The Druid King

by Norman Spinrad

  The scowl that the current Eduen vergobret gave his suddenly not-so-certain successor seemed more one of vindication than of terror. “As you have caused Caesar to do, Litivak.”

  “Couldn’t he have had the decency to wait until our feast was over?” groaned a hoarse voice at the entrance. Critognat, looking very much the worse for wear, staggered into the Assembly Hall to half-ironic laughter.

  “We’d better gather our forces and march south to meet him,” said Comm.

  “Oh no,” said Liscos. “It’s the army of Gaul that is bringing Caesar’s wrath down on this city, and honor demands that the army of Gaul stay here to defend it.”

  “The last thing we want is to be trapped in a siege!” said Cottos.

  “He’s right! Look what happened to Bourges!”

  “Look what happened to Caesar when he tried to besiege Gergovia!”

  “What is happening here?” Luctor had arrived at last and was making his way through the detritus.

  “Caesar is marching on Bibracte—”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Vercingetorix.

  “Then he isn’t?”

  “I didn’t say that either—”

  “What, then—”

  Vercingetorix picked up an overturned tankard and slammed it down loudly on the tabletop.

  “We don’t know what Caesar’s doing!” he shouted. “So, before we start arguing about what to do about it, let Oranix tell you what our scouts have actually seen!”

  “Caesar has split his forces,” Oranix told them. “Labienus, with two legions and what seems to be all of their remaining cavalry, is moving northwest toward Bibracte. They have wagons that appear to be carrying the parts of siege engines.”

  Hearing this befuddled his lieutenants no less than it had Vercingetorix.

  “Where, then, is Caesar?” asked Litivak.

  “Caesar appears to be in command of the rest of his army, almost all afoot, moving more slowly to the north, on a line that will approach Bibracte from the east.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?” said Comm. “Without cavalry, we’ll cut him to pieces!”

  “But before you can reach him, Labienus will reach Bibracte,” said Liscos. “You can’t leave the city defenseless.”

  “What can even Labienus do with only two legions?” scoffed Cottos.

  “Besiege the city!” said Liscos.

  “We could break through easily—”

  “You’re forgetting he has all that cavalry—”

  “—useless in a siege—”

  “It’s a ploy to get us to divide our forces,” said Litivak.

  “So we crush Labienus on the march and then turn east to finish off Caesar,” said Critognat.

  “That would make sense,” said Vercingetorix. “But it makes Caesar seem far too stupid…”

  “It is stupid!” exclaimed Luctor.

  “Too stupid to be credited,” said Vercingetorix. “Caesar is inviting us to destroy Labienus’ weak force and then turn on him. The question is, what does Caesar not want us to do?”

  “This is getting to be too subtle for me,” said Netod.

  “You sound as if you’re thinking like a Roman again, Vercingetorix,” said Litivak.

  “Perhaps Caesar has started thinking like Vercingetorix,” muttered Critognat.

  “What?”

  “I’m just a simple old warrior whose brain may be dimmed by last night’s beer, but it seems to me that Caesar might have learned a trick or two from you, Vercingetorix. Labienus’ force is mostly cavalry, and as you say, he really can’t besiege Bibracte with what he has, so—”

  “Of course!” said Litivak. “As soon as we come after Labienus, he retreats—”

  “—as you had us do for so long,” said Critognat.

  “Long enough to lead us far enough away from Bibracte so that Caesar’s main force can destroy the city before we can return to defend it,” said Litivak.

  “Or take Bibracte and hold it hostage instead of destroying it,” said Liscos.

  Now Vercingetorix saw Caesar’s plan. If he could capture the Eduen capital, he could threaten to destroy it and massacre its inhabitants unless his demands were met. At the very least, he could force the Edui to turn Litivak over to him and withdraw their warriors from the army of Gaul. And after what he did to Bourges, Liscos would have no other alternative.

  “It is as I said, we must keep the whole army here to defend the city,” said the Eduen vergobret, and Vercingetorix was inclined to agree with him now. But…

  “But then won’t we be trapped in a siege when both Labienus and Caesar arrive?” said Cottos. “Perhaps all this is designed to trick us into doing just that.”

