3

At first it looked as if the breaking Gallic storm would be Celtic after all. Caesar had been snugly ensconced in his new stone house for a month when word came that the Carnute elders, egged on by the Druids, had killed Tasgetius, their king. Not usually something of concern, but in this case very worrying; it had been Caesar’s influence had elevated Tasgetius to the kingship. The Carnutes were peculiarly important over and above their numbers and their wealth, for the center of the Druidic web spread throughout Gaul of the Long-hairs was located in the lands of the Carnutes at a place called Carnutum, the navel of the Druidic earth. It was neither oppidum nor town, more a carefully oriented collection of oak, rowan and hazel groves interspersed with small villages of Druid dwellings.

Druidic opposition to Rome was implacable. Rome represented a new, different, alluring apostasy bound to collide with and destroy the Druidic ethos. Not because of the coming of Caesar. The feeling and the attitude were well entrenched by this time, the result of almost two hundred years of watching the Gallic tribes of the south succumb to Romanization. The Greeks had been in the Province far longer, but had remained in the hinterland around Massilia and preferred to be indifferent to barbarians. Whereas the Romans were incurably busy people, had the knack of setting the standard and style of living wherever they settled, and had the habit of extending their highly prized citizenship to those who co-operated with them and rendered good service. They fought crisp wars to eliminate undesirable characteristics like taking heads—a favorite pastime among the Salluvii, who lived between Massilia and Liguria— and would always be back to fight another war if they hadn’t done too well in the last one. It had been the Greeks who brought the vine and the olive to the south, but the Romans who had transformed the native peoples of the Province into Roman thinkers: people who no longer honored the Druids, who sent their wellborn sons to study in Rome instead of in Carnutum.

Thus Caesar’s advent was a culmination rather than a root cause. Because he was Pontifex Maximus and therefore head of the Roman religion, the Chief Druid had asked for an interview with him during his visit to the lands of the Carnutes in that first year Rhiannon had journeyed with him.

“If Arvernian is acceptable you can send the interpreter away,” said Caesar.

“I had heard that you speak several of our tongues, but why Arvernian?” the Chief Druid asked.

“My mother had a servant, Cardixa, from the Arverni.”

A faint anger showed. “A slave.”

“Originally, but not for many years.”

Caesar looked the Chief Druid up and down: a handsome, yellow-haired man in his late forties, dressed simply in a long white linen tunic; he was clean-shaven and devoid of ornament.

“Do you have a name, Chief Druid?”

“Cathbad.”

“I expected you to be older, Cathbad.”

“I might say the same, Caesar.” It was Caesar’s turn to be looked up and down. “You’re Gallic fair. Is that unusual?”

“Not very. It’s actually more unusual to be very dark. You can tell from our third names, which often refer to some physical characteristic. Rufus, which indicates red hair, is a common cognomen. Flavus and Albinus indicate blond hair. A man with truly black hair and eyes is Niger.”

“And you are the high priest.”

“Yes.”

“You inherited the position?”

“No, I was elected Pontifex Maximus. The tenure is for life, as with all our priests and augurs, who are all elected. Whereas our magistrates are elected for the term of one year only.”

Cathbad blinked, slowly. “So was I elected. Do you really conduct the rituals of your people?”

“When I’m in Rome.”

“Which puzzles me. You’ve been the chief magistrate of your people and now you lead armies. Yet you are the high priest. To us, a contradiction.”

“The two are not irreconcilable to the Senate and People of Rome,” said Caesar genially. “On the other hand, I gather that the Druids constitute an exclusive group within the tribe. What one might call the intellectuals.”

“We’re the priests, the doctors, the lawyers and the poets,” said Cathbad, striving to be genial.

“Ah, the professionals! Do you specialize?”

“A little, particularly those who love to doctor. But all of us know the law, the rituals, the history and the lays of our people. Otherwise we are not Druids. It takes twenty years to make one.”

They were talking in the main hall of the public building in Cenabum, and quite alone now that the interpreter had been sent away. Caesar had chosen to wear the toga and tunic of the Pontifex Maximus, magnificent-looking garments broadly striped in scarlet and purple.

“I hear,” said Caesar, “that you write nothing down—that if all the Druids in Gaul were to be killed on the same day, knowledge would also die. But surely you’ve preserved your lore on bronze or stone or paper! Writing isn’t unknown here.”

“Among the Druids it is, though we can all read and write. But we do not write down anything which pertains to our calling. That we memorize. It takes twenty years.”

“Very clever!” said Caesar appreciatively.

Cathbad frowned. “Clever?”

“It’s an excellent way to preserve life and limb. No one would dare to harm you. Little wonder a Druid can walk fearlessly onto a field of battle and stop the fighting.”

“That is not why we do it!” Cathbad cried.

“I realize that. But it’s still clever.” Caesar switched to another touchy subject. “Druids pay no taxes of any kind, is that right?”

“We pay no taxes, it is true,” said Cathbad, pose subtly stiffer, face stubbornly impassive.

“Nor serve in the army?”

“Nor serve as warriors.”

“Nor put your hands to any menial task.”

“It’s you who are clever, Caesar. Your words put us in the wrong. We serve, we earn our rewards. I’ve already told you, we are the priests, the doctors, the lawyers and the poets.”

“You marry?”

“Yes, we marry.”

“And are supported by the working people.”

Cathbad hung on to his temper. “In return for our services, which are irreplaceable.”

“Yes, I understand that. Very clever!”

“I had assumed you would be more tactful, Caesar. Why should you go out of your way to insult us?”

“I don’t insult you, Cathbad. I’m after the facts. We of Rome know very little of the living structure within the Gallic tribes who have not come in contact with us until now. Polybius has written a little about you Druids, and some other lesser men of history mention you. But it is my duty to report on these things to the Senate, and the best way to find out is to ask,” said Caesar, smiling, but not with charm. Cathbad was impervious to it. “Tell me about women.”

“Women?”

“Yes. I note that women, like slaves, can be tortured. Whereas no free man, however low his status, can be tortured. I also note that polygamy is permitted.”

Cathbad drew himself up. “We have ten different degrees of marriage, Caesar,” he said with dignity. “This permits a certain latitude about the number of wives a man may acquire. We Gauls are warlike. Men die in battle. In turn, this means that there are more women among our people than men. Our laws and customs were designed for us, not for Romans.”

“Quite so.”

Cathbad drew a breath audibly. “Women have their place. Like men, they have souls, they change places between this world and the other world. And there are priestesses.”

“Druids?”

“No, not Druids.”

“For every difference, there is a similarity,” said Caesar, the smile reaching his eyes. “We elect our priests, a similarity. We do not permit women to hold priesthoods which are important to men, a similarity. The differences are in our status as men—military service, public office, the payment of taxes.” The smile disappeared. “Cathbad, it isn’t Roman policy to disturb the Gods and worshiping practices of other peoples. You and yours stand in no danger from me or from Rome. Except in one single respect. Human sacrifice must cease. Men kill each other everywhere and in every people. But no people around the margins of Our Sea kills men—or women—to please the Gods. The Gods do not demand human sacrifice, and the priests who believe they do are deluded.”

“The men we sacrifice are either prisoners of war or slaves bought for the specific purpose!” Cathbad snapped.

“Nevertheless it must stop.”

“You lie, Caesar! You and Rome do threaten the Gallic way of life! You threaten the souls of our people!”

“No human sacrifice,” said Caesar, unmoved and immovable.

Thus it went for several hours more, each man learning about the mind of the other. But when the meeting ended, Cathbad left a worried man. If Rome continued to infiltrate Gaul of the Long-hairs, everything would change; Druidism would dwindle and vanish. Therefore Rome must be driven out.

*

Caesar’s response had been to begin negotiating for the elevation of Tasgetius to the Carnute kingship, by chance vacant. Among the Belgae combat would have decided the issue, but among the Celtae—including the Carnutes—the elders decided in council, with the Druids very carefully watching—and lobbying. The verdict had favored Tasgetius by a very narrow margin, and had depended on his undeniable blood claim. Caesar wanted him because he had spent four years in Rome as a child hostage and understood the perils of leading his people into outright war.

Now all of that was gone. Tasgetius was dead and Cathbad the Chief Druid was running the councils.

“So,” said Caesar to his legate Lucius Munatius Plancus, “we’ll try a deterrent. The Carnutes are a fairly sophisticated lot, and the murder of Tasgetius may not have been a design for war. They may have killed him for tribal reasons. Take the Twelfth and march for their capital, Cenabum. Go into winter camp outside its walls on the closest dry ground you can find, and watch. Luckily there’s not much forest, so they shouldn’t be able to surprise you. Be ready to deal with trouble, Plancus.”

Plancus was another of Caesar’s protégés, a man who, like Trebonius and Hirtius, relied heavily upon Caesar to advance his career. “What about the Druids?” he asked.

“Leave them and Carnutum severely alone, Plancus. I want no religious aspect to this war; that stiffens resistance. Privately I detest the Druids, but it is not my policy to antagonize them any more than I have to.”

Off went Plancus and the Twelfth, which left Caesar and the Tenth to garrison Samarobriva. For a moment Caesar toyed with the idea of bringing Marcus Crassus and the Eighth into camp with the Tenth, as they were only twenty-five miles away, then decided to leave them where they were. His bones still insisted that the brewing revolt would be among the Belgae, not among the Celtae.

His bones were right. A formidable adversary has a habit of throwing up men capable of opposing him, and one such capable man was emerging. His name was Ambiorix and he was co-ruler of the Belgic Eburones, the selfsame tribe in whose lands the Thirteenth Legion of raw recruits was wintering inside the fortress of Atuatuca under the “exactly equal” joint command of Sabinus and Cotta.

Gaul of the Long-hairs was far from united, particularly when it came to congress between the part-German, part-Celtic Belgae of the north and northwest, and the pure Celtic tribes to their south. This lack of congress had benefited Caesar greatly, and was to do so again during the coming war-torn year. For Ambiorix didn’t seek any allies among the Celtae; he went to his fellow Belgae. Which let Caesar fight peoples rather than one united people.

The Atuatuci were reduced to a handful—no allies there since Caesar had sold the bulk of the tribe into slavery. Nor could Ambiorix hope for co-operation from the Atrebates, with their Roman puppet king, Commius, plotting to use the Romans as a lever to create a new title, High King of the Belgae. The Nervii had gone down badly several years before, but it was a very large and populous tribe which could still field a terrifying number of warriors. Unfortunately the Nervii fought on foot, and Ambiorix was a horseman. Worth seeing what mischief he could brew there, but they wouldn’t follow a horse leader. Ambiorix needed the Treveri, in whose ranks horse soldiers reigned supreme; the Treveri were also the most numerous and powerful people among the Belgae.

Ambiorix was a subtle man, unusual in the Belgae, with an imposing presence. As tall as a full-blooded German, he had lime-stiffened, flax-fair hair that stood out like the rays around the head of the sun god Helios, his great blond moustache drooped almost to his shoulders, and his face with its fierce blue eyes was nobly handsome. His narrow trousers and long shirt were black, but the big rectangular shawl which he draped around his body and pinned upon his left shoulder bore the Eburone pattern of checks, black and scarlet on a vivid saffron-yellow background. Just above his elbows were twin golden torcs as thick as snakes, just above his wrists were twin golden cuffs studded with lustrous amber, around his neck gleamed a huge golden torc with a horse’s head at either end, the brooch securing his shawl was a great cabochon of amber set in gold, and his belt and baldric were made of gold plates hinged together and set with amber, as were the scabbards of his longsword and dagger. He looked every inch a king.

But before he could acquire the power to persuade other tribes to join his Eburones, Ambiorix needed a victory. And why look further afield than his own lands to find it? There sat Sabinus, Cotta and the Thirteenth Legion like a guest-gift. The problem was their camp; bitter experience had taught the Gauls that it was virtually impossible to storm and take a properly fortified winter camp. Especially when, as in this case, it was built upon the corpse of a formidable Gallic oppidum which Roman expertise had rendered impregnable. Nor would surrounding Atuatuca and starving it out work; the Romans counted on the enemy’s being clever enough to do that. A Roman winter camp was furnished with good fresh water aplenty, food aplenty and sanitary arrangements which ensured disease was held at bay. What Ambiorix had to do was to lure the Romans out of Atuatuca. His way to secure his end was to attack Atuatuca, being careful to keep his Eburones out of harm’s way.

What he didn’t expect was that Sabinus would give him a perfect opening by sending a delegation to demand indignantly of the King what he thought he was doing. Ambiorix hurried to answer in person.

“You’re not going out there to talk to him, surely!” said Cotta when Sabinus began to don his armor.

“Of course I am. You ought to come along too, co-commander.”

“Not I!”

