Victor Radcliff was certainly dissatisfied with his portion. "This is some of the most odious beef I ever had the misfortune to eat," he said.

"Better than no beef at all," Blaise said, grease running down his chin. "Better than slave rations, too. And we won't work as hard when we fight as I did out in the fields. Sergeants don't have whips, either."

"Do you feel the lack?" Victor inquired, not altogether ironically.

"Only every now and again," Blaise answered-also not altogether ironically. He took another bite of beef. He had better teeth than Victor did. Dentistry wasn't quite hell on earth, but it came close. Even after heroic doses of brandy and opium-or of laudanum, which combined the two-losing a tooth hurt like blazes.

"As long as your men fear you worse than they fear enemy musketry, they'll hold the line," Victor said. "That's what we need."

Blaise's wave took in the Atlantean army's encampment. "Can we fight the redcoats with troops like this?" he asked. "Seems to me we had better men when we took on the French settlers. And we had England to back us up then, too-we didn't go against her."

"The second is true, of course," Victor said. "As for the first…" He shrugged. "This is a raw force. No one would say any different. But as soon as the men gain some experience-"

"Their enlistment time runs out, and they go home," Blaise broke in.

"That isn't what I was going to say, dammit!" Victor burst out, which made it no less true. He sighed and took a careful bite of his tough, stringy beef. "Before long, we shall have to improve our system of recruitment. In the meanwhile, what choice have we but to do the best we can with what the Atlantean Assembly, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to give us?"

"If we lose a few times, how well we fought won't matter." Yes, Blaise was ruthlessly pragmatic.

Again, Radcliff thought his comment altogether too likely. Still… "The first few times, I would not be completely discontented with any result that demonstrates we can confront English soldiers on terms approximating equality. Our men need to believe that-and so does the enemy."

"If it be true," Blaise said.

"Yes. If." Victor Radcliff might not have admitted that even to his wife. As much to raise his own spirits as for any other reason, he went on, "The last time around, you will recall, we fought not only French settlers but also French regulars. We did well enough against 'em, too. I see no reason we can't do the same against King George's redcoats. Am I overlooking anything?"

"Only that, when we fought the French, all these settlements joined together against them," the Negro said. "How many settlers now aim to fight on King George's side?"

Victor grunted uncomfortably. He'd already talked about loyalists. He knew too well that this fight would split families. It had already split some. Custis Cawthorne's press and his formidable wit were at the Atlantean Assembly's disposal. Richard Cawthorne, his eldest son, was royal governor of Freetown, south of New Hastings. Richard was not the man his father was. But he was, by all accounts, capable and conscientious: a good enough servant for the king.

"Not many settlers who aim to fight for King George are in camp with us here," Victor said, again trying to buck himself up.

"Nooo," Blaise said, which sounded like agreement but was anything but. He found another unpleasant question to ask: "But how many of 'em are hotfooting it off to General Howe, to tell him how many men we've got and how they're accoutered? By the time we fight, he'll know everything about us except the holes in our stockings."

"Well, it's not as if we won't know as much about his men," Radcliff replied. Patriots came south with word of Howe's movements and of his regiments. And more than a few redcoats, having come to Atlantis, wanted nothing more than to strip off their uniforms and either join the Assembly's army and take aim at their former comrades or to go off into the wilderness where neither side would trouble them again.

"How soon before we meet him?" Blaise asked. "Two or three days," Victor said. "Three, I hope: that will mean our skirmishers are making his march a misery. It will also mean we've passed through Weymouth and saved what's in the arsenal. We won't get powder from England any more, either."

"Not unless we take it from the redcoats' baggage train after we beat them." Blaise understood how war worked, all right.

"I hope we can do that. I expect we will, some of the time. But we are going to have to make our own, too. If we need to depend on what we can steal, we're ruined," Victor said.

From horseback, he urged his men to hurry north. Every so often, a horseman would come down and tell him where General Howe's army was-or rather, where it had been when the horseman rode off to report on it. Victor had to calculate how long it had taken each rider to come from one army to the other. That told him about where the redcoats were at any moment, and about how fast they were coming.

"Whole countryside's in arms against 'em," one scout told him. "They've got to battle their way past every copse of trees and every stone fence within range of the road to Weymouth."

"Good," Victor said. He scowled at the map he held open between his knees. How much nonsense would his horse put up with before it tried to buck him off onto his head? If he was doing his sums correctly, Howe and the Englishmen ought to be about… there. He did some more sums in his head. Then he blinked in sudden glad surprise. "By God! We really may get to Weymouth ahead of them! Who would have believed it?"

"Way they go stealing anything that ain't nailed down, no wonder everybody wants to take a shot at 'em," the Atlantean scout said.

"Well… yes." Victor Radcliff hid as much of a smile as he could. The redcoats' thievery was far from unique. The French Atlanteans had robbed just as enthusiastically in the last war. So had the English Atlanteans, come to that. Soldiers in the Atlantean Assembly's army-his army-were bound to plunder, too. Victor dared hope they would mostly steal from farmers who favored King George. Sometimes, though, it didn't do to inquire too closely.

Heavy wagons carried hogsheads of gunpowder out of Weymouth and down toward New Hastings. The Atlantean soldiers moved off the road to let those wagons by, where all the other traffic had had to move aside for the army's sake. Other wagons brought muskets and lead away from the redcoats. Victor was glad to see them. Even if Weymouth fell, the precious munitions stored there wouldn't fall into English hands.

His men burst into cheers when they entered Weymouth. Victor felt like cheering himself-he'd got there ahead of General Howe. He wondered how long it had been since Weymouth heard much in the way of cheering. The town stank of cod. With Hanover to the north and New Hastings to the south, it would never get very big or very prosperous. A lot of the shops hadn't been painted or spruced up for a long time. Why bother? the shopkeepers seemed to say.

Some of them came out into the street to clap as the Atlantean army went by. Barmaids handed out mugs of beer and kisses. Church bells clanged. Dogs yapped as if possessed.

Not all the locals seemed delighted to see the settlers in arms. One weathered fellow, a cigar clamped in his jaws, looked more as if he was counting them than applauding them. Would he slip off and tell General Howe what he knew, as Victor's scouts had been doing for him? The chances seemed good. Both sides in this fight would have plenty of spies.

With the arsenal evacuated, Victor could have let Howe have Weymouth. Sooner or later, though, the Atlanteans would have to fight If they let the redcoats march here and there unhindered, they weren't an army at all-they were only playing at being one. Victor looked for favorable ground on which to make a stand.