The Druid King (12 page)

He saw the full light of comprehension dawn in his spymaster’s eyes. Gisstus smiled; he even gave out a short barking laugh.

“The Gauls will finance the whole thing?” he said.

The snows of winter had begun to melt, the oaks had put out their buds, and Vercingetorix too felt the sap of approaching spring rising through him as the latest round in his dance of the swords with Rhia ended with both of them panting and sweaty, close enough to feel each other’s heat, faces inches apart.

He leaned closer still, seeking her lips with his own—

Rhia backed away, hooking his left ankle with her foot in the same deft motion, sending him sprawling.

“You still have much to learn,” she said without laughing.

“I have already learned more than I care to,” Vercingetorix said sourly as he scrambled to his feet.

He had learned the annals of the tribes of Gaul. He had learned the laws of the druids. He had learned to read the heavens. He had learned the uses of the herbs and roots of the meadows and woodlands. He had learned secrets of the human body.

And he had learned the way of the sword from Rhia. He had learned moves and figures foreign to the fighting style of Gaul. He had learned to make his sword one with his body, to stop the thought that slowed the mind and give himself over to the dance. He was confident that he had learned enough to best any warrior in Gaul save his teacher.

But Rhia he could never best, and he doubted he ever would take his precious drop of her blood. And so his nights were filled with lustful dreams of the body he could see but not touch, and these warriors’ dances became a tantalization so painful it became sweet, so sweet that it became agony to his flesh.

“Why do we not end this foolish game?” he demanded.

“This is not a game,” Rhia said coldly, even though he could see the passion in her eyes, all but smell the desire on her breath.

“This is torture for both of us!”

“This is
power
for both of us.”

“You burn for me as I burn for you. Can you deny it?”

Rhia would not answer with words, but her averted gaze made its meaning plain.

“There is a great magic in such a fire as long as it burns unconsumed, a weapon greater than any sword,” said Rhia. “And this you have still not learned.”

“This I
would not
learn!” said Vercingetorix, and he turned his back on her and stalked away.

Peering through the open tent flap, Caesar saw that all was in order. Despite the drizzle oozing down from the low, leaden, overcast sky, the legionnaires stood firm and still in their orderly ranks, even with the moisture dribbling down from their helmets onto their foreheads and noses. Their standard was planted before the formation in the sodden turf of the plain; his own eagle, a careful two heads higher, had been erected before the tent; and the trumpeters were ready. It was an impressive martial show, but it made Caesar feel as if he were part of some troop of gladiators touring run-down arenas in minor cities in Italy, attempting to impress the locals with pomp and polish.

“Really, Labienus, why don’t
you
finally give the speech this time?” Caesar said only half jestingly. “You’ve certainly heard
me
regurgitate it often enough to know it by heart.”

Gisstus suppressed a laugh. Titus Labienus, not noted for a finely honed sense of irony, regarded Caesar uneasily.

“I’m a soldier, not an . . . orator like you, Caesar,” he said.

Caesar had more than a suspicion that “politician” was the word he had thought and masked. Labienus did not so much abhor politicians as regard them as a different species of creature, much as many poets could not comprehend why anyone would be interested in the arcana of engineering.

Which was just as well. Tall, built like Apollo with a luxurious mane of black hair that the balding Caesar could only gaze on with envy, Labienus was a charismatic leader and a brilliant general on a tactical level. He would have been a dangerous rival if he had had any political ambitions. Even the Gauls admired this perfect warrior.

That was why Caesar had chosen to tour with Labienus and five cohorts from his legion. It had made the task of winning the Gauls over to his scheme easier. He had also hoped that Labienus would relieve him of some of the drudgery of delivering the same speech over and over again. But no, the fearless soldier, who would face a pride of lions single-handedly before lunch and take on a herd of elephants afterward, turned craven at the prospect of delivering an oration.

But, then, nothing turns out to be as easy as it first seems in this barbaric country, Caesar thought sourly. Five cohorts of Roman infantry were not welcome within the walls of any of these Gallic hilltop redoubts, not even here at Bibracte, the Eduen capital. Not only were the men constrained to sleep in the open, within sight of the comforts and pleasures of these rude cities; he himself was constrained to deliver the speech in the open as well. Even, as now, in the rain.

