The Druid King (48 page)

“Well, I am certainly sworn to no such thing!” said Marah. “If it’s really true that he wants me, he can have me, so why—”

“Because
he
is,” Rhia said in a whisper.

“What?”

Rhia hesitated, nibbled on her lower lip, slowly looked up to meet Marah’s disbelieving gaze.

“Vercingetorix is a virgin,” she finally said.

“Vercingetorix is sworn to virginity?”
exclaimed Marah. “I don’t believe it!”

“Vercingetorix swore no oath of virginity,” Rhia told her, “but we did swear a blood oath as brother and sister of the sword together, an oath to honor
my
oath of virginity while fighting and even sleeping side by side, and thus sharing its warrior’s power. I think, without quite knowing it, Vercingetorix swore a secret silent oath within his own heart to retain the power of his own virginity as long as his destiny required.”

Marah groaned, shook her head. “You don’t know very much about men, do you, Rhia?”

“I lay no claim to your . . . Roman sophistication.”

“You don’t have to have been educated in the amatory arts by a master to know that, shorn of its blood oaths and magical powers, what your little tale really tells is that Vercingetorix has so far remained a virgin because he is afraid.”

“Afraid!” said Rhia. “Never have I known of a man more fearless in battle!”

Marah laughed. “Vercingetorix is afraid to make love to a woman, in large part
because
he is the Great Leader of Warriors. Fearless in battle! Commander of the army of Gaul! Chosen by destiny to be king! Perhaps even you, Rhia, have noticed that their pride is what men hold most dear?”

“It has from time to time come to my attention,” Rhia admitted.

“Well, then, consider what such a man, with so much to be justly proud of, must feel at imagining himself exposed before a woman he would impress with his manly prowess as a virgin as innocent of skill in the necessary art as a fresh-faced girl handed a sword and told to do battle with Hercules.”

“There are things about which
you
know nothing, Marah,” Rhia told her coldly.

“No doubt,” said Marah. “But one thing I
do
know now is that Vercingetorix has failed to make love to me not because he spurns me, but because he fears to face the moment when he must expose his virginity.”

Shaking her head, Rhia stood up, took Marah by both hands, and drew her to her feet. “I do not understand a woman like you, Marah, and I do not think I want to,” she told her. “And perhaps I do not truly understand Vercingetorix either. But I do know that the end approaches, and you must go to him now, while there is yet time.”

And Rhia began tugging the not reluctant Marah across the courtyard toward the door to Vercingetorix’s chamber.

“Knowing what I now know, so I shall,” said Marah. “But I don’t understand you any more than you understand me. You love him, do you not?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then why—”

They had reached the closed door. Rhia took her hands from Marah’s and poised them to push it open.

“I am his flower destined to die. But you are destined to bear his fruit,” she said. “I ask only one thing. . . .”

She paused, hesitated.

“Give this to him from me,” she said, and then kissed Marah tenderly but squarely on the lips.

Marah stared at her in shock for a short moment, then regarded Rhia silently for a much longer one, long enough for tears to come to her eyes. Then she took Rhia’s hands.

“No,” she said. “For one single night, can we not be the two women who love him, nothing less and nothing more?”

And she pulled Rhia to her and kissed her back. “Come with me,” she said, “and give it to him yourself.”

Together they pushed open the door.

And entered, hand in hand.

When the door to his chamber opened, startling him out of his uneasy reveries in the borderland between wakefulness and sleep, Vercingetorix at first thought he had been awakened, but when he saw the silhouettes of two women standing hand in hand in the moonlight, he believed he must be in the realm of dreams.

When they approached his bed and stood over him and he saw that they were Marah and Rhia, he knew not where he was; and when they sat down on either side of him, and Marah kissed him tenderly on the lips while opening the fastenings of his tunic, he found that he didn’t care.

“What is this?” he said softly as she drew it off, if only out of the need to say something.

“This is the most natural thing in the world,” Marah told him.

And after all, in the waking world, this was of course true, else there would be no men or women to inhabit it. It was his denial of this simplest of truths, known to the lowest beasts in the fields, that was unnatural.

“Two . . . two women and the man we both love,” said Rhia, in a voice that seemed constricted by reluctance, or even the
fear
that he had never seen this warrior woman show.

And if it was fear, the courage it must have taken to lie down beside him and kiss him too, hesitantly at first, then roughly, uncertain perhaps how to do it properly, but still as a woman should kiss a man, must be greater than any she had shown in battle.

