The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  —eight large clay amphorae whistled high over their heads, and impacted amidst the ditches behind them. Some burst into flame, some released spreading puddles of fire that set grass burning and flowed down into the ditches, setting stakes aflame and roasting the horses and men impaled on them, burning alive those who had not yet mercifully died.

  Caesar had ridden in among the cavalry just behind his javelin men. He couldn’t really see much, but he was close enough to the front to smell the horses of the onrushing Gauls, to hear their ferocious battle cries, and then the screams of horses gutted by spears, the clang and shatter of swords on shields, the howls of the dead and dying.

  Javelin after javelin was thrown from just forward of where he sat, amphora after amphora passed overhead, and now so much Greek fire had been dropped behind the Gauls that he could smell its sharp reek as it mingled with the odor of blood, horseshit, and sour, fearful sweat that formed the perfume of the battlefield.

  The fighting was intense, as he had known it would be, but a line of horsemen thrusting down at a wall of shields was far less effective than legionnaires thrusting upward from behind it and his infantry held the line against the Gallic cavalry charge, while the javelins took their toll on the Gallic rear.

  Caesar waited until he was sure his front line had broken the charge, then rode back among his signalmen and ordered a trumpeter to sound the advance.

  Behind a solid wall of shields and spears, the front line of Roman infantry, slowly but implacably, step by orderly marching step, began to advance against the disorganized chaos of Critognat’s cavalry.

  Rather than retreat, the Gauls fought back. Some few tried to leap their horses over the palisade of spears, felling some Romans, but impaling their own mounts in the process. Most reared their horses, smashing hooves on shields and helmets, leaning low in their saddles to slash at necks and faces, but as soon as a legionnaire in the front rank fell, one from the rank behind replaced him, and should he fall, one from the third rank replaced him.

  Inexorably, like a millstone grinding hard grain to powdery flour, the legions of Caesar pushed the stubbornly defiant Gauls backward toward the ditches, back toward the flames fed by the ceaseless bombardment of Greek fire.

  As he led his cavalry out onto the plain in a broad ragged front, Vercingetorix was dismayed to behold a heavy pall of black smoke hanging over the hilltop on which Gergovia was built, and the huge Roman army before it. But his hopes rose as, galloping farther, he saw that, no, the city was not burning; rather, the smoke was rising from a wall of flame on the plain below it.

  He raised his sword high above his head and gave a mighty, wordless war cry. Beside him, Rhia did likewise, waving his bear standard higher than any sword. The shouting was joined by the front line of the charging Gauls and spread backward through the ranks; then it was no longer an army, but thousands of howling warriors avid for the blood of the enemy, fearless of death in their lust for glory.

  The time of true battle had come.

  From the Roman army came a tremendous brassy blare of massed trumpets: four high, piercing notes, repeated four times. From the ramparts of Gergovia, in mocking reply, carnaxes blew deeper notes, a short tune of musical laughter, a fanfare of triumph.

  The Gauls fighting the Romans suddenly wheeled their horses, broke away, galloped back toward the outermost ditch and the flames beyond.

  Titus Labienus had not been pleased when Caesar had withdrawn his command of the Gallic auxiliaries invading Britain in favor of Tulius, then handed it back to him when it was clear that it would turn into a travesty. He knew that Caesar trusted him as a general, but he also knew that there were matters on which Caesar did not trust him—political matters and, worse, matters on which his closest confidant had been that odious reptile Gisstus, dirty and dishonorable tasks he handed off to Tulius.

  But Labienus had viewed this as mercy and wisdom. Mercy because he was a man of honor and a soldier with no desire to be anything more, and certainly no desire to be anything less. Wisdom because Caesar seemed to understand this and employ him accordingly.

  Until now.

  Now, however, Labienus found himself in the middle of one of Caesar’s slimiest machinations. Here he was, with a squad of only forty of his own cavalrymen and that only a bodyguard, perched on a ridgeline to the northwest of the battle with the glowering Litivak, whose Eduen cavalry covered the slope behind them, muttering and cursing.

