The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  They were inside the city.

  Rhia had done her magic.

  Now, thought Vercingetorix, I must dare to do my own once more.

  The streets of Gergovia were largely deserted and quiet, for no one would be abroad in the depth of this rainy night without pressing purpose. Vercingetorix’s memory served him well as he led Rhia away from the wall to approach the gates in it stealthily through a maze of back streets and alleys where unseen footfalls gave easy warning of the few patrols.

  They emerged from an alley into the main avenue between the plaza and the city gates, close by the gates themselves. The avenue was deserted at this hour, and they were able to move from portal to portal, shadow to shadow, until the gates were visible where the avenue ended in a small open area.

  Now the easy part was over.

  Two low stone towers flanked the gates, and two legionnaires armed with lances were positioned on either side of each tower atop the parapet, gazing outward. Two more lance-armed legionnaires guarded the gates on the ground inside the city.

  “Six to two, not bad odds,” Vercingetorix whispered.

  “And those lances are better at intimidating unarmed townspeople or dealing with horses,” said Rhia. “Foolish of them not to arm the guards with swords.”

  “They could hardly expect an attack by swordsmen from inside the city…” said Vercingetorix.

  He gazed into Rhia’s eyes. She gazed back steadily into his. Never more than in this moment, which might be their last, had he wanted to kiss her. He was certain that his desire was shared, but he knew that it could not be.

  “Still the thought that slows the mind…” Vercingetorix whispered instead. And found that she was whispering the same thing to him. And then—

  —they were running silently, swords in hand, toward the Romans guarding the gate.

  The Romans shouted wordlessly, one foolishly threw his lance, Vercingetorix slapped it out of the air with his sword, there were more shouts from the wall above, and then they were upon the gate guards.

  Rhia slashed the neck of the Roman who had thrown his lance, nearly decapitating him; Vercingetorix ducked aside from the other Roman’s first thrust, dived to the ground, rolling under his second thrust, and came up with his sword plunging into the Roman’s gut.

  The guard screamed in dying agony, screamed even louder as Vercingetorix yanked his sword out, pulling a slimy green loop of intestine with it. He and Rhia dashed to the gates, unbarred them, flung them open. Vercingetorix grabbed the lance from the blubbering Roman’s flaccid hand and rammed it into the lower right-hand gate hinge, jamming the gate open. Rhia, looking around frantically for something to secure the left-hand gate and finding nothing close to hand, shrugged, took off her cloak and belt, and stuffed them into the upper and lower hinges.

  Vercingetorix blew a long, loud, warbling, and inexpert note on his trumpet, and then he and Rhia, who was naked once more save for her sword, were standing side by side just inside the gateway passage as planned, while Romans clattered down the ladders from the gate towers.

  They must now hold the gates open for perhaps five minutes. Unless their courage had failed them, Vercingetorix’s little makeshift army would now be running toward the open gates, and once inside would be a match for the Romans, most of whom would be waking unprepared from sleep.

  The gateway was wide enough to accommodate the passage of two wagons, which was a disadvantage, but the passage through it was as deep as the width of the city wall, and the last thing the Romans would have anticipated was to have to take it from defenders already inside the city.

  As half a dozen and more legionnaires clambered in confusion toward the open gates, Vercingetorix and Rhia took up positions facing each other with their backs close to the passage’s walls and their swords held out at arm’s length to block it.

  This still left a wagon width’s gap, and after only a moment’s hesitation, three Roman lancers and two swordsmen spontaneously dashed into it.

  Once again, a Roman foolishly tried to spear Vercingetorix by throwing his lance like a javelin, and once more Vercingetorix slapped it aside with his sword. The now defenseless Roman wisely sought to flee, but was trapped in the passageway by the crush of his fellows.

  Vercingetorix took a long, quick stride toward him, swinging his sword high, sideways, and two-handed, severing his head from his neck with a single blow, then kicking the headless body toward the center of the passage as it fell, jerking and twitching and spewing blood.

