The Druid King (51 page)

Nor did Labienus deign to look back now as he ordered his trumpeter to sound the charge, and one trumpet blared, and then many, and five thousand Roman cavalrymen galloped across the plain toward death or glory.

After a few minutes, the drumming rumble of their hooves was drowned out by a far greater thunder.

Thousands of men and horses fell to arrows and then javelins before the sea of Gauls could reach the defensive ditch at the foot of the outer Roman wall, and then it seemed to pause, to pile up, to crest into a foaming breaker like a rolling wave against a rocky coast.

Horses, unable to check their momentum, stumbled into the ditch, their riders thrown; more horses piled up behind them, fell atop them; and in moments the ditch was filled with the dead and the dying, with screams and whinnies and cries, with the mingled blood of horses and men.

But more horses and men crossed over this bridge of flesh and gore, and reached the wall. Scaling ladders were thrown against it, and men fought with each other to climb them, but the angles were too steep for the weight by the time anyone reached the top, and they mostly fell down. Foot soldiers battered madly at the logs of the wall with swords, spears, and battle-axes. Cavalrymen tried to stand up on their saddles. Gauls tried to form human pyramids.

Had any of those battling at the Roman fortifications thought to glance to the northwest, they would have seen a gleaming line of armor moving toward Alesia.

And then, behind it and flanking it on either side, and wider still, darker and more indistinct, something like billowing clouds of dust, or a storm front moving in.

Caesar was torn between two equally grotesque spectacles, for atop this tower he was high enough to see over both walls of his fortress.

On the far side, a vast pile of corpses was already heaped up, and had many of them not been steeped in burning pitch and Greek fire or whatever other noxious stuff Gallius had cooked up, the Gauls probably would have tried to use this pile as a human scaling ladder, yet they kept coming and coming, even as more death poured down, even as catapults and ballistae devastated their rear.

When would the poor fools break or run? Or was their idea of honorable glory to be slaughtered to the last man?

“Look! Look!” cried a signalman, presuming to grab Caesar by the arm with one hand, and direct his attention westward by pointing with the other.

“By the balls of Mars, he did it!” exclaimed Caesar.

There, descending on the rear of an army of Gauls too valorous to admit that it was already defeated, was a formation of Roman cavalry led by the standard of Titus Labienus and followed by a vast horde of Teutons.

In a way, it was a double mercy. Even though the battle was already won, Mars had granted Labienus his moment of glory. And perhaps what was about to happen would finally convince those poor brave bastards that Gaul was conquered.

Caesar crossed the platform and turned his attention to the state of things on the Alesian side. It was much the same, except for the lack of an onrushing Teuton horde. The Gauls crowded as close as they could behind Vercingetorix and his battering ram, where the wall was on fire, virtually right below Caesar’s own position.

Somewhat concerned at this, Caesar surveyed the situation between the walls of his fortress. It was quite reassuring. He saw the backstage machineries of his army grinding smoothly and purposefully on, boiling more pitch and water, relaying ammunition to the walls, and bringing up two cohorts of infantry to face the section of the inner wall beneath him.

Which had blackened and begun to smolder clear through and was now beginning to splinter under the blows of the battering ram.

The earth rumbled with the thunder of onrushing hooves, and finally eyes at the back of the crumbling army of Gauls turned to behold a small formation of Roman cavalry leading a mighty wave of Teuton horsemen descending on their rear.

So great was the collective cry of despair that it could be heard above the din of the battle.

The rear ranks of Gauls—those who saw what was coming—turned to flee, cavalry and infantry alike scrambling back across the filled-in section of the outer ditch, then scattering in all directions.

The army of Gauls disintegrated from the rear, each rank turning in confusion as the rank behind disappeared, then fleeing in terror. It did not take long for the process to reach the carnage beneath the wall, for all to realize that they were about to be caught between the merciless Roman war machine and the onrushing Teutons, whose massed hoofbeats could now be heard above the din of the lost battle.

Courage abandoned those vergobrets still living, those standard-bearers still holding their tribal ensigns aloft. One by one, the Santon hawk, the Parisii wolf, the Cadurque stag, the Atrebate eagle, and the rest turned to flee, dispersing as widely as they could, their tribesmen running, riding, smashing into each other, in their desperation to follow the standard of their own people.

