The Druid King Read online

  Most of their horses carried one warrior, but some carried two, the second mounted behind the horseman and armed with a lance, a battle-ax, or a long sword. There were even a few chariots.

  The din they sent up was terrific and meant to be so; the clattering thunder of hooves, the rumble of chariot wheels, and, most fearful of all, the massed berserker rage of battle cries, bellowed at the top of a thousand and more sets of lungs. But no Roman deigned to glance back, as if even to acknowledge the onrushing presence of that which was gaining on them would be an offense to their dignity.

  As the valley narrowed, the hills confining it descended and it became a small meadow at the margin of a dense lowland forest. The Roman cavalry fled toward it, apparently seeking to disperse within the trees, where a large formation of mounted warriors would find it difficult to run down scattered single horsemen.

  Or so, no doubt, thought the Teutons.

  Instead, as the meadow curved to the left, they found themselves confronting a formation of Roman infantry. This might be only three cohorts of a full legion’s ten, no more than a thousand men, but their front rank confronted the Teutons behind an impenetrable wall of shields barbed with short thrusting swords. About thirty yards behind them, another such rank of swordsmen was visible, and in between were legionnaires armed with javelins. The flanks were guarded by smaller squads of sword-bearing infantry backed up by modest detachments of cavalry.

  The front rank of Roman infantry quickly opened a gap to allow the cavalry to pass through their line to safety, and just as quickly reclosed it.

  By now the Teutons were familiar with Roman infantry, and prudence would have dictated retreat. But their pride would not allow them to flee a force no larger than their own, and one not even mounted like proper warriors.

  The Romans greeted them with a barrage of javelins as soon as they came within even extreme range. The first volley did little damage, but the second and the third, delivered at closer range, caused considerable carnage and great confusion, as men fell screaming from horses or lost control of their mounts, as wounded horses reared and dying horses thrashed and whinnied on the ground, as other horses tripped over them and fell, spilling their riders.

  The front rank of Roman infantry marched toward them, followed by the javelin squads, then by the second rank of shielded swordsmen.

  The Teutons charged.

  This neutralized the Roman javelin squads, as the Teuton cavalry closed with the Roman infantry. But their swords and axes and lances were largely ineffective at penetrating the Roman shield wall to get at the swordsmen behind.

  The Teutons hacked away at the Roman shields with broad sweeps of mighty swords and battle-axes, but the Romans hunkered behind them, wielding short, double-edged, and sharply pointed gladii, thrusting straight at soft targets—the bellies of horses, the legs and groins of their riders. Soon scores of horses had their guts pierced and scores of Teutons lay dead beneath their fallen bodies. Men writhed on the ground screaming, bleeding, as they died in slow agony.

  Then a group of Teuton horsemen at the right of the Roman line found the wit to retreat far enough to regroup and try a flanking maneuver.

  They managed to round the right end of the Roman front line, and fight their way through the flank guard to attack the javelin-throwers and the front line’s vulnerable rear.

  But the javelin throwers had retreated behind the second rank of Roman infantry. And the Roman front rank had no unprotected rear.

  To the befuddlement and dismay of the Teutons, what had appeared as a simple rank of Roman infantry was now revealed as only the front sides of a rank of small square formations of legionnaires, protecting themselves with shield walls in all four directions. Within these little mobile fortresses, the Roman swordsmen hid like turtles in their shells. Worse, attacking them was like falling upon porcupines inside the shells of turtles, for these turtles bristled with sharp metal quills and knew how to use them.

  The Romans allowed the Teutons between their lines to clash against the turtles long enough to set up an encouraging din, then they allowed another group of Teuton horsemen to come around their line on the left. Only then did their rear rank, more turtles, march forward and catch them like grapes in a wine press.

  By now, the berserker rage of the Teutons had been cooled by the disastrous turn of events, and the majority of those remaining were ready to turn and flee back up the valley.

  Turn they did, but flee they couldn’t.

  Blocking their escape route was another wall of Roman infantry, advancing implacably toward them.

