The Druid King Page 10

  “What do trees have to do with the story of Brenn?” Vercingetorix demanded.

  “The Romans believe that any land they conquer belongs to them. But men too are rooted in the soil of their own land. Sooner or later—even if it takes a thousand years—the tree of Gaul will die in the soil of Italy, and the tree of Rome will die in the soil of Gaul. Brenn knew that we could not forever rule Rome. Nor can Rome forever rule Gaul.”

  “One does not have to be a man of knowledge to know that men are not trees!” Vercingetorix said contemptuously. “Trees have no choice but to stand there defenselessly and bow to the woodsman’s ax! Is that what you would have us do? Meekly keep our swords in their scabbards, bow to the will of Caesar, and become just one more enslaved province of Rome?”

  At this there were scattered cheers, and Vercingetorix believed there would have been more had it not been the Arch Druid that he had challenged.

  Guttuatr scowled, and Vercingetorix, as a warrior should, pressed his advantage home. “Are we trees or are we Gauls?” he demanded. “I say we must unite to make war on the Romans to drive them from our lands!”

  Now the cheers were louder, and the Arch Druid’s discomfort verged on open ire. “Behind a king?” Guttuatr said grimly.

  “Is not a comet the sign of the coming of a king?” demanded Vercingetorix. “And was not one seen in the heavens?”

  “Is it?” said Guttuatr. “Was there? No man of knowledge saw any such thing. A comet endures long in the firmament; a falling star, no matter how brightly it burns, is gone in a few heartbeats. And so—might not what was seen be the sign of the death of him who, in his prideful vanity, would place a crown upon his brow in defiance of the law? For did not this very thing come to pass?”

  Vercingetorix’s hands balled into fists, and for one mad moment, he almost stepped forward to menace the Arch Druid of all Gaul.

  “All hail Vercingetorix, king of Gaul!” some Eduen bastard shouted mockingly, and the ensuing roar of laughter was enough to prevent the unthinkable.

  Instead, Vercingetorix found himself fleeing the unbearable, fleeing the harsh, hot sunlight of the clearing to hide his tears and cool his blood in the calm, quiet, shadowy depths of the woods.

  Caesar gazed down at a broad valley that narrowed gradually as it rose into the mild, grassy foothills leading up into the great rocky gray-brown ridges of the Maritime Alps. The green of the grass was only beginning to wither toward brown, but there was white to be seen on the higher crests, and a cool breeze blew down from the mountains, ruffling the banners, whirling the dust kicked up by the carts and wagons and horses, a harbinger of autumn.

  This was a sign that it was indeed time to begin to move south to Aix for the winter, before snow began to clog the passes.

  Caesar had marshaled all his legions here, save the garrison forces being left behind under Titus Labienus, and as he sat on his favorite horse surveying them from a low hilltop, it was almost as if he beheld vast fields of crops that he had sown, ripe now, and ready for the harvest: the brazen helmets slung across the chests of the infantry formations like gleaming yellow sunflowers, the upraised spears and standards like rows of giant asparagus, the brush-crested helmets of the cavalry bobbing like rushes in the wind. And, indeed, in the midst of these fields of his fancy were the real rich crops he had harvested—long strings of yoked slaves, wagons and carts loaded with dyes, metalwork, pelts, silver, gold—the spoils of this season’s booty and tribute.

  But Caesar was not content.

  “Well, it will be good to be getting back to civilization,” said Gisstus, reined up beside him. “Or at least what passes for civilization in Gallia Narbonensis.”

  “Will it?” said Caesar glumly.

  “What ails you, Caesar? The tribute has been rolling in, the only resistance left is minor and fragmented, and the Senate has voted you another term as proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul and Gallia Narbonensis.”

  “And when that one’s over, they’ll be all too happy to vote me another, and then another! I have only to ask and they’ll make me proconsul of Gaul for life! Julius Caesar, permanent proconsul of this barbaric country, permanently and safely far from Rome!”

