The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  Caesar laid a tender hand atop the bloody head of his dead friend and forced himself to gaze on his face one last time. Only now did he allow himself tears.

  “Had I listened to him in the first place,” he muttered, “this utterly ruthless and cynical man might be alive today.”

  And I would not be here so all alone.

  XI

  IN THE HOT BLOOD of his lupine madness, with the Arverni whom he had led into the marshes scattering in terror and so too the Arverne army he had left in the Roman encampment, Vercingetorix retrieved his horse and began a frothing gallop across the countryside toward Gergovia. It took him four days to reach the Gallic road to the city, and along the way, he saw Roman infantry cohorts fanning out through the countryside, accompanied by small detachments of cavalry and many empty wagons, behaving nothing like serious search parties, and everything like serious sackers. Several times, he believed he had been spotted, but, strangely, they never gave chase.

  The road itself was clogged with people fleeing the growing terror of the countryside and eyeing him as if he were a wolf from the forest, but no one sought to impede or seize him until he reached the foot of the hill upon which the city stood. There the road was blocked by a dozen Arverne guards led by Baravax. They were armed with swords, but none were drawn, and so Vercingetorix did not draw his as he reined up before them.

  “Vercingetorix!” cried Baravax. “Are you mad? There’s a Roman garrison in Gergovia. There’s a price on your head. You can’t go there!”

  “I see they’ve given you your old job back, Baravax,” Vercingetorix said bitterly. “I also see that you’ve taken it.”

  Baravax moved closer, and spoke softly for his ears only, for the people backed up on the road were forming an ever-growing crowd behind them. “Be glad that I did, else another might have come here to capture you rather than warn you.” Then, in a whisper: “And even so, I must not be seen to do so. I’m going to create a distraction. You use it to be gone.”

  And behind his back, he made a signal with his hand to his men.

  “There’s a fat price on his head!” one of them shouted.

  “Why don’t we collect it?”

  Three of the guards moved slowly forward and even more hesitantly drew their swords.

  “Sell one of our own to the stinking Romans!” some shouted from the crowd.

  “He’s the son of Keltill!”

  Few were the voices raised against him in what was swiftly turning into a mob whose ire was being turned against the guards, and as they shrank back in fear, Vercingetorix realized that this had been Baravax’s intent.

  “Draw your swords!” Baravax ordered. “Disperse this crowd!”

  The Arverne guards drew their swords but showed little interest in advancing with them on their own people.

  Baravax rounded on Vercingetorix in a great mock fury. “See what you bring! I’ll not have my men slay Arverni in the service of Rome or be slain by their own people! Be gone, before the blood of Arverni shed by Arverni is on your head!”

  And he whacked Vercingetorix’s horse on the rump with the flat of his sword. The horse reared and bolted, and Vercingetorix encouraged it to ride off in a fair imitation of an out-of-control gallop.

  In the valley below, smoldering fires glowed blood-red in the darkness, revealing the flickering black silhouettes of ruined homesteads and ruined lives, mourned by the lonely bleat of orphaned cattle. Vercingetorix reined in his horse as he rode along the overlooking ridgeline, forcing himself to behold the desolation before slinking back into the safety of the forest. This was surely the darkest of the many such nights he had known since he brought the wrath of Caesar down on his own people.

  If wrath it truly was, and not something worse. For the Romans did not burn crops, they forced the peasants to harvest them and hauled them off. They did not slaughter sheep and goats and pigs, they herded them away. They even rounded up and stole the geese and the ducks and the chickens. They did not kill the men they captured, they shackled the able-bodied and led them away into slavery. Only when all this had been done did they burn the buildings and set fire to the stubble in the fields, leaving those too old or too young or too feeble to be of value as slaves to fend for themselves in a blackened and smoking wasteland.

  Caesar had not even been in Gaul when it had begun. He had given his orders, departed for Britain, and left them to his lieutenant Tulius to carry out.

  Such could not be hot-blooded vengeance. It was being done in an orderly manner by disciplined troops for some purpose. Caesar had put a price on his head, and Tulius had declared that the lands of the Arverni would be occupied by Rome until he was either slain or captured. Yet the actions of the Romans made it seem that this was the last thing they wanted to happen.

