Videssos Cycle, Volume 1 Read online

  “Well struck!” Gaius Philippus shouted.

  His sword-arm was red almost to the elbow. Marcus shrugged, not thinking his blow had carried that much force. More likely some smith had jobbed the Gaul, though most Celtic metalworkers took pride in their products.

  It was growing dark fast now. Marcus set some men not yet fighting to make torches and pass them forward. His soldiers used them for more than light—a Celt fled shrieking, his long, greasy locks ablaze.

  Liscus went down, fighting against the countrymen he had abandoned for Rome. Scaurus felt a stab of remorse. The interpreter had been bright, jolly, and recklessly brave—but then, of how many on both sides might that have been said? Now he was merely dead.

  The Gauls pushed forward on either wing, slashing, stabbing, and chopping. Outnumbered, the Romans had to give ground, their line bending away from the covering forest. As he watched them driven back upon themselves, the growing knowledge of defeat pressed its icy weight on Scaurus’ shoulders. He fought on, rushing now here, now there, wherever the fighting was fiercest, shouting orders and encouragement to his men all the while.

  In his learning days he had studied under scholars of the Stoic school. Their teachings served him well now. He did not give way to fright or despair, but kept on doing his best, though he knew it might not be enough. Failure, in itself, was not blameworthy. Lack of effort surely was.

  Gaius Philippus, who had seen more bumbling young officers than he could remember, watched this one with growing admiration. The fight was not going well, but with numbers so badly against the Romans it was hard to see how it could have gone much better.

  The buccinators’ horns blew in high alarm. The woods were screen no more; leaping, yelling Celts burst forward, storming at the Roman rear. Tasting the cup of doom in earnest, Marcus wheeled his last reserves to face them, shouting, “Form circle! Form circle!”

  His makeshift rear defense held somehow, beating back the ragged Celtic charge until the Roman circle could take shape. But the trap was sprung. Surrounded deep within the land of their foes, the legionaries could expect but one fate. The night was alive with the Celts’ exultant cries as they flowed round the Roman ring like the sea round a pillar of hard black stone it would soon engulf.

  Druids’ marks on his blade flashing in the torchlight, the Gallic chieftain leaped like a wolf against the Roman line. He hewed his way through three ranks of men, then spun and fought his way back to his own men and safety.

  “There’s a warrior I’d sooner not come against,” Gaius Philippus said, somberly eyeing the twisted bodies and shattered weapons the Gaul had left behind him.

  Marcus gave tribute where it was due. “He is a mighty one.”

  The battle slowed, men from both sides leaning on spear or shield as they tried to catch their breath. The moans of the wounded floated up into the night. Somewhere close by, a cricket chirped.

  Marcus realized how exhausted he was. His breath came in panting sobs, his legs were leaden, and his cuirass a burden heavier than Atlas had borne. He itched everywhere; dried, crusted sweat cracked whenever he moved. He had long since stopped noticing its salt taste in his mouth or its sting in his eyes.

  His hand had been clenched round his sword hilt for so long he had to will it open to reach for the canteen at his side. The warm, sour wine stung his throat as he swallowed.

  The moon rose, a couple of days past full and red as if reflecting the light of this grim field.

  As if that had been a signal, the Celtic chieftain came up once more. The Romans tensed to receive his onslaught, but he stopped out of weapon range. He put down his sword, raised his bare right hand above his head. “It’s well you’ve fought,” he called to the Romans in fair Latin. “Will you not yield yourselves to me now and ha’ done with this foolish slaughter? Your lives you’ll save, you know.”

  The military tribune gave surrender a few seconds’ honest thought. For some reason he was inclined to trust the Gaul’s good intentions, but doubted the barbarian would be able to control his followers after they had the Romans in their power. He remembered all too well the Gallic custom of burning thieves and robbers alive in wickerwork images and knew it would be easy for the Romans, once captive, to be judged such.

  One legionary’s comment to his linemate rang loud in the silence: “Bugger the bastard! If he wants us, let him come winkle us out and pay the bill for it!”

