The Druid King (8 page)

And when Vercingetorix finally led his blind beggar to the front ranks, he saw that the Arverni had good reason to suspect Diviacx of something less than druidic detachment from the affairs of his tribe.

A rectangular pyre of oak logs like a tiny wooden hut had been erected in the center of the plaza, its interior filled with kindling, and atop this had been placed the wicker cage confining Keltill. Arverne warriors surrounded the pyre, and Gobanit stood to the left, as was his proper station as the new vergobret of the Arverni. So too was it correct for the presiding druid, Diviacx, Eduen or not, to stand beside him. But what was Dumnorix, the Eduen vergobret, doing standing next to his brother? And why were they screened from the Arverne crowd by a score of Eduen warriors?

But all this was banished from Vercingetorix’s mind by his first full sight of his father since the battle in the Great Hall.

Keltill’s tunic was freshly stained with not-yet-dried blood seeping redly from hidden wounds in his chest and side. There was a long cut on his left forearm. One eye was badly blackened.

Vercingetorix’s heart was breaking, and yet it was also bursting with pride, for Keltill stood there within his wicker cage upon his pyre neither cringing in fear like a man about to die a horrible death nor sighing in regret like a penitent who had offended the gods; his arms were folded across his chest, his feet spread wide, his shoulders erect, and his gaze was fierce and fearless and as unwavering as that of a lion.

Like a king.

Diviacx took one short step forward. The crowd murmured, a sound like the lowing of a cranky bull. Diviacx’s Eduen bodyguards tensed.

Diviacx looked uncertain and nervous as he began to speak. “Keltill of the Arverni has offended gods and men—”

“Speak for the gods, druid,” a voice from back in the crowd shouted, “but not for the Arverni,
Eduen
!”

Grunts, roars, shouts of sullen approval.

“Keltill of the Arverni has offended the gods by seeking to crown himself king of Gaul with his own hand!” Diviacx shouted angrily. “And for this sacrilege he must die!”

“Keltill!” shouted the voice of Critognat from within the cover of the crowd. Others picked it up. “Keltill! Keltill! Keltill!”

The Eduen bodyguards brandished their swords. The Arverne warriors surrounding the pyre brought their hands to the hilts of theirs, and that reluctantly, but went no further.

“This is not a dispute between Edui and Arverni,” Diviacx insisted, “this is not a dispute among men! It is not Edui or Arverni who demand the death of Keltill! It is the gods whose will he has defied, and the gods who demand his death, and the gods for whom I speak!”

A groan replaced the chanting, like that of cattle knowing there is after all no escape from the slaughter.

A short, dark-haired Eduen warrior whispered something in Gobanit’s ear. Gobanit frowned, shook his head no. The Eduen whispered to him again, and he stepped forward. The same man shot a commanding glance at Diviacx, and the druid stepped back.

“It is my own . . . my own brother who must die to . . . to appease the wrath of the gods . . .” Gobanit declaimed hesitantly. “And Keltill has also violated the sacred traditions of the Arverni . . . and so . . . and so . . .”

Gobanit succeeded in reducing the crowd to silence, but it was a merciless silence, a void which the assembled Arverni opened up and an invitation for him to fall into it. The Eduen warrior who had been directing Gobanit and Diviacx nodded a sign at one of the Arverne warriors. The man lit a torch and handed it to Gobanit.

It seemed to Vercingetorix that every man beholding his father in the wicker cage, gazing upon the torch in Gobanit’s hand, felt what he felt. Surely he had but to leap forward and demand it of them and they would rush to Keltill’s rescue.

A claw of pain bit hard into his left shoulder, and a voice whispered in his ear. “No,” it said. “The magic of his death is his alone.
You can do nothing save what you must—endure!”

And Vercingetorix found that he could neither take a single step forward nor look away.

Gobanit regarded the torch in his hand fearfully.

“And so . . . and so, my brother, whom I love . . .”

Diviacx stepped forward, his brow creased in exasperation.

“And so in fire must die
any man
who would crown himself king of the free tribes of Gaul!” he shouted.

Gobanit offered him the torch. Diviacx shrank back.

Keltill had regarded this disastrous attempt at solemn ceremony in lofty disdain, standing in his wicker cage upon his funeral pyre with his gaze upon his people and eternity, as if he had already left the world of men and composed himself into an image fit for the Land of Legend.

But now he laughed.

And spoke into the stunned silence.

“Edui! Arverni! Slaves of Rome! Even on this you lack the courage to agree? You’re not fit to call yourselves Gauls! You’re more afraid to kill me than I am to die at your hands! So hand me the torch, you cowards, and I’ll light the fire myself!”

The crowd laughed, then cheered, and at this Gobanit finally tossed the torch onto the pyre, a convulsive gesture owing more to chagrin than to newfound resolve.

