Druids (49 page)

While we were gone the fort and the entire area had been desperately searched, but neither Baroc nor the baby was found.

“How could you do this to me, Ainvar?” Briga asked in a tone that indicated I was like something to be scraped off hef foot.

“I didn’t steal her.”

“You did. You stole her first—or arranged to have it done, you and Lakutu together. You drugged me and took her from me. The

rest would never have happened otherwise.”

“It was only to keep you safe, here in the fort. You are such a willful woman and you were determined to follow me.”

“Why shouldn’t I be with you? I’m your wife.”

“You’re the mother of a small child.”

“I have no child now!” she cried, holding out her empty arms in an agonized gesture.

Lakutu moaned in sympathy. She took half a step, hesitated, then flung her arms around Briga and pressed my wife to her bosom. “Don’t. Ah, don’t,” she soothed. “I… I give you my child,” she offered. The watching women gasped. “He a boy,” Lakutu added with shy pride.

Blinded by sudden, scalding tears, I turned toward the nearest of my bodyguards. “Give me your sword.”

“What …”

I snatched it from him and vaulted back onto my horse. My men came pounding after me. By the time we reached the place we had last seen Crom Daral he was gone, of course, and an icy rain was washing away all trace of his tracks.

One of my men rode close beside me and said, ‘ ‘If you had killed him the moment you saw him, the way you wanted to, he could never have told us where to find Baroc and me child.”

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His words penetrated the red fog in my brain and it slowly lifted. I found myself sitting on a steaming horse in a deluge. Driven by the rain, a fox broke out of some underbrush nearby, peered sideways at me, then opened its mouth and laughed, pink tongue lolling, before it ran on.

One of my men started to hurl a spear at it, but I ordered him to let it go.

We turned our horses and rode back to the fort. All the way 1 kept seeing my daughter with the dark baby ringlets she had never lost, and her tiny, crumpled ears.

Nothing I had ever done was harder than returning to my lodge and facing the two women. Briga refused to speak to me, though her posture and the set of her head condemned me loudly.

She did not seem to blame Lakutu. Ainvar was the one who was supposed to be wise, she said with stamping feet and slamming pots. Ainvar should have known better than to follow poor Lakutu’s foolish suggestion. She even put her arm around Lakutu as the two women built up the fire together.

Women, my head observed, cooperate. Men compete.

I went to Keryth. “Find my child.”

“Bring me something others to hold.”

“She’s so new she has nothing yet, not even a name,” I said despairingly.

Then I remembered the gold arm ring.

When I returned to the lodge and dug it out of the chest Briga’s eyes widened. “Where did that come from?”

“It is the gift Crom Daral brought for the child.”

She understood the implication at once. “He isn’t her father, Ainvar,” she said quickly.

“Perhaps he thinks he is.” Those words had lain like poison at the back of my throat ever since Crom brought the ring. I should not have hurt her with them but I could not help it; I am human, and I need. I need.

She gave me a long, grave look. “It isn’t possible, Ainvar. I’ve been with no one else since that first time with you.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

Crom’s thinking was twisted, I told myself angrily. I must not become like him.

I took the warrior’s arm ring and some blankets that had wrapped the baby to Keryth, then went with her to Crom DaraTs lodge because that was the last place we knew the child had been.

Crom Daral, we were sickened to discover, had been living

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like an animal in its den. The floor was littered with gnawed bones. In places the filth was ankle-deep.

Keryth had brought a hare for sacrifice. She killed it and read its entrails on Crom’s hearthstone. Then she circled the lodge three times sunwise, clutching the ring and blankets to her bosom. Her footsteps faltered, stopped. She stared into an unseeable distance. “There they are,” she whispered. “Two men.”

“Crom Daral and Baroc.”

“Yes. They have met; they are fleeing together now, and they are carrying something. One man is afoot, the other on a horse. The horseman has the reins in one hand and a bundle in the crook of his other arm.” She strained forward as if to see more cleariy. “It stirs. It cries. …”

My daughter was crying’ Crom Daral had my daughter and she was crying. I clenched impotent fists. “Where are they? We’ll send men after them at once.”

