"What comes afterwards is politics." As Sinapis was in the habit of doing, he spoke the word as if it tasted bad. "That is your province. I have nothing to say about it. While the fight goes on… there, I am obliged to tell you what I think."

"Yes, yes." Jeremiah Stafford made himself nod. Sinapis could croak as much as he pleased. If he wanted to think he was obliged to imitate a chorus of frogs, he could do that, too. But, if he thought Stafford was obliged to listen to him, he needed to think again. Stafford did some more talking of his own: "Keep on pressing them, I tell you. It is our best hope of victory."

"You are one of the men in a position to give me orders." By the way Sinapis said that, he didn't care for it, either. Even his salute, though technically perfect, felt somehow reproachful. "Of course I shall obey them… and then, your Excellency, we will see what comes of that."

Frederick Radcliff didn't like falling back before the white soldiers. During his life, though, he'd had to do any number of things he didn't like. He couldn't imagine a slave who hadn't. And so he retreated, and retreated again. The Atlantean regulars and the militiamen who reminded him of hyenas skulking along next to lions came after his men.

Lorenzo fancied retreating no more than he did. "We've got to pin their ears back," the copperskin said.

"That would be good," Frederick agreed. "But how do we make sure they don't pin ours back instead?"

"Ambush 'em," Lorenzo answered at once. "Only way to teach 'em respect. Only way to make 'em keep their distance, too. Bastards have been eating pepper-they're right on our heels."

"If we can, I want to give them a jolt," Frederick said. "My only worry is that they'll slide around our flank the way they did before."

"We need to find a place where the ground won't let 'em," Lorenzo said. "Plenty of people carrying guns on our side who'll know about places like that."

"If there are any places like that," Frederick said.

"Bound to be some," the copperskin insisted. "Let me ask around-I'll see what I can come up with."

Frederick didn't tell him no. He didn't want the Atlantean army hounding his rebels, either. And, before long, Lorenzo found a mulatto (or maybe he was a quadroon-he was nearer yellow than brown) who said he knew about a place where the main road ran through a valley wooded on both sides. "They go in there, a bunch of 'em don't come out the other side," the man said.

"That sounds good," Frederick replied. "Next question is, can we get there without hanging out a sign telling the white folks why we're heading that way?"

Lorenzo sent him an admiring glance. "That's the kind of thing you wouldn't've worried about when we started. Neither would I, chances are."

"Long as you live, you better learn somethin' from it," Frederick said. "Only wasting your time if you don't."

"Got that right," Lorenzo said. He put his head together with the light-skinned Negro. When the two men separated, Lorenzo was smiling. The white men leading the Atlantean army would not have rejoiced to see that smile. To top it off, Lorenzo nodded. "I think we can do it without making the buckra suspicious."

That made Frederick smile in turn. Every slave used the word buckra from time to time to refer to white men. Every Negro slave Frederick had known insisted it came from an African language. No copperskin he'd ever heard of claimed it sprang from Terranova, but that didn't stop copperskins from coming out with it.

And Lorenzo and the high-yellow local slave turned out to know what they were talking about. The valley-Happy Valley, the local man called it-was the perfect place for an ambush. Frederick's fighters retreated toward the northeast and passed through the valley. They seemed to, at any rate. A lot of them melted away to either side instead. After the white Atlanteans charged forward, the insurrectionists would make them pay.

Only one thing went wrong: the Atlantean soldiers didn't charge forward. They paused at the southern end of Happy Valley and sent patrols forward to see what was going on in there.

At Frederick's orders, and Lorenzo's, no one fired at the white scouts except what appeared to be the retreating rebel army's rear guard. The idea was to make the white soldiers and militiamen believe the insurrectionists hadn't posted men in the woods to ravage them when they stormed after the withdrawing Negroes and copperskins.

It was a good idea. Frederick remained convinced of that even afterwards. So did Lorenzo-but then, of course, he would have, because it was his. The one trouble was, it didn't work.

The white scouts seemed to know something smelled like rotting crayfish right away. Instead of pressing on after the tail of the withdrawing rebel army (a tail now much stronger than the body of which it had been a part), the white men studied the trees and ferns to either side of the dirt road. They scratched their heads and rubbed their chins and generally acted like men who didn't like what they were seeing.

Come on in! The water's fine! Frederick thought at them, as loudly as he could. By the intent expression on Lorenzo's face, the copperskin was also doing his best to will the white men forward. Which only went to show that willing someone forward was a hell of a lot easier to talk about than to do.

Little by little, the Atlantean army advanced till it was close to the edge of the woods. The field artillery unlimbered and sprayed as much of the forest as the guns could reach with cannon balls and canister. Frederick hoped his fighters had had the sense to scoot back when they saw the cannon taking aim at them. If they hadn't, it would be too late for some of them.

"How many of those white bastards can you see?" Lorenzo asked. "Are they screening us so they can go around to our right or our left before we cipher out what they're up to?"

Frederick wanted to say no. He couldn't, not when the Atlantean army had repeatedly done that before. He peered through a purloined spyglass, then passed it to Lorenzo. "Doesn't seem like they are," he said. "Or does it look different to you?"

After a long stare of his own, Lorenzo said, "I don't think they are. Harder to be sure, though, now that they've got all those God-damned militiamen alongside the regulars. I hate those sons of bitches."

"Well, Jesus Christ! Who in his right mind doesn't?" Frederick said. "The soldiers are just… soldiers. They've got a job to do, and they do it. But most of the militiamen are the shitheels who bought and sold us. They want to keep on doing it, too."

"And killing us. And fucking us," Lorenzo added.

"Yes. And those," Frederick said heavily. "Are we going to let that keep on happening?"

"Maybe they can still kill me. We've already killed a lot of them, but nowhere near enough. The rest…" Lorenzo shook his head. A lock of his straight black hair flopped down over his eyes. He brushed it back with the palm of his hand. "No one's gonna own me any more, not ever again."

He was bound to be right about that. If he and Frederick were unlucky enough to be captured, they wouldn't be returned to slavery, as some of the men and women who followed them might. No, they would die whatever lingering, instructive death the ingenuity of the whites who'd taken them might devise.

Frederick had always known such things were possible, even likely. That was why he always kept a last bullet for himself in his eight-shooter. What slave didn't have such knowledge? Fear of consequences, fear of failing, kept insurrections rare-but made them all the more desperate when they did break out. Right now, Frederick didn't care to dwell on all the things that might happen to him and his followers if they failed. He aimed to keep from failing if he possibly could.

Because he did, he went back to dwelling on what the white Atlantean soldiers and militiamen were up to. "We've taught 'em respect," he said slowly. "They've learned they'd better not just rush up like a herd of cows. We carve 'em into steaks when they try."