The Druid King (25 page)

He slashed the Roman trooper on his right across the throat with a sweep of his sword, ducked under a sword thrust from the one on his left, and was through, and attacking him from behind. His sword clanged harmlessly off the back of the Roman’s helmet, the Roman trooper wheeled his horse smartly to face Vercingetorix, but the gap in the Roman line was open, and Vercingetorix’s men rode through it.

Or some of them did.

Vercingetorix was too busy fending off sword thrusts to see what had happened, but somehow, within moments, two of his men were dead on the ground, and instead of being behind a shattered line of Roman cavalry, he and the remaining four were within a circle of Roman horsemen.

He reared his horse and slashed down on the hand of one attacker, sending his sword falling to the ground; thrust straight forward, piercing another through the eye.

He whirled his mount to see one more of his men on the ground, being trampled by panicked riderless horses as a javelin was hurled right at him.Vercingetorix flicked it away with his sword, saw another of his men take a javelin in the stomach. He reared his horse again, saw a beardless boy pierced screaming through the neck, put his head down against his horse’s neck, tucked his sword against his body, and made for the encircling line of Romans.

Javelins whizzed past his head—one bounced off his helm—then he reared his horse, whipped out his sword, slashed at the Roman on his right, and saw—

—Dracovax take javelins, one, two, three, chest, back, stomach. No Roman javelin was sharper than the look of astonishment, pain, fury, and betrayal that Dracovax threw him as their eyes met in the briefest of instants before he too fell.

Then Vercingetorix was through the encircling Romans, and the remaining Roman cavalry was once more galloping two abreast down the road in good order toward the flaming fields, behind which the friends and families of the men he had led into this swift and useless slaughter were attempting to flee.

“Bastards! Cowards! Come back and fight!” Vercingetorix shouted after the Romans. “I am Vercingetorix, son of Keltill! Come back and fight! Kill me if you dare!”

He galloped behind them for a while, shouting and waving his sword, but it was as futile as the deaths he had brought to the brave men who had followed him, for he gained no ground on the Romans, nor did they deign to take up his challenge.

The last he saw of the Roman cavalry, they were riding straight into the flames, and he never knew what became of the Gauls running for their freedom beyond them.

Now Vercingetorix endured one last look at the embers of their lives dying to cinders down there, where the night hid the blackened fields that only hours ago had been rich golden croplands, where an unseen dog howled its anguish at the stars and gave voice to his own.

Whether the remnants of Dracovax’s people had escaped or died or been enslaved he might never know, but never could he forget them. For never could he forget the bitter lesson he had learned at their expense.

Perhaps Caesar did not want him slain or captured.

Perhaps
he
could not be slain on the soil of Gaul.

But certainly those who followed him could be killed, as easily as a husbandman might wring the neck of a chicken.

For two nights and two days, Vercingetorix lurked in the forest, his spirit shrouded in mists like the fogs that lay upon the woodland, and no less heavy and dampened than the sodden branches. Finally, he decided to return to the place from which he had left the way of the man of knowledge in the wan hope of finding wiser counsel than his own.

The sun was beginning to set through the tree crowns when he reached the druid school, casting long wavering shadows on an eerie scene of orderly destruction. The thatched huts had been burned to the ground but with care, for neither the grass of the clearing nor a single tree had been singed, and the stone temple still stood untouched. Not a person was present, but neither were there corpses or any sign of a struggle.

Vercingetorix dismounted, examined the ashes of the huts, paced around the periphery of the clearing, peered into the deepening shadows of the forest. No one. No sound but the day birds returning to roost and the night birds tentatively beginning their songs.

There was only one other place to go, only one other’s counsel that he could think to seek, and so Vercingetorix remounted and rode back through the trees, back to the cave of Rhia.

A bloody red twilight had enveloped the forest by the time Vercingetorix got there, and firelight glowed somberly within the opening in the rock face.

Vercingetorix dismounted and entered. Though he had taken many lessons outside, never had he been invited into the cave or sought entry, so he made his way cautiously along a dark and narrow passage toward the firelight at the far end.

