Druids (23 page)

“One would not say such a thing casually. I think you’d better explain it to me.”

“It’s late and I’m tired.” He faked a yawn.

“No one has ever seen you tired, Rix. You’re always alert, and never more so than now.

“You had no compunction about using the products of my thinking to impress those men with your shrewdness. You owe me for that. So I demand in payment that you tell me what you meant about the Germans.” I sat down on a bench and folded my

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arms across my chest, showing him I was willing to wait for as long as it might take. “tell me,” I insisted.

Our eyes locked. I felt once again the tug of wills between us. He was stronger than the last time, so strong he took my breath away. Before I could brace myself I felt my resistance slipping

and I wanted to give in to him, to let Vercingetorix have his way in whatever he wanted, to surrender to that summoning power and vibrant charm… .

Druid! cried my head.

I caught myself and fought back, feeling the sweat spurt on my forehead. I clenched my mind like a fist until I felt Rix waver, then I leaned toward him, silently demanding.

He dropped his eyes. But I had made a discovery. There was a danger in him. Like the man called Caesar, Vercingetorix was inhabited by a spirit of singular determination. I realized he would sacrifice anything or anyone to reach his goal.

His face relaxed into the familiar grin. “I might as well tell you; Hanesa would tell you anyway, if you asked him. The Ar-vemi have employed German mercenaries on various occasions for years now. We use them against the Aedui primarily. I wouldn’t have a German in my lodge or let him near my women, but they’re ferocious fighters.”

I stared at him. “But that’s just what Dumnorix has done-”

“I suppose so. What matters is winning.”

“Your father used Germanic mercenaries?”

“Not enough of them, apparently. And I dare say Potomarus has some, though they don’t seem to be doing him much good, either. But that’s because he really isn’t an able warrior. If it were me, I’d—”

“Rix!” I cried in despair. “Don’t you see what you’ve done? You—all of you—have made it so easy for him!”

“What do you mean?”

“For Caesar, you fool!”

His face was closed. On the one hand I had presented him with new ideas to ponder and a new way of thinking, but on the other I was now challenging a tradition he had always accepted.

“I want your promise,” I said urgently, “that you will never have a German following your standard.”

“I don’t have a standard.”

“You’ll take up that one out there. We both know it. And when you do, there must not be one member of any German tribe among me warriors you lead.”

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He gave me a hooded look. “You know I respect your wis-dom,” he said gravely.

But that night as I lay on the floor of his lodge, my head reminded me that Rix had not actually given me his promise.

I lay awake for a long time, listening to the crackling of the fire and the snoring of the others in the lodge. When at last I fell asleep, with Lakutu curled at my feet, I dreamed again of the Two-Faced One.

As before, the figure came toward me out of a red mist. This time the faces were different, both recognizably human. One was sharp-featured and imperious, with an aquiline nose and sunken, shaven cheeks. The other was square-skulled, fleshy, with heavy features and a broad Germanic jaw.

This time me figure had two arms. They reached out, extended, surrounded me … I began to run, but no matter which way I went the image followed me, the mouths opening to swallow me… .

I awoke with a gasp to find myself, sweat-soaked, in Lakutu’s arms. Clinging to her with all my strength, I fought my way back from the dream. She soothed me wordlessly as a mother soothes a frightened child, pressing my face against her breasts until at last I relaxed and sank back into an uneasy sleep.

Kind Lakutu!

Once I saw a small dog step out of a dugout canoe onto a lily pad, obviously expecting the flat green surface would be solid. At once the lily pad collapsed and the dog sank like a stone. Its head soon popped back to the surface, but the astonished creature had to swim for its life in an alien and unexpected environment.

A similar disaster had befallen Lakutu. She found herself in an alien environment she had never expected, unable to speak a word of me language—indeed, she would not even try. Yet she remained unfailingly kind, helpful, obedient… and I never saw her cry.

With vision clarified by time, I realize how extraordinary she was. Only in our afterthoughts do we fully appreciate.

