Cavarinos nodded his understanding, though there was an unhappy rumble from his brother. Critognatos stirred and ran his fingers through his beard, ripping out the tangles in the matted hair. ‘So you trick our neighbours into distrusting one another, and now you will destroy a small tribe just to shake the resolve of a larger one. Why bother fighting the Romans at all, when we can be just like them?’
He spat on the floor, and Cavarinos noted the slight narrowing of their king’s eyes at such behaviour in his tent.
‘I do not expect you to make war on other tribes, Critognatos,’ the king said in icy tones. ‘You have made your opinions abundantly clear. I have another task for you. The Carnutes have sent a reasonable force south to join us — enough to fool and worry the Aedui, but not half as many as I was expecting. And the Senones as yet send no one, despite their promises. You are concerned that we risk our forces when we should be increasing them? Then I task you with riding north alongside a few good men to visit the tribes and remind them of their loyalties. Draw from them more promises of warriors and make sure those promises are held to and that the reinforcements are sent to join us here.’
Critognatos’ face showed a modicum of disappointment that he was still not being sent to kill Romans, but the knowledge that he would not now be required to fight other tribes, and the faint tang of pride in the importance of the task assigned to him got the better of him, and he nodded with a rare smile. ‘To the Carnutes and the Senones to begin with, then?’
‘And then the Cenomani, the Meldi and the Parisi. And follow up on anything you might come across on other local tribes on your journey. Do not get too close to the Roman forces up there, though. Caesar’s pet war-dog Labienus is in that region, and he is a dangerous man. He would not leap to the aid of the Aedui, but he will not countenance rebels stirring up the local tribes. Use your initiative.’
Cavarinos fought the urge to roll his eyes at the tying of the word ‘initiative’ with his brother, but as Critognatos nodded he saw a look pass between the commanding cousins. Just for a moment he wondered whether the pair might even have considered this duty in the north solely to rid themselves of the difficult chieftain for a time.
‘And you, Cavarinos,’ Vergasillaunus said, still with that twinkling smile.
‘Me?’
‘I am afraid,’ Vercingetorix sighed, ‘you will have little time to rest. Take tonight to recover from your time among the Aedui, for tomorrow you ride north with your brother.’
A cold stone of disappointment settled in Cavarinos’ stomach. ‘But…’
‘No.’ Vercingetorix’s face took on the look that Cavarinos knew brooked no argument, so he fell silent. ‘I have another task for you,’ the king continued. ‘A young uidluias seer with a great reputation for lore and for the sight joined us along with the Carnutes. She tells me that the ongoing depredations of the Romans has awoken the ire of the great god Ogmios and that the lord of words and corpses has bent his strength and will to a new curse with them in mind.’
Cavarinos had to fight once more to hold in his contempt. Ogmios, the Lord of Words. Unlike the common curse tablets, etched by the desperate in the hope of Divine interference and cast into holy springs, his curse tablets came written by the god’s hand, straight from the sky, it was said, and only during the worst storms, amid the crash of thunder and the flare of lightning. They were rarer than a bird flying backwards. Kings and chieftains had fought wars over the ownership of one of the insipid artefacts. Priceless, they were. And as far as Cavarinos was concerned, prime superstitious bullshit.
‘You would send me to the shepherds of the ways to collect a curse? It is wasted effort. Send me instead to procure weapons, horses and men, for it is they who will help us beat Rome. Not the trickery and tomfoolery of druids.’
Vercingetorix’s face still held that fixed expression, defying him to push his luck. But Cavarinos’ opinion of druids and curses and such drivel was well-known among his peers. That the king would even consider sending him bowing and scraping to the druids was little short of an insult.
‘I detest their kind and their attempts to control all the tribes and chieftains of the land. And they know it, too. There is every chance that they will refuse me upon sight. Send me to rouse the tribes and send Critognatos to fawn to the shepherds. He believes in them.’
Vercingetorix had the grace to look faintly apologetic. ‘In truth, my friend, I know all these things, and it was in neither my mind nor my heart to send you.’
‘Then why order it?’
‘Because the uidluias who told me of the curse also told me that only you can find it and wield it. Curious, the ways of gods, are they not?’
Cavarinos opened his mouth to argue, but instead looked at the three faces arrayed before him. Neither of the leaders would ever submit to the power of the druids, but both still respected their power and held them in esteem. And as for Critognatos: well, Cavarinos would find no help there. The uidluias had spoken the will of gods, and her voice carried a thousand times the weight of his to their ears. Argument was futile. He sighed. ‘Where do I start?’
‘The greatest nemeton and gathering of the shepherds is in Carnute lands, and there Ogmios is strong. That would seem the place to begin.’
* * * * *
‘We should have come through the mountains,’ grunted the heavy-set Cadurci warrior with the grisly necklace. Lucterius, his chief and superior in every manner barring foulness of appearance, shook his head, glancing distastefully at the necklace, formed of four dozen Roman teeth, each one selected and removed while its owner was still conscious, and threaded onto the cord with a hole drilled through the enamel. It might be common practice for the warriors to gather gruesome mementos, even down to the preserved Roman heads that he knew his cousin kept in his house, but the clatter and rattle of these particular souvenirs always set Lucterius’ own teeth on edge.
‘The mountains are all-but impassable at this time of year, and you know that. There is every chance we would have to dig our way through snow as deep as two men. This route was longer, but trust me, it was still quicker.’
The initial force of two thousand Cadurci warriors, augmented by men drawn from the Petrocorii, the Nitiobroges and the Volcae, now numbered in excess of six thousand, and that number would rise by at least another two thousand by nightfall, as the Ruteni had pledged horsemen, warriors and many of their infamous and deadly archers to the cause.
Lucterius looked along the narrow grassy valley ahead, which angled to the southeast and would deliver them into the lands of Roman Narbonensis in a matter of days. Above them, along the hillsides, thick, tangled forests kept their advance secret from potential onlookers, and the scouts ahead had as yet found no sign of Roman outposts.
The army had taken a circuitous route, curving out towards Aquitania and the western ocean before arcing back east and south, making the most of the gorges, narrow defiles and oft-unknown forest paths of the region. There was no chance, of course, that the Roman province knew they were coming, but Lucterius was nothing if not careful, and their route had taken them by secretive ways such that they would appear on the edge of Roman territory unnoticed and unexpected.
And without having to dig their way through a snowy pass…
He smiled to himself at what he imagined at the end of their journey: the freeing of the people. Narbonensis would fall, ripped from the Romans’ grasp and released from their endless taxes and uniformity and laws. And they would once again become a free land of Volcae, Tectosages, Arecomici and all the other tribes who had languished under Roman rule for so long. For it was no good Vercingetorix and his far-seeing Arverni raising all the tribes to fight back the Romans without freeing their captive brothers in the south after a century of domination.