The Druid King (26 page)

“Attack!” shouted Vercingetorix, waving his sword, and charged toward the rear of the Roman infantry.

He had hardly brought his horse up into a full gallop when Rhia cut in front of him and barred his way with his own standard.

“What are you—”

“Look behind you!” Rhia shouted.

When Vercingetorix did, he saw that, rather than riding with him in an attempt to attack the Romans from the rear and rescue their fellows, his six “cavalrymen” were disappearing into the distance.

“Cowards! Bastards!” he shouted after them in a fury.

He wheeled again, and would have charged the Romans alone had not Rhia seized the reins of his horse and restrained him at sword point until reason returned.

When the Romans captured the village, they took care to slice ankle tendons, pierce thighs, cut off feet, and otherwise disable without killing, and to take as many prisoners as they could. These they took to a prominent place on the road to Gergovia and crucified. It was said the prisoners took days to die. Longer than it took the carrion birds to pick their bones clean.

Vercingetorix had not had the heart to raise his standard since. Who would have been willing to rally to it if he had?

An owl hooted. A distant wolf howled. Another answered. Something small scurried through the forest. Something somewhat larger pursued. There was a shrill little scream, a thrashing, then silence.

Vercingetorix found that, in the midst of these grim and frustrating memories, he was huddling closer to Rhia. His “war” on Caesar had ended in ignominy before it began, and she was his entire “army.”What further purpose was there to blood oaths, or their brotherhood and sisterhood of the sword?

Perhaps the nights really
were
worse than the days, sleeping close beside her for the warmth, worse still lying awake while she muttered and writhed in her sleep, dreaming amorous thoughts of him, he dared to hope. What reason remained not to fulfill them?

“Our time as brother and sister of the sword would seem to be over, Rhia,” he ventured.

“You must not acknowledge defeat.”

“As I must not acknowledge that the sun will rise in the morning whether I will it or not?”Vercingetorix said bitterly.

“You have seen your destiny in a vision. . . .”

“Cannot visions lie?”

“Their truths may not be spoken plain, but they do not lie.”

“Neither do they point to the path to their fulfillment. What are we to do now?”

Rhia was silent, nor would she meet his gaze. Somehow this emboldened Vercingetorix to move closer to her. She in turn seemed to lean closer to him. Vercingetorix dared to put a hand upon her thigh—

—and she pulled back from his touch as if his hand were afire. “No, Vercingetorix,” she said softly, still unwilling or unable to look him in the eye. “We must not. Destiny has brought us together not for pleasure but to serve a purpose—”

“Destiny or not, Rhia, we are a man and a woman.”

“I have my vow, and you—”

“Vows must be kept!”

It was the voice of Guttuatr, as he emerged like a spirit from the darkness, but he became very much a creature of flesh when he strode to the campfire, squatted down, and immediately and without invitation ripped a haunch off the spitted rabbit.

“Those who would be lovers must leave flesh untouched,” he managed to say between greedy mouthfuls. “Sacrifices must be made.”

“I don’t notice
you
leaving flesh untouched or making any sacrifices,” Vercingetorix snapped petulantly.

Guttuatr froze. He took the rabbit leg from his mouth and tossed it away into the forest. His craggy face, reddened and deeply etched by the firelight, was a mask of deadly earnest as he stared at Vercingetorix.

“What sacrifice would you have me make . . . druid?” he said.

Vercingetorix let his desperation and ire speak for him.

“Command the tribes of Gaul to unite against Rome!”

Guttuatr shrank back as if confronted with the unspeakable. “I cannot do such a thing!” he exclaimed.

“Oh yes, you can!”

“You know not what you ask!”

“Oh yes, I do!” said Vercingetorix, and though these were the iresome words of the man of action, as he spoke them they became truth, his spirit became calm, and it was the man of knowledge who now spoke to his fellow druid.

“I call upon you to descend from the world of knowledge into the world of action. I call upon you to make the sacrifice of that which you hold most dear—the purity of your own spirit.”

“You call upon me to do what no druid must do,” Guttuatr said softly, “what no Arch Druid has ever done.” It seemed to Vercingetorix that, for the first time since he had known him, he saw Guttuatr afraid.

“You must, Guttuatr, or the way of the druids itself will surely perish. If you do not, Caesar will find us as we are now when he returns in the spring, and crush us all. Gaul will become but a name for a conquered province of Rome, and you will trade the precious purity of your druid’s robe for a toga!”