  “Pathetic,” said Gaius Julius Caesar, as he and Brutus rode through the battlefield toward Marcus Tulius.

  The grass of the meadow had been churned up and pools of blood were everywhere, drying to the color of the exposed earth beneath. The clearing stank with the aftermath of battle, with the reek of burst bowels and intestines, the death-dunging of hundreds of horses. Moans and shrieks rent the air as legionnaires dispatched the dying. Other legionnaires stripped corpses of their weapons. Chattels of the slave dealers went about inspecting the wounded, dispatching those too far gone to recover to a marketable condition, yoking the lucky ones together into strings of men and leading them away.

  “A horrific sight,” agreed Brutus, turning a greenish shade of pale.

  Caesar shrugged. “A battlefield…” he said diffidently, kindly restraining the urge to laugh at the boy’s expense. “I was referring to the pathetic battle tactics of the Teutons.”

  “Unfortunate for them, but fortunate for us,” said Brutus.

  “In battle, yes, my young friend; afterward, no. If they were a little less inclined to volunteer to be butchered and a little more inclined to surrender rather than fight hopelessly to the death, we’d be taking a lot more slaves. They just have no idea of civilized warfare.”

  Of course, this had been just a minor skirmish against one of the remnants left behind after the main forces commanded by Ariovistus—a barbarian who at least had some flair for tactics—had been beaten back across the Rhine.

  The Teutons, like the Gauls, were larger men in general than Romans, and great horsemen, and Caesar knew (but would never admit) that an equal force of Teuton or Gallic cavalry would prove superior to his own. But whereas infantry was the main force of a Roman legion, neither the Teutons nor the Gauls had true infantry. The nobles and their warriors thought it beneath their dignity to fight afoot, and so their foot troops consisted of dragooned and untrained peasants or even slaves; Roman infantry consisted of professionals who had volunteered for the full twenty-year term and well-trained citizen conscripts.

  That well-disciplined and well-commanded infantry could be more effective than the bravest and best of cavalry was a concept as foreign to Teuton military doctrine as tactical retreat, which they regarded as an act of cowardice and an offense to honor.

  “Well done, Tulius,” Caesar told the general upon arriving outside his tent, where Tulius sat on a stool beside a great pile of Teuton weaponry being tallied by a scribe with a stylus and tablet.

  “Hail, Caesar,” said Tulius, starting to rise.

  Caesar stopped him with a gesture of his hand and did not bother to dismount. “Mostly worthless, I’d say,” he said, casting a dismissive glance at the pile of captured weapons.

  Tulius, a short, dark-complexioned, wiry man of few unnecessary words, simply nodded. Marcus Tulius was that rarity, a twenty-year legionnaire who had taken five years to make centurion and seven more to rise to command of a legion. He was an exemplar of the Roman professional soldier, and therefore a special favorite.

  It also made him the sort of general you could assign necessary but inglorious or even odious tasks and know that he would get them done. Which was more than you could say for Titus Labienus, Caesar’s second-in-command, a greater leader of men and tactical thinker by far, but one who fought for the joy of glorious battle alone, like a Teuton or a Gaul.

  “Sort out Roman swords and armor and t
he Gallic swords, and leave the rest to rot,” Caesar ordered. “It wouldn’t fetch enough to justify the bother of hauling it away.”

  Tulius nodded again.

  “Slaves?” inquired Caesar.

  Tulius’ shrug may have been all too eloquent, but Caesar pressed him for more detail anyway. “How many?”

  “Fewer than two hundred able-bodied ordinaries,” Tulius told him. “They do find it difficult to surrender in a condition suitable for mines or quarries.” His expression brightened somewhat. “But the same will to fight to the death does make these Teutons great gladiator material when you can capture them intact. I’d say we have twenty or twenty-five, three or four of them potential favorites in Rome itself.”

  Caesar nodded without any great enthusiasm, saluted, then rode slowly toward his own field headquarters to be alone with his own thoughts.

