“So it would seem,” says Guttuatr, and he sighs. “We raised up a boy to be a druid, but destiny called him to be a king.”
“A druid king…”
Blood ran down his arm as he smashed his shield into the face of a Teuton, breaking his nose with a sickening crunch. Vercingetorix reared his horse to escape the thrust of a spear, wheeled around as a Teuton with a lance in his back charged clumsily by, looked up to swat away a javelin with his sword, and by chance saw—
By chance?
Saw?
Did he really see the white robe of a druid at the margin of the forest atop the far ridgeline?
A robe that might even be empty.
Waiting to be filled.
And if this is a sign, it is meant for him. And if it is not, he will make it so. Vercingetorix sheathes his sword and unties the Arch Druid’s staff, entrusted to him, from his saddle.
He takes it by the tip and holds it at arm’s length aloft as high as he can reach, so that the fallen star may be seen above the field of battle.
And as if that fallen piece of the heavens is possessed of the power to call upon them, a bolt of lightning lances across the cloud-blackened sky, there is a mighty clap of thunder, and a hard rain begins to fall.
Guttuatr stands back beneath the trees at the margin of the forest as the rain pours down, lightning bolts continue to flash across the roiling black sky, and thunderclaps drown out the noise of the battle below.
But the battle below is no longer quite a battle.
Vercingetorix holds his staff aloft, wheeling and rearing his horse in tight circles and shouting something. The Teutons immediately surrounding him, those who have seen him raise the fallen star and beheld the heavens answering, are shying away.
And the Gauls who have seen are rallying to him: four, eight, a dozen, a score ride and slash their way through the discombobulated Teutons to cluster around him, forming a circle of swords and lances.
Vercingetorix pumps his staff in the air—once, twice, thrice—and lightning illumines him as he rears his horse once more and points the fallen star westward.
With the swiftly following thunderclap, he rides where he has pointed, as oblivious to the Teutons around him as if they were ghosts, and the Gauls encircling him ride with him, slashing a way with their swords.
And as a comet or a falling star draws a train of light as it moves across the heavens, so do they begin to draw a widening train of men and horses, riding and fighting their way westward out of the valley, and onto the broad plain beyond.
“Behold the man of action defeated,” says Guttuatr. “Behold the man of knowledge turning defeat into victory.”
Then, sardonically: “Or at least into survival.”
His staff once more lashed to his saddle and his sword sheathed, Vercingetorix galloped across the plain through the heavy downpour, leaning low onto his horse’s neck, kicking its foam-flecked flanks to urge the all-but-spent animal onward. As if the heavens had withdrawn the favor of their magic, the lightning no longer flashed and the only thunder was that of the hooves of exhausted horses.
Behind him, the escaping remnant of the army of Gaul rode across the sodden and muddy plain, thousands of grim and soaked horsemen flaying their foamed and panting mounts into exhaustion and beyond.
A league or so behind them, and not losing ground, were the Teutons, and those whose horses could still gallop could see the gory fate of the many whose horses had given out.
A few leagues before them, they could see refuge, the vague silhouette of the city walls of Alesia atop its hill, tantalizingly close through the gauzy curtains of rain.
Before Caesar, the leading ranks of his legions marched stoically through the mud, cursing and muttering but in good order. Several leagues ahead of them, the Teuton horde chased the escaping Gauls, no doubt muttering entreaties to whatever dim and bloody gods they worshipped to protect them from the magic of the man whose army they had routed.
And from the look on Brutus’ face, his eyes and expression glazed over with more than the miserable rain, Caesar had the feeling that, left alone, his young friend might be likewise entreating Mars. From Teutons one might expect such superstition, but for a Roman to credit it went beyond the irksome and into the realm of farce.
“Surely you do not believe such nonsense, Brutus,” he said.
“Surely not…” said Brutus unconvincingly.
“But…?” he said for him, in a good humor despite the foul weather, and the temporary escape of the better part of Vercingetorix’s army. If things had not gone according to his fondest hope, they were certainly proceeding according to plan. A man of reason could hardly demand more of the gods, let alone count on their fickle favor.
