"Relieved, sir?" The word only infuriated the sergeant more. "I was taken with my trousers down! Is that any way to fight a war?"

"Evidently," Victor answered.

The Atlanteans went from grinning to laughing out loud. "You should've seen him jump when old Isaiah here went and yelled, 'Hands up or we'll blow your arsehole off!' " one of them said.

Another-Isaiah, by the way he made as if to bow-added, "He didn't just jump, neither. He went and shat them fancy breeches. Had to try and clean 'em off with some leaves he tore off a bush."

"General!" the English sergeant cried piteously. For how many years had he made his living tormenting the redcoats luckless enough to serve under him? And a good living it had been, too, judging by that bulging belly. But now others were giving it to him, and he was finding he didn't like it so well.

"If you sniff, General, you can still smell him," Isaiah said. "He let go, all right-damned if he didn't."

"That will be enough of that," Victor said. "Had his men taken you, you wouldn't want them gloating afterwards."

"God bless you, sir," the sergeant said, knuckling his forelock. "You're a gentleman, sir, you are, a merciful gentleman."

"Huh." The third Atlantean spoke up. "A great tun like him don't deserve nobody's mercy. He's the kind who loots and murders and takes the women upstairs whether they want to go or not."

Victor thought the soldier had made a shrewd guess. The sergeant turned the color of paste, which said a lot about how shrewd it was. "I don't know anything about any of that," he said, but he didn't sound persuasive.

"Maybe so. Then again, maybe not," Victor said. The Englishman went paler yet; Victor hadn't thought he could. But if he was sweating like that, why not sweat something out of him? "I'm sure the sergeant does know where General Cornwallis is going and what he intends doing once he gets there."

Not only did the sergeant know, he was pathetically eager to tell. He sang like a nightingale. Victor had heard the birds in England; while European creatures like the wild hog and the rat flourished in Atlantis, all efforts to naturalize the nightingale had failed.

After the Englishman spewed out everything he knew, the Atlantean troopers took him away. "He runs on at both ends, seems like," Isaiah remarked.

By then, more confident he wouldn't be murdered out of hand, the sergeant had regained some of his spirit. "If you were my man, I'd cane you for speaking of me so," he said gruffly.

Isaiah gave him a look as cold as the blocks of ice that sometimes drifted down near North Cape in winter. "Any man lays a finger on me without my leave-a finger, mind you, let alone a cane-I'll gutshoot him. And you, your God-damned Sergeant-ship, sir, you've got a devil of a lot of gut to shoot."

Victor smiled as the sergeant, suddenly silenced again, trudged away with his captors. Anyone who thought he could use an Atlantean as he used an Englishman was liable to get a rude surprise. This underofficer had got a whole string of them.

And yet, quite a few Englishmen found they liked Atlantean ways once they got used to them. Maybe the sergeant would be one of those. He'd make a good drillmaster… as long as he left his cane behind.

Redwood Hill must have held the name for a long time. No redwoods grew on it now, or for miles around. It was crowned by a rank tangle of second growth. Ferns and bushes and saplings, some Atlantis' native productions and others imported from Europe or Terranova, warred for space and sunlight.

Redwood Hill was also crowned by an English observation post. An alert man with a spyglass up there could see for a long way. He could easily keep an army under observation.

He might have much more trouble spotting greencoats armed with rifles as one by one they slipped through the second growth toward him. Victor hoped that would be so, and set about finding out empirically. Rifles banged, up near the hilltop. Before long, the greencoats sent a messenger down to Victor to report that Redwood Hill now lay in Atlantean hands. "We've even got the bugger's spyglass," the man reported.

"Capital!" Victor said. The art of grinding lenses was further advanced in England than in Atlantis. "Now we shall spy upon Cornwallis, not conversely."

Cornwallis must have foreseen that possibility, too. It pleased him less than it did Victor Radcliff. He promptly despatched a good-sized force of English regulars to dislodge the Atlanteans from the hilltop. He also sent a small troop of loyalist riflemen to match wits and weapons with the sharpshooters in green.

When the Atlanteans found themselves hard-pressed to hold the crest of Redwood Hill, Victor sent more men forward. They drove the redcoats down the western slope of the hill… until Cornwallis fed more Englishmen into the fight.

That meant Victor had to reinforce again or yield the crest. After he'd already done so much fighting for it, he wasn't willing to let that happen. And, plainly, the English commander wasn't willing to let him keep it.

"I did not purpose fighting our battle here," he told Blaise. "Nor do I believe Cornwallis purposed any such thing. But this fight has taken on a life of its own."

"It is war. It has its own purposes." The Negro spoke as if war were a live thing, and one at least as much in control of its own destiny as either of the opposing generals. Well, maybe he wasn't so far wrong. He finished, "If it wants a fight at Redwood Hill, a fight at Redwood Hill there shall be."

Victor couldn't contradict him. A fight at Redwood Hill there was: a most cursed irregular fight, mostly because of the terrain. The Atlanteans were used to fighting from cover whenever they got the chance. They'd harried the redcoats' looping march down from the north in just that way.

On overgrown Redwood Hill, not even the English regulars or their officers could dream of advancing in neatly dressed ranks. They made their way forward as best they could. Some came up the narrow paths that led to the top of the hill. They could move quickly, but they also exposed themselves to a galling fire from the Atlanteans lurking in the undergrowth. Others pushed through the bushes, fighting Atlantean-style themselves. That might not have been what they were used to, but they managed. Or maybe they just had a strong disinclination to retreat. It amounted to the same thing either way: a harder fight than Victor would have looked for.

He also would have guessed that the Englishmen's red uniform jackets made them better targets. But when he inquired of a man who came back from the crest with a minor wound, the Atlantean shook his head. "Don't hardly seem to matter. What with the ferns and the shrubs and suchlike, and what with the powder smoke, them bastards spy us about as quick as we set eyes on them." He held up his right hand, which was missing the last joint of the fourth finger. "I never did see the English son of a bitch who done gave me this."

"Go get it bandaged up," Victor said, and then, to one of his artillerists, "Can we get our guns up to the top of the hill?"

"Well, General, we can try," that worthy answered. "I'm not so sure how much good it'll do, though. Doesn't seem like anybody's all drawn up in rows for us to shoot at, does it?"

"No," Victor answered. "But send a fieldpiece up there anyhow, if you'd be so kind. Try to command the biggest path coming up from the west. If Cornwallis does seek to rush our position, that's how he'll essay it."

The artillerist sketched a salute. "If that's what you want. General, that's what you'll get. Warm work, it's liable to be, but what can you do?" He gave his own orders to his crew. They limbered up their four-pounder and started for the crest.

Victor hoped he hadn't sent them off to be killed. When a soldier talked about warm work, he commonly meant he didn't think he'd come back from it. But even one gun at the top of Redwood Hill might mean the difference between victory and defeat. Sometimes a general had to move the pieces across the board knowing they might be taken.