  Teuton gladiators did command handsome prices, but he had counted on taking many more slaves during this phase of the war. Thus far the war was running at a loss, for the slave trade was not covering the difference between what the more and more reluctant Edui were paying him to support his expanding army, and his own mounting costs.

  Worse, by now Caesar had learned enough to know that able-bodied warriors in the prime of life would never be plentiful slave material here. Both Gauls and Teutons preferred fighting to the death even to a chance to fight their way to a retirement of riches, fame, and Roman citizenship in the arena. Odd, since, if one was going to fight to the death anyway, one had nothing to lose by giving a career as a gladiator a try.

  Indeed, the Gauls and the Teutons, though both would slit your throat for saying so, were really cousins in the same family of peoples. Both had arrived as marauding bands of nomads from the endless eastern plains. The Teutons kept mostly to the north and west of the Alps. The Gauls had pillaged their way through Italy all the way to Rome under their so-called King Brenn. But once they were driven back here by Rome, Brenn’s “kingdom” had degenerated back into a collection of tribes, each ruled by a vergobret, leaving “Gaul” a nation that really only existed on Roman maps.

  Yet, whereas the Teutons had remained much as they had always been, the Gallic tribes had become more civilized. They farmed, were husbandmen, mined, and smelted ores. They were excellent smiths and produced jewelry as good as most in Rome. They guarded the secrets of dyes whose hues no one else could yet produce, and they built rude but usable roads and cities of a modest kind; some had even learned to write their language in the borrowed Greek alphabet.

  Give them a coherent system of government, and you could fairly deem them civilized. Indeed, they were already beginning to copy the style of the Roman Republic. Vergobrets, although they weren’t yet called “consuls,” were elected by tribal councils for short fixed terms; a few such councils had begun to call themselves “Senates.”

  What made the Gauls different from the Teutons?

  This was a conundrum that Caesar knew he would do well to fathom before he turned his attention to them. Which would have to be fairly soon. He was running out of Teutons. Already there were mutterings to be heard among the Edui’s most powerful rivals, the Arverni, that the legions of Rome had completed their task and it was time for them to leave.

  Logic told him that the difference between the Gauls and the Teutons must have something to do with the druids, since the Teutons had nothing like them. Nor did any other people Caesar had encountered in his travels or readings. Not only did they perform the rites and sacrifices, they administered the law throughout Gaul. But nowhere was the law written down, nor did anyone seem to know quite what it was but the druids themselves.

  The druids were recognized by all Gauls as the ultimate authority, yet they did not seem a priestly theocracy, for they did not rule. But they somehow made sure that no one else did either.

  It was a paradox worthy of Zeno.

  It was early afternoon when Gisstus arrived at Caesar’s camp from the Eduen capital, Bibracte. Caesar was sitting on a stool in the pleasant sunlight, composing his latest dispatch with stylus and wax tablet before committing it to the permanence of paper, since he had found that turning an account of a minor skirmish into a tale of glory usually required several revisions.

  “Hail, Caesar,” Gisstus said, then peered over his shoulder. “Still writing The Conquest of Gaul, eh? Let’s hope it won’t be long before you can write the final chapter. And then on to—what?—the first chapter of Julius Caesar, King of Rome?”

  “No, Gisstus, the gods forbid that such a volume ever be written!”

  “But the whole purpose of this war is to seize power and—”

  “To rule as dictator as the law allows, Gisstus, not to reign as king. The king who founds a dynasty is a hero and a statesman, his son is a mediocrity, his son a half-wit or a monster, and his son probably both!”

  “All this for six months as dictator?” Gisstus said sardonically. “As the law allows?”

  “Laws can be changed when inconvenient to the health of a state,” Caesar told him.

  “Spoken like a lawyer.”

  “By a lawyer, as I am, who is also a general with a sufficient force behind him to be decisively persuasive in debate. As I will be.”

  Gisstus laughed. “Spoken like Gaius Julius Caesar,” he said. “But changed to what?”

  In truth, Caesar hadn’t decided yet. “Perhaps dictator for life?” he said tentatively.

