“Do you know what the Romans do when one of their armies is defeated in battle?”
She looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing.
“They send more legions, and more legions, and as many as it takes until they win. And when they do, they wipe the offending nation from existence. Valens knows that. He’ll gather an army bigger than Caesar’s ever was, and then turn around and betray your father. He won’t have any choice. He’ll have to conquer the Belgae. The senate will demand it, no doubt prompted by his own cronies. He’ll do it just to improve his standing in Rome, regardless of the promises he made your father. Don’t you see? A man like that will stop at nothing. Your father, your people, are nothing but stepping stones on his quest for power.”
“Why do your people support such men? Why do they attack us?”
Lucius was taken aback at the question. “To stop the barbaric practices you yourself said were a disgrace, ma’am. You despise human sacrifice? So do the Romans. That kind of practice would certainly stop were you under Roman rule.”
“Yet I have heard that the Romans entertain themselves by watching wild animals feast on human flesh.”
“What? Oh, you mean the arena. Well, yes, but it’s not the same thing.”
Gertrude muttered something that sounded like a Belgic curse. She looked irritated, not at Lucius’s story, but at Lucius himself. She said something to Alain with many hand gestures and many sighs and much inflection in her voice.
“What did she say?” Lucius asked the boy, who seemed to have been affected by Lucius’s words, even though he still translated between them.
“It is unwise to call her father a fool,” Alain said.
“Is that all? Surely, that’s not all she said,” Lucius said astonished. “The fate of her whole people are at stake and she’s worried I called her father a fool?”
“Fool!” Gertrude said in a sudden attempt at Gaulish. She rose from her seat and glared across the table at him. “Fool!” She said again. Then, in a huff, she stormed out of the hut, her face red with anger.
After several moments, Alain said, “You have upset her. All your talk of treason has upset her. You must learn better manners, Roman dog.”
Lucius eyed the boy, thinking of how much he would like to take the runt by the scruff of the neck and toss him out the window, but he remained calm and took a deep breath. He had to befriend Alain somehow, if he wished to escape, and the lad’s dogged devotion to his mistress was giving Lucius an idea of how he might do just that.
XVIII
Divitiacus rode north cautiously. He stayed off the path whenever possible to avoid being seen by any Nervii patrols, but, strangely, he had encountered none. He came to a river which he knew to be the Sabis, and swam his horse across the slow-moving stretch of icy water. Upon reaching the northern bank, he could not find the path again, but he kept heading northward, deeper into the Nervii countryside.
Having seldom been in the Nervii lands, and then only keeping to the roads, he was fairly certain that he was lost. He kept heading north because he knew the Nervii had a large oppidum there, but whether it was just up ahead, or still two days away, he could not tell. He knew that the main north-south road being used by the Roman army was east of his position, and he only knew this because he had not yet crossed it. The road might be far away by now, or it might be just beyond the next hill. He had no way of knowing, so he pressed on.
The forest and the surrounding hills seemed strangely quiet, especially if he was indeed as close to the main Nervii oppidum as he believed he was, and he proceeded with attentiveness.
Around midday, as he steered his horse further into the wilderness, he was met by a scattering of forest animals heading in the opposite direction. Several deer came out of the woods to his front and passed him on both sides. Animals that would have normally stayed clear of a man practically brushed his leg as they scurried away. He even had to steer his horse out of the way of one disoriented, large-horned elk.
Then, he heard a rumble in the ground. It sounded as if the earth itself had a heartbeat. Divitiacus instantly knew what was coming. He wheeled his mount around and started in the other direction, but then the thunder of hooves to his right and left made him rein in.
It was too late. The flankers had gotten past him.
Grabbing the low hanging branch of a large tree, Divitiacus pulled himself up into the giant boughs and began to climb, pausing only once to swat the rump of his horse to send it running. He climbed as fast as he could, up and up, until he was hidden within the leaves and branches in the tree’s high top.
Then, what he had expected came.
A wall of men moved through the forest. Rank after rank of spearmen, swordsmen, and skirmishers. There were thousands of them, a seemingly endless mass of warriors filing through the trees beneath as if the trunks of the trees had been overtaken by a flood of humanity. Every opening in the branches, every piece of ground beneath him, was covered with the marching soldiers, and they were moving quickly, unencumbered by baggage. The woad-covered warriors were marching to war. They marched southeast, they marched silently, and Divitiacus knew that they were headed to intercept the Roman army.
Divitiacus sat in the tree for nearly three hours as the horde passed beneath him, holding his breath each time he saw a blue-painted face turned skyward. But, they never saw him. When he finally dared to come down, he set foot onto ground that had been trampled into mud.
As he looked at the torn-up ground, stretching off in all directions beneath the trees, a massive scar on the earth that could only have been made by fifty thousand men or more, Divitiacus suddenly remembered why the Aedui had never gone to war against the Belgic tribes.
XIX
The old druidess stood on the barren hilltop speaking incantations as the yellow moon crept over the eastern horizon. Her druids were beside her and they repeated her words. The previous night’s bonfire still smoldered, a mound of red embers and blackened bones. The elevation afforded a view of the darkened treetops, stretching out as far as the eye could see, and the woman raised her hands as if to bless the direction in which the horde of Belgic warriors had taken in their rapid march to head off the approaching invaders. Far away to the south, almost to the visible horizon, a glow hung above the forest. It marked the campfires of the Roman army, only a day’s march away. The sight made her stomach turn, though she did not know why. There was something about the infidels that frightened her to the core, something that drew her to them yet repulsed her at the same time. They were so strange, and yet so familiar to her. It was as if she understood their nature and all that they intended for the lands they conquered. They would drive her kind from the land. The druids would fade into nothingness.
She felt at the ring on her finger, the strange ring, the only thing she had brought with her from the other world. All those years ago, when the god of the sea had deposited her onto the beach, she had been naked but for the single ring that marked her as an endowment by the gods to the world of men. The druids had found her and cared for her, and when they saw that her mind was blank and undefiled by the knowledge of men, they knew that she had been sent to fulfill a purpose. She was a gift from the gods, a spotless soul to learn the arts and to bring the people back into harmony with the spiritual world. She had learned quickly, and had quickly become the seer for many tribes. In her first years as a druidess, she had crossed the length and breadth of Gaul and Belgica, learning the arts of the various druid sects, even travelling to Britannica, where they practiced magic long since forgotten by civilized man. Her knowledge had made her powerful, and her prophecies had given her renown. For hers always came true. But the years had passed, and she had seen the tribes of the land succored by the temptations of trade. They traded openly with the heathens that lived around the great southern sea, and the influence had been most corrupting.