The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  “Ah yes, Litivak!” said Caesar. “No, better that he not be troubled with the bothersome details of the arrangements. But not for all the world would I have him miss out on the entertainment.”

  Bourges had been surrounded by orderly formations of Roman infantry deployed out of arrow range of the walls. Eight mobile siege towers—two before each quarter of the city walls—were positioned within the front rank of the infantry. These were huge wooden ladders on wheels inside log frameworks clad with thick planking for protection. They were provided with parapeted platforms at their summits, slightly higher than the city palisade, and clad with wooden shields at their bases to protect the men poised to propel them forward.

  To the east and far to the rear, eight catapults sat unmanned, and among them was a battering ram of logs bound together with iron hoops and faced with iron, so enormous that it was set on two wagons, one behind the other, with fifty men manning the poles jutting out from each, like so many galley slaves.

  A man appeared atop the left-hand siege tower facing the gates. His armor and helmet were no different from those of his troops, but the bright crimson cloak blowing in the breeze behind him announced the presence of Gaius Julius Caesar. A cheer went up from his army. A few futile arrows were launched his way from the parapets of Bourges, but fell far short. Caesar raised his right arm high above his head, and held it there for a dramatic moment. Then he brought it down, trumpets blew, and it began.

  The eight siege towers began to roll slowly toward Bourges, the Roman infantry advancing at a measured pace behind them. Archers on the city walls shot arrows at them as they came into range, and Roman archers crouched down behind the tower-platform parapets answered the Biturige volleys. Both were largely ineffective, which worked to the advantage of the Romans, since their archers were able to suppress the fire of the Bituriges well enough so that flaming arrows could not prove a significant counter to the siege towers.

  When the siege towers were all but upon the walls, another signal was sounded. An aisle opened up in the eastern infantry formation, and the hundred legionnaires manning the poles of the battering-ram wagons began to push. They had to lean into it with all their strength and weight to get the ram to move at all, and when it began to move it rolled forward slower than the slowest walk of a very old man. But once in motion, it began to gather momentum.

  The siege towers reached the walls, and legionnaires scrambled up their interior ladders. Where the summit platforms met the top of the walls, the leading Romans, fighting shoulder to shoulder from behind a wall of their shields, engaged the defenders in bloody close combat in restricted quarters, seeking not to slay as many Bituriges as possible but merely to push them back off the wall so that the troops behind them could pour into the city.

  The battering ram, meanwhile, was gathering force, rolling toward the gates faster and faster, the pace of a man walking vigorously, trotting, beginning to run—

  The Romans heavily outnumbered the Bituriges, and there was an endless line of replacements waiting to ascend the tower ladders. They were inexorably pushing the Bituriges back, and in several places were already fighting them atop the walls when—

  With a tremendous rumble that shook the earth and a great cheer from the legionnaires, the huge battering ram, rolling at the speed of a trotting horse, and with the men on the poles hanging on now rather than pushing, struck the city gates head-on with a crash that shattered them completely and shook the walls themselves. The ram rolled through the flinders unaided for a few wagon lengths, and the Roman army began to pour into Bourges behind it.

  The first waves of Romans made directly for the walls, running alongside them, dashing up the interior ladders and stairways to attack the defenders from below and behind, trapping them between themselves and the other Romans atop the wall and the siege towers. The Bituriges on the walls had no chance at all, nor did the Romans give them any quarter, cutting them to pieces with swords, spearing them with javelins, throwing them off the parapets, as more Romans dropped into the city via the towers, and formation after formation of legionnaires marched through the shattered gates.

  Organized squads spread out through the city to seize and secure the granaries and storehouses, but these were only the smallest portion of the Roman troops entering Bourges. The rest were free to commence general looting, pillaging, destroying, and butchery.

  The houses on one side of the street were all beginning to burn, and legionnaires were pouring from them like ants, bearing bits and pieces of whatever they could carry. Most of the houses on the other side of the street were already merrily aflame, but there was an island of temporary safety large enough for half a dozen legionnaires to continue their ravishment of three screaming young girls.

