Empire of Unreason (42 page)

5.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Lines of Supply

“General Oglethorpe?”

Oglethorpe opened his weary eyes a crack. The voice with the thick
upcountry accent belonged to Lieutenant Smalls.

“Yes?”

“I’ve finally gotten word from Governor Nairne on the
aetherschreiber. He congratulates you on four successful
engagements.”

Privately, Oglethorpe wasn’t sure he ought to be congratulated.

They had scarcely slowed the redcoats, and their own casualties
were mounting. Oh, the Colonials took two or three of the enemy
for every one they lost—and had brought down one flying ship that
came too close—but the redcoats were getting wilier. Slowly but
surely, the Continental Army was being forced back toward Fort
Moore. In two days, they would be there, and what then?

Maybe Nairne knew. Oglethorpe took the communique from
Smalls.

As he expected, they weren’t going to try to defend the fort. Nairne
was marching what remained of their forces south into the
margravate, as he had promised. That was a relief, anyway—he
didn’t like leaving his own people defenseless.

The rest of the letter was harder medicine. He rubbed the grit from
his eyes and stood. His feet were sore in their boots, his back hurt,
his face was burned red by the fierce heat. Like Tomochichi, he was
getting old.

The climate, as unpleasant as it was, was their friend. The
Pretender’s forces, many of them Scots, were unused to the
blistering weather, whereas the rangers, Indians, and Maroons had
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been living with it for most of their lives. Each time they engaged
the enemy, fewer and fewer wore their coats, or even shirts, and at
least a few had dropped from heatstroke.

Still, the redcoats came on, and on, and he suspected that they
weren’t the only army in the field.

“Go find Parmenter, Unoka, and Tomochichi,” he told the aide.

“We have matters to discuss.”

Oglethorpe poked a stick into the embers of the campfire, wasting a
second or two to marvel. Who could imagine that a piece of wood
had so much flame locked inside it, such heat? One would never
think it, gripping a hickory branch, and yet there it was, unlocked
by the simplest alchemy. Why should the occult forces lurking in
iron, in the very air, surprise him?

There must have been a first time when a man saw fire. Adam,
almost certainly, after being cast out of Eden. Had he thought that
first flame as strange, as impossible as Oglethorpe considered
aetherschreibers,
kraftpistoles,
and airships?

Probably. But fire, however magical, was not his problem just now.

“The problem—our very chiefest problem—is their airships,” he
told the other leaders.

“Nah,” Parmenter said. “That devil gun does a good job of bringin‘

’em down when they try and come close.”

“I don‘’t’ink he mean as weapons,” Unoka said.

“I don’t. It’s that they don’t need a supply train. Think—if they were
hauling their food and drink in wagons, what an easy time we
would have. We could fell trees it would take them days to clear, dig
trenches in their path—that sort of thing. As it is, they can travel
almost as fast as we can.” He poked angrily at the fire again.

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“So we have to bring down the ships,” Parmenter said. “All that
need’s doin‘ is for a few of us to get close enough to use the devil
gun on ’em.”

“Exactly right. High marks for Mr. Parmenter.” Oglethorpe didn’t
try to keep the acid from his tone.

Parmenter blushed angrily but did not reply.

“What I need
now
,” Oglethorpe went on, “is some plan to get us
that close.”

“We do it,” Unoka said without looking up.

“Sir?”

“I said, we do it. Or are you goin‘ deaf?”

“You’ll watch your tone, Mr. Unoka. And, no, I heard you—but ‘we
do it’ is not a strategy I remember having studied. I’ll need more
than that from you.”

Unoka rolled his eyes. “We hides in’t‘e woods. T’e army, she come
past, an we wait—t’en up we creep, little mice, and’t’e ship,
down’t‘ey come.”

“Are you suggesting I lend you our only depneumifier, our only
defense against these flying craft?”

“No, we bring’t‘e ships down wit’ sling rocks,” Unoka said
sarcastically. “O‘
course
we need’t’e debil gun. Y‘ said it y’self.”

“Sir,” Parmenter interjected, “I can take ten rangers—”

“No,” Oglethorpe said. “Mr. Unoka is right. This is Maroon work. I
need the disciplined fighting troops up here.”
Though it sits ill,

sending the gun with them. What if they should run off with it?

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He quashed the thought. No matter who dropped back, odds were
they would all be killed before coming near enough to the airships
to do any good. Better to lose the Maroons than troops he could
make other use of.

Still, to send them out, unchaperoned, with the depneumifier…

“It’s a brave offer,” Oglethorpe said, “and an honorable one—but
maybe each company should send a few men, to keep things fair.”

“You don‘ trust me wit’ your debil gun?” Unoka asked slyly,
showing his white teeth.

“It’s not that,” Oglethorpe lied.

“T’en we go. Tonight, eben.”

Oglethorpe shrugged. “Very well, Mr. Unoka. Make your plans.”

Unoka was as good as his word. By morning, he and his Maroons
were gone. James stepped up the level of sniping, to keep the
redcoats worried about what was in front of them and give them
less chance to wonder what might be behind. He did this simply by
putting a bounty on Jacobite scalps, to be paid when possible. He
had made good on such promises before, and the Indians
remembered.

And they pressed on, back toward Fort Moore, with all speed.

“Seems a nuisance, just riding back the way we came,” Philamon
Parmenter commented.

“That was always the plan, one way or the other,” Oglethorpe told
him. “We meant to use the frontier forts as places of refuge. We
never dreamed they would mount such a large expedition so fast.”

“We ain’t goin‘ to hold Fort Moore?”

