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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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