  As a general, Labienus had just barely been able to swallow the butchery at Bourges as a necessary and clever stratagem. That was war. But this was forcing an honorable enemy into committing despicable treason. Most distasteful of all was that Labienus knew that Caesar had burdened him with this foul “command” precisely because the Gauls respected him as an honorable enemy, Roman or not.

  Labienus sighed deeply.

  Litivak, perhaps hearing his sigh and understanding its import, looked his way. It was a baleful glance, and Labienus returned it with a wan, regretful shrug, hoping for some sign of forgiveness but not receiving it. It was hardly a proper manner in which to deliver a decisive command. Nevertheless…

  “Now,” said Titus Labienus.

  His blood afire, his body aglow with glorious strength, whirling his sword above his head as though it were a willow wand, and all but laughing with the wild joy of it, Vercingetorix led his warriors toward the rear of Caesar’s army.

  Closer, and closer, and closer. Now he could make out the catapults slinging something in the direction of the city, and the sunlight glinting off the shields of the infantry—

  A moan so great and terrible that it could be heard above the din of the hoofbeats of thousands of horses arose from his own men, a sound so mournful and outraged that it sapped Vercingetorix’s spirit as a sudden unexpected blow to the stomach might knock the air from his lungs.

  He looked to the northwest and saw an army of horsemen almost as large as his own cresting the ridgeline and galloping down the slope toward his right flank, wearing the blue cloaks of Eduen warriors, waving swords and spears and axes and shouting battle cries.

  The features of the figure leading the charge were not yet visible. But Vercingetorix did not need to see the traitor’s face to know who it was, for it surely could be no other.

  “Litivak!” he screamed in soul-deep agony.

  This was just too good!

  Vercingetorix was turning his army to meet the charge of Litivak’s force on his right flank, or perhaps, like the schooling of fish or the flocking of birds, this was no more than the spontaneous reaction of a chaotic horde, but either way it exposed his left flank to Caesar as invitingly as a coquettish whore presents her succulent rump.

  “Advance!” Caesar cried.

  And without waiting for his word to be turned into a trumpet call, he raised his sword and rode through the ranks of his infantry to the front and beyond. Crimson cloak waving in the breeze of his passage as the ensign of his long-sought triumph, he led his legions as this fateful and glorious moment would have him do, from the front.

  Vercingetorix found himself galloping ahead of his warriors, one horse length, two, five, eight, oblivious to all that was behind him, for now he had eyes only for what lay ahead—a rider wearing the blue cape of the treacherous Edui galloping ahead of his army too, sword held high in challenge.

  And now he could see his face.

  It was indeed Litivak.

  Worse still, the swine was smiling.

  And then Litivak reached across his body with his left hand and flipped his cloak over to turn its underside upward.

  Vercingetorix gasped. Tears came to his eyes.

  It was orange.

  “The Arverne who would have burned Bourges was my enemy!” Litivak shouted. “But the Gaul who paid the price to spare it is forever my brother!”

  As Caesar gaped in dismay, there in the distance before him, Litivak and Vercingetorix locked arms in a comradely embrace. And to a man, the Eduen warriors descending upon the right fla
nk of Vercingetorix’s army flipped their blue cloaks over to display Arverne orange. And wheeled around, as did Vercingetorix’s cavalry.

  And the trap he had set suddenly became the trap in which he was caught, as the two armies combined forces, and Vercingetorix and Litivak, side by side, led the whole horde straight toward him.

  A huge cheer went up from the women and old men and children on the ramparts of Gergovia. In lieu of shields and swords or spears, they began a rhythmic beating of knives and tradesman’s tools on pots and rocks and the walls of the city itself, accompanied by carnaxes.

  Critognat’s cavalry, outnumbered though it still was, charged what a moment before had been the orderly advancing Roman army, suddenly transformed into a melee of confusion as it found itself caught now between the hammer and the anvil.

  There was no time to rage at Litivak’s treachery; though Caesar’s army might still outnumber the Gauls, that very treachery had turned what had been a winning deployment into an impending fiasco. Caesar wheeled his horse around and dashed five ranks back into his infantry from his totally exposed position before the charging Gauls.

