"I reckoned your horde a pack of thieves before you broke in," one of the men who was to be expelled told him. "You do nothing to make me believe myself mistaken."

"You love us not," Victor said. "If you war against us, do you doubt we shall love you not in return?"

"A Christian man loves his enemies," the loyalist returned.

"Well, then, we show our love as you showed yours," Victor said. He pointed north, in the direction of Croydon and, much closer, the nearest English lines. "Now get you gone."

"Maybe you should have been rougher," Blaise said after the last of the expulsions and confiscations. "Our men would like to see some of those scoundrels go to the gallows."

"Scoundrels, is it?" Victor managed a twisted smile. "Sometimes the words you know surprise me. Sometimes it's the ones you don't know."

"Did I go wrong? Is scoundrels not what they are?" Blaise asked seriously.

"Scoundrels is what they are," Victor assured him. "It's a fancy word for what they are, but not a wrong one."

"Scoundrels." Blaise said it again, with relish. "I like the sound It makes them seem like dogs."

"Like dogs?" Victor was briefly puzzled. Then he realized what the Negro had to mean. "Oh, I see. Like spaniels."

"Those dogs, yes. With the floppy ears," Blaise said. Maybe he told the joke to a printer, or maybe someone else had the same idea, for a few days later a newspaper had a front-page woodcut of several prominent men leaving the city with sorrowful expressions and big spaniel ears, let the dogs go! it said beneath the cartoon. Custis Cawthorne showed more wit-and hired more talented engravers-but Custis was in Paris these days. Artistic or not, the woodcut struck Victor as effective. That would do.

As soon as spring came, the redcoats would try to recapture Hanover. Victor was as sure of that as he was of the Resurrection and the Second Coming, and it struck him as rather more immediately urgent than either of those. He set his men to digging trenches and throwing up earthworks to keep the enemy from getting past them.

His soldiers concealed their enthusiasm for all that cold-weather pick-and-shovel work very well. The most he ever heard any of them say in its favor was a remark from one tired Atlantean to his comrade as they both piled up an earthen rampart: "Maybe all this slaving means we ain't so likely to get shot."

"Maybe." The man's friend seemed unimpressed. "But it's near as bad as if we were, eh?"

"Well…" The first soldier weighed that. Then he nodded. "Afraid so," he agreed mournfully.

But neither of them stopped working. Victor didn't mind grumbling. William the Conqueror's soldiers must have grumbled, and Augustus Caesar's, and King David's as well. As long as they did what wanted doing, they could grumble all they pleased.

Grumbling only turned dangerous when it started swallowing work.

English scouts rode down to see what Victor's men were up to. Atlantean riflemen fired at the scouts to make them keep their distance. Every so often, a rifleman would knock a scout out of the saddle. Then the others would stay farther away for a while.

Sometimes patriotic Atlanteans would sneak down from the north to tell Victor what Cornwallis' men were up to. Sometimes Victor wasn't so sure whether the Atlanteans who sneaked down from the north were patriotic or not. But he had soldiers from all over the northern settlements. States, he reminded himself. They're states now. We're states now. More often than not, he could find somebody who knew his would-be informants, either by name or by reputation.

He didn't seize the men he reckoned untrustworthy. No: he thanked them for what they told him, and then threw it on the mental rubbish heap. He sent them back to the north with as much misinformation as he could feed them. Maybe Cornwallis would realize Victor realized he was being fooled, or maybe not. The chance to confuse King George's commander seemed worth taking

As spring approached, Victor wondered whether the enemy would let him hold Hanover undisturbed till summer. He wouldn't have done that himself, but Howe and Cornwallis had already tried several things he wouldn't have done himself. Some of them had worked, too, worse luck.

But then three reliable men in quick succession came down to warn him the redcoats were moving at last. He put men into his north-facing works. He also sent horsemen out beyond those works to shadow the English army.

Cornwallis, naturally, had his own spies. Just as patriots hurried south to warn the Atlantean army, so loyalists galloped north to tell the English what Victor Radcliff was up to. They must have given him a good report of Victor's field fortifications. Instead of trying to bull through them, Cornwallis slid around them to the west.

"He wants to fight it out in the open," Victor told a council of war. "He thinks his regulars will smash our Atlantean fanners."

The officers almost exploded with fury. He'd never heard so many variations on "We'll show him!" in his life. He got a stronger reaction than he really wanted, for he retained a solid respect for the men who filled the ranks of the English army. They were miserably paid, they were trained and handled harshly enough to make a hound turn and snap, but they were deadly dangerous with musket and bayonet to hand.

If he marched out of Hanover and lost a battle in the open field, he wasn't sure he could fall back into the city and hold on to it. And he wanted to keep Hanover-no, he had to. An Atlantean presence on the east coast was visible proof the United States of Atlantis were a going concern. Not only that: the harbor gave France a perfect place to land troops-if France ever got around to sending them.

And so Victor temporized: "First, let's see how mad we can drive him. Most of you remember how bad the mosquitoes were down in the south." He waited till the other officers nodded. Anyone who'd forgotten what the mosquitoes were like had to have an iron hide. Victor said, "I aim to make us into mosquitoes, the way we were when the war began."

"Sounds pretty, General," a captain said. "What's it mean?"

What would Cornwallis have done after a question like that? Had the luckless questioner flogged? Cornwallis was a good-natured man, as Victor had cause to know, but…Most likely, the question would never be asked in an English council. Unlike rude colonials, English junior officers knew their place.

Being a rude colonial himself, Victor didn't drag the captain off to the whipping post. "I want to put riflemen or musketeers behind every tree and bush along the enemy's line of march. I want to capture every man of his who goes off into the bushes to answer nature's call. I want to shoot the animals hauling his cannon and supplies. Let's see how much he enjoys an enemy with whom he cannot close. Does that satisfy you, sir?"

"Reckon so," the captain answered. "But if that's how you aim to fight, seems a shame we wasted all that time on close-order drill."

"Wasted!" Baron von Steuben roared-actually, "Vasted!"

" 'Bout the size of it," the captain said-he didn't seem to care whom he antagonized. "Form square! and By the right flank march! and Deploy from column to line! and I don't know what all else. This here coming up sounds like a lot more fun."

Before the German officer could murder the man, Victor said, "We need both styles. And our men are better soldiers because they can fight like regulars as well as guerrilleros. Close-order drill improves discipline generally. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

"Hayfoot! Strawfoot!" the captain said reminiscently. He spread his hands. "All right, General. You've got me there."

"Good." Victor smiled. "Now let's go get the damned redcoats."

The portly English sergeant was almost beside himself with rage when three grinning Atlanteans marched him into Victor Radcliff's presence. "Hello, Sergeant," Victor said. "What seems to be your trouble? Are you not relieved to be captured rather than killed?"