The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  “A virgin!” exclaimed Caesar.

  “We’re not in Rome, Caesar. Perhaps you’ve noticed?”

  Caesar had indeed noticed that the sexual practices of this part of the world were peculiar. The Teutons even mocked warriors who availed themselves of natural sexual pleasures before their twenty-fifth year or so, believing it made them less fierce.

  “Here’s another little surprise for him,” said Gisstus. He reached into the sack and pulled out a crown. “The legendary Crown of Brenn!”

  It was a rather crudely fashioned crown, but apparently crafted of gold.

  “Is it real?” asked Caesar.

  “Well, it’s gold all right,” Gisstus told him, “but I had the thing made. I saw the real one myself, if you will remember. Assuming it was the real one, and not something Keltill had made up for the occasion. I hear from certain cynical sources that more than one petty Gallic chieftain claims to hide the real thing.”

  “You really think it would fool Vercingetorix?”

  “Is he a jeweler?”

  “But didn’t he have the real thing when he fled? How could he be made to believe that I—”

  Gisstus made a dramatic pass over the crown with his free hand. “Druid magic!” he said. “The Crown of Brenn has a will of its own and journeys to meet its appointed darling of destiny!”

  Caesar laughed. “What would I do without you, Gisstus?” he said.

  Critognat, who had slain more men in combat than he could count and had an abundance of honorable battle scars to prove it, found himself riding as second-in-command beside a war leader of the Arverni less than half his age and with no battle experience at all.

  And willingly!

  Of the four thousand Arverne warriors riding behind them, about half had inherited their loyalty to Vercingetorix through their loyalty to his father. Most of the rest were followers of Critognat, or of experienced warriors like Cavan, Blosun, and Rackelanar, who looked to him as their senior. Critognat knew full well that he could have claimed leadership of the Arverne forces, just as he could have demanded an immediate election of a new vergobret and probably won it.

  But he had done neither of these things. There was something magic about the young son of Keltill that made an old warrior not only love him but trust in his leadership against all common sense and experience—the magic of how Vercingetorix had seized this leadership. Or how he had not.

  When Critognat learned that Vercingetorix proposed to postpone the election until all who might seek to be elected vergobret had the chance to prove their worthiness on the field of battle, he had wept with joy. Unblooded in battle or not, here was a man with the heart of a true Gaul! Here at last was a leader who loved honor above power and understood that the loyalty of warriors must be won with the sword.

  If Vercingetorix held him under a magical spell, it was the right sort of magic. The magic of honor and the sword. The kind of magic that had brought Brenn’s army to victory at Rome itself.

  To the northeast, by the shore of the gray rolling sea, was a Roman stockade. And before it Critognat could see tens of thousands of warriors setting up an enormous encampment. Gauls of many tribes, to judge by the standards and pennants set out above them.

  “Never have I seen such a gathering of the tribes,” said Critognat. “Never had I thought to see one.”

  “Never has there been one since the time of Brenn,” said Vercingetorix.

  “But gathered together not by a Gaul, but by a Roman,” Critognat muttered, shaking his head ruefully.

  “What do we do now?” grunted Critognat.

  It was a good question for which Vercingetorix had no good answer, for they were approaching the edge of the Gallic encampment outside the Roman palisade, and there seemed no place to go; indeed, they confronted a scene of pandemonium.

  Though standards staking out tribal territories had been planted widely, thousands of warriors were clustered around each of them, leaving only ragged random aisles between the tribal encampments. These might be wide enough for the parade of camp followers and tradesmen offering their wares, but far too narrow for the Arverne troops to pass, assuming there was any territory closer to the palisade where Vercingetorix could quarter his troops.

  Nor were the troops of the tribes who had already claimed their territory properly quartered. Some tents had been pitched. Here and there, enterprising peasants had set up large cookfires and were roasting pigs and sheep and chickens for sale. There was an abundance of bread loaves, but no ovens to be seen. There were brewers selling beer out of barrels or whole casks, but the briskness of their trade seemed to be moderated by the amphorae of Roman wine that were everywhere.

