"Oh, I understand that. But you are Protestants from the cradle, and so I can partly forgive your views since you know no better," du Guesclin said with what was no doubt intended for magnanimity. "This thing of a Voltaire, however, knows and, knowing, rejects. For this he is far worse. God will have somewhat to say to him when he is called to account."
"He may render unto God the things that are God's," Cawthorne said. "What we're engaged in doing here is ciphering out how not to render unto Caesar the things Caesar thinks are his." He turned and nodded to Victor. "How do we best go about that. General Radcliff?"
How many men had gone from major to general while skipping all the ranks in between? Victor couldn't think of many. But Cawthorne's question would have perplexed a man who'd held every one of those ranks-Victor was sure of it. "I have no detailed answer for you, sir, not knowing what the enemy will attempt," he said. "In general, we should do our best to keep him from holding and occupying our leading towns, and not allow him to split Atlantis so he can defeat in detail our forces in the various parts."
"As always, the Devil is in the detail." Cawthorne's eyes twinkled behind his spectacles, so that he looked like a skeleton pleased with itself. Several Atlantean Assemblymen groaned or flinched at the pun; those who'd missed it looked puzzled. Still smiling slightly, Cawthorne went on, "And they are now strongest at Hanover?"
"Yes, and at Croydon," Victor Radcliff replied. "We must do everything in our power to keep their two armies from joining forces."
"That seems sensible," the escaped printer said. "Nevertheless, we will try not to hold it against you."
Before Victor had to respond to that, Matthew Radcliffe asked him, "How do you view the situation in the west?"
"Through a glass, darkly," Victor told his distant cousin. A ripple of laughter ran through the Assembly. He wondered why; he meant it. "I have visited Avalon and New Marseille only once- most of my life has passed on this side of the Green Ridge Mountains, as you well know. I understand the importance of holding all we can there, but I would be lying if I said I had any certainty as to ways and means."
An Assemblyman he didn't know said, "It sounds as though we have too much to do and not enough to do it with."
It sounded that way to Victor, too. Admitting as much would probably result in the army of the National Assembly getting a new commander on the instant. With a shrug, he replied, "Sir, I can but promise my best effort and full dedication to victory. I do not believe it will come swiftly. Anyone who does, in my view, has charged his brier with something stronger than pipeweed." He got another laugh for something he didn't intend as a joke.
After more questions and more back-and-forth among the illustrious Assemblymen-they all thought they were, anyhow-they finally got around to calling the question. No one voted against putting Victor in charge of their makeshift army, although several Assemblymen abstained. If things went wrong later, they could say it wasn't their fault.
If things went wrong later, chances were what they said wouldn't matter a farthing's worth.
Somewhere close to two thousand men had gathered outside of New Hastings. Victor's first order of business was to give them the rudiments of drill, so they could-with luck-perform as an army, not a mob. Veterans from the war against French Atlantis had some notion of marching and countermarching and deploying from column to line and other such mysteries.
Understanding them well enough to teach them to men who had no notion they existed, though… In the whole encampment, Victor found two men he trusted with the job. One was a deserter from the redcoats, a barrel-chested sergeant who'd fallen in love with an Atlantean barmaid and changed sides because of her. Tim Knox had a manner that brooked no argument and a voice that carried halfway to Hanover.
The other drillmaster was Blaise.
A few people objected to taking orders from a Negro. Victor had seen that in the last war, too. After Blaise knocked the stuffing out of a couple of the grumblers, the rest of the men stopped complaining. Blaise took it all in stride. "In Africa, my clan wouldn't want to do what a white man said, either," he remarked.
"Had you ever seen a white man before you were brought to the coast and sold?" Victor asked him.
"Once. A trader. He died of a fever in our village," Blaise said. "We took what he had-iron needles and little shears and the like. The women were so happy!" He smiled at the memory.
"Poor trader wasn't," Victor Radcliff said.
"True." Blaise nodded. "You white men have learned all sorts of tricks we don't know: everything from those good needles- ours are bone, and not so slender-to books and guns and ships, But you have not got the trick of staying healthy in our country."
Radcliff had heard the same thing from men who dealt in slaves off the African coast. They'd sounded irked, not-relieved?- the way Blaise did. Victor had another question for Blaise, one that mattered more than how Africans thought about white men: "Are we ever going to make soldiers out of these militiamen?"
"Maybe," Blaise said. "Chances are, about the time their enlistments run out."
"Ha!" Victor said, not that Blaise was kidding. Since the war that swallowed French Atlantis, militias had sadly decayed. There was no one left to fight-the Spaniards in the south weren't going to cause trouble, so why worry about drilling? Unless Hanover went to war with New Hastings, people in Atlantis could live in peace, and they did.
And, because they did, most of them didn't know the first thing about soldiering. Even the young men who took up arms against England weren't thrilled about learning, either.
"Do the best you can, that's all," Victor said. "If we can keep our armies in the field for a while-and if we can keep the same people in them-the men will pick up what they have to know."
"If we can't, we lose," Blaise said.
Radcliff nodded. "I know. I figured that out, too. Quite a few people in the Atlantean Assembly haven't yet."
"But they are supposed to be the smartest men in Atlantis," Blaise said.
"So they are," Victor agreed. "And if that isn't a judgment on all of us, I don't know what would be. One more thing, too." He waited till the Negro made a questioning noise, then went on, "In their infinite wisdom, they're the ones who chose me for chief general. Makes you wonder, eh?"
Blaise said not a word.
The courier rode into the encampment outside of New Hastings five minutes after Victor Radcliff had sat down to half a fat roasted capon with starberry sauce spooned over it. The green sauce, tart and sweet at the same time, came from one of Atlantis' few native berries, a product of the thinly settled southwest.
It went well with chicken, and even better with greasier fowl like duck and goose.
A sentry let the courier into Victor's tent, making him pause with a bite halfway to his mouth. "Yes?" he said.
"Sir, the English are coming," the courier said, and then, "Could I have a bite of that? I'm powerful hungry."
Victor liked white meat better than dark. He tore off the drumstick and handed it to the newcomer. As the fellow started to eat, Victor demanded," Where are the English coming?" The courier had interrupted his supper; he saw no reason not to return the disfavor.
" Wumbumpf," the courier said with his mouth full-that was what it sounded like, anyhow.
"Would you care to try that again?" Victor asked.
The man swallowed heroically. "Weymouth," he managed, and took another bite, this one even bigger than the last
"Ah," Victor said. That did make sense-an unpleasant amount of sense, in fact. Weymouth was a small coastal town that lay between New Hastings and Hanover, closer to the latter. Victor would have said the English were welcome to the place-if ever a town had a fine future behind it, Weymouth was the one-if only it didn't have a sizable arsenal. He couldn't afford-Atlantis couldn't afford-to lose the tons of powder and lead bars stored there.