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“No. We’ll resupply and then burn her to the ground.”

“Nairne has already cleared out?”

“He left a small force to guard it against Cowetas or come who
might, but yes. Another Jacobite army has been sighted
approaching the margravate.”

“Oh.” The ranger was silent for a few moments. “Don’t you itch to
go down there? That’s your country.”

Oglethorpe set his jaw. “I’ve been encouraged to think of all the
colonies as my country. I’ll see my way to do so. Once we’ve
finished off this army, then we’ll go fight alongside Nairne, if
needed.” He sighed. “I’ll admit I don’t like retreating, but the extra
raids the Yamacraw and Kiawah are making will cover that for a
time. The trick is for the redcoats to think we’re just over the next
hill, so they’ll come cautiously.”

“An‘ when they do ken we’ve hightailed it?”

“Then they will think they have us on the run.”

“Don’t they?”

Oglethorpe rubbed the hilt of his saber. “Not as they think. There is
a method to it—at least I like to hope so.”

Parmenter grinned. “We’ll send a few more Jacobites to hell then,
sir?”

Oglethorpe frowned. “To my mind, Mr. Parmenter, the Jacobite
cause was a just one. I kept that to myself for many years, but now,
with the Hanover line well dead, I don’t think it much matters
anymore. I will say I dislike naming our foe in that manner—it does
not describe them. Howsoever many of those redcoats think
themselves fighting for the Stuarts, in fact they do not. They fight
for the tsar, and next for the devil himself so far as my poor, simple
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mind can tell. True Jacobites ought to be our brothers in arms, and
it’s a great pity that they aren’t. We’re killing good men bent to an
evil cause.”

“Yes, sir. I meant no offense, sir. I never thought much of King
George, myself. They say he never even learned English.”

“Not much, and not well, and he kept his mistresses German, too.

Even the whores of Britannia were too low for him, I think.” He
shook his head. “That’s past, Mr. Parmenter, all dead history. We
have to fight for what we have now, for this place we have made our
home.”

“Well said, sir.”

Two days later they reached Fort Moore. As expected, Nairne and
his troops were gone, leaving ten men to defend her. Once they
arrived, James set his troops to packing up what supplies they
could carry and destroying the rest. Reluctantly, he ordered the few
remaining cannon spiked and the spring filled in. There had been
no word from Unoka and his Maroons. He reported to Nairne via
aetherschreiber and got a terse,

“marching” reply that stressed the weakness of Nairne’s position
on the overland journey—after all, the majority of the women,
infantry, and artillery were with him, and they must travel slowly
over poor trails.

Oglethorpe understood the unstated part of the message: his task
had changed. Where before he had been the vanguard, carrying the
fight to the enemy, stinging it like a hornet and retreating to sting
another day, now he was rearguard for the rest of the Colonial
forces.

He called his officers together in the war room to explain their new
situation.

“What it means, gentlemen,” he said, by way of summing up, “is we
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either stop them cold here, every mother’s son of them, or we lead
them astray.”

“We might hold them here,” a young fellow named Barton
ventured. “Not for long, maybe—”

“Not for long at all, I think. A few days, and then we die and the
southern colonies lose a third of their army. They want the North,
or they wouldn’t have sent an army to Fort Moore. Well, we’re the
only force in the North. Without us, they have it. With us still on the
loose, they have to deal with us before consolidating and turning
south.”

“You think we should go farther north, sir? Toward our Cherokee
allies?”

“Allies, mine arse!” Parmenter snapped. “If they’re our allies, I say
where are they?”

“That’s a good question,” Oglethorpe said. “I don’t know the
answer. Mr. Priber seemed to think they had troubles of their own,
and maybe they do. But that isn’t where I thought to go anyway. I
thought to go west.”

“West? Into Coweta territory? Have you heard from Franklin or
McPherson? Do we have alliance with them?”

“I have not, and so assume we do not.”

“General, that’ll catch us between two rocks, if you get my meanin‘.”

“Consider: we are resupplied. Assuming Unoka and his men were
successful—”

“If you pardon me, sir, that’s a hell of an assumption. The Maroons
are by nature thieves and cowards. They’re probably halfway to
Jamaica with that devil gun by now—if not to Charles Town, selling
it to the foe.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“That’ll be enough of that,” Oglethorpe snapped, “quite enough.”

Never mind that he had the same fears himself—he could not allow
talk along those lines. They needed the hope that the ships would
come down, even if it was a false one. “Now, as I was saying,
assuming the Maroons succeed in their task, the redcoat army will
be without supplies. If we march through Coweta territory, where
do you suppose they will get those supplies?”

They all looked puzzled for a moment, all but Tomochichi. He
nodded and said something to one of his braves in their own
tongue.

Parmenter got it next. “From the Cowetas. But that’s a dangerous
trick, General. Suppose the Indians blame us?”

“Who will they blame, Chief?” James asked Tomochichi.

The old man didn’t think about it for more than a second. “The
redcoats,” he replied.

“Exactly. Indians will fight for revenge, glory, and gifts— in that
order. The redcoats loot their farmsteads, the redcoats will pay. It
might not be much help, but it might sway the Coweta to our cause.”

“Or it might wreck the negotiations Franklin was to work at.”

“Those have done well or failed by now,” Oglethorpe said.

“The Coweta are fickle. Us goin‘ onto their land might anger ’em.”

“A chance we’ll take.”

“There’s another thing, sir,” Lieutenant Smalls said. “If we get
pushed way out there in the west, aren’t we goin‘ to get cut off from
the margravate and the rest of the army? How are we goin’ to get
back?”