Thinking about the ginkgo and about Custis made him wonder how the printer was doing in France. He also wondered how news of his victory over General Howe and the subsequent Proclamation of Liberty would go over there. All he could do was wonder and wait and see.

He didn't think he could do much more about New Marseille. If he hurled his army against those works, the redcoats and the Royal Navy would tear it to shreds. If he didn't… Sooner or later, Cornwallis would come after him. The English could bring in supplies by sea. He was proud of keeping his army fed in its overland march across Atlantis. If it had to stay where it was for very long, though, it would start running out of edibles.

He contemplated the prospect of retreating across Atlantis. After a moment, he shuddered and did his best to think about something else. He almost wished he hadn't crossed the Green Ridge Mountains-but if he hadn't, he would have tamely yielded western Atlantis to the enemy. Sometimes your choices weren't between bad and good but between bad and worse.

Blaise came up beside him. "What do we do now. General?" the Negro asked: one more question Victor didn't want to hear.

He parried it with one of his own: "What would you do in my place?"

Blaise eyed the redcoats' fieldworks. He didn't need the spyglass and the details it revealed to come up with a reasonable answer. "Wait for whatever happens next," he said. "That is a strong position. Mighty strong."

"It is, isn't it?" Victor said mournfully. "I wish our engineers were as good as theirs."

"Why aren't they?" Blaise asked.

"Because we never needed professional soldiers till this war started," Victor said. "I suppose the United States of Atlantis will from this time forward-and it will have them, too. But we don't have them yet, worse luck."

That made Blaise grunt thoughtfully. "Too peaceful for our own good, were we? You wouldn't think such a thing could be so."

"I fear it is," Victor said in mournful tones.

Blaise grunted again. "Well, if my tribe had more warriors, and better warriors, I never would have crossed the sea. I'd still be back there, still talking my own language." He spoke several incomprehensible syllables full of longing.

"Your life might have been-would have been, I suppose- easier had you stayed in Africa. But I would have missed a friend." Victor set a hand on the Negro's shoulder.

"Too late to worry about it now," Blaise said. "You are a friend, but this is not my land. It never will be."

"The United States of Atlantis should be any free man's land," Victor said, more stiffly than he'd intended to.

"Should be, yes." Blaise used that gesture Victor had seen before from him, brushing two fingers of his right hand against the dark back of his left. "Easier to talk about should be than is."

"Mmm, maybe so. We do what we can-nothing more to do," Victor said. "We aren't perfect, nor shall we ever be. But we keep heading down the road, and we'll see how far we fare."

He got one more grunt from Blaise. "Heading down the road on the backs of blacks and copperskins."

"Not on the backs of freemen, regardless of their color," Victor said uncomfortably.

This time, Blaise didn't answer at all. That might have been just as well. The United States of Atlantis might be heading down the road towards a place where a man of one color was reckoned as good as a man of another. Victor wasn't sure the land was heading toward that place, but it might be. He was sure it hadn't come close to getting there.

All of which brought him not a hairsbreadth nearer to deciding what to do about New Marseille. Attacking those works looked like something only a man who craved death would try. Going back the way he'd come yielded Atlantis west of the mountains to England, and God only knew what it would do to the army's morale. Unfortunately, things being as they were, he couldn't simply stay where he was for very long, either.

He ordered his men to start digging works of their own. If the redcoats came after them, they had to be able to hold their ground if they could. As far as he could see, General Cornwallis would have to be a fool to attack him, but maybe Cornwallis was a fool, or at least would turn out to be one this time. Victor could hope so, anyhow. He realized he wasn't in the best of positions when hoping for a foe's mistake was the best he could do.

A couple of days went by. Not much came from the far side of the Green Ridge Mountains. The hunters shot less than he'd wished they would, too. Before long, the army would get hungry. It might get very hungry.

He began planning an attack. It wasn't one he wanted to make, but when all his choices looked bad he had to pick the one that wasn't worst. He'd thought about that not long before, and now it stared him in the face again. Still, if he could take New Marseille from the English, he'd redeem this campaign.

If he could…

And then, to his amazement, the redcoats abandoned the town. They did it with their usual competence, leaving fires burning in their outworks to fool his men into thinking they remained there through the night. When the sun rose, the last few Englishmen were rowing out to the Royal Navy ships. The warships' sails filled with wind, and they glided off to the south.

Victor's first thought was that smallpox or the yellow jack had broken out in Cornwallis' army. But the English commodore could scarcely have let soldiers onto his ships in that case. Knowing only his own ignorance, Victor rode into New Marseille.

If the locals were glad to see him, their faces didn't know it. They seemed more French-and more superciliously French- than most southern folk on the other side of the mountains. Englishmen? English-speaking Atlanteans? If they recognized the difference, they didn't let on.

And they seemed proud of themselves for their Frenchness. "Don't you know why this Cornwallis individual absconded?" one of them demanded.

"No," Victor replied, "and I wish I did."

"Well, it's all because of King Louis, of course," the local told him.

"Perhaps you would be good enough to explain that to me?" Victor said. The King of France hadn't done much lately, not that he knew about.

But he knew less than the local did. "Word came here that France has declared war against the rascally English," the fellow said. "And… oh, yes…"

"What?" Victor asked, now eagerly.

"And recognized your United States of Atlantis," the man told him.

Habbakkuk Biddiscombe rode back to Victor Radcliff with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Radcliff eyed the cavalry officer a trifle apprehensively. Biddiscombe wore that smirk when things were going very well-and when they were going anything but Which would it be this time? Do I realty want to know? Victor wondered.

"I have news, General," Biddiscombe said portentously.

"I thought you might," Victor said. "Otherwise-I do hope- you would have stayed in your assigned position, with the men you lead." That failed to quash the bumptious cavalryman. Biddiscombe also failed to disgorge whatever he'd brought back. Sighing, Victor prompted him: "And that news is…?"

"Without question, General, my men have reached the east-em slope of the Green Ridge Mountains." From the pride in his voice, Habakkuk Biddiscombe had only a little less to do with that eastern slope than the Almighty Who'd created it in the first place.

"Well, I am glad to hear that." Victor meant it. His men wore lean and hungry looks, and did not wear them gladly. "We'll be much better able to subsist the soldiers once we return to civilization."

"Civilization?" Biddiscombe flared a nostril and curled his lip. "Nothing but Frenchies, and not a devil of a lot of them."