The greater the magic, the greater the price that must be paid. Now he began to understand the terrible price he had paid for the magic, such as it was, to become the Druid King of Gaul. Nor had he paid it alone. These two women, each of whom loved him after her different fashion, had paid it with him.

The magic might have failed, the war might be lost, death might be near, and the Gaul they had known might soon perish, but on this night, which might be their last in the world of strife, he at least
did
have the power to break the spell.

By doing the most natural thing in the world.

Vercingetorix arises, and he draws Marah to her feet and undresses her tenderly with a grace he has never imagined, though he has imagined doing this many times. But never, in the perfection of his dreams or reveries, was she as lovely as now, in the fleshly truth of her little imperfections. Nor had he ever envisioned her standing so tall and proud and unashamed before him.

Nor had he ever imagined that there would be an onlooker.

Rhia sits on the bed in her warrior’s garb, regarding them with a face of stone. In the world of flesh, Vercingetorix finds that her presence redoubles the arousal of his manhood, but in the world of the spirit, he is unmanned, for the three of them are frozen there like a tableau carved in marble, and neither the man of action straining at his pantaloons, nor the man of knowledge with his divided heart, has any idea of what to do.

But Marah does. With one hand, she leads Vercingetorix back to the bed, and draws Rhia to her feet with the other. Then she kneels before this woman dressed as a man, and unbuckles her sword. She nods at Vercingetorix, who now understands, and who begins to remove Rhia’s armor.

And then, at last, the two women he has wanted since he began his life’s journey into manhood stand fully revealed. Marah, with the softly perfect body and smooth, clear skin of the goddess Venus as rendered by a Roman sculptor. Rhia, with the battle-hardened and scarred body of a mighty woman warrior. Both, in their utterly different ways, equally beautiful.

Gently Marah pushes him back onto the bed, gently she guides Rhia as the two of them, Rhia on the left leg, Marah on the right, peel off his pantaloons. And now Vercingetorix’s manhood is fully revealed, to Marah, to Rhia, and indeed to himself in a way it has never been before. As the most natural thing in the world.

Nor does it seem anything but natural when Rhia and Marah lie down beside him, wrap their arms around him, and press their breasts against him, covering his face, the nape of his neck, his chest, his nipples, with caresses. And though their kisses dance over him in ever-moving profusion, he can easily tell one from the other: Rhia artless and bold like a warrior entering an unknown country, Marah cunning and knowing, each kiss artfully placed to elicit his pleasure, to inflame his arousal.

But then there comes a moment that is not natural at all, the inevitable moment of choice between them, a choice he finds he cannot make, for it seems to Vercingetorix that to choose the one would be to spurn the other, and in this moment he loves them both, differently but equally.

It is Marah who lovingly makes the choice for him.

She reaches down and takes the burning quick of him firmly in hand, kisses him deeply with her lips and tongue, then rolls him over.

“First you must give her this from me,” she says, and guides him into Rhia.

As soon as Vercingetorix enters his sister of the sword, he transforms her into something less and something more, a natural woman of Gaul knowing her first lover. And, transformed himself, he knows that this is right, for the spell that has bound the three of them has been broken by this gift of love from Marah.

Marah embraces the two of them as Vercingetorix finds his rhythm, as he rides Rhia, as she rides him, side by side, strongly, plainly, insistently, neither and both horse and rider.

Lovers now yet still brother and sister of the sword, they make love like comrades, and as Vercingetorix’s thoughts dissolve, the smell of Rhia is of warm grass and the sweat of battle, and his vision is of deep, shadowy forests and the starry heavens, and he soars across them borne on Rhia’s hearty cry of ecstasy and joins it with his own.

But as he glides back down into the world of flesh, into her arms, he senses that something is departing; the bright glow of the greatest pleasure he has ever known gutters down into the smoldering embers of a sad longing for a world entire which is passing, never to return.

The greater the price that is paid, the greater the magic.

But what is bought when the price is the magic itself?

“Now you must give her what is hers, Vercingetorix,” says Rhia. “For mine is to be but the flower. Hers is to be the fruit.”

Vercingetorix does not understand these words, but Marah does. “No, Rhia,” she says, “if there is to be fruit, the love that quickens the seed is yours as well.”

And she kisses Rhia tenderly on the lips.

And Rhia kisses her back.

And it seems to Vercingetorix that a new magic is made.

Women’s magic, never to be understood by men.