  Farther up the street, a score of legionnaires had found a few Biturige warriors and were making a slow, gory game of cutting them to pieces. Behind them, women, children, and old men were stumbling out of burning buildings, some with their hair afire. Shrieks of pain, terminal moanings, cracklings of fire, sharp reports of burnt-out timbers collapsing, and drunken laughter filled the air, which stank of ash, fire, roasting flesh, drunken piss, and spilled beer.

  Caesar had been parading him under guard through the carnage for perhaps half an hour now, and Litivak had no recourse but to allow himself to be led through the horror like a dog on a leash, rendered mute by the shock of the assault on his eyes and ears and nostrils, on his spirit itself, unable to even find the words to express his uncomprehending disgust and outrage.

  “Why are you showing me this…this…?” he finally managed to mutter.

  “Atrocity?” Caesar suggested with a fatuous grin.

  “Why subject me to it?” Litivak snarled at him.

  “Why, to win you to my cause, of course. I’ve arranged this entertainment just for you, Litivak. Relax and enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy it! Win me to your cause! Are you are mad, or do you believe I am?”

  “Not at all,” said Caesar with a mildness that somehow was more chilling to Litivak than anything he had seen or heard or smelled. “I’m the sanest man I know, and surely you are sane enough to be convinced by cold, clear logic.”

  Litivak saw that Caesar had been leading him back toward the shattered gates through which they had entered the city. Now they were in sight, giving him hope that this nightmare would soon be over.

  A long train of wagons laden with sacks and barrels of grain, dressed carcasses of cattle and swine, baskets of live chickens, geese, and ducks, apples fresh and dried, vegetables, hams, was leaving the city. Bloodied and bruised Bituriges were dragging timbers outside at sword point. One of the more seriously wounded prisoners collapsed in the dirt, and when he could not rise, a legionnaire stabbed him through the heart with his sword.

  “You call this hideous butchery cold, clear logic?” Litivak cried in outrage.

  “Indeed I do,” Caesar told him as they slid past the timber-bearers and outside the city, where a long line of wooden crosses were being hammered together beside the wall. “Now Vercingetorix will have no doubt what will happen to any city I choose to attack and he fails to defend.”

  He favored Litivak with the warm, friendly smile of a serpent. “And so will you come to see the logic of serving my cause,” he said. “Having witnessed the alternative.”

  “I’d die first!” cried Litivak, and never had he said anything more sincerely.

  “Perhaps,” said Caesar, “but there are worse things than death, are there not? Is not loss of honor one of them for a noble Gaul such as yourself?”

  Caesar had Litivak escorted to a hilltop overlooking the city and left him there while he saw to the preparations for the final act of the drama he had prepared for the Eduen’s benefit.

  This took nearly three hours. Everything edible had to be removed from the city, and the troops withdrawn to a safe distance as Gallius brought up the catapults. Some two hundred Bituriges—mostly men, but a scattering of women and children to make the specta
cle all the more hideous—had to be nailed to the crosses, and the crosses erected at regular intervals before the city walls.

  The sun was beginning to set by the time all this was accomplished and Caesar returned to the hilltop where he had left Litivak. Brutus had arrived to keep him company. Both of their faces were pale, and it was difficult to determine whose eyes were the more haunted. When Caesar turned to observe the vista from their vantage, he had to admit that, for sheer dramatic horror, it put the legendary sack of Carthage to shame.

  A pall of smoke hung over the city, acquiring a golden-orangish tint from the bloody sun beginning to sink behind it. Black thunderheads of fresh smoke from the larger fires boiled up through it, and bright flames could be seen through the smoke sustaining them. At this distance, the people trapped inside were too small to be seen, and only the roar of major blazes could be heard clearly, but their cries and screams merged into a thinly audible wail, like the buzz of a distant beehive. Before the city walls, Bituriges hung on crosses, but at this remove, their cries and writhings must be left to the imagination.