Vercingetorix watches in stone-still silence as the kindling within the pyre catches with a crackling burst of orange flame, and then the inner logs, not knowing whether the magic in the hand of the Arch Druid restrains him or not, for now nothing in this world or any other could make him move or look away.

For as Keltill stands erect and unmoving in his wicker cage, as the bonfire begins to roar and blaze beneath him, as the flames begin to lick at his feet, the pain in Vercingetorix’s heart is burned away by the fiercer flame of the passion to gaze upon the fire consuming the best man he would ever know and love. He watches with the same unwavering courage, so that perhaps he might prove worthy of having some small portion of his father’s spirit pass into him, and one day people might say, “Like father, like son,” and speak the truth.

And perhaps the gods look upon him with their cruel favor, for as the flames rise higher and higher, and his face contorts with pain, Keltill’s eyes scan the crowd, and while the smoke rises to obscure his blistering body and his tunic catches fire, they find what they seek.

Vercingetorix finds himself looking directly into the eyes of Keltill and doubts not that Keltill sees him. As his hair ignites in a crown of flame, his visage becomes a mask not of pain but of the iron resolve to triumph over that pain, and Keltill’s eyes burn far brighter than the fire consuming him as they gaze from the next world into his own.

And if there is any doubt in Vercingetorix’s heart, it is gone when Keltill speaks from within the flames, loud and clear, for all the world to hear, reciting his own funeral ode from his funeral pyre.

“In fire do I become the tale the bards will sing.

In fire I enter the Land of Legend as a king!”

The flames mount higher, and there is nothing in Vercingetorix’s vision but the fire and the eyes peering out of it into the depth of his soul.

“As the fire sets my spirit free

So in fire will you remember me.”

And something passes from those eyes into those of Vercingetorix, the eyes of a filth-smeared boy dressed in rags with love and pride filling his burning heart.

It lasts but a heartbeat.

And when it is gone nothing remains but the flames.

And Vercingetorix knows that the boy he was has died with the father he had loved.

He swears a silent oath by the flames that consumed them both that the father would live on in the man the son must become.

VI

WHAT ARE THE THREE necessary virtues of the man of knowledge?”

The voices droned on.

Vercingetorix heard, but did not listen.

He squatted on the well-beaten earth within the semicircle of students around Gwyndo, seated before the evening bonfire. Behind the fat and balding druid was a small square temple of roughly dressed granite. Beyond that were the wattle-and-thatch huts where he had lived with his fellow students for twenty cycles of the moon, and beyond the huts the darkening oak aisles of the forest. And outside this hateful and ignoble refuge was the world from which he was banished, the world where he longed to be.

But Vercingetorix’s attention was captured by the flames alone.

“The courage to follow the will of the gods in this world . . .”

The words were willow-bark bitter in his ears. What craven gods willed that he endure these lessons, which taught him nothing of the warrior’s way? What cruel gods willed that he endure the contempt of the sons of vergobrets and nobles of many tribes as an outcast who had gained refuge here only by the will of the Arch Druid himself? Where was the courage in that?

“The will to make his own destiny in the Land of Legend . . .”

Oh, I have the
will
! he thought bitterly. I have the will to finish the great task Keltill died to begin. I have the
will
to be my father’s son. But where is my courage to act?

“Vercingetorix?
Vercingetorix?
”

Gwyndo was shouting at him. Some of the students were laughing.

“If you have returned to this world from the other, Vercingetorix,” Gwyndo said, “perhaps the wisdom you have gained there will now enable you to answer the question.”

More laughter.

“The third of the necessary virtues of a man of knowledge?” Vercingetorix muttered. “The wisdom to tell the one from the other,” he grunted sourly, knowing the proper response, but finding it worse than meaningless to his own heart.

“To tell which from what?” sneered Viridwx. “This world from the one you seek to enter in the fire?”

Viridwx, three years older than Vercingetorix, was the son of an Eduen noble who had once been a famed warrior, served a term as vergobret, and was now waxing richer and richer through commerce with the Romans. He did not have to say “like your father” for Vercingetorix to hear it in his voice.

“We must all enter the other world sooner or later,Viridwx,” he said, his hands balling into fists. “Some of us with honor, some without.”

“You insult my honor, Vercingetorix?”

“I only meant that some of us will enter later and others sooner than they might wish or expect,” Vercingetorix said in a false tone of sweetness.

“Is that a threat, Arverne?”

“Do you feel threatened, Eduen?” Vercingetorix asked with the same mocking sweetness, glaring at him menacingly. Viridwx might be heavier and taller by half a hand, but Vercingetorix had given as good as he had gotten in their previous bouts, and was eager to take him on again.

“Enough!” shouted Gwyndo.