  Rhia had already somehow slain one of the Roman swordsmen and likewise thrown the corpse to the center of the passage, where the body of the decapitated Roman fell upon it even as Rhia gutted the other swordsman, whipped him around screaming with her sword to shield her from a thrown lance, then threw him, not yet dead but unable to do more than howl in agony, upon the two corpses.

  Having seen their fellows slain in moments and turned into a barricade of flesh, the two remaining Romans recoiled in horror and fear and fled backward, leaving Vercingetorix grinning ferally at Rhia. She grinned back at him, naked and panting, and spattered with blood, and unspeakably desirable.

  But such a bizarre thought was driven from his mind in the next moment when a fresh press of Romans jammed into the passageway, all swordsmen now, and Vercingetorix became one with his weapon.

  Swords flashed and clanged, men shouted and screamed, blood flew through the air in drops and gouts, and bodies piled up in the center of the passageway, the dying blubbering and groaning in a growing pool of red.

  Vercingetorix lost all track of time, which now seemed to crawl as slowly as a snail across a stone as attackers came at him, and now seemed as rapid as his sword strokes slicing their limbs, piercing their stomachs, spearing their hearts. He was aware of the sharp slicing pains of his own wounds, not as agony but as goads. His heart pounded, his breath came freely and deeply, and there was a terrible pleasure in it all.

  The more Romans appeared, the deeper and wider the barricade of their bodies became, and the easier the gateway passage to defend, for now Vercingetorix found himself fighting side by side with Rhia from behind it, close enough to smell the intoxicating aroma of her battle sweat, close enough to touch.

  The shouts of pain and surprise and agony, of her battle cries and his own, the pounding of his blood, melded into a roaring torrent of sound upon which his spirit rose up. The sword in his hands seemed alive with a will of its own, wielding him as its instrument, as he gave himself over to an awful but exhilarating abandon.

  “They’re here! They’re here!”

  First Vercingetorix came to the awareness that Rhia was shouting at him. Then he realized that the roaring in his ears had become the exultant shouts and battle cries of a multitude advancing rapidly toward him.

  Turning, he saw twoscore and more Arverne warriors waving their swords and screaming as they rushed up the last yards of the roadway leading to the open gates, and he thought he glimpsed Oranix among them. Behind them were hundreds of peasants, huntsmen, smiths, half-grown boys, even women, brandishing spears, scythes, hoes, torches, knives, tree limbs.

  He had one moment to regard Rhia—naked save for a veil of blood; scratched, stinking, panting, and exhausted, but with her lips creased in a triumphant smile and her eyes blazing with lustful glory as they met his own.

  Then the Arverne warriors surged between them, kicking and shoving aside the barricade of Roman corpses. And Vercingetorix found himself hard-pressed to make his way through his own forces to the front of the battle, to lead the Arverni pouring into Gergovia to take back what was rightfully their own.

  For Vercingetorix, most of the night passed like a time passed in a Land of Legend aflame with blood-pounding visions of glorious and vengeful death and destruction.

  The commotion at the gate quickly aroused the townspeople from their slumber, and they poured into the streets in shock and confusion that turned to vindictive elation when they realized what was happening. Those who were not arme
d returned to their dwellings only to snatch up what fell to hand—a sword, a knife, an ax, a mallet—before returning to the streets to join in the sanguinary search for Roman legionnaires.

  Most of the Romans were awoken into a chaos in which they found themselves outnumbered by angry mobs consisting of the entire population of the city. It quickly turned into a bloody blur of a rout without order or strategy or the need therefor.

  Once most of the Romans had been cut to pieces or beaten to death, and the remaining few score taken prisoner, the ire of the mobs turned on those who were deemed collaborators. Wineshops and other merchant establishments purveying Roman goods were looted and sacked, buildings that had been Romanized with wooden imitations of columns or merely an excess of white paint were set ablaze, and anyone caught in the street wearing an item of Roman attire was fortunate to escape with a beating.

