The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  Their hands tied behind them, their armor and helmets gone, stripped to their breechclouts, their bodies scratched bloody, their faces bruised purple by beatings, a score or so of Roman legionnaires, prodded by spears, swords, broom handles, pitchforks, staggered inside.

  This stilled the chanting and caused a surge of people to rush at the helpless Romans, kicking, pummeling with fists, some armed with swords and daggers.

  “Stop!” Vercingetorix shouted as loud as he knew how. “Stop before you dishonor yourselves before the gods and all Gaul!”

  This stayed the impending murderous vengeance for a moment Vercingetorix knew would not last.

  “Are we to become the barbarians the Romans say we are?” he added quickly. “Is it our way to rip our enemies to pieces like a pack of mad dogs, or are we Gauls?”

  “Is it our way to let these mad dogs live?” demanded the old warrior who had first called for their blood.

  “All Romans in Gaul are outlawed!”

  “By our vergobret himself!”

  “Kill them!”

  “Tear them apart!”

  “No!” declared Vercingetorix.

  “Would you spare them, Vercingetorix, vergobret of the Arverni?”

  “No,” said Vercingetorix, “I would not spare them.”

  And he gazed out at his people, red-faced, blood-lusted, their fury stayed by his words for what could only be moments. The silver-tongued Vercingetorix knew not what to say next. And so he allowed whatever might come forth to speak through him.

  “No, I would spare the life of no Roman, but I would not waste their deaths either,” he said. As these words escaped his lips, he knew what he was going to say, he knew what he was going to do, and he trembled with the knowledge.

  “I would use their deaths to make magic,” he declared, and that brought utter stillness, the rapt attention of all eyes upon him, upon this warrior, this vergobret, who all knew had worn the robe of a druid when he had taken the sacrifice of the life of Diviacx.

  And Vercingetorix knew what they were thinking:

  What magic would he make with a score of lives?

  “I will use their deaths to make a great magic,” he said. “As Caesar and Rome caused the burning of my father, so will I burn these Romans. I will burn them not only as your vergobret, but before all the tribes of Gaul as a druid, with the Arch Druid by my side. We will seal the pact we made with the life of Diviacx once more. This time with the lives of the enemies of Gaul! As is only just!”

  As is only just, Guttuatr, Vercingetorix thought grimly. As you commanded me to watch my father burn and do nothing but endure, so must you now pay the price of enduring your collaboration in this terrible magic that the destiny you called upon me to fulfill commands me to make.

  The vast crowd spread out across the meadow and halfway up the hill on which Gergovia stood. The entire population of the city and more had turned out for the spectacle: Arverni from the countryside, leaders of most of the other tribes, and even their curious followers, bards, druids, musicians. The late-winter day was cool, but the sky was a cloudless blue and the sun rising to its zenith warmed the blood and the spirit, as did the beer being passed around; a gay festival atmosphere prevailed.

  “This is wrong, Vercingetorix,” said Guttuatr as the Roman prisoners, their arms bound behind them, were marched through the jeering, hooting, laughing throng to the wicker man.

  “Wrong to execute by burning?” Vercingetorix said bitterly. “Tell that to the spirit of Keltill!”

  “Your father would never have done this thing, even had he made himself king,” said the Arch Druid.

  “Would not have sacrificed captured enemies? Would not have burned them in a wicker man, as was so often done in the long ago?”

  The Romans had been given much wine before being brought forth, leaving them just barely able to walk, and now more was being poured down their throats as they were prodded, thrust, and stuffed into the wicker man, for Vercingetorix had no desire to see them suffer more than this ceremony required. Many might take pleasure in what was about to come, but for him it was grim necessity.

  The wicker man was a cage in the rough shape of a man. It took a large one to hold a score of Romans. Its head stood half as high as the top of a full-grown oak, and it was a fat fellow, its unseemly girth crammed with the prisoners, even trussed as they were, and piled atop each other in two layers.

  “Your father would not have presumed to don a druid’s robe before a gathering such as this,” said Guttuatr.

