The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  The sun was beginning to set through the tree crowns when he reached the druid school, casting long wavering shadows on an eerie scene of orderly destruction. The thatched huts had been burned to the ground but with care, for neither the grass of the clearing nor a single tree had been singed, and the stone temple still stood untouched. Not a person was present, but neither were there corpses or any sign of a struggle.

  Vercingetorix dismounted, examined the ashes of the huts, paced around the periphery of the clearing, peered into the deepening shadows of the forest. No one. No sound but the day birds returning to roost and the night birds tentatively beginning their songs.

  There was only one other place to go, only one other’s counsel that he could think to seek, and so Vercingetorix remounted and rode back through the trees, back to the cave of Rhia.

  A bloody red twilight had enveloped the forest by the time Vercingetorix got there, and firelight glowed somberly within the opening in the rock face.

  Vercingetorix dismounted and entered. Though he had taken many lessons outside, never had he been invited into the cave or sought entry, so he made his way cautiously along a dark and narrow passage toward the firelight at the far end.

  He emerged into a rough-hewn circular chamber where a fire burned in a large brass brazier. Before the fire, back to him, was a warrior in armor and helmet with a sword held in both hands, its point grounded upon the rocky floor.

  Rhia whirled around at some slight sound made by his approach, her sword held high over one shoulder, and Vercingetorix found that, without thought, he had drawn his own sword and assumed the same position.

  Rhia smiled mirthlessly. “Well learned,” she said.

  “Well taught,” said Vercingetorix. “But where is everybody? The druids of the school—”

  “Gone into the forest to hide in plain sight.”

  “And you remained to face the wrath of Caesar alone?”

  “I remained to wait for you,” said Rhia. “For now begins the destiny for which my life was crafted.”

  “Crafted…?”

  “Are not all our lives crafted for destinies we do not know, by gods or forces or magics we never see or understand?”

  “Some of us see our destinies before they arrive,” Vercingetorix said somberly. “But whether boon or curse…” He could only shrug.

  “Does it matter?” said Rhia. “Can we resist destiny? When I was a wild creature of the forest and lived without words in which to think, I saw without thought, and so was one with both this world and the Land of Legend, and I saw…I saw…” Her brow wrinkled, as she struggled to find words to bind that which could not be bound by words.

  “I saw you, Vercingetorix,” she finally said. “And likewise I saw myself…my life to come…my death…”

  “As I saw my destiny under the Tree of Knowledge…”

  “Perhaps,” said Rhia, “but as an animal might.” Sword still held high above her shoulder, she yet trembled like a fawn, and Vercingetorix felt the desire, the need, to comfort her.

  “Let us not speak of such things,” she said in a whispery voice. “Let me just say that, as this sword was crafted by men to be my weapon, so was I crafted by the gods to be yours.”

  Rhia strode forward. But not to embrace him. Instead, she reached down one-handed with her sword, put the tip of it under his, and raised both up so that the two warriors were separated by crossed swords held high between them.

  “I am your weapon to wield to the last drop of my blood,” she said. “Nothing more and nothing less. Your sister of the sword. You must accept our destiny, for in this there is no choice. Swear this oath with me!”

  She reached up with her free hand and ran the palm of it along the cutting edge of her sword, drawing a thin line of blood.

  She kissed the palm, smearing her own blood upon her lips.

  Vercingetorix stared at her, stunned and transfixed for a long moment, before he understood. Then he too ran his palm down the edge of his sword, and kissed the blood he had drawn onto his lips.

  Swords still crossed, they kissed, closed-mouth but long, without erotic ardor, but with a fiercer passion.

  “Brother and sister of the sword!” he declared.

  “Until death parts us in this world,” said Rhia, “and forever in the Land of Legend.”

  Am I vexed or am I content? Caesar asked himself, and the question was its own answer, for in this season of his life, each of these humors seemed to contain the seed of the other. The foray into Britain had proved as pointless as he had known it would, but upon his return he had found that Tulius had done well in subjugating the Arverni and their tributary tribes, so well that what he had extracted from them in goods and slaves exceeded the whole cost of the British expedition.

