The Druid King (32 page)

“We must last out until the grain in the field is ready for harvest, and that is all there is to it,” said Caesar. “We will just have to reduce the rations again.”

“Again?” moaned Tulius, holding up his bowl, which contained but a handful of porridge that had been boiled with grass to eke out the dwindling grain supply. “The men are eyeing the horses hungrily, and I must admit they’re beginning to look good to me too.”

“Surely you’re not serious!” exclaimed Labienus. “We’ve got no chance at all without cavalry.”

“Surely not,” Caesar said peevishly. “We’ve lost enough of them already, and now at least there’s enough new grass to sustain what we have left.”

“Too bad it won’t sustain
us,
” said Galba.

“If it comes to that, perhaps it will,” said Caesar.

Caesar choked down the last gluey and tasteless morsel of his own ration of gruel, which did little to assuage the dull ache in his gut.

A spring shower was descending, and behind was his bundled tent, but Caesar insisted that he and his commanders share every hardship of the men and be clearly seen to do so. If the ordinary legionnaires squatted outside in the rain to eat their midday meal, so would they. And if the men must make do with two handfuls of this grim green slop a day, the generals, and he himself, must enjoy no better. Morale was bad enough without having tales get around of fabulous luxuries—such as extra handfuls of gruel—being secretly enjoyed by high officers.

“Why don’t we capture some of the more important cities?” suggested Labienus. “Nothing like a few one-sided major victories to improve morale. If Vercingetorix fights us for them, we’ll have him where we want him.”

“And find ourselves tying down large garrison forces in each city we hold to keep down hostile populaces, with our troops still on very short rations. Were I Vercingetorix, I would be most pleased to allow us to occupy as many such cities as we like.”

“Perhaps, then, we should retreat south and try again when the situation is more favorable . . . ?” suggested Trebonius.

“And what, may I ask, are we to eat along such a long retreat, grass and worms and marmots?” Caesar said scathingly. “And what do you suppose we will find when we return, save a larger army of Gauls emboldened by our disgrace?”

He did not deem it politic to say “
if
we return,” which, given the fatuous public hand-wringing of the Senate over the situation, and the private glee of his ever-more-numerous enemies therein, did not seem likely if he dragged the remnants of a starving army back over the Alps with its tail between its legs.

Which, Caesar had no doubt, was exactly what Vercingetorix was trying to force him to do. I should never have been so open with him. I should certainly never have told him that keeping an army supplied is half the battle. Worse still, thanks to my own folly, Vercingetorix knows that conquering Gaul is only a necessary military prelude to the conquest of Rome by political means.

Caesar had certainly not been forthcoming with his own generals about
that
!

Labienus, with his overdeveloped sense of honor, would report it to the Senate. Most of the rest of them probably would betray me out of ambition. No, there has been no man with whom I can fully share such thoughts since Gisstus was slain.

“Send out more foragers,” he told his commanders. “Hunt down deer, hunt down boar, hunt down
rabbits,
fish every stream with nets, winkle every last mouse and vole out of its burrow. Strip the bark from the trees and scrape the moss from the rocks and boil it all into bitter soup. We need only survive until there are crops ripening in the fields, and
then
we shall attack every city in Gaul one by one if need be, not to hold but to sack, until we
force
the Gauls to fight to defend them.
Then
shall we crush them, and
then
shall the Gauls eat a defeat far more bitter than what they force us to swallow now.”

If I have to eat grass, grass will I eat. If it comes down to dung, I will eat dung too. For there are morsels even less nourishing than grass, destinies far less possible to choke down than shit, and these I will
never
swallow.

Vercingetorix looked back down the valley at what he had wrought.
The blue skies of summer above this rich farmland were fouled with a pall of sooty smoke; there were fires burning everywhere the grain in the fields had not yet been reduced to ash; the smoldering skeletons of orchards glowed an ugly orange against the blackened landscape.

Vercingetorix and Rhia rode a horse’s length ahead of a squad of fifty warriors. He had divided the force with which he had entered this valley into a score of such squads, each with a druid whose authority would, he hoped, preclude the use of force by Gauls against Gauls.

