"They're nothing but runaways," Biddiscombe repeated. "Copperskin runaways, at that."

"Leave them alone. Leave this place alone. That is an order," Victor said, so the cavalry officer could be in no possible doubt "If they harry us, we shall make them regret it. Until they do, I prefer to concentrate on the English, who truly are the enemy. Do I make myself clear?"

"Abundantly." Biddiscombe might have accused Victor of picking his nose and then sticking his finger in his mouth.

"Carry out your orders, then-and no 'accidental' destruction for the sport of it, either." Victor did his best to leave no loopholes in the orders. By Habakkuk Biddiscombe's expression, he'd just closed one the horseman had thought about using.

He wondered if he would have been so firm about protecting a village built by Negro runaways. Somehow, whites had an easier time looking down their noses at blacks than at copperskins. Blaise wouldn't have approved of that, which made it no less true.

Before long, Victor became pretty sure his men would be able to keep themselves fed on the road to New Marseille. He must have put the fear of God in the quartermasters at Nouveau Redon: supplies did keep coming over the Green Ridge Mountains. They weren't enough by themselves to victual the soldiers, but they were ever so much better than nothing. With oil thrushes and honkers, with fish and turtles taken from the streams (and with snails almost the size of roundshot and big, fat frogs taken by the French Atlanteans in the army), the men got enough to eat.

Marseille, Victor knew, lay in the south of France. Maybe that was why the French Atlanteans had named their western town after the older city. The weather here certainly was southern in nature. It was hot and humid. The army could have marched faster in a cooler climate. Too much haste here, and you were much too likely to tall over dead. A handful of soldiers did. They got hasty, lonely graves, like the one for the man bitten by the coral snake. The rest of the army pushed west.

Victor waited for someone to come over the mountains and tell him General Cornwallis had pulled a fast one, landing his army somewhere on the east coast of Atlantis. If the English commander had, Radcliff didn't know what he could do about it, not right away. Local militias would have to try to keep the redcoats in play till he shifted his men back to the east. And how obedient his army would stay after getting marched and countermarched like that was anyone's guess.

But Habakkuk Biddiscombe brought a couple of French Atlanteans before him. "I found them fleeing from the west," Biddiscombe said. "I don't talk much of their lingo, but I know you do." By his tone, speaking French lay somewhere between affectation and perversion.

Ignoring that, Victor asked the strangers, "Why were you running through the woods?"

"Because swarms of soldiers have landed in New Marseille," one of the men answered. "When soldiers come out of nowhere, it is not good for ordinary people." He eyed Victor and the troops he led as if they proved the point. Very likely, in his eyes, they did.

"Are their warships still in the harbor?" Victor asked.

"They were when we left," the French Atlantean said. His comrade nodded. After a moment, so did Victor. The Royal Navy wouldn't drop Cornwallis on this half-settled shore and then sail off to do something else far away. It would support him and, if need be, take him somewhere else.

Victor tried a different question: "Did anyone try to fight to hold the redcoats out of New Marseille?"

Both French Atlanteans looked at him as if they had trouble believing their ears. The one who'd spoken before said, "Suicide is a mortal sin, Monsieur." He didn't add, and you are an idiot, but he might as well have. His manner would have offended Victor more if he hadn't had a point.

"Have you heard of the Proclamation of Liberty?" Victor asked. "It announces that Atlantis is to be free of the King of England forevermore."

"Has anyone given this news to the English soldiers in New Marseille?" the refugee enquired in return.

"We are on the way now to deliver the message," Victor said.

"When the hammer hits the anvil, the little piece of metal in the middle gets flattened," the French Atlantean said. Was he a blacksmith? His scarred and callused hands made that a pretty good guess. Whether he was or not, his figure of speech seemed apt enough.

Victor had to pretend he didn't understand it. "Will you guide us to New Marseille and help us take your town back from the invaders?"

The local and his friend looked anything but delighted. "Do we have another choice?" he asked bleakly.

"In a word, no," Victor said. "This is a matter of military necessity for the United States of Atlantis." Les Etats-Unis d'Atlantk he thought it sounded quite fine in French.

If the refugees thought so, too, they hid it well. The one who did the talking for them said, "How generous you are, Monsieur. You offer us the opportunity of returning to the danger we just escaped."

"You escaped it alone. You return to New Marseille with the Army of the Atlantean Assembly at your back," Victor said.

"And where is your navy, to drive away the English ships?" the French Atlantean asked.

Victor would rather have heard almost any other question in the world. "One way or another, we'll manage," he said gruffly.

The French Atlantean had no trouble understanding what that meant. "There is no Navy of the Atlantean Assembly," he said.

Since he was right, Victor could only glare at him. "Nevertheless, we shall prove victorious in the end," he declared.

"But the end, Monsieur, is a long way away," the other man said. "In the meanwhile, much as I regret to say it, I fear I prefer the chances of the Englishmen. Good day." He wanted nothing to do with the Proclamation of Liberty or any other idealistic project. He wanted nothing more than to be left alone. But King George's forces and the Atlantean rebels seemed unlikely to pay the least attention to what he wanted.

An eagle screeched overhead. Victor looked up. As he'd thought, it wasn't the red-crested eagle that stood for the uprising, but the smaller, less ferocious white-headed bird. Instead of boldly attacking honkers-and livestock, and men-white-headed eagles ate fish and carrion. One of their favorite ploys was to wait till an osprey caught a fish and then assail the other bird till it gave up its prize. As far as Victor was concerned, the white-headed eagle made a fine symbol for England.

He laughed at himself. He might have become a fair general, but he knew himself to be the world's most indifferent poet. And he would never get better if he couldn't come up with imagery more interesting than that

Victor stood on a rise a couple of miles east of New Marseille, peering down into the town and its harbor through his brass telescope He muttered under his breath. The redcoats were there in force, all right. They had already ringed New Marseille with field fortifications. They'd gone to some effort to conceal their cannon, but he could still pick out the ugly iron and brass snouts.

And General Cornwallis couldn't hide the Royal Navy ships that had brought him here and still supported him. They filled the harbor of New Marseille. More anchored offshore. Avalon Bay farther north could have held them all with ease. Because New Marseille's harbor was so much less commodious, it had neither the checkered past nor the bright future of Avalon.

A little warbler with a green head hopped about in the tree that shaded Victor. The tree itself, a ginkgo, was curious not only for its bilobed leaves but also for its existence. Others like it grew only in China. Scholars had expended gallons of ink trying to explain why that should be so. Custis Cawthorne-Victor's touchstone in such matters-was of the opinion that none of them had the slightest idea, but that they were unwilling to admit as much.