  “One thing is certain at least,” said Litivak, “we must not go chasing after Labienus.”

  “On that much we are in agreement, Litivak,” Liscos told him sourly.

  “If we attack Caesar’s infantry with our full force and destroy him on the march, Labienus will be easy enough to deal with afterward,” said Netod.

  “Let’s do it, then, and stop talking about it!” said Critognat.

  “All we have to do is destroy Caesar’s depleted forces and final victory is ours!”

  “So it would seem,” said Vercingetorix, feeling that he was missing something vital, but unable to see what.

  “You intend to leave Bibracte defenseless against Labienus while you chase after Caesar?” asked Liscos.

  “So stay behind to defend it,” Critognat told him contemptuously. “I held Gergovia against a full army with a few thousand men. Of course, they were Arverni. But double the number of Edui should be enough to defend Bibracte against two little legions.”

  “You say Edui are lesser men than Arverni?” snarled Liscos.

  Vercingetorix knew he had better end this before they were at each other’s throats instead of the Romans’. “Enough!” he cried. “You shall have the great battle you’ve been waiting for! But against the Romans, not each other. Liscos, keep behind as many men as you deem necessary to defend Bibracte. The rest of us will go east to confront—”

  And then it came to him.

  “No,” he said, “first we go south so as to pass west of Caesar and then attack his western flank, driving him east—”

  “Toward the Rhine!” exclaimed Kassiv.

  “Toward the lands of the Teutons!”

  Vercingetorix nodded. “Who, if destiny smiles upon us, will believe he’s invading and attack him from the other side.”

  “And become our unwitting allies!”

  Vercingetorix knew that if he joined the revelry Marah need only follow the crowd that would accumulate around him as surely as torches attracted their admiring night moths. Perhaps that was why he had avoided the festivities of the first two nights, for the hero of Gergovia could hardly walk the streets of Bibracte with a tankard of beer in one hand and Marah’s hand in the other like an ordinary man. Any words they spoke to each other among the revelers would enter the Land of Legend through every passing ear. Should they steal off together, that too would be noted and be sung by the bards.

  Why should this so trouble him? Because she had arrived back in his life at such an opportune moment? Because he distrusted her as much as he desired her? Or could it be that he did not trust himself with a woman of such amatory experience, that he feared to either admit that he had none when the time came, or to reveal the embarrassing truth by ineptitude?

  But this was the last night of the feast, the last night before they rode out to battle, and it could be the last time they would ever meet. So Vercingetorix went out into the streets, allowed a tankard to be pressed into his hand, allowed men to hail him and women to flirt, and both to follow in his aimless wake as he wandered from bonfire to bonfire, ate proffered boar and venison, listened to bards and musicians, even joined for brief moments in dance.

  But he moved through the celebration without feeling part of it, and when Marah did find him, she seemed the only one in the whole fêt
e to be entirely a creature of flesh and blood.

  The street was smoky with the cookfires of stalls offering slices of spitted boar, whole roast pigeons, and brochettes of tiny ortolans. On one side of the street, a bard recited odes to a small crowd; on the other, a piper played for a group of wildly drunk dancers.

  Marah approached through the cookfire smoke clothed in a plain white shift, reminding Vercingetorix of the nameless woman who had appeared to him out of the luminous mist in Bourges. And bent the path of his destiny.

  “I see that tonight you descended to the feast,” Marah said dryly.

  “And I see that you have had little trouble finding me.”

  “All eyes and ears lead to the hero of Gergovia. You would be hard not to find tonight, Vercingetorix.”

  Then she sighed, and a wistful look replaced her air of mildly mocking banter.

  “But it has certainly been a long journey from a boy and a girl kissing beside a stream to where we find ourselves now, has it not?” she said, moving closer, so that he could smell the floral sweetness of the perfume she wore, mingled with the tangier musk of her body.

  “And where do that boy and girl find themselves now?”