Thus Sabinus went alone save for his interpreter and a guard of honor; the parley took place right outside Atuatuca’s front gate, and Ambiorix was accompanied by fewer men than Sabinus had with him. No danger, no danger at all. What was Cotta on about?

“Why did you attack my camp?” Sabinus demanded angrily through his interpreter.

Ambiorix produced an exaggerated shrug and spread his hands, eyes wide with surprise. “Why, noble Sabinus, I was merely doing what every king and chieftain is doing from one end of Gallia Comata to the other,” he said.

Sabinus felt the blood drain from his face. “What do you mean?” he asked, and wet his lips.

“Gallia Comata is in revolt, noble Sabinus.”

“With Caesar himself sitting in Samarobriva? Rubbish!”

Another shrug, another widening of the blue eyes. “Caesar is not in Samarobriva, noble Sabinus. Didn’t you know? He changed his mind and departed for Italian Gaul a month ago. As soon as he was safely gone the Carnutes murdered King Tasgetius, and the revolt began. Samarobriva is under such huge attack that it is expected to fall very soon. Marcus Crassus was massacred nearby, Titus Labienus is under siege, Quintus Cicero and the Ninth Legion are dead, and Lucius Fabius and Lucius Roscius have withdrawn to Tolosa in the Roman Province. You are alone, noble Sabinus.”

White-faced, Sabinus nodded jerkily. “I see. I thank you for your candor, King Ambiorix.” He turned and almost ran back through the gate, knees shaking, to tell Cotta.

Cotta stared at Sabinus with jaw dropped. “I don’t believe a word of it!”

“You had better, Cotta. Ye Gods, Marcus Crassus and Quintus Cicero are dead, so are their legions!”

“If Caesar had changed his mind about going to Italian Gaul, Sabinus, he would have let us know,” Cotta maintained.

“Perhaps he did. Perhaps we never received the message.”

“Believe me, Sabinus, Caesar is still in Samarobriva! You’ve been told lies designed to make us decide to retreat. Don’t listen to Ambiorix! He’s playing fox to your rabbit.”

“We have to go before he comes back! Now!”

The only other man privy to this conversation was the Thirteenth’s primipilus centurion, known as Gorgo because his glance turned soldiers to stone. A hoary veteran who had been in Rome’s legions since Pompey’s war against Sertorius in Spain, Gorgo had been given the Thirteenth by Caesar because of his talent for training and his toughness.

Cotta looked at him in appeal.

“Gorgo, what do you think?”

The head in its fantastic helmet with the great stiff sideways crest nodded several times. “Lucius Cotta is right, Quintus Sabinus,” he said. “Ambiorix is lying. He wants us to panic and pull stakes. Inside this camp he can’t touch us, but the moment we’re on the march we’re vulnerable. If we stick it out here for the winter we’ll survive. If we march, we’re dead men. These are real good boys, but they’re green. They need a well-generaled battle with plenty of company to season them. But if they’re called on to fight without some veteran legions in the line with them, they’ll go down. And I don’t want to see that, Quintus Sabinus, because they are good boys.”

“I say we march! Now!” Sabinus shouted.

Nor could he be bent. An hour of reasoning and arguing later Sabinus was still insisting on a retreat. Nor could Cotta and Gorgo be bent. At the end of another hour they were still insisting that the Thirteenth stick it out in the winter camp.

Sabinus stormed off in search of food, leaving Cotta and Gorgo to look at each other in consternation.

“The fool!” Cotta cried, not caring that he was insulting a legate in the hearing of a centurion. “Unless you and I can talk him out of retreating, he’ll get us all killed.”

“Trouble is,” said Gorgo thoughtfully, “he won a battle all on his unaided own, so now he thinks he knows the military manual better than Rutilius Rufus, who wrote it. But the Venelli aren’t Belgae, and Viridovix was a typical thick Gaul. Ambiorix is not typical and not thick either. He’s a very dangerous man.”

Cotta sighed. “Then we have to keep trying, Gorgo.”

Keep trying they did. Night fell with Cotta and Gorgo still trying, while Sabinus just grew angrier and more adamant.

“Oh, give over!” Gorgo yelled in the end, patience exhausted. “For the sake of Mars, try to see the truth, Quintus Sabinus! If we leave this camp we’re all dead men! That includes you as well as me! And you might be ready to die, but I’m not! Caesar is sitting in Samarobriva, and may all the Gods help you when he finds out what’s gone on here for the last twelve hours!”

The kind of man who wouldn’t stomach the attendance of King Commius at a Roman council was certainly not going to stomach this from a lowly centurion, primipilus veteran or not. Face purple, Sabinus went for him, one hand upraised, and slapped him with an open palm. That was too much for Cotta, who stepped between them and knocked Sabinus off his feet, then fell on him and pounded him unmercifully.

It was Gorgo who broke them up, aghast. “Please, please!” he cried. “Do you think my boys are deaf, dumb and blind? They know what’s going on between us! Whatever you decide, decide it! This sort of thing isn’t going to help them!”

On the verge of tears, Cotta stared down at Sabinus. “All right, Sabinus, you win. Not Caesar himself could reason with you once you’ve made up what passes for your mind!”

*

It took two days to organize the retreat, for the troops, all very young and inexperienced, couldn’t be persuaded by their centurions not to overload their packs with personal treasures and souvenirs, nor to relinquish their extra gear and souvenirs in the wagons. None of it worth a sestertius, but so precious to seventeen-year-olds keen to cement their yearned-for military careers with memories.

The march when it did begin was painfully slow, not helped by the sleet driving in their faces behind a howling wind straight off the German Ocean; the ground was both soaked and icy, the wagons kept bogging to the axles and were difficult to extricate. Even so, the day passed and the rugged heights of Atuatuca disappeared behind the shifting mists. Sabinus began to crow over Cotta, who set his lips and said nothing.

But Ambiorix and the Eburones were there beyond the sleety rain, biding their time with the complacence of men who knew the terrain a great deal better than the Romans did.

Ambiorix’s plan worked smoothly; he could not afford to let the Roman column, marching down the Mosa, get far enough away from Atuatuca to encounter any of Quintus Cicero’s men, for Quintus Cicero and the Ninth were very much alive. The moment Sabinus led the Thirteenth into a narrow defile, Ambiorix swung his foot soldiers to block the Roman advance and unleashed his horse soldiers on the tail of the column until it turned back on itself and prevented retreat out of the steep-sided gulch, perfect for Ambiorix’s purpose.

The initial reaction was blind panic as screaming hordes of Eburones swarmed into both ends of the defile, their brilliant yellow shawls abandoned so that they seemed like black shadows out of the Underworld. The unversed troops of the Thirteenth broke formation and tried to flee. Worse was Sabinus, whose fear and dismay drove all military ideas from his head.

But when the shock wore off, the Thirteenth steadied down, saved from immediate massacre by the narrow confines in which the attack took place. There was nowhere to flee, and once Cotta, Gorgo and his centurions got the milling recruits standing in proper rank and file to resist, the lads discovered to their delight that they could kill the enemy. The peculiar iron of a hopeless situation stiffened their spirits, and they resolved that they would not die alone. And while the troops at the head and the tail of the column held the Eburones at bay, the troops in the middle, helped by the noncombatants and slaves, began to throw up defensive walls.

At sunset there was still a Thirteenth, hideously smaller but far from defeated.

“Didn’t I tell you they were good boys?” asked Gorgo of Cotta as they paused to catch their breath; the Eburones had drawn off to mass for another onslaught.

“I curse Sabinus!” Cotta hissed. “They are good boys! But they’re all going to die, Gorgo, when they deserve to live and put decorations on their standards!”

“Oh, Jupiter!” came from Gorgo in a moan.

Cotta swung to look, and gasped. Carrying a stick on which he had tied his white handkerchief, Sabinus was picking his way across the dead at the mouth of the defile to where Ambiorix stood conferring with his nobles.

Ambiorix, wearing his brilliant yellow shawl because he was one of the leaders, saw Sabinus and walked a few paces forward, holding his longsword in front of him, its tip pointing at the ground. With him went two other chieftains.

“Truce, truce!” Sabinus shouted, panting.

“I accept your truce, Quintus Sabinus, but only if you give up your weapons,” said Ambiorix.

“Spare those of us who are left, I beg you!” said Sabinus, throwing sword and dagger away ostentatiously.

The answer was a sudden swirling sweep of the longsword; Sabinus’s head soared into the air, parting company with its Attic helmet as well as its body. One of Ambiorix’s companions caught the helmet as it descended, but Ambiorix waited until the head had finished rolling before he walked to it and picked it up.

“Oh, these shorn Romans!” he cried, unable to wrap Sabinus’s half-inch-long hair about his knuckles. Only by shaping his hand into a claw did he manage to lift the head high and wave it in the direction of the Thirteenth. “Attack!” he screamed. “Take their heads, take their heads!”

Cotta was killed and decapitated not long after, but Gorgo lived to see the Aquilifer, dying on his feet, summon up some last reserve of strength and fling his hallowed silver Eagle like a javelin behind the dwindling Roman line.

The Eburones drew off with the darkness, and Gorgo went the rounds of his boys to see how many were still on their feet. Pitifully few: about two hundred out of five thousand.

“All right, boys,” he said to them as they huddled together in a sea of fallen comrades, “swords out. Kill every man who’s still breathing, then come back to me.”

“When will the Eburones return?” asked one seventeen-year-old.

“At dawn, lad, but they won’t find any of us alive to burn in their wicker cages. Kill the wounded, then come back to me. If you find any of our noncombatants or slaves, offer them a choice. Go now and try to get through to the Remi, or stay with us and die with us.”

While the soldiers went to obey his orders, Gorgo took the silver Eagle and looked about him, eyes used to the darkness. Ah, there! He gouged out a long, pipelike trench in some soft, bloody ground and buried the Eagle, not very deeply. After which he heaved and hauled until the spot was under a pile of bodies, then sat on a rock and waited.

At about the middle hour of the night, the surviving soldiers of the Thirteenth Legion killed themselves rather than live to be burned in wicker cages.

*

There were very few noncombatants or slaves left alive, for all of them had plucked swords and shields from dead legionaries and fought. But those who still lived were let through the enemy lines indifferently, with the result that Caesar got word of the fate of the Thirteenth late the following day.

“Trebonius, look after things,” he said, clad in good plain steel armor, his scarlet general’s cloak tied to his shoulders.

“Caesar, you can’t go unprotected!” Trebonius cried. “Take the Tenth; I’ll send for Marcus Crassus and the Eighth to hold Samarobriva.”

“Ambiorix will be long gone,” said Caesar positively. “He knows a Roman relief force will appear, and he has no intention of imperiling his victory. I’ve sent to Dorix of the Remi to muster his men to arms. I won’t be unprotected.”

Nor was he. When he reached the Sabis River some distance beyond its sources, Caesar met Dorix and ten thousand Remi cavalry. With Caesar rode a squadron of Aeduan cavalry and one of his crop of new legates, Publius Sulpicius Rufus.

Rufus gasped in awe as they came over a rise and looked down on the massed Remi horsemen. “Jupiter, what a sight!”

Caesar grunted. “Pretty to look at, aren’t they?”

Remi shawls were checkered in brilliant blue and dull crimson with a thin yellow thread interwoven, and Remi trousers were the same; Remi shirts were dull crimson, Remi horse blankets brilliant blue.

“I didn’t know the Gauls rode such handsome horses.”

“They don’t,” said Caesar. “You’re looking at the Remi, who went into the business of breeding Italian and Spanish horses generations ago. That’s why they greeted my advent with glee and profuse protestations of friendship. They were finding it very hard to keep their horses—the other tribes were forever raiding their herds. Fighting back turned them into superb cavalrymen themselves, but they lost many horses nonetheless, and were forced to pen their breeding stallions inside veritable fortresses. They also border the Treveri, who lust after Remi mounts. To the Remi, I was a gift from the Gods—I meant Rome had come to stay in Gaul of the Long-hairs. Thus the Remi give me excellent cavalry, and as a thank-you I send Labienus to the Treveri to terrify them.”

Sulpicius Rufus shivered; he knew exactly what Caesar meant, though he knew Labienus only through the stories forever circulating in Rome. “What’s wrong with Gallic horses?” he asked.

“They’re not much bigger than ponies. The native stock if unmixed with other breeds is a pony. Very uncomfortable for men as tall as the Belgae.”

Dorix rode up the hill to greet Caesar warmly, then swung his dish-faced, long-maned marca beside the General.

“Where’s Ambiorix?” asked Caesar, who had preserved his calm and betrayed no sign of grief since getting the news.

“Nowhere near the battlefield. My scouts report it’s quite deserted. I’ve brought slaves with me to burn and bury.”

“Good man.”

They camped that night and rode on in the morning.