“But many Teutons saw it happen…”
“Saw exactly what happen, Brutus?”
“The, uh, druid weather magic,” said Brutus, so embarrassed by his words that he was constrained to avert his gaze as he uttered them.
“No, that is not what anyone saw,” Caesar told him. “They saw a man hold up a stick with a rock on top of it under a sky full of thunderheads. They saw thunder and lightning, and then it began to rain. What an enormous surprise! I too could make such magic if I chose. I need only hold up my arm as the first ray peers over the morning’s horizon and command the sun to rise, and, behold, it shall obey, to the stupefaction of savages and barbarians!”
Brutus laughed wanly. Caesar laughed heartily.
“Be of good cheer, Brutus,” he said.
“You certainly seem to be of good cheer, considering the circumstances, Caesar.”
“And why should I not be?”
“Call it chance, call it magic—Vercingetorix and the greater part of his army are escaping—”
“No, Brutus, no more than a herd of cattle running before drovers is escaping. They are being driven into the slaughterhouse corral.”
XX
VERCINGETORIX STOOD STILL and silent on the ramparts of Alesia under a dirty gray sky from which sheets of rain had not yet ceased to fall. No one would speak to him—not Critognat, not Rhia, not Litivak, not any of the thousands of inhabitants of the Carnute capital who gathered on the walls to gaze down in terror.
Below the ramparts, thousands of sodden Teutons huddled sullenly around damply smoldering fires, some under crude makeshift tents of horse or cowhide. Throughout this vast and unruly encampment they had planted lances as standard poles so that the emblems atop them would be plainly visible from the city walls. But these were not animals carved of wood or cast in metal.
They were the severed heads of thousands of Gauls.
Hundreds more Teutons, angrily drunk, rode back and forth, waving swords, axes, spears, fists, cursing and shouting like a pack of hunting dogs, which, having treed its bear, can only circle, yipping and baying in frustration at being deprived of its kill.
And at the limit of his vision, Vercingetorix could just make out the thin gray line of Caesar’s army approaching at a measured and leisurely pace across a once-verdant plain whose grass had been soaked by the rain and trodden into a muck of mud and blood by the hooves of thousands of horses and the deaths of thousands of men.
The Teuton hunting pack had treed its bear. Their Roman masters could take their time arriving to finish it off.
Indeed, the Teutons might very well have done it for them had it not been for Baravax.
Not even their own vergobret Cottos had been able to persuade the Carnutes within Alesia to open the city gates to admit the shattered army of Gaul. The warriors on the wall above had pointed in terror at the onrushing Teutons and refused to obey Cottos’ order.
It had been the plainspoken Baravax, not the silver-tongued Vercingetorix, who had ordered two of his guards to hold up a shield, leapt upon it, and made the noble speech that shamed the Alesians into opening their gates.
“I am Baravax, no mighty warrior, no brave hero, only the longtime captain of the guards of Gergovia, a man, like yourselves, whose job it is
to protect the lives of those I am commissioned to guard,” he declared to the warriors above the gates. “And I know how to do my job. Do you know how to do yours?”
He turned to address his own men, fewer than a hundred of them, drew his sword, and pointed it at the Teutons, now less than a league away, close enough for the hoofbeats of their galloping horses to be heard as a low, grumbling rumble.
“Our task, as always, is to guard those under our protection from miscreants who would harm them. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is not. Now our task is to delay those bastards long enough for the heroes inside this city to summon up the courage to open their gates, for Vercingetorix to get our army inside, and for the Carnutes to get them closed again. It’s a simple job, so now let’s get it done.”
With that, he leapt down from the shield, mounted his horse, and galloped off toward the Teutons, toward certain death, without even looking back to assure himself that his men were following.
Seeing this, thousands of Gauls, men of all tribes, singly and in small groups, spontaneously rode off to join them before Vercingetorix could even think of an order to give.
