Viridomarus exploded in incoherent rage, his friend trying to keep him under control, though his anger was too great for his speech to be truly intelligible. Similarly, at the far side of the chamber, Critognatos rose angrily to his feet and started to jab the air in the direction of the livid Aeduan with an accusatory finger, yelling insults and imprecations, as Cavarinos sat back and watched his brother, shaking his head in distaste at this pointless bickering. It occurred to him that if Critognatos and Viridomarus were to command this army, the tribes might win, but what they would win would be a blood-soaked land, empty of people and light, unable to support life.
‘The Aedui should lead.’ The voice of Convictolitanis, the magistrate who ruled the Aedui, cut through the cacophony in much the same way as the Arverni king’s had. The bickering faded away.
‘Explain?’ Vergasillaunus requested quietly.
‘We are the greatest of the tribes. I do not want to belittle your achievements, which are magnificent, and without your boldness and effort, none of this would have happened. But the Aedui are the largest, strongest and richest tribe. We know the Romans better than any of you. Our capital — this great oppidum in which you now sit — is the greatest in the land and has a history of moots for the tribes. The Romans are now in our lands, which makes us the sensible commanders and gives us the most to lose. Surely the logic of all this cannot escape you. And above all, we are an elected rulership, who can be legally deposed and replaced. There is no danger of us deciding to remain your overlord when Caesar is gone, which is, I think, a large part of what worries the other tribes.’
‘Then let us ask them,’ threw in a new voice.
The Aeduan magistrate and the Arverni king, as well as most other eyes in the room, turned on Cavarinos, who shrugged.
‘The Aedui make a good case. I cannot deny it. And yet they are new to this war, which Vercingetorix is winning, having forced Caesar onto the defensive. We can argue about our validity all day, but this is a matter which affects all the tribes. The Romans call us “Gaul” as though we were one nation and, as my king has said: we need to be one nation in order to defeat Rome. We need to be Gaul. Well unless I am much mistaken there are nobles and ambassadors present from almost every tribe this side of the Rhenus and the Hispanic mountains. The Treveri are missing, for they are busy with German incursions, and the Remi and Lingones do not attend, for they remain tied to Caesar, along with those peoples on the southern borders who have been Roman so long they have forgotten who they were. But every other tribe deserving of mention is here. Let us moot as we have for Caesar in the past. Let the vote be cast for the leadership of the army.’
Silence fell as all regarded Cavarinos, and finally Vercingetorix and Convictolitanis shared a look and nodded. The Aeduan magistrate turned to his right hand man. ‘Fetch the voting sherds.’
The man nodded and opened a chest at the rear of the council chamber, drawing from it a large, heavy leather bag. Passing around the room as the buzz of ordinary conversation returned in place of the roar of anger, the Aeduan guard handed to each tribe’s leader two pieces of broken pot, one bearing the scratched and painted image of a boar and the other a rearing horse.
Another man set a large amphora into a recess in the floor at the room’s centre and cleared his throat. ‘Every tribe gets one vote. Cast your sherd into the pot appropriately: The horse for Aedui leadership, the boar for Arverni.’
Cavarinos looked across at Vergasillaunus as the sherds were passed to the king’s cousin, Vercingetorix being skipped as one of the proposed leaders. A lot rode on this moment. His eyes fell on the pot and he felt the tension in his body rise as the first man threw a vote in. He saw the Aedui horse flipping over and over into the darkness as the Mediomatrici put in their vote. Slowly, subtly, he reached down to his belt pouch and withdrew the wrapped bundle, unwinding the cloth and resting the curse of Ogmios openly upon his knee, in plain sight of all who approached the voting jar. He was rewarded by the sight of the Senone chief, who had been weighing the sherds in each hand, peering up at the curse and apparently coming to a decision, casting the boar into the pot.
A quarter of an hour was all it took and as the last, an ambassador for the distant Morini who faced Britannia across the water, cast his sherd, the two men who had carried out the voting duties lay out a wide, black blanket upon the ground. Carefully, they tipped the large amphora onto one side of it and began to lay out the pieces of pottery in two groups.
As the boar pile grew and grew, it became immediately apparent how the vote had gone. Across the room, lit by many lamps of Roman design, the Aeduan Magistrate gave a resigned sigh and nodded his sad acceptance of his lot. Critognatos leered at the Aedui noblemen and Viridomarus began to rise angrily once more, restrained only by the hands of Eporedirix.
There was no need to perform a count. It was plain from the relative sizes of the piles.
‘I will recognise no king over my people,’ snarled Viridomarus.
Vercingetorix rose and folded his arms. ‘The tribes have made their choice plain. But rest assured, Aedui friends, I have no intention of becoming king of your tribe. I accept the overlordship of all the peoples. The Romans cannot comprehend an alliance of tribes. They seek to make us one Gaul under their rule. Well one Gaul we shall be. Not beneath their rule, but atop their bodies.’
A bellow of approval rose from most throats in the hall, and the Arverni king noted Viridomarus’ sullen silence. He nodded as though coming to a decision.
‘The time has come to finish Caesar and to drive Rome from our lands once more. But we cannot finish there. Once Caesar is dead or in disgraced retreat to Rome, we must push back their border and recover what they call Narbonensis, freeing our brothers in the south, and the lands of the tribes beyond the Alpes, in the north of their own lands. This is the time to free all the tribes once more and come together as a great nation in defiance of Roman domination.’
Another roar greeted this, and even Viridomarus was nodding reluctantly.
‘The assembled tribes who have hitherto taken no part in the campaign will provide between them fifteen thousand horsemen, who should be able to be gathered and sent to the army swiftly. With them, we can hammer the legions of Caesar. I will take the cavalry from here, along with our own already assembled, and harry Caesar’s army, preventing him from foraging, while the rest of the army gathers and moves into position.’
He nodded to Convictolitanis. ‘The Aedui and Segusiavi will raise ten thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry in the meantime. You may assign them Aedui generals as you see fit, and they will serve only under Aedui, to bring concord with those who disapprove of my overall command. You will take this army south, along with others you can raise from the allied tribes south of here. Crush those peoples at the borders who revel in their Romanness, and make the Romans fight for their own lands. As long as they are busy there, Caesar will find no succour from his own people.’