  After which it was a pandemonium such as he had never before experienced in battle.

  The Gallic cavalry charge hit the front rank of Roman infantry along a fairly broad front, but not nearly as broad as the line of legionnaires. They at once broke through by the sheer shock of their concentrated numbers.

  Hacking and slashing, they quickly penetrated a dozen ranks deep before encountering the heavily outnumbered Roman cavalry, who were able only to slow their advance briefly.

  It was long enough, however, for Roman infantry on either flank of the Gallic spearhead to wheel around, come together in a pincer movement, cut it off, and then form a new line behind it. But this new Roman line was immediately broken by more charging Gallic cavalry and the rear of the Roman army began to fragment into isolated fighting units under assault of the unexpectedly massive cavalry charge.

  Meanwhile, Critognat’s cavalry was held back by the Roman line facing the city, taking and giving heavy casualties. But not for very long: elements of the combined forces of Vercingetorix and Litivak, fighting their way through the shattered Roman army, attacked them from the rear, and broke through to Critognat’s warriors in several places.

  It was no longer an organized combat between two armies on a coherent battlefield. It was now warriors fighting each other in small groups on a vast plain of chaotic slaughter.

  With a sweep of his sword, Vercingetorix slashed across the throat of a Roman cavalryman, and blood fountained as the Roman fell from his horse to be trampled by scores of hooves. Rhia, regaining his side and hugging her horse with her thighs, sent a head flying into the air to bounce off the shield of a laughing Arverne.

  Half a dozen Roman infantrymen charged at them from the left with swords; from somewhere a spear pierced one of them through the eye; as Rhia thrust her sword through a neck, Vercingetorix hacked an arm, reared his horse, smashing a skull with the full weight of its front hooves. A terrified horse galloped by with a headless Gaul tumbling from its saddle; Rhia leaned far down and struck upward at a Roman crotch; Vercingetorix slashed a centurion across the face, slitting it from cheek to eyeball.

  Caesar had never experienced such combat, and found that everything was happening too fast, too furiously, too disconnectedly, for there to be space for thought or time for terror or even anger. Slash, duck, wheel, turn, thrust—he was no longer a general, hardly even a man, but fighting as an animal would for its life and the blood of its enemies, his sword his tooth and claw.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a catapult tumble over in a crash of wood and iron, even as he struck at one attacking Gaul’s throat while another slashed his right arm. But the pain was far away, the line of blood strangely beautiful. So did the combat come to seem, a graceful dance of steel and flesh, of blood and guts oozing from wounds to the music of clanging swords and ululating screams, the rhythmic clatter of metal on metal, the drumming of stomping hooves…

  Thrust, parry, slice a neck; Vercingetorix seems to see everything the moment before it happens. Just as he wields his sword, so does destiny wield him.

  A pair of Romans attack from the right and another three at the left, but they are moving so slowly, slower than the passage of time. He brings his shield down on a head, kicks a chin, turns to slash a throat.

  It is as his vision beneath the Tree of Knowledge, as if there is a Tree of Action too, and he dreams this battle beneath it, for just as he stood outside of time and saw his life entire, so now does he see this battle entire, even while immersed in the blood and death and screams of it.

  He sees dying Gauls and dying Romans, he sees catapults tumble and fall. He sees fire and blood and steel. He sees this battlefield strewn with the corpses of horses and men, littered with limbs and heads and guts. He sees dogs and wolves gnawing meat from the bones as clouds of carrion birds descend to join the feast.

  He sees himself upon his horse, cutting, kicking, maiming, killing, bathed in the commingled blood of himself and his enemies. Beside him is Rhia, likewise incarnadine, eyes burning like those of the feral wolf-child she once was, and never more beautiful.

  He sees the Roman army slowly retreating afoot across the plain, harried by Gallic horsemen, enclosed by its shields, slinking away in defeat like an enormous vanquished but impenetrable tortoise yapped at by frustrated foxes.

  He sees himself holding a bloody sword high above his head in triumph.

