The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  “Visions!”

  “Such visions do not lie.”

  “Do they not?” Vercingetorix said angrily. “I followed a vision at Bourges. And it led to the deaths of thousands and into the jaws of Caesar’s trap!”

  “Did it lie? Did it show you anything that did not come to pass? Some visions tell us only what we already know in our own hearts. You followed such a vision at Bourges. Not because it revealed what was to come, but because it spoke to you of what you knew to be right. Visions may speak to us in riddles when they speak of the things of the world, but when they speak of the things of the spirit, they always speak plain.”

  There was a half-moon that night, and no cloud. Vercingetorix walked alone between the city wall and the innermost ditch, hoping for a sign to paint itself across the starry heavens, or perhaps fearing that one would appear.

  Visions in the sky. Visions in the Land of Legend. Visions seen in fire. Visions seen in mist. These had he followed since he first surrendered to destiny under the Tree of Knowledge. He had trusted in that destiny. Like a good Gaul, he had listened to the voice of his spirit.

  And it had robbed him of the life of a natural man. He had no wife. He had not even known a woman. Marah scorned him as a barbarian. Rhia was sworn to celibacy. He had sacrificed all to follow his visions of destiny.

  But Caesar crafted his own destiny by following the ruthless logic of necessity, and his army was as united under his command as a flock of birds in the sky or a school of fish in a river.

  Whereas I command Gauls, Vercingetorix thought peevishly. Ready to fight and die for glory alone. And that very strength is their weakness, for they are willing to die defeated for glory rather than triumph without it. And willing to follow a leader only when he leads them toward it.

  Vercingetorix walked on, staring upward into the heavens, where nothing was written this night, and so almost stumbled into Guttuatr, who was circling the walls in the opposite direction.

  “Seeking a sign?” he asked the Arch Druid sardonically.

  Guttuatr looked unnaturally pale in the silvery moonlight, which seemed to grave the lines in his face ever deeper—a ghost of what he had been, or perhaps of what he would become.

  “As are you?” he asked.

  “I seek not another of the visions that have drawn me into Caesar’s snare,” Vercingetorix told him, “but a way out of it. How did I allow myself to fall into this trap, Guttuatr?”

  “By doing what was right.”

  “What was right?” Vercingetorix said bitterly. “Then tell me who benefited! The people of Bourges who were slaughtered?”

  When Guttuatr did not answer, Vercingetorix answered for him. “I’ll tell you who benefited, Guttuatr—only Caesar!”

  “Might contends with might on the world’s battlefields,” Guttuatr told him. “Right and wrong contend within each man’s spirit. You benefited, Vercingetorix. The man of action found the man of knowledge he had lost.”

  “Perhaps,” he told Guttuatr, “a man of knowledge must not shrink from doing a lesser evil to prevent a greater. There are times when we must sacrifice more than our lives to do good. When we must sacrifice our honor itself.”

  “Now you truly speak as a druid,” Guttuatr said. “You speak as my equal.”

  “A sacrifice I forced you to make by descending into the world of strife to become my instrument, did I not?” Vercingetorix said softly. “And it weighs heavily upon my spirit.”

  Vercingetorix had never seen such a tender look in the Arch Druid’s eyes. “Now,” said Guttuatr, “you speak as my friend.”

  He had done what he could to restore the Great Hall of Gergovia, but still it seemed to Vercingetorix a sad specter of a past that could never return. The white-paint wattle had been scraped from the outside walls, but most of the ancient carvings of vines and flowers had gone with it. The colonnaded entrance portico had been torn down, but the scars still remained. The tinted glass had been removed from the window slits, the oil lamps had been replaced with torches, and the old banquet table had been brought back in, but there was nothing that could be done for the interior-wall paintings, which had been half destroyed by Gobanit’s “repairs” in Roman style with paints whose hues had never been used in the originals.