  Vercingetorix drifted through this night of retribution not as the leader who had called it into being, but as one more Arverne giving free vent to unfettered rage, joining in the slicing and mauling and stomping of Romans, smashing open amphorae with his feet, standing in the midst of a crowd setting a merchant’s goods ablaze, though careful not to harm a fellow Gaul, however Romanized.

  But then he found himself in the plaza, crowded with joyfully irate Arverni. Scores of them had climbed into the Roman fountain and were ineffectually attacking the crudely carved stone bears with mattocks and hoes and wooden mallets. To judge from the hooting and cheering and torch-waving and debris-tossing, not all the Roman wine had been poured onto the stones of the plaza rather than down gullets.

  Across the plaza, another such drunken and ecstatically vengeful mob had gathered in front of the Great Hall, working up their courage to storm it and no doubt attempt to destroy the Roman entrance portico that had been added to it. But standing at the foot of the steps and bravely trying to defend the Great Hall from the mob’s outrage were Baravax and a score of Arverne warriors armed with axes and javelins.

  The sight of Baravax about to be torn down by the mob whose actions he had incited abruptly awoke the man of knowledge within the unthinking man of action.

  The press of shouting people paid no heed to his presence among them as he shouldered through them, and for a moment Baravax menaced him with his javelin when Vercingetorix confronted him at the foot of the stairs.

  Then he recognized him.

  “Vercingetorix!”

  “Death to the Romans!” a drunken voice shouted.

  “Death to collaborators!”

  Rocks and bits of rubble began to fly from the anonymous safety of the midst of the mob.

  “You saved my head—now it’s time for me to save yours,” Vercingetorix told Baravax, and he mounted the stairs. From this vantage he could be clearly seen, and slowly recognized by a score of people, and then, as the word spread, by everyone. The shouts and cries of the crowd guttered away into silence, and then a foot-stomping chanting began.

  “Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix!”

  King of Gaul! King of Gaul!

  In his mind’s ear, unheard voices added the refrain. Vercingetorix basked in this song to himself longer than was needful, for there was an intoxication to it headier than even the blood-hot thrill of battle.

  And perhaps more dangerous.

  “The Romans have been defeated and Gergovia is free!” he shouted to quell the chanting and his own sweet delirium. “Today Gergovia is free of Rome, tomorrow the lands of the Arverni, and after that all Gaul!”

  “Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix!”

  Was it a phantom of his desire, or were there now scattered voices out there indeed adding “King of Gaul”?

  “The battle is won and the enemy is defeated! Go to your homes now, and let no Arverne’s hand be set against any other!”

  This was greeted not with adulatory chanting but with hoots and jeers. Taken aback, Vercingetorix realized that they would not be calmed until they were fed with meat they wanted to eat, until they were given something they wanted to hear.

  “The enemy is Rome! The enemy is Caesar! From this day forward, let no Arverne’s hand be set against any other, and let no Gaul set his hand against any other Gaul! Harm not the Great Hall of the Arverni, for from this day forward it belongs to you, to all of you, from the loftiest noble to the bastard child of the tiller of the smallest plot of land! Sleep well on the memory of glorious victory won, for tomorrow you will taste the sweet fruit thereof. Tomorrow we will hold council here to choose a new vergobret—not elected by a lackey Senate, as in the days of Gobanit, or even by an assembly of nobles, as in my father’s day, but by all of us! A vergobret chosen by you, the brave Arverne people who have thrown off the yoke of Rome with your own hands!”

  For the first time, Vercingetorix beheld a great multitude obeying his words as if he were a king as the crowd did indeed disperse toward sleep.

  Shortly before noon the next day, Vercingetorix entered the Great Hall to the sound of his name’s being shouted, being chanted, being sung, by a throng such as had never been seen there before. Warriors. Peasants. Townspeople. Artisans. Even beggars and whores. The Great Hall of the Arverni was packed with Arverni, blood-spattered, wild-eyed, drunk with beer, and triumph, and glory.

  The great old wooden table from Keltill’s day had been brought back into the center of the hall, and there stood the great old warrior Critognat presiding over a dozen warriors of similar vintage to keep it clear.