Ambiorix had taken his own dead; only Roman bodies lay in the defile. Dismounting, Caesar gestured that the Remi and his own squadron of cavalry should stay back. He walked forward with Sulpicius Rufus, and as he walked the tears began to run down his seamed face.

They encountered the headless body of Sabinus first, unmistakable in its legate’s armor; he had been a smallish man, Cotta much larger.

“Ambiorix has a Roman legate’s head to decorate his front door,” said Caesar, it seemed oblivious to his tears. “Well, he’ll have no joy from it.”

Almost all the bodies were headless. The Eburones, like many of the Gallic tribes, Celtae as well as Belgae, took heads as battle trophies to adorn the door posts of their houses.

“There are traders do an excellent business selling cedar resin to the Gauls,” said Caesar, still weeping silently.

“Cedar resin?” asked Sulpicius Rufus, weeping too, and finding this dispassionate conversation bizarre.

“To preserve the heads. The more heads a man has around his door, the greater his warrior status. Some are content to let them wear away to skulls, but the great nobles pickle their trophies in cedar resin. We’ll recognize Sabinus when we see him.”

The sight of dead bodies and battlefields was not a new experience for Sulpicius Rufus, but his youthful campaigns had all been conducted in the East, where things were, he knew now, very different. Civilized. This was his first visit to Gaul, and he had arrived but two days before Caesar had ordered him to come on this journey into death.

“Well, they weren’t massacred like helpless women,” said Caesar. “They put up a terrific fight.” He stopped suddenly.

He had come to the place where the survivors had killed themselves, unmistakably; their heads remained on their shoulders and the Eburones had obviously steered a wide berth around them, perhaps frightened of that kind of courage, alien to their own kind. To die in battle was glorious. To die after it alone in the dark was horrifying.

“Gorgo!” said Caesar, and broke down completely.

He knelt beside the grizzled veteran and pulled the body into his arms, crouched there and put his cheek on the lifeless hair, keening and mourning. It had nothing to do with the deaths of his mother and daughter; this was the General grieving for his troops.

Sulpicius Rufus moved onward, shaken because he could see now how young they had all been, most of them not yet shaving. Oh, what a business! His running eyes flicked from face to face, looking for some sign of life. And found it in the face of a senior centurion, hands still clasped around the handle of his sword, buried in his belly.

“Caesar!” he shouted. “Caesar, there’s one alive!”

And so they learned the story of Ambiorix, Sabinus, Cotta and Gorgo before the pilus prior centurion finally let go.

Caesar’s tears hadn’t dried; he got to his feet.

“There’s no Eagle,” he said, “but there should be. The Aquilifer threw it inside the defenses before he died.”

“The Eburones will have taken it,” said Sulpicius Rufus. “They’ve left nothing unturned except those who killed themselves.”

“Which Gorgo will have known. We’ll find it there.”

Once the bodies alongside Gorgo were moved, they found the Thirteenth’s silver Eagle.

“In all my long career as a soldier, Rufus, I’ve never seen a legion killed to the last man,” said Caesar as they turned to where Dorix and the Remi waited patiently. “I knew Sabinus was a puffed-up fool, but because he handled himself so well against Viridovix and the Venelli, I thought him competent. It was Cotta I didn’t think up to it.”

“You weren’t to know,” said Sulpicius Rufus, at a loss for the right response.

“No, I wasn’t. But not because of Sabinus. Because of Ambiorix. The Belgae have thrown up a formidable leader. He had to defeat me on his own in order to show the rest of them that he is capable of leading them. Right now he’ll be sniffing at the arses of the Treveri.”

“What about the Nervii?”

“They fight on foot, unusual for the Belgae. Ambiorix is a horse leader. That’s why he’ll be wooing the Treveri. Do you feel up to a long ride, Rufus?”

Sulpicius Rufus blinked. “I don’t have your stamina in the saddle, Caesar, but I’ll do whatever you require.”

“Good. I must stay here to conduct the funeral rites for the Thirteenth, whose heads are missing and therefore cannot hold the coin to pay Charon. Luckily I’m Pontifex Maximus. I have the authority to draw up the necessary contracts with Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Pluto to pay Charon for all of them in one lump sum.”

Completely understandable. The only Romans who were deprived of their heads under usual circumstances had also forfeited their Roman citizenship; to have no mouth in which to hold the coin to pay for the ferry ride across the river Styx meant that the dead man’s shade—not a soul but a mindless remnant of life—wandered the earth instead of the Underworld. Invisible demented, akin to the living demented who roamed from place to place being fed and clothed by the compassionate, but were never invited to stay and never knew the comfort of a home.

“Take my squadron of cavalry and ride for Labienus,” Caesar said, pulling his handkerchief from under the armhole of his cuirass and wiping his eyes, blowing his nose. “He’s on the Mosa not far from Virodunum. Dorix will give you a couple of Remi as guides. Tell Labienus what happened here, and warn him to be very vigilant. And tell him”— Caesar drew a harsh breath—”tell him to give absolutely no quarter.”

*

Quintus Cicero knew nothing of the fate of Sabinus, Cotta and the Thirteenth. Camped among the Nervii without benefit of a fortress like Atuatuca, Cicero’s little brother and the Ninth Legion had made themselves as comfortable as possible in the midst of a flat, sleety expanse of pasture as far from the eaves of the forest as they could get, and well removed from the Mosa River.

It wasn’t all bad. A stream ran through the camp, providing good fresh water where it entered and carrying the latrine sewage away as it chuckled, unfrozen, down to the distant Mosa. Of food they had plenty, and it was more varied than Quintus Cicero for one had expected after that gloomy council in Portus Itius. Wood for heating was not hard to come by, though the parties sent off to the forest to fetch it went heavily armed, stayed alert, and had a signal system in case they needed help.

The best feature about this winter cantonment was the presence of a friendly village in close proximity; the local Nervian aristocrat, one Vertico, was strongly in favor of a Roman army in Belgica, for he believed that the Belgae had more chance of fending off the Germans if they were allied to Rome. This meant that he was anxious to help in whatever ways he could, and generous to a fault in the matter of women for the Roman troops. Provided a soldier was prepared to pay, women there were. Mouth rugging itself into a smile, Quintus Cicero closed a tolerant eye to all of this, contenting himself with writing to his big brother snug in Rome and wondering on the paper if he ought to demand a share of the commission Vertico undoubtedly extracted from his obliging females, whose ranks kept swelling as word of the largesse to be found in the Ninth’s camp spread far and wide.

The Ninth was composed of genuine veterans, having been enlisted in Italian Gaul during the last five months of Caesar’s consulship; they had fought their way, they were fond of saying, from the Rhodanus River to Oceanus Atlanticus and from the Garumna in Aquitania to the mouth of the Mosa in Belgica. Despite which, they were all around an age of twenty-three, hard-bitten young men whom nothing frightened. Racially they were akin to the people they had been fighting for five years, for Caesar had culled them from the far side of the Padus River in Italian Gaul, where the people were the descendants of the Gauls who had fallen on Italia some centuries before. So they were on the tall side, fair or red of hair, and light-eyed. Not that this blood kinship had endeared the long-haired Gauls to them; they hated long-haired Gauls, Belgae or Celtae made no difference. Troops can live with respect for an enemy, but not with feelings of love or even pity. Hate is a mandatory emotion for good soldiering.

But Quintus Cicero’s ignorance went further than oblivion about the fate of the Thirteenth; he also had absolutely no idea that Ambiorix was intriguing in the councils of the Nervii to see what damage he could do en route to his parley with the Treveri. Ambiorix’s lever was simple and extremely effective: once he learned that the Nervian women were hustling themselves off to earn some money (a substance to which they normally had little access) in the Ninth’s winter camp, stirring up the Nervii was easy.

“Are you really content with dipping your wicks in some Roman soldier’s leavings?” he asked, blue eyes wide with astonishment. “Are your children really yours? Will they speak Nervian or Latin? Will they drink wine or beer? Will they smack their lips at the thought of butter on their bread, or hanker to soak it in olive oil? Will they listen to the lays of the Druids or prefer to see a Roman farce?”

Several days of this saw Ambiorix a happy man. He then offered to see Quintus Cicero and play the same kind of trick on him as he had on Sabinus. But Quintus Cicero was no Sabinus; he wouldn’t even see Ambiorix’s ambassadors, and when they became insistent he answered dourly through a messenger that he wasn’t going to treat with any longhaired Gauls, no matter how highfalutin’ they were, so take yourselves off (actually not quite so delicately expressed) and leave me alone.

“Real tactful,” said the primipilus centurion, Titus Pullo, grinning hugely.

“Pah!” said Quintus Cicero, shifting his meager body on his ivory curule chair. “I’m here to do a job, not crawl up the arses of a lot of uppity savages. If they want to treat, they should go and see Caesar. It’s his job to put up with them, not mine.”

“The interesting thing about Quintus Cicero,” said Pullo to his pilus prior confederate, Lucius Vorenus, “is that he can say things like that, then turn around and be as nice as a long swig of Falernian to Vertico— without ever seeing that there’s any inconsistency in his behavior.”

“Well, he likes Vertico,” said Vorenus. “Therefore to him Vertico isn’t an uppity savage. Once you’re on Quintus Cicero’s list of friends, doesn’t matter who you are.”

Which was more or less what Quintus Cicero was saying on paper to his big brother in Rome. They had corresponded for years, because all educated Romans wrote copiously to all other educated Romans. Even the rankers wrote home regularly to tell their families what life was like and what they’d been doing and what battles they’d fought and what the rest of their tent mates were like. A good number were literate upon enlistment, and those who were not discovered that some at least of winter in camp had to be spent in being tutored. Especially under generals like Caesar, who had sat and listened at Gaius Marius’s knee when a child and absorbed everything Marius had to say about everything. Including the usefulness of legionaries who could read and write.

“It’s the lettered version of learning to swim,” Marius had mumbled through his twisted mouth. “Saves lives.”

Odd, thought Quintus Cicero, that big brother Cicero grew more bearable in direct proportion to the amount of distance between them. From winter camp among the Nervii he seemed like a really ideal big brother, whereas when he was a short distance down the Via Tusculana— and likely to arrive on the doorstep unannounced—he was usually a pain in the podex, full of well-meaning advice Quintus just didn’t want to hear while Pomponia was shrilling in the other ear and he was busy walking the tightrope of being nice to Pomponia’s brother, Atticus, yet striving to be master in his own house.

Not that every letter which arrived from Cicero wasn’t at least half full of advice, but among the Nervii that advice didn’t need to be taken or even listened to. Quintus had perfected the art of knowing the exact syllable which would introduce a sermon, and the exact syllable which would end it, so he just skipped those many sheets and read the interesting bits. Big brother Cicero was, of course, a shocking prude who had never dared to look beyond his fearsome wife, Terentia, since he had married her over twenty-five years ago. So anywhere in his vicinity Quintus had to be similarly abstemious. Among the Nervii, however, there was no one to see what little brother Quintus got up to. And little brother Quintus got up on every possible occasion. Belgic women were on the hefty side and could flatten you with one punch, but they all fought for the attentions of the dear little commander with the lovely manners and the gratifyingly open purse. After living with Pomponia (who could also flatten you with one punch), the Belgic women were an Elysian Field of uncomplicated pleasure.

But for a day after the ambassadors from King Ambiorix had been sent away unseen and so impolitely, Quintus Cicero was conscious of a peculiar restlessness. Something was wrong; what, he didn’t know. Then his left thumb started pricking and tingling. He sent for Pullo and Vorenus.

“We’re in for trouble,” he said, “and don’t bother asking me how I know, because I don’t know how I know. Let’s walk around the camp and see what we can do to shore up its defenses.”

Pullo looked at Vorenus; then they both looked at Quintus Cicero with considerable respect.

“Send someone to fetch Vertico—I need to see him.”

That attended to, the three men and an escort of centurions set out to examine the camp with an unsparing eye.

“More towers,” said Pullo. “We’ve got sixty, we need twice that many.”

“I agree. And an extra ten feet of height on the walls.”

“Do we throw up more earth or use logs?” asked Vorenus.

“Logs. The ground’s full of water and freezing. Logs will be faster. We’ll simply jack the breastworks up another ten feet. Get the men felling trees at once. If we come under attack we won’t be able to get to the forest, so let’s do it now. Just fell ’em and drag ’em in. We can pretty them up here.”

Off ran one of the centurions.

“Put a lot more stakes in the bottom of the ditches,” said Vorenus, “since we can’t deepen ‘em.”

“Definitely. How are we off for charcoal?”

“We’ve got a bit, but not nearly enough if we want to harden sharpened points in slow fires beyond a couple of thousand,” said Pullo. “The trees will give us all the branches we’ll need.”

