Druids (37 page)

Rix moved in relentlessly; Ollovico gave ground rapidly. By the time we left his lodge, Rix had his pledge to join the confederacy, though with a stipulation. “If Caesar attacks the center of Gaul with his armies, and the other tribes agree to follow your standard, Vercingetorix, I shall also. But I demand your word that you wifl make no attempt to usurp the kingship of the Bituriges.”

“I have my own tribe,” Rix assured him. “All I want is to keep them free.”

Free.

It is a simple word. Yet if the great grove was the heart of Gaul, freedom was Gaul’s lifeblood.

Fleetmgly, I wondered if me Belgae felt the same way about their freedom… .

VERCINGETORIX WAS ELATED-His SUCCCSS with OUoviCO

left him too excited to sleep, so we passed the night in his tent in earnest conversation. Sometime before dawn I hoped to be able to insert a few subtle references to the importance, and the reality, of me Otherworid; to begin tearing down the dangerous walls of resistance he had erected.

But Rix had more tangible matters on his mind. “I’m going back to the kings I visited before, Ainvar. Now that I have the support of Ollovico to use as a lever, I know I can persuade more of mem to join with us. I may even go to some of the tribes on the fringes of free Gaul. They’ll be the first Caesar gobbles up. I won’t need you to go with me, I know how to handle them now.”

That night he felt he could do anything.

I was glad; it was a feeling he needed if we were to succeed at all. So I kept my lips sealed on the topic of the Otherworid. Why run me risk of alienating him now? There would be other opportunities, other conversations.

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Besides, my concentration was fragmented. The patrol we had seen was very much on my mind. Rix had spoken me truth when he Cold Ollovico I was concerned for the safety of the grove.

Now Caesar was occupied with the Belgae; but when the time came to turn his attention to free Gaul, his initial attack might be against its druids. I had observed how Rome discredited and ultimately outlawed the druids of Narbonese Gaul in order to elim-inate any influence other than Roman upon the people.

If Caesar meant to do the same thing in free Gaul, what better way to begin than by destroying its sacred center? A dreadful intuition warned me that the scouting party we saw might have been seeking me exact location of the great grove.

For Caesar’s future reference.

I was relieved that Rix did not feel he needed me to go with him to the other kings. More than anything else I wanted to be riding north again, to assure myself of the safety of the fort, and

Briga, and Lakutu. And the trees.

Rix and I had a final conversation in the morning before I left. All around us his warriors were breaking camp, taking down the leather tents, packing supplies, leading horses to water, sorting weapons, laughing and challenging and insulting one another, tripping over tent pegs, urinating noisily onto bare earth, singing and swearing and swirling with the customary confusion of Celtic

warriors about to march.

Rix surveyed the chaos. “Ainvar,” he said thoughtfully, **in me Roman army camps each man has specific duties that he performs in a certain order. No more, no less, the same way every time. None of this scrambling around and two men arguing over

who gets to pack me mule.”

I saw the direction his thoughts were taking. “Can you imagine ordering Gaulish warriors to measure every stride they took? It

wouldn’t suit our style, Rix.”

He rubbed his jaw. His eyes brooded below their hooded lids. “Caesar’s bringing us a new face of war. The old reasons for fighting—the sort of thing Ollovico was saying yesterday—it’s all

changed, hasn’t it?”

“Yes. I’ve had mat thought myself.”

“And there’s no going back. “

“No.” Recalling a favorite saying of Menua’S, I recited, “The inexorable rhythm of the seasons brings an end to all, to joy and sorrow alike. Winter to summer, death to birth, the wheel turns, and we must turn with it.”

“Druid,” Rix said souriy.

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“But true.”

“You’re always beating that drum, aren’t you? Oh, you’re very subtle, Ainvar, but I know what you’re doing. You hale it that I don’t believe anymore. But you just said yourself, everything changes. Perhaps mine is the new way. Perhaps we don’t need all that chanting and pattern-dancing and sacrificing any longer. Cae-sar doesn’t dance patterns.”

“Caesar sacrifices to Roman gods-I’ve heard their priests say so. No king dares openly defy me deities.”

