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You want to know how the Romans were sent packing? How I helped tip the scales of Fate? Well, I suppose it started with ill luck, no matter who you ask. Romans can tell one tree from another, but that's to better fell them. They don't respect the sanctity of sacred groves. I believe it all began in a battle pushed too far and a stroke given to the wrong man, but for me it was with the skinning of a doe.
The spring had been dragging, never truly leaving the embrace of winter, and the poor thing was lean and without a fawn. I was quartering her when a messenger appeared, bedraggled and hard-pressed. It felt like an oman. He said he'd run from the small grove south of Cenabum, where a gathering of druids and Mothers had sent for me by name. There was a fuss, he told me, with a druid of the Parisii come so far south, and already a white cow had been sacrificed.
"Go!" he said, taking over my quarry. "I'll bring her to your village, I'll hunt for them in your stead, I was tasked to. But make haste, or the Gods will have me!"
What a Parisii druid wanted of me, a Carnute woman, I didn't know, but I didn't question it. Druids all seem to know everything, after a while one stops wondering. I made my way North, slinking past the Roman patrolled roads, stopping only to ask shelter in an isolated farmstead, and before two days had gone, I entered the grove where I was expected. I recognised several of the Mothers, and two of the druids, but the messenger hadn't lied, this was a large and busy gathering.
My bow and knives were taken from me, and I was led to kneel at the feet of the great Oak tree at the heart of the grove, its ancient branches rustling with the bones of cranes and holly tied in wheels. The Parisii druid sat on a thick root, his cloak lined with wolf fur and pinned by a Taranis wheel. The torc around his neck looked a lot like mine, but slimmer, and made of gold.
I bowed and waited.
"Eskenga Kouadrounia, you are an initiated Daughter."
"Yes," I said, raising my head to meet the eyes of the Parisii man. His name was Martialis, and he had ridden from Lutecia.
"The war is not going well, Eskenga."
Like I wouldn't know.
My village chief had taken every able warrior to fight, most never to return. My father—once crippled in a raid, but still a respected hunter—had resigned himself and taught me the craft, to use bow and arrow as my mother had taught me to card and spin, to dye and weave stripes and herringbone.
Then the fighting had turned so bitter that even my one-armed father had gone to die at the tip of a Roman spear, and I'd been left not just the only initiate Daughter for leagues, but also one of the last hunters who could spear boar and buck. For two springs I'd been given youths to teach. I showed them how to walk in the forest, how to craft sigils of silence out of yew and hazel, how to ensnare small game and ward off wolves. I was reluctant to teach them more. It was not done—not among the Carnutes and nor, I knew, among the Parisii—for a young man to learn the spear at the knee of a maiden.
"It is rare for a Daughter to be well versed in the ways of the forest," the druid said with a smile, as if reading my mind. "I think this is why you were chosen."
"Chosen?"
"You have felt something at the turn of the moon, have you not?"
"Yes, I reported this," I said, nodding to the Mothers standing among the trees around us. "Like a kick in the very fabric of spring."
All the druids nodded, some with a tremor in their beard.
"It was the All-Father," Martialis explained.
There had been a large battle, up North, that had trespassed on sacred grounds. Every holy man had felt that kick, and known it to mean the death of The Woodman, All-Father, who brought spring with him. I gaped. The Parisii accent made the name sound like Cernunos, but there was no mistaking his claim that the namesake God of my people had been slain.
"Isn't Carnonos immortal? Isn't he the God of Life and Death?"
"He is. But his earthly body is as subject to death as ours, for his rules are inescapable."
"Why tell me this?" I asked, bemused.
"Because of what you told the Mothers of your circle."
"How I felt anger?"
Anger was the least of it. I'd been fidgety ever since, fighting an urge to abandon my clan and go North.
"Yes. It is the God speaking to you. You must go, listen to him, do his will, you are his favoured child, Eskenga."
They trimmed my hair, gave me a charm-sewn cloak, a checkered blouse loose enough to hide my figure, and a pack ready for the march ahead. Martialis explained where to go, what to do, and how someone would wait for me West of Lutecia.
So I went. There is nothing to say of my travels, except that I soon tied cloth around my neck to hide the heavy silver torc there, and took to carrying game at my belt. It was better, I learnt, to approach Roman soldiers waving my "wares" expectantly, than to wait for them to notice me.
When I reached my destination, there was no mistaking it.
There were many bodies still spread on the thawing forest floor, though mostly Carnutes. I didn't need to look at all the brave fallen, the pulse in my throat seemed to guide my every step, till I fell by the body of Carnonos. He was untouched by decay, a youth too perfect to be on any battlefield, with the first hints of a golden beard that would never grow around a beautiful mouth parted by the surprise of death.
The cut was in his neck, an angry wedge that had bled into the soil in a small, wine-dark puddle.
"All-Father," I moaned, "don't abandon us!"
I dug with my bare hands, each cold handful of bloodstained earth tucked in a bag druid Martialis had provided. Carnonos had bled to the centre of the world, it seemed, but the bag was full, so I pulled its leather strings, kissed the young man's icy brow, and left.
The walk to Lutecia now, that was another story.
The bag of earth smelled in turn of the rot of Autumn and the heart-blood of a dying stag, of a hot knife through a comb of honey and the tang of fir sap. Animals started to follow me through the woods, and people abandoned the tasks in their fields to look in my direction, no matter how well hidden I was in the shadows of the brush. Never was I more scared than when a whole host of Roman soldiers passed me by, and as I lay frozen under a shrub, I watched all of its branches slowly come into bloom. But the men marched on, and so did I, harried but undetected, until I reached the valley West of Lutecia.
There, an old man leaning against a way stone waved at me. Before I could speak, he'd turned around and started down a deer trail, leading me to a clearing. In its centre was a young oak tree, and tied to it a naked man. Broad-shouldered and tan, he had the build of a soldier in his prime. A buck had been bled over his bare legs, its antlered head laid to rest against his groin.
"What—"
"A Roman soldier", the old man said, clearly making an effort not to spit at the words.
The soldier's eyes were rolling white like a spooked horse, and I felt sorry for him, and a little for myself: I'd never killed a man.
"Me paenitet," I whispered, as I knelt down in the deer's blood, "te adiuvare non possum."
The soldier begged and cursed, but didn't shirk from the kiss of my blade. His blood flowed, dark and oily, an endless tide over my fingers fumbling on the strings of the purse. Two handfuls of dirt I pressed in his mouth before death cramped it shut, and the rest to fill the cut in his throat.
“Carnonos,” I cried, “come back to us!”
The old man, having cut the soldier’s bonds, prostrated himself next to me, joining in my pleas.
The gapping flesh knitted itself shut, and the eyes of the dead man opened, now green and flecked with gold. Hair flowed from his scalp, white as moon-glow and parting over budding antlers that grew and ramified, forming a living crown veined with silver. Carnonos breathed in sickly Spring and exhaled promises of Summer.
His thumb brushed my cheek where dirt blended with tears and blood.
“I will fight with you, my Children,” he said, and kissed my brow.
That, is how we won the war. With Carnonos leading us in battle, bleeding in the same earth we did.