Druids (63 page)

There was little time for farewells, but I managed to find and embrace Hanesa. I had told him Vercingetorix’s last words, committing them to his bardic memory, and he wanted to stay with the others to the end. “The climax of my epic,” he said.

He was druid, and not afraid to die.

The conquering army started across the plain toward Alesia to claim its plunder. The Gauls on the palisade set up a great howling, meant to distract the Romans from what was happening at the side gate. The gate opened, and the king and the craftsman pulled the wheeled platform outside. I walked next to it, with one hand resting on the leather-covered object. The women and children clustered around it.

We struck off at an angle leading sharply away from Alesia. If we were fortunate, we could lose ourselves in the hills before the Romans saw us.

But we were not so fortunate. We heard the trumpets blow, and when I looked back, I saw that a detachment of German cavalry had been sent to head us off and bring us back. Some of the children screamed and several women stumbled in fear, but I shouted to them to be as brave as Vercingetorix. His name seemed to have a calming effect.

As the Germans bore down on us, I looked back toward the fort. Then I whipped the covering from the object on the wheeled platform and waved the leather in the air as a signal.

The watchers on the wall saw it. At once they began chanting as I had taught them, m one great and rhythmic voice.

I concentrated on pouring all the strength left in me into me uncovered image of the Two-Faced One.

When my fingers touched the surface of the stone, heat leaped along my arm. It pulsed in rhythm with the chanting coming from

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Alesia, the sound encircling and connecting us, amplifying my strength and the power in the stone.

The women and children screamed and shrank back. I knew what they were seeing, but I was not looking at the image. I was watching the German cavalry bearing down upon us.

They came at a headlong gallop, shrieking wildly, their faces distorted with smears of blood and dye meant to give them terrifying expressions. But when they saw the figure of the platform, their terror became real.

I watched panic seize them as it had once seized our warriors when the Germans attacked them. The foremost horsemen began desperately sawing at the reins, trying to turn their animals around. Those behind crashed into them. Horses and men screamed together. The air was filled with screaming.

And from the figure at my back pulsed a deadly, horrible heat,

I kept my face turned toward the Germans, my arm stretched back behind me so my fingers remained in contact with the image. I seemed to be held within a bubble of scalding light. The Germans tried to flee from that light, trampling each other in their manic fear, changing before my eyes from a military assault force into a pack of hysterical savages willing to kill each other just to escape the unknown.

They were broken completely. Faced with a magic beyond their comprehension, they fled in all directions—not a moment too soon. The last of my strength was devoured by the stone and I felt my knees give way.

Throwing off his harness, the Goban Saor caught me as I fell. Over his shoulder I had one glimpse of the thing the Germans had seen. On the wheeled platform crouched a two-faced monster burning with an unearthly fire, all four eyes rolling and glaring, two sets of nostrils snorting, two sets of lips writhing to reveal gnashing teeth.

Alive.

Blazingly, undeniably, alive.

As I collapsed, the fire faded.

Cotuatus threw the leather cover back over the figure. The Go-ban Saor propped me against the platform and rubbed life back into my limbs. Timidly, the women and children crept up to us. When they had all been collected, the two men took up the cart once more, and we set off at the trot, the women and children following like a parade of geese on their way to the river.

I do not know if any of the Germans recovered enough to report to Caesar. But no one else came after us.

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At sundown we buried the stone image in the heart of a woodland. We burned the wooden platform in our campfire, and at dawn resumed our journey west and northward.

I was going home. to the great grove of the Carnutes.

Along the way I asked everyone we met if they had news of the army of Gaul. We were given conflicting reports. I began to hope Aberth had not learned of our defeat, though it was a foolish hope. I knew how fast word could travel.

As if to intensify our pain, the land was lovely that autumn. The earth wore amber and emerald, mornings were as sweet and crisp as the first bite of an apple, nights were soaked with starlight.

At first we hardly spoke to one another. We traveled numbly, each isolated m memories. Even the children were less fretful than I anticipated. They clung to their mothers and scuSed their toes in the earth as we walked. When people we met along the

way gave us food, we fed the children first.