“If gods exist. You say the Roman ones are invented by Man. How can you prove that ours are not? ‘Believe,’ you tell me, but I don’t believe; yet no bolt from the Source has struck me to punish me.

“What I do believe in, Ainvar, is your intelligence and your sound advice when we’re dealing with practical matters and you’re not off in a mist somewhere.”

I bit off the words that leaped to my tongue. 1 must not indulge in me luxury of arguing with him now; any sort of division between us would be dangerous. “I have to get back to the grove,” I said stiffly.

“You’re angry with me.”

“No.”

“You’ll come to me again if I need you?”

I met his eyes. “When you need me.”

He swallowed but he did not blink, “I’ll send word to you,” be said.

Before leaving, I had the most cursory of meetings with the druid Nantua, to repeat my warning about danger to the grove in case Ollovico should say anything to him about it. I also used the opportunity to stress that he must keep encouraging Ollovico to support Vercingetorix.

“The arrangements of war are matters for warriors,” me chief druid of the Bituriges said reprovingly.

“I’m talking about naked survival, Nantua! And that is the

concern of dndds"

Galloping northward, I remembered the shock on his face. The danger was still not real to him. It was not real to any of mem yet. Caesar was a shout in me distance; they could not compre-hend the threat he posed.

Yet every day that threat grew nearer.

As we came pounding across the plain, I saw, with a sense of indescribable relief, the great grove standing inviolate against the sky.

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I had barely entered the gates of the fort before I was needed for this and for that, to go here, run there, confer with him, demonstrate to her. I plunged into summerwork, and when I could spare a thought at all, I thought of Vercingetorix in the south, riding from tribe to tribe, trying to gather a following.

Children who wanted to become druids followed at my heels as I went about the fort or walked in the surrounding countryside. One of them, my most ardent follower, was the boy Briga had cured of blindness. Remembering myself walking in Menua’s shadow, I saved a special smile for the lad.

“Has he a gift?” I asked his mother, a farmer’s wife with creamy skin and a generous mouth. I recalled her from the first hot seasons of my manhood.

“None that I know of, except for his fascination with die dru-ids.”

“When he’s old enough for instruction send him to me, then. He’s already received one gift: He can see, while remembering the darkness. We’ll make something of him.”

Harvest brought Lughnasa; autumn brought Samhain with die winter stretching ahead. At the Samhain convocation that year I told the assembled druids, * ‘Caesar has spent the summer fighting the Belgic tribes. After building innumerable fortifications and killing countless women and children, he has finally defeated them, and then on some pretext attacked the Nervii and their allies, the Aduatuci. He cuts a swath across the northland from the Rhine to the Gallic Sea. So far, the protection Menua gained fcr us with sacrifice has held, and we have been spared Caesar’s attentions. But who can say how much longer that may last?

“I have been told that for the purposes of campaigning he has divided Gaul into three parts. He intends to subdue each pan separately. The Belgae are the first, the Aquitani in the southwest will be next. The central region will be his final target. Free Gaul. Including us.

“If Caesar succeeds in turning Gaul into one of the Roman provinces, he will make certain there are no druids left, except men like his misguided ally, Diviciacus of me Aedui. He will destroy the Order of me Wise so no thinkers are left to resist him, and he will sell our people into slavery. I have seen Celtic women

on the auction block while me crowd leered at them and their captors fondled them and rubbed against mem and laughed at their shame. I have seen this and worse—1 have observed children of our race begging in the streets of Roman towns because their

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clans have been forced to adopt Roman ways and no longer care for their orphans as we do.”

I went on spinning a web with my words until the smell of fear rose like a fecal stench from my listeners. I wanted them to be afraid. Not of death, which is me least thing, but of entrapment, of square pens, square houses, paved streets, shackled legs, crushed spirits . . ,

“Persuade your tribes to unite under Vercingetorix,” I urged, “or tribe by tribe Caesar will conquer us all.”

During the long, cold winter, the druid network fanned out across Gaul, speaking in favor of the Gaulish confederacy under Rix’s leadership. I could only hope me Order still had enough power in the land to make a difference.

