“It has never been for druids to take a hand in the affairs of war—”
“Nor honest farmers either!”
“Let warriors slaughter each other and let us be!”
“Will the Romans let any of us be?” said Guttuatr. “The Romans wage war on the very soul of Gaul, and all Gauls must sacrifice to save it! Warriors must sacrifice their lives, farmers their crops and livestock…”
He faltered for a moment, and looked back at Vercingetorix with accusation in his eyes, and when he turned and spoke again, there was an inner message in his words that Vercingetorix knew was meant for him.
“And druids most of all,” he said.
“Oh, and what do you sacrifice, Arch Druid?”
“More than you can know…” Guttuatr said somberly. His lower lip trembled like that of a doddard. “Perhaps more than even I can know…Perhaps, in the end, the very thing I seek to save…”
“He mocks me, Brutus,” said Caesar.
And so, he thought, does the landscape of this accursed country, even the weather.
He rode a dozen or so horse-lengths ahead of the vanguard of his starving army, accompanied only by the young officer, whom he allowed more and more to follow at his side like a favorite hound.
The clear blue sky, fleeced with but a few pure white clouds, and the summer sun warming his skin mocked him with memories of better times in sweeter climes. On the northwestern horizon, the hills were green with grass, and forest climbed their slopes.
But he rode through the landscape of his terrible falling-sickness vision: burnt fields and meadows where the only signs of life were the occasional green shoots peeping up through the endless ashes, and carrion crows squabbling over what little flesh remained on the charred corpses of farm animals.
And to the northeast, in the direction in which they were presently marching, there were already black clouds of smoke on the horizon. They were always marching through these wastelands toward those black clouds, for the army of Vercingetorix, grouped all together now as a juicy bait, always remained just within range of his advance scouts, but always beyond reach, firing the land as they retreated before him.
“How long can this go on, Caesar?” asked Brutus.
“Until we catch them and destroy them,” said Caesar. “However long it takes.”
“But that could be forever,” Brutus muttered disconsolately.
“Vercingetorix is a clever general,” said Caesar. “He does what I would do in his place. Faced with a superior force, he lures his stronger enemy into endless pursuit, destroying everything as he retreats before us, so that we are forced to march through a desert.”
“A cowardly strategy,” Brutus said primly.
“But an effective one.”
“As long as he can maintain it,” said Brutus.
“What?” cried Caesar. Suddenly he began to see the beginning of hope. “You are absolutely right, my clever young friend!”
“I am…?” said Brutus, with such a choice look of befuddlement that Caesar almost laughed aloud.
“These Gauls prize honor and glory above all else, and that will be their downfall!” And then Caesar did laugh, not at Brutus, but at his own folly.
“What is it, Caesar? What have you found to laugh about?”
“Myself, Brutus, myself! I have been a fool. Here is a lesson for you—a general should never trap himself in outdated wisdom. A strategy that once would have been futile may later prove wise.”
“I don’t understand…”
Caesar gazed at the black smoke rising before him in the far distance. “Then perhaps neither will he,” he said.
“You have lost me completely, Caesar,” said Brutus.
“Worse still, I lost myself,” said Caesar. “But no more. In the winter, in the spring, taking a city bereft of supplies would have been a disaster, but now there are a city or two whose tribes are minor ones which wisely sought to keep out of Vercingetorix’s ruinous war—”
“Like the Bituriges?”
“Exactly, my young friend, exactly! Vercingetorix has thus far kept out of their territory, for fear of accumulating new enemies.”
He wheeled his horse around.
“But now we will force him to follow us! To Bourges! Where the Bituriges will surely have stored away the harvest within its walls against the general chaos outside.”
“But surely Vercingetorix will realize where we are going and, with his well-fed horses and us moving mostly afoot, will be able to get there before us.”
“Exactly!” said Caesar. “Pray to the gods that he does!” He laughed again, this time more heartily. “On second thought, why bother them with beggarly entreaties? He will have no choice! We have him, Brutus, we have him!”
And he set off at a full gallop to give the order.
Vercingetorix had called Critognat, Litivak, Comm, Luctor, and Cottos into council in a small forest clearing some distance from their troops. The night sky was moonless but star-bright, yet empty of omens that might aid him in comprehending the mind of Caesar. Even though a young boar was roasting on its spit above the fire around which they hunkered, Vercingetorix could summon up no visions from the flames. Nor did the barrel of beer into which they dipped drinking horns from time to time provide any.
For five days, Caesar’s army had ceased its futile pursuit and instead marched away through lands already burned black. And today he had even refused the bait when Vercingetorix had shown his assembled forces atop a ridge to his southeast, continuing relentlessly to the northwest.
“He is going somewhere,” said Vercingetorix. “That much is obvious.”
“You do not have to be the Great Leader of Warriors to figure that out,” snapped Comm.
“But where?” said Luctor. “And why?”
“Why should we care?” said Critognat. “Wherever he’s going, we can move faster than he can, so let us finally chase him, catch him, and finish him off.”
