Liberating atlantis a 3, p.7
Liberating Atlantis a-3, page 7
part #3 of Atlantis Series
Frederick answered the question as if replying to an idiot: "On account of the snake's still there."
"Huh," the trooper said scornfully. He looked around in alarm. "Why are you people crowdin' around us like this? Watch yourself, Stu! Somethin' funny's goin' on."
Things happened very quickly after that. Lorenzo knifed Stu as neatly as Frederick had killed the sentry by the wagons of guns. Frederick stabbed the other trooper less than a heartbeat later. But the man screamed like a hurt shoat and went for his revolver. One of the slaves tried to stop him, but he shook off the Negro. The pistol cleared the holster. Another slave grabbed his arm and dragged it down, so he fired a shot into the dirt at his feet.
The noise was horribly loud. And, if one shot had already rung out, two wouldn't make any difference. Frederick held the muzzle of his own pistol against the side of the struggling trooper's head and pulled the trigger.
He'd seen bullet wounds on animals. Henry Barford was proud of his skill as a hunter-and well he might have been, because he helped feed the plantation with it. But Frederick had never seen anything like this. If he was very lucky, he never would again, either. The trooper's head might have been a rotten melon dropped off a roof. It blew apart. Brains and blood and bits of bone splat tered Frederick and all the other slaves close by. The Atlantean cavalryman had fought despite a nasty knife wound, but now he dropped like a felled redwood.
Lorenzo already had the other man's pistol. Another copperskin had got his knife. Now a Negro took this trooper's eight-shooter. And Helen pulled the knife off his belt. Frederick smiled at that. It was good that his wife should have a proper weapon. They'd all have them as soon as they unloaded the wagons, but why shouldn't Helen take the lead?
The gunshots brought house slaves running out to see what was going on. To Frederick's heartfelt relief, they didn't bring out any more Atlantean cavalrymen. The rest of the troopers must have been either dead or too sick to care. The house slaves… Their eyes went wide with shock. Looking down at himself, Frederick saw why. The cavalryman's blood and brains splashed his shirt and trousers. He looked as if he'd just come from a hard day's work at a slaughterhouse.
"What… What happened?" a housemaid quavered, as if she couldn't see for herself.
In case she really couldn't, Frederick answered, "We're free now. We're really free now, and we're gonna stay that way."
"The hell you say!" That furious roar came from Henry Barford. His wife might be dying of yellow fever. For all Frederick knew, Mistress Clotilde might be as dead as Lieutenant Torrance. But the idea of a slave uprising brought the master out onto the back porch, a shotgun cradled in his arms, his over-and-under pistol stuck in his belt. "And hell is where I'll blast the lot of you, too!"
He started to raise the shotgun to his shoulder. Housemaids scattered, squealing. Frederick aimed his pistol, too. He knew he would have to be lucky to hit Master Henry at this range, while the master, with that shotgun, wouldn't have to be lucky at all to hit him.
Thunk! Speaking of slaughterhouses, that noise came straight out of one. Davey stood behind the master. The chief cook had buried a cleaver in the back of Henry Barford's head. Barford stood there a long moment, looking absurdly surprised. The shotgun slipped out of his hands. Then his knees buckled and he fell over. His feet drummed on the planking. That wouldn't last long. No one could hope to live with such a terrible wound.
Slowly, Frederick lowered his eight-shooter. "Obliged," he said, wishing his voice weren't so shaky.
Davey sketched a salute. "Any time." He stooped and picked up the shotgun. "Now I got me a piece, too. I know some folks who could use two barrels' worth of double-aught buck, I expect."
"Take Master Henry's pistol if you want, but don't worry about the shotgun," Frederick said. Davey frowned, not following. Frederick pointed to the wagons. "Those're full of guns that'll hit from four or five times as far away as any shotgun ever born, remember? Fancy government muskets, bound for New Marseille."
"That's right." The cook's heavy-featured face cleared. "Reckon we'll need 'em, too."
"Reckon we will," Frederick agreed. "But for now, this here plantation is ours."