A visiting druid from the north, making his first pilgrimage to the sacred center of Gaul, told me about the aftermath of Caesar’s campaign against me Belgae.

He was one of the Remi, neighbors of the Belgae who, fearing for their own safety, had bowed before Caesar and been the loud-est in accusing the Belgae of conspiring against Rome. For standing with Caesar they had expected to be left in charge of the region when he withdrew his armies.

‘ ‘But when the fighting was over, Caesar did not withdraw his troops,” lamented the Remian. “Nor did he leave us in charge. Because he wages war on women and-children as well as warriors, he bad depopulated vast areas, and his own soldiers moved onto them and began building settlements!” The man was quivering with the indignation of the betrayed. “We are left with nothing to show for supporting Caesar.”

“I could have warned you,” I told him. “If you had come to me sooner, I could have told you about Caesar’s pattern.’*

“It is a long journey for us … and mere are not so many of us anymore … you don’t understand. …”

I understand that you’ve come running to the grove when me trouble grew serious enough. What is it—are the Romans now moving onto your lands also?”

He bowed his head.

The druids of the Remi were not die only ones who had rarely made pilgrimages to the grove since I became Keeper. Diviciacus of die Aedui had never appeared among die oaks.

I wondered if he still considered himself a member of die Or-der—or was he totally Caesar’s man?

He had betrayed die Order, allowing himself to be seduced by die glittering metal and die clattering hooves of Roman might into

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thinking that Caesar’s power was all he needed to protect his tribe. Perhaps he thought he had made the wisest choice for his people.

The weight of responsibility surely sat on Diviciacus as heavily as ft did upon me.

Since returning from Avaricum I had questioned every sentry, every warrior, every craftsman and freeman and bondservant at the fort and in the surrounding area, to discover if any of them had seen a Roman patrol near the grove. No one had.

Yet at the base of my spine, I knew. I could smell danger to the grove.

“Ogmios, we need more lookouts at all times,” I demanded. “You let too many men sleep when they should be watching every cart track and fold in the land. I want the grove protected, Og-mios, do you understand? Protected!”

“Are you afraid someone will steal the trees?” he asked, mak-ing a ponderous attempt at a joke.

“Yes!”

He stared at me with me blank expression of a genuinely stupid man trying to think. “How could they take so many without us

knowing?”

I saw that Ogmios must soon surrender to the seasons and be replaced by a more alert and able captain. Knowing it was useless, I sent a message to Tasgetius requesting additional warriors for the fort.

“He’ll never give them to you,” Tarvos old me. “That man would not willingly put a single weapon in your hands.’*

*^know it. But I must observe the traditions.”

“You still won’t break with him openly?’*

“Look what’s happened because of the open break between Dumnorix and Diviciacus. The Aedui are split in half, too weak ever to resist Caesar. No, Tarvos, when the break comes with Tasgetius it must appear to come from me people, not from a member of me Order.”

“When will that be?”

When. Everyone wanted to know when.

So did I.

Using the need for more guards for the grove as an excuse, I

visited Cenabum repeatedly, ostensibly to persuade Tasgetius but actually to spend as much time as I could with me prince Cotuatus, training him to think, to be prudent, to hold his temper, to recognize patterns, to plan ahead. I was preparing nun for the very special sort of king we would need in the near future.

As I had expected, Tasgetius refused to give us any more war—

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riors. “You are mistaken about the Romans being any threat, Ainvar,” he told me in me privacy of his lodge, where the antagonism between us was open and naked now. ‘ ‘I think you are just using that to try to get more armed men and build up your own power, but I am too clever for you.”

“Druids have never required the power of weapons.”

“Times change.”

“The very point I’m making-I am Keeper of the Grove, Tasgetius, and times are changing. If there is any threat to me grove I am obligated to—”

“There isn’t,” he said harshly. “I don’t know why you keep making the trip to tell me there is. You’ve let the foolishness of your predecessor infect you, you see shadows where there are none.”

“I saw a Roman patrol deep in our territory.‘1

“No one reported it to me.”

We glared at each other. He did not offer me food or drink, knowing I would not accept-Knowing I knew. Not caring.