Vercingetorix knew that Critognat was speaking for most of the Gauls. Morale had been low since this strategy of despoiling and burning Gaul before the Romans had begun, but now that Caesar had seized an initiative that Vercingetorix could not explain, it was getting worse. Even Litivak was, in his darker moments, openly skeptical of his leadership.
“It is not yet time,” Vercingetorix told them nevertheless.
“You always say that!” said Critognat. “Why not now?”
“Because we must have patience. Because time is on our side. Because the Romans only become weaker day by day.”
“You always say that too!”
“Because it is always true.”
“Arrgh!” growled Critognat, throwing up his arms in disgust. “We act like cowards who have shot arrows into a lion and slink back waiting for him to bleed to death, lacking the courage to do what honor demands!”
Litivak had said little, but now Critognat had spoken what his warriors, restive with disgust, were telling him. Surely the time had come for him to be forthright himself.
“Time is not on our side,” said Litivak. “The Romans’ bodies may be weak with hunger, but our spirits are weakened by this craven retreating, this destruction we wreak in our own land, which makes us hated by our own people—”
“—which makes us hate ourselves!”
“Well spoken, Cottos!” declared Critognat. “I say it is time to remember what it means to be Gauls, and attack now before our troops lose all heart!”
“That is what he’s inviting us to do,” said Vercingetorix, “and only a fool accepts an enemy’s invitation.”
“He is desperate,” said Luctor. “All the more reason to fall upon him now.”
“He is both desperate and cunning,” said Vercingetorix.
“So what does the cunning Vercingetorix suggest we do?” Litivak asked, somewhat taken aback by the edge he heard in his own voice.
“Continue the strategy that has made him so desperate, and in the end victory will be ours.”
“In
the end, we will all be old men with beards down to our belly buttons!” roared Critognat. “In the end, we all end up in the Land of Legend! In the end, what tale of glory will we have to boast of to the heroes we will meet there?”
“I tell you, Vercingetorix, your ‘army of Gaul’ will not survive much more of this,” said Litivak.
“Meaning what, Litivak?”
Litivak paused to take a deep draft of beer, or, rather, took a long drink of beer to allow him a pause. But when he had swallowed it all, there was still nothing else for it.
“Meaning I cannot keep my warriors under your command much longer,” he said.
“Cannot or will not?” demanded Vercingetorix.
“I will not lose the loyalty of my own men in the service of a strategy in which neither they nor I believe, and I cannot disobey my own vergobret when Liscos finally summons up the courage to order me to withdraw—”
“For fear of losing your chance to succeed him, Litivak?”
“Who are you to chide me for such modest ambition, Great Leader of Warriors and would-be king of Gaul?”
“Well spoken, Litivak,” Vercingetorix admitted softly, touching Litivak’s heart. Still…
“I tell you, no matter what I will or do not will, my Edui will no longer follow a leader who takes them where they do not want to go.”
“You speak of me or yourself?”
Litivak sighed. He calmed himself with another swallow of beer before he spoke again. “Both,” he said. “My men will not follow me if I follow an Arverne who leads us only into dishonor. They’re at the point where they will follow whoever will lead them where they want to go.”
“Which is where?”
“Either home, or in an attack on the Roman army on its desperate march to wherever—”
Litivak stopped in midstream as the revelation struck him.
Of course!
“Or find out where the Romans are going and get there first!”
“Yes!” exclaimed Vercingetorix.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I know how to get there first.” For Vercingetorix had now remembered the first time he had seen a Roman road, arrow-straight from horizon to horizon, thrust through the landscape like a sword of stone. Caesar was on no such road now. But his army was marching as if one were there. That was his Roman nature. And that was his Roman mistake.
He picked up a twig from the ground and began making purposeful marks with it in the dirt.
“Look! Here is where Caesar broke off pursuing us,” he said, marking an X in the dirt. “And here is where he was the second day, and here the third, and the fourth, and the fifth.”
He drew a line connecting the five position markers.
“Straight as an arrow!” said Comm.
“And to where does the arrow point…?”
“By the gods, of course!” exclaimed Luctor. “To the lands of the Bituriges!”
“Who have held aloof from the war,” said Litivak.
“And whose lands neither we nor the Romans have entered,” said Cottos.
“And who therefore have been able to bring in the harvest!”
“And no doubt stored it here!” Vercingetorix said, jabbing the point of his stick into the earth. “In Bourges!”
“Of course! That’s what they’re after!”
Vercingetorix nodded. “The Romans’ last hope of resupply,” he said. “And, knowing where they are marching, we can easily ride there first.”
“And then,” cried Critognat, “when he arrives, we destroy him!”
“No,” said Vercingetorix. “We burn the granaries of Bourges. Every bit of food for man or horse in the city.”
There was a brief moment of silence, during which nothing could be heard but the distant hoot of an owl and the death scream of some small creature nearby in the woods.
“What!” howled Litivak, bolting to his feet. “You’ve gone mad!”
Have I? Vercingetorix wondered. But the logic of it was as cold and clear and hard as a sword of ice. They must slay Caesar not here in Gaul, but where he must be slain if another Caesar was not to come to avenge him.
In Rome.
