GALLUS IACTUS EST
(The Gaul is Cast)
[Dedicated to Helen F.]
"The Winter Vestige is now departing!" came the hollow resounding from the cylindrical bronze cone. The long-haired man in scale armor announced this three more times as sullen clouds milked sunlight through its openings and the bleak shadow of a Veneti longship lurched overhead.
Sounds and shadows. Ardonix entered the port city of Melvini under shouts and shadowy imagery. Wooden buildings dotted the port, new structures supported by robust oak columns, paraded by tribal soldiers in scale, sandals and blue capes. Leather scraping wood. The port busy at sea with the hundred pairs of tanned hands laboring to load and unload ships bound for exotic lands.
But Ardonix rode in the Vestige, a new device made from the curious minds of the seafaring Veneti tribe. Built up on a private aqueduct twenty meters high, the Vestige presented a narrow ship powered by wind and the release of steam on still days. It appeared as a slight crescent ship, a boiler at the rear in the form of a bronze bull whose nostrils let slip hot air. A triangular sail of crimson hung taut, a good sign that the wind was at the ship's aft. This vessel floated in enough water to hurl it down the artifical waterway from Melvini to Ardonix's bemoaned destination.
"Name and purpose," stated the guardian at the gangplank.
"Arvernius. Ardonix Arvernius. My scroll states all." He produced a scroll in a copper tube and slapped it into the guardian's armored hand.
He pulled out the scroll and read Gallic words in Latin script. "A surveyor, are you? Rome, does it say? A lover of garbage heaps?" He eyed Ardonix up and down as the breeze blew. Slender build. Olive skinned. Wide, almond-shaped eyes of liquid hazel behind a blowing mass of curly sandalwood hair. High cheekbones. Full lips. Scars formed squares and swirls on exposed shoulders. A bronze gladius lay concealed behind the flowing layers of three cloaks.
"It does."
"Rome it is. She is the final stop before we turn back. No help down there for many a day, my friend. Trouble. Bandits. Foreigners."
"I am aware of the risks. But I go where the Legion sends me." Ardonix stirred lies into his pot of truth. While there were an infinite number of Legions in the Gaul States, from militant to mercantile, he did not declare from which sent him abroad. To say so would have been tantamount to arrest and prosecution. His Legion had no formal name in the tribes, though its works were vital to their existence.
The lie came in the form of the scroll. A surveyor. If a spy surveys land and enemies for ensnaring, then let it be true. But Ardonix had no legal claim to surveying land for engineering works. He sought a different sort of staking in the ruins of Rome.
"Come along, surveyor! Vestige blows on soon enough!"
ASHES OF WHAT ONCE WAS
ROME
Wreckage.
Ardonix walked down the thousand steps from the Great Aqueduct to ground level. He alone let off in Rome, while other wealthy passengers had departed much earlier in the finer Gaul vineyards and estates to the north. Rome seemed to smolder. Even nine hundred and a score of years since Caesar escaped the claws of Pompey and returned with a joint Gaul-Roman army to level this place, she had the appearance of a city recently sacked. Burned earth. Broken columns. Were bandits setting fires to this day?
The Theatre of Pompey remained as a cracked open shell, a center for trading used by the nomadic Romani, Umayyad warriors and tempermental Ostmen. Strangers, all of them. He would stand out in their presence. Few from Gaul would dare set foot here, even though their sweet victory paved the way for the expansion of these other peoples.
Ardonix found his nerve, walked across the warm, burned field, and approached the city that made his people legendary.
The shell once home to gladiators swarmed with bodies and antiquities, carpets, tapestries, fruits and spices. Ardonix sampled some, ignored others. He found a notable group of merchants from Asia examining bronze braziers that brewed tea and possessed a pouring automaton in the form of a robed woman. Ingenious design, no doubt stolen from a tribesman, but not Ardonix's concern this day. He sought out a better prize than novelty. He searched for history. Bloodied, momentous, glorious history that had been taken.
The Legion sent him for his premiere versatility with tongues, a yearning to travel and an ability to suss out danger and tackle it. The three primary attributes of a spy. Ardonix roved through the crowds of buyers and sellers, seeking the ones who operated in his area of interest.
It, of course, manifested at the opposite end of the market. He squeezed between gaggles of people in robes, cloaks, tunics, armor. At last, he reached a smaller, quieter area of tents, where men young and old sold off things found in the rubble, and other items procured in residences by the dead of night.
"Welcome, friend! A Gaul, is it? We get so few in this region."