When I awoke at dawn the taste of the dream was still acrid on my tongue. I did not try to forget it; dreams are communications from the Otherworid. And I was eager to hurry to Menua and tell him of this one.

Now it was Rix who was reluctant for us to pan. “Surely you could stay for a few more nights, Ainvar. The princes will come to my lodge again, there’ll be a lot to talk about. I would like … it would be good to have you with me.”

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I felt the pull, yet I could also feel the grove calling to me, the trees singing to me on the wind. And 1 felt a growing anxiety to reach Menua that I could not explain, even with all the tangible reasons I had. “One more night only,” I told Rix. “Then I have to go.”

That day I went to see the chief druid of the Arvemi, a man called Secumos. He was dark-haired and thin, with graceful hands

that constantly wove patterns in the air as he spoke. He was eager to hear what I had learned in my travels about the Roman gods. He invited me to his lodge and gave me wine and sweetmeats—imported ones, I noticed. “A gift from Potomarus,” he explained-When I was comfortable he began questioning me. “Is it true that the Roman gods grant their followers a prosperity exceeding anything known in free Gaul?”

I wondered from whom he had heard that—the traders? Probably. “Perhaps Roman citizens are prosperous,” I told him, “but those of Celtic ancestry in me Province must work desperately hard just to stay out of slavery. Roman gods are not kind to them.”

“What are these gods like?”

“Like men,” I said contemptuously. “I’ll tell you about them, Secumos. I visited several Roman temples along the way and had the bard Hanesa strike up numerous conversations with Roman priests in order to learn what I could of their beliefs, and I was shocked at what I learned.

“In the bustle of cities, which rats and Romans appear to love, the clamor of construction and the rumble of wheels on paving stones drowns out the voices of water and wind and tree. Without the music of the nature gods to guide them, the Romans have lost a vital link with the Source. They no longer listen to the song of creation. They hear only their own voices, so they make gods in their own images. Or rather, the images of themselves perfected, as they would like to be. Men and women of surpassing beauty, but carved from cold stone, with empty eyes and no spirit in them.

‘ “There is a god or goddess for every human requirement: war, love, the hearth, the harvest, wine, commerce, smithcraft, the hunt… the list is endless. They worship each of these separately and even claim that the various gods fight among themselves as humans do.

“And perhaps they are right, for these manmade gods appear to possess all the pettiness and spitefulness of human beings. They arc jealous, vicious, greedy creatures who must be continually bribed. Except the priests keep the bribes, since statues have

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no way of spending gold. The only true prosperity is the priest-hood,” I added cynically.

Secumos was wringing his slender fingers together in an excess of sympathy. “Those poor people. I had no idea they were so misguided, so lost.”

“They call us misguided—and worse. Druids are despised by the official religion of Rome, which prevails in the Province now. The entire time I was there I had to keep my triskele hidden under my clothing. The Romans claim mat druids worship a thousand brutal gods, each more hideous than the next—which is ironic, coming from them. They who worship so many separate deities seem unaware that we worship only the diverse faces of me one

Source.”

“Do they not know of the Source, then?”

Sadly I told him, “I have stood in manmade temples throughout the Province, Secumos, opening the senses of my spirit. Yet I found no presence in any of them but that of Man.”

The druid’s eyes glittered with tears.

“The Roman religion does not recognize the immortality of our spirits,” I went on. “The priests say only their invented gods are immortal, and that when men die they cease to be. This terrible belief is, I think, what makes them so frantic and greedy. They believe they have only one life and are desperate to get as much as they can out of it.”

Poor Secumos was quite overcome by my revelations, I did not have the heart to tell him any more of my sad discoveries, such as the fact that Roman priests—a name they apply only to sacrificers—have no knowledge of the healing arts. They cannot draw on the forces in Earth and sky to restore a body to harmony, nor can they find hidden springs of sweet water, or recite their tribes’ histories and genealogies, or predict the future, or even open up the minds of young people to anything other than their own nar-row religion.

Religion, they call it. Priests, they call themselves.

I left Secumos contemplating my words in misery and went back to attend that night’s meeting in the lodge of Vercingetorix.