“Then we’ll see how much charcoal Vertico can donate.” The commander pulled thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Siege spears.”

“Oak won’t work for them,” said Vorenus. “We’ll have to find birches or ash forced to grow straight up.”

“More stones for the artillery,” said Pullo.

“Send some men down to the Mosa.”

Several more centurions ran off.

“Last,” said Pullo, “what about letting Caesar know?”

Quintus Cicero had to think about that. Thanks to his big brother, who had loathed Caesar ever since he had opposed the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators, Quintus tended to mistrust Caesar too. Not that these emotions had prevented big brother Cicero from begging that Caesar take Quintus as one of his legates and Gaius Trebatius as a tribune. Nor, though Caesar was well aware how Cicero felt, did Caesar refuse. Professional courtesies between consulars were obligatory.

But what the family tradition of Caesar-detestation meant was that Quintus Cicero didn’t know the General as well as most of his other legates did, nor had he yet found his feet in his dealings with the General. He had no idea how Caesar would react if one of his senior legates sent a message full of alarm when there was no better reason behind it than a pricking left thumb and a presentiment that big trouble was brewing. He had gone to Britannia with Caesar, an interesting experience, but not one which had allowed him to see what kind of latitude Caesar gave his legates. Caesar had been in personal command from beginning to end of the expedition.

A lot hinged on what answer he gave Pullo. If he made the wrong decision, he wouldn’t be asked to remain in Gaul an extra year or two; he would suffer the same fate as Servius Sulpicius Galba, who had botched his campaign in the high Alps and had not been asked to stay. No use believing the senatorial dispatches; they had lauded Galba. Though any militarily acute individual who read them could see immediately that Galba hadn’t pleased the General one little bit.

“I don’t think,” he said to Pullo finally, “that it would do any harm to let Caesar know. If I’m wrong, then I’ll take the reprimand I’ll deserve. But somehow, Pullo, I know I’m not wrong! Yes, I’ll write to Caesar at once.”

In all of this lay some good luck and some bad luck. The good luck was that the Nervii were not yet mustered to arms and therefore saw no sense in spying on the camp; they simply assumed that its denizens would be going about their normal business. This enabled Quintus Cicero to fell his trees and get them inside, and start building his walls and his extra sixty towers around the perimeter. It also enabled him to lay in a great store of good round two-pound rocks for his artillery. The bad luck was that the Nervian council had decided on war, so a watch had been put on the road south to Samarobriva, a hundred and fifty miles away.

Carried by the usual courier, Quintus Cicero’s rather diffident and apologetic letter was confiscated along with every other letter the courier carried. Then the courier was killed. Some of the Druids among the Nervii read Latin, so to them went the contents of the courier’s pouch for perusal. But Quintus had written in Greek, another consequence of that pricking thumb. It was only much later that he realized he must have been listening when Vertico had remarked that the Druids of the northern Belgae were schooled in Latin, not in Greek. In other parts of Gaul, the opposite might be true; usefulness determined the language.

Vertico agreed with Quintus Cicero: there was trouble coming.

“I’m so well known to be a partisan of Caesar’s that I’m not welcome in the councils these days,” the Nervian thane said, eyes anxious. “But several times during the last two days some of my serfs have seen warriors passing through my land, accompanied by their shield bearers and pack animals—as if going to a general muster. At this time of year they can’t be going to war in someone else’s territory. I think you are the target.”

“Then,” said Quintus Cicero briskly, “I suggest that you and your people move into camp with us. It may be a little cramped and not what you’re used to, but if we can hold the camp you’ll be safe. Otherwise you might find yourself the first to die. Is that acceptable?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Vertico, profoundly relieved. “You won’t run short because of us—I’ll bring every grain of wheat we have—all the chickens and livestock—and plenty of charcoal.”

“Excellent!” said Quintus Cicero, beaming. “We’ll put all of you to work, never think we won’t.”

*

Five days after the courier was killed, the Nervii attacked. Perturbed because he should have had a reply, Quintus Cicero had already sent a second letter off, but this courier too was intercepted. Instead of killing him outright, the Nervii tortured him first, and learned that Quintus Cicero and the Ninth were working frantically to strengthen the camp’s fortifications.

The muster was complete; the Nervii moved immediately. Their progress was very different from a Roman march, even one at the double, for they ran at a tireless lope which ate up the miles, each warrior accompanied by his shield bearer, his body slave and a burdened pony on which were loaded his dozen spears, his mail shirt if he had one, his food, his beer, his checkered shawl of moss green and earthy orange, and a wolf pelt for warmth at night; his two servants carried their own needs upon their backs. Nor did they run in any kind of formation. The fleetest were the first to arrive, the slowest the last to arrive. But the last man of all did not come; he who arrived last to the muster was sacrificed to Esus, the god of battle, his body strung from a branch in the sacred oak grove.

It took all day for the Nervii to assemble outside the camp, while the Ninth hammered and sawed frantically; the wall and its raised breastworks were quite finished, but the extra sixty towers were still rising and the many thousands of sharpened stakes were still hardening in a hundred charcoal fires wherever there was enough vacant ground.

“Good, we’ll work all night,” said Quintus Cicero, pleased. “They won’t attack today, they’ll have a proper rest first.”

A proper rest for the Nervii turned out to be about an hour; the sun had set when they stormed the walls of the camp in their thousands, filling up the ditches with leafy branches, using their gaudy, feather-bedecked spears as hand holds to haul themselves up the log walls. But the Ninth was up on top of the walls, each two men with one of the long siege spears to take the Nervii in the face as they climbed. Other men stood atop the partially finished towers, using this additional height to launch their pila with deadly accuracy. And all the while from within the camp the ballistae lobbed two-pound river rocks over the walls into the boiling masses of warriors.

Full night brought a cessation to the hostilities, but not to the battle frenzy of the Nervii, who leaped and shrieked and howled for a mile in every direction around the camp; the light of twenty thousand torches banished the darkness and showed up the capering figures wielding them, bare chests coppered, hair like frozen manes, eyes and teeth flashing brief sparks as they turned and reeled, bounced into the air, roared, screamed, flung up their torches, caught them like jugglers.

“Isn’t this terrific, boys?” Quintus Cicero would shout as he bustled about the camp, checking on the charcoal fires, the artillerymen toiling stripped of their mail shirts, the baggage animals snorting and stamping in their stalls at so much noise. “Isn’t it terrific? The Nervii are giving us all the light we need to finish our towers! Come on, boys, buckle down to it! What do you think this is, the harem of Sampsiceramus?”

Then his back began to ache, and came an agonizing pain which shot down his left leg and forced him to limp. Oh, not now! Not an attack of that! It sent him crawling to his bed for days on end, a moaning rag. Not now! How could he crawl off to his bed when everyone depended on him? If the commander succumbed, what would happen to morale? So Quintus Cicero clenched his teeth and limped onward, finding from somewhere the resolution to unclench his teeth, smile, joke, tell the men how terrific they were, how nice it was of the Nervii to light up the sky…

*

Every day the Nervii attacked, filled up the ditches, tried to scale the walls, and every day the Ninth repulsed them, hooked the leafy branches out of the ditches, killed Nervii.

Every night Quintus Cicero wrote another letter in Greek to Caesar, found a slave or a Gaul willing to carry it for a huge sum of money, and sent the man off through the darkness.

Every day the Nervii brought the previous night’s courier to a prominent spot, brandished the letter, capered and shrieked until the courier was put to a fresh torture from the pincers or the knives or the hot irons, when they would fall silent and let the courier’s screams rip through the appalled Roman camp.

“We can’t give in,” Quintus Cicero would say to the soldiers as he limped his rounds; “don’t give those mentulae the pleasure or the satisfaction!”

Whereupon the men he addressed would grin, give him a wave, ask about his back, call the Nervii names big brother Cicero would have fainted to hear, and fight on.

Then came Titus Pullo, face grim. “Quintus Cicero, we have a new problem,” he said harshly.

“What?” asked the commander, keeping the weariness from his voice and trying to stand straight.

“They’ve diverted our water. The stream’s dried up.”

“You know what to do, Pullo. Start digging wells. Upstream from the latrines. And start digging cesspits.” He giggled. “I’d pitch in and help, but I’m afraid I’m not in a digging mood.”

Pullo’s face softened: was there ever such a cheerful and unquenchable commander as Quintus Cicero, bad back and all?

Twenty days after that first assault the Nervii were still attacking every morning. The supply of couriers had dried up along with the water, and Quintus Cicero had to face the fact that not one of his messages had got through the Nervian lines. Well, no other choice than to continue resistance. Fight the bastards off during the day, use the nights to repair the damage and make a supply of whatever might come in useful the following dawn—and wonder how long it would be before the dysentery and the fevers commenced. Oh, what he’d do to the Nervii if he lived to get out of this! The men of the Ninth were still unbroken, still in good spirits, still working frantically when they were not fighting frantically.

The dysentery and the fevers started, but suddenly there were worse problems to cope with.

The Nervii built a few siege towers—not a patch on Roman siege towers, naturally, but fully capable of wreaking havoc when they were close enough to serve as platforms for Nervii spears. And for a bombardment of Nervii boulders.

“Where did they get their artillery from?” cried the commander to Vorenus. “If those aren’t trusty Roman ballistae, then I’m not the great Cicero’s little brother!”

But since Vorenus didn’t know any more than Quintus Cicero did that the artillery came from the abandoned camp of the Thirteenth Legion, the appearance of Roman ballistae was simply an additional worry—did it mean all Gaul was in revolt, that other legions had been attacked and defeated, that even if the messages had gotten through, no one was alive to answer?

The stones were bearable, but then the Nervii became more innovative. At the same moment as they launched a fresh assault on the walls, they loaded the ballistae with blazing bundles of dry sticks and shot them into the camp. Even the sick were manning the walls, so there were few to put out the fires which began all over that town of wooden houses, few to blindfold the terrified baggage animals and lead them into the open. Slaves, noncombatants and Vertico’s people tried to split themselves in two and cope with this new horror while doing all the other things they had to in order to keep the Ninth fighting atop the walls. But so strong was the Ninth’s morale that the soldiers never even turned their heads to see their precious possessions and food go up in flames, fanned by a bitter early winter wind. They stayed where they were and fought the Nervii to a standstill.

In the midst of the fiercest attack, Pullo and Vorenus took a bet that each was braver than the other, and demanded that the Ninth be the judges. One of the siege towers was pushed so close that it touched the camp wall; the Nervii began to use it as a bridge to leap onto the defenders. Pullo produced a torch and flung it, rising from behind the shelter of his shield; Vorenus produced another torch and rose even higher from behind his shield to fling it at the siege tower. Back and forth, back and forth, until the siege tower was blazing and the Nervii fled, their stiffened hair in flames. Pullo grabbed a bow and quiver of arrows and demonstrated that he’d served with Cretan archers by nocking and shooting in one fluid movement and never missing. Vorenus countered by stacking pila and throwing them with equal speed and grace—and never missing. Neither man sustained a scratch, and when the attack ebbed the Ninth shook their heads. The verdict was a draw.

“It’s the turning point as well as the thirtieth day,” said Quintus Cicero when the darkness came and the Nervii wandered off in undisciplined hordes.

He had summoned a little council: himself, Pullo, Vorenus and Vertico.

“You mean we’ll win?” asked Pullo, astonished.

“I mean we’ll lose, Titus Pullo. They’re getting craftier every day, and from somewhere they’ve got hold of Roman gear.” He groaned and beat his fist on his thigh. “Oh, ye Gods, somehow we have to get a message through their lines!” He turned to Vertico. “I won’t ask another man to go, yet someone has to go. And right here and now we have to work out a way to make sure that whichever man we send can survive a search if he’s apprehended. Vertico, you’re the Nervian. How do we do it?”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Vertico in his halting Latin. “First of all, it has to be someone who can pass for a Nervian warrior. There are Menapii and Condrusi out there too now, but I don’t have access to shawls of the right pattern. Otherwise it would be better to pass the man off as one of them.” He stopped, sighed. “How much food survived the fireballs?”

“Enough for seven or eight days,” said Vorenus, “though the men are so sick they’re not eating much. Maybe ten days.”

Vertico nodded. “Then it will have to be this. Someone who can pass for a Nervian warrior because he is Nervian. I’d go myself, but I’d be recognized immediately. One of my serfs is willing to go. He’s a clever fellow, thinks on his feet.”

“That’s well and good!” growled Pullo, face filthy, tunic of metal scales ripped from neck to sword belt. “I see the sense of it. But it’s the search worries me. We put the last note up the messenger’s rectum, but those bastards still found it. Jupiter! I mean, maybe your man will get through without being accosted, but if he is accosted, he’ll be searched. They’ll find a note no matter where it is, and if they don’t, they’ll torture him.”