  Vercingetorix and Guttuatr stood together before the wicker man, alone save for Baravax and his guards, who were loading the Romans into it and piling up logs and kindling at its feet. Guttuatr, as always, wore his white robe, and carried his staff of office.

  Vercingetorix wore the garb of an Arverne warrior—sword and helmet included—but carried a folded druid’s robe, pure white and untrimmed by tribal colors, over his left arm.

  “You object more to the garment I intend to wear than to the burning of these Romans or the words I would have you speak,” Vercingetorix ventured in an attempt to lighten the tension between them.

  “I am not a fool, Vercingetorix,” Guttuatr said coldly. “You intend to use it to make a magic that has never been made before. But I do not pretend to know where it will lead if it succeeds.”

  “Nor do I,” admitted Vercingetorix. “But we both know that Gaul will fall to Caesar if it fails.”

  The Arch Druid sighed. “That,” he said with no enthusiasm, “is why I am here.”

  Vercingetorix had prevailed on Guttuatr not only to attend himself but to summon vergobrets, leaders, and nobles of all the tribes of Gaul to bear witness to the burning of the Romans.

  The Arch Druid had at first refused to collaborate in such an atrocity.

  “You must, even as must I,” Vercingetorix had told him. “Exactly because it is such a terrible atrocity. All who witness it will know that it will so outrage Caesar that no further collaboration is possible. Thus will it bind together the tribes of Gaul in adversity. There will be no turning back.”

  Most of the vergobrets had come. Vercingetorix could make out their standards staked in the ground among the crowd at wide intervals, but the boar of the Eduen vergobret was not among them. Liscos had developed a convenient illness and sent Litivak in his stead, or, rather, had not forbidden Litivak to attend with twoscore of his own warriors.

  When they met, Litivak had been distant, and his unease apparent. “Why are you doing this, Vercingetorix?” he had demanded. “Surely you know it will bring down the wrath of Caesar on all of us.”

  “The wrath of Caesar has already fallen on the Arverni,” Vercingetorix told him. “Now the wrath of the Gauls will fall on Rome.”

  “The wrath of the Arverni, you mean. And do not suppose I don’t know why you’re doing this. You mean to bring down the wrath of Rome upon all Gaul.”

  “If you believe that, then why are you here?”

  Litivak had shrugged, and sighed. “Because, though Liscos still believes Caesar, I doubt not that Caesar will turn on the Edui as soon as he finishes off the Arverni. So we must fight or die.”

  “Spoken like a true Gaul!” Vercingetorix had ventured warmly.

  “Spoken like a man who knows his choice has been taken from him,” Litivak had said as he turned his back and walked away.

  Worse was waiting when the Carnutes arrived. Cottos, their vergobret, greeted Vercingetorix warmly, as did Epona, who was with their party, but Marah was with her, and obviously only under her mother’s duress, for while she would meet his eyes, it was with an angry glare and a curled lip.

  Only when her mother angrily thrust her upon him would she speak, and then her words were like a dagger in his heart.

  “You at least owe it to him to tell him what you told me,” Epona had said.

  “I owe this barbarian nothing.”

  “Then why are you here?” said Vercingetorix.

  “Because my mot
her demands that I witness this disgusting and hideous spectacle,” said Marah, glaring now at Epona and not at him.

  “She understands nothing of the necessities of—”

  “I understand the difference between barbarism and civilization as you so obviously do not!” Marah shouted at both of them. “Caesar released hostages when we no longer served his…necessities, rather than kill us in a childish petulant rage. Which is more than can be said for this…this…boy who would make me his Queen of Gaul.”

  And she too had turned her back and stalked away.

  Vercingetorix takes a step forward, raises his left hand.

  The door to the wicker cage is tied shut, and the guards withdraw into the watching crowd, still and silent now with expectancy, and the only sounds to be heard are the cries of terror and angry curses of the drunken Romans.

  “You have told me, Retake your own city from the Romans, and then we will see about doing what you have done in our own lands,” he says.

  He gestures at the Romans in the cage. “Behold, this I have done, and Gergovia is free. Here are Caesar’s men in a good Gallic cage, and as they burn, so will the lands of the Arverni be burned free of the pillage and death and desecration that they have brought!”