  Gisstus shrugged. “So it’s going more slowly than planned,” he said. “But you do have six legions, and enough money to—”

  “To keep them here forever as an army of occupation!” Caesar snapped irritably. “And these miserable tribes will keep them occupied with their endless petty rebellions just as long! No, Gisstus, I need to finally conquer Transalpine Gaul, so that the three parts of Gaul can be formally incorporated into a single Roman province. Only that will force the Senate to allow me the full triumph in Rome I need to bring this army unopposed to the border of Italy.”

  Gisstus nodded in comprehension. “To persuade the Senate to elect you dictator…?”

  Caesar nodded back, but he found himself measuring Gisstus out of the corner of his eye. How much can I tell even him? he wondered. Gisstus knows me better than anyone save Calpurnia. But even she doesn’t know everything. Best not to tell him all.

  Best not to tell anyone that I am not about to blindly obey the law that no proconsul may take his legions beyond the borders of his own province, let alone across the frontier into Italy itself.

  A man who would make history cannot not be bound by the history that has been made before him and frozen in place by senatorial law. The law is no more than the ancient residue of the politics of the past. The law is not meant to constrain destiny.

  If the fools in the Senate call my bluff, they will find that Gaius Julius Caesar does not bluff, that he has the courage to follow his own star. If the presence of this army on the frontier between Gaul and Italy is not enough to convince them…

  Well, I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.

  And I’ll allow no lawyerly Horatiuses to bar my path.

  “You know, Caesar,” said Gisstus, “if what you need is a formal conquest, when we return in the spring why not just sack the major towns, execute all the vergobrets, and declare victory?”

  “Not funny, Gisstus!” Caesar snapped.

  But he felt that the seed of something had been planted in the soil of his fertile mind.

  “Perhaps,” he said, in a slightly better humor, “not so funny at all…”

  “Could we have read the signs wrong, Zelkar?” asks Guttuatr, to the amazement of the druid Salgax.

  Zelkar shakes his heavy, jowly head. “The sign of the new star proclaims a Great Turning as clearly as a mighty flash of lightning proclaims a coming clap of thunder.”

  “But does it really point to the boy?” Kifris mutters dubiously.

  “Vercingetorix defies all laws because they are laws,” says Polgar. “The law commanded the death of his father, and so the law itself is his enemy, or so he sees it.”

  The five druids sit on wooden stools around a stone brazier within the school’s small stone temple. Although waning golden afternoon light streams in through the oblong entranceway in a solid sharp-edged beam, it does not penetrate the shadows, and the little fire in the brazier augmenting it has not been well built, so its acrid smoke thickens the air, adds to the atmosphere of gloom, mustiness, confinement. Salgax does not like this place. He does not like to be enclosed by walls and roofs at all.

  Kifris keeps the knowledge of the rites. Polgar keeps the knowledge of the law. Zelkar keeps the knowledge of the heavens. Salgax does not know why the Arch Druid has included him in this council. His knowledge is of the forest, of the trees and men and animals who dwell within it, who are the parts of its living body, as fingers are living parts of a man’s hand. He has little knowledge of and less interest in heavenly portents, laws, rites, and none in what those known as Druids of the Inner Way call “knowledge of the oak.” Rather would he be rewarded by the gods for his service to them in this life by being born an oak in the next.

  “The boy would sooner become a brigand than a druid,” Kifris says scornfully.

&nb
sp; “The boy is a boy,” Salgax finds himself saying, speaking out for the first time, much to his own bemusement. “And, like all natural boys, he would be a warrior. Would you expect a wolf cub to seek to become a sheep?”

  “I fail to see—”

  “Let Salgax speak!” the Arch Druid commands sharply, and turns an approving smile upon him; now Salgax understands the wisdom of Guttuatr in summoning him here. The others bear knowledge of rites and stars and laws, but have long since forgotten the knowledge of what it is to be the spirit of a boy on the cusp of manhood within a healthy young man’s body. But this is part of the knowledge that he is meant to remember and pass to the generations to come.

  “As a colt must become a horse before he can be ridden by either druid or warrior, so must a boy first become a man before he can choose to become a druid or a warrior,” Salgax explains. “The body becomes a man before the spirit does, so, before being faced with such choices, the boy inside must satisfy his natural desire to learn the way of the warrior and thus become that passion’s master rather than its slave.”