What did generals call it when victory had been won but the fighting wasn't quite over? Mopping up-that was what they said. The slaves still had to mop up. Knocking the cavalrymen down with yellow fever over the head was quick and easy. A couple of them were near death anyway. Frederick told himself his people were doing the whites a favor by ending their suffering. He didn't have much trouble making himself believe it.
Clotilde Barford also still clung to life in the upstairs bedroom. Three housemaids got into a catfight about who would have the privilege of holding a pillow over her face till she quit breathing for good. It was a real brawl-their nails drew blood.
"Lord Jesus!" Frederick exclaimed after some of the men separated them-and got clawed in the process. "Let's settle this fair and square."
"How you gonna manage that?" one of the women asked, dabbing at her bleeding cheek with her apron.
Frederick dug out Henry Barford's deck of cards. "Here's how," he said. "You all draw one. High card does the job."
The housemaid who'd asked him won the draw. The other two swore at her as she proudly climbed the stairs to finish the last white person on the plantation. When she came down, she was grinning from ear to ear. "That bitch ain't gonna give nobody grief no more!" she declared.
Everyone cheered. Frederick held up his hands. "Listen to me!" he said. "You got to listen to me!" He wasn't sure they would. Some of them had already got into the master's-the dead master's-barrel-tree rum and whiskey.
"Listen to him, damn it!" That was Lorenzo. He seemed to be the one the copperskins on the plantation heeded most. And he had a fierce bass voice that made people pay attention to him.
Eventually, most of the field hands and house slaves looked in Frederick's direction. "We're free now," he said. Then he couldn't go on, because everybody started cheering again. He held up his hands once more, this time hoping for quiet. After a while, he got something close to it. He continued: "We're free-till the first white man-drummer or preacher or neighbor: doesn't matter which one-decides to pay a call on Master Henry. Then they'll find out what happened here, and they'll try and kill us all."
"Well, fuck 'em!" shouted a housemaid with a whiskey bottle in her hand. "Fuck 'em in the heart, the stinking shitsacks!" She got a cheer, too.
"Easy to say," Frederick said when he could get a word in edgewise. "Not so easy to do. Way it looks to me is, we got two choices. We can slip away by ones and twos, going every which way. Some of us'll get free if we try that, odds are-some of us, but not everybody."
"We could go off to the woods and the swamps," a copperskin said. Runaway slaves of all colors scratched out livings in places where whites judged pursuit more trouble than it was worth.
"Well, we could try," Frederick said. "When they find out we killed the whites here, though, they'll come after us a lot harder'n they'd chase ordinary runaways. Or does anybody reckon I'm wrong?"
No one said anything. If slaves killed white people, other whites would hunt them down no matter what. Every slave understood that. It was one of the pillars on which slavery rested.
"So slipping away doesn't look so good," Frederick said. "Only other chance I see is, we gotta fight, and we gotta win."
"We got the guns, by God!" Davey's voice was as deep as Lorenzo's.
"Anybody figure there ain't some white folks around these parts who still need killing?" Lorenzo himself added.
No one left alive on the plantation believed that. "And when we liberate a plantation, what happens to the mudfaces and niggers who were slaves on it?" Frederick answered his own question before anyone else could: "I'll tell you what happens to 'em. They join our army-the Liberating Army, that's what we'll call it. And then we go on and we free up the next plantation down the road."
"And the slaves there, they turn into soldiers, too!" That was one of the housemaids who'd lost the draw to kill Mistress Clotilde. By the excited way she said it, the possibility hadn't occurred to her till that very moment. It probably hadn't. Frederick had never thought she was long on brains.
Excitement surged through the assembled slaves-no, through the newborn Liberating Army. They had rifle muskets and ammunition for several plantations' worth of slaves. After that… Well, Frederick couldn't imagine any plantation without firearms, both for hunting and for keeping two-legged property in line. Those weapons would arm more Negroes and copperskins.
And what happens when the Liberating Army goes up against the army of the United States of Atlantis? Frederick wondered. What do we do for cannon? What do we do for grapeshot?
Well, he didn't have to worry about that, not yet. And, as long as he didn't have to, he didn't intend to. Borrowing trouble never did anybody any good. And, if you were a slave-even more, if you were a slave trying to rise up against white masters-you already had plenty of troubles, and didn't need to borrow any more.