  Horses were tethered and did their shitting and pissing where their masters sat gambling, eating, but mostly drinking, and likewise befouling the nearby ground. The boisterous encampment sent up a stench that had Critognat wrinkling his nose.

  “I’ve seen better-organized pigsties,” he grumbled. “Smelled them too. Where are we supposed to quarter our troops? Where are the vergobrets? Who is in charge of this mess?”

  “Keep the men mounted for now,” Vercingetorix told him, “and I’ll try to find out.”

  He summoned Baravax, and had him assemble a dozen warriors before riding into this unruly encampment, for he didn’t like the smell of it, and not just that of the steaming urine and fly-speckled dung. Then, flanked by his guards, he rode in a zigzag fashion up the disorderly paths between the tribes in the direction of the palisade gates.

  He had exchanged Caesar’s crimson cloak for one of Arverne orange, but he was still riding the horse Caesar had given him, with its red-and-gold saddle blanket, an unpopular combination of colors here, to judge by the sour looks he got, by the mutterings that seemed to be stopped just short of coherent curses by the presence of his escorts.

  So he was pleased to see the familiar face of Litivak as he approached the boar standard.

  “Litivak!”

  “Vercingetorix! I hear you’ve become a great general,” Litivak said. His tone of voice did not allow Vercingetorix to tell whether this was sincere congratulation or wry jest.

  “Those who followed my father now follow me, if that’s what you mean,” Vercingetorix said carefully. “Perhaps you can tell me what is going on here? I see no Romans. I see no vergobrets. No one seems to be in charge of anything.”

  “Caesar keeps his legions inside the wall, where the vergobrets, and whoever else he seeks to seduce, are favored with luxurious quarters. The rest of us are at liberty to fend for ourselves.”

  “Well, I can see the wisdom in keeping Romans and Gauls apart…” said Vercingetorix.

  “It may help to keep the peace now,” said Litivak. “But once we find ourselves fighting alongside each other…” He shrugged.

  “Under whose command?”

  “Caesar’s, who else?”

  “I mean all these tribal armies.”

  “I am given to understand that Caesar has assigned command of the Gallic auxiliaries to his favorite lieutenant, Titus Labienus.”

  “A Roman?”

  “Can you imagine all these tribes accepting a Gaul as their commander?” Litivak scoffed.

  “So Labienus is in charge of the bivouacking arrangements?”

  Litivak shrugged. “Does it look like anyone is in charge of anything out here?”

  “What should I do, then?”

  Litivak looked his horse up and down. “That’s a Roman general’s horse you’re riding, isn’t it?” he said suspiciously.

  “It’s Caesar’s,” Vercingetorix told him.

  “Caesar’s! How in the world did you ever come by it?”

  “He lent it to me…or sold it to me…” said Vercingetorix. “It’s a strange story…”

  “Well, Caesar’s horse should at least be enough to get you inside Caesar’s fortress,” Litivak told him.

  Vercingetorix rode on toward the palisade gates. They were open, but the way was barred by four Roman legionnai
res, who appeared more bored than hostile.

  “You are?” said the one who seemed to be in charge, an older man with a long scar on his cheek and more gray than black in his hair.

  “Vercingetorix of the Arverni.”

  “Ah, the famous son of Keltill,” said another snidely. “Is it true that you slew a hundred men single-handedly in Gergovia, serviced their widows in a single night, and then started in on their horses?”

  The gray-haired legionnaire silenced him with a poisonous look.

  “No one gets in without someone who knows him by sight on hand inside to identify him,” he told Vercingetorix apologetically. “You could be anyone, after all. No offense intended.”

  “None taken,” said Vercingetorix.

  “Announce him, Claudius,” the squad leader ordered, and the legionnaire who had spoken trudged inside.

  Claudius returned from within looking dazed.

  “Well?” demanded the squad leader.

  Claudius regarded Vercingetorix with much more respect than before.

