The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  Then, with a final shattering crack, the ram did breach the fire-weakened wall, and to the cheers of all the Gauls who saw it, a whole blackened section fell away in shards to reveal—

  A solid wall of Roman shields blocking the breach and bristling with the swords of the legionnaires behind them.

  For a moment, Vercingetorix froze.

  And then he glanced upward.

  And his eyes chanced to meet Caesar’s atop the tower.

  Gazing into the eyes of Vercingetorix, Caesar sees a little smile of grim acknowledgment.

  He knows.

  Vercingetorix raises his sword in mocking salute.

  “We who are about to die salute you, Caesar!” he shouts.

  Mockingly?

  Perhaps not, thinks Caesar, as he finds himself raising his own sword and saluting his worthy vanquished foe with total sincerity.

  Vercingetorix lowers his sword, and with his amazon at his side, and his defeated Gauls rallying to him, lunges at the cohort of legionnaires blocking the breach in the fortress of Rome. And so the final battle of the conquest of Gaul begins after the war is already won, a meaningless combat of man against man and sword against sword.

  Meaningless, or as it is meant to be? Caesar asks himself. Shall history say that Gaius Julius Caesar was a lesser man than the king of the Gauls?

  As, with no further thought, he descends from on high to join it.

  Action mercifully stops the thought that blackens his mind as Vercingetorix slashes away at Roman shields, a mindless clatter and clash of metal against metal, of muscle against muscle, of the sheer weight of bodies, of the mass of his warriors expending their strength and their lives against the armored mass of Roman legionnaires. Of all that was once Gaul against all that is Rome.

  With Rhia, his sister of the sword, fighting beside him to the very end.

  Caesar reaches the rear of the fray and sees a squad of his men wheeling a mobile barricade toward the breach, but sees too that the Gauls have pushed his legionnaires back, and a line of them stands just inside the blackened and jagged hole, defending and blocking it with their bodies.

  “Take heart, legionnaires!” he shouts as he presses forward, sword held high, the ensign of his crimson cloak streaming behind him. “Caesar himself fights at your side!”

  And they do. They cheer. They attack with renewed vigor. Four javelin men from a reinforcing cohort rushing up behind him break ranks to escort him through the crush to the front.

  “The battle is won!” Caesar shouts triumphantly as he breaks through the ranks of his own men to face the Gauls.

  To face Vercingetorix.

  “The Gauls flee to the four winds!” he shouts. “The war is over! Gaul is conquered.”

  Vercingetorix looks right at him. His sword hangs limp.

  The Gauls surrounding him seem to cringe backward in dismay. Caesar’s legionnaires stand motionless for an instant, so that it seems that he and Vercingetorix stand alone facing each other on their own private battlefield.

  As it was meant to be.

  Dreamily, Caesar finds himself moving forward. To accept the unspoken challenge.

  As was destined—

  From behind him, a javelin whistles toward Vercingetorix—

  His amazon leaps in front of him—

  And the javelin pierces her breast straight through to the heart.

  She falls backward into the arms of Vercingetorix.

  Who holds her tenderly as he gazes at Caesar. Who cannot look away from those eyes until—

  He senses the wind of a motion behind him.

  And sees a legionnaire in the act of throwing his javelin.

  “No!” he shouts angrily as he smashes it from the man’s hand with the flat of his sword. “He has lost everything but his life and his honor.”

  And he looks back at Vercingetorix with the tenderness of the father he has never been for the son he has never had.

  “Those he may keep. The triumphant conqueror of Gaul owes that much to…its king.”

  And the mobile barricade slides shut across the breach between them.

  XXIII

  VERCINGETORIX CARRIES the lifeless body of Rhia across a plain piled with corpses and drenched with blood, toward a burning city, through its shattered gates, and into a plaza thronged with warriors beating a dirge on their shields with their swords.