Marah then kisses him, her tongue tasting the depths of him, lapping at his soul as the tongue of a bee drinks nectar from a flower, so deeply that she reaches beyond to his sated manhood, magically filling it with herself, commanding it to arise again.

Unseen hands urge it upward and onward, the smooth soft knowing hands of Marah’s gentle and subtle caresses, the strong rough hands of Rhia gripping it like the pommel of a sword, and together they temper its metal once more.

Then Marah rolls over onto him, and those hands wield his manhood together as Marah mounts and rides.

With Rhia it had been the rough-hewn consummation of all those nights lying together on the fragrant forest floor and a magic that was passing. With Marah it is a reluctant yet exquisite surrender to a mistress of a magic he has never known, a passage into a world being born.

Yet, as Rhia kisses him roughly once more, but with some of the knowing and artful tenderness of Marah, it seems to Vercingetorix that some magic is passing between them, from the world that will be to the world that was, from a world being lost to a world to come, and in that moment, the three of them become one, a circle completing itself.

And as Vercingetorix’s seed surges through him and beyond him, he knows that
this
is somehow the moment of the Wheel’s Great Turning, as all thought that fills the mind stops, and there is only a great white light.

XXII

WHEN THE SUN ROSE above the distant silhouette of Alesia, it looked down upon a mighty army of Gauls moving across the plain in a broad front, like an ocean of men flowing inexorably toward the city. Nearly forty thousand mounted warriors rode at a frustratingly slow walk, so as not to outdistance an almost equal number of men afoot—a ragtag collection of farmers, townsmen, artisans, smiths, even beggars. The fortunate were armed with swords, pikes, lances, axes, and equipped with shields, helmets, bits and pieces of Roman and Gallic armor; the rest made do with scythes, hoes, hay-forks, whatever came to hand.

Gaul itself had risen up as one to come to the rescue.

But, riding in the center and front of this second “army of Gaul,” Litivak knew all too well that this was a unity so fragile as to be close to an illusion. He rode in the center only because the Edui were the largest contingent. Each tribal army rode and marched behind its own standard, and the leaders of
all
the tribal contingents rode in the front line to either side of him, casting measuring glances from time to time to assure themselves that none of the others had presumed to move to the forefront.

Litivak had only obtained the leadership of the Eduen forces by renouncing all ambition to election as vergobret. That had been the price he had to pay to still the opposition of Liscos to what he had privately called “the whole doomed enterprise.”

As for Vercingetorix’s druid magic, Litivak knew only what he had seen, and what he had professed to believe, and must continue to profess.

He had seen what every man who had escaped from Alesia with the horses had seen—Vercingetorix holding high the Arch Druid’s staff and calling down the lightning and thunder, Vercingetorix pointing the staff at the Teutons surrounding Alesia and scattering them in terror.

After escaping from Alesia, some eighteen men had reached the sanctuary of the forest within sight or earshot of each other. Not daring to light a fire, they had huddled close to find the words to rally the forces of their peoples. But none of them knew what words might accomplish such a feat until at length Litivak spoke up.

“Tell them of the blood oath that Vercingetorix made. Tell them that he himself could have escaped, but swore that he would not leave Alesia alive until an army of Gauls arrived to relieve the siege. Say that he proclaimed that if no such army came the dishonor would not be
his
but Gaul’s.”

“True enough, perhaps,” said Comm, “but—”

“Remind those fortunate enough
not
to be trapped in Alesia that
all
of our tribes
have thousands of men in there who are!” Litivak had said peevishly. “And if they all die or are dragged off to Rome as slaves because of the cowardice of their brothers, what Gaul of
any
tribe will ever be able to look another in the eye and see a man of honor?”

No one had had anything to say to that except a few grunts and mutters of disconsolate agreement. Litivak had sensed that something more was required.

Magic.

“Tell them that Vercingetorix drew down the wrath of the gods on the Teutons. Tell them he so terrified the Teutons with druid magic that they fled in terror without so much as a single blow being struck against them.
We were all there. We saw it. Tell the people of Gaul that destiny is with us because our cause is just. Tell them that not even Caesar and all the legions of Rome can stand against druid magic!”

Magic? Who was to say what was magic and what was fortune, save a druid? Certainly this great army of Gauls could only have been conjured up by, if not magic itself, then the tales thereof. Magic? Perhaps magic could only be made by those who believed in it. As these Gauls, his brothers, in their thousands upon thousands, surely did, or it would not have brought them here to win the war and their freedom.