  “Was…was…this brutal butchery really necessary, Caesar?” Brutus stammered.

  “Oh, indeed, Brutus, and a masterstroke as well, for without this brutal butchery, Vercingetorix might harbor some illusions about what will happen to the next city we attack, and our friend here might even conceivably fail to join us in the siege of Gergovia.”

  “How can you possibly believe I would—”

  “A moment, please, Litivak, and then you will understand all, I promise,” said Caesar, raising his arm both to quiet the Gaul and to prepare the signal. “Poor Gallius has waited long to try this out, and it would be cruel to torment him further.”

  He dropped his arm, a trumpet blew, and the lever arms of the eight catapults were released from their tension, throwing large clay amphorae in high arcs toward the city.

  Six of them cleared the walls nicely, and four of those burst into flame in proper explosions; the others simply released what from this distance looked like oozing puddles of fire. The remaining two fell short and hit the walls, releasing the burning ooze with a dull thud.

  “The catapults need work, I’d say, wouldn’t you, Litivak?” said Caesar, shaking his head as he turned to confront the Gaul. “But don’t worry, my friend, I promise you they’ll get it.” He favored Litivak with a smarmy smile. “And you will have the honor of choosing where.”

  The catapults launched another fusillade as Litivak stared at him numbly, and Caesar was pleased to note that now they had gotten the range, for all eight amphorae cleared the walls to feed the conflagration consuming the city.

  “Will it be Gergovia or Bibracte? What do you think, Litivak? I would prefer Gergovia, of course, since Vercingetorix could hardly remain vergobret of the Arverni if he allowed…such brutal butchery to befall his own capital, and I will destroy him if he defends it, and either way the war will be over before any such disaster should befall the Eduen capital.”

  Caesar shrugged. “But a promise is a promise, Litivak, and I did promise the choice would be yours. Perhaps you have some strange reason for preferring that I first destroy Bibracte? I can’t imagine why, but still, if you wish…”

  Litivak’s mouth quivered as if he were struggling to form words, but what could they possibly be under the circumstances?

  Caesar shrugged again, theatrically, quite enjoying his own performance.

  “I’ll tell you what, Litivak!” he said as if the idea had just come to him. “We will march southeast for five days, which will put us more or less equidistant from Gergovia and Bibracte when we reach the fork of the Allier River. We will camp there for a day and then move on. If your cavalry joins us, you receive a chest of gold, we march south on Gergovia together, conquer the Arverni together, and end this war, then back to an intact Bibracte we parade, where you will be hailed as a hero.”

  Caesar paused for suitable dramatic emphasis.

  “If not…”

  The light of comprehension, if not of approval, dawned in Brutus’ eyes.

  “If not,” Caesar said, “at least you won’t be able to complain that I left the consequences to your imagination.” Another fusillade of Greek fire, if such it truly was, soared over the walls of Bourges. The walls themselves were beginning to burn in several places now.

  “You bastard…” Litivak muttered.

  XVI

  THE SUN AROSE gorgeously through a rosy-golden morning mist, but it was an evil beauty, for the mist was a haze that perfumed the air with the tang of burning wood and things best left unthought, and on the far horizon a pillar of black smoke was still visible feeding it.

  The army of Gaul gathered in rolling countryside where the leaders had mounted a small hill in order to be seen. But so many warriors were gathered that their words must be relayed from ear to mouth to ear to reach them all.

  Comm of the Atrebates spoke first, no doubt speaking for a congress of the smaller tribes, all that was left of the “army of Gaul” save the Arverni after the defection of the Edui and the Cadurques.

  “We obeyed the druids and joined this unnatural alliance because you promised to drive the Romans from Gaul, but instead you have laid waste to the countryside, time after time refused to give battle, and now—”

  “Coward!” shouted Epirod of the Santons.

  “—and now you let them massacre Bourges without even trying to defend the city!”

  “Had we fought for the city, we would’ve lost the battle, and Caesar would have sacked it anyway,” Vercingetorix said coldly.