  The faces of the warriors are bone-white skulls, a funeral pyre is already burning, somehow Rhia already lies upon it, and within the fire Vercingetorix sees the eyes of Keltill, brighter than the flames, as his father’s voice speaks to him from the place beyond them.

  “In fire do you become the tale the bards will sing.

  In fire shall you enter the Land of Legend as a king.”

  Vercingetorix walks into the flames, burning but unconsumed.

  He knows that this is a dream, that he has passed through the flames into the Land of Legend, where the Great Wheel turns and a new Great Age is born. And he can see now what will be.

  He sees himself catching the falling body of Rhia, and Caesar staying the hand that would slay him, and he hears the words that Caesar spoke, which never reached his ear in the timebound world of strife.

  “You have lost everything but your life and your honor.”

  Now the corpse that he holds is his own. And Caesar stands before him in a stone prison cell, a sword in one hand, and the Crown of Brenn in the other.

  “One or the other,” says Caesar. “Which shall it be?”

  The voices of a multitude chant: “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul! Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  Vercingetorix reaches for the Crown of Brenn.

  “Hail, Vercingetorix, king of Gaul,” Caesar says sardonically, and places it upon his brow.

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

  The chanting is mocking now, larded with laughter. Vercingetorix wears only a filthy loincloth and the Crown of Brenn. His hands are chained before him, and the chain is fastened to a gilded chariot, and he is afoot. The chariot is dragging him down a wide avenue in Rome, and Caesar rides in the chariot, a wreath of laurel on his brow, waving triumphantly to the crowds lining the way.

  “Vercingetorix!” they cheer sardonically. “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  Vercingetorix stands once more in the dank stone cell, the Crown of Brenn heavy on his head, as Caesar kneels and now offers him the sword.

  “I owe this much to the king of Gaul,” he says tenderly.

  Vercingetorix accepts the sword, and he turns it inward, and plunges it into his own heart.

  As he does, he becomes an eagle soaring once more above the magic city of his vision beneath the Tree of Knowledge.

  But now it is night. A magical night in the Land of Legend such as has never been known in the world of strife. The city is alive with light, as if the gods have sprinkled it with jewels of every color, as numerous as a winter snowfall. Lights soar across the heavens. Lights move along the avenues like falling stars which will never touch ground. The tower of metal wickerwork glows with lights like the Tree of Knowledge set ablaze, so bright that it outshines the stars, burning yet unconsumed.

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  The eagle he has become swoops down to alight on the pedestal of the statue of the warrior on horseback he has seen before, but now, in this magical night, it is illumined a brilliant greenish white, like old copper shining under a full moon. There is writing engraved on the pedestal in the lettering of the Romans, yet in a language he somehow knows that neither he nor Caesar could ever read.

  But he can read clearly enough what is written on the face of the statue, his own face ennobled in stone. It is a face that has seen far too much for its years. It is not the face of a victor, and yet its grim smile is triumphant.

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  Somehow he knows that this City of Light is in a land that will one day be called Gaul. This is a city built by Gauls, built by
a people far greater than the Arverni, Edui, Carnutes, Santons, Atrebates, tribes whose names they have forgotten, a city whose glory outshines even that which once was Rome.

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  This is what the magic of his death has made. Will make. Must make.

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  The king who must die that his people might live.

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  He who must die that his people might truly be born.

  Caesar has had visions before, in the burning white light of the falling sickness, in the blood-throbbing heat of battle, in the moment of orgasmic completion, in the depths of fatigue. This is like all of those, and yet it is not, for he awakens out of the bright white light onto a battlefield of dreams.

  This must be a dream, else how could Great Alexander, blond and radiantly glowing, be riding toward him through the battle of Gergovia upon a horse as white as that light?

  Through the red fog of battle he rides, godlike, untouchable, immortal, and Caesar strides forth to meet him, as is his destiny. They come together, their eyes meet, and Caesar looks into those fierce blue depths and is filled with envy, with awe, with pity, and, yes, with love, for he knows that somehow each of them, one to the other, is both father and son.