Keryth drew in a sharp breath. “Men are already after them. Men on horses … a patrol, a Roman patrol has spotted them and is overtaking them. …”

I stared at her in horror.

“The Romans have captured the two men,” Keryth’s relentless vision continued. “They are going toward the sunrise lands, they are moving beyond the limits of my vision. …” Her shoulders sagged. “I see nothing,” she reported at last.

Crom’s lodge contained only one broken bench. I eased her onto it and chafed her icy hands. “What have the Romans done with the child, Keryth?”

Her exhausted voice replied, “I cannot say. I saw them seize Baroc and Crom Daral, they bound them securely and then slung them over their horses. But whatever they did with the child was hidden from me. Now I can see nothing. I’m sorry, Ainvar.”

So was I. She had seen too much.

“Don’t tell Briga about the Romans, Keryth,” I implored. “I’ll find the child somehow, if she’s still alive; I vow it by earth and fire and water!”

I was trying not to think of the stories refugees had told of Roman warriors tossing Celtic children on their spears.

Have them toss Crom Daral on their spears instead! I implored That Which Watched. I gladly offer him.

When Keryth had recovered sufficiently we searched her mem-ory together for any detail that might tell us which of Caesar’s tens of thousands of warriors had happened across our fugitives, or where they might have taken them. It was no use.

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Trying to conceal my own despair, I reported to Briga, “The seer says they went east. I have already sent searchers after them, they’ll find her.”

She read the truth in my eyes. “All you had to do, Ainvar,” she said bitterly, “was tell me I couldn’t come with you. That’s all you had to do. But that wasn’t enough for you, you had to complicate matters. Are you happy now?”

Happy? I could not recall the taste of the word.

I sent a quarter of the fort’s warriors eastward, seeking news of Crom Daral and my daughter. The rest remained at the fort, awaiting war.

Vercingetorix was moving swiftly. He had become a stricter disciplinarian than any wariord before him. Hanesa was traveling through free Gaul telling a tale of Rix cutting off the ears of attempted deserters—a tale with considerable power to discourage any others from trying to desert. Once I would not have judged deserters so harshly, but since Crom Daral’s betrayal I was judg—

ing everyone harshly, myself most of all. I did not blame Vercingetorix for his deed.

Vercingetorix sent a prince called Lucteros south, to collect loyal warriors there, while he set out for the north to set up camp in the land of the Bituriges, a strategic location that would enable him to move in any direction.

Unfortunately, OUovico had had-another change of the unreliable organ he called his mind. When he learned that the Arvemian had almost reached the gates of Avaricum with an army, Ollovico decided his own sovereignty was threatened and sent a frantic message to the nearest Roman legate, who was encamped among the Aedui. Ollovico assured the Romans he had no part in the attempted uprising and asked mat his lands be spared the retribution sure to come, and that his own position as leader of the Bituriges be protected.

The legate did not wait to consult with the distant Caesar, but ordered his loyal Aeduans to march to the aid of Ollovico.

The Aeduans advanced as far as the banks of the Liger, where they were met by a druidic deputation led by Nantua, chief druid of the Bituriges. Nantua assured them the whole thing was a trick meant to lure them into Ollovico’s land, where they would be trapped between the Bituriges and the Arvemi and destroyed.

The Aeduans turned around and went home.

Upon learning of this, so close on the heels of the massacre at Cenabum, Caesar abandoned whatever was keeping him in La-tium and rushed to Gaul. But he was in a difficult position. He

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was physically in the south; the bulk of his legions was in the north. If he sent for them to come south and join him, they would have to fight their way down without the aid of his presence. If he attempted to go to them, he would have to pass through hostile territory. He was clever enough to realize that in Gaul, even tnbes who professed loyalty to him might welt change with the changing of the moon.

Meanwhile, Lucteros was leading the warriors of the Ruteni, the Nitiobriges, and the Gabali in a determined march toward the Province and its capital, Narbo.

Instead of going north Caesar hurried to Narbonese Gaul instead, killing several horses on me way, I understand. He swiftly fortified the local defenses and posted additional troops along the borders. Deciding the region was now too well defended, Lucteros withdrew to await further orders from Vercingetorix.

