Plaintively, the Englishman they'd captured asked, "What will you do to me?"

"Ought to knock you over the head and pitch you into the Brede. Better than you deserve, too," one of the Atlanteans said. The prisoner turned pale.

"No, no," Victor said. "Can't have that, or Howe's soldiers will start knocking our men over the head after they catch them. I'll fight that kind of war if I must, but I don't want to. We'll keep him as a prisoner till he's properly exchanged, that's all."

"Thank you kindly, your Honor," the Englishman said. "If you let me go, I'll give my parole not to fight until I'm exchanged."

"Sorry. I think we'd do better to hold you for now," Victor replied. "Let General Howe think his letter's been delivered." He turned to the Atlanteans who'd captured the man. "Keep him with our other prisoners, and keep an eye on him. We don't want him slipping away while our backs are turned."

"Right you are. General," the big man said. He set a hand the size of a ham on the prisoner's shoulder. "Come on, you." The Englishman perforce came. The Atlantean soldiers led him away.

Victor Radcliff slowly read through Howe's letter once more. He nodded to himself. Nice to learn he wasn't the only commander with worries, anyhow.

After taking Bredestown, the redcoats lay quiet for a fortnight Licking their wounds, Victor thought, though he had no idea whether that was the explanation. Then General Howe cautiously began moving skirmishers down the Brede toward New Hastings.

Atlantean skirmishers met them right away. Victor didn't want Howe coming after him. Maybe a show of force would persuade the English that an attack on the oldest town in Atlantis would prove more trouble than it was worth.

On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't. The redcoats kept pushing forward. Victor sent more of his army back toward the west to delay them. He wished he could write General Howe a stiff letter. The continual pressure the Englishman applied to his forces struck him as not the least bit sporting.

Then nature took a hand. It rained buckets, sheets, hogsheads. The Brede turned into a raging brown torrent that threatened to burst its banks and lay New Hastings waste before Howe could. Every road for miles around became a knee-deep quagmire.

And every firearm became no more than a fancy club or a wet spear. If steel squelched when it struck flint, no spark flew. And keeping powder in the priming pan dry was a separate nightmare. Victor wished for a thousand armored knights all carrying lances. As long as the rain lasted, they might have driven the redcoats from the field.

But it wouldn't last. He knew that all too well. He set his men to work on field fortifications north and south of the Brede. If the English army wanted to try to bull through to New Hastings, he aimed to set as many obstacles in its path as he could.

No matter what a man aimed at, he commonly got less. Victor did here. Earthworks sagged to muddy lumps as soon as they were built. Trenches turned to moats just as fast. And rumbles of mutiny came from the soldiers.

"They think you're trying to drown them," Blaise reported. He eyed the general commanding. "Maybe they're right, too."

"No." Radcliff shook his head. "That is not so. I'm trying to keep them from getting shot when the fighting picks up again. But…" The rain drummed down on his tent. He was standing in mud. He had a cot, that being one of the privileges a general enjoyed. So he slept dry-except when the tent leaked. Too many of his men slept in the open if they slept at all. He sighed. "We'll give it up, then. Sooner or later, though, the sky will clear."

After a week and a half, it did. General Howe tried to get his army on the move as soon as he could, which turned out to be too soon. Wagons and guns bogged down in the gluey mud. The redcoats' advance stopped almost before it got started.

"If we could get at 'em, we could slaughter 'em," reported a scout charged with keeping an eye on the enemy. "Some of their oxen are in it up to their bellies."

"So are ours," Victor replied. "And what sort of time did you have coming back to bring your news to me?"

"Well…"The cavalryman grimaced. "It wasn't what anybody'd call easy-I will say that."

Victor didn't attack. The sun made everything from the grass to the soldiers' wet clothes steam. Victor wondered how much of their powder was dry. Enough to fight a battle? Enough to shoot at all? He had a few men fire their muskets. Most of the firelocks went off. That was about as much as he could have hoped for.

Even in the driest weather, misfires were all too common.

Scouts reported hearing musket fire from the redcoats, too, though they'd thought better for the moment of moving forward. No doubt General Howe was also making sure his soldiers could shoot if they had to.

Sergeants exhorted men to push oily rags through their musket barrels to hold rust at bay. Radcliff could only hope the stubbornly independent Atlanteans would listen. Over in the English army, other underofficers would be telling the men they led the same thing. The redcoats would obey-Victor was mournfully sure of that.

At last, slowly and cautiously, they did edge forward once more. Victor's men skirmished and sniped from behind fences and trees. The Englishmen caught a sniper who was wearing a green coat and cut his throat, leaving his body for his comrades to find.

"We ought to do that to the next redcoat we catch!" a rifleman raged. "If they want to fight filthy, we can fight filthy, too!" His comrades shook their fists and shouted agreement.

Do you intend this to be a war without quarter? Victor wrote to General Howe. If you do, sir, we shall endeavor to oblige you. But murdering men taken prisoner only adds cruelty to the conflict without in the least changing its likely result. He added details about the killing and sent oft* the note under flag of truce.

An English junior officer carrying a white flag brought the enemy general's response the next day. Please accept my apologies and my assurances that such distasteful incidents shall not be repeated, Howe wrote. The men responsible have been punished.

He didn't say how. Victor Radcliff muttered to himself. Was it enough? Victor used a penknife to trim a quill, then dipped the tip of the goose feather in a bottle of ink. So long as these assurances be respected and observed, we shall not reply in kind, he wrote. But if we meet with such barbarities again, you may rely on our ability and intention to avenge ourselves by whatever means seem fitting. Very respectfully, your most obedient servant… He signed his name.

The subaltern who'd brought General Howe's reply waited for Victor's. The young man saluted as he might have done for his own commanding officer. He took Victor's letter, performed a smart about-turn, mounted his horse, and rode off toward his own lines.

War's politesse, as formal as a gavotte's, Victor thought. It doesn't stop us from killing one another. It doesn't even slow us down much. But it does make sure we do it by the rules.

His chuckle held a distinctly wry edge. Blaise had never got used to those rules. He thought they were nothing but white men's foolishness. He might have been right. Still and all, though, the whole business might have ended up even worse without them.

A few days later, Victor was wondering how the whole business could end up any worse. The redcoats probed at the lines he'd tried to set up to hold them away from New Hastings. They probed, and they found that the lines weren't nearly so solid as he'd wished they were.

Too many of his men hadn't learned how to stand up under an artillery bombardment. Most cannon balls harmlessly buried themselves in wet earth or went skipping over the landscape, dangerous only if you were rash enough to try to stop one with your foot. Every so often, though, a roundshot would mash a man-or two or three men-into a crimson horror not usually seen outside a slaughterhouse. It was worse when the cannon ball didn't kill right away. Then the luckless soldier's shrieks spread his agony to every man who heard them.