“Look,” said Vertico, wrenching a Nervian spear out of the ground nearby.

It was not a Roman weapon, but it was workmanlike; a long wooden shaft with a large leaf-shaped iron head. As the long-haired Gauls loved color and decoration, it was not naked. At the place where the thrower held it, the shaft was covered by a woven webbing in the Nervian colors of moss green and earthy orange, and from the webbing, secured by loops, there dangled three goose feathers dyed moss green and earthy orange.

“I understand why the message has to be in writing. Caesar might not believe a message from the mouth of a Nervian warrior. But write your message in the smallest script upon the thinnest paper, Quintus Cicero. And while you write, I’ll have my women unpick the webbing on a spear which looks used but not warped. Then we’ll wrap the message around the spear shaft and cover it with the webbing.” Vertico shrugged. “That’s the best I can suggest. They search every orifice; they search every scrap of clothing, every strand of hair. But if the webbing is perfect, I don’t think it will occur to them to take it off.”

Vorenus and Pullo were nodding; Quintus Cicero nodded to them and limped off to his wooden house, unburned. There he sat down as he was and took the thinnest piece of paper he could find. His Greek script was tiny.

I write in Greek because they have Latin. Urgent. Under attack from Nervii for thirty days. Water sour, latrines infested. Men sick. Holding out, don’t know how. Can’t much longer. Nervii have Roman gear, shooting fireballs. Food up in smoke. Get help to us or we’re dead men. Quintus Tullius Cicero Legatus.

The Nervian serf belonging to Vertico was a perfect warrior type; had his station in life been higher, he would have been a warrior. But serfs were a superior kind of slave, could be put to torture, and would never be allowed to fight for the tribe. Their lot was to farm; they were lowly enough to use a plough. Yet the man stood calmly and looked unafraid. Yes, thought Quintus Cicero, he would have made a good warrior. More fool the Nervii for not allowing their lowly to fight, but lucky for me and the Ninth. He’ll pass muster.

“All right,” he said, “we’ve got a chance to get this to Caesar, but how does Caesar get his message to us? I have to be able to tell the men that help is coming or they might go under from sheer despair. It will take Caesar time to find enough legions, but I must be able to say that help is coming.”

Vertico smiled. “Getting a message in isn’t as difficult as getting one out. When my serf returns, I’ll tell him to attach one yellow feather to the spear bearing Caesar’s answer.”

“It’ll stick out like dog’s balls!” cried Pullo, aghast.

“So I would hope. However, I don’t think anyone will be looking too closely at spears flying into the camp. Don’t worry, I’ll tell him not to attach the yellow feather until just before he throws,” said Vertico, grinning.

*

Caesar got the spear two days after the Nervian serf passed through the Nervian lines.

Because the forest to the south of Quintus Cicero’s camp was too dense for a man on an urgent mission to negotiate, the serf had no choice but to travel on the road to Samarobriva. It was so heavily guarded that it was inevitable he would be stopped sooner or later, though he did well, evaded the first three watches. The fourth watch detained him. He was stripped, his orifices probed, his hair, his clothes. But the webbing on the spear was perfect; the message lay beneath it undetected. The serf had lacerated his forehead with a piece of rough bark until it looked like the result of a blow; he swayed, mumbled, rolled his eyes, endured the search ungraciously and tried to kiss the leader of the watch. Deeming him hopelessly concussed, the leader let him go south, laughing.

It was early evening when he arrived, utterly exhausted; Samarobriva was immediately plunged into a disciplined frenzy of activity. One messenger went at a gallop to Marcus Crassus, twenty-five miles away; he was ordered to bring the Eighth on the double to garrison Samarobriva in the General’s absence. A second messenger galloped for Portus Itius and Gaius Fabius, who was ordered to take the Seventh and march for the lands of the Atrebates; Caesar would meet him on the Scaldis River. A third messenger galloped for the camp of Labienus on the Mosa to apprise him of developments, but Caesar didn’t order his second-in-command to join the rescue mission. He left that decision to Labienus, who he privately thought might be in like case to Quintus Cicero.

At dawn the whole of Samarobriva could see Marcus Crassus’s column in the distance. Caesar left with the Tenth at once.

Two legions, each a little under full strength; that was all the General could bring to the relief of Quintus Cicero. Nine thousand precious men, veterans. There could be no more of these stupid mistakes. How many Nervii? Fifty thousand had stayed to die on the field several years before, but it was a very populous tribe. Yes, there could be as many as fifty thousand more around the beleaguered camp of the Ninth. Good legion. Oh, not dead!

Fabius made good time to the Scaldis; he met up with Caesar as if they were engaged in a complicated drill maneuver upon the Campus Martius. Neither man had needed to wait an hour for the other. Seventy more miles to go. But how many Nervii? Nine thousand men, no matter how veteran, wouldn’t stand a chance in the open.

Caesar had sent the Nervian serf on ahead in a gig as far as he dared, since he couldn’t ride, under instructions to send the spear back into Quintus Cicero’s camp with a yellow feather tied to it. But he was a serf, not a warrior. He did his best, hoping to get the spear over the breastworks into the Roman camp. Instead it buried itself in the junction between the breastworks and the log wall, and there undetected it remained for two days.

Quintus Cicero got it scant hours before a column of smoke above the trees told him that Caesar had arrived; he was on the point of despair because no one had seen a spear with a yellow feather on it, though every pair of eyes had searched until they watered, fancied yellow in everything.

Coming. Only nine thousand men. Can’t just rush in. Need to scout and find a piece of ground where nine thousand can beat many thousands. Bound to be an Aquae Sextiae here somewhere. How many of them are there? Get a message to me with details. Your Greek is good, surprisingly idiomatic. Gaius Julius Caesar Imperator.

The sight of that yellow feather sent the exhausted Ninth into paroxysms of cheers, and Quintus Cicero into a fit of weeping. Wiping his indescribably dirty face with an equally dirty hand, he sat down, aching back and crippled leg forgotten, and wrote to Caesar while Vertico got another spear and serf ready.

Estimate sixty thousand. Whole tribe here, serious muster. Not all Nervii. Notice lots of Menapii and Condrusi, hence the numbers. We will last. Find your Aquae Sextiae. Gauls getting a bit careless, got us burning alive in the wicker cages already. Notice more drinking, less enthusiasm. Your Greek isn’t bad either. Quintus Tullius Cicero Legatus Superstes.

Caesar got the letter at midnight; the Nervii had massed to attack him, but darkness intervened, and that was one night the messenger detection squad forgot to operate. The Tenth and the Seventh were spoiling for a fight, but Caesar wouldn’t oblige them until he found a field and built a camp similar to the one at which Gaius Marius and his thirty-seven thousand men had beaten a hundred and eighty thousand Teutones over fifty years before.

It took him two more days to find his Aquae Sextiae, but when he did, the Tenth and the Seventh trounced the Nervii—and accorded them no mercy. Quintus Cicero had been right: the length of the siege and its fruitless outcome had eroded both morale and temper. The Nervii were drinking heavily but not eating much, though their two allies, having come later to the war, fared better at Caesar’s Aquae Sextiae.

The camp of the Ninth was a shambles. Most of its housing had crumbled to ashes; mules and oxen wandered hungrily and added their bellows to the cacophony of cheers which greeted Caesar and his two legions when they marched inside. Not one man in ten was without a wound of some kind, and all of them were sick.

The Tenth and Seventh set to with a will, undammed the stream and sent good clean water through, cheerfully demolished the log wall to build fires and heat water for baths, took the Ninth’s filthy clothing and washed it, stalled the animals in some measure of comfort, and scoured the countryside for food. The baggage train came up with enough to keep men and animals content, and Caesar paraded the Ninth before the Tenth and the Seventh. He had no decorations with him, but awarded them anyway; Pullo and Vorenus, already possessed of silver torcs and phalerae, got gold torcs and phalerae.

“If I could, Quintus Cicero, I’d give you the Grass Crown for saving your legion,” said Caesar.

Quintus Cicero nodded, beaming. “You can’t, Caesar, I know that. Rules are rules. The Ninth saved themselves; I just helped a bit around the edges. Oh, but aren’t they wonderful boys?”

“The very best.”

*

The next day the three legions pulled out, the Tenth and the Ninth headed for the comfort and safety of Samarobriva, the Seventh for Portus Itius. Even had Caesar wanted to, it wasn’t possible to keep the camp among the Nervii going. The land was eaten out where it wasn’t trampled to mud, and most of the Nervii lay dead.

“I’ll sort out the Nervii in the spring, Vertico,” said Caesar to his partisan. “A pan-Gallic conference. You won’t lose by helping me and mine, so much I promise. Take everything here and what we have left; it’ll tide you over.”

So Vertico and his people returned to their village, Vertico to resume the life of a Nervian thane, and the serf to go back to his plough. For it was not in the nature of those people to elevate a man above the station he was born to, even as thanks for great services; custom and tradition were too strong. Nor did the serf expect to be rewarded. He did the winter things he was supposed to, obeyed Vertico exactly as before, sat by the fire at night with his wife and children, and said nothing. Whatever he felt and thought he kept to himself.

*

Caesar rode upstream along the Mosa with a small escort of cavalry, leaving his legates and legions to find their own way home. It had become imperative that he see Titus Labienus, who had sent a message that the Treveri were too restless to permit of his coming to help, but had not yet summoned up the courage to attack him; his camp bordered the lands of the Remi, which meant he had help close at hand.

“Cingetorix is worried that his influence among the Treveri is waning,” said Labienus. “Ambiorix is working very hard to swing the men who matter onto Indutiomarus’s side. Slaughtering the Thirteenth did wonders for Ambiorix—he’s now a hero.”

“His slaughtering the Thirteenth gave the Celtae all sorts of delusions of power too,” Caesar said. “I’ve just had a note from Roscius informing me that the Armorici started massing the moment they heard. Luckily they still had eight miles to go when the news of the defeat of the Nervii reached them.” He grinned. “Suddenly Roscius’s camp lost all its appeal. They turned round and went home. But they’ll be back.”

Labienus scowled. “And winter’s barely here. Once spring comes, we’re going to be in the shit. And we’re down a legion.”

They were standing in the weak sun outside Labienus’s good wooden house, looking out over the serried ranks of buildings which spread in three directions before them; the commander’s house was always in the center of the north side, with little behind save storage sheds and depots.

This was a cavalry camp, so it was much larger than one required to do no more than shelter and protect infantry. The rule of thumb for infantry was half a square mile per legion for a winter sojourn (a short-term camp was a fifth this size), with the men billeted ten to a house— eight soldiers and two servant noncombatants. Each century of eighty soldiers and twenty noncombatants occupied its own little lane, with the centurion’s house at the open end of the lane and a stable for the century’s ten mules and the six oxen or mules which pulled its single wagon closing off the other end. Houses for the legates and military tribunes were ranked along the Via Principalis on either side of the commander’s quarters, together with the quaestor’s quarters (which were bigger because he ran the legion’s supplies, accounts, bank and burial club), surrounded by enough open space to hold issue lines; another open space on the opposite side of the commander’s house served as a forum wherein the legions assembled. It was mathematically so precise that when camp was pitched every man knew exactly where he had to go, and this extended to night camps on the road or field camps when battle was imminent; even the animals knew whereabouts they had to go.

Labienus’s camp was two square miles in extent, for he had two thousand Aeduan horse troopers as well as the Eleventh Legion. Each trooper had two horses and a groom as well as a beast of burden, so Labienus’s camp accommodated four thousand horses and two thousand mules in snug winter stables, and their two thousand owners in commodious houses.

Labienus’s camps were inevitably sloppy, for he ruled by fear rather than logic, didn’t care if the stables were not mucked out once a day or if the lanes filled up with rubbish. He also permitted women to live in his winter camp. This Caesar did not object to as much as he did to the look of disorder and the stench of six thousand unclean animals plus ten thousand unclean men. Since Rome couldn’t field its own cavalry, it had to rely upon non-citizen levies, and these foreigners always had their own code. They also had to be let do things their way. Which in turn meant that the Roman citizen infantry also had to be allowed women; otherwise winter camp would have been a nightmare of resentful citizens brawling with indulged non-citizens.

However, Caesar said nothing. Squalor and terror stalked one on either side of Titus Labienus, but he was brilliant. No one led cavalry better save Caesar himself, whose duties as the General did not permit him to lead cavalry. Nor was Labienus a disappointment when leading infantry. Yes, a very valuable man, and an excellent second-in-command. A pity that he couldn’t tame the savage in himself, that was all. His punishments were so famous that Caesar never gave him the same legion or legions twice during long stays in camp; when the Eleventh heard that it was to winter with Labienus its men groaned, then resolved to be good boys and hoped that the following winter would see it with Fabius or Trebonius, strict commanders yet not unmerciful.