“Perhaps the son of Keltill has just wandered too deep into his dreams to notice that we are now learning the virtues of the man of knowledge, not the arts of combat,” said another Eduen, to a round of laughter at Vercingetorix’s expense.

This was Litivak, Vercingetorix’s size and build, but dark-haired and, like Viridwx, both his elder and the son of an Eduen noble. But where Viridwx was dim, Litivak was bright, and where Viridwx was forthrightly hostile to him and all things Arverne, Litivak’s barbs were far more finely pointed, often as not delivered with a mirthful grin.

“Must the man of knowledge listen quietly and grind his teeth to stubs while the honor of his father is insulted?”

“I heard no insult to your father’s honor,” Litivak replied mildly.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” said Vercingetorix, turning his gaze back on Viridwx. “Viridwx need merely say that Keltill was a man of honor and a hero and I shall be happy to apologize for my error and hail him as my brother.”

Litivak groaned.

And then there was a long moment of tense silence as Viridwx sat there befuddled by the trap Vercingetorix had set for him.

Guttuatr might command that Vercingetorix not venture into the world outside the forest, but he learned of events there from those who came and went.

Among the Arverni, there were those who found it expedient to support Gobanit, and according to these men, Keltill had been justly condemned by the druids for defying the will of the gods. But to those who were eager to do battle with not only the Teutons and the legions of Caesar but the Edui as well, Keltill was a hero.

Most of the other tribes accepted that Keltill had offended the gods, but, thanks to the depredations of Caesar, more and more had come to agree that uniting long enough to drive off the Romans was becoming a necessity. Only the Edui, waxing richer, stronger, and by their lights “more civilized,” thanks to their cooperation with the Romans, were united in their approval of things as they were now.

And since the druids mingled students from all of the tribes in their schools, the world inside this forest mirrored the world outside. Except here the memory of Keltill had a living heir and champion. It might be a petty game, but Vercingetorix had no other worth playing. Viridwx might not be very clever, but he was clever enough to realize that whatever he did now would be wrong.

If he acknowledged Keltill as a man of honor and a hero, he might be hailed by those who believed it, but he would be scorned by his fellow Edui as a traitor speaking out of cowardice. But if he did not, the Arverne students would be given a fine excuse to come to blows with the Edui, and Vercingetorix’s esteem would be raised in their eyes no matter who won the fight.

But Gwyndo saw Vercingetorix’s intent and spoke before Viridwx was forced to. “Observe what your words are about to kindle in the name of your father’s honor, Vercingetorix, and then tell us you have nothing more to learn of the wisdom of the man of knowledge.”

“Must the man of knowledge be without honor?” Vercingetorix countered angrily.

“Would the father whose honor you seek to defend be proud of a son who sowed strife among the tribes of Gaul to do so?”

To that Vercingetorix had no reply, for he could not deny that Gwyndo had spoken truth, and a truth which shamed him.

“Well spoken, Gwyndo,” he was forced to mutter sullenly.

“Spoken like a man of knowledge who is also a man of honor.”

“And yet . . .”

And yet you
men of knowledge
killed my father! Vercingetorix thought, but he found himself hesitant to so challenge a druid.

“And yet?” Gwyndo asked him encouragingly.

But Vercingetorix still lacked the courage to speak the angry words in his heart. “You invoke the honor of Keltill to shame me, and justly so, and yet . . . and yet . . .”

“And yet he was condemned to burn by the law of the druids,” Gwyndo said for him.

Vercingetorix could only nod meekly.

“Keltill was not condemned for lack of honor,” Gwyndo said, “for Keltill acted as he did with a pure heart, believing his cause was just. Keltill lived and died a man of honor, let no one mistake that.”

Then he dampened the warm glow he had built in Vercingetorix’s breast.

“But Keltill was not a man of knowledge, and so he defied the will of the gods and the way of our people out of pure-hearted and honorable
ignorance,
” the druid said, “and for
that
was he condemned.”

Gwyndo looked directly at Vercingetorix. “You have just demonstrated that it is possible for a man of knowledge to be a man of honor, Vercingetorix,” he said. “But your father demonstrated that it is necessary for a man of honor to be a man of knowledge or heed those who are if he would be a man of destiny. Else he will enter the Land of Legend as your father did—an honorable
failure.
”

“Like father, like son,” sneered Viridwx.

But in that moment Vercingetorix lacked the will to reply.

Strangely enough, it was Litivak who rebuked his fellow Eduen with a poisonous glance.

Litivak came up beside Vercingetorix as the troop of students ambled through the forest to the gaming field.

“Why do you forever goad poor simple Viridwx?” he demanded.

“It is Viridwx who is forever goading
me
by dishonoring the memory of my father,” Vercingetorix replied testily, the calm deep-green boughs and cool shadows of the oak groves doing little to slake his ire.