  “When I was your age,” says Alexander the Great, “I had conquered the world.”

  “When you are my age,” Caesar tells him, “you will be long since dead.”

  For those are the eyes of Vercingetorix in the face of Alexander. He dismounts, and holds out a sword, one hand on the hilt, the other on the blade. Caesar’s own sword.

  Vercingetorix kneels before him and holds it up as an offering. “In the name of my people, I surrender my life and my sword.”

  “In the name of the Senate and people of Rome, I accept your surrender,” says Caesar, as he takes the sword and places the Crown of Brenn upon the brow of the defeated. “Vercingetorix, King of Gaul.”

  Vercingetorix stands in a clearing in the great forest beneath the Tree of Knowledge. He wears the robe of an Arch Druid over the armor of a warrior. In his right hand is a sword, in his left the scepter of the fallen star. Within the forest stand the shapes of druids; faceless, numberless, hidden in plain sight.

  Vercingetorix raises the sword, and an empty white robe comes forth. He raises the Arch Druid’s staff and the face of Guttuatr appears within its cowl.

  “And have you seen the story of your life entire now, Vercingetorix, man of action?” he says.

  Vercingetorix holds up his sword. “I have seen my death and the triumph its magic will make.”

  “The triumph, man of knowledge?”

  Vercingetorix holds up his Arch Druid’s staff. “The age of the tribes of Gaul is over, the age of druids has passed, and the age of Rome has begun,” he says. “And when that age passes, there will come another, far greater than any man of knowledge born in this age can hope to understand.”

  Vercingetorix raises his sword and crosses it with the Arch Druid’s staff. “I was never destined to do more than carry the spirit of that which is passing from this Great Age into the next.”

  From the ethereal folds of his robe, Guttuatr withdraws the Crown of Brenn. Vercingetorix kneels and allows him to place it upon his head.

  Vercingetorix rises. “All kings must die,” he says, “but a druid king, having encompassed the moment of his death while he yet lives, may wield it as a mighty sword.”

  He holds the Arch Druid’s staff aloft by the tip. And the fallen star thereon rises on a tail of fire back into the heavens from whence it came. To become a bright new star as the Wheel turns from one Great Age into the next.

  Caesar approaches a circular clearing. In the center of the clearing is a great oak. Beneath the oak is a man. He wears the armor of a warrior beneath the cloak of a druid. Upon his head is the Crown of Brenn. In his left hand is a wooden staff. In his right is a sword.

  The sword is Caesar’s own.

  “Hail, Caesar, Conqueror of Gaul,” says Vercingetorix.

  “Hail, Vercingetorix…my young friend,” Caesar finds himself saying. “Do I wake or do I dream?”

  “This is the Land of Legend, Caesar. And we are both in it.”

  “But why are we here?” Caesar finds himself saying, as if he is an actor playing the part of himself in a drama that has played out many times before.

  “To give you what you need,” says Vercingetorix.

  “You would surrender Alesia and save the city from further carnage?” says Caesar.

  “Is that what you need, Caesar?” says Vercingetorix. “Do you need to pass the rest of your life as an object of ridicule chasing barbarian tribes through the forest?”

  “No,” says Caesar. “What do I need?” he asks Vercingetorix.

  “You must have a King to surrender Gaul,” says Vercingetorix. “Thereby creating a Gaul for you to conquer.”

  And Caesar understands. After all, this is the man he sought to make that king before this war began.

  “So be it, my young friend,” he says. “You may rule Gaul as Roman proconsul subject to no man but Caesar. And you may keep the crown you wear if it pleases you to also be called a king.”

  “This cannot be,” Vercingetorix tells him. “I have sworn a blood oath never to rule as king while a single Roman soldier remains on the soil of Gaul. No Gaul would obey a traitor who broke such an oath.”

  “But then what do you offer me?”