“The first thing I have to do when I return to Samarobriva is to write to Mamurra and Ventidius in Italian Gaul,” Caesar said. “I’m down to seven legions, and the Fifth Alauda is grossly under-strength because I’ve been tapping it to plump out losses in the others. If we’re going to have a hard year in the field, I need eleven legions and four thousand horse.”

Labienus winced. “Four legions of raw recruits?” he asked, mouth turning down. “That’s over one-third of the whole army! They’ll be more a hindrance than a help.”

“Just three raw,” said Caesar placidly. “There’s one legion of good troops sitting in Placentia right at this moment. They’re not blooded, admittedly, but they’re fully trained and itching for a fight. They’re so bored they’ll end up disaffected.”

“Ah!” Labienus nodded. “The Sixth. Recruited by Pompeius Magnus in Picenum a year ago, yet still waiting to go to Spain. Ye Gods, he’s slow! You’re right about the boredom, Caesar. But they belong to Pompeius.”

“I shall write to Pompeius and ask to borrow them.”

“Will he oblige?”

“I imagine so. Pompeius isn’t under any great duress in the Spains— Afranius and Petreius run both provinces for him well enough. The Lusitani are quiet, so is Cantabria. I’ll offer to blood the Sixth for him. He’ll like that.”

“Indeed he will. There are two things you can count on with Pompeius—he never fights unless he has the numbers, and he never uses unblooded troops. What a fraud! I abominate the man, I always have!” A small pause ensued, then Labienus asked, “Are you going to enlist another Thirteenth, or skip straight to the Fourteenth?”

“I’ll enlist another Thirteenth. I’m as superstitious as the next Roman, but it’s essential that the men grow accustomed to thinking of thirteen as just another number.” He shrugged. “Besides, if I have a Fourteenth and no Thirteenth, the Fourteenth will know it’s really the Thirteenth. I’ll keep the new one with me for the year. At the end of it, I guarantee that its men will be flaunting the number thirteen as a good-luck talisman.”

“I believe you.”

“I take it, Labienus, that you think our relations with the Treveri will break down completely,” said Caesar as he began to walk down the Via Praetoria.

“Bound to. The Treveri have always wanted downright, outright war, but until now they’ve been too wary of me. Ambiorix has rather changed that—he’s a brilliant talker, you know. With the result that Indutiomarus is gathering adherents hand over fist. I doubt Cingetorix has the thews to resist now that there are two experts working on the thanes. We can’t afford to underestimate either Ambiorix or Indutiomarus, Caesar.”

“Can you hold here for the winter?”

The horse’s teeth gleamed. “Oh, yes. I have a little idea as to how to tempt the Treveri into a battle they can’t win. It’s important to push them into precipitate action. If they delay until the summer, there will be thousands upon thousands of them. Ambiorix is boating across the Rhenus regularly, trying to persuade the Germani to help; and if he succeeds, the Nemetes will decide their lands are safe from German incursions and join the Treveri muster as well.”

Caesar sighed. “I had hoped Gaul of the Long-hairs would see sense. The Gods know I was clement enough during the early years! If I treated them fairly and bound them with legal agreements, I thought they’d settle down under Rome. It’s not as if they don’t have an example. The Gauls of the Province tried to resist for a century, yet look at them now. They’re happier and better off under Rome than ever they were fighting among themselves.”

“You sound like Cicero” was Labienus’s comment. “They’re too thick to know when they’re well off. They’ll fight us until they drop.”

“I fear you’re right. Which is why each year I get harder.”

They stopped to let a long parade of horses led by grooms cross from one side of the wide thoroughfare to the other, off to the exercise yards.

“How are you going to tempt the Treveri?” Caesar asked.

“I need some help from you, and some help from the Remi.”

“Ask, and you shall receive.”

“I want it generally known that you’re massing the Remi on their border with the Bellovaci. Tell Dorix to make it look as if he’s hurrying every trooper he’s got in that direction. But I need four thousand of them concealed not too far away. I’m going to smuggle them into my camp at the rate of four hundred a night—ten days to do the job. But before I begin, I’ll convince Indutiomarus’s spies that I’m a frightened man planning to leave because the Remi are withdrawing. Don’t worry, I know who his spies are.” The dark face warped itself, looked terrifying. “All women. After the Remi start coming in, I assure you that not one of them will get any messages out. They’ll be too busy screaming.”

“And once you have the Remi?”

“The Treveri will appear to kill me before I can leave. It will take them ten days to muster and two days to get here. I’ll make it in time. Then I’ll open my gates and let six thousand Aedui and Remi cut them up like pork for sausages. The Eleventh can stuff them into the skins.”

Caesar left for Samarobriva satisfied.

*

“No one can beat you,” said Rhiannon, her tone smug.

Amused, Caesar rolled onto his side and propped his head up on one hand to look at her. “That pleases you?”

“Oh, yes. You’re the father of my son.” ‘

“So might Dumnorix have been.”

Her teeth flashed in the gloom. “Never!”

“That’s interesting.”

She pulled her hair out from under her, a difficult and somewhat painful task; it lay then between them like a river of fire. “Did you have Dumnorix killed because of me?” she asked.

“No. He was intriguing to create trouble during my absence in Britannia, so I ordered him to accompany me to Britannia. He thought that meant I’d kill him over there, away from all eyes which might condemn me for it. He ran away. Whereupon I showed him that if I wanted him killed, I’d have him killed under all eyes. Labienus was pleased to oblige. He never liked Dumnorix.”

“I don’t like Labienus,” she said, shivering.

“Not surprising. Labienus belongs to that group of Roman men who believe that the only trustworthy Gaul is a dead one,” said Caesar. “That goes for Gallic women too.”

“Why didn’t you object when I said Orgetorix would be King of the Helvetii?” she demanded. “He is your son, yet you have no son! At the time Orgetorix was born I didn’t understand how famous and influential you are in Rome. I do now.” She sat up, put her hand on his shoulder. “Caesar, take him! To be king of a people as powerful as the Helvetii is a formidable fate, but to be the King of Rome is a far greater fate.”

He shrugged her hand off, eyes flashing. “Rhiannon, Rome will have no king! Nor would I consent to Rome’s having a king! Rome is a republic and has been for five hundred years! I will be the First Man in Rome, but that is not to be Rome’s king. Kings are archaic; even you Gauls are realizing that. A people prospers better when it is administered by a group of men who change through the electoral process.” He smiled wryly. “Election gives every qualified man the chance to be the best—or the worst.”

“But you are the best! No one can beat you! Caesar, you were born to be king!” she cried. “Rome would thrive under your rule—you’d end in being King of the World!”

“I don’t want to be King of the World,” he said patiently. “Just the First Man in Rome—first among my equals. If I were king, I’d have no rivals, and where’s the fun in that? Without a Cato and a Cicero to sharpen my wits, my mind would stultify.” He leaned forward to kiss her breasts. “Leave things be, woman.”

“Don’t you want your son to be a Roman?” she asked, snuggling against him.

“It’s not a matter of wanting. My son is not a Roman.”

“You could make him one.”

“My son is not a Roman. He’s a Gaul.”

She was kissing his chest, winding a rope of hair around his growing penis. “But,” she mumbled, “I’m a princess. His blood is better than it could be with a Roman woman for mother.”

Caesar rolled on top of her. “His blood is only half Roman—and that the half which cannot be proven. His name is Orgetorix, not Caesar. His name will remain Orgetorix, not Caesar. When the time comes, send him to your people. I rather like the idea that a son of mine will be a king. But not the King of Rome.”

“What if I were a great queen, so great that even Rome saw my every virtue?”

“If you were Queen of the World, my dear, it wouldn’t be good enough. You’re not Roman. Nor are you Caesar’s wife.”

Whatever she might have said in answer to that was not said; Caesar stopped her mouth with a kiss. Because he enchanted her sexually, she left the subject to succumb to her body’s pleasure, but in one corner of her mind she stored the subject for future contemplation.

And future contemplation was all through that winter, while the great Roman legates passed in and out of Caesar’s stone door, paid court to her son, lay on the dining couches, talking endlessly of armies, legions, supplies, fortifications…

I do not understand, nor has he made me understand. My blood is far greater than the blood of any Roman woman! I am the daughter of a king! I am the mother of a king! But my son should be the King of Rome, not the King of the Helvetii. Caesar makes no sense with his cryptic answers. How can I hope to understand what he will not teach? Would a Roman woman teach me? Could a Roman woman?

So while Caesar busied himself with the preparations for his pan-Gallic conference in Samarobriva, Rhiannon sat down with an Aeduan scribe and dictated a letter in Latin to the great Roman lady Servilia. A choice of correspondent which proved that Roman gossip percolated everywhere.

I write to you, lady Servilia, because I know that you have been an intimate friend of Caesar’s for many years, and that when Caesar returns to Rome, he will resume his friendship. Or so they say here in Samarobriva.

I have Caesar’s son, who is now three years old. My blood is royal. I am the daughter of King Orgetorix of the Helvetii, and Caesar took me off my husband, Dumnorix of the Aedui. But when my son was born, Caesar said that he would be brought up a Gaul in Gallia Comata, and insisted that he have a Gallic name. I called him Orgetorix, but I would far rather have called him Caesar Orgetorix.

In our Gallic world, it is absolutely necessary that a man have at least one son. For that reason, men of the nobility have more than one wife, lest one wife prove barren. For what is a man’s career, if he has no son to succeed him? Yet Caesar has no son to succeed him, and will not hear of my son’s succeeding him in Rome. I asked him why. All he would answer was that I am not Roman. I am not good enough, was what he meant. Even were I the Queen of the World, yet not Roman, I would not be good enough. I do not understand, and I am angry.

Lady Servilia, can you teach me to understand?

The Aeduan secretary took his wax tablets away to transcribe Rhiannon’s short letter onto paper, and made a copy which he gave to Aulus Hirtius to pass on to Caesar.

Hirtius’s chance came when he informed Caesar that Labienus had brought the Treveri to battle with complete success.

“He trounced them,” said Hirtius, face expressionless.

Caesar glanced at him suspiciously. “And?” he asked.

“And Indutiomarus is dead.”

That news provoked a stare. “Unusual! I thought both the Belgae and the Celtae had learned to value their leaders enough to keep them out of the front lines.”

“Er—they have,” said Hirtius. “Labienus issued orders. No matter who or how many got away, he wanted Indutiomarus. Er—not all of him. Just his head.”

“Jupiter, the man is a barbarian himself!” cried Caesar, very angry. “War has few rules, but one of them is that you don’t deprive a people of its leaders through murder! Oh, one more thing I’ll have to wrap up in Tyrian purple for the Senate! I wish I could split myself into as many legates as I need and do all their jobs myself! Isn’t it bad enough that Rome should have displayed Roman heads on the Roman rostra? Are we now to display the heads of our barbarian enemies? He did display it, didn’t he?”

“Yes, on the camp battlements.”

“Did his men acclaim him imperator?”

“Yes, on the field.”

“So he could have had Indutiomarus captured and kept for his triumphal parade. Indutiomarus would have died, but after he had been held in honor as Rome’s guest, and understood the full extent of his glory. There’s some distinction in dying during a triumph, but this was mean— shabby! How do I make it look good in my senatorial dispatches, Hirtius?”

“My advice is, don’t. Tell it as it happened.”

“He’s my legate. My second-in-command.”

“True.”

“What’s the matter with the man, Hirtius?”

Hirtius shrugged. “He’s a barbarian who wants to be consul, in the same way Pompeius Magnus wanted to be consul. At any kind of price. Not at peace with the mos maiorum.”

“Another Picentine!”

“Labienus is useful, Caesar.”

“As you say, useful,” he said, staring at the wall. “He expects that I’ll choose him as my colleague when I’m consul again five years from now.”

“Yes.”

“Rome will want me, but it won’t want Labienus.”

“Yes.”

Caesar began to pace. “Then I have some thinking to do.”

Hirtius cleared his throat. “There is another matter.”

“Oh?”

“Rhiannon.”

“Rhiannon?”

“She’s written to Servilia.”

“Using a scribe, since she can’t write herself.”

“Who gave me a copy of the letter. Though I haven’t let the courier take the original until you approve it.”

“Where is it?”

Hirtius handed it over.

Yet another letter was reduced to ashes, this one in the brazier. “Fool of a woman!”

“Shall I have the courier take the original to Rome?”

“Oh, yes. Make sure I see the answer before Rhiannon gets it, however.”

“That goes without saying.”

Down came the scarlet general’s cloak from its T-shaped rack. “I need a walk,” said Caesar, throwing it round his shoulders and tying its cords himself. Then he looked at Hirtius, eyes detached. “Have Rhiannon watched.”

