The former king had disappeared after the surrender of the oppidum last autumn. Some said he had been quietly murdered in the aftermath, though Cavarinos doubted that. Not only did it not seem to be the Roman way, but also the Arverni king would be too valuable as a symbol to merely kill without pomp and show. But what had happened to him was still a mystery as far as the people of his former army knew.
The familiar voice of Lucterius was closing on the door now, and Cavarinos retreated to the corner of the room and slumped into his seat with his beer. There was nowhere to hide from the gathering of nobles, and he couldn’t really see any reason to hide anyway. He was no more their enemy than he was their friend.
The door clicked open and the four other occupants looked up in passing interest before going back to their drinks and food. Lucterius was finely arrayed, though not in armour. His sword, however, remained at his side, as did those of the other nobles accompanying him.
‘It is all a matter of time and location,’ Lucterius was saying to his cronies. ‘If only we could trust Commius and bring him in to our plans, he could prove extremely useful, but after his flight and cowardice at Alesia, we simply cannot rely on him.’
‘What use is Commius anyway?’ snorted one of the nobles in an accent that was either Carnute or Senone. ‘He has ever been but a lap-dog of Caesar. One summer of riding in Vercingetorix’s shadow does not make him a hero.’
Lucterius nodded his agreement. ‘He is weak and untrustworthy. But he has influence and power. While he languishes up among the Belgae, it is said he already begins to put together an army to lead against Rome’s ally, the Remi.’
‘There are not enough Belgae left to fight in a tavern brawl let alone a war!’
Nor are there enough of you, thought Cavarinos silently.
‘But,’ Lucterius countered, ‘Commius, as I said, has influence. There is talk that he will cross the narrow sea and bring his cousins from the northern isles to war against Rome. And his people are related to several of the tribes across the eastern river.’
And you think our lands would still be ours if an alliance of the Britannics and the Germanics pushed Rome from it? You fools.
‘Then perhaps we should approach him anyway?’ an Arvenian noble hazarded.
‘No. But perhaps we can use him. Our friends among the Carnutes and the Bituriges will bash their shields and light their fires to draw the Roman gaze, but we cannot afford to lose those lands.’ He turned to the outspoken Carnute noble. ‘As soon as the Romans are engaged in trying to quench your flames, we need to draw his attention to Commius. Between the two regions the Romans will be kept busy, and we will have time to build our army in the south.’
Cavarinos flashed a glance to the Carnute and Biturige leaders in the crowd and was not surprised to see misgivings written on their features. It sounded an awful lot like Lucterius was sacrificing them to give himself time to raise a force unnoticed. The idiot. As if he could find the manpower to fight off two or three legions, let alone ten!
‘Be reassured, my friends,’ Lucterius continued, apparently also reading the nervousness of his sacrificial animals. ‘We will not lose you. Make much noise. Rebel and shout, but when the Romans come, run to the swamps and the forests and keep your people safe. The time will come when we need them.’
They did not look altogether reassured, but the men at least nodded their acceptance and understanding. Cavarinos took another swig of his beer, shaking his head at the idiocy of it all. The man was so arrogant in his self-belief that he didn’t even hold such plotting in private, but spoke of rebellion aloud in an inn. Of course, Uxellodunon was Lucterius’ home town and he was lord here, but only a foolish lord believed his domain impregnable and secure from spies. Cavarinos would not be at all surprised if one of the shady fellows in this bar ran off to tell the Romans in hope of a reward. For a moment, he considered it himself. His personal war was over and, while he still felt the base pride of his tribe somewhere down in the pit of his stomach, he now recognised that the good of his people lay in capitulation and peace. Further struggle would only end in worse conditions and more dead. The only hope for the tribes now was to embrace their fate and make it work for them. Become more Roman than the Romans and thereby keep both their pride and their control.
But despite that, he would not run to the Romans and tell them. Someone should, but it would not be him. Not now, anyway. The time was coming to leave Uxellodunon and Cadurci territory. He would travel back east for now, to his own Arverni lands. He had not been there since the autumn, directly after Alesia. Perhaps things had improved there over the winter. Probably not, he decided.
His attention was drawn again by the word ‘prisoner’, and he looked up at the gathering of nobles.
‘If they are of no use, why do you not simply dispose of them?’
Lucterius frowned at the speaker – an unknown man with a western accent. ‘Only a fool disposes of an asset, even if it is seemingly of no current use. They have already been tortured for anything they know. There are less than thirty of them and they are starving and broken. They are no threat and require very little guarding or maintenance, so we will keep them until we have won or lost. When Esus rises once more we will ride high on a mound of Roman bodies, my friends.’
Cavarinos closed his eyes and took another pull of his drink. Did Lucterius really think he could be an ‘Esus’ raising the tribes to war once more? He could only ever be a pale imitation of the great Vercingetorix. And his army would be but an echo of that which had held the ground at Alesia.
The issue of prisoners was interesting though. They could not have been taken at Alesia, for the Romans controlled the field at the end of that fight. And while there was every possibility that they had been taken from some supply depot or roving patrol in recent months, Cavarinos doubted it. If Lucterius was trying to hide his army-building from the Romans, taking prisoners would be stupid and dangerous, and would almost certainly attract unwanted attention. And the Romans had not fought down into Cadurci lands in recent campaigns. But Gergovia was a mere two days to the northeast, and the Cadurci under Lucterius had played a large part in that victory. Cavarinos would be willing to put money on the prisoners being survivors of Gergovia.
Paying no heed to the inn’s other occupants, Lucterius approached the bar and collected a drink, leaving the others to deal with their own refreshments as he launched off into a tirade over Roman cowardice compared to the cowardice of treacherous tribesmen who should know better.
Cavarinos quickly became aware that although the nobles had paid no attention to who might be overhearing their plotting, the warriors in their retinue as they entered were beginning to look around the interior and focus on the occupants. Cavarinos was clean-shaven – a state so rare as to be noteworthy – and clearly not Cadurci, and trouble could very well be looming on the horizon. These warriors were the best their tribes still had to offer, and any one of them would be a tough proposition in a fight. Standing, he picked up his bag, nodded his thanks to the innkeeper, and made his way as nonchalantly as possible to the door. There he waited for the warriors to enter, and once the entire bunch were inside, packing the sizeable interior, he slipped past them and out into the chilly late afternoon air. Time to move on. Sooner or later someone would mention his presence to Lucterius, and it was faintly possible that this new self-professed ‘Esus’ would remember the Arverni noble who had shaved off his moustaches before the final capitulation at Alesia.