Some people gave us nothing. They cowered behind the walls of their dwellings, the Celtic tradition of hospitality forgotten, and their dogs snarled at us as we passed by. Rome was already an acknowledged presence in what had been free Gaul.

We saw Roman patrols several times. Each time I herded my little group into a woodland and hid until they passed by.

By our third-night camp, we were able to talk to one another, a little. I sat on a fallen tree beside Cotuatus and stretched my legs toward the fire.

“What do you suppose those Germans told Caesar?” he asked after a time.

“I doubt if they told him anything. I suspect they took the horses he’d given them and rode straight for the Rhine.”

“Mmmmm.” Cotuatus gazed into the flames. “I would have done the same thing myself. I wish you’d warned us first.”

A child was crying somewhere, a thin, weak sound. A mother’s gentle murmur quieted it. The night smelled of woodsmoke.

For some reason that most familiar of scents made me uneasy.

Onuava joined us. She never ceased to surprise me. I had expected that, of all the women, she would complain the most, longing for her abandoned comforts. Instead, she encouraged oth-ers when they were weary, and made light of our problems. If a weaker woman was too tired to carry her infant, Onuava took the child in her arms and strode on as if it weighed nothing.

Yet she must have been tired, too. And heartsick. And I knew she carried her own infant in her womb.

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I moved over on the log to make room for her. Reaching down, Onuava picked up bits of bark and twig and began throwing them idly into the campfire. “What will happen to him, Ainvar?”

I knew who she meant. So did Cotuatus, who made a pained sound and stood up. Muttering something about needing to relieve himself, he left us.

Thinking about Vercingetorix was painful for all of us.

“Caesar said he would take him back to Rome. To exhibit. He’s never had such a captive.”

“He’ll take care of him, then?” she asked hopefully.

“If you mean, will he feed him well and clothe him richly and give him the finest shelter as we do our noble hostages? the answer is no, Onuava. That isn’t the Roman way.”

“Then what will he do? Ainvar, you can see the future; look

into it for me and tell me what will become of my husband.”

“I cannot see the mture. At least, not to order. I have random flashes sometimes, never when I want or expect them. It is not my gift. And even if it were, 1 don’t want to see the future. I don’t want to see any more pain.”

‘ ‘But haven’t you tried to foresee what will happen to your own people? Your wife, your children …”

She felt me stiffen beside her.

“I have a daughter,” 1 said, tight-lipped. “Had a daughter. She was stolen. We think she was taken to a Roman camp, but I don’t know. I suspect I’ll never know, now. She may have been one of the captives with Caesar. If we had won, I would have gone among them trying to find her. Now …”

“Oh, Ainvar.” She put her hand on my arm and said nothing more, for which I was grateful.

That night when I spread my cloak on the ground to try to sleep, Onuava came to me. She lay down in my arms and pulled the cloak over the two of us. She was warm against my body, but I could not feel her warmth—nor, I suspect, could she feel mine. I clasped her more tightly, trying to restore the sense of touch, but I was numb. I put my hand on her full, soft breast, and it was just a hand on a breast. It might have been a hand on a lump of earth.

She touched my genitals, stroked their unresponsive flesh, then took her hand away and laid it instead on my chest, her palm over my heart—

1 held her until the dawn, then we got up and went on.

We skirted the ruins of Cenabum. Neither Cotuatus nor I had any desire to go close enough to see the destruction. But as we

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continued northward and the soft brown earth welcomed my feet, I began extending my stride without realizing it.

“You’re outrunning the women,” the Goban Saor told me.

I checked myself, slowed, tried to wait for them. But there was a woman up ahead who was waiting for me. Briga was waiting for me.

And Lakutu, and Glas, and Cormiac Ru.

And the grove. My spirit was hungrier for the grove than my belly had been for food during the siege of Alesia. My feet broke into a trot without permission from my head, leaving the others behind.

