‘Never,’ gurgled Molacos. ‘Rome cannot stand. Rome will pay.’
Lucterius nodded. ‘There are healers at the camp. They…’ It seemed a pointless platitude. If the man had survived to flee the field like this then he would live, but no healer short of the gods themselves could fix that face.
Molacos’ one good eye burned with baleful fire, and Lucterius shuddered. ‘Come. Let us turn this disaster around.’
Wearily, the two men clambered up the mile-long slope to the camp of the reserves, now missing a third of its original occupants but still a powerful, if tired and disconsolate, army. They were not even questioned by guards at the camp’s edge as they moved in among the blazing fires, though every warrior they came across, old and young, hale and wounded, turned his face away from Molacos in horror.
Half an hour after they had met on the lowest slope of the hill, the two Cadurci stumbled into the camp of the commanders, where Vergasillaunus had held court with the other leaders these past days. It came as no surprise to see Commius of the Atrebates, former friend of Caesar, sitting in Vergasillaunus’ chair. A number of familiar faces were absent.
‘The Cadurci hero returns,’ sneered Commius. ‘And he brings monsters to our table.’
There was no reaction from Molacos, for which Lucterius was glad. This was a delicate moment. If he was to bring the army and the war back from the brink, it would be no good launching accusations and insults around. Political. That was what he needed to be.
‘The army has lost its heart,’ he said carefully.
‘The army has lost a war,’ snapped Commius in reply.
‘Not so,’ Lucterius said clearly but calmly. ‘We lost a battle. The war goes on. Vercingetorix is still in Alesia. The Romans are still trapped in their forts. We still outnumber them. We are one step away from victory, as we were yesterday, though now it is a shorter step.’
Commius rolled his eyes. ‘Your problem, Lucterius, is that you are a fanatic. You never know when to stop.’
‘And you,’ Lucterius snapped, losing his temper despite his oath not to, ‘are a Roman pet and a coward.’
Commius rose from his seat slowly, glaring at the Cadurci.
‘I will not have you scourged and beaten from the camp for that, in memory of the brave fight you just led on the plains and the fact that you were seen to be the last to flee. But do not push me further. Now that Vercingetorix’s little boy has gone, I am in command here.’
‘Then while you’re standing and not on your fat arse, get among the tribes and rouse their spirits. Tell them that all is not lost. Remind them that we outnumber the Romans and we can still win.’
‘You are a fool, Lucterius. We have lost. It is time to lick our wounds and move out of Caesar’s vengeful eye.’
Lucterius stared. ‘You cannot seriously be suggesting that the army flee?’
‘Not flight, Lucterius. Simply returning to our cities and farms to take up our lives once again and hope that Caesar will be satisfied with the blood of those trapped in the oppidum and leave us to our peace.’
Lucterius took an angry step forward, the hideous monster Molacos at his shoulder, and several Atrebate warriors moved close to Commius, protectively.
‘If you flee then you ruin our chances for good. We have Caesar trapped and fighting for his life. His army cannot repeat what happened today. But if we leave, then he can resupply, feed his men, and will burn Alesia clear of all life. The war will go on either way, but it can either be ended here with relative ease, or it must be prosecuted elsewhere with a great deal more difficulty and uncertainty. Do not waste the only true opportunity we may ever have!’
Commius slowly sank back to his seat.
‘This is over, Lucterius. Take your Cadurci and go home. At sunrise this army disbands.’
The Cadurci chieftain stared at his opponent, and his eyes did a circuit, raking across every other noble and chief at the fire. None of them, barring the leader of the Senones — Drapes, his name was — would meet his belligerent gaze. They were beaten. Lucterius felt the bottom fall out of his world. Nothing he could do would persuade these men. Perhaps if he’d been the first to speak to them after the fight there would have been a chance, but they’d had hours of maudlin talk from Commius now and saw only failure and capitulation.
‘This is not over, Commius. As long as one Cadurci draws breath, the war will go on.’
‘Then you are a fool, Lucterius, and within a season your tribe will be but a memory.’
‘A memory of glory and defiance, rather than treachery, cowardice and surrender,’ spat Lucterius, turning and stomping away from the fire, the ruined Molacos at his side. He had made it perhaps twenty paces from the fire before he became aware of another figure falling in at his other side. He glanced across to see Drapes of the Senones with a thoughtful look on his face.
‘You are serious about carrying on the war?’
Lucterius grunted an affirmative with a nod.
‘You realise that the Arverni king will not be with us?’
‘Perhaps. The Romans will not kill him, though — he is too valuable as a prize. But even if he is crucified, we can still fight on. The Romans are tired and weak. If we can rally the tribes over winter, we will be able to rise again next year, this time with purpose and fury, not caution and subtlety.’
‘The druids might not support us after Vercingetorix’s failure.’
‘Then we will do it without them. This is not over.’ He glanced sidelong at the carved-meat face of his Cadurci friend, who radiated silent malice. ‘No. This is not over by a long way.’
Cavarinos had heaved his way through the western gate of the oppidum in the cold dark of the night and found the first empty house — there were so many now — to collapse in. His night had been fitful and unpleasant, filled with dreams of admonishment and loss, and for some reason punctuated with flashes of Fortuna laughing at him. Then, before the first rays of dawn, he had been struck with a vivid nightmare of battle in which a thousand dark-skinned warriors beat him to death in a brown dusty valley while a thousand glittering Romans looked on and laughed. The killing blow had never landed, though, for Cavarinos had lurched awake, drenched with cold sweat to the sound of a carnyx honking.
He rubbed his eyes and rolled out of bed. As his foot hit the ground and sent a shock up his leg, he remembered the calf wound and moved more carefully. At least his head had stopped hurting and he felt less groggy, the fuzziness that remained merely the product of his bad night.
His tunic and trousers clung to him with cold salty sweat and his hair felt saturated. He rose, trying to pick out what the carnyx call was saying. It was a general call to attendance. Not a battle call, at least. Assuming that whatever it summoned to was no urgent matter, he staggered over to the wall, where the house’s owner had hung a bronze mirror of Roman manufacture — an irony that made him smile despite himself. Peering at his face, he felt a little relieved. There was some mottled bruising where Fronto’s man had hit him, but otherwise he appeared to be whole. Nothing unfixable, anyway, and though the wrapping on his leg was soaked through with blood, as was the bottom of the bed, he had not bled out and he could feel that the wound had clotted and crusted, sticking to the binding.
He looked quizzically at the face before him. In the past few weeks and months he had left his chin hair to grown out again, his beard now as luxuriant and full as it had ever been.
He looked like Critognatos.
With a cathartic breath, he reached for the knife at his belt and, testing the edge, began to methodically shave his chin, then on a whim continued across his cheeks and down his neck until the face that stared back out of the rippled bronze looked more Roman than Gaul. He stared, feeling certain that somehow what he was looking at was the future. It looked and felt surprisingly natural.