Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (14 page)

Aristius watched his victim in astonishment as the famer staggered back, blood pouring from his face. The tribune actually blinked in surprise as his fist struck again and repeated the blow, knocking the farmer back a few more paces.

As the man shuddered, his arms out at his sides and still gripping the twin weapons, the world and all its sounds and smells came rushing back in to Aristius’ senses and with a cry of pure fury, he slammed into the reeling farmer, knocking him flat to the ground, the sickle and knife skittering off to the sides.

The tribune, his first taste of the horrifying, thrilling adrenaline of battle suffusing him, went down with the floundering Gaul and his arm bent back at the elbow and then shot forward, stabbing the steel point into the man’s chest. The Gaul tried to yell something, and Aristius could not quite hear it, let alone understand it, but he was certain it was a cry of defiance, for the man’s one good eye carried only hate and strength.

Pulling back again, his blade left the man’s chest with a spray of blood that washed across the tribune’s face and filled his mouth with a cloying iron tang, and yet still the Gaul seemed to be trying to rise. With a cry to Mars for strength, the tribune smashed his sword down into the man’s gut, and then again into the chest.

Again…

Again.

He was not at all sure how long he had been here and when the uncontrollable anger had begun to subside, but Aristius blinked as a hand closed on his shoulder in a gentle yet firm grip.

‘Come on, sir.’

‘I… I…’

‘He’s dead sir. Stand up, sir.’

Surrendering to the calm voice, Aristius stood, his eyes taking in the shape beneath him, ripped ragged with half a hundred stab wounds. He blinked in surprise. He remembered three… maybe four. He turned with a confused expression to see the veteran centurion standing next to him, an unperturbed look on his face.

‘It… he just…’

‘First barney, sir?’

All Aristius could do was nod dumbly. The centurion smiled, showing two missing teeth and a badly split lip, long-healed. ‘Takes everyone different, sir. Some dither and some panic. Those who do either don’t last long. Most well-trained soldiers just accept it and get on with it. Some odd ‘uns get the spirit o’ Mars and Minerva right in the gut, sir, just like that. Shame you wear the tribune’s tunic, sir. You’d make a fuckin’ dangerous centurion, beggin’ your pardon.’

With a grin, the centurion patted him on the back.

‘It’s over?’ Aristius managed without shaking too heavily.

‘Yessir. Just farmers. We tried to be selective. We let more than half a dozen escape, though, sir. More like
two
dozen. None of the new lads much wanted to deal with the children, though there’s a few captive women in them huts as is becomin’ well-acquainted with the odd soldier if you get my drift, sir.’

Aristius could not find it in himself to argue with the leniency of allowing children to flee. These tribes folk may be the enemy, but they were little different from the Gauls of Narbonensis who paid their taxes and enjoyed the benefits of Rome. He couldn’t quite imagine putting his sword through the chest of a six year old boy in Narbo’s fruit market.

‘Well done, centurion. I think we can count this a success.’

‘One thing occurs, sir. There were no warriors here. None at all. I reckon as they’re all in the north with the rebels.’

Aristius nodded. ‘Then we may feel a little less nervous about our position, centurion, so far from our allied legions.

‘Yessir. This was a bit of a mess, I’ll grant you, but it’s the first time any of these lot have ever seen their own sword draw blood, I reckon, and most of ‘em are only part trained, so we have to give ‘em a bit o’ leeway. Next time will go smoother, and in between we’ll start drilling some sense of discipline into the buggers.’

As the centurion saluted and jogged off to a call from the optio, Aristius took in the scene of carnage before him and the iron tang of blood in the air made him shudder.

This is just the beginning. How many of these attacks would it take to bring Vercingetorix down on them
?

* * * * *

Cavarinos trod warily, his boot slipping on the mossy stones. The Carnute magistrate who administrated the settlement of Briga had been reluctant to give him directions to this place, his eyes constantly flicking to the carved sacred stone in the village’s centre, but Cavarinos’ reasoned argument that the druids had been the ones to raise Vercingetorix to his position and that it was that same leader who had sent him to recover the curse had swayed him.

