Free Druids by Morgan Llywelyn

him—”
    “You were looking for Ogmios yet you chose me?” Tarvos interrupted.
    I was learning to listen: 1 recognized the concealed pleasure in the Bull’s voice. I bit off the words I had meant to say about Ogmios and his son, Crom Daral, and said instead, “When I saw you, Tarvos, I found the man I needed.”
    My reward was the expression of satisfaction on his blunt face and the flash of his teeth in his beard when he smiled.
    He left the lodge to get some food for me from Damona, and I lay back on my bed, thinking. I had spoken the truth, I now realized. I had chosen the right man, though on that day I was looking for someone very different.
    I had gone in search of Crom Daral to ask him to be my bodyguard, hoping that would somehow be a start toward mending the
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    breach between us. But he was hard to find, even in our small fort. He had been deliberately avoiding me since the manmaking.
    I had thought Ogmios, as captain of the guard, would surely know where his son was. I went in search of him among the company of warriors who could usually be found near the main gate of the fort, boasting and wrestling to pass the time. But before I saw Ogmios I discovered his son embedded in the group, listening with unsmiling face to the rough banter. I shouted “Crom!”
    and raised an arm in greeting.
    He turned at me sound of my voice and met my eyes. Then he deliberately turned his back on me.
    I halted in midstride-My head echoed Vercingetorix’s words:
    “He failed himself and you were a witness. He won’t forgive you.”
    My eyes chanced to meet those of a burly young man with hair the color of dirty thatch, lounging at the edge of the cluster of warriors. Impulsively I shouted to him, loud enough for Crom to hear, “You there! You’re the very one I want! Bring your spear and come with me, on command of the chief druid.”
    Tarvos had been with me since, proving to be the ideal ally. Solid and steady, he conformed to my need, fitting exactly into my pattern although I had taken him on impulse.
    What, then, is impulse?
    Such questions roil the brains of druids.
    In any event, I could not hold Tarvos to my side much longer. My strength rapidly returned; soon 1 did not even need to lean on him when I went to relieve myself at the squatting trench.
    Before I could dismiss him formally, he was taken from me by his primary obligation.
    A great shout came thundering across the land. The warning was cried from plowman to herdsman to woodcutter until it reached our fort, and it would be shouted on from there by a network of the common class all the way to Cenabum, which was two nights from us by foot but only a short distance by voice. “Invasion and attack!” came the cry.
    Details followed. A large war party of the neighboring Senones had moved into Camute territory east of the fort and was plundering the more prosperous farmsteads there. Our fort and its warriors were sufficient to defend the grove and to shelter nearby farmers, but for this son of problem we needed Nantorus and a larger army. The shouts soon brought him from Cenabum with a full complement of fighting men. Our warriors ran to join them, yelling and clashing their weapons to make a frightful racket.
    48 Morgan Llywelyn
    We all crowded the gateway to see them leave for war. In the crush a small red-haired boy who was jammed against my knee tugged impatiently at my tunic. “What do you see?” he kept asking—
    1 started to lift him up so he could see for himself, then realized he was blind. I knew the boy; he belonged to a clan of smallholders who planted barley just beyond the fort. He was always wandering away from his distracted mother. His pale gray eyes were covered with a milky film that Sulis the healer had never been able to clear. Sundered from the sun, his was an endless night.
    I picked him up and held him so my lips were close to his ear. He was very young, he hardly weighed anything. But he vibrated with life. “I see the