Around highsun I circled a clump of alders and found a griz-zled fisherman sitting on the bank of a tributary of the Autura. He was mending his net, patiently reknotting torn network. He

looked up at me in surprise.

“Where did you come from?”

“Alesia.”

His eyes opened wide. “I thought they were all dead in Alesia. The army of Gaul and everyone with them.”

“When did you hear that?”

“Just this morning, about dawn. It was shouted up the river. We’d heard rumors for days, but this claimed to be truth.”

I froze. “Would they have heard it at the Fort of the Grove?”

“I suppose so. I don’t go that way much myself. It’s half a day’s walk, you know. This is my little patch and I stay with it.” He looked back at his net, anxious to return to his task. His world was very narrow and self-contained; he really did not much care about Caesar, or Alesia.

Perhaps he was a fortunate man.

But his words had just destroyed my world.

By now Briga would have followed my instructions. The sacrificer’s knife would have done its work

I began to run.

It is better this way, my head tried to tell me. Better that they are dead, with their spirits set free, than alive to be sold into slavery.

But I am still alive, I argued. I wanted them to be alive with me!

I ran faster. Familiar landmarks blurred past. I ran until my lungs were tearing apart for want of breath and I found myself leaning against some smallholder’s wattle-and-daub shed, gasping for air.

Cotuatus and the Goban Saor were far behind me. They would

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have to take care of the women and children and bring them on to the Fort of the Grove.

Where my family lay dead.

I knotted my fists and shook them at the sky and screamed.

Soft ash drifted onto my upturned face.

The smell of woodsmoke hung thick in the autumn air.

Too thick.

I stood very still, exploring with the senses of my spirit. Then I began to run again.

The great ridge rose from the surrounding plain as it had since before the Celts came to Gaul. Sacred heart of the land, place of awesome power.

Crowned in flame.

Even so far away, I could see that the grove was burning.

Transcending legs and lungs, I ran as I had never run before, keeping my eyes fixed on the terrible sight of leaping fire devouring the oaks. The wind blew the ash toward me, bringing me the dying whispers of the trees.

My trees.

I thought fleetingly of rain magic, but it was too late. The entire forested ridge was blazing furiously. By the time I could summon enough clouds to the clear sky, there would be nothing left to save.

I ran on.

How much pain can a spirit absorb? That is a question for druids to ponder. Kind death gives us a chance to forget those pains too cruet to remember. As I ran, my hand sought the knife I was still carrying in my belt, the one the Goban Saor had sharpened for Vercingetorix.

The Fort of the Grove loomed off to one side and I veered toward it, determined to die wherever my family was. By then I was sobbing a wild mixture of curses and invocations, calling upon the Source of every name I knew, with all the power of love and grief.

And Briga ran into my armsAs simply as that, she ran out through the gateway of the fort and into my arms.

Joy can hurt more than pain and be harder to believe in. Crying and laughing, we clung to each other. Her fingers explored my face and I wrapped her in my arms and swung her around and around.

“You!” we cried to each other. “You, you, you!”

Then they were all there, gathering around us, shouting with

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surprise and relief: Lakutu, the children, Sulis, Keryth, Grannus, Teymon and Damona, Dian Cet …

I did not see Aberth.

“Where is the sacrificer, Briga?”

“Ah, Ainvar. Just this morning we heard that you …”

“I know. But you can see I’m still alive.”

“Yes’ But when I thought everything was lost I went to Aberth as you had asked me to do. While he was making … preparations for us. the sentry shouted that there was fire in the grove.

“A Roman patrol had set fire to the great grove! As soon as he heard that, Aberth forgot about us. He left like a wind blowing, running up there to fight the fire and the Romans. Narios the exhorter went with him, and I had to hold back Cormiac Ru to keep him from joining them. We waited and hoped, but …”

“They never came back,” I finished for her- “They are dead, then.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged in a whisper. “The Romans rode away; they never bothered to attack the fort. We didn’t know what to do. We’ve just been waiting and watching.”