  In the days that followed his shameful flight from Gergovia, he had at first wandered aimlessly, keeping to the forest, eating well enough off what he could forage, sleeping under the trees, trying with no success to formulate a plan to redress the wrong he had done both to the innocent Dumnorix and to his own people.

  All because of a vision.

  And if that vision were false?

  At length, he decided that there was only one way to test the truth of his vision of his own destiny. He could not test whether or not he would one day be acclaimed king in Rome, but it would be easy enough to see if he could not be slain on the soil of Gaul.

  All he had to do was court death.

  If he was slain, he had followed a false vision into disaster for his people, and death would be just punishment.

  So he had ridden out of the safety of the forest a dozen times, appearing openly on roads, in villages not yet sacked, inviting the desperate and the greedy to seek to claim the price Caesar had put on his head. None succeeded—singly, in pairs, in threes and fours—and his sword took more lives than he cared to count; enough, it would seem, for the legend of his invincibility to spread, for finally no Arverne would dare challenge him.

  But this could all be laid to the teachings of Rhia, who had made him a swordsman no one in the land could best save herself. So next he attacked the rearmost wagon of a Roman train, heavily laden with grain, decapitating the legionnaire driving it, setting it ablaze with a torch, and easily outrunning the cavalry guards.

  Perhaps too easily.

  Perhaps he indeed could not be slain on the soil of Gaul. Or perhaps, to judge by the ease with which he escaped the feckless pursuit of the Romans, Caesar did not want him slain or captured. Either way, it was an invitation to boldness.

  This afternoon he had observed from a safe distance a cohort of Roman infantry, with a small detachment of cavalry and a large train of empty wagons, moving toward a farmstead. At the pace at which they were moving, they would be there within the hour.

  There might be no way to prevent the Romans from sacking the farmstead, but he decided to try to save its people from slavery. For, if he could not be slain in battle, might not he and those he led prove invincible?

  And so Vercingetorix had galloped ahead and reached the farmstead in advance of the Romans. A palisade so new that its logs were still half green had recently been thrown up around the large round thatch-roofed manse of its master and the courtyard of his holdings; a barn, a pigsty, sheds of ducks, chickens, and geese, a smithy, a bake house. Beyond the enclosure, and surrounding it as far as the eye could see, were fields of golden grain ready for the harvesting.

  The palisade gate was open, and when Vercingetorix rode unopposed through it, he almost passed unnoticed into the pandemonium in the courtyard. The courtyard boiled with panicked people. Half a dozen women were loading carts with household goods while adolescent boys attempted to hitch them to balky horses. Peasants were frantically butchering two freshly slaughtered pigs and a cow. Small boys and girls were chasing down chickens and ducks and trying to stuff them into wicker baskets.

  A large, beefy man mounted on a black stallion—helmetless, shieldless, armorless, but wearing a sword—see
med to be presiding, and it was he who first noticed Vercingetorix and challenged him.

  “Who in the name of the gods of shit and piss are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know the Romans are coming?”

  “I would lead you against them,” Vercingetorix told him.

  “Lead us against them? All we can do is flee with whatever we can, and perhaps thereby escape slavery.”

  “Fleeing is useless. They’re close behind me, their cavalry will run you down easily, and their infantry will do the rest.”

  “What do you suggest, then, great leader?” the man on the black stallion snarled sarcastically. “Are you mad? Who do you think you are?”

  “I am Vercingetorix, son of Keltill.”

  Then there was a sudden silence as they all ceased what they were doing and all eyes turned to regard him.

  Dracovax, son of Marnil, did not think of himself as a rich man or a poor one. He held no slaves, though some seventy-three Arverni owed him their allegiance, working his fields, tending to his livestock, and otherwise living their lives and earning their sustenance under his aegis. Though he had fought in a few small battles when he was a hot-blooded young man eager to prove his manhood, he was no warrior. Dracovax was a successful farmer approaching the end of his middle years and content with the life he was living.

  Or, rather, had been living. Now he and his people were about to lose everything they had, everything generations of his ancestors had so painstakingly won from the soil. And for causes comprehensible only to the likes of Caesar and the nobles and warriors who followed or fought him. And they had nothing to do with sowing and reaping crops to feed the seventy-three mouths that followed him—not for glory or conquest, but to fill their stomachs.