  Now, as he rode under a blue stormless sky, the Alpine peaks were capped with snow only at their heights, the grass was still green in these valleys, and the passage south to Gallia Narbonensis for the winter was proving a sweet and soft one. Beside him rode Brutus, as he had in Britain—a poor substitute for Gisstus as a mirror for his inner thoughts perhaps, but one whose youth and naïveté encouraged his brighter aspects.

  Behind them, his legions marched in good order, and among the formations of infantry and cavalry, there were long lines of slaves, herds of sheep and horses, and many wagons bearing not only foodstuffs, leathers, and cloth, but sacks of dyes known only to the Gauls, gems, excellent metalwork, and more gold than Caesar had even hoped for. The men were in a fine humor, and why should they not be, marching south for the usual winter of rest after an unusually successful and lucrative campaigning season.

  “They wouldn’t dare!” cried Brutus.

  Four cavalrymen were galloping down the mountain slope toward them with hands full of snowballs that they were throwing at each other in wild good spirits.

  Brutus laughed as they approached.

  “Or would they?”

  But when two of the troopers reached them, each holding a snowball, another produced a wineskin and poured wine on them.

  “Taste this!” he cried in delight, as Caesar and Brutus were each handed a snowball.

  Brutus bit gingerly into his. “Delicious!” he exclaimed.

  Caesar, constrained to do likewise, tasted his snowball. It was indeed delicious, and unexpectedly so; if anyone could work out a way to create such a cool treat in the heat of the Roman summer, his fortune would surely be made.

  “Wonderful!” said Caesar, and plastered a happy grin across his face. But his heart just wasn’t in it, and Brutus sensed this.

  “The men are in a happy mood,” he said when the troopers had departed. “Why is your mood not light, Caesar?”

  “Because we’ll be marching the other way in the spring, Brutus,” said Caesar. “After leaving the Gauls to their own devices all winter…”

  “But with the Arverni all but conquered, we’ll be ready to turn our attention to the Edui…”

  “True,” said Caesar.

  “Then why do you worry?”

  “In a word, Vercingetorix,” said Caesar. “Still at large.” I can’t tell him that this is by my own order, can I? And certainly not that it’s turned into a mistake.

  “A fugitive in the forest, detested by all save the Arverni for the slaying of Dumnorix,” Brutus said scornfully.

  “True again, my young friend. But the Arverni are turning him into a legend.”

  “A mythic hero with no army. What can one man do?”

  “Am I not one man, Brutus?” Caesar said sardonically.

  The first light snow of winter had dusted the boughs of the trees. Vercingetorix sat close by Rhia as they warmed themselves around a campfire that sent sparks up into the crystalline night. The savory smoke of the rabbit they had spitted and roasted clung to his nostrils as they hunkered there, picking off morsels.

  Here we are, thought Vercingetorix sourly, camped alone on a chilly early winter eve, smacking our lips over crackled meat around a cozy fire, soon to turn t
o doing likewise over each other, were we any natural man and woman. But brother and sister of the sword did not have the right to think such things, though for two turnings of the moon, he had spent all his days and all his nights with Rhia.

  Caesar had taken his main force south for the winter, leaving only garrisons to hold Gergovia and the larger villages. But Vercingetorix knew that the Romans would return in full force in the spring. Now was the time to raise an army, overwhelm the garrisons Caesar had left behind, and be prepared to confront the Romans when the snows in the mountain passes melted.

  So he carved a crude bear out of oak, affixed it to a pole, gave it to Rhia, and anointed her “standard-bearer of the army of the Arverni,” hoping that the legend of his invincibility, the presence at his side of such an arcane bearer, and the outrageousness of raising the bear standard at all would rally the Arverni to it.

