Bredestown fell. The English garrison fired a few shots for honor's sake and then marched away down the Brede toward New Hastings. Exultantly, the Atlanteans pursued. Taking back their first city, the city that still thought of itself as Atlantis' leader (Hanover? New Hastings never had cared a farthing for Hanover) would be a strong blow against King George.

But New Hastings didn't fall. No one could say that the redcoats lacked for clever engineers. They'd worked all winter to fortify the landward approaches to the town. Worse-certainly from Victor's perspective-they'd taken big guns off some of their warships and mounted them in their fieldworks.

Some of those guns seemed to fire roundshot as big as a man's head. One cannon ball sent a column of almost a dozen men to the surgeons-or to the gravediggers. After that, the Atlanteans lost their zeal for approaching the enemy works. The redcoats might not be there in numbers, but they could badly hurt any assault Victor tried.

And so Victor swung south without trying one. He didn't expect the English garrison to come out after him. He hoped-he prayed-it would. But he didn't expect it. The redcoats would have been giving themselves into his hands. Their commander, to Victor's disappointment, saw that for himself.

Blaise laughed at him. "You want the duck to walk into the oven and roast itself," the Negro said.

"Well… yes," Victor admitted in some embarrassment. "Why should I work hard if the other fellow can make things easy for me?"

"Just because he can doesn't mean he will," Blaise said, which was true even if unpalatable. "How much French do you recall?"

"Un petitpeu,j'espere," Victor answered. "Et tu?"

"La mime chose," Blaise said, and then, in English, "French was the first white people's language I learned after the slavers brought me here. Some of it got beaten into me, and that stuck. The rest… I use English all the time now, except when I'm with Stella."

His wife came from the same part of Africa he did. Till Victor got to know Blaise, he hadn't thought that Africa might have as many languages as Europe. He wondered why not; he knew Terranovan copperskins spoke many different tongues. Maybe it was because blacks looked more nearly alike to him than copperskins did.

How did whites look to Terranovans and Africans? That was an interesting question. One of these days, maybe he'd ask Blaise about it For the moment, he had more urgent things to worry about.

First and foremost was keeping Freetown in Atlantean hands- if it still was. Maybe General Howe had sailed for the southernmost good-sized town in English Atlantis rather than heading farther south. And if he had, maybe Freetown had opened up for him. It had always been a royalist center-especially when viewed from the perspective of New Hastings or even Hanover.

"Push it, boys! Push it!" Victor called. "We've got to keep Freetown living up to its name."

The men seemed eager to march. He cherished that, knowing there would be times when they weren't. They also had enough to eat, which wasn't always true. And the roads were good: hard enough to march on, but not summer-dry so that travelers choked in their own dust and advertised their coming from miles away.

Victor breathed a sigh of relief when Freetown welcomed him as warmly as the place ever welcomed anybody who wasn't born there. His own name was in good odor in these parts. He'd helped defend Freetown against an attack from French Atlantis fifteen years earlier. He would have put more credit in that if he hadn't had redcoats as allies then. Freetown also remembered them fondly.

Discovering the place wasn't flying the Union Jack, Victor sent a messenger back to Honker's Mill: "Tell them that if Custis Cawthorne wants to head for France, this may be the best place to leave from."

"I'll do it, General," the man promised, brushing the brim of his tricorn with a forefinger.

Freetown fishermen said they'd seen the Royal Navy sailing south past their home. They said as much after Atlantean soldiers sought them out and grilled them, anyhow. They showed no great desire to come forward on their own and share what they knew.

Talking to one of them, Victor Radcliff said, "We might have walked into trouble if you'd kept your mouth shut."

He got back a shrug. "I just want this war to end, one way or the other," the fisherman said. "Don't much care which."

How many people felt the same way? How many went A plague on both your houses when redcoats or greencoats came near them? More than a few, unless Victor missed his guess. Most of the time, that didn't matter. It might have here.

"I think you just helped us take a step toward winning," he told the fisherman.

"Huzzah," the fellow said. "What difference does it make to me? D'you think the cod care one way or the other?"

"You'll have more places to sell them when Atlantis is free" Victor refused to say, or even to think, if Atlantis is free.

"And some nosy bastard seeing how much I caught and how much he can tax me for it." No, the fisherman didn't care for the war or freedom or anything else.

Victor Radcliff raised his right hand, as if taking an oath. "If the day comes when Atlantean officials do such things, pick up a musket and march on them. By God, you'll see me marching on them, too."

He still failed to impress the Freetown man. "You don't catch on, General. I don't want to march on anybody. I don't want anybody marching on me, either. I just want to get left alone and not be bothered. Is that too damned much to ask?"

Yes, Victor thought. "I was going to give you a couple of pounds for what you knew," he said. "If you don't want to be bothered, I'll keep them in my wallet."

The fisherman turned out not to have anything against money going into his pocket, no matter how little he liked paying taxes. He left Victor's presence happier than he'd entered it. That didn't happen every day; Victor supposed he should have cherished it.

He made a quick tour of Freetown's ocean-facing forts. The Royal Navy hadn't cared to test them by landing here. As far as Victor could see, the sailors had missed a chance. They could have put an army of redcoats ashore with little risk from these popguns. Maybe General Howe thought he could win the war farther south.

"Here's hoping he's wrong," Blaise said when Victor mentioned that.

"Yes," Victor said. "Here's hoping."

Howe could land wherever he chose. He had plenty of time to maneuver after landing, too. Ships sailed faster than men marched. And they sailed all through the day and night, while marching men had to rest.

Determined to do what he could, Victor sent riders ahead of his army, urging the former French settlements to call out their militias and resist the redcoats wherever the enemy happened to come ashore. Even if they all obeyed the summons, he wondered whether he was doing them a favor. The English soldiers would likely go through raw militiamen like a dose of salts. He shrugged. If he couldn't stop the enemy, he had to try to slow them down.

Moving south from Freetown took him back in time. When he was a younger man, he'd fought French settlers and French regulars again and again in these parts. The redcoats were his allies then. He'd been glad to lean on their skill and courage. Now he had to beat them… if he could.

Corning up from the south, French Atlanteans had named the river that ended up dividing their land from that of the English the Erdre. Coming down from the north at about the same time, English Atlanteans called the same river the Stour. Since the English prevailed in their war, the latter name was heard more often these days.

The bridge over the Stour closest to the sea was fine and new and wide. Roland Kersauzon's French Atlanteans had burned the old one behind them when they crossed back into their own territory after their defeat south of Freetown. The new one, intended as a symbol of unity, was mostly stonework. Fire wouldn't bring it down. Hogsheads of black powder probably would.