Caesar led his Provincial troops into the homelands of the Ga-bali and the Helvii and laid waste to their territories while their warriors were still farther west with Lucteros. The speed with which he accomplished this was unnerving—

The Arvemians in the south of their land were shocked to find Caesar suddenly within striking distance of their borders. Panick—

ing, they sent messages to their kinsmen who were with Vercingetorix to plead with him not to leave his own tribeland defenseless against the Roman.

When I heard of this latest development, I hastily summoned my druids to the grove, where we concentrated our heads and spirits on the Otherworid, and received signs revealing Caesar’s intent. At once I sent an urgent message to Rix, to stay where he was in central Gaul—which was an ideal location for preventing Caesar from reaching his legions in the north.

But it was too late. Rix had already set out for Arvemian territory. And as I knew, Caesar’s action had been a ruse. Once Rix left the land of the Bituriges, Caesar ceased menacing the Arvemians, sent his Provincial forces back to guard Narbonese Gaul, and sped east almost alone to the Rhone River, where a fresh contingent of cavalry awaited him. Protected by these reinforcements, he made his way safely through the mountainous Auvergne region to the land of the Lingones, where he had two full legions in winter camps.

The unreliability of sending messages was obvious. I needed to be with Rix. My daughter had not yet been found, but I did not dare linger in the fort in vain hope. If she had been taken as

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far as a Roman camp, then if I was with Rix the tides of war might lead me to her.

I set out at once to join him, pausing at Cenabum only long enough to collect Cotuatus and the Camutian warriors. We left Conco with old Nantorus to guard the tribal stronghold and headed for the territory of the Bituriges, knowing Rix would return to his camp there.

He and his army arrived soon after we did. He was angry. “Caesar got us out of the way just long enough to allow him to reach safety, and my men had a hard march for nothing.”

“It won’t happen again-We must outthmk him.”

‘ ‘We can and will, now that you’re here. I want you to help me decide on the best plan for attacking his winter camps.”

“Don’t attack them.”

“Why not?” he asked with sudden belligerence, the urge to strike the enemy burning bright in his eyes.

“Because that’s what Caesar wants you to do, Rix. He thinks the wild and reckless Gauls will fling themselves into any danger for the sake of battle.”

“We always have.”

“We have, but that must change. Caesar can’t be defeated that way. He has the strength of two legions in those camps, well entrenched behind massive fortifications. We would exhaust ourselves in futile attack, then the Romans would come out and

destroy us. Instead, I suggest we attack Gorgobina.”

He raised his eyebrows. ‘ ‘The stronghold of the Boii?”

“Exactly. Since the Boii have accepted Caesar’s, ah, friendship , he’s put them under the protection of his Aeduan allies. But as we know, and he must surely realize by now, the Aedui have lost heart. A successful attack on the Boii will show the other tribes that Caesar cannot protect his so-called friends, and he’ll lose support throughout Gaul.”

“Caesar will surely go to Gorgobina himself to prevent that happening.”

‘ ‘Ah, but in what manner? It is too early in the year for him to lead his legions out of the winter camps; it would be impossible for him to supply a large army along the route of march with the weather so bad. And it will stay bad. I, as a druid, assure you. Rain and wind and cold hamper the southerners.

“On the other hand, if he attempts to go to the aid of the Boii with a reduced force that he can supply, he will find himself facing our superior numbers.”

Rix rewarded me with a huge grin. “We can’t lose.”

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“I didn’t say that, and you must not think it. Never underestimate the man. We shall have to be clever and careful if we are to defeat him. If you do decide to attack Gorgobina, at least whatever response he decides upon will present great difficulties for him and opportunities for us.”

“We’ll attack Gorgobina,” Rix said unhesitatingly. “You are brilliant, Ainvar. Brilliant.”

I warmed my hands in the heat of his praise. But alas, even the keenest head cannot foresee every possibility, or predict every accident and inspiration. I make a plan and I stand by it. But the burden of responsibility is cruel.

Vercingetorix led the Gaulish army east to attack Gorgobina, taking the Boii by surprise. As we had expected, no Aeduan came to their defense.