  Marah sighed once more, close enough for Vercingetorix to feel the breeze of her breath, taste its warmth.

  “Why ask me?” she said softly. “I have lost myself often enough along the way. I lost that girl who kissed you when I became the sophisticated student in a Roman grammaticus. I lost that woman when Caesar became a worse barbarian than any Teuton.”

  “And now?” Vercingetorix asked testily. “Now who are you?”

  “Who do you wish me to be?” said Marah.

  No answer could have been worse. This woman whom his body longed to embrace had embraced Caesar when it seemed expedient, had embraced Rome as the future of Gaul when it had seemed inevitable, would embrace him now as its future king if destiny gave him the victory that made it so.

  “Someone I can trust!” said Vercingetorix, speaking the angry truth.

  “You do not trust me?” Marah asked in a voice so even and with eyes so devoid of any hint of emotion that Vercingetorix could not begin to guess what feelings were behind them.

  “How can I?” he said. “Are you the girl I longed for as a boy? Are you the bait Caesar dangled before me? Are you the woman who arrived here two days ago to publicly accept an offer I made to you as a boy? Who are you, Marah?”

  “She who has been all those things, one after another. Who else could I be?”

  “And this you ask me to trust?”

  “Remember, Vercingetorix?” Marah said softly. “We were walking on the beach, and you asked me if I trusted Caesar. And I said, yes, I trusted him to be Gaius Julius Caesar. To be what he was. As I trusted you to be the Great Leader of Warriors. To be what you are.”

  She shrugged, and Vercingetorix could see her nipples caress the fabric of her dress with the motion. “Can you not trust me in like manner?”

  And he wanted to.

  “Between a boy and a girl there should be something more than that,” he found himself saying instead.

  “Long live Vercingetorix, king of Gaul!” gabbled a glazed-eyed woman in middle years, one of a group of dancers whirling up the street, as she grabbed Vercingetorix by the hand, whipped him around once, twice, thrice, and threw him off balance into the arms of Marah.

  “The hand of destiny!” Marah exclaimed with a laugh, and kissed him deeply, and Vercingetorix found himself returning the kiss. He felt her breasts, and then her thighs, pressing against him.

  But then there was raucous and lubricious laughter.

  Vercingetorix pulled away, his ears burning, as he discovered to his mortification that a circle of warriors and townspeople, good-naturedly drunk, had surrounded them and were cheering them on.

  The black look with which Vercingetorix regarded the onlookers cleared them away as surely as the threatening sweep of a sword.

  “If you cannot trust me, let me prove myself,” Marah said in a voice loud enough for the closest of the crowd to overhear. “Give me a horse, and a weapon, and a shield, and let me ride to battle beside you as your warrior woman does.”

  To his chagrin, Vercingetorix heard a few mutters of encouragement and approval. Was she doing this for the benefit of their ears and the tales to be told by generations of bards? Or was this truly the offer of a brave and loving heart?

  And why not both?

  “You cannot be serious!” Vercingetorix whispered.

  “But I am!” Marah declared, and this time for his ears alone, and when Vercingetorix saw the ferocity in her eyes, it sent his spirit soaring.

  But what he saw also was a soft woman in a clean white dress without a battle scar on her body, who had probably never even lifted a weapon, let alone wielded one.

  “It cannot be,” he said.

  “Why not?” Marah demanded.

  “Because you are a woman, and you would not last five minutes on a field of battle.”

  “Then so be it. Let me die at your side.”

  “No!”

  “And what is your warrior lover, Rhia?”

  “She is not my lover!” Vercingetorix fairly shouted, then was mortified to realize that they were being overheard once more.

  “And I am supposed to trust you? What would you have me believe next, that Rhia is really a man?”

  “We swore a blood oath—”

  “Yet another blood oath!” Marah shouted for all to hear. “Very well, then, why should I not swear my own?”

  The music had stopped. The dancing had ceased. At once they were surrounded by a crowd that openly pressed in upon them, and it was to them that she spoke, and through them to Bibracte, and to Gaul beyond, and to the bards who would bear her words into the Land of Legend.