  “We let him pass,” he said. “But without his escort. Himself himself awaits him.”

  “In Latin that we can understand, please, Claudius.”

  “Himself, Marius,” Claudius said. “Gaius Julius Caesar.”

  “Hail, Vercingetorix,” said Caesar.

  He was amused to note that, though Vercingetorix had exchanged the crimson cape for one of orange, the animal still bore the livery of a Roman general. Caesar had deemed it politic to be attended by Labienus when greeting arriving tribal leaders and was even more amused to observe Labienus’ outrage at this sight. Not that Labienus was the most difficult officer in his army to scandalize.

  Vercingetorix sat there on horseback silently for a long awkward moment, apparently unwilling to return the salutation in like Roman manner, lest it be taken as a gesture of fealty. The boy had good political instincts.

  “Greetings, Caesar,” he said instead.

  “Uh, hail, Vercingetorix,” said Labienus.

  “My chief lieutenant, Titus Labienus,” said Caesar.

  “Greetings, Labienus,” said Vercingetorix. “I have heard much about you.”

  “Have you?”

  “It is said by your enemies—your former enemies—that you are the worthiest of foes, a clever general and brave as a lion,” said Vercingetorix. Labienus seemed close to blushing, and it seemed to Caesar that Vercingetorix was subtle enough to catch it. “Almost as brave as a Gaul,” he added with a little grin that turned into a chuckle in which Labienus could join, thus allowing this truly modest man to escape from his embarrassment.

  Vercingetorix then untied a large cloth pouch from his saddle and dismounted with it. Reaching into it, he withdrew Caesar’s cloak, neatly folded. “Thank you for the loan of your mantle,” he said, handing it to him. “It shielded me well, but I do prefer orange.”

  Vercingetorix took a small leather bag out of his pouch and handed that to Caesar. When Caesar opened the drawstring, he saw that it contained five gold coins with Vercingetorix’s own image graven on them.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Payment for the horse,” Vercingetorix told him. “I told you you would have it when I regained my birthright, and now I have.”

  “Oh no,” said Caesar, handing the money back to him, “you’ll not get off as easy as that, my young friend! I intend to hold you to the Gallic version of our bargain,” he told him. “Fifty gold coins when we both are dead and meet again in the Land of Legend!”

  He and Vercingetorix laughed.

  The befuddled look on Labienus’ face was choice.

  “Come, my young friend,” said Caesar, clasping Vercingetorix’s arm like that of an old comrade, “allow me to show you to your quarters.”

  In stark contrast to the situation outside the palisade, all that Vercingetorix saw inside was well ordered and clean. There were cookfires, baking ovens, thick porridge bubbling in great black iron kettles, amphorae of wine and barrels of water set out at regular intervals. There were dung ditches dug at a decent distance away from the legionnaires, and the Roman horses, far fewer than those of the Gauls, were likewise corralled well away from the men.

  The legionnaires themselves were bivouacked in neat rows of identical eight-man leather tents separated by dirt avenues as straight as a Roman road, and thousands of them sat outside enjoying the sunshine, eating porridge, drinking wine, mending armor, sharpening swords and javelins.

  Caesar led him past a much smaller group of tents isolated from the main Roman troop encampments that, strangely, were under guard. Stranger still, Vercingetorix was surprised to see Diviacx passing from one to another.

  “The students from the grammaticus are quartered within,” said Caesar.

  “The hostages, you mean.”

  “They are, after all, receiving the benefits of a Roman education,” Caesar insisted mildly.

  “Diviacx is teaching Gauls how to be Romans?”

  “Here we have students from many of your tribes, and who would the leaders thereof trust to supervise them inside a Roman encampment but a druid?”

  “And the only druid you could find who would so serve is Diviacx,” Vercingetorix said sourly.

  “I sense you love him not.”

  “How could I love the man who condemned my father to death?”