It seemed that none of the - clearly highly superstitious - inhabitants of Briga ventured into this section of woodland that made up part of the great forest of the Carnutes yet was considered wholly separate and sacred to Ogmios above all. As was his wont, Cavarinos had scoffed at their credulity in the privacy of his own head while maintaining a polite façade.

Following the instructions, the Arverni noble had reached the forest, tethered his horse, searched the treeline for a time and then fought his way in through the undergrowth, strangely unable to find a track or path leading into the foliage and to the sacred
nemeton
he sought.

His heart had almost jumped from his mouth when a badger, presumably disturbed by his passage, had actually run at him from the shadows of the forest floor and stopped but two feet away, growling and snarling, watching him intently. This strange behaviour, particularly during the daylight hours, was as nothing when a moment later three more of the creatures appeared at speed, side-by-side with the first as though forming ranks on a battlefield.

Despite his self-avowed practicality and disbelief in the oddities that seemed to fill the hearts of most of his peers, even Cavarinos was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable in the circumstances. He had departed what he assumed to be the badgers’ territory at some speed.

His foot slipped off another of the slimy green stones that seemed to be arranged in the shapes of buildings long gone among the boles and roots of the pine trees, and this time he fell heavily, throwing out his hands with a thud into the blanket of mud and pine needles to arrest his fall As he slowly straightened, an odd thing occurred to him.

Breathing shallow and almost silently, he frowned. Stooping, he picked up the offending stone, its surface slippery and unpleasant. Raising it above his head, he threw it down as hard as he could onto the other rocks that seemed to have once formed a wall.

It hit with a loud crack and split in half. Cavarinos looked up, listening to the echo of the crack again and again through the woodland.

Curious
.

He had seen noises much quieter than either that or his earlier fall send up clouds of cawing and flapping birds in woodlands such as this. Where were the birds?

‘Have some respect, young man.’

In his state of heightened senses, Cavarinos jumped slightly at the voice from mere feet behind him, and turned in surprise. He had been listening carefully for the rock and the sounds of avian life and yet had heard no sign of the man’s approach.

The visitor wore a pair of warm, oft-repaired wool trousers and a tunic of midnight blue with green stitch. His grey hair was held in place with a silver circlet and his beard was trimmed neatly to perhaps an inch long. One of his eyes was half-closed by an old scar that had left an impression on his socket both above and below, and his left ear was missing entirely. Yet, despite this odd appearance, what drew Cavarinos’ curiosity was the man’s outer-wear. Against all probability, he seemed to be wearing a lion skin about his shoulders and down his back, the mane creating some sort of shawl and the paws tied below his chin. Cavarinos had seen a lion once, on a visit to Narbo with a delegation when the Arverni were considered allies of Rome. He had watched the poor beast in the arena there rip a man apart and then get ruthlessly speared for its efforts. How did a man up here get hold of such a pelt?

He realised as he regarded the staff upon which the man leant and noted its vaguely club-like shape, that the form of dress was likely some sort of homage to Ogmios - the pelt and club the same as the manner in which the Greeks portrayed him.

Druids
.

‘I slipped.’

‘And then deliberately defiled an ancient place.’

‘It’s a mossy rock that broke on other mossy rocks.’

The druid held him in a penetrating gaze and finally brushed the matter aside, though clearly storing the act for later reference.

‘It is said,’ Cavarinos went on quietly, ‘that you hold a curse from Ogmios himself.’

‘And yet you come here a destructive and heedless unbeliever.’

‘Pragmatist.’

‘Unbeliever.’

Cavarinos sighed. ‘I was sent by Vercingetorix to retrieve the item. Have you got it and if so, do you have any intention of passing it to me, else I am wasting my time and may as well leave?’

The druid placed both palms on the top of the staff-club and leaned on it, placing his chin on the top. ‘You do not believe in the curse.’

‘Frankly, no. I believe in credulous folk beseeching gods for curses, which I have seen time and again and have yet to see answered. Do I believe that a great god of words and corpses took the time out of his busy schedule to jot down a spell that will kill a man who hears it? That a god would need to write such a thing? No, I do not. I believe that you and your power-mad friends wrote the curse and attributed it to a god to fool the people.’