  And Vercingetorix could do nothing to stop her. And when he heard them, he did not know if he would if he could.

  “I do love you, Vercingetorix, future king of Gaul, and if you would not have me as your queen, I would be your whore. Like it or not, where you go, so go I, and no one shall prevent me, not Gaius Julius Caesar, not the gods themselves, not even you!”

  And to a roar of approval, with a swirl of her robe, and her head held high, and with Vercingetorix’s ears burning and his heart aflame with both love and fury, she turned on her heel and marched off into the night.

  As might a queen.

  Marah had gone to her bedchamber and doffed her robe, and was sitting on the chamberpot when there was an insistent knocking on the heavy oaken door.

  “A moment, please, Vercingetorix,” she said in a voice crafted not to sound flustered but failing to succeed.

  She finished pissing as quickly as she could, slid the chamberpot into a far corner well away from the bed, put on her robe, did the best she was able to rearrange her hair with her fingers, then went to the door and opened it.

  Rhia stood in the doorway.

  “What do you want?” Marah demanded.

  “To help you keep the oath you have made,” said Rhia. “May I enter?”

  She was dressed as a warrior and wearing a sword, though not a helmet. In her arms she carried a shirt of mail armor, a pair of orange-and-gray-striped pantaloons, a horned helmet, a heavy cloak of Arverne orange, and a scabbarded sword with its buckler.

  With a bemused expression, Marah nodded. Rhia entered, and laid out what she had been carrying on the bed as Marah closed the door behind them.

  “Take off your robe,” Rhia said.

  “What!”

  “Come, now, we are both women, are we not?”

  “Why should I do such a thing?”

  Rhia picked up the pantaloons in one hand and hefted the heavy mail shirt in the other. “So that we may dress you as a man.”

  “As a man…?” Marah said slowly.

  “As one of thousands of warriors following the man you too have vowed to follow tomorrow,” said Rhia.

  “Why…why are you doing this? Why would
you help me?”

  “Did you not say there is no reason why we cannot be friends?”

  Marah regarded Rhia suspiciously.

  “You have nothing to fear by standing naked before me,” said Rhia. “I am not a man, nor am I your rival.”

  “The former I can believe,” said Marah, “the latter…?” She shrugged, but she took off her robe and stood there naked, looking questioningly into Rhia’s eyes.

  Rhia stared back, gazed slowly down the contours of Marah’s soft-muscled but well-formed body, then smiled, if only wanly, for the first time. “And even if I could be your rival…”

  She handed Marah the mail shirt. Marah put it on. Then the pantaloons. Rhia picked up the sword and its belt, put her arms around Marah, and buckled the weapon around her waist. She took the helmet in one hand, balled the train of Marah’s long hair into an untidy fistful with the other, and held it atop her head while she jammed the helmet down over it.

  Rhia stepped back and studied her appraisingly.

  “Now put on the cloak,” she said.

  Marah draped the orange cloak around her shoulders. Rhia shook her head. “Close it across your body to hide the bulges of your breasts, and keep it that way,” she said.

  Marah did as she was told.

  Rhia cocked her head, left, right, left.

  “Pick up some dirt and rub it on your cheeks tomorrow,” she said, “and keep your head down when you ride, as if fatigued. It’s the best we can do to hide your lack of beard.”

  “I ask you again, why would you help me?” said Marah. “I tell you truly, in your place I would not help my rival.”

  “And I tell you truly, Marah, I am not your rival,” said Rhia.

  “And will you tell me that you do not love him?”

  Rhia sighed. “I am his sister of the sword. Is that love? Who am I to say? Who am I to know? I am but the flower.”

  “I do not understand what that means,” said Marah.

  “Then understand and believe this,” Rhia told her. “I have an oath to keep and so do you. And by aiding you in keeping yours, I aid myself in keeping mine. So we are not rivals, Marah, we are oath-sisters.”

  And the warrior woman kissed Marah on the cheek and was gone.