  A cheer goes up, but almost entirely from Arverne throats. The vergobrets and nobles of the other tribes stand stone-faced beneath their tribal emblems, some with their arms folded across their chests.

  “When Caesar returns with his mighty legions, you will wish you had never been born, you cowardly Arverne turd!” a Roman shouts boldly from the cage.

  Vercingetorix smiles as if the Roman has spoken at his bidding.

  “When Caesar returns with his mighty legions, he will be met by the mightier army of Gaul!” he roars.

  And the assembled Arverni in their thousands pound daggers and swords upon shields, feet upon the earth, a rhythmic thunder to accompany the chanting:

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul! Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  The Bituriges and the Santons, the Turons and the Parisii, the Atrebates and the Belovaques, far outnumbered by the chanting multitude, stand silent. Some glance around fearfully, some stare in guarded outrage, realizing that Vercingetorix is about to bring Rome down upon them all, like it or not. Litivak narrows his eyes like a commander coldly and speculatively studying a field of battle.

  “Yes, I intend to lead all Gauls who will follow me in driving the Romans from our land,” Vercingetorix declares. “For I am Vercingetorix; my name may mean ‘great leader of warriors,’ but it can also be taken to mean ‘leader of great warriors.’ And that is you, Edui; that is you, Carnutes; that is you, Santons, Atrebates, Bituriges, Parisii; that is you, my fellow Gauls, for that is what we all must become if we are to survive!”

  The Arverni roar their approval. Here and there, warriors of other tribes begin to join in. Even a few vergobrets—Epirod of the Santons, Comm of the Atrebates, Cottos of the Carnutes—beside whom Epona gives full voice. Marah regards Vercingetorix with frosty disgust.

  The chanting begins again:

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul! Vercingetorix! King of Gaul!”

  But now the Arch Druid, Guttuatr, raises his staff high above his head. “Silence!” he commands.

  And silence he receives.

  “Vercingetorix speaks the truth. This is the time of a Great Turning, and the peoples of Gaul must turn with it or perish from the earth. This has been written in the heavens, and…”

  The Arch Druid seems to hesitate for a moment before going on. “And it has also been written…that all Gaul must unite…under one war leader, and that must be Vercingetorix, son of Keltill.”

  “Vercingetorix! King—”

  But before the chant can fully rise, the Arch Druid pounds the end of his staff hard upon the earth.

  “But not as king!” he roars.

  “So be it!” Vercingetorix shouts, and unfolds the pure white druid’s robe and dons it, over his warrior’s garb and arms.

  “So be it,” repeats the druid that the warrior has become. “I swear to you an oath as a druid and as war leader of Gaul. For behold, now they are one and the same. Never shall I be king in Gaul while a Roman soldier remains on the soil of our land. May my life be taken and my honor forfeit if ever I seek to violate this oath.”

  A stillness descends on the crowd.

  Critognat emerges from the crowd and hands Vercingetorix a torch.

  “As war leader of the armies of Gaul, I say that, from this moment forth, we are all Gauls or traitorous lackeys of Rome!” Vercingetorix declares. “All who are not with us are against us! And all who are against us must die!” He half turns, and backs up to the pile of logs and kindling at the foot of the wicker man.

  “As the son of Keltill, who died in fire, I now fulfill my father’s failed destiny and seal in fire the alliance among us against Rome. By this fire, every Roman will know that every Gaul is his enemy, and by this fire, every Gaul will know that Caesar can give him no quarter.”

  And he throws the torch upon the pyre.

  Vercingetorix watches in silence as the kindling ignites, then the logs, and then the wicker man itself. His eyes are drawn to the blazing giant, a sketch of a man drawn in flame, towering above him, burning bright.

  Within that flaming spirit, men writhe and scream and cry out in their agony, and from that spirit out of the Land of Legend there comes the savory aroma of roasting meat and the sweet, foul stench of burning flesh, and they are one and the same.

  Somehow both are the smell of Keltill.

  Vercingetorix would look away, but he cannot. He cannot move. For there are eyes looking into his from within the man-shaped fire, and they capture his own. And he falls down into them, and through them, and into the Land of Legend.

