One of them added, "You'd have to be a crazy fool to try and take this place."
"I think so, too, but who's to say the English aren't crazy fools?" Roland answered. The guards nodded-they also seemed to think the English were likely to be crazy fools. Kersauzon went on, "And you're right: it won't be hard to ready the town. It's strong to begin with, and we've kept the works and the garrison in good order, thank God." He glanced down at the sheet. "But there's more than that."
"What is it?" Again, several men asked the question in chorus-he knew how to tell a story and spin it out.
"We are to gather together an army from all the settlements under the rule of the King of France, and to march against the English and take away what has been theirs for too long," he replied grandly. "So it is commanded of us, and so shall it be."
When the guards huzzahed this time, several hats went flying. A couple of them landed on the ground, but none, luckily, in the horse dung. Townsfolk came out of shops and taverns to see what the commotion was about. When the guards shouted out the news, fresh commotion spread.
One of the men asked, "The Spaniards are on our side, is it not so?"
He sounded anxious, and with some reason. Men who followed the King of France were almost as likely to reckon Spaniards dogs and sons of dogs as they were Englishmen. True, no one could accuse the Spaniards of being godless Protestant heretics. But if Spain allied itself with the godless Protestant heretics of England, that could prove unfortunate in Atlantis, where English and Spanish settlements lay to the north and south of France's.