This last performance shouldn’t even have been necessary. One would have thought Diviacx could have done the recruiting, being the brother of their vergobret and a druid as well. But no, as a druid, Diviacx could take no part in warfare, not even to the extent of standing by Caesar’s side with his mouth shut. And as Caesar had learned, the vergobrets were “tribal chieftains” in name only when it came to mustering troops. Each noble had his own collection of warriors, and the vergobret was powerless to raise an “army” except by force of charisma or oratory art.

Speaking of which, you had better stick out your chin, and paint a smile on your lips and a gleam in your eyes, Caesar told himself.

He nodded to Labienus, Labienus nodded to a centurion within the tent with no little relief, the centurion stepped outside and signaled to the trumpeters, who blew a fanfare, and Labienus marched out of the tent to take his place beneath his legion’s standard at the head of his troops, facing the assembled Edui.

The trumpeters blew a louder, longer, and grander fanfare, and Caesar himself strutted out into the light rain, taking care to hold his crimson cloak away from his body with his upraised elbows and rotate his shoulders once, twice, thrice, to give it a proper dramatic swirl as he strode up to the map hanging from a lance plunged into the ground, and turned smartly to face the Gauls.

Gisstus emerged quietly to take his usual place beside the map, from where, in the guise of a lackey helping to display it, he could whisper to Caesar anything he might need to hear.

“Hail, Caesar!” shouted Labienus, snapping his arm out in a smart salute.

“Hail, Caesar!”
five cohorts of legionnaires roared, saluting in perfect unison.

The Gauls, as usual, boorishly failed to join in the salutation.

There they stood, no more than a hundred of them, with their hilltop city gloomily visible through the mist, a rabble of some hundred warriors confronting five cohorts of a Roman legion. Which was more or less Caesar’s point.

“People of Gaul, I salute you!” Caesar began.

This at least elicited a scattering of polite “Hail, Caesar”s, which would be described as an enthusiastic ovation in his next dispatch to Rome.

“Rome has rid you of the scourge of the Teutons, built roads, aqueducts, and bridges, conferred upon you the benefits of commerce with the greatest civilization on earth,” Caesar declaimed.

This was greeted by sullen mutterings, for even the Edui, who had made out better than any of the other tribes, were not dim enough to fail to comprehend that not only did all roads lead to Rome but most of the profit flowed along them in that direction as well.

It was an old rhetorical trick. Caesar had used it so many times by now that he could do it in his sleep.

“And now Rome will bring you riches and glory!”

This never failed to pique their interest. Caesar then suddenly drew his sword, producing a mass intake of breath.

With a flourish, Gisstus unfurled the map behind him, which depicted the northern coast of Gaul and the isle of Britain beyond in a manner designed to maximize the size of the prize and minimize the width of the channel that must be crossed to get to it. Caesar planted the point of his sword in the center of Britain as if it were a succulent fig on the end of a dining knife.

“Britain, my friends, rich beyond measure, yet inhabited by people so primitive they think it the height of civilized fashion to paint themselves blue!” he declared.

This brought rude, superior laughter. It always did.

“Gold, silver, jewels, vast treasures, guarded not by great armies or mighty warriors, but by mere savages, a hundred of whom would be no match for a single Gaul!”

This brought the usual cheers and banging of swords and daggers on shields.

“I propose to bring the benefits of Roman civilization to these benighted savages—”

Hoots of derision. “And take their riches from them!” someone shouted. Someone always did shout something like that. You could count on it.

“Indeed, my friends! And share both those riches and the glory of triumph with
you
!”

Utter silence. You could perhaps hear a few greedy drops of drool fall.

“Rome is the most terrible of enemies, as the Teutons and a few misguided Gauls have learned to their sorrow, but Rome is also the greatest of friends, as you will now learn to your profit and glory and joy! We will invade Britain together, my friends, the noble warriors of Gaul—”

Caesar half turned and pointed with his sword to the cohorts massed on his right hand, who, on the signal, drew their swords as one, held them high in the air.