Seeing this, Litivak could only wave his sword in a rage, screaming and cursing in a futile attempt to rally the Gauls to continue their suicidal attack on the Romans—

He reared his horse, wheeling it and—

A ballista bolt struck him in the throat and passed clear through, ripping his head almost free from his neck in a fountain of bright, spurting blood, and struck his standard-bearer in the navel, knocking him off his horse, and the standard of the Edui to the blood-soaked ground.

“Now I have finally conquered them,” Caesar muttered to himself, as he saw Litivak fall and the Eduen standard fall with him.

If this ghastly rout could be dignified by such a military term. The battle was won, the war was over, and he should have felt triumphant elation.

There was that, but there was also something akin to what those who suffered from it described as postcoital sadness. In which state Caesar realized that the poor Gauls were still being bombarded to no useful purpose by ballistae and catapults.

“Tell them to cease firing and let the poor bastards go,” he ordered a signalman.

Am I becoming soft in my maturity? he wondered. But no; for while mercilessness might be a virtue while there was a war to be fought, it was unseemly once it was won.

Turning his attention to the other front in this war that was already won, Caesar saw that Vercingetorix and his army didn’t yet know it.

They were still there being slaughtered, and Vercingetorix was still humping away with his battering ram like a dutiful but insensitive lover.

Then, with a final shattering crack, the ram
did
breach the fireweakened wall, and to the cheers of all the Gauls who saw it, a whole blackened section fell away in shards to reveal—

A solid wall of Roman shields blocking the breach and bristling with the swords of the legionnaires behind them.

For a moment, Vercingetorix froze.

And then he glanced upward.

And his eyes chanced to meet Caesar’s atop the tower.

Gazing into the eyes of Vercingetorix, Caesar sees a little smile of grim acknowledgment.

He knows.

Vercingetorix raises his sword in mocking salute.

“We who are about to die salute you, Caesar!” he shouts.

Mockingly?

Perhaps not, thinks Caesar, as he finds himself raising his own sword and saluting his worthy vanquished foe with total sincerity.

Vercingetorix lowers his sword, and with his amazon at his side, and his defeated Gauls rallying to him, lunges at the cohort of legionnaires blocking the breach in the fortress of Rome. And so the final battle of the conquest of Gaul begins after the war is already won, a meaningless combat of man against man and sword against sword.

Meaningless, or as it is meant to be? Caesar asks himself. Shall history say that Gaius Julius Caesar was a lesser man than the king of the Gauls?

As, with no further thought, he descends from on high to join it.

Action mercifully stops the thought that blackens his mind as Vercingetorix slashes away at Roman shields, a mindless clatter and clash of metal against metal, of muscle against muscle, of the sheer weight of bodies, of the mass of his warriors expending their strength and their lives against the armored mass of Roman legionnaires. Of all that was once Gaul against all that is Rome.

With Rhia, his sister of the sword, fighting beside him to the very end.

Caesar reaches the rear of the fray and sees a squad of his men wheeling a mobile barricade toward the breach, but sees too that the Gauls have pushed his legionnaires back, and a line of them stands just inside the blackened and jagged hole, defending and blocking it with their bodies.

“Take heart, legionnaires!” he shouts as he presses forward, sword held high, the ensign of his crimson cloak streaming behind him. “Caesar himself fights at your side!”

And they do. They cheer. They attack with renewed vigor. Four javelin men from a reinforcing cohort rushing up behind him break ranks to escort him through the crush to the front.

“The battle is won!” Caesar shouts triumphantly as he breaks through the ranks of his own men to face the Gauls.

To face Vercingetorix.

“The Gauls flee to the four winds!” he shouts. “The war is over! Gaul is conquered.”

Vercingetorix looks right at him. His sword hangs limp.

The Gauls surrounding him seem to cringe backward in dismay. Caesar’s legionnaires stand motionless for an instant, so that it seems that he and Vercingetorix stand alone facing each other on their own private battlefield.

As it was meant to be.

Dreamily, Caesar finds himself moving forward. To accept the unspoken challenge.

As was destined—

From behind him, a javelin whistles toward Vercingetorix—

His amazon leaps in front of him—

And the javelin pierces her breast straight through to the heart. She falls backward into the arms of Vercingetorix.

Who holds her tenderly as he gazes at Caesar. Who cannot look away from those eyes until—

He senses the wind of a motion behind him.

And sees a legionnaire in the act of throwing his javelin.

“No!” he shouts angrily as he smashes it from the man’s hand with the flat of his sword. “He has lost everything but his life and his honor.”

And he looks back at Vercingetorix with the tenderness of the father he has never been for the son he has never had.