  “How indeed?” said Caesar. He gave Vercingetorix a sidelong speculative look. “As one man of destiny to another, I find him impossible to love myself. Though he is an ally of sorts, there is something about him I find rather despicable.”

  “Then why do you use him?”

  “Why don’t you kill him?” Caesar asked slyly.

  “Kill a druid?” exclaimed Vercingetorix. “If I did such a thing, even the Arverni…” He stayed himself, realizing that Caesar’s question had been rhetorical.

  Caesar nodded. “Even men of destiny are slaves of necessity,” he said. “Some tools—a well-made sword, a good knife, a nicely crafted stylus even—one may come to love. Others—an ordinary mallet, a plain pot, a peasant’s scythe—may lack all charm but still serve necessity. And when there is no other at hand…” He shrugged.

  They reached a section of tents pitched close by the eastern wall, well away from both the legionnaires’ bivouacs and the hostage tents. There were a score of them, set more widely apart than those of the legionnaires, and a Gallic tribal standard was set up before each of them. Caesar halted before an Arverne bear.

  “Your quarters,” he said, drawing aside the flap and ushering Vercingetorix into a scene more like the bedchamber of a Roman harlot than an officer’s field quarters.

  There was a Roman-style bed raised up off the ground on curved and carved wooden legs and piled with the pelts of bear and lynx. There were wooden tables, small and large, all painted in red and black, the largest and most elaborate ornamented with fittings of brass. There were brass and bronze serving plates and goblets embellished with silver. Overfragrant oil burned in brass lamps, giving off a sickeningly sweet odor of lavender. Above the bed hung a tapestry depicting three creatures that seemed half man and half goat performing sexual acts with naked women, one of which Vercingetorix would not have believed possible. Fierce desire rose unbidden in his loins, and a burning blush bloomed on his cheeks.

  “Admittedly a bit on the Spartan side,” said Caesar, “but I hope you’ll find it hospitable enough for a military camp. And at least you won’t have to worry about being cold and lonely at night.”

  He clapped his hands, once, twice, thrice, and two women entered the tent, one red-haired and draped in a loose black robe, the other black-haired and wearing a robe of red. Both were in the first flower of youth and stunningly beautiful. Vercingetorix found himself bending forward at the hips in an attempt to hide the state of his arousal. Caesar nodded, and the black-haired woman fetched them goblets while the other took up a small amphora and poured wine.

  “Your body servants,” said Caesar, “and never fea
r, they have been well schooled to serve your body.”

  He nodded again, and both women doffed their robes with simultaneous flourishes and openly lubricious smiles. Underneath they wore tiny breechclouts, black for the black-haired one, red for the red, and nothing more.

  Vercingetorix had never in his life seen two women in such a near-naked state at the same time, had never seen any woman as perfectly formed as these, had never beheld a single woman willing to slake his lust at all. But he sensed danger here, some kind of sweet trap, in which these two women and all that surrounded them were the bait.

  Then too, there were his men to consider, not just in terms of the injustice of their relative discomfort, but of how they would regard a leader who luxuriated here while they camped outside with their horses.

  It appears to be true! Caesar marveled as he observed Vercingetorix’s reaction to the sudden revelation of nubile feminine flesh. His eyes were practically popping out of his head, his priapic state was amusingly obvious, and more amusing still were his embarrassed attempts to conceal it. Either the boy is a virgin, or at the least his experience must be severely limited.

  Vercingetorix nodded toward the two body servants in a manner that he no doubt deemed covert, and leaned closer to Caesar. “A word in private…?” he whispered.

  Caesar led him over to a far corner of the tent.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your hospitality, Caesar,” Vercingetorix said, “but I do not deem it wise to enjoy such luxuries while my men sleep outside in the open. A commander should share not only the dangers but the conditions of his troops, not set himself above and apart. And so I will sleep outside with them, if it does not offend you.”

  “No offense taken,” Caesar told him. “This tent will remain yours whenever you wish to use it, for as long as you like.” He nodded in the direction of the body servants, now donning their robes. “For whatever you like.”