"Where do we go first?" That was Davey: trust the cook to come up with a good, practical question.
Frederick had been chewing that over, too. "Way it looks to me is, first place we ought to set free is Benjamin Barker's," he answered. "It's close, and he doesn't treat his slaves real well, so they'll be ready to swing our way, and-"
"And his wife, that Veronique, she's an even nastier cunt than Mistress Clotilde, an' that's really sayin' somethin'," interrupted the handmaid who'd just snuffed out Clotilde Barford's life.
From everything Frederick had seen and heard, she was right. He made himself nod. "She sure is," he said. "And that's one more reason the slaves on the Barker plantation will see things our way." They'd better, or this will be one of the shortest uprisings in a history that's seen a lot of short ones. He looked around. "Anybody got a better idea?"
The people who really counted were Lorenzo and Davey. If either of them thought the Liberating Army should pick a different direction, Frederick would have to listen carefully. He might have to change his mind.
They both paused thoughtfully, considering. At last, almost in unison, their heads went up and down. "Benjamin Barker deserves whatever happens to him," Davey said in the tones of a judge passing sentence.
"He does," Lorenzo agreed. And so it was decided.
They took the rifle muskets out of their crates. Then they had to figure out how to use the percussion caps that came with the cartridges: all of the firearms on the plantation were flintlocks. But several slaves had heard about the percussion system, and had a notion of how to fit the thin copper caps over the nipple on each musket.
Some of the field hands used beat-up old shotguns of their own to kill varmints and hunt small game. The fancy new muskets impressed them enormously. "See, the thing of it is, a flintlock'll misfire maybe one time in five," Lorenzo explained to Frederick. "And even when it doesn't, there's always that wait while the sparks set off the priming powder and the priming powder starts the main charge, so you miss what you were aiming at 'cause it's not there no more."
"Not like that with these guns," Frederick said. His shoulder was sore from a rifle musket's fierce kick. "Soon as you pull the trigger and the hammer comes down-bang!" His ears were still ringing, too.
"I hope to shit, it's not like that!" Lorenzo said enthusiastically. "We're gonna kill us a lot of white folks with 'em."
"That's right." Frederick saw the need, but he wasn't so eager. The color of his skin reminded him of the white blood that flowed in his veins. So did the thick beard that rasped under his fingers every time he rubbed his chin.
Lorenzo pressed ahead: "How are we gonna get there? We march down the road with guns on our shoulders, people'll figure out pretty damned quick there's a slave uprising."
"Think so, do you?" Frederick's voice was dry. "Looks to me like they'll figure it out pretty damned quick any which way."
Lorenzo grinned. He had strong white teeth, and his fierce expression made them seem uncommonly sharp. "Looks the same way to me. But do you want to let the whole world know right away, like we're some traveling medicine show?"
"Well…" Frederick didn't need long to think that over. "No."
And so they went cross-country-all but the precious rifle muskets they weren't using themselves and the even more precious ammunition. Those rolled down the road, guarded by slaves with eight-shooters taken from dead Atlantean cavalrymen. The Negroes and copperskins slapped paint on the wagons before setting out, so no one who saw them would think of the United States of Atlantis.
One of the slaves who took the lead wagon down the road pulled a black felt hat of Henry Barford's low on his forehead, so the brim was barely above his eyes. It was the perfect touch, especially since he was also smoking one of the dead master's cheroots. If he didn't look like a teamster, Frederick had never seen anybody who did.
"They'll get there ahead of us," Davey said in worried tones as the rest of the Liberating Army started tramping from one big house to the other.
Frederick shook his head. "Don't think so. Hope not, anyways. I told 'em to hold up by the side of the road a couple of times. White folks going by won't think anything of that. You know how they always go on about how lazy niggers and mudfaces are."
"Oh, hell, yes-usually while they're pilin' more work on our heads," Davey said. "Then they get mad on account of we don't finish as fast as they want." He muttered something under his breath; the look in his eyes went as dark as his skin. After a few seconds, though, his face cleared. He set a hand on Frederick's shoulder. "That's good, the way you set it up. Seems like you got a notion of what's likely to happen next. Fellow who's runnin' this show, he better do that."