  But all he could rally at any one time were a few real warriors and a score or two of starving peasants to raid small villages garrisoned by no more than a handful of legionnaires. This had resulted in half a dozen easy and pathetic “victories” by “the army of the Arverni.” These makeshift bands would slay the Romans and all they deemed collaborators, drink all there was to drink, eat what they could stuff into their bellies, and then disappear with what was left before Roman reinforcements could arrive.

  A week ago, though, this frustrating routine of what amounted to little more than banditry had produced disaster.

  The village they attacked had a large supply of Roman wine; the “army of the Arvernes” had gotten drunker than usual and passed into oblivion for the night. A Roman or two must have escaped in the confusion, for the revelers awoke to find the village surrounded by half a cohort of Roman infantry.

  With the first rays of the sun, the Romans moved in from all directions like a fist slowly closing on a peach. Vercingetorix, Rhia, and the half dozen Arverni who had horses found themselves fighting to escape with their lives. Since the Romans had no cavalry, slashing their way through the thinly spread infantry line was not difficult for those who were mounted, nor did the Romans seriously seek to impede them, intent as they were on the less risky task of massacring those without horses.

  It would have been easy enough to flee, for infantry could hardly pursue horsemen, but Vercingetorix could not honorably leave the rest of his men to perish. So, once the Roman infantry had turned their backs on his tiny escaping cavalry band, Vercingetorix wheeled his horse around and reared it. Rhia, seeing this, did likewise, raising his standard as high as she could.

  “Attack!” shouted Vercingetorix, waving his sword, and charged toward the rear of the Roman infantry.

  He had hardly brought his horse up into a full gallop when Rhia cut in front of him and barred his way with his own standard.

  “What are you—”

  “Look behind you!” Rhia shouted.

  When Vercingetorix did, he saw that, rather than riding with him in an attempt to attack the Romans from the rear and rescue their fellows, his six “cavalrymen” were disappearing into the distance.

  “Cowards! Bastards!” he shouted after them in a fury.

  He wheeled again, and would have charged the Romans alone had not Rhia seized the reins of his horse and restrained him at sword point until reason returned.

  When the Romans captured the village, they took care to slice ankle tendons, pierce thighs, cut off feet, and otherwise disable without killing, and to take as many prisoners as they could. These they took to a prominent place on the road to Gergovia and crucified. It was said the prisoners took days to die. Longer than it took the carrion birds to pick their bones clean.

  Vercingetorix had not had the heart to raise his standard since. Who would have been willing to rally to it if he had?

  An owl hooted. A distant wolf howled. Another answered. Something small scurried through the forest. Something somewhat larger pursued. There was a shrill little scream, a thrashing, then silence.

  Vercingetorix found that, in the midst of these grim and frustrating memories, he was huddling closer to Rhia. His “war” on Caesar had ended in ignominy before it began, and she was his entire “army.” What further purpose was there to blood oaths, or their brotherhood and sisterhood of the sword?

  Perhaps the nights really were worse than the days, sleeping close beside her for the warmth, worse still lying awake while she muttered and writhed in her sleep, dreaming amorous thoughts of him, he dared to hope. What reason remained not to fulfill them?

  “Our time as brother and sister of the sword would seem to be over, Rhia,” he ventured.

  “You must not acknowledge defeat.”

  “As I must not acknowledge that the sun will rise in the morning whether I will it or not?” Vercingetorix said bitterly.

  “You have seen your destiny in a vision…”

  “Cannot visions lie?”

  “Their truths may not be spoken plain, but they do not lie.”

  “Neither do they point to the path to their fulfillment. What are we to do now?”

  Rhia was silent, nor would she meet his gaze. Somehow this emboldened Vercingetorix to move closer to her. She in turn seemed to lean closer to him. Vercingetorix dared to put a hand upon her thigh—

  —and she pulled back from his touch as if his hand were afire. “No, Vercingetorix,” she said softly, still unwilling or unable to look him in the eye. “We must not. Destiny has brought us together not for pleasure but to serve a purpose—”

  “Destiny or not, Rhia, we are a man and a woman.”

  “I have my vow, and you—”

  “Vows must be kept!”