The druid gave him a knowing smile that set his teeth on irritable edge and Cavarinos eyed the man suspiciously. The shepherds of the people were sacrosanct, of course, untouchable by most and revered by all.
Almost
all. Cavarinos trusted them about as far as he could spit a hunting hound and would rather spend time with a Roman than a druid, truth be told.

They were powerful, for sure, and they knew things that most men would never understand in a hundred lifetimes of learning, but they were also interested only in their own goals and not those of their people, no matter what they claimed. 'Shepherds of the people' was a misnomer as far as Cavarinos was concerned. '
Controllers
of the people' was more like.

But they
were
needed this year. They were necessary during this time of struggle. The druids could never have hoped to field an army in the manner of the nations around the southern sea without Vercingetorix, but neither could Vercingetorix have hoped to build that army without the aid of the druids, who bound the people together with invisible chains. They needed each other, and so the uneasy alliance between the great chief and the gods' magicians would continue.

Until the war was over.

Then, Vercingetorix would be able to put them in their place. Cavarinos believed he’d almost persuaded the chief that the druids had become too powerful. That they could make Vercingetorix king over all the Gaulish tribes showed just how powerful they had become, and his leader knew that. The druids were there to please the Gods, perform the rituals, and interpret the wishes of the powers. Not to control the people.

The Arvernian rolled his shoulders, the Roman mail shirt he had taken from a centurion the year before shushing as he moved, the sword-damage among the links repaired by one of the finest smiths using bronze rings forged from the dead man's own medals. His once-Roman helmet still bore the centurion's crest holder, though black crow feathers and a silver serpent rose from it now, and that same smith had hammered good embossed images of a leaping boar and a running stag into the bronze bowl of the skull.

'I will have your oath upon the life of your king and the success of your endeavour that you will keep the curse safe until the time comes to use it, and that you will show it to no other?'

Cavarinos sighed. 'I thought I might go sell it in Narbo. Use the profits to bed a hundred Egyptian whores. Or perhaps I'll wipe my arse with it…'

The druid glared at him, and the Arvernian rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I will keep it safe. And no, I will not let anyone take it from me.'

‘Then it is the will of the lord of words and corpses that I entrust this to you.’ The druid eyed him for long moments before he fished into his voluminous robe and drew out a bundle some hand-span in each dimension. He paused again before he reached out to the visiting warrior and passed the item over.

Cavarinos lifted the small bundle and began to unwind the wrappings. It was light and brittle within. Made from pottery?

'Do not open it yet. It will lose its power if you reveal its markings now. It will be useless when it is needed. Have you any idea how rare this is?'

'Have you any idea how little I care?' the warrior sighed again. 'This war will be won by men with strong sword arms, mailed chests, the ability to stand against a Roman and the desire to see them beaten. It will not be won by magical trinkets and bric-a-brac. The value of this thing,' he added, brandishing the package, ‘is in the morale it will bring to our warriors.’

'Ogmios is not a giving God. He is a taker - of tributes, of souls, of lives. He only gives when he knows it is needed, and his curse-tablets are so rare that some chiefs are hoarding ones a thousand years old, considering them too precious to use. This curse is destined for an enemy of our peoples - and a specific one - though who that is will only be revealed to you in time, when the boar and the eagle are locked in a struggle, bound by the sword. Do not waste it now.'

Cavarinos stared at the item, and then huffed his irritation and folded the wrappings tight once more. 'Tell your wyrd brothers that it is in the right hands.'

The druid nodded and turned, threading his way back among the trees and out of sight. Cavarinos eyed the bundle again as though it might bite him if he held it wrong and, reluctantly, pushed it inside his mail shirt for safety, giving him an odd lump in his belly area. For a moment, he could not get his bearings and wondered which way he had come, but he realised he had left something of a trail pushing through the trees. Curious that the druid seemed not to have done. Still, he turned and began to make his way back out from this strange wood, to where his horse was tethered in a field of rich grass.