The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  “Who will board his men after Vercingetorix?” demanded Caesar. “Don’t all speak at—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence, suddenly staring toward the tent entrance. Vercingetorix whirled around to see a Roman centurion, bleeding profusely from wounds on his right arm and left thigh, half staggering, half falling into the tent.

  “The Edui…Dumnorix…Caesar…”

  Caesar rushed to his side and cradled him in his arms, heedless of the blood. “Go to the ships and fetch a surgeon!” he ordered Tulius, and only when the general had departed on an ordinary servant’s errand did he speak to the centurion, displaying a sense of priorities that left Vercingetorix quite touched.

  “Easy, man, help is on the way,” Caesar then said gently. “Now, do you think you can tell us what happened?”

  “Dumnorix…he…tricked us…When he spoke to his men…”

  The centurion hesitated, wincing in pain; then forced himself to continue. “The Romans would drown us in this storm, he shouted…and he drew his sword and cut down one of the guards before…before I could…draw my own…and by the time I did, Edui were rushing forward to aid him, he was shouting at them to scatter and flee…It was all swords and confusion…”

  Caesar’s face had been darkening with anger and flushing red as he listened to this. “I am shamed to have failed you, Caesar…but there were only three of us…they took us by surprise…” the centurion said.

  Now purple veins in Caesar’s temple throbbed with rage, yet he managed to lay the wounded centurion gently on the ground. “No blame,” he said. “For your bravery against hopeless odds, you shall be promoted to primus pilius.”

  But when he rounded on the Gauls, his fury was uncontained. “I’ll crucify the cowardly bastard when I catch him, and all who fled!” he roared. “And if this man dies, I’ll execute the Eduen hostages too! I’ll…I’ll…”

  “Calm yourself, Caesar,” said his man Gisstus, “you know—”

  “I’ll…I’ll…”

  Caesar’s tongue seemed to turn to wood in his mouth, his body began to shake, his knees crumpled, his eyes rolled upward, showing only whites; the Gauls shrank backward as he began to foam at the mouth like a mad dog—

  —all but Vercingetorix, who had learned of this malady in the druid school and knew what it was before Gisstus spoke its Roman name.

  “The falling sickness!”

  “Touched by the gods!” cried Comm.

  Vercingetorix had already dropped to his knees at Caesar’s side, and as he had been taught, he jammed the heel of his left hand into Caesar’s mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue, wincing at the pain of the bite as he kept Caesar’s teeth pried open. He pressed the thumb of his right hand hard into the back of Caesar’s neck, rotating it rhythmically.

  “What are you—”

  “Druid magic!” said Epirod. “I have seen this before.”

  Caesar emerged from the blinding white light of the fit to find himself supine on the ground with a hand in his mouth and a not unpleasant pressure at the back of his neck.

  He looked up and saw the face of Vercingetorix looking down on him, then realized the hand was his. And Caesar’s teeth were biting cruelly into it, his mouth tasting blood.

  Hastily, he spit out the hand, pried himself upright, saw that the blood was Vercingetorix’s, not his own.

  “Your hand…”

  “It is nothing, Caesar; I’ve had worse from playing too roughly with dogs…”

  “Still…”

  As his wits returned to full clarity, he saw that the Gauls were staring down at him with expressions of fear tinged with awe, and then he remembered that many of the superstitious believed that victims of the falling sickness—among them, some said, Great Alexander himself—were favored by the gods. Indeed, there were times he believed it himself, times when he had returned from wherever his spirit went with visions.

  But this was not one of them.

  On the other hand…

  “What are you staring at?” he shouted. “Have you never seen the gods speak thusly to a man before?”

  The Gauls shrank back fearfully, as well the treacherous, lying bastards should. All save Vercingetorix, who offered him his uninjured hand instead.

  Just as Caesar was rising shakily to his feet with this aid, Tulius returned to the tent with the surgeon.

  “Caesar—”

  “I’m all right, Tulius,” Caesar told him brusquely. Then, to the surgeon, “Tend to the wounded man, while I tend to these.”