  It was the voice of Guttuatr, as he emerged like a spirit from the darkness, but he became very much a creature of flesh when he strode to the campfire, squatted down, and immediately and without invitation ripped a haunch off the spitted rabbit.

  “Those who would be lovers must leave flesh untouched,” he managed to say between greedy mouthfuls. “Sacrifices must be made.”

  “I don’t notice you leaving flesh untouched or making any sacrifices,” Vercingetorix snapped petulantly.

  Guttuatr froze. He took the rabbit leg from his mouth and tossed it away into the forest. His craggy face, reddened and deeply etched by the firelight, was a mask of deadly earnest as he stared at Vercingetorix.

  “What sacrifice would you have me make…druid?” he said.

  Vercingetorix let his desperation and ire speak for him.

  “Command the tribes of Gaul to unite against Rome!”

  Guttuatr shrank back as if confronted with the unspeakable. “I cannot do such a thing!” he exclaimed.

  “Oh yes, you can!”

  “You know not what you ask!”

  “Oh yes, I do!” said Vercingetorix, and though these were the iresome words of the man of action, as he spoke them they became truth, his spirit became calm, and it was the man of knowledge who now spoke to his fellow druid.

  “I call upon you to descend from the world of knowledge into the world of action. I call upon you to make the sacrifice of that which you hold most dear—the purity of your own spirit.”

  “You call upon me to do what no druid must do,” Guttuatr said softly, “what no Arch Druid has ever done.” It seemed to Vercingetorix that, for the first time since he had known him, he saw Guttuatr afraid.

  “You must, Guttuatr, or the way of the druids itself will surely perish. If you do not, Caesar will find us as we are now when he returns in the spring, and crush us all. Gaul will become but a name for a conquered province of Rome, and you will trade the precious purity of your druid’s robe for a toga!”

  “Who dares ask me to do such a terrible thing?” said Guttuatr, regarding him as if seeing a demon.

  “Who dares ask?” Vercingetorix roared at him. “I do, Vercingetorix, son of Keltill, who died in fire to save our people! I do, the boy you trained as your instrument because the heavens commanded you! I do, Vercingetorix, denied all the pleasures of an ordinar
y man! I do, Vercingetorix, whose hands are steeped in blood! I chose none of this! If I am a monster, you have made me so!”

  “To break my vow and use the druid’s art to bend the worldly destiny of men…” Guttuatr muttered hesitantly.

  But his very hesitancy was answer enough. Vercingetorix saw that his words had conquered the Arch Druid, and held his silence.

  Guttuatr sighed. “It is a terrible magic you ask me to make, and the price will be terrible.”

  “The greater the magic, the greater the price that must be paid, as someone has told me often enough.”

  “I must have a human life with which to work this art,” said Guttuatr.

  “It has been done before…” Vercingetorix said coldly. “And I have already sacrificed countless lives to accomplish nothing.”

  Was it illusion, or had the night sounds ceased? All at once, Guttuatr’s visage transformed from that of an old man whose will he had tamed into that of the fiercest of Arch Druids from the legends of long ago.

  “Never have the druids made magic such as this,” he said. “And so the life that must be paid must be unlike that of any that have been sacrificed to the gods before. The life of a druid…and not taken, but freely given.”

  The crowns of the surrounding trees are still frosted with snow, but the sun rising toward its zenith has melted it away from the circular clearing, revealing the bleak brownish remnants of grass and rocks tinged the dirty purple of old bloodstains by the dying moss and more tenacious lichen.

  The Arch Druid Guttuatr stands in the center of the circle, his breath rendered visible by the frost, bearing the great oaken staff of his office, crowned with its fallen star.

  Once, twice, thrice, he raps the nether end upon a rock, and from the four quarters of the wind, druids emerge from the forest. There are many of them, perhaps as many as two hundred, an unnatural number for the size of the clearing, which fills completely. Their white robes are trimmed with the colors of all the tribes of Gaul. The mood is sullen rather than solemn as they wait for the Arch Druid to speak.