Vercingetorix rose slowly and deliberately to his feet, then turned, took a step backward toward the fire. He let it heat his back just short of pain, knowing that this was going to be the hardest thing he had ever had to tell them. Knowing that this was not at all how Gauls thought of war. Knowing that the one man in all Gaul who would understand it completely, who would even admire it, was the man he was going to destroy, Gaius Julius Caesar.
“Here is the great and final victory I promised you,” he said. “Greater even than victory in this one war. By destroying Caesar’s last hope of supply and sending him crawling back over the Alps to disgrace in Rome, at such a terrible price to ourselves, we teach any Roman general who would seek vengeance or glory in Gaul just how dearly we hold our liberty, just how impossible it is to break our spirit, just what will happen to any fool who tries. Thus do we defeat Rome not only for our time or the time of our children or our children’s children but for all the ages to come.”
“We can’t do this!” cried Litivak.
“We can easily reach Bourges before Caesar’s army,” Vercingetorix said evenly.
“You would not burn the granaries of Bourges and leave its people to starve were it an Arverne city!” Litivak shouted at him in a fury.
“I would do it to Gergovia itself if that was what it took!” Vercingetorix shouted back just as hotly.
He now saw something worse than anger or even hatred in Litivak’s eyes: a pity so deeply regretful, so sorrowful, that hatred would have come as boon in its place. Vercingetorix found that pity stealing into his own heart, pity for himself, pity for what he must become. But he was Vercingetorix, was he not, chosen by destiny to become king of Gaul? Who had stood outside of time and seen in a vision his life entire. Therefore, where was his choice? He must harden his heart, and his will must be forged in cold, hard steel. Only thereby could Gaul be saved and destiny fulfilled.
“We must win this war at any price,” he said, “or the very soul of Gaul will perish. There is no choice.”
“At the price of your own honor?” demanded Litivak.
“If need be.”
Litivak took two long steps away from Vercingetorix before he turned to address the others. “The worst of it is that this vile plan will work, and you all know it will work too!” he said.
Comm, grim-faced, nodded in reluctant agreement. Cottos and Luctor looked away from both Litivak and Vercingetorix.
“The Bituriges have never sent a single man to support us,” said Critognat. “They bought their safety from the Romans with their cowardice. Let the bastards pay for our victory! It is only just!”
Hearing such words spoken by this simple-hearted old warrior, Vercingetorix knew he would retain the forces to do this necessary and terrible deed. If Critognat understood, so would the like-minded warriors of the Arverni. And to do this thing, the forces of the Arverni alone would suffice.
“Oh yes, your plan will work, Great Leader of Warriors,” Litivak told him scornfully, “but you can no longer style yourself Leader of Great Warriors, Vercingetorix, son of Keltill. For no great warrior would buy victory at such a price. Your plan will work in this world, but it is without honor. It is wrong! You’ve spent so much time fighting Caesar, you’re beginning to think like a Roman!”
“The Romans fight to win,” said Vercingetorix. “And if we are to defeat them, so must we.”
“The Edui will not fight at the side of a man who would do such a thing!”
“Nor will the Cadurques,” said Luctor.
“In order to defeat the enemy, we must become the enemy?” said Litivak, and spat into the fire as if it were Vercingetorix’s face. And, followed by Luctor, he stalked out of the circle of firelight and into the darkness of the forest night.
XIV
WELL, another two days’ march and we will be there
,” said Tulius, “but Vercingetorix’s army is arriving already.”
“Excellent,” said Caesar, in high spirits despite the reduction in the ration to one handful of gruel a day.
“What’s so excellent about it?” asked Labienus. “It means he’ll have time to bring his army into Bourges before we can catch him outside the walls. It means a siege.”
“Exactly,” said Caesar.
Caesar, Labienus, Tulius, and Gallius sat outside Caesar’s tent, slurping down their meager share of the tasteless slop in full view of the surrounding troops. It seemed more watery today, and more noticeably tinged with green from the added grass.
Dionysus protect me! Caesar thought. I’m beginning to become a connoisseur of this stuff! His rumbling gut, however, was not in agreement. Patience, he told it as he licked the last of the gruel off his spoon, soon you will eat your fill.
“You want a siege?” Labienus said in no little perplexity.
“Why attack a pack of wolves in the process of entering a trap?” Caesar told him. “Why not wait till they’re inside and have barred the exit behind them?”
“You’re assuming he’ll make the mistake of accepting a siege,” Labienus said dubiously.
“Why do the Gauls build fortified cities on hilltops?”
“Because they know that fighting from inside them is an advantage…?” Labienus muttered, his perplexity now complete.
Caesar laughed. Labienus was a great tactician, an inspiring leader of men, a soldier’s soldier, and perhaps because of that he had difficulty with the concept of winning battles with means other than swords and valor.
“Explain it to him, Gallius,” he said.
“It is an advantage when one tribe of Gauls is being besieged by another,” the chief engineer told Labienus, “but they’ve never seen Roman siegecraft. They’ll piss themselves when they see the battering ram I’ve constructed!”
The Druid King Page 30