  After that, Marcus did not feel the need for any direct reply. The Celt understood. “On your heads it will be, then,” he warned.

  He turned to his own troops, shouting orders. Men who had chosen to sit for a moment heaved themselves up off their haunches, tightened their grips on spears, swords, clubs. They tramped forward, and the insane smithy’s din of combat began again.

  The Roman ring shrank, but would not break. The still bodies of the slain and thrashing forms of the wounded impeded the Gauls’ advance; more than one stumbled to his death trying to climb over them. They came on.

  “Give yourselves up, fools, while there’s the most of you alive!” their chieftain yelled to his foes.

  “When we said ‘no’ the first time, did you not believe us?” Marcus shouted back.

  The Gaul swung up his sword in challenge. “Maybe after the killing of you, the Roman next in line to your honor will have more sense!”

  “Not bloody likely!” Gaius Philippus snarled, but the big Celt was already moving. He cut down one Roman and kicked two more aside. He ducked under a broken spear swung club-fashion, lashing out with his blade to hamstring the swinger. Then he was inside the Roman line and loping at Marcus, longsword at the ready.

  A score of legionaries, first among them Gaius Philippus, moved to intercept him, but the tribune waved them back. Fighting died away as, by unspoken common consent, both armies grounded their weapons to watch their leaders duel.

  A smile lit the Celt’s face when he saw Marcus agree to single combat. He raised his sword in salute and said, “A brave man you are, Roman dear. I’d know your name or ever I slay you.”

  “I am called Marcus Aemilius Scaurus,” the tribune replied. He felt more desperate than brave. The Celt lived for war, where he himself had only played at it, more to further his political ambitions than from love of fighting.

  He thought of his family in Mediolanum, of the family name that would fail if he fell here. His parents still lived, but were past the age of childbearing, and after him had three daughters but no son.

  More briefly, he thought of Valerius Corvus and how, almost three hundred years before, he had driven a Celtic army from central Italy by killing its leader in a duel. He did not really believe these Gauls would flee even if he won. But he might delay and confuse them, maybe enough to let his army live.

  All this sped through his mind as he raised his blade to match the Gaul’s courtesy. “Will you give me your name as well?” he asked, feeling the ceremony of the moment.

  “That I will. It’s Viridovix son of Drappes I am, a chief of the Lexovii.” The formalities done, Marcus braced for Viridovix’s attack, but the Celt was staring in surprise at his sword. “How is it,” he asked, “that a Roman comes by the blade of a druid?”

  “The druid who bore it tried to stand against me and found he could not,” Marcus replied, annoyed that his enemies, too, found it odd for him to carry a Celtic sword.

  “It came of its own free will, did it?” Viridovix murmured, more surprised now. “Well, indeed and it’s a brave blade you have, but you’ll find mine no weaker.” He drifted forward in a fencer’s crouch.

  Celtic nonsense, the tribune thought; a sword was a tool, with no more will of its own than a broom. But as he brought his weapon to the guard position, he suddenly felt unsure. No trick of the setting sun now made the druids’ marks stamped down the length of the blade flicker and shine. They glowed with a hot golden light of their own, a light that grew stronger and more vital with every approaching step Viridovix took.

  The Gaul’s sword was flar
ing, too. It quivered in his hand like a live thing, straining to reach the blade the Roman held. Marcus’ was also twisting in his hand, struggling to break free.

  Awe and dread chased each other down Viridovix’ long face, harshly plain in the hellish light of the swords. Marcus knew his own features bore a similar cast.

  Men in both armies groaned and covered their eyes, caught in something past their comprehension.

  The two blades met with a roar louder than thunder. The charms the druids had set on them, spells crafted to keep the land of the Gauls ever free of foreign rule, were released at their meeting. That one sword was in an invader’s hands only powered the unleashing further.

  The Celts outside the embattled circle of Romans saw a dome of red-gold light spring from the crossed blades to surround the legionaries. One Gaul, braver or more foolish than his fellows, rushed forward to touch the dome. He snatched his seared hand back with a howl. When the dome of light faded away, the space within was empty.