A larger crowd than before made its way to the lodge. There was no room for women, or even for Baroc and Tarvos, and poor Hanesa was so squeezed he turned quite red in the face as he elbowed for position between two powerfully built warriors. Stacked shields were piled high outside the door, and jar after jar of wine was emptied. Wine whose fragrance brought back to me

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the heady, ripe-apples-and-grapes smell of the Province in winemaking season, when even the air in intoxicating.

I sat quietly beside Rix on his bench, at his invitation, and from time to time I nudged him surreptitiously with my elbow. He would cock his head toward me while I whispered into his ear under the pretext of passing him a wine cup. When he spoke to me crowd, my words fell from his lips, and the gathered warriors listened.

I also was listening—to them.

Among them this time were four princes, men who had led their followers into battles in many parts of Gaul. They had much to tell of the situation among the tribes, and one story in particular was very disturbing.

As I listened, I could tell that Dumnorix’s policy of seeking Germanic support to help him win the kingship of the Aedui had

had far-reaching consequences. He had made, through the Sequani, an alliance with Ariovistus and his Suebi, the same tribe from whom Briga’s father had fled. To win the support of Ariovistus, Dumnorix had apparently led the Germans to believe they would be given Celtic land.

Ariovistus had interpreted this to mean he could occupy the lands of the Helvetii, a Celtic tribe, and had begun moving people onto them.

Naturally the Helvetii resented this invasion. But for them it served a usefiu purpose. They had long been complaining that their territory, which was limited by the natural boundaries of the Rhine River and the Jura Mountains, was too small for their burgeoning population. Using me German incursion as a pretext, their tribal council of two winters ago had decided that the entire tribe would migrate to broader fields and more fertile lands elsewhere.

“Ask where they will go,” I whispered to Rix.

“Where will the Helvetii go?” he asked aloud- “Surely no other tribe will share land with them willingly.”

The prince who had told us of the situation replied, “It is believed they mean to head for the land of the Aquitani, north of me Pyrenees. There are two routes by which such a large tribe can go: a difficult way through Sequani territory, or a somewhat easier journey across the northern part of the Province.”

I did not have to think for Rix now; the problem was obvious. “The Helvetii can’t take their entire tribe through the Province! The Romans would never allow it, they would attack them before they ever got mere.”

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With a sense of inevitability, I realized this was just the sort of problem the druid Diviciacus had foreseen when he had petitioned me Roman Senate for aid against the ambitions of Dumnorix.

Now Diviciacus had Caesar for an ally.

Free Gaul would be crushed between the closing jaws of the Germans and the Romans.

I whispered this to Rix, but when he spoke it aloud, the prince Lepontos, a deep-chested man with hair the color of dried blood, did not agree. “The matter doesn’t affect us, unless the Helvetii try to enter our land. Which they won’t. Their route will take them farther south. We merely thought you would find it interesting.

‘ ‘Of course, with the right leadership we might march an army down and intercept the Helvetii. There will be plunder from such a vast body of people on the move; they will be in no position to defend themselves adequately.”

I murmured to Rix, “No. They arc Celts.”

He glared at Lepontos- “The Helvetii are of our blood-We are not vultures to pick their bones, we shall not prey on them in then-time of difficulty. Someday we might want them to stand with us.”

Lepontos looked baffled. “Tb stand with us? Helvetians?”

“We might need them as allies against the Roman, Caesar-provided he does not destroy them first.”

“Why should we fight Caesar?” asked an older man with more puckered scars than smooth flesh. “You’re making too much of this perceived Roman threat, Vercingetorix. We have a long and amicable history of trade with the Romans. If worse comes to worse I’m sure we can always offer mis Caesar enough grain for his army and he will leave us alone, no matter what else he may—”

“Fools!” Rix leaped to his feet and huried his wine cup across the lodge, narrowly missing the last speaker. The wine splashed like blood on the man’s tunic. “I am ashamed of you! “Rix cried. “I am ashamed of any man who would attempt to appease an aggressor! We were not born to cringe and crawl!”