Sinapis gave him a crooked smile. "And do you also look for your chicken to climb up onto your plate already fried, your Excellency?"

"Well… no," the Consul admitted.

"Then do not expect the enemy to do what is convenient for you," Sinapis said.

Reluctantly, Stafford nodded. "All right. I can see the sense in that. How do we go about forcing the damned insurrectionists to fight on our terms, then?"

"That is a better question." Balthasar Sinapis plucked at his shaggy mustache. "In Europe, I would say the way to do this is to attack some place the enemy feels obliged to defend."

"In Europe? Why not here?" Stafford said.

"Because I see no place in these parts that the enemy would feel he had to hold," the colonel replied. "Where is the capital of the so-called Free Republic of Atlantis? Wherever Frederick Radcliff happens to be, unless my guess is wrong. Where are the rebels' manufactories? As far as I know, they have none. This being so, what position must they hold to the death?"

He waited. By all the signs, he really wanted an answer. Stafford opened his mouth, then closed it again when he realized he had no good one to give.

"You see the difficulty," Sinapis said. Even more reluctantly, Stafford nodded again. The Atlantean officer continued. "Do you intend that we should kill every Negro and copperskin within the area the rebels claim?"

"If that is what it takes to put down the insurrection, yes!" Stafford said.

"Those who own these persons under current Atlantean law would not thank you for destroying their property," Sinapis warned. "And what better reason to give the rebels still in the field to keep fighting instead of yielding?"

He might be nothing but a damned foreigner, but he was a shrewd damned foreigner. Slaveholders didn't want their human property destroyed; they wanted it restored to them. As far as Stafford was concerned, they hadn't thought things through. "How far will they be able to rely on slaves experienced in rebellion?" he asked. "Would you trust such a man to shave your face, Colonel?"

"Me? Not a bit of it," Sinapis answered. "But if a man can get no use from this form of property, what point to having it?"

It wasn't so simple. House slaves had to be trusted. They gave personal service and cooked; if you couldn't be sure they wouldn't turn on you, you couldn't keep them around. Field hands were different. All you needed from them was work, and even before the uprising overseers had had to watch their backs. Plantations could stay profitable after the insurrection. But even if they did, white planters' lives on them would have to change. Colonel Sinapis saw that clearly. So did Stafford.

"We shall burn that bridge when we come to it," the Consul said after what he hoped wasn't too awkward a pause. "First we have to win this war one way or another. If we lose it, nothing else matters any more. Or do you disagree?"

"No, your Excellency," Sinapis answered. "As you say, winning comes first. Maybe not even winning, though, will solve all our troubles here. What do we do in that case?"

"Worry about it after we win," Stafford said at once. "If we don't win, we'll have a pile of other things to worry about. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

"About that? No," Sinapis said.

He does think I'm wrong about other things, Stafford realized angrily. About what? About slavery? Well, the Devil take him if he does.

By the map, the Gunston plantation lay only a couple of days' march to the west. Leland Newton had studied maps till he was sick of them. What difference did they make if the enemy wouldn't stand and fight? He didn't like thinking of the insurrectionists as enemies, but he couldn't think of people who'd shot at him as friends.

This stretch of countryside had belonged to the rebels till the Atlantean army marched in to reclaim it. Signs of that were everywhere. Big houses stood empty. Doors gaping open and smashed windows said they'd been plundered. Every so often, the army would march past one that had burnt to the ground.

Fields went untended. Ripening maize and wheat stood forgotten. So did acres and acres of cotton and pipeweed. No livestock was in sight. Even if surviving white plantation owners reclaimed this land, they would have lost a fortune. Consul Stafford couldn't open his mouth without going on about that.

Consul Newton didn't need long to get sick of listening to his colleague. "You didn't care while whites were taking everything away from blacks and copperskins," he pointed out. "Why do you bellow so loud when the shoe is on the other foot?"

"Because I am a white man, damn it," Stafford snapped. "And so are you, if you take the time to remember it. The United States of Atlantis are a white man's country, in case you hadn't noticed."

"I thought we were a free man's country," Newton said mildly.

"Same thing," Stafford insisted.

"Come to Croydon and you'll see how wrong you are," Newton said.

"If I came to Croydon, I would see all kinds of things I don't care to see: free niggers and mudfaces, screeching bluestockings, trade unionists, free lovers, and every other sort of crackpot under the sun," Stafford said. "Since I already know as much, I have the sense to stay away."

Before Newton could come up with the retort that would leave the other Consul gasping for air, a brisk racket of gunfire broke out ahead. "I wonder what that's in aid of," he said.

"It's a demonstration of patriotism," Stafford said. "What else would it be?"

"I'm sure the people shooting at our men would agree with you," Newton said. "I own myself surprised, though, that you of all people would say such a thing." Sometimes the worst thing you could do to sarcasm was take it literally.

This skirmish seemed sharper than the Atlantean army was used to fighting. Maybe the insurrectionists held no vital strong-points. Maybe they could melt off into the woods whenever they chose. But they could also fight whenever they chose, and they seemed to have chosen to fight here.

Newton rode forward to get a better look at what was going on. That made him a target: something he didn't realize till he came close to the fighting. When he did belatedly figure it out, he wasn't sorry to dismount and hand the horse's reins to an ordinary soldier. He continued on foot.

As they usually did, the rebels fought from the edge of a stretch of forest. If things went wrong, they could melt away in a hurry. Not only that, but they'd dug themselves holes and trenches from which to shoot. They made much smaller targets than they would have had they stood up and volleyed the way the Atlantean regulars did.

A grizzled sergeant near Newton knew exactly what he thought of that. "Yellow dogs!" he growled, the stub of a stogie shifting in his mouth as he spoke. "Well, we can shift 'em even if they want to play silly games."

Soldiers went forward in neat lines. Every so often, one would fall. Sometimes he would get up and stagger toward the rear on his own. Sometimes medical orderlies would carry him to the rear. Sometimes, ominously, he would lie where he fell, not to rise again till Judgment Day.

Those neat lines did not wash over the dug-in rebels. They couldn't get close, not in the face of that galling musketry. Some men fell back. Others lay down themselves and returned fire. Then a flanking column went in off to one side of the insurrectionists' line.

That shifted them where the frontal attack couldn't. The Negroes and copperskins saw they were about to get enfiladed. They didn't wait around to let it happen, but slid away into the woods. And they kept on sniping at the men who came up to look at their trenches and the handful of bodies in them.

"Well, we licked 'em," an Atlantean soldier said. It was true, Newton thought-but only if you didn't count the cost.