'It's you who've sold the people out, not me!'
They were the ones who advocated a laying down of arms before the Roman advance. They were the ones who insisted the tribes kowtowed to Roman rules and paid Roman bloody taxes. Taxes? Lenus almighty, we work our own soil, grow our own grain, cut our own timber, raise our own beasts and then have to pay ten per cent for the privilege?
'What right do these oppressors have, tramping in here, riding roughshod over good, honest people then telling them how to live their own lives?' he'd demanded. 'Are they gods? Superheroes? Tell me, are they monsters? Demons? Supernatural beings who cannot be slain?'
He'd challenged the Chieftains to deny it, but all he got back was the usual crap about how the Roman militia protected the Nation far better than they'd defended themselves, how ten per cent tax was a trifle compared to the profits Aquitania was reaping thanks to the new trade links and how the tribes were stronger, healthier, better educated under the eagle. Surely, they asked, he could see this?
'Fuck, no! All I see are cowards who cover themselves in metal and tell you it's glory. Bullies who oppress you and tell you it's freedom. What I see,' he'd told them, 'are jackals who feed off your flesh while telling you they're cuddly puppies, and by Lenus, you cretins believe them.'
'Do not talk to us of bullying,' the Chieftains had countered. 'We have seen for ourselves the weals you left on your wife.'
Women again, and which one of those bitches in the village had been telling tales this time? he wondered. Cooking up mischief, when they should have been cooking a decent meal for their family. Spreading rumours, when they should have been spreading their legs for their husbands. Too much time on their hands, that's the trouble.
'Nothing she didn't deserve,' he'd told the Chieftains.
Bloody Romans, this was. Putting ideas in his wife's head that women could answer back.
'And your children? Did they deserve their beatings, too?'
'Discipline's breaking down under these bastards and you're castigating me for enforcing it in my own home?' He couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'You ask whether I'm blind to progress, but it's you who can't see that Rome's cut off your balls under the pretext of friendship.'
His loyalty was to his bloodline, he thundered. Where was theirs?
'I won't stand by while the tribes are annihilated through your self-centred apathy. You say trade benefits our people? I say they're selling their souls. You say peace is a good thing? I say it's man's duty to fight, not only to defend what is his, but to take from his neighbour if his neighbour is weak, for weakness cannot be tolerated in any society, least of all ours!'
The Chieftains had glanced at each other, but more in pity, he'd thought, than discomfort.
'You are still a young man,' they said. 'You have a wife, who will be married off to another should you be cast out, and whose husband will raise your children as his own. Think carefully. You are denying yourself, as well as them, the chance to speak to or hug them again, and you might wish to consider those consequences before we cast our votes.'
'Men are born to be warriors and though my sons might be forbidden from speaking to me, you cannot strip away their respect!'
As they grew up, they'd see it was their father who led
Aquitania to freedom and drove the oppressors from Gaul. Standing in that circle of longhouses, surrounded by browbeaten weaklings, the Whisperer's heart had swelled as he pictured his sons growing into warriors in his own image. Tearing up law courts, pulling down temples, putting an end to the trade that brought foreign ways into the region. What use were aqueducts anyway, when women were perfectly capable of fetching water from the river in buckets? Thanks to him, there would be a return to the old ways, when life was simple, the only tongue heard was their own and men went to war, as they should do. A return, moreover, to a morality in which children obeyed their fathers and wives didn't dare question how their husbands spent the household income.
He snorted. Stupid bitch couldn't understand that men drank to relieve the pressures of raising a family, that it was them who went out to work, them who deserved a treat for their slaving. Ach, the man who took on that lazy cow, good luck to him, that's what he said. Let some other poor bugger listen to her whining on about having no money for food because he'd drunk it away. Let some other poor bastard find out what it's like, coming home late at night and wanting his woman, then having to fight for what's his because she objected to being bent over the bloody table or was cramped up with a toothache. Who the hell wanted to look at her fucking face anyway? Good riddance to that selfish bitch.
'If you cowards won't back me,' the Whisperer had shouted to all the tribespeople who'd gathered to vote, 'there are enough Aquitani who aren't happy shouldering this foreign yoke. Who needs you?'
It was them who'd need him, watch and see. Them who'd bloody need him. Because who had united the Nations, eh? All right, some of these hotheads were bitter for all the wrong reasons, but who was it who'd stirred up passion among the dispassionate? Who'd inspired the disenchanted? Who'd roused the anger that had lain dormant for a whole generation? Through him — through his carefully executed crimes and his extensive contacts — an arsenal of weapons and supplies had been amassed, traps set, pits dug, nets sewn that would spring down from the trees, and when the battle cry rose up, the Oppressors wouldn't know what bloody hit them.
And if the Chieftains thought shunning would teach him a lesson, they were right. Instead of standing on the steps of the basilica and railing against his people's indifference, the Whisperer had adopted patience and stealth in his quest to rid Gaul of these pigs. Changing his name, changing his identity and being all things to all men, he moved from daylight into the shadows, conducting his business in secret and discussing rebellion in whispers. Oh, but soon. He smiled. Soon he'd be free to emerge from the darkness and lift his face to the sun. No more shadows. No more whispers. Only screams.
The screams of Roman women as his sword ripped their throats and hacked the heads of their children clean off their shoulders. The screams of Roman babies, the screams of filthy half-breeds, but most especially the screams of the Hundred-Handed, who'd done so much to suck the power from men, even to preaching that all life in the universe stemmed from a woman. Well, let's see how swiftly this earth mother rides to their rescue when their eyes are being gouged out and their precious gesticulating hands are chopped off. By the axe of the Thunder God, he'd leave so much carnage in his wake that the beehive of Rome would buzz wild with anger. And once grief and outrage had blinded it to all reason, that's when the Whisperer would slough off his disguise and lead the charge for freedom.
No armour. Not for him. He'd ride down on them shirtless to prove he had nothing to fear, and it wouldn't only be Rome who paid the price. The Chiefs would pay dearly for not backing him. Them, and that bitch of a wife.
He thought back to this morning, to the slave block in Santonum, and spat. He didn't hold with these Roman-style auctions. Slaves should be captured in combat and brought back as trophies. Let the bastards understand every day for the rest of their lives who was boss. But what he wouldn't have given right then to put the cow that he'd married on that auction block and see her sold into bondage.
That was another lesson he'd learned since that voting jug was upended with not a single white pebble in sight. Just how many different ways there were to hurt women. How many methods by which he could inflict pain.