And, seeing that, the Alesians could only open the gates, and Vercingetorix led his army, riding only six or seven abreast and crowded together like peas in a pod, to safety inside.
But not all of it. Baravax’s rearguard had been overcome before all the army could make it into Alesia, and the tail end had been attacked by the Teuton vanguard while the gates were still open. Hundreds of warriors had then turned their backs to safety to stand off the Teutons long enough for Cottos to give the order that Vercingetorix could not bear to give.
The order to close the gates behind them.
Vercingetorix had watched from the cowardly safety of this wall while they were cut down, disemboweled, beheaded, torn to pieces by the Teutons right beneath his eyes. So close that each dying scream was a personal reproach. He had held aloft a fallen star and by chance or destiny had thereby brought his army out of Caesar’s deathtrap valley, but those men had been the true heroes.
And now here he stood, alive and beholding what his pursuit of destiny had wrought, while Baravax’s head was out there somewhere impaled on a Teuton lance.
It was Cottos who finally screwed up the courage, or the ire, to speak to him, for it was his people who found themselves playing hosts to an army that brought with it their doom.
“Well, what do we do now, Vercingetorix?” he demanded in a grim voice that seemed emptied of rancor only by act of will.
“I would not blame you if you surrendered the city,” Vercingetorix told him.
“To the Teutons? That would do about as much good as a lamb offering its surrender to a pack of ravenous wolves!”
Vercingetorix nodded toward the horizon, where the Romans were an orderly advancing forest of metal and men.
“To Caesar,” he said, hoping this offer would be spurned, and ashamed of his guile in making it. “He might show mercy to Alesia if we left the city—”
“Your army would surely be slaughtered!”
“We’ll all be slaughtered like rats caught in the grain barrel if we stay here anyway!” Critognat declared. “Better to ride out and die with honor!”
“And where would the honor of the Carnutes be if I allowed you to do such a thing in the hope of extracting mercy for us from Caesar?” said Cottos. “Which would not be forthcoming anyway. No, we’re all in this together.”
“As the cockroaches said to each other in the dung pit,” Critognat muttered, at which enough spirit was summoned up to produce general wan laughter.
“As Gauls,” said Cottos.
Gallius had already sent logging crews into the surrounding forests, and Labienus had turned away from Bibracte as planned and would arrive shortly, so Caesar had been quite content until Ragar arrived outside his tent, announcing that his men were going to leave and demanding the rest of their pay right now.
The Teuton warlord was a huge man a decade younger than Caesar, with enormous muscles on the battle-scarred arms emerging from his ill-tanned leather tunic. His helmet was adorned with a yellowed human skull, his long blond hair was worn uncombed and filthy, and if he wasn’t belligerently drunk he was doing a fair imitation. The iresome bloodshot eyes were not those of a dimwitted lout, however, but of a reasonably clever warlord.
“The task for which you were hired is not completed,” Caesar told him evenly.
“We routed the Gauls for you, Caesar!”
“True,” said Caesar, nodding toward the city walls looming beyond the disorderly and odoriferous Teuton encampment, “but there’s still an army of Gauls in there.”
“Your problem, Caesar!”
“True too, my friend, and I promise you it will be taken care of,” Caesar told him, “but before it is, a final service is required of you.”
“The gold, Caesar! Now!”
Caesar held his temper and favored Ragar with a smarmy grin. “All that is required of you is that you camp here for a few weeks or so, enjoying our wine and terrifying the Gauls. Surely your men will not find that an excessively onerous task.”
“This is not what you promised, Caesar!”
Caesar hadn’t really expected to destroy Vercingetorix’s whole army with the Teuton flank attack, but the chance confluence of Vercingetorix’s pass at so-called “druid weather magic” with the breaking of the storm and the Teutons’ superstitious dread had allowed a larger force than expected to fort itself up inside Alesia. Too large to be easily contained by his legions alone while Gallius did his work. He needed the Teutons to remain. He didn’t need them to fight, but he did need them outside the walls of Alesia looking ferocious and numerous.