  Caesar brought up his shield as a huge Arverne warrior, eyes wild, blond hair and beard streaked with blood, came at him with an ax. The ax hit the shield with tremendous force, embedding itself in it, then the shield was ripped from his hands, his horse reared in panic, and Caesar was dumped on the ground, still clutching his sword.

  Even as he scrambled to his feet, a dozen or more legionnaires, seeing him fall, dashed to protect him.

  The rearing horses and the writhing men, the clash of sword upon sword, the shouts and cries and screams of the battlefield seem to Vercingetorix to dissolve into mist. Not the white mist out of which emerged his vision at Bourges, but a blood-red mist out of which emerges—

  —a bright crimson banner snapping and whipping about in a storm of slashing metal.

  A bright crimson cloak.

  The standard of Gaius Julius Caesar.

  Draped across the shoulders of Caesar as he rises from the blood-soaked ground, sword in hand, as legionnaires gather to him, like some demonic serpent who may be defeated, who may be brought down, but who will not die.

  Vercingetorix urges his horse toward that undying monster, toward this moment of shared destiny, and, as if the gods would have it so, he glides forward, untouched and untouchable, as if all is unreal here save himself and Caesar.

  Through the red fog of battle, a figure on horseback rides toward Caesar; young, blond, blood-spattered, Great Alexander as savage nemesis. But it is Vercingetorix, not Alexander, and as he draws closer, Caesar sees that his eyes gaze out from elsewhere, and he rides forward as he might in a dream.

  Caesar cannot look away from those eyes as Vercingetorix approaches. They trap him in the nightmare of defeat which this day has become, as if he himself has become but a figment in the dream of glory of its victor. Yet Vercingetorix seems unable to look away from his eyes too. As if this is a dream they both share, a dance of death or of destiny, an eternal moment outside of time.

  Caesar hardly notices when a mighty blow from somewhere strikes his sword from his hand and sends it tumbling through the air.

  As a boy once caught the Crown of Brenn falling from the brow of his father before it could touch the floor, so now, without thought, does Vercingetorix pluck from the air the sword of Gaius Julius Caesar.

  Time stops for Caesar as he stands swordless and defenseless before Vercingetorix, staring transfixed into the eyes of his conqueror, into the eyes of the man who will now slay him with his own sword.

&n
bsp; And yet in those eyes he sees…

  How can this be?

  Before Vercingetorix stands his defeated and defenseless enemy, gazing unwaveringly into his eyes as if accepting his fate.

  Yet what Vercingetorix sees in his vision of the next moment, in a moment outside of time, is not himself plunging the captured sword into the heart of Caesar, but himself holding a sword in both hands before him as an offering.

  A token of surrender.

  Caesar wonders if Vercingetorix sees what he sees.

  But how can he?

  For what Caesar sees is not his own impending death, but Vercingetorix, today’s victor, meekly handing him back his sword as if he were the vanquished.

  Caesar nods, as if to acknowledge the vision of unknown destiny which in this moment they share.

  Without knowing why, but without being able to do otherwise, Vercingetorix nods back.

  And raises the hilt of Caesar’s sword before his lips in salute.

  And then, holding it aloft, he gives a wordless cry of triumph that sounds hollow in his own ears, turns, and rides away.

  XVII

  RHIA RODE on Vercingetorix’s right hand, holding high the Arverne bear. Litivak rode on his left with a standard-bearer displaying the Eduen boar. Behind them paraded a wonder unknown since the days of Brenn—a united and triumphant army of Gaul.

  The gates of Bibracte were open wide, the ramparts were crowded with shield-banging warriors and cheering citizens, garlands were tossed, and carnaxes blew welcoming salutes. Vercingetorix entered the Eduen capital to the acclaim of its inhabitants, basking in the greatest glory known to a Gaul since Brenn had held Rome itself to ransom.

  Yet his enjoyment of the greatest moment of his life was shadowed. He had spared the life of Caesar. He knew not why, save that he had followed a vision which had commanded him far more surely than he had ever commanded this army. And so Caesar had lived to rally his battered and bloodied army, to withdraw it from the battlefield of its defeat and shame in an orderly manner, a feat that Vercingetorix could not imagine himself performing had Caesar been the victor.