He emerged into a rough-hewn circular chamber where a fire burned in a large brass brazier. Before the fire, back to him, was a warrior in armor and helmet with a sword held in both hands, its point grounded upon the rocky floor.

Rhia whirled around at some slight sound made by his approach, her sword held high over one shoulder, and Vercingetorix found that, without thought, he had drawn his own sword and assumed the same position.

Rhia smiled mirthlessly. “Well learned,” she said.

“Well taught,” said Vercingetorix. “But where is everybody? The druids of the school—”

“Gone into the forest to hide in plain sight.”

“And you remained to face the wrath of Caesar alone?”

“I remained to wait for you,” said Rhia. “For now begins the destiny for which my life was crafted.”

“Crafted . . . ?”

“Are not all our lives crafted for destinies we do not know, by gods or forces or magics we never see or understand?”

“Some of us see our destinies before they arrive,” Vercingetorix said somberly. “But whether boon or curse . . .” He could only shrug.

“Does it matter?” said Rhia. “Can we resist destiny? When I was a wild creature of the forest and lived without words in which to think, I saw without thought, and so was one with both this world and the Land of Legend, and I saw . . . I saw . . .” Her brow wrinkled, as she struggled to find words to bind that which could not be bound by words.

“I saw
you,
Vercingetorix,” she finally said. “And likewise I saw myself . . . my life to come . . . my death. . . .”

“As I saw my destiny under the Tree of Knowledge . . .”

“Perhaps,” said Rhia, “but as an animal might.” Sword still held high above her shoulder, she yet trembled like a fawn, and Vercingetorix felt the desire, the need, to comfort her.

“Let us not speak of such things,” she said in a whispery voice. “Let me just say that, as this sword was crafted by men to be my weapon, so was I crafted by the gods to be yours.”

Rhia strode forward. But not to embrace him. Instead, she reached down one-handed with her sword, put the tip of it under his, and raised both up so that the two warriors were separated by crossed swords held high between them.

“I am your weapon to wield to the last drop of my blood,” she said. “Nothing more and nothing less. Your sister of the sword. You must accept our destiny, for in this there is no choice. Swear this oath with me!”

She reached up with her free hand and ran the palm of it along the cutting edge of her sword, drawing a thin line of blood.

She kissed the palm, smearing her own blood upon her lips.

Vercingetorix stared at her, stunned and transfixed for a long moment, before he understood. Then he too ran his palm down the edge of his sword, and kissed the blood he had drawn onto his lips.

Swords still crossed, they kissed, closed-mouth but long, without erotic ardor, but with a fiercer passion.

“Brother and sister of the sword!” he declared.

“Until death parts us in this world,” said Rhia, “and forever in the Land of Legend.”

Am I vexed or am I content? Caesar asked himself, and the question was its own answer, for in this season of his life, each of these humors seemed to contain the seed of the other. The foray into Britain had proved as pointless as he had known it would, but upon his return he had found that Tulius had done well in subjugating the Arverni and their tributary tribes, so well that what he had extracted from them in goods and slaves exceeded the whole cost of the British expedition.

Now, as he rode under a blue stormless sky, the Alpine peaks were capped with snow only at their heights, the grass was still green in these valleys, and the passage south to Gallia Narbonensis for the winter was proving a sweet and soft one. Beside him rode Brutus, as he had in Britain—a poor substitute for Gisstus as a mirror for his inner thoughts perhaps, but one whose youth and naïveté encouraged his brighter aspects.

Behind them, his legions marched in good order, and among the formations of infantry and cavalry, there were long lines of slaves, herds of sheep and horses, and many wagons bearing not only foodstuffs, leathers, and cloth, but sacks of dyes known only to the Gauls, gems, excellent metalwork, and more gold than Caesar had even hoped for. The men were in a fine humor, and why should they not be, marching south for the usual winter of rest after an unusually successful and lucrative campaigning season.

“They wouldn’t dare!” cried Brutus.

Four cavalrymen were galloping down the mountain slope toward them with hands full of snowballs that they were throwing at each other in wild good spirits.

Brutus laughed as they approached.

“Or would they?”