"As I imagine. We tend to see Rome as little more than a stepping stone, of value only in our recollections, not in reality." Ardonix glanced around the tent. Everything here came from ancient Rome. Busts, jewelry, silver tripods. All of it looted from the soil and the River Tiber. These men were well adorned and eager. Artifacts such as these were in demand for those who craved what had been.
"Do you have anything of Caesar? Gaius Julius?" He feigned foolishness, as if Caesar had not been taught to him from birth, the man who turned against his own nation and made the tribes he conquered into his chosen people, and dominated all of the continent then, and now. Every altar in every city, every tribal swath of land for hunting and seagoing navy bearing fur-covered warriors to seize Britain owed their glory and majesty to the Traitor turned Chieftain.
"Such as?" Suspicion entered the voice of one seller, a heavy set, older Moor with a fine silky beard and one too many bracelets.
"A bust. The Glorious Head? Caesar in a feathered antler helm after he was cast as the Great Chief of the Unified Tribes."
"There were many such busts, my friend. Of which pose--"
"The original. Sculpted in bronze, not marble or stone like later versions. I hear it was in the possession of a general of the Sequani, who died in his home from unnatural exposure."
A brief laugh echoed from a few merchants in the Roman gallery tent. But the Moor remained astute.
"You said 'unnatural'?"
Ardonix gave him a sober stare. "Yes. Having one's entrails fall out by a slice is far from Nature's course..." pause for effect, "in my experience."
The Moor stepped closer. He eyed his peers with caution. "It is said that Caesar sought to subdue Rome. When it failed, for Pompey found his nerve and sent soldiers to counter the Legion Twelve Gemina, your first Great Chief made many a promise to the Gauls to unite them to his cause."
"Yes."
"Your unifier is a traitor."
"Yes."
"And you have no ill will towards this harbinger or what is says of your many and varied tribes?"
"Only on Jovis," he remarked with a sheepish grin. "The rest of the week I remain indifferent. Now then, you sound like a man with his ear to the wind. Have you heard of this work of art?"
"I may know something. Come back after dusk. We can eat, talk, and I will show you works of wonder." The Moor's eyes shone.
A simple head nod, and Ardonix departed to sniff spice and play the role the Legion gave him.
ROME BY NIGHT
Ardonix walked up to another tent, smaller than the last, and entered after raising a welcome hand to the Umayyad guard in an elaborate white headwrap posted out front.
He found the sight of women, young men and ornates displays of food welcoming. A golden brazier at the center smoked worn embers under lavender seed to make the air pleasant. The Moor he spoke to earlier in the day sat at the center of this buffet, adorned in red and white robes, more bracelets on the forearms.
"Sit, Gaul. Eat as you like, what you like, and whomever likes you." He gestured to a few women to the right.
Brows raised. They possessed much for the vision and imagination, but business first, and last.
"I am Ardonix, of the Arverni. The bust of bronze?" Ardonix took a hunk of bread, goblet of wine and a pomegranate. He told his flesh gluttony was to be avoided while on surveillance.
"I have a name as well, besides 'merchant'. Aayan Vaziri, from Bugia. Yes, yes. I have them." An index finger curled over again and again notified the Moor's young men to get up and run twards the rear. Soon, each one brought forth with great use of strength many bronze cast busts of every great leader from dour Crassus to the Grecian Alexander. Ardonix could see the famous faces of ancient warfare and politics on display: Cicero, militant Aetius, the writer Amafinius, Boudicca the Mother Empress of Britain. All of them lovely, polished by hand, gleaming in the light of the fragrant brazier.
More were brought forth. Ardonix kept his face an impregnable fortress wall. The next to last head sat before him bore the face he knew all too well. Gaius Julius Caesar. Vercingetorix, Arverni chief and ancestor to Ardonix called Caesar 'The Man With Two Faces'.
"Do you see it, Man of the Arverni? There is little asked for I cannot provide. Gaius, the man who amputated your wild bands like severed fingers only to stitch them into a mighty fist clothed within a cestus of toil and victory." He laughed and the expansive stomach bubbled.
"This is the one, merchant." It brought about a mire of emotions for Ardonix. Joy for the outcome of his race. Satisfaction that the object of his quest rested before him. Fear, for how to get it out? Anger. The Empire idolized Caesar. His face radiated across Gaul as the Sun, yet nary a bust or flag held the face of a single Gallic man of note.
"You may take it with you, for one-hundred fifty dinar." Aayan rubbed sweaty hands on his robe.
Or at the price of fleet feet and not tripping over them.
"If you desire to pay now, and have a horse to carry it, I will sell it to you now."