  “The surrender of a king to take back to Rome in chains as proof that Gaius Julius Caesar can at last be hailed as conqueror of Gaul. That is the part I play in the legend of Caesar.”

  “And what part do I play in the legend of Vercingetorix?”

  “They are one and the same,” Vercingetorix tells him. “We open the door to the Land of Legend, each for the other, and each of us walks through it.”

  And Caesar knows that this is true. Will be true. Is destined to be true.

  “The king who must die salutes you,” says Vercingetorix, and hands Caesar back his own sword.

  Vercingetorix awoke with the warmth of Marah’s body close beside him and a weighty burden upon his brow.

  He did not need to reach up and touch it to know that it was the Crown of Brenn.

  XXIV

  MUST YOU?” Marah asked Vercingetorix after they had made love, but he heard no true questioning in her voice.

  This second and last time had been far different from the first. That had been the opening of a door, a magic of a kind, and while it had lasted, he could believe that it was a beginning.

  This had been a simple, natural act of love between a man and a woman, as he supposed it was meant to be, as it would have been a thousand times and more down through their years together, had destiny not robbed them of those years. Had he been favored by the gods with another life, the life of Keltill perhaps, a noble of the Arverni on his homestead with his wife by his side and a son to love him.

  But that way of life was passing, and that simple happiness would never be his. The final act of love that they had shared had been a farewell, and both of them had known it. And if this had tinged it with a hint of the bitter, it had sweetened it with poignancy as well.

  “You above all others know that I must,” he told her as he rose from the bed to dress himself.

  Marah could only sigh, and nod, and somehow that little nod of brave acceptance touched his heart more deeply than she ever had before, making what he must do both easier and more arduous.

  “Rome is the future,” she said. “And Gaul is the past.”

  “No,” Vercingetorix told her as he donned his pantaloons and tunic and armor. “The Age of Rome has come, but when the Wheel makes its next Great Turning, Rome too shall pass. The Gaul that was a forest of tribes, which the druids would have preserved forever like a fly in amber, is gone, but the Gaul that will be is a great oak with many branches that will bear seeds that will flower when the names of those bra
nches have been forgotten and Rome has become a fading memory.”

  “You have seen this in a vision?” asked Marah.

  “I have seen another time and place, where the very tongues of Gaul and Rome are no longer spoken. In the end, Rome and Gaul will make this Great Age as…as…”

  Vercingetorix paused, unable to say the words, and his eyes burned with tears when Marah said them for him.

  “As a father and mother make the child that is neither of them and the heir of both.”

  Vercingetorix could only nod. “That is the future I must do this thing to make,” he said in a whisper. “If I must be its father, you will always be its mother.”

  He picked up the Crown of Brenn. He paused.

  “I swore an oath not to don the Crown of Brenn while a single Roman soldier remained on the soil of Gaul, and yet now I must break that vow, that Gaul might be born…”

  “Then let its mother, who loves not honor more than the boy who first kissed her by a stream, break it for you and leave your honor unblemished,” said Marah.

  She rose from the bed, and as Vercingetorix gazed upon her naked loveliness for the last time, she took the crown from his hands, and he beheld all that he would lose, all the joys of the long life together that he must now throw away.

  The greater the magic, the greater the price that must be paid.

  Marah kissed him for the last time.

  “Take that with you into the Land of Legend…” she said, and placed the Crown of Brenn upon on his head.

  “…Vercingetorix, king of Gaul.”

  Carnaxes blow a solemn note as the gates of Alesia open and Vercingetorix rides through them alone, mounted on a white horse and wearing the Crown of Brenn. From within the city comes the slow, steady beating of unseen swords on shields as he rides across the corpse-strewn battlefield to the inner wall of the Roman fortification, where a portal has been opened to grant him passage.

  Roman trumpets answer as he rides through it, parading down an aisle formed by two lines of centurions—their armor polished to a spotless gleam, their swords raised in salute—across the Roman encampment, and through the outer wall.