"I dare say he's caused King George's men in those parts a good deal of, ah, pain," Victor remarked with malice aforethought.

"Why, so he has." One of Rand's bristly eyebrows rose. "Funny you should put it so, General, for Paine's his family name."

"And Thomas his Christian name," Victor agreed. "I am acquainted with the gentleman, and with his qualities. Indeed, I sent him west across the Hesperian Gulf, hoping he would do exactly as he has done."

"Well, good on you, then," the merchant told him. "The more toes England has on the griddle, the more hopping she needs must do." Now the look he sent Victor was more speculative than pitying. A general who could work out a plot and have it come off the way he wanted wasn't some harmless bumpkin, but a man who might need some serious watching.

"I am grateful for the news, believe me," Victor said. "It will surely influence the way I conduct my campaign from this time forward."

"Ah? Influence it how, pray?" Gustavus Vasa Rand leaned forward, eager to be even more in the know than he was already.

But Victor Radcliff only laid a finger by the side of his nose. "By your leave, sir, I'll say no more. What you have not heard, no red-hot pokers or thumbscrews may tear from you should the redcoats decide they must learn all the secrets you carry under your hat."

"They wouldn't do that." Rand's voice lacked conviction. Victor refrained from mentioning one other possibility: that the trader from Hanover might tell the English what he knew under no compulsion whatsoever. Some men tried to work both sides at once, or pretended to serve one while actually on the other. He had spies in Hanover; he had to assume Cornwallis played the same game.

"Whilst the Hesperians make England divide her forces, you may be sure I shall do my best to keep the occupiers, ah, occupied here in Atlantis," Victor said. "And, sir, you may publish that abroad as widely as you please."

"I'll do it, General. You can count on me," Rand said.

Victor Radcliff smiled and nodded. Maybe the man from Hanover would. Then again, maybe he wouldn't. If he didn't, the world wouldn't end; nor would the Atlantean uprising.

And if he did, Victor hadn't said a word about strategy. Of course Cornwallis would expect him to try to take advantage of what England had to do to try to put down the new rebellion far to the west. Cornwallis would be right, too. But how Victor would try to exploit the new situation…

Cornwallis won't know, Victor thought. He can't possibly, for I haven't the faintest idea myself. He didn't believe that was what the military manuals meant when they talked about "the advantage of surprise," but it was what he had. Now he needed to figure out how to make the most of it.

Several rivers met at or near Hanover, which helped make it Atlantis' most important harbor. (Some of the people who argued about such things argued that Avalon had a better site. They might well have been right. But Hanover raced towards Europe, Avalon toward Terranova. When it came to ships and cargoes heading in and out, that made all the difference in the world.)

These days, cargoes heading in and out of Hanover did so for England's benefit, not Atlantis'. Oh, dribs and drabs of what came into Hanover got smuggled out to the lands that owed the Atlantean Assembly allegiance, but only dribs and drabs. As General Howe had before him, General Cornwallis hoped that keeping his opponents poor would detach them from the United States of Atlantis and make them take another look at King George.

What worried Victor Radcliff was that Cornwallis might be right. A patriot without a ha'penny in his pocket was only one long step-sometimes not such a long step-from discovering he was really a loyalist after all.

The most important river that flowed into Hanover, the Severn, ran down from the north. Victor led his own army along the north bank of a smaller stream, the Blackwater, that approached from the west.

"Why did they name it the Blackwater?" Blaise asked. "What's in there looks like any other water to me."

"To me, too-now," Victor answered. "But when we get a little closer to Hanover… Well, you'll see."

Before they came that close to Hanover, they had to deal with a hastily run-up English stockade that blocked their approach to the city. One of the popguns inside the stockade boomed defiance at the Atlantean army. The roundshot it fired fell far short of Victor's men. After the ball stopped rolling, one of his gunners picked it up. If it fit an Atlantean gun-and it probably would-it would fly back toward some redcoats one of these days.

Instead of assaulting the little fortress right away, Victor marched his troops past it before halting. Maybe the soldiers inside hadn't sent anyone east toward Hanover to warn Cornwallis of his advent. But if they had, the redcoats in the seaside city might sally forth to see if they could smash the Atlantean army between themselves and the garrison.

"They may think they can get away with that, but I don't aim to let them," Victor told his assembled officers-and, inevitably, Blaise, whom everyone took for granted by now.

"How will you stop 'em. General?" one of his captains asked. "I'll tell you how, in the name of the Lord God Jehovah," Victor said. "We shall attack the stockade at midnight tonight-that's how. Once it has fallen, all their hopes of playing hammer and anvil against us fall with it."

The officers buzzed like bees. "Can we do it?" one of them asked.

He might not have meant for Victor Radcliff to hear him, but Victor did. "We can, sir, and we shall," he declared. "The idea may surprise you, but I intend that it shall flabbergast the poor foolish Englishmen mured up behind those pine and redwood logs. Flabbergast 'em, I say!"

To that end, the Atlanteans encamped as they would have done at the end of any ordinary day's march. They pitched tents. They built up cook fires. They ambled back and forth in front of and around those fires. Victor had learned his lessons watching the redcoats abandon positions they could hold no longer. If the enemy commander inside the stockade was watching the encampment through a spyglass, he would notice nothing peculiar.

He wouldn't be able to see, for instance, that the men silhouetted in front of the fires were always the same men: a group left behind to make the camp appear normal from a distance, even when it wasn't.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Atlanteans took care to stay out of the firelight. Victor Radcliff led them against the English works. The night was moonless and cloudy and dark. "Move as quietly as you can," he called-quietly. "If you fall, pick yourself up with no loud, profane swearing."

"Indeed, for such vileness offends against God," said a voice out of the blackness.

"Well, so it does," Victor agreed. "But it's also liable to mark our advance against the foe. Unless you have such a clean conscience that you can meet your Maker sooner than you might have had in mind, keep your lips buttoned."

The Atlanteans did… for the most part. No cries of alarm rang out from the stockade ahead. The redcoats inside the log palisade kept big bonfires blazing. The red-gold light shone through chinks between one log and another, and also lit up the buildings inside the stockade: barracks that could double as a redoubt in time of need.

Motte and bailey, Victor thought. The Normans used that scheme in England, and it's still a good one. Would it be good enough to hold up against complete surprise? He had to hope not. He also had to hope he could bring off a complete surprise. That, at the moment, remained what barristers called a Scotch verdict: not proven.

Those bonfires made advancing against the enemy position easier than it would have been otherwise. On a night this dark, Victor might have had trouble finding an unilluminated fort-and tramping past it would have been embarrassing, to say the least No risk of that, not now.