“Those he may keep. The triumphant conqueror of Gaul owes that much to . . . its king.”

And the mobile barricade slides shut across the breach between them.

XXIII

VERCINGETORIX CARRIES the lifeless body of Rhia across a plain piled with corpses and drenched with blood, toward a burning city, through its shattered gates, and into a plaza thronged with warriors beating a dirge on their shields with their swords.

The faces of the warriors are bone-white skulls, a funeral pyre is already burning, somehow Rhia already lies upon it, and within the fire Vercingetorix sees the eyes of Keltill, brighter than the flames, as his father’s voice speaks to him from the place beyond them.

“In fire do you become the tale the bards will sing.

In fire shall you enter the Land of Legend as a king.”

Vercingetorix walks into the flames, burning but unconsumed.

He knows that this is a dream, that he has passed through the flames into the Land of Legend, where the Great Wheel turns and a new Great Age is born. And he can see now what will be.

He sees himself catching the falling body of Rhia, and Caesar staying the hand that would slay him, and he hears the words that Caesar spoke, which never reached his ear in the timebound world of strife.

“You have lost everything but your life and your honor.”

Now the corpse that he holds is his own. And Caesar stands before him in a stone prison cell, a sword in one hand, and the Crown of Brenn in the other.

“One or the other,” says Caesar. “Which shall it be?”

The voices of a multitude chant:
“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!
Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

Vercingetorix reaches for the Crown of Brenn.

“Hail, Vercingetorix, king of Gaul,” Caesar says sardonically, and places it upon his brow.

“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul! Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

The chanting is mocking now, larded with laughter. Vercingetorix wears only a filthy loincloth and the Crown of Brenn. His hands are chained before him, and the chain is fastened to a gilded chariot, and he is afoot. The chariot is dragging him down a wide avenue in Rome, and Caesar rides in the chariot, a wreath of laurel on his brow, waving triumphantly to the crowds lining the way.

“Vercingetorix!”
they cheer sardonically.
“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

Vercingetorix stands once more in the dank stone cell, the Crown of Brenn heavy on his head, as Caesar kneels and now offers him the sword.

“I owe this much to the king of Gaul,” he says tenderly.

Vercingetorix accepts the sword, and he turns it inward, and plunges it into his own heart.

As he does, he becomes an eagle soaring once more above the magic city of his vision beneath the Tree of Knowledge.

But now it is night. A magical night in the Land of Legend such as has never been known in the world of strife. The city is alive with light, as if the gods have sprinkled it with jewels of every color, as numerous as a winter snowfall. Lights soar across the heavens. Lights move along the avenues like falling stars which will never touch ground. The tower of metal wickerwork glows with lights like the Tree of Knowledge set ablaze, so bright that it outshines the stars, burning yet unconsumed.

“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

The eagle he has become swoops down to alight on the pedestal of the statue of the warrior on horseback he has seen before, but now, in this magical night, it is illumined a brilliant greenish white, like old copper shining under a full moon. There is writing engraved on the pedestal in the lettering of the Romans, yet in a language he somehow knows that neither he nor Caesar could ever read.

But he can read clearly enough what is written on the face of the statue, his own face ennobled in stone. It is a face that has seen far too much for its years. It is not the face of a victor, and yet its grim smile is triumphant.

“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

Somehow he knows that this City of Light is in a land that will one day be called Gaul. This is a city built by
Gauls,
built by a people far greater than the Arverni, Edui, Carnutes, Santons, Atrebates, tribes whose names they have forgotten, a city whose glory outshines even that which once was Rome.

“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

This is what the magic of his death has made. Will make. Must make.

“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

The king who must die that his people might live.

“Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

He who must die that his people might truly be born.

Caesar has had visions before, in the burning white light of the falling sickness, in the blood-throbbing heat of battle, in the moment of orgasmic completion, in the depths of fatigue. This is like all of those, and yet it is not, for he awakens out of the bright white light onto a battlefield of dreams.

This
must
be a dream, else how could Great Alexander, blond and radiantly glowing, be riding toward him through the battle of Gergovia upon a horse as white as that light?

Through the red fog of battle he rides, godlike, untouchable, immortal, and Caesar strides forth to meet him, as is his destiny. They come together, their eyes meet, and Caesar looks into those fierce blue depths and is filled with envy, with awe, with pity, and, yes, with love, for he knows that somehow each of them, one to the other, is both father and son.