  “That might turn out to be a shorter term than it might seem, since it would leave only one means of retiring you from office,” Gisstus pointed out dryly.

  “Appointed for some long fixed term, then? Ten years? Twenty?”

  “A modest enough ambition…” Gisstus said dryly.

  “Indeed. When Alexander the Great was ten years younger than I am now, he had conquered the entire civilized world.”

  “When Alexander the Great was your age, Caesar, he was dead.”

  “All the more reason to hurry.”

  Gisstus’ sardonic mien warped toward an expression of worry. You had to know him well, as well as Caesar did, to read it.

  “What is troubling you, Gisstus?” he asked.

  “We may have a small problem with the Arverni. Or perhaps not so small…”

  “I thought this Gobanit they’ve just elected vergobret is a greedy and pliable fellow…”

  “Oh, he is, and he’s not all that clever either,” Gisstus told him. “But he’s not the problem…the possible problem. It’s his brother.”

  “His brother?”

  “Keltill, the outgoing vergobret…and the omen…”

  “You mean the new star?” Caesar asked in no little perplexity. According to the locals, a new star had appeared in the heavens shortly before his arrival, a sign of a change of destiny or some such thing. Caesar’s attempts to claim it as a sign of the good fortune of his own coming might not have been exactly a great success, but he couldn’t see how this omen could become a problem.

  “Not the new star,” Gisstus told him, “a falling star.”

  “They take falling stars for omens too? But at certain times the night skies are full of them.”

  Gisstus shrugged. “This isn’t one of them, and apparently there was an unusually large one,” he said. “Large enough for some of the ignorant to call it a comet.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “According to our druid friend Diviacx, the Gauls believe that comets are the omen of the passage of kings, some say the death of a king—”

  “But there isn’t any king of—”

  “—and someone seems to be encouraging their bards to say the coming of a king.”

  “Oh,” said Caesar. “But why would Diviacx be spreading such stuff around?” As a former pontifex privy to the tricks of the trade, he knew only too well that omens could easily enough be interpreted to mean whatever might serve the purpose of the interpreter.

  “He isn’t.”

  “It’s this Keltill?”

  Gisstus nodded.
“So it would seem. It can hardly be a coincidence that he’s convened a meeting of all the tribal leaders—”

  “I thought only the druids had the authority to do such a thing.”

  “That’s why Diviacx is so worried. Keltill can’t command attendance at such a meeting, but he’s famous as a lavish host, and when he invites you to a feast, it’s an invitation that few Gauls are abstemious enough to refuse.”

  “But surely the druids could forbid it.”

  “They could,” said Gisstus, “but although he wouldn’t quite admit it, Diviacx seems to be afraid that, what with Keltill’s popularity among the minor tribes, and their fear of us, and the money he has to toss around, it would be a dangerous move for them politically, especially if he did the forbidding…”

  “And he wishes us to weigh in against it somehow…?”

  “Diviacx has unclearly made it clear that he believes it would be to our mutual benefit if Keltill were to…retire from public life.”

  “Thus speaks the druid Diviacx,” said Caesar. “But perhaps the Eduen Diviacx fears that the Arverne Keltill might be able to make a favorable alliance with me. After all, a king of Gaul who swore an oath of fealty to Rome would allow me to—”

  “Keltill is no friend of Rome, that much is certain!” Gisstus replied. “Sooner would a lamb swear an oath of fealty to the wolves.”

  Caesar pondered the situation without being able to attain any clear vision through the murk; indeed, perhaps the murk itself, so characteristic of the tribal politics here, was all that there was.

  “You said this Keltill is famed as a host, Gisstus?” he finally said. “Perhaps you might like to enjoy his hospitality?”

  Gisstus eyed him narrowly. “Keltill’s hospitality toward any Roman arriving uninvited would probably consist of roasting me on a spit and serving me up as the main course.”

  Caesar looked Gisstus slowly up and down. He shook his head disparagingly. “You have no color sense, Gisstus,” he said. “A man of your complexion would be a much more pleasing figure garbed in blue. Eduen blue.”