Druids (51 page)

quickly enough.

Caesar had brought four hundred German horsemen with him! Astonishment defeated us as much as anything else, though

their attack was so savage that only the bravest couid have with—

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stood it. Our men were brave enough; their own fear of the Germans weakened them. It was our turn to be broken, and the horse warriors of Gaul went galloping back toward the main body of the army, many of them hacked and injured.

More lay dead on the ground, trampled by the German horses. Cotuatus, at least, was among the survivors.

Once we caught our breath and regrouped, Rix was furious. “Caesar supposedly invaded Gaul to fight the Germans. Now he uses them in his army! He has no true warrior style, he keeps changing the rules, Ainvar.”

“Obviously that is his style, then. And a good one, because it is succeeding for him.”

“I can get Germans, too, you know I can. I should have used them all along,” he added, not bothering to conceal his anger with me in the matter.

However, that was in the past and could not be changed; 1 would not react to it now. “You can’t defeat Caesar by adopting his strategies, Rix. That way he shapes the war. You have to introduce a pattern of your own, one he doesn’t expect and will have to deal with.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m waiting for suggestions.”

By twilight we had retired to make camp, some distance away from the Romans. The two armies now had a river of water and a sea of hostility between them, with commanders on both sides considering the next step in the campaign. Ours must be one that Caesar did not expect; one that would cripple him, if possible.

Leaving Rix, I walked alone to think. I did not throw pebbles or read entrails. I opened the senses of my spirit, and waited to know.

In time, inspiration came.

A large, sauntering circle took me past our grouped supply wagons. They were already piled high, but even while the battle was going on, local people had come from the surrounding farmsteads, gratefully bringing additional offerings of food for us and fodder for our animals. We were in friendly territory now.

I stared long and hard at the supply wagons.

Think like Caesar, I commanded my head.

I returned to find Rix standing beside the campfire nearest his command tent, listening with barely concealed irritation as the princes of the tribes tried to outshout each other. Each one was claiming his men had not been the first to run from the Germans, but had been caught up in the panic of cavalry from some other tribe.

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I caught Rix’s eye; he turned his back on the lot of them and strode over to me.

“I have that suggestion you wanted,” I told him, “but you may not like it.”

“I don’t like losing. Tell me how to win.”

‘ ‘Caesar has several legions with him now, which means a huge mass of men and horses to feed. Why did he pause to capture Vellaunodunum and Cenabum and Noviodunum if he was in such a hurry to fight the Gauls and defend the Boii? For their supplies, of course. In hostile territory, the only way he can lay hands on sufficient supplies for such a large army is by taking them from our own storehouses in the forts and towns. His army can’t live off the land, it’s too early in the year.”

“So what are you suggesting? We haven’t enough warriors to fight Caesar and defend every fort in Gaul at the same time.”

“No,” I agreed, “we don’t. But we can offer a sacrifice.”

He looked scornful. ” Your druid magic won’t…”

“It will. We’ll sacrifice the forts.”

Rix stared at me.

“We must set fire to any forts that are not made impregnable by their own fortifications or by their locations. We can disperse the inhabitants throughout the surrounding countryside. It will be hard on them to see their strongholds put to the torch, but not as hard as seeing themselves and their children enslaved.

“The Romans will be denied any centralized sources for supplies and plunder. They will have to send out foraging parties, and our own warriors can pick these off day by day.”

“The unfbrtified villages and some of the larger farmsteads have large grain supplies in their storehouses, Ainvar.”

“Then we must bum them, too. It will mean a hard year for Gaul—but we will be free. And the Roman armies won’t stay here to starve. If our people are willing to make a large enough sacrifice, Rix, we can defeat Caesar now.”

He never hesitated. Summoning the warlords of the tribes, he explained the proposal to them-Cotuatus was his first and most enthusiastic supporter. “If Cenabum had already been burned when Caesar got there, my family would have been safe in some friendly farmhouse far beyond the walls and he would not have had enough supplies to strengthen his men for today’s battle. As it is, he has burned Cenabum anyway—after he finished looting it. And the people are led away to slavery.”