  “We should have fought!” Critognat shouted angrily. “Had we lost, we would have died with honor!”

  The leaders shouted their agreement with this, and some banged their swords on their shields. As Critognat’s words spread from ear to mouth to ear among the assembled warriors, waves of shouting and shield-pounding spread, like those made by a stone tossed into a pond. Vercingetorix found himself facing the open contempt of his own army.

  “You are angry and so am I!” he shouted as loudly as he was able, so that as many as could would hear his words from his own mouth. “You are angry with me and I am angry with you, but I am even more angry with myself!”

  He waited until these words had been relayed to the farthest reaches of the assembled army and the shield-banging and shouting had been silenced.

  “I am angry with myself for listening, like you, to my heart and not to my head! We should have forced the evacuation of the city and burned the food supplies! Had I followed necessity instead of visions, thousands now dead would yet live, and Caesar’s famished legions would be retreating back across the Alps! Take back the command you entrusted to me if you find me unworthy! Take it back because we have been fools! Take it back because I have been the biggest fool of all!”

  No one within earshot knew how to greet these words. But as they were relayed throughout the army, a murmuring arose—sullen perhaps, but not enraged, or so to Vercingetorix it seemed.

  And he knew that, although the words he had just spoken had arisen uncrafted from his heart and he believed every one of them, the bravado he must now utter would ring hollow in his own ears even as he declaimed it.

  “Take heart!” he shouted. “Yes, I have been a fool! Yes, we have made a terrible mistake, and paid a terrible price! But Caesar has been an even bigger fool, and made a far more terrible mistake, and the price he will pay is certain defeat! For, after this monstrous massacre, every Gaul will now understand his true nature! No Gaul will stand by his side! No Gaul can remain neutral! By this evil and dishonorable atrocity, Gaius Julius Caesar has achieved what my father could not, what I could not, what no Gaul could accomplish—he has united all the tribes of Gaul, every man, woman, and child, against himself! As in the long ago, when Brenn was king and we made Rome tremble! And when all the tribes of Gaul are united, not the entire world can stand against us!”

  At this they banged their shields, if with no great enthusiasm.
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br />   But Vercingetorix knew full well that it was a silver-tongued lie. The Gauls were more divided than ever. Without Litivak and his Edui, the “army of Gaul” amounted to his own Arverni and a few thousand auxiliaries from minor tribes. And Caesar had been far from a fool. The massacre he had committed was a plain message: Now I will lead and you must follow.

  For this is what will happen to any city you fail to defend.

  The cheeriness of the bright morning sunlight mocked Vercingetorix’s mood as he and Rhia paced the walls of Gergovia, surveying the frantic activity below. The entire population of the city was working with a feverish will born of terror and desperation to finish the new outer fortifications before Caesar’s army arrived.

  Four ditches encircled the city, and a fifth was being completed. The three outermost ditches were lined with sharpened wooden stakes to impale charging cavalry. They should also be wide enough to prevent the Romans’ fearsome catapults from coming within range, or their siege towers and battering rams from reaching the city walls. The inner two ditches were filled with hay steeped in pitch. Planks had been nailed to logs to form simple mobile bridges, and these were stored within the walls, so that if the Roman assault were not only stopped but broken the Gallic cavalry could emerge to harry their retreat.

  “Caesar has forced me to lead the Arverni into his trap,” Vercingetorix muttered somberly.

  “Trap? We’re turning Caesar’s trap into our fortress.”

  “So it would seem,” said Vercingetorix. “But Caesar knew that this was a trap I could not evade. After Bourges, if I failed to defend my own capital, I would be a general without an army. But by defending Gergovia, I am doing just what he wants me to do.”

  “You should not cloud the mind with such thoughts before a battle you must not lose. That you cannot lose.”

  “Cannot lose!” Vercingetorix exclaimed bitterly.

  “Cannot lose,” Rhia said softly. “You have seen the vision of your life entire, have you not, and it ends not here but as king of Gaul in Rome.”