"And what of the Pechenegs, suspected of stealing the Glorious Head? How is it they came to place it into your gilded hands?" Ardonix cut open the pomegranate with his gladius and stuffed plump seeds into his mouth.
Aayan lost his sense of humor. "Pechenegs? I have seen no Pechenegs of late this far west. Unless they gave the Head to the Ostmen. But, those sailors had no apprciation of its true value."
"I see. Here." Ardonix removed a pouch from his belt and handed it to the closest young male servant. "One-hundred biatec. Gold from the Tribal States. Fifty more in silver will be yours from the graces of the throne in Alesta upon its safe return." He initiated a relaxed posture, partaking of seeds, looking into Aayan without blinking. Haggling in silence.
Aayan surveyed the many men and women in his dominion as if they might offer the proper response. None were versed in economics or affairs of state, only pleasure and manual labor.
"Alesta...this is very far away. I never travel into Gaul, new friend. They do not take kindly to outside business."
"This is the offer. This, or I can take it from you now."
Some of the young women fled. The men as well. Ardonix ate pomegranate as if the mood were complacent. Aayan stood up in a rush, face flush, fists formed.
Ardonix responded in kind, to a point. He retained the passive sentiment.
"A threat, Man of the Arverni? In my welcoming home? You eat from my plate and boldly state you will steal from me!"
"Mmm..." Pomegranate so ripe! "Yes. I stated it so." The gladius remained in hand, dripping juice. Ardonix studied the merchant. "I know you. I learned of you throughout the day. You deal with the thieving Magyars, Pechenegs, Ostmen and other foes of the States. I think you may even loathe us."
Young men who stayed on fetched daggers, whips, scimitars.
Ardonix, casually, kicked over the brazier. Aayan screamed. Embers reached the ends of his robes and bit in with flaming teeth.
"I believe you are enflamed."
As was the tent, a hot eruption of lavender scented destruction. Ardonix moved fast. He was paid well to. Think fast. Move with swiftness. The Glorious Head in his hands, much lighter than it appeared, he fled as the men threw daggers, only to strike fabric.
In the night air, across jagged ground of broken columns and shifting steps under dirt and grass, Ardonix moved.
He caught sight of his horse, a bright white camargue bearing cloud gray blotches, and jumped on. She took off at his command, leaving the Umayyad servants in the distant past of Roman relics.
ALESTA
CAPITAL CITY OF THE GAUL STATES
Ardonix Arvernius entered the immaculate open courtyard of Achentrix Gaius, Great Chief of Gaul, elder of the Sequani covered in a double layered scarlet cape and silver chain cuirass about his collar bones. His curly hair adorned in eagle feathers blew in a coarse wind as dark clouds rolled in from the west. Wool bracca trousers and woolen top kept his body warm as he walked by an altar to Sucellus on his way to hail the chief.
Achentrix stood as a corpse, old, hunched over like a gnarled tree in a storm. He lacked any form of regality. Near toothless, one handed, he held his postion by sheer cunning, alliances and bold words.
"Is this Ardonix I see?"
"It is, Old One, Sire of Gaul. I see Glanis has blessed you.The swelling in your calves is but gone."
"I stand on my own again, this is true. Have you brought it?"
Ardonix raised a leather bag. "I have."
The Chief moved as a young lad, snatching the bag to open it. His feeble arms lifted the bust up high as rain began to water the landscape.
"Heh! Do you know what this is, surveyor?"
Ardonix shrugged one shoulder and supressed a yawn. "A sculpture of he who made us great."
"No. No! This is the symbol of our greatness, not Rome's, not that of Caesar!" The Chief grinned a gummy grin.
"How so? Is it not the face of Caesar in bronze? Did he not make us by his own efforts?" Ardonix wanted to say 'cowardly guile' but the leader stood before him and there were warriors across the yard. Moot points to consider.
"Yes, but the lightness of it! Have you never heard? Caesar died in his bed ten days after our ancestors won the War and placed Romans in rags and fetters."
"I have heard it. What of it?"
"We did it. Yes. We, the tribes, never forgot his murderous acts against us. Unison or no, the chiefs of the time remembered, and as he slept, we took vengeance the way we knew how. This is ours!"
"This?"
The gums were more revealed. Ardonix tried hard not to appear repulsed.
"The head of Julius Caesar. Lopped off. Cast in bronze. And I hold it in my hand. Our seal of superiority. Our sign from above. Blessing from bloodshed."
Ardonix took a step back. The old way, when the tribes took heads as trophies an kept them hidden forever.
"And now," said the Great Chief Achentrix Gaius, "he returns to..." disturbing laughter, "lead us once more."
END