Agreement was unanimous. Riders were dispersed in every direction, and by the following sundown there was not a village

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within a day’s march where the Romans could find provisions. With their own hands the Bituriges denied twenty of their towns to Caesar.

Hanesa sang a great song of the valor of the Bituriges.

When Caesar sent out foraging parties from his camp near Noviodunum, our cavalry happily slaughtered them. The Romans swiftly broke camp, obviously preparing to move to some location with more to oner. The nearest was Avaricum.

The courage of the Bituriges did not extend to destroying the tribal stronghold that was their greatest pride. They went to Rix and begged him to spare the great fort.

“Avaricum is the most beautiful town in all of Gaul,” they insisted, “and easily defended. It is surrounded by river and marsh, with only one narrow way through. Why should it be destroyed? Caesar can never take it.”

Rix conferred privately with me; I conferred even more privately with the spirits. “The sacrifice must be total, Rix,” I told him. “We can’t afford to spare this one or that one because they are special. Every place is special to those who live there. Caesar’s men are getting hungry and pressing him hard, the plan is working. Deny him Avaricum and he’ll have to withdraw from free Gaul to some place where he can supply his army. Think of it! Imagine seeing his retreating back!”

Rix agreed, but unfortunately the-others were persuaded by the arguments of the Bituriges. The princes began to accuse Rix of being too harsh to his supporters, of demanding sacrifice when none was necessary. Several kinsmen of Ollovico suggested the Arvemian simply wanted Avaricum destroyed to make it easier for him to establish Gergovia as the capital of free Gaul.

Vercingetorix acceded to the Bituriges’s request; Avaricum was not to be destroyed before Caesar’s army arrived. I told him he was making a mistake and I think he knew it also, but the word was shouted. The best warriors of the Bituriges sped off ahead of us to man the defenses of Avaricum. When Caesar himself got under way, our army moved with his, shadowing every step of his march.

Reaching the vicinity of Avaricum, Rix set up camp m a region protected by woodland and marsh. At my suggestion he sent out a network of patrols to relay information about Roman move-ments. Whenever enemy foraging parties set out, our cavalry attacked and destroyed them. Caesar began sending desperate messages to the Aedui and the Boii, asking them to aid him with grain supplies. But even if we had let his messengers get through,

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it would have been useless. The Aedui were no longer Caesar’s unfailing allies. Having observed the size of the army of free Gaul, they were waiting to leam which way the wind blew. As for the Boii, they were a diminished tribe with no supplies to spare.

The Roman army was getting very lean and very hungry.

* ‘I can taste victory the way other men taste wine,” Rix boasted in an expansive moment. “Your plan has defeated Caesar.”

“Not yet,” I warned him. “You haven’t followed my plan, not completely. Avaricum is still standing, stocked with everything the Romans need.”

“The Romans can never capture it, it’s as strong as any fort in Gaul. They’re already beginning to be weakened by lack of adequate food. We’ll let them exhaust themselves in a futile attack on Avaricum, then I’ll order our armies in and we’ll destroy them.”

He said it with perfect confidence, as if he were actually seeing the future.

But Rix had not been given the gift of prophecy. He was a warrior.

The rains of early spring were as persistent as the winter storms had been, drumming tiresomely on our leather tent until both Hanesa and I suffered from headache.

I longed for Briga’s touch; I wondered what effect so much rain would have on our vines. I wished I were home to help care for them.

In spite of the weather, Caesar apparently was planning to lay siege to Avaricum. “They won’t go through with it,” Rix said confidently. “They’re too weakened by hunger.”

Privately, I thought hunger might be the very goad to drive them to success.

By the time we were settled in our new camp, Caesar had moved siege towers up to the walls of Avaricum. At dawn Rix took most of the cavalry and set off in a wide sweep to attack Roman foraging parties. The day turned dark, with black clouds piling up like old regrets. The Romans appeared to abandon their efforts at the walls. When Rix was not back by dark, we knew he had encamped somewhere rather than risk the horses’ legs by riding at night.