“Who dares ask me to do such a terrible thing?” said Guttuatr, regarding him as if seeing a demon.

“Who dares ask?”
Vercingetorix roared at him. “I do, Vercingetorix, son of Keltill, who died in fire to save our people! I do, the boy you trained as your instrument because the heavens commanded you! I do, Vercingetorix, denied all the pleasures of an ordinary man! I do, Vercingetorix, whose hands are steeped in blood! I chose none of this! If I am a monster, you have made me so!”

“To break my vow and use the druid’s art to bend the worldly destiny of men . . .” Guttuatr muttered hesitantly.

But his very hesitancy was answer enough. Vercingetorix saw that his words had conquered the Arch Druid, and held his silence.

Guttuatr sighed. “It is a terrible magic you ask me to make, and the price will be terrible.”

“The greater the magic, the greater the price that must be paid, as someone has told me often enough.”

“I must have a human life with which to work this art,” said Guttuatr.

“It has been done before . . .” Vercingetorix said coldly. “And I have already sacrificed countless lives to accomplish nothing.”

Was it illusion, or had the night sounds ceased? All at once, Guttuatr’s visage transformed from that of an old man whose will he had tamed into that of the fiercest of Arch Druids from the legends of long ago.

“Never have the druids made magic such as this,” he said. “And so the life that must be paid must be unlike that of any that have been sacrificed to the gods before. The life of a
druid . . .
and not taken, but freely given.”

The crowns of the surrounding trees are still frosted with snow, but the sun rising toward its zenith has melted it away from the circular clearing, revealing the bleak brownish remnants of grass and rocks tinged the dirty purple of old bloodstains by the dying moss and more tenacious lichen.

The Arch Druid Guttuatr stands in the center of the circle, his breath rendered visible by the frost, bearing the great oaken staff of his office, crowned with its fallen star.

Once, twice, thrice, he raps the nether end upon a rock, and from the four quarters of the wind, druids emerge from the forest. There are many of them, perhaps as many as two hundred, an unnatural number for the size of the clearing, which fills completely. Their white robes are trimmed with the colors of all the tribes of Gaul. The mood is sullen rather than solemn as they wait for the Arch Druid to speak.

“I have summoned you all here from the far corners of Gaul to bear witness to a sacred circle of judgment such as has never been held before. . . .”

Murmurs sweep through the assembled druids.

“For it is a druid who is to be judged.”

The massed intake of breath is like a wind through the trees, and the white exhalations drape the druids in a momentary fog.

“And more. Much more. I call upon the druid Diviacx of the Edui to come forward.”

There is a commotion in the middle of the crowded clearing, and then the way parts for Diviacx, who strides forward in his blue-trimmed white robe. His face is impassive; only his eyes, darting this way and that, betray his fearful unease.

“I am to be judged by the druids?”

“Far crueler than that, Diviacx. You must judge yourself.”

“Myself?”

“Who better to judge the story of your life in this world and what it will mean in the next?”

“You ask a hard thing, Arch Druid.”

“Have you not done hard things before, Diviacx?” shouts a voice from the assembly. It is Vercingetorix, coming forward in a druid’s robe, pure white like Guttuatr’s, unmarked by tribal emblem.

“Or was it easy to conspire to bring the Romans here for your own profit?” he says as he approaches.

Diviacx turns away from Guttuatr to confront Vercingetorix and his fellow druids. “I did it to save us all from the Teutons! And they are gone, are they not?”

“You did it for the Edui!”

“I did it for all Gaul!”

“Then will you now prove it?” Vercingetorix asks insinuatingly. “Will you now save us from the Romans? Even the Arverni,
Eduen
?”

“I am a druid before I am an Eduen!” Diviacx declares. “I would save us from the Romans if I could,” he says more weakly, and perhaps with genuine sorrow, “but I know not how.”

“You begin by swearing to speak nothing but truth within this sacred circle,” Guttuatr tells him. “No matter where its path may lead.”

Diviacx withdraws a dagger from beneath his robe. “With an open heart and the last drop of my blood, Arch Druid,” he says softly, and he slashes his palm, raises his hand aloft, and allows a few red drops to stain the whiteness of his robe.

