Well, we crossed the river to find them." Victor Radcliff hoped he sounded calmer than he felt. The sun was sinking toward the Green Ridge Mountains. "How close are they? Will they get here before night falls, or can we fight them in the morning?"

"In the morning, I'd say," the rider replied. Then he shook his head. "Or maybe not, if they push their march. Hard to be sure."

"Damnation," Victor muttered under his breath. He couldn't stand people who couldn't make up their minds. And he had to rely on what this fellow said, no matter how indecisive it was.

He did the best he could. He sent out pickets to cover a fan-shaped arc from due south to northeast of his position. If General Howe did try a forced march, the Atlanteans would slow him down and warn the main body of his approach. Victor didn't really anticipate it. Howe made a better strategist than a field commander. On campaign, he'd proved several times that he didn't move as fast as he might have.

Better to send out the pickets without need than to get an ugly surprise, though.

"If we don't fight the redcoats this afternoon, we will fight them on the morrow," he told the men still in camp. "Clean your muskets. Riflemen, take especial care with your pieces-they foul worse than smoothbores. Cooks, ready supper now. If we do tight today, better to fight on a full stomach."

Thanks to their foragers, they would have enough to eat for the next couple of days. After that, they would need to shift again and take what they could from some other part of formerly French Atlantis.

Victor wondered how the English troops were subsisting themselves. Did they have a wagon train from Cosquer and the ocean? Did boats bring their victuals up the Blavet? Or were they foraging like the Atlanteans?

It didn't matter now. It might if he routed them and fell on their baggage train. He laughed at himself. He was nothing if not ambitious. He had yet to beat the redcoats in a pitched battle, and now he was thinking about what might happen after he routed them? If he wasn't ambitious, he'd slipped a cog somewhere.

No sudden spatters of gunfire disturbed the rest of the afternoon. General Howe hadn't eaten hot Terranovan peppers or anything else that made him break out in a sweat of urgency. More riders came in. Victor got a better notion of the enemy's position.

And an English Atlantean who'd settled south of the Blavet rode into camp just after sunset. He introduced himself as Ulysses Grigsby. "I hear the redcoats aren't so far off," he said.

"I hear the same," Victor agreed gravely.

"You aim to fight 'em?" Grigsby asked.

"The thought had crossed my mind," Victor admitted, "Why do you wish to know?" If this stranger was some loyalist spy, he might imagine he could waltz away with the Atlanteans' battle plans. If he did, he was doomed to a most painful disappointment.

But Ulysses Grigsby said, "On account of if you do, I know a damned good place to do it at." He was between forty and fifty, skinny and weathered: if he hadn't seen a good many out-of-the-way places, Victor would have been surprised. He smelled of sweat and pipeweed.

"Oh, you do?" Victor said. Grigsby nodded. Victor eyed him. "If you try to put us in a bad spot, or in a good one where General Howe knows of some weakness and can use it, I promise you it will be your final mistake."

"And if I tell you nothing but the plain truth?" the other man returned.

"Then Atlantis will have cause to be grateful" Victor said. "We are not in an ideal position to show our appreciation at the moment, things being as they are. But, once we prove to England we are not to be defeated and she leaves off trying to subjugate us, we shan't forget our friends. If that is not enough for you, sir, I will tell you good evening."

"And be damned to me?" Grigsby suggested.

"You said it, not I," Victor answered.

"Hen." Grigsby's chuckle was dry as dust in an August drought. "Well, I'll take you there now, if you like." He chuckled again. "Bring as many guards as you please. You don't need to- it's inside your picket line. But I expect you'll bring 'em anyhow. You've no reason to trust me… yet."

"You got past the pickets unnoticed, I gather?" Victor said.

"I sure did. But don't fret yourself." That dry chuckle came out once more, "I expect they'd likely spy an army as tried the same."

"One may hope." Radcliff wasn't about to let anybody he'd just met outcalm him. Ulysses Grigsby laughed yet again. Between the two of them, they could probably evaporate the Blavet.

"Well, let's get going," said the English Atlantean who'd settled south of the old dividing line. "Sooner you see I'm not a prevaricating son of a whore, sooner you can commence to ciphering out how to steer General Howe into your jaws."

"Prevaricating," Victor echoed, not without admiration. He would have bet Grigsby was self-taught. He'd known several Atlanteans like that: they would trot out the proofs of their learning whenever they could. Well-built women often wore decollete dresses for similar reasons of display.

He took along half a company's worth of soldiers. If that force couldn't let him get away from an ambush… then it couldn't, and he and Atlantis would have to lump it. He watched Grigsby out of the corner of his eye. The other man gave no sign of wanting to betray him to the enemy. Of course, if he was worth anything at all in this game, he wouldn't.

As twilight deepened, a poor-bob somewhere under the trees loosed its mournful two-note call. It sang once more, then fell silent as the riders got closer. If redcoats skulked nearby, the night bird likely wouldn't have called at all. More than a few people reckoned hearing a poor-bob unlucky. This once, Victor took it for a good sign.

"Not much farther," Grigsby said a few minutes later. "Still ought to be enough light to let you see what I'm going on about."

"That would be good," Victor said, which got one more chuckle out of his guide.

Grigsby reined in and gestured. "This here is the place. You're the general. Expect you'll see what I've got in mind."

Victor looked east: the direction from which Howe's army would advance. He eyed the ground on which his army would fight if things went well. Slowly, thoughtfully, he nodded. "Promising, Mr. Grigsby. Promising," he said. "But I am going to keep you under guard till after the fighting's over even so."

He waited to see whether the leathery settler got angry. Grigsby only nodded back. "Didn't reckon you'd tell me any different," he replied. "Doesn't look like I'll have to wait real long any which way."

"You're right," Victor said. "It doesn't."

The Atlantean soldiers grumbled when their sergeants and officers routed them from their bedrolls well before sunup the next morning. The sergeants and officers, having been awakened earlier still so they could rouse the men, had already done their own grumbling. Stony-hearted, they ignored the honking from the common soldiers.

Tea and coffee and breakfast helped reconcile the troops to being alive. The eastern sky went gray, then pink, then gold as sunrise neared. Stars faded and disappeared; the third-quarter moon went from gleaming mistress of the heavens to a pale gnawed fingernail in the sky.

"Keep moving!" Blaise called to the Atlanteans near him as they marched along. "Every step you take, you have less excuse for tripping over your own big, clumsy feet."

When they got to Ulysses Grigsby's chosen battlefield, a lot of the men murmured appreciatively. As Baron von Steuben had noticed, one difference between Atlanteans and Englishmen was that Atlanteans liked thinking for themselves instead of letting somebody else do it for them. Most of Victor's troopers imagined themselves captains if not generals. They could see-or believed they could see-what would happen if the redcoats came up that road through the meadow.