  “Vercingetorix…”

  “They say he has slain a hundred Romans.”

  Dracovax had heard that this boy was the cause of his misfortune. He had slain an important Eduen, had somehow enraged Caesar against not only himself but all Arverni and those weaker tribes who had previously considered themselves under Arverne protection.

  “It is said he cannot be defeated in battle.”

  This too Dracovax had heard, and also that the Romans offered a handsome price for his capture or death. But what Arverne would betray another to these Roman thieves and slavers for slaying some Eduen who no doubt had it coming?

  Fighting the Romans seemed madness, but Dracovax could see no other hope for himself or his people. He might be getting too old for battle, but he was yet too young for slavery. And still would be when the last tooth had fallen from his gums, and the last white hair from his skull.

  “I am Dracovax, son of Marnil; this is my homestead, and I would save my people from slavery if I can,” said the man on the black stallion. “Is it really true that the Romans cannot defeat you?”

  “This I do not know,” Vercingetorix admitted.

  He hesitated. Then he said something he had never presumed to proclaim before, not knowing whether he spoke truth or a silver-tongued lie, but knowing that he must say it to learn whether it was the one or the other.

  “But I do know that I cannot be slain on the soil of Gaul,” he said. “This the gods have granted me in a vision.”

  The intakes of breath around him made a sound like the sighing of the wind through the tree crowns of a forest.

  “Druid magic…” said a woman’s voice.

  “You are a druid?” asked Dracovax.

  Am I? wondered Vercingetorix. Just what have I become?

  “I am a man of knowledge,” he said. “But I am also a man of action.”

  “But druids never join in battle,” said Dracovax.

  “Never have we faced such an enemy as the legions of Caesar,” said Vercingetorix. “When the Wheel makes such a turning from one Great Age into another, even druids must turn with it or be crushed beneath it.”

  “Well spoken!”

  “The words of a druid indeed…”

  “But of a warrior also!” cried Vercingetorix, drawing his sword.

  And thus did he commit himself and the people of Dracovax’s farmstead to seemingly hopeless battle.

  There were nearly four hundred men in a Roman cohort. Vercingetorix now commanded fewer than four dozen: peasants, bakers, smiths, stablehands, and a third of those half-grown boys. There were swords and spears for a dozen of them; the rest had only scythes, woodsman’s axes, and butchering knives. There were half a dozen horses, none of which had ever faced battle.

  “Accept that you cannot save your fields or your property, Dracovax,” Vercingetorix said when he had this pathetic force assembled. “So do not leave them for the Romans. Forget the carts. Move your people out of here now, and set this place on fire. Let all flee on foot through the fields, firing the grain behind them. All save you, and me, and these other five horsemen. When the Romans see the flames, they will send their cavalry ahead. We will ride to meet them and delay them until your people have time to retreat from their infantry into the forest behind a wall of fire.”

  Dracovax regarded him with a mixture of awe and terror. “Seven of us against a Roman cavalry detachment!” he exclaimed.

  “I have seen their cavalry, and there cannot be much more than a score of them.”

  “Three or four to one! Hopeless odds!”

  “You are right,” declared Vercingetorix. “For they are mere Romans and we are Gauls! Perhaps we should leave half our number behind to make the fight a fair one!”

  The brave cheer that went up set Vercingetorix’s blood afire and his spirit soaring, and so, sword held high and flames of destruction behind him, he galloped forth to meet the cavalry of Caesar at the head of his tiny army of peasants and stableboys.

  The Roman cavalry were galloping two abreast down the narrow earthen road approaching the burning farmstead, but as soon as their commander saw Vercingetorix’s little force riding up toward him, he had his trumpeter blow a short series of notes, and the Romans spread out across the road and on either side of it in a wide skirmish line.

  Vercingetorix led his horsemen off the road to the left, as if attempting to pass them on the flank, but since his goal was to delay the Romans, not escape them, this was a feint, and when the two forces were but half a dozen horse-lengths apart, he wheeled his mount and made straight for the center of the Roman line, hoping to break through, create chaos, attack the right flank from behind.

  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.