"Yeah, I know. Right now, main thing I'm tryin' for is not to do anything out-and-out stupid," Frederick answered. Sooner or later, he would do something stupid, too. You couldn't help it, any more than you could help needing to piss every so often. He just hoped his mistakes wouldn't be too bad and wouldn't hurt the Liberating Army too much.
He was glad Davey seemed willing to let him lead. The head cook was one of a handful of men who might have wanted to run things himself. Lorenzo was another. He also seemed content with Frederick's leadership.
Well, of course they are, Frederick thought. Nothing's gone wrong yet, so they can't hang any blame on me.
A rail fence separated Master Henry's land from Benjamin Barker's. Maybe it was Frederick's imagination, but he thought the crops on the far side of the fence grew taller than they did on this side. Nothing, not even cotton plants, dared give Benjamin Barker a hard time.
He remarked on that as he clambered over the fence and came down on the other side. Now it's official. Now it's an invasion, he thought. Helen answered him before anyone else could: "We're gonna give Master Benjamin Barker a hard time, by Jesus! And his stuck-up bitch of a wife, too!"
"That's right!" Several Negroes and copperskins said the same thing at the same time. Women's voices were loud in the chorus. Frederick knew nobody liked Veronique Barker very much. Considering what was likely to happen to her, that might be just as well.
"Hey, now! What are you slaves doin' on Barker land?" an officious-sounding Negro demanded. "And"-the fellow's voice suddenly wobbled-"what are you doin' with guns in your hands?"
"This here is the Liberating Army," Frederick answered proudly. "We're here to clean things out, that's what we're here for. Are you with us or against us?"
"Lord Jesus!" the Negro yelped. If he said he was against them, he wouldn't live long. And maybe he didn't need much persuading. "You're gonna do for Master Benjamin?"
"His snooty ol' Veronique, too," Helen said.
"You really are!" Benjamin Barker's slave might have discovered it was Christmas in summertime. "Count me in! You got a spare gun I can shoot?"
"Not yet, but we will pretty quick," Frederick said. If Barker's Negro wanted to think that meant they aimed to plunder the big house, he was welcome to for the time being. Let him prove himself before he got a rifle musket of his own.
"Well, come on, then!" he said now, and he sure seemed enthusiastic. "I'll take you straight to him, I will!"
V
They hadn't gone very far before they came upon a work gang weeding in the fields. Frederick's back and shoulders twinged sympathetically. He'd been doing the same thing himself a couple of days earlier. And making sure the gang actually worked, of course, was Benjamin Barker's overseer.
He was older and tougher-looking than Matthew had been. Matthew had been a man who wanted to rise, the kind who dreamt of owning a plantation himself one day. This fellow was out of dreams. All he wanted was to go on doing what he was doing already. He'd never rise higher than overseer, and he knew it.
Instead of a switch, he carried a lash in his right hand. And, where Matthew had had a knife on his belt, a pistol rode this overseer's right hip.
His hand dropped to that pistol as soon as he saw strange slaves. "All right, you bastards!" he growled. "You've got three shakes of a lamb's tail to tell me what the hell you're doing on Master Barker's land. C'mon! Make it snappy!"
He had to die. Frederick wasn't the only one who realized it. Half a dozen rifle muskets rose as one and trained on the overseer's chest and head. It wasn't anything personal-but, then again, it was. Frederick had trouble imagining a field hand who didn't want to shoot an overseer.
"Son of a bitch!" this white man exclaimed. "You lousy, stupid idiots are trying to rise up!" With startling speed, his pistol cleared the holster.
With startling speed-but not fast enough. Before the overseer could pull the trigger, those rifle muskets spoke together. A couple of the conical bullets the longarms spat might have missed him, but most struck home. A round that caught a man square in the face drastically rearranged his looks, and not for the better. Scarlet flowers blossomed on the overseer's shirtfront, too. He pitched forward and lay facedown in the dirt.
Benjamin Barker's slaves gaped at him, and at the men and women of the Liberating Army. Frederick paid no attention to them for a little while; he was reloading as fast as he could. Only after a new percussion cap sat on the nipple and a new powder charge and bullet were rammed down and firmly seated in the barrel did he start to notice their exclamations.