But when two of the troopers reached them, each holding a snowball, another produced a wineskin and poured wine on them.

“Taste this!” he cried in delight, as Caesar and Brutus were each handed a snowball.

Brutus bit gingerly into his. “Delicious!” he exclaimed.

Caesar, constrained to do likewise, tasted his snowball. It was indeed delicious, and unexpectedly so; if anyone could work out a way to create such a cool treat in the heat of the Roman summer, his fortune would surely be made.

“Wonderful!” said Caesar, and plastered a happy grin across his face. But his heart just wasn’t in it, and Brutus sensed this.

“The men are in a happy mood,” he said when the troopers had departed. “Why is
your
mood not light, Caesar?”

“Because we’ll be marching the other way in the spring, Brutus,” said Caesar. “After leaving the Gauls to their own devices all winter . . .”

“But with the Arverni all but conquered, we’ll be ready to turn our attention to the Edui. . . .”

“True,” said Caesar.

“Then why do you worry?”

“In a word, Vercingetorix,” said Caesar. “Still at large.” I can’t tell him that this is by my own order, can I? And certainly not that it’s turned into a mistake.

“A fugitive in the forest, detested by all save the Arverni for the slaying of Dumnorix,” Brutus said scornfully.

“True again, my young friend. But the Arverni are turning him into a legend.”

“A mythic hero with no army. What can one man do?”

“Am
I
not one man, Brutus?” Caesar said sardonically.

The first light snow of winter had dusted the boughs of the trees. Vercingetorix sat close by Rhia as they warmed themselves around a campfire that sent sparks up into the crystalline night. The savory smoke of the rabbit they had spitted and roasted clung to his nostrils as they hunkered there, picking off morsels.

Here we are, thought Vercingetorix sourly, camped alone on a chilly early winter eve, smacking our lips over crackled meat around a cozy fire, soon to turn to doing likewise over each other, were we any natural man and woman. But brother and sister of the sword did not have the right to think such things, though for two turnings of the moon, he had spent all his days and all his nights with Rhia.

Caesar had taken his main force south for the winter, leaving only garrisons to hold Gergovia and the larger villages. But Vercingetorix knew that the Romans would return in full force in the spring. Now was the time to raise an army, overwhelm the garrisons Caesar had left behind, and be prepared to confront the Romans when the snows in the mountain passes melted.

So he carved a crude bear out of oak, affixed it to a pole, gave it to Rhia, and anointed her “standard-bearer of the army of the Arverni,” hoping that the legend of his invincibility, the presence at his side of such an arcane bearer, and the outrageousness of raising the bear standard at all would rally the Arverni to it.

But all he could rally at any one time were a few real warriors and a score or two of starving peasants to raid small villages garrisoned by no more than a handful of legionnaires. This had resulted in half a dozen easy and pathetic “victories” by “the army of the Arverni.” These makeshift bands would slay the Romans and all they deemed collaborators, drink all there was to drink, eat what they could stuff into their bellies, and then disappear with what was left before Roman reinforcements could arrive.

A week ago, though, this frustrating routine of what amounted to little more than banditry had produced disaster.

The village they attacked had a large supply of Roman wine; the “army of the Arvernes” had gotten drunker than usual and passed into oblivion for the night. A Roman or two must have escaped in the confusion, for the revelers awoke to find the village surrounded by half a cohort of Roman infantry.

With the first rays of the sun, the Romans moved in from all directions like a fist slowly closing on a peach. Vercingetorix, Rhia, and the half dozen Arverni who had horses found themselves fighting to escape with their lives. Since the Romans had no cavalry, slashing their way through the thinly spread infantry line was not difficult for those who were mounted, nor did the Romans seriously seek to impede them, intent as they were on the less risky task of massacring those without horses.

It would have been easy enough to flee, for infantry could hardly pursue horsemen, but Vercingetorix could not honorably leave the rest of his men to perish. So, once the Roman infantry had turned their backs on his tiny escaping cavalry band, Vercingetorix wheeled his horse around and reared it. Rhia, seeing this, did likewise, raising his standard as high as she could.