“Surely the greatest warriors on earth cannot be afraid of a rock on a stick?” he ventured.
“We are afraid of nothing on earth!” roared Ragar. Then, in a much smaller voice: “But…”
“But?”
The Teuton’s eyes became furtive, and his voice betrayed an undertone of fear. “But even the greatest warriors on earth would be fools not to fear a magician who can call down the powers of the heavens.”
“I do not fear such nonsense,” Caesar snapped at him. “You are telling me that you are a lesser man than I? You disappoint me, Ragar. I thought you my equal.”
The Teuton warlord frowned, unable, no doubt, to decide whether he was being insulted or flattered. Caesar magnanimously rescued him from this arduous mental task.
“Of course, it may be that you speak thusly for your men and not yourself.”
Ragar nodded in relief. “My men want their pay and they want to be far from this place.”
Caesar nodded back in comradely commiseration. “Not all generals are as fortunate as I.”
With a broad gesture of his arms, he invited Ragar to contemplate the Roman encampment: the thousands of tents, the catapults being constructed, the armories full of arrows and javelins and lances and Gallius’ noxious incendiary brews, and the tens of thousands of well-armed, well-armored, well-disciplined troops now forming a ring around his own Teutons.
“What do you see, my friend?” he asked silkily.
“I’ll tell you what you see,” Caesar told him when the only reply was a dim look of befuddlement. “You see fifty thousand Roman legionnaires, all of whom will follow my every order as faithfully as the fingers of my own hand, none of whom fears anything on earth or in the heavens as long as they know they are commanded by Gaius Julius Caesar. You may tell your warriors that, Ragar, you may tell them that there are two reasons for such obedience. First, of course, because my men love me with open hearts as I love them.”
He displayed a vulpine grimace that could be taken as threatening. “Second, because they know that my displeasure is much more to be feared than the wrath of any other power on earth or in the heavens.”
He smiled and clapped Ragar on the shoulder. “I’m sure a great leader such as yourself will be able to make your warriors understand.”
&n
bsp; Alesia was a city hosting an unwelcome army that had put it under perilous siege, and so Cottos had summoned up a guard of some score warriors as well as a bearer displaying the horse standard of the Carnutes before escorting Vercingetorix, Litivak, Rhia, and Critognat through the streets to their quarters in his own “villa.”
At Gergovia, Vercingetorix’s main force had been out in the forest, and at Bibracte, those troops who could not be accommodated within the walls had found hospitality in the countryside. Here, however, the gates were closed, and stones, wood, rubble, and earth were being heaped up behind them against a Roman battering-ram assault, and the countryside was in the hands of the Romans and Teutons. So warriors were bivouacking everywhere. In the market. In the plaza. In people’s houses when they were given leave, sometimes when they were not. Some were constrained to camp in the streets, clogging them with cookfires. Mobs of idle armed men wandered the streets, and the only women to be seen abroad were crones too aged to be endangered.
Alesia, a city that had not expected a siege and therefore had laid up no extra supplies, had suddenly had its population doubled.
Tens of thousands of horses had also been trapped inside the city, and Vercingetorix saw them everywhere, gobbling what little grass there was, rapidly devouring stored-up fodder, and converting it all to abundant quantities of flyspecked dung liberally distributed wherever one sought to set foot. The wells too were being drained. The reek of horse piss was everywhere.
And most of the warriors packing the city were from foreign tribes, bringing not victory, or even hope, but noise, stench, chaos, and impending disaster.
And the siege had only just begun.
Cottos’ villa, though constructed of wood and wattle, was built around an interior court in the Roman style, to judge by the crown of a great old oak peering up from behind its walls.
Vercingetorix scarcely considered the grim mockery of this, concerned as he was with matters of siegecraft. Did the city’s water come from wells, or springs inside the wall? How much food was stored up? How much fodder? How long could they last?
But when Cottos led them through heavy wooden gates and into the central courtyard, all else was forgotten as Vercingetorix beheld who awaited him there:
The Druid King Page 41