  Here he can still see the flame and hear the screams and cries. But it is a corpse on a funeral pyre burning in the flame as warriors solemnly pound out a dirge on their shields with their swords. And the screams and cries arise from the throats of famished wretches, children, doddards, crones, grubbing for roots and worms on a treeless and unforgiving earth.

  Yet Vercingetorix finds himself wearing the Crown of Brenn as he rides a white horse triumphantly through an honor guard of Roman centurions toward Caesar, seated humbly before him.

  And he hears the familiar chanting.

  “Vercingetorix! King of Gaul! Vercingetorix, King of Gaul!”

  Then he is upon a horse in the midst of a ferocious battle, surrounded by Romans and Gauls. He spies Caesar, fighting afoot.

  Caesar’s sword goes flying through the air; Vercingetorix rears his horse.

  And snatches the tumbling sword out of the air as he did the Crown of Brenn as a boy. And the sword becomes the crown, and he places it upon his head, riding in the center of a great army of Gauls.

  Like the shadow of a dark front of clouds moving at magical speed, Vercingetorix’s army rides across fair, sunny Gaul, plains rich with ripening grain, lush green valleys thronged with fat sheep, orchards laden with fruit, farmsteads with bursting granaries.

  But as the army of Gaul passes, a wall of flame follows in their wake, and the grain burns in the fields, and the sheep become rotting skeletal corpses, and the trees fall in fire, and the farmsteads are smoldering ruins, and the skies are black with evil roiling smoke.

  A vast Roman army pursues them across this desolate landscape. But it is an army of stoop-shouldered cavalrymen leading skeletal horses, of ranks of legionnaires afoot, too weak to bear armor, their ribs showing through threadbare tunics. There is only one rider among them, and he is wearing the crimson cloak of Caesar. But the horse is a bleach-boned skeleton, and so too the man.

  And Vercingetorix hears the voice of Keltill. Out of the long ago.

  “In fire do I become the tale the bards will sing.

  In fire, I enter the Land of Legend as a king!”

  And Vercingetorix is declaiming with him.

  “As the fire sets my spir
it free…”

  And then he stands before a burning man-shaped cage of wicker already beginning to crumble into embers, wrapped in the oily and obscenely savory smoke of the roasting corpses within. And, turning to gaze at the multitude who have witnessed the terrible magic he has made, leaves the Land of Legend, chanting the last words of his father’s death ode:

  “So in fire will you remember me.”

  XIII

  CAESAR WAS CHILLED even wrapped in his heavy winter cloak, and once more, snow avalanched down from the mountain slopes onto the valley floor had forced him to dismount and lead his horse through the treacherous terrain of hidden rocks, sodden soil, and melt pools.

  But he was mindful only of the larger logistical problem. Cavalrymen reduced to leading their horses. Wagons endlessly mired in snow and mud. Cracked wheels. Broken axles. Snow and misty rain. The infantry were most used to the hardship and grumbled the least. The infantry were the heart of his legions and highest in Caesar’s affections, and, were it not unseemly for their commander to do so, he would have given over his horse entirely and marched the whole way afoot with them.

  At the moment, he was effectively doing it anyway, for the only men in front of him were trailblazers on foot, testing the way ahead with poles.

  Young Brutus led his horse and slogged in the forefront with him, but Labienus, Antony, Trebonius, Galba, and the rest of his generals stayed back within the main body of the troops, so that they could ride through the passes on paths well trodden by thousands of foot soldiers.

  Perhaps I should order all of them to lead from the front as I do, Caesar mused half seriously. It would serve them right.

  They had all blanched at the prospect of crossing the Alps from the south with an army in early March.

  “Never been done before,” Galba had grunted.

  “Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants,” Caesar had told him. “And that had never been done before either.”

  “You’re sure you want to risk such a venture?” asked Labienus.

  “Even you are afraid, Labienus?”

  “I fear no danger in battle,” Labienus replied with proper indignation. “But who can fight the weather? Valor will avail us nothing if there’s a late blizzard in the high passes.”