“Some better news to take out into the cold, Caesar.”

The smile was rueful. “I need it! What?”

“Ambiorix has had no luck yet with the Germani. Ever since you bridged the Rhenus they’ve been wary. Not all his pleading and cajoling has seen one German company cross into Gaul.”

*

Winter was nearing its end and the pan-Gallic conference was looming when Caesar led four legions into the lands of the Nervii to finish that tribe as a power. His luck was with him; the whole tribe had gathered at its biggest oppidum to debate the question as to whether it ought to send delegates to Samarobriva. Caesar caught the Nervii armed but unprepared, and accorded them no mercy. Those who survived the battle were handed over to his men, together with enormous amounts of booty. This was one engagement from which Caesar and his legates would see no personal profit; it all went to the legionaries, including the sale of slaves. And afterward he laid waste to the Nervian lands, burning everything save the fief belonging to Vertico. The captured tribal leaders were shipped off to Rome to wait for his triumph, kept, as he had said to Aulus Hirtius, in comfort and honor. When came the day of his triumph their necks would be snapped in the Tullianum, but by then they would have learned the measure both of their glory and of Rome’s.

Caesar had been holding a pan-Gallic conference every year since his coming to Gaul of the Long-hairs. The early ones had been held at Bibracte in the lands of the Aedui. This year’s was the first to be held so far west, and a summons had gone out to every tribe commanding it to send delegates. The purpose was to have an opportunity to speak to the tribal leaders, be they kings, councillors or properly elected vergobrets—an opportunity to persuade them that war with Rome could have only one outcome: defeat.

This year he hoped for better results. All those who had made war over the past five years had gone down, no matter how great their numbers and their consequent sense of invincibility. Even the loss of the Thirteenth had been turned to advantage. Surely now they would all begin to see the shape of their fate!

Yet by the time that the opening day of the conference dawned, Caesar’s expectations were already dying. Three of the greatest peoples had not sent delegates: the Treveri, the Senones and the Carnutes. The Nemetes and the Triboci had never come, but their absence was understandable—they bordered the Rhenus River on the opposite shore to the Suebi, the fiercest and far the hungriest of the Germani. So dedicated were they to defending their own lands that they had almost no impact upon thought within Gaul of the Long-hairs.

The huge wooden hall hung with bear and wolf pelts was full when Caesar, his purple-bordered toga glaringly white amid so much color, mounted the dais to speak. The gathering possessed an alien splendor, each tribe in its traditional regalia: the basically scarlet checks of the Atrebates in the person of King Commius, the orange and emerald speckles of the Cardurci, the crimson and blue of the Remi, the scarlet and blue stripes of the Aedui. But no yellow and scarlet Carnutes, no indigo and yellow Senones, no dark green and light green Treveri.

“I do not intend to dwell upon the fate of the Nervii,” Caesar said in the high-pitched voice he used for orating, “because all of you know what happened.” He looked toward Vertico, nodded. “That one Nervian is here today is evidence of his good sense. Why fight the inevitable? Ask yourselves who is the real enemy! Is it Rome? Or is it the Germani? The presence of Rome in Gallia Comata must go to your ultimate good. The presence of Rome will ensure that you retain your Gallic customs and traditions. The presence of Rome will keep the Germani on their own bank of the Rhenus. I, Gaius Julius Caesar, have guaranteed to contend with the Germani on your behalf in every treaty I have made with you! For you cannot keep the Germani at bay without Rome’s aid. If you doubt this, ask the delegates from the Sequani.” He pointed to where they sat in their crimson and pink. “King Ariovistus of the Suebi persuaded them to let him settle on one-third of their lands. Wanting peace, they decided that consent was a gesture of friendliness. But give the Germani the tip of your finger and they will end in taking not only your whole arm, but your whole country! Do the Cardurci think this fate will not be theirs because they border the Aquitani in the far southwest? It will be! Mark my words, it will be! Unless all of you accept and welcome the presence of Rome, it will be!”

The Arvernian delegates occupied a whole row, for the Arverni were an extremely powerful people. The traditional enemies of the Aedui, they occupied the mountainous lands of the Cebenna around the sources of the Elaver, the Caris and the Vigemna; perhaps because of this, their shirts and trousers were palest buff, their shawls checkered in palest blue, buff and dark green. Not easy to see against snow or a rock face.

One of them, young and clean-shaven, rose to his feet.

“Tell me the difference between Rome and the Germani,” he said in the Carnute dialect which Caesar was speaking, as it was the universal tongue of the Druids, therefore understood everywhere.

“No,” said Caesar, smiling. “You tell me.”

“I see absolutely no difference, Caesar. Foreign domination is foreign domination.”

“But there are vast differences! The fact that I stand here today speaking your language is one of them. When I came to Gallia Comata I spoke Aeduan, Arvernian and Vocontian. Since then I have gone to the trouble of learning Druidan, Atrebatan and several other dialects. Yes, I have the ear for languages, that is true. But I am a Roman, and I understand that when men can communicate with each other directly, there is no opportunity for an interpreter to distort what is said. Yet I have not asked any of you to learn to speak Latin. Whereas the Germani would force you to speak their tongues, and eventually you would lose your own.”

“Soft words, Caesar!” said the young Arvernian. “But they point out the greatest danger of Roman domination! It is subtle. The Germani are not subtle. Therefore they are easier to resist.”

“This is your first pan-Gallic conference, obviously, so I do not know your name,” said Caesar, unruffled. “What is it?”

“Vercingetorix!”

Caesar stepped to the very front of the dais. “First of all, Vercingetorix, you Gauls must reconcile yourselves to some foreign presence. The world is shrinking. It has been shrinking since the Greeks and the Punic peoples scattered themselves around the whole rim of the sea Rome now calls Our Sea. Then Rome came upon the scene. The Greeks were never united as one nation. Greece was many little nations, and, like you, they fought among each other until they exhausted the country. Rome was a city-state too, but Rome gradually brought all of Italia under her as one nation. Rome is Italia. Yet the domination of Rome within Italia does not depend upon the solitary figure of a king. All Italia votes to elect Rome’s magistrates. All Italia participates in Rome. All Italia provides Rome’s soldiers. For Rome is Italia. And Rome grows. All Italian Gaul south of the Padus River is now a part of Italia, elects Rome’s magistrates. And soon all Italian Gaul north of the Padus River will be Roman too, for I have vowed it. I believe in unity. I believe that unity is strength. And I would give Gallia Comata the unity of true nationhood. That would be Rome’s gift. The Germani bring no gifts worth having. Did Gallia Comata belong to the Germani, it would go backward. They have no systems of government, no systems of commerce, no systems which permit a people to lean on one single central government.”

Vercingetorix laughed scornfully. “You rape, you do not govern! There is no difference between Rome and the Germani!”

Caesar answered without hesitation. “As I have said, there are many differences. I have pointed some of them out. You have not listened, Vercingetorix, because you don’t want to listen. You appeal to passion, not to reason. That will bring you many adherents, but it will render you incapable of giving your adherents what they most need—sage advice, considered opinions. Consider the state of the shrinking world. Consider the place Gallia Comata will have in that shrinking world if Gallia Comata ties herself to Rome rather than to the Germani or to internal strife between her peoples. I do not want to fight you, which is not the same as unwillingness to fight. After five years of Rome in the person of Gaius Julius Caesar, you know that. Rome unifies. Rome brings her citizenship. Rome brings improvements to local life. Rome brings peace and plenty. Rome brings business opportunities, a system of commerce, new opportunities for local industries to sell their wares everywhere Rome is in the world. You Arvernians make the best pottery in Gallia Comata. As a part of Rome’s world, your pots would go much further than Britannia. With Rome’s legions guarding the borders of Gallia Comata, the Arverni could expand their business ventures and increase their wealth shorn of fear of invasion, pillage—and rape.”

“Hollow words, Caesar! What happened to the Atuatuci? The Eburones? The Morini? The Nervii? Pillage! Slavery! Rape!”

Caesar sighed, spread his right hand wide, cuddled his left into the folds of his toga. “All those peoples had their chance,” he said evenly. “They broke their treaties, they preferred war to submission. The submission would have cost them little. A tribute, in return for guaranteed peace. In return for no more German raids. In return for an easier, more fruitful way of life. Still worshiping their own Gods, still owning their lands, still free men, still living!”

“Under foreign domination,” said Vercingetorix.

Caesar inclined his head. “That’s the price, Vercingetorix. A light Roman hand on the bridle, or a heavy German one. That’s the choice. Isolation is gone. Gallia Comata has entered Our Sea. All of you must realize that. There can be no going back. Rome is here. And Rome will stay. Because Rome too must keep the Germani beyond the Rhenus. Over fifty years ago Gallia Comata was split from end to end by three-quarters of a million Germani. All you could do was to suffer their presence. It was Rome in the person of Gaius Marius saved you then. It is Rome in the person of Gaius Marius’s nephew who will save you now. Accept the continued presence of Rome, I most earnestly beseech you! If you do accept Rome, little will actually change. Ask any of the Gallic tribes in our Province—the Volcae, the Vocontii, the Helvii, the Allobroges. They are no less Gallic for being also Roman. They live at peace, they prosper mightily.”

“Hah!” sneered Vercingetorix. “Fine words! They’re just waiting for someone to lead them out of foreign domination!”

“They’re not, you know,” said Caesar conversationally. “Go and talk to them for yourself and you’ll see I’m right.”

“When I go to talk with them, it won’t be to enquire,” said Vercingetorix. “I’ll offer them a spear.” He laughed, shook his head incredulously. “How can you hope to win?” he asked. “There are a handful of you, that’s all! Rome is a gigantic bluff! The peoples you have encountered until now have been tame, stupid, cowardly! There are more warriors in Gallia Comata than in the whole of Italia and Italian Gaul! Four million Celtae, two million Belgae! I have seen your Roman censuses— you don’t have that many people! Three million, Caesar, not a person more!”

“Numbers are irrelevant,” said Caesar, who appeared to be enjoying himself. “Rome possesses three things neither the Celtae nor the Belgae own—organization, technology and the ability to tap her resources with complete efficiency.”

“Oh, yes, your much-vaunted technology! What of it? Did the walls you built to dam out Ocean enable you to take any of the Veneti strongholds? Did they? No! We too are a technological people! Ask your legate Quintus Tullius Cicero! We brought siege towers to bear on him, we learned to use Roman artillery! We are not tame, we are not stupid, we are not cowards! Since you came into Gallia Comata, Caesar, we have learned! And as long as you remain here, we will go on learning! Nor are all Roman generals your equal! Sooner or later you will return to Rome, and Rome will send a fool to Gallia Comata! Another like Cassius at Burdigala! Others like Mallius and Caepio at Arausio!”

“Or another like Ahenobarbus when he reduced the Arverni to nothing seventy-five years ago,” said Caesar, smiling.

“The Arverni are more powerful now than they were before Ahenobarbus came!”

“Vercingetorix of the Arverni, listen to me,” said Caesar strongly. “I have called for reinforcements. Four more legions. That is a total of twenty-four thousand men. I will have them in the field and ready to fight four months from the commencement of the enlistment process. They will all wear chain mail shirts, have superbly made daggers and swords on their belts, helmets on their heads, and pila in their hands. They will know the drills and routines so well they could do them in their sleep. They will have artillery. They will know how to build siege equipment, how to fortify. They will be able to march a minimum of thirty miles a day for days on end. They will be officered by brilliant centurions. They will come wanting to hate you and every other Gaul— and if you push them to fight, they will hate you.

“I will have a Fifth—a Sixth—a Seventh—an Eighth—a Ninth—a Tenth—an Eleventh—a Twelfth—a Thirteenth—a Fourteenth—and a Fifteenth Legion! All up to strength! Fifty-four thousand foot soldiers! And add to them four thousand cavalry drawn from the Aedui and the Remi!”

Vercingetorix crowed, capered. “What a fool you are, Caesar! You’ve just told all of us your strength in the field this year!”

“Indeed I have, though not foolishly. As a warning. I say to you, be sensible and prudent. You cannot win! Why try? Why kill the flower of your manhood in a hopeless cause? Why leave your women so destitute and your lands so vacant that I will have to settle my Roman veterans on them to marry your women and sire Roman children?”

Suddenly Caesar’s iron control snapped; he grew, towered. Not realizing that he did so, Vercingetorix stepped backward.

“This year will be a year of total attrition if you try me!” Caesar roared. “Oppose me in the field and you will go down and keep on going down! I cannot be beaten! Rome cannot be beaten! Our resources in Italia— and the efficiency with which I can marshal them!—are so vast that I can make good any losses I sustain in the twinkling of an eye! If I so wish, I can double those fifty-four thousand men! And equip them! Be warned and take heed! I have made you privy to all of this not for today, but for the future! Roman organization, Roman technology and Roman resources alone will see you go down! And don’t pin your hopes on the day when Rome sends a less competent governor to Gallia Comata! Because by the time that day comes, you won’t exist! Caesar will have reduced you and yours to ruins!”