  “You are saying that we should give Vercingetorix what he wants?” Polgar says skeptically.

  “Or what he now thinks he wants…” muses the Arch Druid.

  “You must first give the boy what he thinks he wants,” Salgax says, “if you would have the man want what you wish to give.”

  The Arch Druid nods. “Wisdom,” he says simply.

  “But who here is to teach him?” protests Zelkar. “No druid knows the warrior’s way.”

  “But do we not shelter one who does?” says Salgax.

  “More wisdom, Salgax,” says the Arch Druid. And, to Salgax’s astonishment, he laughs! “Greater wisdom than you think!”

  An autumn’s morning mist obscured the treetops as Vercingetorix was led by Guttuatr through the woods, away from the druid school to a deeper part of the forest, where he had never been before. Awakening day birds chirped, now and again unseen animals crashed through the underbrush. Other than that, and the soft sounds of their own passage, the silence lay heavier than the light fog.

  Guttuatr had rudely awakened Vercingetorix at dawn with a thump of his staff and, before he could rub the grit of sleep from his eyes, had handed him a sword.

  “Like all…boys, you seek to learn the warrior’s way; then so be it,” Guttuatr had said, and led him away, and would speak no more.

  “Where are you taking me, Guttuatr?” Vercingetorix asked yet again.

  At last the Arch Druid deigned to answer, with a look that chilled Vercingetorix more than the dank morning fog.

  “To confront the most dangerous animal known to man!” he said.

  Vercingetorix drew the sword from its scabbard and gripped it tightly, eyes suddenly alertly peering through the mist, ears registering every distance-muffled sound.

  “A boar? A bear? A lion?” he said, unsuccessfully trying not to show his fear.

  But Guttuatr remained silent, and Vercingetorix spent the next half hour or so darting at shadows, startled by rabbits, whirling his sword at every distant thump. By the time they had reached a small clearing before a cave mouth in a rock face, the fog had lifted, and a wan sun was attempting to shine.

  Guttuatr approached the cave entrance. “We are here!” he shouted. “Come forth!” And then he stepped to one side, well clear of the cave mouth, so that Vercingetorix would confront whatever lurked within on his own.

  Vercingetorix spread his legs, braced himself, raised his sword two-handed and upright before him.

  A woman with long raven-black hair, wearing a white robe, emerged from the cave.

  “Behold the most dangerous animal known to man!” Guttuatr exclaimed. And laughed.

  “Her?”

  The robe hid all but the woman’s face. She was a head shorter than Vercingetorix and seemed several years older. Her hair was lustrous, her brown eyes were hard and unwavering beneath a noble brow, her nose was a bit overlarge, her lips were thin and creased in an expression that might be mirth or might be determination. It was a compelling visage, but too strong for a man to deem beautiful.

  “This is Rhia, Vercingetorix,” said Guttuatr. “She will teach you the way of the sword. And other things besides.”

  “You jest!”

  “Fear not,” said Rhia in a cool, even, soft voice. “I will inflict no pain you cannot learn to bear.”

  And she pulled the robe over her head and tossed it aside.

  Beneath it she wore nothing but a white breechclout and a leather belt from which hung a sword.

  Vercingetorix had never seen a woman naked, but he had caught enough glimpses of this and that to form a picture of what one should look like in his mind.

  Rhia’s body was nothing like it.

  She was not heavily muscled, but every muscle stood out as though sculpted by a master. Her breasts were not large but were held upright by the muscles of her chest. The nipples were small and hard and brown. The strangely masculine beauty of her body was marred—no, not marred, but somehow enhanced—by old sword scars across her hard stomach and the thigh of one of the mighty legs, which seemed to guard a treasure trove that only a hero might enter.

  Rhia drew her sword one-handed, a motion so rapid and fluid that Vercingetorix could hardly follow it, then put the other hand on the hilt and pointed it straight at him. Judging from the way she handled it, it must be lighter than his own: if not, she must be the stronger.

  “Come at me with your sword,” she said.

  “I can’t do that…”

  “Don’t be afraid to hurt me.”