  The shields and swords and skulls of dead enemies had never been removed, but this boast of bygone glories now mocked the present circumstances. The chests of jewels and gold had been drained of most of their treasure to pay the people of the countryside for the loss of their crops and property, so Vercingetorix had had the empty ones removed to avoid being reminded of the extent to which the war had depleted the wealth of what had once been one of the richest tribes in Gaul.

  Gathered at the old wooden table were Critognat, Cottos of the Carnutes, Comm of the Atrebates, Epirod of the Santons, Velaun of the Parisii, Kassiv of the Turons, and Netod of the Belovaques—the leaders of what remained of the army of Gaul.

  “According to the scouts, if the Romans continue at their present pace, they will arrive before the sun goes down tomorrow,” Vercingetorix was forced to tell them.

  “We are ready for them!” declared Critognat.

  “As ready as we will ever be,” Vercingetorix said, and immediately chastised himself for it. Keltill would not have spoken thusly in a council of war.

  “The fortifications are completed,” said Critognat. “Every sword has been sharpened, every helmet has been polished till it gleams. We are ready to destroy them!”

  “No,” blurted Vercingetorix, regretting his words even as he uttered them, “we are ready to fight them.”

  “What, then, do we lack?” Netod demanded.

  “A path to victory,” said Vercingetorix, and again was dismayed by his own words.

  “What kind of talk is that?” said Critognat.

  “You are saying I should flee with my warriors?” Comm said sarcastically.

  “Perhaps we should,” said Velaun, “rather than fight at the side of a general who sees no path to victory.”

  “Why should we allow ourselves to be trapped inside this Arverne city by the legions of Caesar?” demanded Cottos.

  “He is right!”

  “Indeed he is!” exclaimed Vercingetorix. “We should not!”

  It was as if he had stood upon a mist-shrouded crag and the fog had suddenly lifted to reveal the valley below with perfect clarity.

  A logical clarity. This must be how Caesar thinks, Vercingetorix surmised. And now I am beginning to understand it.

  “You look as if the gods have granted you a vision,” said Rhia.

  “Not the gods,” Vercingetorix said. “Cottos.”

  Cottos gave him a perplexed look.

  “You asked why we should allow ourselves to be trapped in Gergovia by Caesar. The answer is we should not!”

  “What?” roared Critognat. “You would abandon our own city to Caesar’s butchery without a fight?”

  “No,” said Vercingetorix. “You will stay here with enough warriors to put up some kind of defense. I will leave with the greater part of our forces, and most of the cavalry.”

  At this, Critognat’s face purpled.

  Vercingetorix laughed. “What did Caesar hope to achieve at Bourges?” he asked.

  No one said anything for a long moment.

  “What he did achieve?” Epirod finally ventured.

  “No,” said Vercingetorix. “Resupplying his army was what he was able to achieve. What he hoped to achieve was to trap us inside the city.”

  “And now he seeks to do the same thing again…” said Velaun.

  “That is why he destroyed Bourges and massacred its people, to force us to defend Gergovia against his siege.”

  “But, by the gods, we already knew that!” exclaimed Comm.

  “We must not do what Caesar expects us to do,” Vercingetorix said. “We cannot prevail defending a city against a Roman siege. He would either confine us until we starved to death or crush us like an egg inside a fist of iron. W
e must fight attacking, not defending! Not like rats in Caesar’s trap, but in the open, like Gauls!”

  “Well spoken!” said Critognat. “For the first time in too long a while!”

  At least we can fight with some hope in our hearts, Vercingetorix thought grimly. But a commander of Gauls should speak like Keltill. And so, affixing a mask of fierce determination upon his visage, he leapt to his feet, drawing his sword.

  “And even if we are defeated,” he declared, “when the bards tell the tale, they will be proud to say that as Gauls did we die!”

  “Given what resources he commands and the time he had to do it, even Gallius could not have done a better job of fortifying the city,” Caesar told Brutus as he gazed admiringly at a fellow general’s well-crafted piece of work.

  From the forefront of his army’s position on the plain below the unforested hill upon which Gergovia was built, Caesar could make out warriors on the walls and formations of men on horseback coming and going through the open gates and riding around the city like cavalry on parade.

