Liberating Atlantis by Harry Turtledove Page B

and fired again. This time, he hit one of his own copperskins. Unlike Ivanhoe, the second slave didn’t make a sound. He simply crumpled, shot through the head.
    More bullets flew at Benjamin Barker. These didn’t bite, either. As slaves went, Frederick wasn’t superstitious. He had more education—and more sense—than most bondsmen. But even he wondered if the planter didn’t have a snakeskin or a rabbit’s foot in his pocket.
    Shaking his fist, Barker turned and ran back toward the big house. Another volley pursued him. Yet again, every shot missed. If that wasn’t uncanny, Frederick couldn’t imagine what would be.
    He also couldn’t imagine letting the planter get away. That would be . . . whatever was worse than a disaster. About as bad, say, as tripping over a floorboard that had come loose. Maybe even worse.
    “Come on!” he said. “We’ve got to do for him!”
    “How?” a copperskin asked. “If bullets won’t—”
    “If bullets won’t, we’ll burn down the God-damned big house,” Frederick said savagely. “I don’t want to do that, on account of the smoke’ll draw a crowd where we don’t need one, but I will if I got to. We ain’t gonna let that man get away!”
    His determination pulled the rest of the slaves after him. He realized it didn’t have to be a white man giving orders in a loud voice. Anyone would do, as long as he sounded sure of himself. Being right plainly wasn’t essential, or slaves would have stopped obeying masters hundreds of years ago. Being—or seeming—sure just as plainly was.
    Benjamin Barker got inside. He fired at the oncoming Liberating Army, and dropped a second copperskin. A moment later, another gun spoke from upstairs. Veronique Barker didn’t aim to sit around and let herself get slaughtered—or suffer the proverbial fate worse than death. Frederick didn’t think she hit anybody, but she was making the effort.
    “I need five or six men to come into the house with me,” Frederick said. “The rest can go on shootin’, make the white folks keep their heads down.”
    “I’m with you,” Lorenzo said at once.
    “Me, too,” Davey said. “Got to finish that fucker.”
    Frederick soon had his volunteers. As the rest of the Liberating Army banged away, they rushed toward the front door. Benjamin Barker appeared in a window like an angry ghost. He fired and vanished again. The bullet cracked past Frederick’s head, much too close for comfort. Involuntarily, he ducked. He hoped that wouldn’t make his comrades think him a coward. Whether it did or not, he couldn’t help it.
    His shoulder hit the door. “Oof!” he said, and bounced off. He might have known it would be locked.
    “Here—I’ll settle it.” Lorenzo fired two shots from a captured revolver into the lock. Then he rammed it with his shoulder. He fell down as it flew open.
    Davey sprang over him and dashed into the big house. He took a shotgun blast full in the chest, and sank without a sound. Benjamin Barker howled laughter. “Thought it would be easy, did you?” He fired again, this time with a pistol. A copperskin beside Frederick screeched and clutched his leg.
    Frederick had never thought it would be easy. If slave uprisings were easy, one of them would have succeeded before this. But he thought it might be possible. And one of the things that would make it possible was killing planters who got in the way.
    He shot Benjamin Barker in the neck. Barker gobbled like a turkey. He clapped a hand to the bleeding wound. Why doesn’t he fall over? Frederick wondered. But the answer to that was only too obvious. Because you only grazed him, that’s why .
    He ran forward. Sure as the devil, Barker wasn’t badly hurt. He pulled a knife off his belt—no, a razor, the edge glittering even in the dimness inside the big house—and slashed at Frederick.
    But a razor in a desperate man’s right arm couldn’t match the reach of an eighteen-inch bayonet at the end of a five-foot rifle musket.