  He glared at the Gauls. “It would appear that Dumnorix and the Edui have robbed us all of glory and fortune—”

  “What?” exclaimed Tulius.

  “Dumnorix has fled with an unknown number of his troops,” Labienus told him. “So much for your chance to lead an army of Gauls to glory, Tulius. The invasion can hardly go ahead now that—”

  “That’s for me to decide,” Caesar snapped peremptorily.

  “I only—”

  “Never mind that now, Labienus. I put you in charge of order here. Restore it. Take however many men you need off the boats and do it! And have whatever so-called leaders of the Edui still remain here brought to me. Including that lying dog’s brother, Diviacx!”

  Few words were spoken among the Gauls while the Romans rounded up the Eduen prisoners, and Vercingetorix himself was at a loss for words. Caesar huddled in a corner of the tent in hushed conversation with his man Gisstus, whose face always seemed familiar to Vercingetorix somehow, and who, though no Roman noble or general, always seemed to have Caesar’s ear.

  It was Decimus Brutus, a Roman officer not much older than himself, who finally brought in half a dozen sodden Edui under the guard of an equal number of legionnaires, among them a fearful Diviacx and a defiant-looking Litivak.

  “As you can see, Caesar, I did not betray you,” Diviacx whined, “I’m still here—”

  “Silence!” roared Caesar. “Dumnorix is your brother, you treacherous swine!”

  “Am I responsible for that? I’ll have Litivak—”

  “Another unbidden word and I’ll rip your tongue out myself!” Caesar said. “Brutus, what’s the situation out there?”

  “Utter confusion, Caesar. Perhaps two-thirds of the Edui scattered when Dumnorix fled.” Brutus nodded at Litivak. “But this man rallied the rest to him and kept them from leaving.”

  “This is true?”

  “Someone had to uphold the honor of the Edui,” Litivak said. “We are not all oath-breakers, Caesar.”

  “We shall see about the honor of the Edui when we have Dumnorix before us,” said Caesar. “Brutus, take as many men as you need, and track him—”

  “You can’t do that, Caesar!” cried Diviacx.

  “You are telling me what I can’t do?” Caesar roared. “And when did I give you permission to speak?”

  “I crave your pardon for misspeaking myself,” Diviacx said in a groveling tone that curdled Vercingetorix’s stomach. “But allow me to explain, Caesar.”

  Caesar gave Diviacx a curt, contemptuous nod, clearly as disgusted with him as Vercingetorix was.

  “This is a matter of Eduen honor, to be—”

  “Eduen honor?” shouted Caesar. “About as real as the teeth of chickens!”

  “Something that my brother has stolen from us and that must be returned,” Diviacx told him. “He must be condemned by a druid enforcing the law of—”

  “Congratulations, Diviacx,” said Caesar, “you have just volunteered. And the verdict and punishment had better not be in doubt.”

  “So be it,” Diviacx said softly. “But if Dumnorix is captured and held by your men, no Gaul will see this as other than an act of Rome.”

  “He’s right!” cried Comm.

  “No Gaul must be seized by Rome!” said Litivak.

  “It is true,” Vercingetorix told Caesar. “Dumnorix has disgraced the Edui, but if your men seize him, it will rob the Edui of the chance to redeem their honor, and his punishment will be s
een not as druid justice but as your vengeance.”

  “He is right,” said Litivak. “Do this thing, Caesar, and what remains of the Eduen army will no longer heed me unless I denounce you.”

  Caesar grew more thoughtful at this. “Point taken,” he muttered sourly, “but—”

  “Send Litivak after him,” said Diviacx, “a man who has proved his loyalty.”

  “I’ll not trust another Eduen with anything until Dumnorix is captured and disposed of.”

  “Then send Vercingetorix,” said Litivak.

  “Vercingetorix?” cried both Caesar and Diviacx. Vercingetorix himself was taken aback.

  “He’s an Arverne who has won the admiration of many of the Edui,” said Litivak. He gazed at Vercingetorix with more warmth than Vercingetorix had ever expected to see on an Eduen face.

  “Vercingetorix…?” said Caesar in quite another tone, his fury apparently slaked by this suggestion for some reason Vercingetorix himself did not understand.