  He could not see the entrenchments dug around the city, but he had the reports of the men he had sent to reconnoiter. The first ditch they had encountered was too wide for them to cross and filled with the sharpened stakes generally employed to impale cavalry, so they were unable to determine how many more such ditches there were, but they had seen at least three more. And the outermost ditch put the walls beyond catapult range.

  “See how he has neutralized our catapults, our siege towers, and even our battering ram, Brutus? With nothing more than shovels! We’d have to build heavy mobile bridges and throw them across at least four ditches to bring them into play, so it’s not going to be worth the effort to try. Gallius will be furious.”

  “You almost sound proud of Vercingetorix,” said Brutus, abashed at the petulance he heard in his own voice.

  “I suppose I am, Brutus. I’ve been in this country too long. There are times when I find myself thinking like a Gaul. Mars help me, I’m beginning to weigh glory. And there is more of it to be had in defeating a worthy enemy than in overcoming a fool.”

  Decimus Junius Brutus had come to Gaul with buoyant high hopes of grand adventure and rapid advance in serving under the wing of a great man.

  Caesar—the greatest man he had met and probably the greatest living Roman—was possessed of a pedagogical passion to explain, to instruct, to speak his mind to someone he might consider worthy of hearing it all, a function normally fulfilled by a son. And so, having no son, Caesar adopted substitutes.

  Brutus had not understood this until Vercingetorix had for his time replaced him as the object of such attentions. But the jealousy this had called up within him—so like that between brothers for paternal favor—had made it plain. Thus his shameful secret satisfaction when Vercingetorix became the enemy.

  If Brutus did not truly love Caesar, he had admired him as would the son of a great and brilliant father, who sought to earn his approval in turn. But the war against this barbarian chieftain, who burned men alive to seal pacts with blood-rite magic and thought nothing of destroying the countryside of his own people to starve his enemies, had changed the man Brutus had so admired.

  Perhaps Caesar had been in Gaul too long, for, if he had not truly come to think like a Gallic barbarian, he had come to act like one. Vercingetorix seemed to have drawn him into a duel of ruthless atrocities, culminating in the butchery of Bourges, where Caesar had not only proved himself the harder man but entrapped the hapless Litivak with his display of utter ruthlessness, and apparently sealed Vercingetorix’s doom.

  Brutus understood the brilliance of this as strategy and by now had seen enough of war to understand the truth of what Caesar had told him long ago in Rome, that war was but a huge number of individual murders. He had no love for the Gauls, but now, though he still admired the great Caesar’s brilliance of mind and godlike energy, he had seen in him something that made him shudder, that he had no desire to emulate at all.

  Caesar often enough had instructed him to shed his innocence. And now he had succeeded. But not in the manner he had intended. Perhaps not even in a manner that Brutus’ great mentor could even comprehend.

  “He seems to have left us only two choices,” said Caesar. “Lay siege, or storm the city with our infantry alone, using simple planks to get across the ditches and ladders to scale the walls. Which would you choose to do, Brutus?”

  “A massive infantry assault would cost us many casualties and might even fail, but a siege would bring sure victory eventually, so I suppose…” Brutus shrugged like a diffident student.

  A dim answer, Caesar thought irritably. Something seems to have gone out of Brutus of late.

  “Think, Brutus, think!” he said. “The winter could be upon us before a siege succeeded. Our supplies would become exhausted again and we might be forced to break it off. And Vercingetorix knows this. And knows that I know it. So…?”

  The glassy-eyed stare that was Brutus’ only response was dimmer still.

  “He only seems invite a siege because he wants us to attack!” Caesar told him. “He means for me to see through it.”

  “He does?”

  “Neither of us can afford a long siege. I because I am operating on hostile soil with a time limit, and Vercingetorix because the one military virtue an army of Gauls has the least of is—”

  “—patience!”

  Brutus seemed at last to have been shaken out of his trance.

