Druids (59 page)

And I saw in Rix’s eyes the shadows he tned to keep hidden.

Men were dispatched to meet our wagons and provide them

safe escort to Alesia, as well as to watch our rear for signs of Roman pursuit. There was no doubt Caesar would be after us all too soon.

As we set off, I moved up to ride beside Rix for a time. He knew I was there but said nothing to me. My presence reminded him that he had been wrong about our men’s preparedness to face the Germans, and Rix did not like to be reminded of his mistakes.

But how else can we leam?

I edged my horse closer to the rangy brown horse he was rid-ing. An aide was leading his black stallion, to keep it fresh for use in battle if needed. A hot summer sun was beaming down on us. The air was filled with dust and the smell of horse sweat. We

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rode to a music of jingling bits and creaking leather and rhythmic hooves. We were moving at a brisk pace, but Rix held it steady, he did not want the men to feet as if they were running away m panic.

“We weren’t overcome by the enemy, but by our own fear.” I told Rix in a conversational tone, keeping my eyes on the way ahead. “Caesar relied on the effect the Germans would have on us. They weren’t any better than our men. Just more terrifying.”

“My cavalry ran away. They ran away, Ainvar ” Rix’s voice sounded as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well- “I had made them my favorites; they had the best food. the best weapons, the choice horses taken from all the tribes. And they ran away. I could not hold them.” His words were hollow with loathing and despair.

Vercingetorix had been as shocked as anyone else by what had happened, I realized. But because he was commander, he had to conceal it—except to his soul friend.

“They’re only human, Rix,” I said consolingly. “And it was the southerners and westerners who broke first. The Senones and the others of central Gaul faced up to the Germans.”

“As long as they could, yes. But when hundreds of other horses started to run, they could not control their own indefinitely. The panic was like a brushfire, wasn’t it? It has scorched everyone. I’ve watched the men; the foot warriors have caught fear from the cavalry. They’re all afraid now. That’s why I’m taking them to Alesia. We have to be in a position where we can win the next battle… ori’m afraid we’ll lose the army of Gaul.”

I had never heard him sound so bitter.

ALESIA OCCUPIED AN extensive lozenge-shaped plateau protected by rivers on both sides, with steep hills to the north and south. Rix had chosen well. The actual stronghold was only of middle size, but stood on a height so imposing it was impregnable to every form of assault but blockade. As soon

as we arrived, Rix ordered the army to set up camp on the slopes outside the walls and fortify its position with ditches and additional walls.

Litaviccus gave us a formal welcome at the gates of the town. I entered with Rix and the princes of Gaul; the Mandubian townspeople pressed forward from every side to offer us wine and food and victors’ wreaths—“for saving us from the Romans,” they said.

Rix refused the wreaths. “Offer them again when we have defeated Caesar,” he said loudly.

He was given the hospitality of the king’s lodge, but slept instead in his own tent with the army. And within another day, Caesar reached Alesia.

The Roman had wasted no time in following us. Expecting this, Rix made every effort to present an unassailable face to Cae-sar when he arrived.

As Caesar, wearing his scarlet cloak, came galloping over the plain, the stronghold of Alesia must have looked daunting even to him.

To my relief, our wagons arrived shortly before the Romans. The Goban Saor came to my tent. I greeted him with a Celtic hug. “The wagons came up very fast. You must have thrown out everything you could spare for more speed.”

“We did. Casks, boxes, anything heavy and dispensable.”

“But not… ?”

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The Goban Saor smiled at my anxiety. “Not that, no. It’s still in my wagon-When I told people it belonged to the chief druid. no one touched it. If you’ll help me unload it we can bring it into the tent now, if you like—but I still don’t see how you can mean to use it.”

“To work magic,” I said simply.

The Goban Saor went off with Rix to examine the fortifications, and Cotuatus left to spend the day with the Camutian warriors. who were repairing battle damage and making excuses to each other for the recent debacle. When they had gone I uncovered the object in the center of the tent.

I was alone with the Two-Faced One.