“—and the invincible legions of Rome!”

“Hail, Caesar!” the legionnaires shouted. Some of the Gauls replied, and since his men had been drilled to repeat the salutation as they did, the illusion was created that everyone now repeated it in unison.

“Hail, Caesar!”

The illusion in turn created the reality, as such illusions tended to do, and the salutation was repeated spontaneously.

“I like it not!” shouted a bluff blond fellow with an enormous unkempt mustache near the front.

There was at least one in every crowd.

“Dumnorix,” Gisstus reminded Caesar in a whisper. “Diviacx’s brother, but no particular friend of Rome.”

“What is the great warrior Dumnorix afraid of, a horde of half-naked savages?” Caesar taunted, taking care to say it with a smile, so that the mockery drew laughter from all but Dumnorix, who glowered back at him, his fair skin blushing red.

“I fear no man!” he shouted.

“What, then, causes you to hold back from easy wealth and noble glory, O fearless Dumnorix?”

Though the rage thus evoked in him was visible, Dumnorix apparently was clever enough to know he had best choke it back and escape with a jest. “We are no race of sailors, and that channel gets stormy,” he said. “We might find ourselves heaving our guts out before we got there, to say nothing of what the horses might do!”

Modest laughter at this.

“What, is the great warrior Dumnorix afraid of a little seasickness?” Caesar said good-naturedly, allowing him his escape. “Are there others here unwilling to sacrifice a bellyful of vomit for a mountain of gold and a paean of glory?”

Louder and more derisive laughter.

“Well, if there are, there are plenty of others in Gaul eager to take your share,” Caesar said with a shrug, and, turning on his heel, pretended to stalk off.

But only for one, two, three paces. Then he stopped suddenly, snapped his fingers as if at his own forgetfulness, and turned back to face the Gauls.

“Oh,” he said, “did I forget to tell you that half the booty we take will be yours?”

The cheers and “Hail, Caesar”s were louder and more prolonged this time, and Caesar took care to make his exit into the tent before they had fully died out.

“Another good performance, Caesar,” Gisstus said when Labienus had gone off to bivouac his troops, and wine had been brought to soothe Caesar’s throat. “Fortunately, the last.”

Caesar sighed. “It
did
get boring,” he said.

“But it was effective. Few of them are able to resist their greed, and the few that are clever enough to suspect our generosity are shamed into coming along for fear of appearing cowards.”

“Except for that mound of lard, Gobanit,” said Caesar. “Nothing shames him.”

The Arverni tended to oppose whatever the Edui favored, and the closer the Edui had come to alliance with Rome, the more restive they had become. So replacing the biggest troublemaker, that Keltill, with his greedy and pliant brother, and getting him to create an “Arverne Republic” whose “Senate” could then keep electing him vergobret, had been a good idea at the time.

But Gobanit had outlived his usefulness. He had grown so fat and lazy that the thought of him leading the Arverni into battle was ludicrous. He had dutifully supported the invasion of Britain, but made it clear that he himself would not cross the water. Meaning that he had not the charisma to persuade the hotbloods among the Arverni, who had practically made a god of Keltill, to come along against their distaste for Rome. And these were precisely the sort of elements the whole thing was designed to eliminate.

Worse, if the restive leadership of the other tribes were to be eliminated without doing likewise to the Arverni, the effect would be to increase the relative strength of Rome’s bitterest enemy among the Gauls.

“Something must be done about the Arverne situation before we embark, Gisstus,” Caesar said.

Gisstus drew a forefinger across his throat.

Caesar shook his head. “If Gobanit were simply eliminated right now, half of the Arverne nobles would suspect us, and all of them would be contending to take his place. It would be chaos.”

“So we
replace
him with someone both more popular and more pliant.”

“Indeed . . .”

“The question is, with whom?” said Gisstus.

“Find someone,” said Caesar.

“And where do you suggest such a mythical creature might be found?”

Caesar shrugged. “If one cannot find a unicorn,” he said, “one must make do with an antelope horn glued to the forehead of a white goat.”