Carnaxes blared.

Fists pounded on a wooden door.

“They’re here!” a voice shouted.

Cottos’ voice.

“They’ve come at last!”

Vercingetorix awoke bolt upright as Cottos burst in the room, and such was the Carnute vergobret’s exhilarated excitement that he barely blinked at the sight of the two women rubbing sleep from their eyes.

“There’s an army of Gauls arriving! We’re saved!”

Such was Vercingetorix’s own excitement that he threw off the bedclothes and leapt out of bed, forgetting his nakedness, and forgetting too the nakedness of Marah and Rhia.

Marah pulled the bedclothes up over her breasts, but Rhia was so indifferent to her nudity, except when it came to regaining her sword and armor, that she almost put them on before she had clothed herself.

“So many!” groaned Brutus.

Caesar, Tulius, and Brutus had mounted the most convenient tower on the outer wall to observe the arrival of this new “army of Gaul,” and Caesar had to admit that it was an impressive spectacle. The sheer number would have been daunting, had the outer fortifications not been completed.

But since they had been, it was the Gauls who were clearly daunted. They had arrived as a massive and vengeful charge in full battle frenzy, expecting to overwhelm the exposed rear of a besieging Roman army. Instead, they found themselves confronting a mighty fortress, their enemy snug inside it, and not a man outside to be intimidated by any amount of screaming and shield-beating and horn-blowing.

Now the battle cries and carnax blares guttered away to a discombobulated silence, and the Gauls, infantry and cavalry alike, milled around half a league or so beyond the outer defensive ditch, visibly at a loss.

“What would you do if you were their commander, Brutus?” Caesar asked in a playful pedagogical mood.

Brutus shrugged eloquently.

“Exactly,” said Caesar. “Their only rational strategy is to sit there, do nothing, and hope that they can starve
us
out before
Alesia
starves.”

“I can’t imagine them doing that,” said Tulius.

“Neither can I,” said Caesar. “But just in case they are smitten by an uncharacteristic attack of rationality . . .”

Vercingetorix stood on the ramparts of Alesia watching helplessly, as did Critognat, Rhia, Marah, Cottos, and as many warriors and townspeople as had been able to crowd atop the wall to greet the arrival of their rescuers. Who, in their scores of thousands, massed along a wide front, well beyond the Romans’ outer defensive ditch, doing nothing.

Until—

A gate in the outer Roman wall opened, and square after square of Roman legionnaires emerged, at least two full legions, bridging and crossing their narrow inner entrenchment, then spreading out to form a skirmish line three ranks deep. Behind the first rank were javelin-throwers. Behind the second rank were archers. Behind the third were five small wheeled catapults, light enough to be maneuvered by men.

The Roman infantry marched slowly and carefully across the pit-strewn field toward the outer defensive ditch and the Gauls beyond it, the catapults being drawn up behind them more gingerly still.

When they were barely in range, the Roman archers fired a volley of arrows on a high arc that just reached the front ranks of the Gauls, doing little damage. Some archers within the body of Gallic foot soldiers answered to even less effect, their arrows clattering weakly off the Roman shields.

The Roman archers continued to fire, moving behind the Roman infantry marching to the edge of their own defensive ditch. At this range, their arrows had more deadly effect, piercing scores of Gallic horsemen with each volley—deadlier still because the front line of the Gauls was prevented from retreating out of range by the great mass of men behind them. The result was milling, rearing confusion.

When the Romans reached the ditch, they began throwing javelins as well, and what order there had been in the Gallic front line disintegrated as hundreds of men were struck from their horses, as horses went down, as warriors rode this way and that in futile attempts to avoid the rain of arrows and javelins.

“Retreat! Retreat!” Vercingetorix shouted from the ramparts, but he was far too distant to be heard. The Great Leader of Warriors was reduced to groaning in dismay like everyone else.

On the left flank, a hundred or so Gauls, Santons by their green cloaks, galloped senselessly across the plain toward the Romans. Not to be outdone in suicidal bravery, a contingent of Atrebates on the right flank did likewise. And then Turons, Cadurques, Parisii, hundreds of each tribal army, some led by their vergobrets, some with their vergobrets remaining behind desperately trying to maintain their armies’ cohesion.

In the center, where the Edui were grouped, Litivak reared around to face his troops, shouted something Vercingetorix could not hear, then rode with his standard-bearer into the gap on their left flank opened by the charge of some Turons; and the Edui retreated behind him in more or less good order.