“Did you not conspire with Caesar to murder my father?”Vercingetorix demands.

“Did your father not conspire to make himself king of the Gauls against all law and tradition?” cries Diviacx. “And did
you
not murder Dumnorix, my brother?”

“No, I did not.”

“What?”

“I swear to speak nothing but the truth within this sacred circle, no matter where its path may lead,” says Vercingetorix, and from beneath his druid’s robe he withdraws not a dagger but a warrior’s sword. “With an open heart and the last drop of my blood.” And he slashes not his palm but his forearm, and allows his blood to flow down his white robe’s sleeve.

“The truth is, I did
wish
to slay your brother, Diviacx, and this sword did pierce his innocent flesh, for I believed he conspired with you and Caesar to kill Keltill. For this I ask his spirit to forgive me. And for this that spirit’s brother may take my life if he so wishes.”

Vercingetorix hands the dumbfounded Diviacx his sword.

“But before you do, Diviacx, know that it was
Caesar’s
hand that slew your brother, not my own.”

“Caesar . . . ?” whispers Diviacx as the sword hangs limply in his hand.
“Caesar?”

“Through the instrumentality of his assassin Gisstus,” says Vercingetorix, “who slew him with a javelin from hiding like the serpent he was.”

“Gisstus!”
exclaims Diviacx.

“Whom I then slew, and whose head I threw at Caesar as a token of my outrage and a declaration of war between him and myself.”

“You knew this man?” asks the Arch Druid.

Diviacx’s head droops deeper than the sword hanging from his hand. “He was Caesar’s secret emissary at . . . at . . .”

“At Gergovia!” cries Vercingetorix. “At the seizing and burning of my father!”

“Why should I believe he slew my brother?” Diviacx demands.

“You have just admitted that you conspired in secret with him to burn my father.”

“I admitted no such thing,” Diviacx insists, albeit weakly, and with an evasive look in his eyes.

“Do you deny it under an oath sworn in blood?” says the Arch Druid.

“I . . . I cannot,” Diviacx replies miserably in a voice barely above a whisper. Then, plaintively: “It’s true? Gisstus slew my brother? From hiding? Without honor?”

“I swear it under blood oath as the man who saw it and avenged Dumnorix,” Vercingetorix tells him in a tone not devoid of sympathy.

“Under orders from Caesar?”

“Who else could order Gisstus?”

Diviacx sighs. His eyes grow misty. His lower lip trembles. “Caesar betrayed me!” he cries. “And tricked me into betraying my own people! And killed my brother!”

The assembled druids, who have maintained a rapt silence, now mutter and cry among themselves. The Arch Druid lets this continue a while before raising his staff to command a silence in which to speak.

“Behold the work of Rome, which has not only set tribe against tribe, but Eduen against Eduen, Arverne against Arverne, brother against brother,
druid against druid
!”

“What I did, I did for Gaul, or so I truly believed,” insists Diviacx. “I was the unwitting tool of treacherous Caesar. And yet . . .”

“And yet?” says Vercingetorix.

“And yet my own brother, full of honor, has paid with his life for what
I
have done!” Diviacx cries out in anguish.

“And would you now be the tool of Gaul, Diviacx?” says Guttuatr.

A light dusting of snow begins to fall. The druids sigh as if they have been given a sign. But of what, they do not know. Nor does Diviacx.

“I don’t understand. . . .”

“You say you conspired to bring the Romans to save Gaul from the Teutons. You said you conspired to slay Keltill to preserve our people and our way. . . .”

“I swear this to be true!”

“Would you now do as much to preserve Gaul and its way from the Romans?”

“With the last drop of my—”

Diviacx stops short as a terrible comprehension dawns in his eyes. The druids gasp, then murmur, then fall so silent that it seems the fall of the snowflakes upon their robes can almost be heard.

“With the last drop of my blood,” he says softly, and humbly hangs his head.

Guttuatr takes a step forward. There is something hesitant about it, and so too in his voice as he begins to speak.

“It is not our way to fight as one people under a single leader. Our diversity has long been our strength and our freedom. It has preserved the tribes of Gaul from those who lust for power. The druids have always been the guardians of the things of the spirit, and never intervene in the worldly destiny of Gaul. And yet . . . and yet now, if we do not intervene, the destiny of Gaul will be for its very spirit to perish. . . .”