Free The Fort by Bernard Cornwell

place?” Lieutenant Campbell, a lank youth with a prominent nose and an equally prominent adam’s apple, swallowed nervously and said nothing, while young Moore just leaned back on the heaped nets as though contemplating an afternoon’s sleep. “Come, come,” the brigadier chided the pair, “tell me what you would do.”
    “Does that not depend on what the enemy does, sir?” Moore asked idly.
    “Then assume with me that they arrive with a dozen or more ships and, say, fifteen hundred men?”
    Moore closed his eyes, while Lieutenant Campbell tried to look enthusiastic. “We put our guns on the bluff, sir,” he offered, gesturing towards the high ground that dominated the river and harbor entrance.
    “But the bay is wide,” McLean pointed out, “so the enemy can pass us on the farther bank and land upstream of us. Then they cross the neck,” he pointed to the narrow isthmus of low ground that connected Majabigwaduce to the mainland, “and attack us from the landward side.”
    Campbell frowned and bit his lip as he pondered that suggestion. “So we put guns there too, sir,” he offered, “maybe a smaller fort?”
    McLean nodded encouragingly, then glanced at Moore. “Asleep, Mister Moore?”
    Moore smiled, but did not open his eyes. “ Wer alles verteidigt, verteidigt nichts ,” he said.
    “I believe der alte Fritz thought of that long before you did, Mister Moore,” McLean responded, then smiled at Bethany. “Our paymaster is showing off, Miss Fletcher, by quoting Frederick the Great. He’s also quite right, he who defends everything defends nothing. So,” the brigadier looked back to Moore, “what would you defend here at Majabigwaduce?”
    “I would defend, sir, that which the enemy wishes to possess.”
    “And that is?”
    “The harbor, sir.”
    “So you would allow the enemy to land their troops on the neck?” McLean asked. The brigadier’s reconnaissance had convinced him that the rebels would probably land north of Majabigwaduce. They might try to enter the harbor, fighting their way through Mowat’s sloops to land troops on the beach below the fort, but if McLean was in command of the rebels he reckoned he would choose to land on the wide, shelving beach of the isthmus. By doing that, the enemy would cut him off from the mainland and could assault his ramparts safe from any cannon-fire from the Royal Navy vessels. There was a small chance that they might be daring and assault the bluff to gain the peninsula’s high ground, but the bluff’s slope was dauntingly steep. He sighed inwardly. He could not defend everything because, as the great Frederick had said, by defending everything a man defended nothing.
    “They’ll land somewhere, sir,” Moore answered the brigadier’s question, “and there’s little we can do can stop them landing, not if they come in sufficient force. But why do they land, sir?”
    “You tell me.”
    “To capture the harbor, sir, because that is the value of this place.”
    “Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven, Mister Moore,” McLean said, “and they do want the harbor and they will come for it, but let us hope they do not come soon.”
    “The sooner they come, sir,” Moore said, “the sooner we can kill them.”
    “I would wish to finish the fort first,” McLean said. The fort, which he had decided to name Fort George, was hardly begun. The soil was thin, rocky, and hard to work, and the ridge so thick with trees that a week’s toil had scarcely cleared a sufficient killing ground. If the enemy came soon, McLean knew, he would have small choice but to fire a few defiant guns and then haul down the flag. “Are you a prayerful man, Mister Moore?” McLean asked.
    “Indeed I am, sir.”
    “Then pray the enemy delays,” McLean said fervently, then looked to James Fletcher. “Mister Fletcher, you would land us back on the beach?”
    “That I will, General,” James said cheerfully.
    “And pray for us, Mister Fletcher.”
    “Not sure