Once Celtic warriors had taken the heads of their most worthy adversaries to mount in places of honor as battle trophies, to impress their friends and intimidate their enemies. The custom had died out in recent generations, but members of the warrior nobility still observed the tradition symbolically by having trophy heads carved in wood or stone and mounted around their strongholds.

In my travels through Gaul I had seen numerous examples of

these.

The figure the Goban Saor had long ago carved for me as a gift for Menua was not a trophy head. The years had not diminished its impact. To look upon the Two-Faced One was to feel the cold breath of the Otherworld on my neck.

I sat down cross-legged on the ground to contemplate the im-age. Outside, the sounds of distant trumpets and shouting warned that our patrols had seen the Romans approaching; they were still far away but drawing nearer. Men began to run, dig in, prepare, watch, worry. But nothing would happen the first day, I knew. Caesar would draw up his forces before Alesia and consider the situation, set up a camp, make his preparations. The two great armies would stare at each other with cold assessment for a time, each looking for an advantage.

I stared at the image of the Two-Faced One.

The sun striking the leather walls of the tent imparted an ocher glow to the surroundings. In that light the pale gray stone could have been mistaken for flesh-It took little imagination to discover awareness lurking in those blank eyes, to see those nostrils flare with breath. So great was the artistry of the Goban Saor that he had actually captured life, a disturbing, fearsome form of life, in the stone. It crouched there, waiting.

Fearsome.

Fear is a tool of magic.

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Once Menua believed I could strike the spark of life. Once I had tried, for Tarvos’s sake.

This was different. Life had not fled but was here, imprisoned through the magic of the artisan. It only required another, greater magic to bring it to the surface.

I closed my eyes and concentrated. With invisible fingers I groped outward, seeking the limits of my power. 1 drew the Otherworid around me like a hooded robe until I could feel it, smell it, taste it. I sank deeper, my lips forming the most potent words I knew, the names of the gods of the abyss, the lords of night and storm and the spaces between the stars, the darkest aspects of the Source.

A cold tingling invaded my fingertips.

Without opening my eyes, I reached out and rested my fingers on the surface of the carved image.

Sensation ran up my arms as if I had thrust my hands into a raging fire.

It took all my willpower to keep from snatching my hands away from the stone. Then I heard the voices. The d^ep and distant

voices of druids chanting, otherwhen, in the great grove of the Camutes.

“You will enter the light but never suffer the flame, ” they reminded me.

I opened my eyes.

By the time the Goban Saor returned to the tent, an oxhide painted with druidic symbols once more covered the Two-Faced One. The craftsman slanted a look at it, then led me outside to watch him draw various plans in the dirt with a spearhead, explaining the advantages of each and telling me which ones Rix had approved.

“If we erect a line of stakes just inside the perimeter walls of our encampment and then … you aren’t listening, Ainvar.”

“I am,” I said hastily.

I pulled my thoughts away from the Two-Faced One and bent over to study the Goban Saor’s latest design.

While we were making our arrangements, Caesar was making his. He deployed his legions in a huge irregular circuit around Alesia, erecting twenty-three small redoubts at various points from which observers could watch for activity among the Gauls. Under cover of night, he had his men start digging trenches and erecting palisades we did not discover until daylight.

Rix took the cavalry out on frequent sallies in an attempt to

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destroy these constructions, but each time he was repulsed. “My men aren’t fighting as hard as they should,” he told me grimly. “They advance on the enemy as if they expect something terrible to happen at any moment.”

“They do,” I said. “Caesar has clouded their minds with fear. Fear is a powerful magic, Rix. If you’ll let me, I could undertake

a ritual to counter…”

“My men don’t need magic to make them fight! They need inspiration, and that is something /can give them!”

He gathered the warriors and made brave, exhortatory speeches that had them cheering and beating on their shields with spears. As long as they could hear his voice ringing in their ears, they were willing to face any danger. But he could not defeat Caesar with speeches alone. The time came when he must lead the men against the Romans, and when that happened and the Gauls heard Roman war trumpets and German battle cries, they seemed to

shrink inside themselves.

When men who were once confident of winning have lost badly

instead, something inside them is broken.