  “Let him take a mixed party of Arverni and Edui,” suggested Litivak.

  “Oh no!” said Caesar. “I’ll permit no more Edui out of my sight until Dumnorix is captured, condemned, and executed.”

  There was a long moment of silence as Caesar and the Gauls glared at each other.

  Then Caesar smiled at them.

  “I will send either Brutus with a force of Romans after him, or Vercingetorix with his Arverni,” he said with the poisonous sweetness of a dose of hemlock in a cup of honey. “But let it not be said that Caesar is not a reasonable man. You get to choose.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Do I hear any votes for Brutus?” said Caesar.

  When there were none, he turned to Vercingetorix, cocking an inquisitive eyebrow at him. Gisstus seemed to be attempting to gain his attention, but Caesar paid him no heed.

  “I cannot order you to do this, my friend,” Caesar told him, “nor would I if I could. But would you volunteer?”

  “I cannot refuse such a request,” Vercingetorix told Caesar, then cast a black look at Diviacx. “Nor will I pretend that it displeases me to do it.”

  “Get rid of them,” Gisstus hissed urgently in Caesar’s ear when Vercingetorix had departed. “We must speak privately at once.”

  It sounded like an order, and Caesar would have taken umbrage at being addressed thusly by any other man.

  “Tulius, take these noble Gauls to their men and have them see to it that there are no further defections,” he ordered. “And make sure they’re securely guarded while they do it. Brutus, take Diviacx back to his tent, and guard him well against loneliness.”

  “You’ve made a mistake, Caesar,” Gisstus told him as soon as they were alone in the tent.

  “How so?” asked Caesar irritably. He did not at all like being told he was wrong by anyone, even Gisstus. But any commander who trusted no one to tell him such things was courting disaster.

  “Dumnorix may know too much,” Gisstus told him.

  “He does…? For whom to know?”

  “Vercingetorix.”

  “Keltill!” Caesar groaned, realizing that Gisstus was right. The minor matter of eliminating that troublemaker now threatened major problems.

  Diviacx had condemned Keltill under druid law, but Caesar had encouraged—or, to be blunt about it, ordered—the druid to get it done if the situation turned out to warrant it. No one else knew this, save Gobanit, who was dead, and of course Gisstus.

  As far as Caesar knew…

  But Dumnorix was Diviacx’s brother.

  And however much Diviacx had or had not told him, he knew that Gisstus had been there when Keltill was seized, disguised as a simple Eduen warrior…

  “You really think he knows?” asked Caesar.

  Gisstus shrugged. “We certainly can’t be sure he doesn’t.”

  “But if so, why would he have held his silence so long?”

  “If he knows, Dumnorix would have held his silence to protect his brother and to avoid Arverne retribution against the Edui. But now that half the Edui disown him, and Diviacx is ready to condemn him to death—”

  “He has no reason to remain silent and every reason to speak and take vengeance before he dies…” groaned Caesar. “Take care of it yourself, Gisstus. But use a Teuton weapon. It won’t do to have our hand visible behind this one either.”

  It was still raining hard when Vercingetorix reached the Arverne encampment. There were neither stars nor moon to see by, and Dumnorix’s defectors had broken up into small bands and scattered. But Vercingetorix realized that Dumnorix’s choices were limited. To the northwest was the sea, to the east were the lands of Teuton tribes, so surely the Eduen vergobret would be trying to make his way back south, to the lands of the Edui, within a wedge-shaped territory between the coast and the Rhine. And he was less than an hour ahead.

  Leaving Critognat in charge of the rest of his men, Vercingetorix dispersed a thousand of his warriors into small groups, and sent them south along an ever-widening front with orders not only to seek out Dumnorix directly but to question everyone in their paths, for surely someone would have seen Dumnorix and his men.

  Taking Baravax and a dozen guards, Vercingetorix rode out several leagues behind the center of this widening front. Rather than trying to capture Dumnorix themselves, any party picking up the trail was to follow it cautiously at a distance and send a messenger back to him.