Before him, the valley was a golden sea of ripe grain alternating with the stubble of that which had already been harvested, dotted with small groves of apple trees heavy with reddening fruit. Sheep grazed in the lush green fields around farmsteads, their granaries beginning to fill with the harvest, their sties filled with fat sows suckling new litters of piglets, the chickens and ducks and geese leading the season’s hatchlings, a vision of bounty and well-being.

Vercingetorix raised his right arm and made a circling signal as his squad approached a little village of wood and wattle-and-thatch houses and granaries, surrounded by pigsties, duck ponds, and grassy fields where grazed the sheep. Thirty of his warriors fanned out to encircle the buildings in the center of the village where the peasants had already gathered. The rest accompanied Vercingetorix to guard him against their expected and not unjustified ire.

Dagavar, wife of Pithrin, mother of Comak, Belandra, Frisa, and Dirnor, watched the great hero ride into her village with an angry and uncomprehending heart. She knew this was Vercingetorix himself, for beside him rode his warrior woman carrying the bear standard. It almost shamed her to hate this boy, who could not be six years older than her own eldest son. But hate this vergobret of her own tribe, this sorcerer, this ravager of the land, Dagavar did.

She knew that Caesar and his Romans were the enemy, for so the druids proclaimed. Certainly she had no love for them; for she understood that if they had remained in their own country, where they belonged, this blond boy would not now be leading his warriors into her village to destroy the life she and Pithrin had built here for their children.

But how could anyone in her village not hate and fear Vercingetorix when all they had to do was look out into the distance and see the boiling black pillars of smoke to know that he and his warriors had already destroyed half the crops and livelihoods of the valley?

And for what? So that one clan of leeches would rule over them and extract unfair tribute, rather than another? So that a portion of their crops would be stolen in the name of “Gaul” rather than “Rome”?

War should be left to the nobles and warriors, and the folk of the land should be left alone to bring in the crops and tend the livestock as long as those who ruled were allowed to steal their unfair share.

What sort of war was this that turned farmers into beggars and destroyed the land in the name of saving it?

Vercingetorix rode into the dusty little square, where a score or so men had gathered with their wives and their children. He halted before them, warriors on either side of him. He did not dismount.

“I am Vercingetorix, commander of—”

“The great hero of Gaul!” a burly gray-haired fellow shouted scornfully, to hoots and jeers. Some of the men held scythes and hoes and pitchforks and meat knives.

“Why do you ruin the lands and destroy the crops of your own people?” demanded the portly woman of like age standing at his side with a raging glare in her eyes.

“To prevent a greater despoliation by Caesar’s legions,” Vercingetorix replied, as he always did. “The Romans would steal anything left behind for them to steal in any case.”

“Stolen by the Romans, destroyed by you—what difference does it make to us? We are still left with nothing!”

And as he always did, Vercingetorix reached into the large leather sack affixed to his saddle, withdrew a handful of gold coins, and tossed them into the peasants’ midst. “Do you suppose Caesar will pay in gold for what he takes?”

There was a scramble for the coins, but the adults seemed less avid than the children.

“Do you suppose we can eat your gold?”

“Enough!” shouted Vercingetorix, exasperated not with them but with himself, with having to repeat this dishonorable act over and over. But as the peasants must make the bitter sacrifice of their goods in this world that Gaul be free, so must he make bitter sacrifice in the Land of Legend, that of his own honor.

For there he had seen what would be the sweet fruit of such sacrifice, his and theirs—the legions of Rome, stoop-shouldered cavalrymen leading skeletal horses, legionnaires afoot too weak to bear armor plodding across a lifeless landscape. He had seen Caesar, a skeleton riding the skeleton of a horse. A cruel and mysterious vision burned into his brain. Crueler still, now that he knew what it meant.

“Every sheaf of grain, every scrawny chicken, every blade of grass!” he declared, drawing his sword. “Flee with what you can carry, and destroy
everything else
!”