“When I was your age,” says Alexander the Great, “I had conquered the world.”

“When you are my age,” Caesar tells him, “you will be long since dead.”

For those are the eyes of Vercingetorix in the face of Alexander. He dismounts, and holds out a sword, one hand on the hilt, the other on the blade. Caesar’s own sword.

Vercingetorix kneels before him and holds it up as an offering. “In the name of my people, I surrender my life and my sword.”

“In the name of the Senate and people of Rome, I accept your surrender,” says Caesar, as he takes the sword and places the Crown of Brenn upon the brow of the defeated.
“Vercingetorix, King of Gaul.”

Vercingetorix stands in a clearing in the great forest beneath the Tree of Knowledge. He wears the robe of an Arch Druid over the armor of a warrior. In his right hand is a sword, in his left the scepter of the fallen star. Within the forest stand the shapes of druids; faceless, numberless, hidden in plain sight.

Vercingetorix raises the sword, and an empty white robe comes forth. He raises the Arch Druid’s staff and the face of Guttuatr appears within its cowl.

“And have you seen the story of your life entire now, Vercingetorix, man of action?” he says.

Vercingetorix holds up his sword. “I have seen my death and the triumph its magic will make.”

“The triumph, man of knowledge?”

Vercingetorix holds up his Arch Druid’s staff. “The age of the tribes of Gaul is over, the age of druids has passed, and the age of Rome has begun,” he says. “And when that age passes, there will come another, far greater than any man of knowledge born in this age can hope to understand.”

Vercingetorix raises his sword and crosses it with the Arch Druid’s staff. “I was never destined to do more than carry the spirit of that which is passing from this Great Age into the next.”

From the ethereal folds of his robe, Guttuatr withdraws the Crown of Brenn. Vercingetorix kneels and allows him to place it upon his head.

Vercingetorix rises. “All kings must die,” he says, “but a
druid
king, having encompassed the moment of his death while he yet lives, may wield it as a mighty sword.”

He holds the Arch Druid’s staff aloft by the tip. And the fallen star thereon rises on a tail of fire back into the heavens from whence it came. To become a bright new star as the Wheel turns from one Great Age into the next.

Caesar approaches a circular clearing. In the center of the clearing is a great oak. Beneath the oak is a man. He wears the armor of a warrior beneath the cloak of a druid. Upon his head is the Crown of Brenn. In his left hand is a wooden staff. In his right is a sword.

The sword is Caesar’s own.

“Hail, Caesar, Conqueror of Gaul,” says Vercingetorix.

“Hail,Vercingetorix . . . my young friend,” Caesar finds himself saying. “Do I wake or do I dream?”

“This is the Land of Legend, Caesar. And we are both in it.”

“But why are we here?” Caesar finds himself saying, as if he is an actor playing the part of himself in a drama that has played out many times before.

“To give you what you need,” says Vercingetorix.

“You would surrender Alesia and save the city from further carnage?” says Caesar.

“Is that what you need, Caesar?” says Vercingetorix. “Do you need to pass the rest of your life as an object of ridicule chasing barbarian tribes through the forest?”

“No,” says Caesar. “What
do
I need?” he asks Vercingetorix.

“You must have a
King
to surrender
Gaul,
” says Vercingetorix. “Thereby creating a Gaul for you to conquer.”

And Caesar understands. After all, this is the man he sought to make that king before this war began.

“So be it, my young friend,” he says. “You may rule Gaul as Roman proconsul subject to no man but Caesar. And you may keep the crown you wear if it pleases you to also be called a king.”

“This cannot be,” Vercingetorix tells him. “I have sworn a blood oath never to rule as king while a single Roman soldier remains on the soil of Gaul. No Gaul would obey a traitor who broke such an oath.”

“But then what
do
you offer me?”

“The surrender of a king to take back to Rome in chains as proof that Gaius Julius Caesar can at last be hailed as conqueror of Gaul. That is the part I play in the legend of Caesar.”

“And what part do I play in the legend of Vercingetorix?”

“They are one and the same,” Vercingetorix tells him. “We open the door to the Land of Legend, each for the other, and each of us walks through it.”

And Caesar knows that this is true. Will be true. Is destined to be true.

“The king who must die salutes you,” says Vercingetorix, and hands Caesar back his own sword.

Vercingetorix awoke with the warmth of Marah’s body close beside him and a weighty burden upon his brow.

He did not need to reach up and touch it to know that it was the Crown of Brenn.