  Hunched over on their horses against the rain, two men in rough brown peasants’ cloaks but with Teuton javelins lashed to their saddles rode a mile or so behind Vercingetorix’s party, hidden from them by the rain, the distance, and the darkness, but tracking them easily enough by the noise of their horses and the churned-up mud of their passage.

  “What are they doing, Gisstus?” muttered his companion, a chunky balding man with a befuddled and grim demeanor. “And why are we following them? I thought we were supposed to be after Dumnorix.”

  “We are, Marius, and so are they,” Gisstus told him. “That’s why we’re following Vercingetorix. He’s got hundreds of men, and he’s using them like a pack of hounds. The hounds find the trail, then the hunters run down the prey…”

  “But the jackals following them move in—”

  “Wolves, please, Marius, wolves!” said Gisstus. “A much more honorable predator! The very one, in fact, whose teats suckled our noble ancestors Romulus and Remus.”

  The storm was easing, though the rain had not yet ceased, and Vercingetorix could detect a hint of gray lightening the blackness of the sky at the horizon when a rider came galloping up to his party out of the southwest. The horse, a roan mare, was drenched with rain and its own foam, and wheezing with exhaustion. The rider was a wiry blond man a few years older than himself, helmetless, but with a sodden orange Arverne cloak pulled up over his head against the rain, and was breathless with excitement when he reported.

  “We’ve found Dumnorix! My men are following him as we speak!”

  “Where is he?”

  The man seemed to catch his breath, or perhaps to rein himself in as he had his horse. “Well, actually, Vercingetorix,” he admitted in a somewhat more subdued voice, “we’ve found his trail.”

  “You’ve not actually seen Dumnorix?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Well, then, how do you know—”

  “A village. A half-dozen or so Edui practically rode through it, they said—”

  “But how—”

  “One of them had a vergobret’s standard. It was lashed to his saddle, not held aloft, but a boy saw the boar.”

  “But if you never saw them, how—”

  “I am Oranix,” the fellow declared, as if that was supposed to settle things. Then, when Vercingetorix showed no sign of reacting to what he clearly had intended as a boast: “You haven’t heard of me? I am the greatest tracker among the Arverni, and my men are experienced hunters all. Once we find tracks, we never lose the trail. I myself once tracked a wounded stag for six days
across the passage of whole herds of deer before I slew it.”

  There was something about this fellow that had Vercingetorix grinning. “Where are they heading?” he asked.

  “Southwest.”

  Vercingetorix turned to Baravax. “Have one of your men exchange horses with the great Oranix,” he ordered. “You can lead us to wherever your friends went?”

  “Of course!” said Oranix indignantly. “They blaze a trail behind for us to follow, that’s the way it’s done, you know! Or did you imagine we grew to manhood within the walls of Gergovia?”

  Oranix’s hunters had indeed blazed a trail that Oranix could easily follow, though Vercingetorix could not see how, and, moving as fast as the muddy ground would allow, they caught up with the hunters within the hour. All four bore bows, and all were helmetless and shieldless and garbed as woodsmen.

  They were no more than a mile from the coastal marshes. Dawn was breaking, the rain had dwindled to a foul misty drizzle, the ground here was viscous brown muck, and Vercingetorix did not need Oranix or his men to tell him that the trail of churned-up mud and trampled turf they were following led straight into the swamp.

  “Six of them.”

  “Could be eight.”

  “No more than a half hour ago.”

  “Maybe less.”

  The spirits of Vercingetorix’s men became as sodden as the terrain as he led them toward the marshes, for Dumnorix had made a cunning choice. These bogs were crisscrossed by innumerable creeks and rivulets, and what so-called dry land there was would be watery ooze where hoofprints or footprints would disappear as soon as they were made. Once inside, Dumnorix could choose any point at which to emerge, and one would either need to surround the entire marshland with an army, or be favored by the gods with fantastic luck, to intercept him emerging.

  Not even Oranix and his hunters showed any enthusiasm for entering when they reached the margin of this dank and forbidding tangle of moss-greened trees, tall moisture-laden grasses, pools of stagnant water, clinging and reeking mud. A thick layer of fog lay heavily over it, from which emerged mournful cries of unseen birds, the guttural croaks of frogs.