Litivak gave him a lidded look of gentle scorn. “True enough as far is it goes,” he said, “but why do you use the fool to set tribe against tribe?”

“I do no such thing!”

“Oh yes, you do!”

“I do not!”

“You bring every lesson and conversation you can around to the subject of Keltill in such a manner that those who do not praise him become your foes,” Litivak told him. “Most men seek to accumulate friends and allies.
You seem avid to accumulate enemies.”

“I am not!”

“But that is what you are doing all the same, Vercingetorix. Who here among us, other than the Arverni, can you count an ally? And even among them—”

“Do I really do that?” Vercingetorix found himself asking this Eduen with unaccustomed sincerity.

“Would you have me believe that you do not know that the honor of Keltill is a subject sure to arouse bitter contention? To many of your tribe, he was a hero; to others and to mine, a usurper—”

“You call my father a usurper, Litivak?” Vercingetorix demanded angrily.

Litivak laughed. “You see, you’re doing it again!”

Vercingetorix could not help laughing at himself, something he did not do often. “But you still haven’t answered my question,” he said, softening it with another laugh.

Litivak shrugged. “An Arverne crowning himself king of Gaul can hardly fill my Eduen heart with joy,” he said. “But—”

“No doubt your Eduen heart would prefer an Eduen king!” Vercingetorix snapped.

“By the balls of the gods, you’re doing it yet again!” Litivak said, and now there was real anger in his voice. “You accuse me of saying something I haven’t said, and you won’t even hear me speak!”

“Speak then, Eduen!”

“
I was going to say
that your father was right about the need for us all to unite to rid ourselves of the Romans before we all find ourselves prancing around in togas, drinking soured grape juice, and worshipping Jove and Venus!”

“You were . . . ?” said Vercingetorix in a small voice, feeling very much chastened, and no little bit a fool.

Litivak nodded. “Thus speaks not the Eduen heart but . . .”

He shrugged.

“The Gaul?” Vercingetorix suggested.

Litivak shrugged again.

“That was what my father was about, I think,” Vercingetorix told him earnestly. “And why I do what I do, Litivak. Not to set tribe against tribe, but to unite those who feel thus, whatever their tribe.”

“You’re not exactly doing any better at it than your father did—now, are you, Vercingetorix?”

“What do you mean by
that
?” demanded Vercingetorix, his ire once more aroused.

“You wield words like a sword,” Litivak told him. “Even against yourself.”

“Against myself ?”

“When you wield words against one whom you might win over, whom do you really wound?”

“Meaning
you,
Litivak of the Edui?” said Vercingetorix. It was a novel thought.

Litivak laughed. “Take it as you will,” he said. “But some advice, Vercingetorix of the Arverni. The best way to win over men to your way is not with words, but with noble deeds that display its virtues.”

These words both troubled and teased at Vercingetorix’s spirit, but there conversation ended, for they had reached the gaming field, a grassy meadow created by the damming of a stream by beavers in the long ago, then expanded by men clearing the forest at its margins. Young trees, clumps of blackberry brambles, half-buried boulders had, however, been left where they were—obstacles to make the game of war more interesting.

A large, crudely carved wooden statue of a horse had been set out at one end of the gaming field, and a similar statue of a wild boar at the other, both now so weathered and splintered by rain and wind, and moss-grown with time, that they appeared to be growing out of the earth even as the years slowly absorbed them back into it.

The rules of the game were simple. The students would be divided into two equal “armies,” the “horses” and the “boars.” They would line up facing each other in the middle of the field in “battle formations” of each army’s choosing. A pig’s bladder stuffed with straw would be tossed between them, and the game would begin as the armies fought to capture the ball and retain it long enough to move it down the meadow to touch it to their sigil animal. The first army to score twelve “touches” won the war. Biting and blows to the head or testicles were not allowed.

In order for the warriors of each army to recognize each other during the fray, the “horses” retained their shirts while the “boars” played bare-chested. Sides were chosen by the drawing of straws held by Salgax, the youngish, muscular druid who taught the arts of the body and the lore of forest survival—short for the horses, long for the boars. When the lots had been chosen, Vercingetorix became a boar, Litivak became a horse, and so did Viridwx.

Salgax threw the stuffed pig’s bladder between them, both sides rushed forward—grabbing for the ball, and pushing, pummeling, and punching at each other—and the game of war began.

A boar seized the ball and ran a short distance toward his statue before a horse slammed into him from behind. But as he fell, he tossed the ball to another boar, who planted an elbow in the ribs of a horse trying to intercept it as he caught it, ran forward a few steps, kept his balance as a horse kicked him in the buttocks, knocked his way past two more horses, only to be tripped by another horse.

He went down hard, the ball rolled free, and half a dozen young men scrambled on the ground for it, punching and kicking, before a horse grabbed it up, ran toward the other end of the field—