He swept from the dais and from the hall, leaving the Gauls and his legates stunned.

“Oh, that temper!” said Trebonius to Hirtius.

“They needed straight speaking,” said Hirtius.

“Well, my turn,” said Trebonius, getting to his feet. “How can I follow an act like that?”

“With diplomatic words,” said Quintus Cicero, grinning.

“It doesn’t matter a fig what Trebonius prattles on about,” said Sextius. “They’ve got the fear of Caesar in them.”

“The one named Vercingetorix is spoiling for a fight” from Sulpicius Rufus.

“He’s young” from Hirtius. “Nor is he popular among the rest of the Arvernian delegates. They were sitting with their teeth on edge and dying to kill him, not Caesar.”

*

While the meeting went on in the great hall, Rhiannon sat in Caesar’s stone house with the Aeduan scribe.

“Read it,” she said to him.

He broke the seal (which had already been broken; it had been re-sealed with the imprint of Quintus Cicero’s ring, since Rhiannon had no idea what Servilia’s seal looked like), spread the little roll, and pored over it, mumbling, for a long time.

“Read it!” Rhiannon said, shifting impatiently.

“As soon as I understand it, I will,” he answered.

“Caesar doesn’t do that.”

He looked up, sighed. “Caesar is Caesar. No one else can read at a glance. And the more you talk, the longer I’ll be.”

Rhiannon subsided, picking at the gold threads woven through her long gown of brownish crimson, dying to know what Servilia said.

Finally the scribe spoke. “I can start,” he said.

“Then do so!”

“Well, I can’t say I ever expected to get a letter writ in rather peculiar Latin from Caesar’s Gallic mistress, but it’s amusing, I must admit. So you have Caesar’s son. How amazing. I have Caesar’s daughter. Like your son, she does not bear Caesar’s name. That is because I was married to Marcus Junius Silanus at the time. His distant relative, another Marcus Junius Silanus, is one of Caesar’s legates this year. My daughter’s name is therefore Junia, and as she is the third Junia, I call her Tertulla.

“You say you are a princess. Barbarians do have them, I know. You produce this fact as if it could matter. It cannot. To a Roman, the only blood which matters is Roman blood. Roman blood is better. The meanest thief in some back alley is better than you, because he has Roman blood. No son whose mother was not Roman could matter to Caesar, whose blood is the highest in Rome. Never tainted with other blood than Roman. If Rome had a king, Caesar would be that king. His ancestors were kings. But Rome does not have a king, nor would Caesar allow Rome to have a king. Romans bend the knee to no one.

“I have nothing to teach you, barbarian princess. It is not necessary for a Roman to have a son of his body to inherit his position and carry on the name of his family because a Roman can adopt a son. He does this very carefully. Whoever he adopts will have the necessary blood to carry on his line, and as part of the adoption the new son assumes his name. My son was adopted. His name was Marcus Junius Brutus, but when his uncle, my brother, was killed without an heir, he adopted Brutus in his will. Brutus became Quintus Servilius Caepio, of my own family. That he has preferred of late years to return to the name Marcus Junius Brutus is due to his pride in a Junian ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, who banished the last King of Rome and established the Roman res publica.

“If Caesar has no son, he will adopt a son of Julian blood and impeccably Roman ancestors. That is the Roman way. And knowing this, Caesar will proceed through his life secure in the knowledge that, should he have no son of his body, his last testament will remedy things.

“Do not bother writing back. I dislike the implication that you class yourself as one of Caesar’s women. You are no more and no less than an expedient.”

The scribe let the scroll curl up. “That tells us where we barbarians belong, doesn’t it?” he demanded, angry.

Rhiannon snatched the letter from him and began to tear it into small pieces. “Go away!” she snarled.

Tears pouring down her face, she went then to see Orgetorix, in the custody of his nurse, one of her own servants. He was busy towing a model of the Trojan Horse around the floor; Caesar had given it to him and shown him how its side opened to disgorge the Greeks, fifty perfectly carved and painted figures each owning a name: red-haired Menelaus; red-haired Odysseus with the short legs; the beautiful Neoptolemus, son of dead Achilles; and even one, Echion, whose head fell forward, broken, when he hit the flags. Caesar had started to teach him the legend and the names, but little Orgetorix had neither the memory nor the wit to immerse himself in Homer, and Caesar gave up. If the child delighted in his gift, it was because of childish reasons: a splendid toy which moved, concealed things, could be stuffed and unstuffed, and excited admiration and envy from all who saw it.

“Mama!” he said, dropping the cord which was attached to the horse and holding out his arms.

Her tears dried; Rhiannon carried him to a chair and sat him on her lap. “You don’t care,” she said to him, her cheek on his brilliant curls. “You’re not a Roman, you’re a Gaul. But you will be King of the Helvetii! And you are Caesar’s son!” Her breath hissed, her lips peeled back from her teeth. “I curse you, lady Servilia! You will never have him back again! Tonight I will go to the priestess in the tower of skulls and buy the curse of a long life spent in misery!”

*

News came the next day from Labienus: Ambiorix was finally having some success among the Suebic Germans, and the Treveri, far from being subdued, were boiling.

“Hirtius, I want you and Trogus to continue the conference,” Caesar said as he handed the box containing the sash of his imperium to Thrayllus, packing his gear. “My four new legions have reached the Aedui, and I’ve sent word instructing them to march for the Senones, whom I intend to scare witless. The Tenth and Twelfth will go with me to meet them.”

“What of Samarobriva?” asked Hirtius.

“Trebonius can stay to garrison it with the Eighth, but I think it’s politic to shift the site of the conference to some place less tempting to our absent friends the Carnutes. Move the delegates to Lutetia among the Parisii. It’s an island, therefore easily defended. Keep on trying to make the Gauls see reason—and take the Fifth Alauda with you. Also Silanus and Antistius.”

“Is this war on a grand scale?”

“I hope not, quite yet. I’d rather have the time to pluck some of the raw cohorts out of the new legions and slip some of my veterans in.” He grinned. “You might say, to quote the words of young Vercingetorix, that I am about to embark upon a gigantic bluff. Though I doubt the Long-hairs will see it that way.”

Time was galloping, but he must say goodbye to Rhiannon. Whom he found in her sitting room—ah, not alone! Vercingetorix was with her. Goddess Fortuna, you always bring me luck!

He paused in the doorway unobserved; this was his first opportunity to study Vercingetorix at close quarters. His rank was manifest in the number of massive gold torcs and bracelets he wore, in the sapphire-encrusted belt and baldric, in the size of the sapphire buried in his brooch. That he was clean-shaven intrigued Caesar, for it was very rare among the Celtae. His lime-rinsed hair was almost white and combed to imitate a lion’s mane, and his face, entirely displayed, was all bones, cadaverous. Black brows and lashes—oh, he was different! His body too was thin; a type who lives on his nerves, thought Caesar, advancing into the room. A throwback. Very dangerous.

Rhiannon’s face lit up, then fell as she took in Caesar’s leather gear. “Caesar! Where are you going?”

“To meet my new legions,” he said, holding out his right hand to Vercingetorix, who had risen to reveal that he was the usual Celtic six feet in height. His eyes were dark blue and regarded the hand warily.

“Oh, come!” said Caesar genially. “You won’t die of poison because you touch me!”

Out came one long, frail hand; the two men performed the universal ritual of greeting, neither of them imprudent enough to turn it into a contest of strength. Firm, brief, not excessive.

Caesar raised his brows at Rhiannon. “You know each other?” he asked, not sitting.

“Vercingetorix is my first cousin,” she said breathlessly. “His mother and my mother were sisters. Arverni. Didn’t I tell you? I meant to, Caesar. They both married kings—mine, King Orgetorix; his, King Celtillus.”

“Ah, yes,” said Caesar blandly. “Celtillus. I would have said he tried to be king, rather than was one. Didn’t the Arverni kill him for it, Vercingetorix?”

“They did. You speak good Arvernian, Caesar.”

“My nurse was Arvernian. Cardixa. My tutor, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, was half Salluvian. And there were Aeduan tenants upstairs in my mother’s insula. You might say that I grew up to the sound of Gallic.”

“You tricked us neatly during those first two years, using an interpreter all the time.”

“Be fair! I speak no Germanic languages, and a great deal of my first year was occupied with Ariovistus. Nor did I understand the Sequani very well. It’s taken time to pick up the Belgic tongues, though Druidan was easy.”

“You are not what you seem,” said Vercingetorix, sitting down again.

“Is anyone?” asked Caesar, and suddenly decided to seat himself too. A few moments spent talking to Vercingetorix might be moments well spent.

“Probably not, Caesar. What do you think I am?”

“A young hothead with much courage and some intelligence. You lack subtlety. It isn’t clever to embarrass your elders in an important assembly.”

“Someone had to speak up! Otherwise they would all have sat there and listened like a lot of students to a famous Druid. I struck a chord in many,” said Vercingetorix, looking satisfied.

Caesar shook his head slowly. “You did indeed,” he said, “but that isn’t wise. One of my aims is to avert bloodshed—it gives me no pleasure to spill oceans of it. You ought to think things through, Vercingetorix. The end of it all will be Roman rule, make no mistake about that. Therefore why buck against it? You’re a man, not a brute horse! You have the ability to gather adherents, build a great clientele. So lead your people wisely. Don’t force me to adopt measures I don’t want to take.”

“Lead my people into eternal captivity, that’s what you’re really saying, Caesar.”

“No, I am not. Lead them into peace and prosperity.”

Vercingetorix leaned forward, eyes glowing with the same lights as the sapphire in his brooch. “I will lead, Caesar! But not into captivity. Into freedom. Into the old ways, a return to the kings and the heroes. And we will spurn Your Sea! Some of what you said yesterday makes sense. We Gauls need to be one people, not many. I can achieve that. I will achieve that! We will outlast you, Caesar. We will throw you out, and all who try to follow you. I spoke truth too. I said that Rome will send a fool to replace you. That is the way of democracies, which offer mindless idiots a choice of candidates and then wonder why fools are elected. A people needs a king, not men who change every time someone blinks his eye. One group benefits, then another, yet never the whole people. A king is the only answer.”

“A king is never the answer.”

Vercingetorix laughed, a high and slightly frenzied sound. “But you are a king, Caesar! It’s there in the way you move, the way you look, the way you treat others. You are an Alexander the Great accidentally given power by the electors. After you, it will fall to ashes.”

“No,” said Caesar, smiling gently. “I am no Alexander the Great. All I am is a part of Rome’s ongoing pageant. A great part, I know that. I hope that in future ages men will say, the greatest part. Yet only a part. When Alexander the Great died, Macedon died. His country perished with him. He abjured his Greekness and relocated the navel of his empire because he thought like a king. He was the reason for his country’s greatness. He did what he liked and he went where he liked. He thought like a king, Vercingetorix! He mistook himself for an idea. To make it bear permanent fruit, he would have needed to live forever. Whereas I am the servant of my country. Rome is far greater than any man she produces. When I am dead, Rome will continue to produce other great men. I will leave Rome stronger, richer, more powerful. What I do will be used and improved by those who follow me. Fools and wise men in equal number, and that’s a better record than a line of kings can boast. For every great king, there are a dozen utter nonentities.”

Vercingetorix said nothing, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I do not agree,” he said finally.

Caesar got up. “Then let us hope, Vercingetorix, that we never have to decide the issue upon a battlefield. For if we do, you will go down.” His voice grew warmer. “Work with me, not against me!”

“No,” said Vercingetorix, eyes still closed.

Caesar left the room to find Aulus Hirtius.

“Rhiannon grows more and more interesting,” Caesar said to him. “The young hothead Vercingetorix is her first cousin. In that respect, Gallic nobles are just like Roman nobles. All of them are related. Watch her for me, Hirtius.”

“Does that mean she’s to come to Lutetia with me?”

“Oh, yes. We must give her every opportunity to have more congress with cousin Vercingetorix.”

Hirtius’s small, homely face screwed up, his brown eyes pleading. “Truly, Caesar, I don’t think she’d betray you, no matter who her relatives might be. She dotes on you.”

“I know. But she’s a woman. She chatters and she does silly things like writing to Servilia—a more stupid action is hard to think of! While I’m away, don’t let her know anything I don’t want her to know.”

Like everyone else in on the secret, Hirtius was dying to learn what Servilia had said, but Caesar had opened her letter himself, then sealed it again with Quintus Cicero’s ring before anyone had a chance to read it.