Meanwhile, perhaps two thousand galloping Gauls reached the outer ditch, many of the front rank realizing too late their mad folly and falling into it in a melee of whinnying horses and screaming men. Some of those behind managed to pull up short. Others did not and tumbled into the ditch atop the mass of broken men and horses already there. A hundred or so, farther back, tried to charge across this bridge of writhing flesh, and a few even succeeded.

The Roman infantry inexplicably retreated backward before the scattered horsemen who had successfully crossed, inflaming them into a screaming suicidal charge into the field of pits. The horses tripped, splintered their legs, and fell, dumping their riders to the ground.

Then the Roman catapults began lobbing amphorae into the main mass of the Gauls on the other side of the ditch. They burst into flame, scattering burning globs that fired everything they touched and stuck like mud. Volley after volley of the fiery death.

This was enough to send the makeshift infantry fleeing back across the plain after Litivak’s Edui—hundreds of them aflame and screaming—followed by the tribal cavalry, many horsemen likewise turned into torches spreading fiery death.

Behind the ghastly rout, a steaming pall of grayish smoke mercifully obscured the field of blackening corpses. But there was no escape from the stench of it.

So eager was Caesar to see what dawn would reveal of the deployment of the Gauls that he was up on the battlements while it was still dark and no one else was abroad but the guards. The first rays of the sun revealed a plain seared to ash in many patches, strewn with the corpses of men and horses so thoroughly crisped that it was difficult to tell the one from the other. Across the plain, the army of Gauls was encamped atop a hill about two leagues from his outer fortifications, still a force larger than his own.

What would I do now, were I their commander? Caesar asked himself.

I would keep my army up there except for foragers to keep it supplied and wait for starvation to finally force the outnumbered Romans to emerge from their fortress. Would whoever commanded the Gauls up there have the sense to do that? Would he be able to convince his fractious forces to follow such a sure but plodding strategy if he did?

The former could be expected of any commander who was less than a fool. The latter, though, might only be achieved by the “druid magic” of Vercingetorix.

Caesar turned to regard the walls of Alesia and smiled in satisfaction. For in his mind’s eye he saw his only worthy adversary among the Gauls looking back at him in frustration, removed from all communication with the larger part of his forces up on the hilltop, and therefore removed from command.

“What will Litivak do now?” said Cottos.

“Assuming he’s in command . . .” muttered Critognat.

“He’s in command up there if anyone is,” said Vercingetorix. “He was leading the Edui, and the Edui led the retreat. If they hadn’t, there’d be little left out there to command at all.”

“Who’s in command up there is not the question,” said Critognat. “The question is, what will
we
do?”

“What would you have us do, Critognat?” asked Vercingetorix, knowing what the futile answer would be.

“What we all want to do!” declared Critognat, opening his arms to embrace the demands of the warriors who had been gathering atop the ramparts since dawn. “Attack!”

“Attack
where
? Attack
how
?”

At this, Critognat fell silent.

“All we can do now is prepare ourselves to attack the inner Roman wall if and when Litivak’s army attacks the outer one,” Vercingetorix told them. “Like . . .”

“A hammer and an anvil,” muttered Cottos.

“If and when!” said Critognat. “What if there
is
no if and when?”

At this, it was Vercingetorix who was forced into silence, and he doubted that the frustration of his two chief lieutenants could match his own. He was powerless to order such a coordinated attack, and if he emerged from the city with his weaker force to attack the inner Roman fortifications alone, they would surely be met by the same Roman tactics and thrown back reeling.

Worse, Vercingetorix knew full well that his smaller and half-starved force would not retain the strength and numbers to attack again effectively in coordination with Litivak.

Worse still, he knew that there was one strategy that Litivak could pursue on his own that
would
bring victory, but it was so dire that he could scarcely bring himself to think it. Litivak
could
besiege Caesar as Caesar besieged Alesia: starve him out into open battle against superior forces. But the food supplies and the water inside Alesia would expire long before what the Romans had stored up was gone.

Everyone inside the city would die.

That would be the price of certain victory.

Vercingetorix was sure Litivak would never pay it.

Would he himself?

The sun had slid far past its zenith when the army of Gaul descended from its hilltop, and this time it appeared to Caesar to be more of a real army and less of a barbarian horde. It moved along a comparatively narrow front, with cavalry leading at a measured pace, so that what passed for infantry could keep up.