No friend of yours, Victor thought. "My name is Richard Saunders," he replied. Some Radcliffs and Radcliffes favored the English; the clan was too large to have uniform opinions. But if the redcoats knew they had hold of Victor Radcliff, they'd never let him go.

"Well, Saunders, what are you doing coming out of Hanover?" the sergeant asked. "Where are you bound?"

"I'm heading for Hooville," Victor answered, which was true, although he wouldn't stop there. Then he blossomed into invention: "I was seeing my solicitor. My uncle just died childless, and looks like I'll have to go to law with my cousins over his property and estate." He tried to seem suitably disgusted.

The sergeant and Charles and the rest of the redcoats put their heads together. "Are you loyal to his Majesty, King George III?" the underofficer demanded fiercely.

"Of course I am." Victor lied without compunction. As the redcoat had said to the fat man, who would tell George's soldiers no?

And the English soldiers' crooked grins said they understood the likely reason for his answer. "Then you won't mind if we search you?" the sergeant asked.

"Yes, I'll mind," Victor said. "Not much I can do about it past minding, though, is there?"

"Too right there's not, friend." Charles used the last word to suggest anything but its literal meaning. "Why don't you get down from that sorry piece of crowbait you're riding?"

"Sam's a good horse," Victor protested. The redcoats laughed. In their boots, he would have laughed, too.

They patted him down and looked inside his saddle bags. They found nothing to make them suspicious-Victor wanted to look as harmless as he could. The sergeant still seemed unhappy. "You've fought in war," he said, and it wasn't quite a question.

Victor nodded. "I fought the French here, back about the time your beard sprouted."

The English underofficer scratched at a side whisker. "We were on the same side then, England and Atlantis."