  “Why should I want to?”

  Rhia licked her lips, arched her pelvis forward. “Draw but a single drop of my body’s blood,” she said, “and you shall have the blood of my virginity.”

  Vercingetorix hesitantly lifted his sword and edged forward.

  Rhia stood still, gazing into his eyes with a force that at once went straight to his groin and yet constrained him to look away.

  “Don’t be shy,” she said seductively. “I’m waiting. I’ve been waiting for a long time.”

  Vercingetorix aimed a tentative crosswise slash at Rhia’s sword, still unable to aim at her flesh. Rhia dropped her sword beneath it, whirled around in a low crouch, ducked under his sword, and, in a rapid motion he could not quite follow, came up behind him and whacked him humiliatingly on the rump with the flat of her blade.

  Angered, Vercingetorix found himself turning to slash blindly at his tormentor, but Rhia ducked under the blow, came up behind him again, and teasingly ran the point of her sword lightly between his shoulder blades. Vercingetorix whirled around furiously, but this time stepped back and, anticipating her move, slashed low at her ankles. But Rhia hadn’t tried to spin behind him this time; rather, she stood her ground, leapt over his sword toward him, and brought the edge of hers up against his throat.

  “Watch the eyes, not the sword,” she said.

  She leapt away from him, pointed her sword at him in challenge again. Vercingetorix ignored her sword, thrust straight forward, and, watching her eyes and seeing Rhia glance left and anticipating her parry, bent his move to the right in mid-course.

  Rhia’s sword was under his unexpectedly. She brought the flat of her blade up hard against the edge of his, flipping it out of his grasp into the air, then caught it on the way down and handed it back to him. “Trust nothing your opponent says or does,” she said.

  Once again, Rhia stepped back and pointed her sword at Vercingetorix. Chagrined, enraged, the blood pounding in his ears, he ground his teeth, forced himself to slow down and plan his next move, decided to look right, slash left, and then—

  —Rhia’s sword turned into a whirlwind of metal, forcing him backward in terror, faster than he could keep his balance, and he fell over backward. Rhia stood over him astraddle, and he found himself staring straight up between the muscular pillars of her legs into her breechclout and at her breasts beyond, with the tip of her downthrust sword lightly
resting on his groin, a position that he found both humiliating and enormously exciting.

  “Stop thinking,” she said. “It slows the mind.”

  “I have never known a woman like you,” Vercingetorix whispered.

  “Have you ever known a woman at all?” Rhia said, teasingly running the point of her sword round his pelvis, circling inward.

  Vercingetorix burned in silent shame, for in truth he had not. “No shame,” said Rhia, reading this. “I have never known a man.”

  “Then this shall be your lucky day!” cried Vercingetorix, as he suddenly rolled out from under her, tipping her off balance, and, scrambling to his feet, thrust his sword at—

  —where she had been.

  Somehow Rhia had not fallen, and had come up behind him yet again. With a quick sideways leap, she was once more before him, sword upraised this time.

  “Not so bad,” she said, “for a boy.”

  Beside himself with lust, fury, shame, Vercingetorix did as she had advised, or perhaps he could not help doing so, for a red tide overcame his thinking and he found himself slashing, thrusting, clanging metal against metal, without regard to harm, either to her or to himself.

  Somehow, and he could not remember how, it ended with his back up against a tree, his sword crossed with hers, hilt to hilt, and blocking it, both of them leaning against their weapons, Rhia’s nipples pressed hard against his chest, and her face close enough to his that he could feel her warm breath when she spoke.

  “Hot blood can cloud the warrior’s mind.”

  “Then let me cool my heat in you!”

  “Hot blood can also give power to him who knows how to use it and is willing to pay the price.”

  “Can you truthfully say you do not want me now as I want you?”

  Rhia brought her pelvis against his, and Vercingetorix ached cruelly with lust.

  “No,” said Rhia, moving against him, “I burn with desire. All of the time.”

  “Well, then—”

  Rhia shook her head. “That fire is my strength,” she said. “To burn with lust and yet keep the virgin’s vow is a mighty source of power.”