  “Very good, my young friend!” Caesar was finally able to tell him. “The virtue most needed to withstand a siege. And therefore a leader of Gauls will avoid a siege at almost any cost. Vercingetorix let us have Bourges without a fight to avoid one.”

  “But…we…committed that…massacre at Bourges to force him to defend his own city.”

  “Oh, he must defend Gergovia all right. But not necessarily from inside.”

  “But his army is up in there! We’ve seen—”

  “Warriors on the walls and cavalry on parade. We have no way of knowing how many men are actually inside. Or whether Vercingetorix is in there with them.”

  “You think he’s not?”

  “I would not sit inside the walls if I were him. I would leave enough forces inside to make it appear I was there, and hide somewhere with the one element in which I was superior to the Romans, my cavalry, and wait for Caesar to storm the city, and then, when his infantry is enmeshed in fighting its way across those defensive ditches to the walls—”

  “—attack from the rear!”

  Caesar nodded. “About the only chance he really has. And it might even work. The only logical battle plan under the circumstances.”

  “But he doesn’t really know the true circumstances…”

  “No, he does not, the poor bastard,” Caesar said almost wistfully. “And when he finds out, the knowledge itself will be the cruelest blow of all.”

  An owl hooted; sparks from a campfire drifted up like fireflies toward a starry night above the overhanging tree boughs. Rhia lay tantalizingly close with her back turned to him, and were it not for the whinnies and nickers of the horses and the snores and sleepy mutters of thousands of men, Vercingetorix could have imagined that he was back in the time when his entire army consisted of himself and his sister of the sword camped out like this in the forest.

  But that time seemed like the long ago. Since then, he had killed more men than he could count, laid waste to more countryside than had Brenn or Caesar, commanded the army of Gaul, become a druid, and seen his life entire.

  “Rhia…” he muttered softly. And then, when there was no answer, in a more normal voice, “Rhia? Are you asleep?”

  “No longer,” came her voice, but with a little laugh that softened the reproach.

  “Perhaps the battle will come tomorrow, or if not, certainly soon, and so we cannot know whether this will be our last night together…”

  “And so…?”

  “And so…” crooned Vercingetorix, laying a hand
on her shoulder.

  Rhia pulled away. “This from the man who cannot die on the soil of Gaul?”

  “But what if visions are but snares sent by the gods to perplex us?”

  “You may have reason to want to believe that at this moment, and perhaps so do I, but neither of us really does—now, do we, silver-tongued Vercingetorix?” Rhia said banteringly.

  And of course this was so. Nevertheless, Vercingetorix found himself rolling closer to her, so that he could hear her breathing, smell her musky odor mingled with the nighttime forest perfumes.

  “Right now, I find it impossible to believe that I will ever be king of Gaul,” he said. “And if that vision is false, of what value is—”

  “—our vow as brother and sister of the sword?” said Rhia, and she laughed. And Vercingetorix was forced to laugh with her.

  “You see through my strategy better than Caesar ever has,” he said. Nevertheless, he inched closer, until their bodies were almost touching.

  “It is less than subtle.”

  “Well, why not?” said Vercingetorix, laying a hand on the small of her back. She did not roll over to face him, but this time she did not pull away.

  “Because our destinies would not have it such,” Rhia told him, her voice now gone somber.

  “But if our destiny is to die tomorrow, what matters what we do tonight?”

  Rhia did not answer. The silence was long. Vercingetorix feared to move his hand farther, nor would he take it away. At length, Rhia sighed deeply—mournfully, or so to him it seemed.

  “What is it, Rhia?”

  “I would not speak of this,” Rhia whispered.

  “Of what?”

  “Of…of love and death and destiny…yours and mine. Of why we cannot, of why we must not—”

  Vercingetorix reached out his other hand to her shoulder and rolled her over to face him. She did not resist. “This may be my last night on earth, and I may die a virgin, and you will not even tell me why?”

  “Some things are better left unsaid.”

  “But this is not one of them!” Vercingetorix declared vexatiously. Then, pleadingly, “Please, Rhia, at least this much…”