  Talking in low voices over the prodigy they had witnessed, the Celts buried their dead, then stripped the Roman corpses and buried them in a separate grave. They drifted back to their villages and farms by ones and twos. Few spoke of what they had seen, and fewer were believed.

  Later that year Caesar came to the land of the Lexovii, and from him not even miracles could save the Gauls. The only magic he acknowledged was that of empire; for him it was enough. When he wrote his commentaries, the presumed massacre of a scouting column did not seem worth mentioning.

  Inside the golden dome, the ground faded away beneath the Romans’ feet, leaving them suspended in nothingness. There was a queasy feeling of motion and imbalance, though no wind of passage buffeted their faces. Men cursed, screamed, and called on their gods, to no avail.

  Then, suddenly, they stood on dirt again; Marcus had the odd impression it had rushed up to meet his sandals. The dome of light winked out. The Romans found themselves once more in a forest clearing, one smaller and darker than that which they had so unexpectedly left. It was dark night. Though Scaurus knew the moon had risen not long before, there was no moon here. There were no massed Celts, either. For that he gave heartfelt thanks.

  He realized he was still sword-to-sword with Viridovix. He stepped back and lowered his blade. At his motion, Viridovix cautiously did the same.

  “A truce?” Marcus said. The Gaul was part and parcel of the magic that had fetched them to this place. Killing him out of hand would be foolish.

  “Aye, the now,” Viridovix said absently. He seemed more interested in looking around at wherever this was than in fighting. He also seemed utterly indifferent to the danger he was in, surrounded by his foes. Marcus wondered whether the bravado was real or assumed. In the midst of Gauls, he would have been too terrified to posture.

  He glanced from his sword to Viridovix’. Neither, now, seemed more than a length of edged steel.

  The Romans milled about, wandering through the open space. To the tribune’s surprise, none came rushing up to demand putting Viridovix to death. Maybe, like Scaurus, they were too stunned at what happened to dare harm him, or maybe that confident attitude was paying dividends.

  Junius Blaesus came up to Marcus. Ignoring Viridovix altogether, the scout gave his commander a smart salute, as if by clinging to legionary routine he could better cope with the terrifying unknown into which he had fallen. “I don’t believe this is Gaul at all, sir,” he said. “I walked to the edge of the clearing, and the trees seem more like the ones in Greece, or some place like Cilicia.

  “It’s not a bad spot, though,” he went on. “There’s a pond over there, with a creek running into it. For a while I thought we’d end up in Tartarus, and nowhere else but.”

  “You weren’t the only one,” Marcus said feelingly. Then he blinked. It had not occurred to him that whatever had happened might have left him and his troops still within land under Roman control.

  The scout’s salute and his speculation gave the tribune an idea. He ordered his men to form a camp by the pond Blaesus had found, knowing that the routine labor—a task they had done hundreds of times before—would help take the strangeness from this place.

  He wondered how he would explain his arrival to whatever Roman authorities might be here. He could almost hear the skeptical proconsul: “A dome of light, you say? Ye-ss, of course. Tell me, what fare did it charge for your passage …?”

  Earthworks rose in a square; inside them, eight-man tents sprang up in neat rows. Without being told, the legionaries left a sizeable space in which Gorgidas could work. Not far from where Marcus stood, the Greek was probing an arrow wound with an extracting-spoon. The injured legionary bit his lips to keep from crying out, then sighed in relief as Gorgidas drew out the barbed point.

  Gaius Philippus, who had been supervising the erection of the camp, strolled over to Scaurus’ side. “You had a good idea there,” he said. “It keeps their minds off things.”

  So it did, but only in part. Marcus and Gorgidas were educated men, Gaius Philippus toughened by a hard life so he could take almost anything in stride. Most legionaries, though, were young, from farms or tiny villages, and had neither education nor experience to fall back on. The prodigy that had swept them away was too great for the daily grind to hold off for long.

  The Romans murmured as they dug, muttered as they carried, whispered to one another as they pounded tentpegs. They made the two-fingered sign against the evil eye, clutching the phallic amulets they wore round their necks to guard themselves from it.