Using legionaries as ditchers and carpenters and engineers, Caesar continued inexorably to strengthen his position. Soon there were two lines of earthworks encircling Alesia, each composed of ditches and ramparts and banks and various traps of his devising. The inner earthwork was meant to keep us penned inside the town, while the outer one was obviously intended to deflect any reinforcements who might come to our aid.

Observing these constructions from the palisade of the stronghold, the Goban Saor was mightily impressed with their ingenuity. It seemed impossible that such a huge undertaking could have been done in so short a time by the Roman army, but it had.

Rix was furious. “Fifty thousand Romans cannot hold eighty

thousand Gauls!”

But they could.

And in repeated engagements, we were learning at a great cost of blood that our warriors were no match for Caesar’s men in the open. The Gauls attacked as they always had, wildly, haphaz-ardly, heroically, each searching out an opponent who looked capable of testing his courage and giving him an honorable triumph, each fighting according to the dictates of his own inner

nature.

The Romans, on the other hand, moved in precise formations

according to one overriding design, and through a variety of long-practiced maneuvers trapped our warriors and cut them down.

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hi our tent at night after a particular disastrous battle, Cotuatus rolled his eyes at the covered image.’ ‘Are you going to work your magic now, Ainvar, and shrivel Caesar’s army?”

“Even the Order of the Wise does not possess a magic strong enough to destroy so many men at once,” I said. “It would be easier to roll the sea aside-”

“But you must be planning to do something very powerful,” interposed the Goban Saor, “or you would not have had me bring that so far.” He nodded toward the covered image. “You have to tell us what you’re going to do, Ainvar, we need to know.”

I frowned. “Magic is weakened if you give it away beforehand.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue with him,” Cotuatus interrupted. “Never, ever, argue with the Keeper of the Grove!”

The Goban Saor fell silent. I cast an approving nod at the new king of the Camutes. Cotuatus had learned his lesson well.

Periiaps I should have sought to develop the same sort of control over Rix. But I doubt if I could have done so. Cotuatus believed in magic. Vercingetorix did not.

As Caesar’s grip tightened, Rix made another attempt to strengthen the cavalry, exhorting them to overcome once and for all the memory of their recent disgrace by crushing Caesar’s horsemen in an engagement on the plain. I watched the battle from the walls of the stronghold.

It was a long and hard-fought fight. Sometimes it looked as if we might win. Rix led one brilliant, fearless charge after another and the Roman horsemen fell back. Then Caesar sent his Germans against us once more and once more the Gauls panicked and fled.

In despair, I turned away from me sight. I looked down to discover Onuava at the toot of the palisade, gazing up at me, shading her hand with her eyes. “What’s happening, Ainvar?”

“We’re losing. Our men are running away from Caesar’s.”

“They can’t! They must not! Not the Gaulsl” She stared at me fixedly for a heartbeat, then spun away and ran toward the king’s lodge in the center of the stronghold. I lost sight of her in the milling crowd. Alesia was filled not only with the usual townspeople and members of the army, but also with the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside, driven by war to seek protection within its walls. The cleverest hound could not get from one side of Alesia to the other without being stepped upon.

I saw Onuava again soon enough. A side gate opened and a

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chariot emerged, the battered war cart of the king of the Mandubii. He was not in it, however. An Arvemian wamor held the reins, and beside him rode the wife of Vercingetorix.

Onuava was screaming and brandishing a sword. Her unbound hair streamed behind her like a tawny flag. Following her ran two-score women, wamors’ wives, also screaming, also brandishing weapons. Like Onuava’s, their faces were distorted with fury.

They were an awesome sight. When the women collided with the retreating warriors, many of the men stopped, turned, and went back with them to face the Germans once more. The battle resumed on a new level of savagery. I saw Gaulish women hurl themselves on the fiercest German horsemen and drag them from their animals to attack them with teeth and nails and fists and feet as welt as knives. As an assault force, our women were more frightening than anything Caesar could send against us. It was a pity we did not have more of them. Led by the formidable Onuava, they displayed an awesome talent for survival against overwhelming odds.