The howls and protests were enough to have his guards drawing their swords, moving closer to him, and brandishing them menacingly.

“You do it or we will! No food or fodder must be left behind for the Romans. They would seize everything they find, so you lose nothing you would not lose anyway!”

“And what are we to do when what we can carry is gone?” shouted out an old man.

“What we all must do for Gaul, sacrifice and suffer.”

It was Guttuatr who spoke these words, from behind the peasants; they turned and saw a druid in a pure white robe bearing a staff with a fallen star atop it.

“The Arch Druid himself!”

Guttuatr slowly made his way to Vercingetorix’s side, and turned to deliver the speech that he had now delivered scores of times. It had aged him. There were more lines in his face. His nose now seemed less that of a proud raptor and more that of an old man. His eyes no longer showed the same strength nor the line of his mouth the same resolution. Something had gone out of the man holding the staff of the Arch Druid’s office. Perhaps some power had left the staff itself.

“It has never been for druids to take a hand in the affairs of war—”

“Nor honest farmers either!”

“Let warriors slaughter each other and let us be!”

“Will the Romans let any of us be?” said Guttuatr. “The Romans wage war on the very soul of Gaul, and
all
Gauls must sacrifice to save it! Warriors must sacrifice their lives, farmers their crops and livestock. . . .”

He faltered for a moment, and looked back at Vercingetorix with accusation in his eyes, and when he turned and spoke again, there was an inner message in his words that Vercingetorix knew was meant for him.

“And druids most of all,” he said.

“Oh, and what do
you
sacrifice, Arch Druid?”

“More than you can know . . .” Guttuatr said somberly. His lower lip trembled like that of a doddard. “Perhaps more than even
I
can know . . . Perhaps, in the end, the very thing I seek to save . . .”

“He mocks me, Brutus,” said Caesar.

And so, he thought, does the landscape of this accursed country, even the weather.

He rode a dozen or so horse-lengths ahead of the vanguard of his starving army, accompanied only by the young officer, whom he allowed more and more to follow at his side like a favorite hound.

The clear blue sky, fleeced with but a few pure white clouds, and the summer sun warming his skin mocked him with memories of better times in sweeter climes. On the northwestern horizon, the hills were green with grass, and forest climbed their slopes.

But he rode through the landscape of his terrible falling-sickness vision: burnt fields and meadows where the only signs of life were the occasional green shoots peeping up through the endless ashes, and carrion crows squabbling over what little flesh remained on the charred corpses of farm animals.

And to the northeast, in the direction in which they were presently marching, there were already black clouds of smoke on the horizon. They were always marching through these wastelands toward those black clouds, for the army of Vercingetorix, grouped all together now as a juicy bait, always remained just within range of his advance scouts, but always beyond reach, firing the land as they retreated before him.

“How long can this go on, Caesar?” asked Brutus.

“Until we catch them and destroy them,” said Caesar. “However long it takes.”

“But that could be forever,” Brutus muttered disconsolately.

“Vercingetorix is a clever general,” said Caesar. “He does what I would do in his place. Faced with a superior force, he lures his stronger enemy into endless pursuit, destroying everything as he retreats before us, so that we are forced to march through a desert.”

“A cowardly strategy,” Brutus said primly.

“But an effective one.”

“As long as he can maintain it,” said Brutus.

“What?”
cried Caesar. Suddenly he began to see the beginning of hope. “You are absolutely right, my clever young friend!”

“I am . . . ?” said Brutus, with such a choice look of befuddlement that Caesar almost laughed aloud.

“These Gauls prize honor and glory above all else, and that will be their downfall!” And then Caesar
did
laugh, not at Brutus, but at his own folly.

“What
is
it, Caesar? What have you found to laugh about?”

“Myself, Brutus, myself! I have been a fool. Here is a lesson for you—a general should never trap himself in outdated wisdom. A strategy that once would have been futile may later prove wise.”

“I don’t understand. . . .”

Caesar gazed at the black smoke rising before him in the far distance. “Then perhaps neither will
he,
” he said.

“You have lost me completely, Caesar,” said Brutus.