  And more and more, they looked toward Viridovix. Like the anodyne of routine, his immunity slowly wore away. The mutters turned hostile. Hands started going to swords and spears. Viridovix’ face turned grim. He freed his own long blade in its scabbard, though even with his might he could not have lasted long against a Roman rush.

  But the legionaries, it seemed, wanted something more formal and awesome than a lynching. A delegation approached Scaurus, at its head a trooper named Lucilius. He said, “Sir, what say we cut the Gaul’s throat, to take away the anger of whatever god did this to us?” The men behind him nodded.

  The tribune glanced at Viridovix, who looked back, still unafraid. Had he cringed, Marcus might have let his men have their way, but he was a man who deserved better than being sacrificed for superstition’s sake.

  Scaurus said so, adding, “He could have stood by while his men slew us all, but instead he chose to meet me face-to-face. And the gods have done the same thing to him they did to all of us. Maybe they had their reasons.”

  Some legionaries nodded, but most were still unsatisfied. Lucilius said, “Sir, maybe they left him with us just so we could offer him up, and they’ll be angry if we don’t.”

  But the more he thought about it, the more Marcus hated the idea of deliberate human sacrifice. As a Stoic, he did not believe it would do any good, and as a Roman he thought it archaic. Not since the desperate days a hundred fifty years ago, after Hannibal crushed the Romans at Carthage, had they resorted to it. In even more ancient days, they sacrificed old men to relieve famine, but for centuries they had been throwing puppets made of rushes into the Tiber instead.

  “That’s it!” he said out loud. Both Viridovix and his own men eyed him, the one warily, the others expectantly. Remembering his fear of what the Gauls would do to his men if they surrendered, he went on, “I won’t make us into the savage image of the barbarians we were fighting.”

  He left everyone unhappy. Viridovix let out an angry snort; Lucilius protested, “The gods should have an offering.”

  “They will,” the tribune promised. “In place of Viridovix here, we’ll sacrifice an image of him, as the priests do to mark festivals where the victim used to be a man. If the gods take those offerings, they’ll accept this one as well—and in this wilderness, wherever it is, we may need the Gaul’s might to fight with us now, not against us.”

  Lucilius was still inclined to argue, but the practicality of Scaurus’ argument won ove
r most of the men. Without backing, Lucilius gave up. To keep from having a disaffected soldier in the ranks, Marcus detailed him to gather cloth and, from the edges of the pond, rushes to make the effigy. Self-importance touched, Lucilius bustled away.

  “I thank your honor,” Viridovix said.

  “He didn’t do it for your sake,” said Gaius Philippus. The senior centurion had stayed in the background, quiet but ready to back Marcus at need. “He did it to hold his leadership over the troops.”

  That was not altogether true, but Marcus knew better than to dilute Gaius Philippus’ authority by contradicting him. He kept quiet. Why the Gaul thought he had saved him did not matter; the result did.

  Viridovix looked down his nose at the short, stocky centurion. “And what would you have had him do with me, now? Chop me into dogmeat? The dogs’ll feed on more than me if you try that—a deal more, if himself sends runts like you against me.”

  Scaurus expected Gaius Philippus to fly into a killing rage, but instead he threw back his head and laughed. “Well said, you great hulk!”

  “Hulk, is it?” Viridovix swore in Gaulish, but he was grinning too.

  “What then?” Marcus said. “Do you aim to join us, at least till we find out where we are? The gods know, you’re a warrior born.”

  “Och, the shame of it, a Roman asking for my comradeship and me saying aye. But these woods are a solitary place for a puir lone Celt, and you Romans are men yourselves, for all that you’re dull.”

  Gaius Philippus snorted.

  “There’s another score,” Viridovix said. “Will your men have me, after my sending more than one of them to the next world?”

  “They’d better,” the senior centurion said, smacking his vine-stave into a callused palm.

  “Dull,” Viridovix repeated. “Never the chance to tell your officer be damned to him—and the day you try ordering me about you’ll remember forever. Nay, it’s always march in line, camp in line, fight in line. Tell me, do you futter in line as well?”