  Critognat waved him to the table. This was hardly necessary, since it was the only possible place for him to stand and be seen by all; even so, Rhia, Baravax, and half a dozen guards had to clear a way for him through his own cheering and riotous people. The chanting broke up into a wordless cheer as he was seen to make his way toward it and then mounted it.

  “The Arverni are without a vergobret, and I would—”

  The chanting of “Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix!” resumed, accompanied now by the rhythmic beating of swords and daggers on shields, of feet on the stones of the floor. The sound was thunderous. And heady.

  But Vercingetorix’s blood had cooled during the night, and now he sought to do more than bask in this adulation—he meant to shape and to use it.

  “Hear me before you elect me!” he cried, after he had raised both arms above his head for a silence in which to speak. “As the Arverni are without a vergobret, so is Gaul without a leader, and I tell you truly, I would be both!”

  A wordless roar, and then they were chanting again, but this time words of a kind surely not heard since the time of Brenn.

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

  “No!” Vercingetorix shouted. When the chanting and banging of shields and stomping of feet still went on, he shouted even louder: “NO!”

  “No, Arverni,” he went on when the crowded Great Hall had been reduced to silent mystification. “You have the power and the right to acclaim me vergobret, but no single tribe may proclaim me king of Gaul. Only Gaul may do that! Nor would I wear the Crown of Brenn until I have earned it in battle! I would lead an army of Gaul to victory, but not as king, for I will not rule in Gaul until there is truly a Gaul in which to rule! And I have seen it in a vision that this shall be! A king of Gaul shall parade in triumph through Rome itself!”

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

  Now Vercingetorix let it go on, until at length it died away of its own accord.

  “Our vergobret had long been chosen by the council of nobles, and then by Gobanit’s Senate of traitors. But now the Great Wheel is turning, and we must all become great to turn with it. And so I would be proclaimed vergobret by all of the people!”

  “Ver-cin-getorix! Ver-go-bret!” someone shouted out, and then someone else, and then it became a kind of chanting song, the words sung by voices, the rhythm beaten out by stomping feet, clapping hands, swords and daggers upon shields.

  “So be it!” Vercingetorix finally d
eclared when he was granted silence in which to speak. “And these are my first words as your vergobret: I, Vercingetorix, vergobret of the Arverni, outlawed by Caesar, now outlaw Gaius Julius Caesar! I declare his life forfeit should he dare once more to set foot in Gaul! So too do I outlaw all Romans in Gaul! I declare all their goods the property of the first loyal Gaul to seize them! Take what you want and destroy the rest! Let us sweep all things Roman from our hearts and our land! Let us begin this happy task here and now!”

  At this a tremendous cheer went up, as Vercingetorix had known it would, and what was supposed to happen next was what he had given them leave to do, pour out of the Great Hall and begin the cleansing of all things Roman from the lands of the Arverni, and, he hoped, inspire the other tribes of Gaul to follow their lead.

  But this plan went awry.

  “Death to Caesar!” someone shouted. “Death to Rome!”

  This was met with full-throated roaring enthusiasm, and instead of emptying out, the Great Hall was filled with a chanting of “Death to Caesar! Death to Rome!” that swiftly proceeded to ferocious cries of fury.

  And to Vercingetorix’s horror, he found himself beholding a gathering whose mood had changed with the suddenness of a summer thunderstorm from victorious elation into bloodthirsty rage. Fists shook in the air, daggers and swords were brandished. He found it a fearsome and ugly sight—the face of the madness of the night before exposed in the full light of day, made no more bearable by the knowledge that he had taken part in it himself.

  His people, like famished wolves, were howling for something to tear apart, something to kill; he could see it, he could hear it, he could smell it on their breath and sweat, and he could not deny that he felt it himself.

  “Death to Caesar! Death to Rome!”

  And then the prey was tossed into their midst.

  “Death to these Romans!” shouted a grizzled old warrior at the back of the hall near the entrance.