Under cover of night, Gaius Caesar approached our camp with an attack force.

Alerted by our patrols, we were not taken by surprise as he had hoped. We hid our wagons and supplies in a dense wood and then

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gathered our forces on high ground almost totally encircled by marsh. When Caesar met the warriors of Gaul in the dawn light, he saw brave, free men, standing tall in the open, defying him.

Hanesa would compose an epic about those warriors, later.

Our position served us well. It was my suggestion, softly murmured into the ears of various tribal princes, each of whom then thought it was his own idea. Trusting none of them totally, Rix had not named a commander to serve during his absence. Of course, none of us had anticipated a Roman attack on our camp;

we thought Caesar preoccupied with his siege.

But we outsmarted him. If his soldiers attempted to charge through the marsh to reach us, we would attack them from the high ground as they floundered below us in cold water and sticky mud.

We could have done great damage to them. Realizing this, the Roman officers consulted among themselves, then ordered a withdrawal, knowing they were outmaneuvered.

How we cheered the sight of their backs!

When Rix returned we were eager to tell him of our victory. Some of the princes, denied the satisfaction of a battle, were suffering curdled dispositions, however. They found fault with the day’s success. They even accused Rix of treachery for having left the army without putting one of them in supreme command. “As soon as you were gone the Romans moved in as if it were planned,” the troublemakers said. “Was it? Did you think Caesar would give you the kingship of Gaul for betraying your people and leaving us undefended, with no cavalry?”

Rix was coldly furious. Answering the last charge first, he said, “What good is cavalry in a marsh? If every horseman we have had been there, they would not have been able to help you, whereas they were a great help to me and we destroyed every foraging party we found.

k ‘I did not hand over command to anyone in my absence because there is not one among you who would not put his tribe’s interests over the interests of Gaul-As for my seeking power from Caesar, there is no need. We will soon defeat Caesar and I will have, through my own achievement, all the power I want in Gaul, all I have ever sought… which is the kingship of the Arvemi.”

By revealing their pettiness and jealousy, he shamed them. The princes made no further accusations; they slipped away to their own campfires and began singing victory songs with their men.

But I who knew Rix best could not resist saying to him, “You want more than the kingship of the Arvemi.”

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He did not deny it. He simply said, “I don’t want anything from the hand of Caesar.”

‘ ‘What about those African mares he sent you? You kept those, I seem to remember.”

“A horse is not the same as a kingship. And Caesar didn’t buy me with them, Ainvar. You know that.”

Yes. I knew that. But we had been boys together and sometimes

I still had to tease him. Sometimes in private I even called him King of the World.

Watching him riding at the head of the army, however, it no longer seemed a ridiculous title.

Rix HAD TAKEN several captives from the foraging parties. He had them tell our army of the hunger and privation in the Roman camp, the desperation that had driven them to seizing a stray cow or pillaging a solitary bam.

When their story was told Rix added, “Some of you accused me of treachery; yet thanks to me the invaders are wasting away without a drop of our blood being shed. When the Romans are sufficiently weakened we shall rout them and drive them from Gaul in disgrace!”

The warriors shouted and clashed their weapons, proclaiming Vercingetorix the greatest of all war leaders.

If Caesar was weakened, however, his intention was not. The siege of Avaricum continued.

The Bituriges within were staging an impressive defense, and their kinsmen with us began to claim their tribe was winning the war by itself and had no need of anyone else. Vercingetorix at once ordered a large force containing members of each tribe of the confederacy to go to the aid of the besieged fort.

‘ ‘I have no intention of letting the Bituriges have all the glory,

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he explained to me. “Besides, we want to study Roman siege techniques more closely. We’re going to have your Goban Saor help us imitate them.”

“Shall I send riders to the Fort of the Grove?”

“Why not?”

I dispatched messengers at once, not only to bring back the Goban Saor, but also to inquire after the safety of my family.