Druids by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

fools,” the chief druid replied shortly. “Fools who have been seduced by traders’ trinkets.”
    “I say this to you, Menua. As king of the Camutes, I charge
    you and the Order of the Wise to take whatever precautions you deem necessary to protect our tribe from this threat you foresee. You need no one’s support but my own. Protect us, druid, because we are free people and not to be crushed beneath paving stones.” Witih this injunction Nantorus turned aside to the warmth and comfort of his own lodge, leaving us in a darkness that had fallen like a stone upon Cenabum.
    Instinctively I understood that the king felt he had fully discharged his duty by putting the responsibility onto the druids. Nantorus would sleep this night with a peaceful mind. Menua, however, shifted his shoulders uncomfortably, as we walked on, like a man carrying a heavy burden.
    The wind had swung around and came howling out of the north, ending our golden summer. Cold rain lashed us. Menua abandoned his resolve to sleep under the open sky. Together we ran for the shelter of the guest lodge.
    The rain followed us only to the eaves. The cold followed us into our beds.
    Next morning the chief druid told me we were returning at once to the grove. “We have work to do, Ainvar.” We. He had said we. “We are going to raise a cry for assistance in protecting the tribe, a cry so loud it will ring throughout the Otherworid.”
    “How do we do that?” I asked eagerly.
    His face was somber in the sunless dawn. “We are going to sacrifice the prisoners of war.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    ATTENDANCE AT THE public sacrifices was a privilege afforded to every adult member of the tribe. Being denied that privilege was considered the most cruel punishment the druids could inflict, for it meant denying an individual the right to participate in direct communion with the Otherworld.
    But there were not as many human sacrifices as had once been offered in Gaul. In recent generations the number had dwindled drastically, and since my own manmaking there had been none. Only oxen went to the sacrificial altar.
    Seeing the Senones sacrificed would be my first such experience. As Menua’s apprentice, I would be expected to assist in the ritual; I, who looked away when the blood bubbled from the throat of a sacrificial animal.
    The meat on the roasting spit was sacrificed for your sake, my head reminded me. And you ate it with a good appetite, you even licked the grease from your fingers.
    That is different, I argued with myself. My brother-in-creadon died that I might live, and its spirit was propitiated before the slaughter. When I eat flesh I always do so in full knowledge of the gift given me.
    My head replied, The prisoners will die that you and the tribe
    may be protected, and their spirits will be propitiated. It would be cowardly not to witness their dying, when they are giving so great a gift.
    Cowardly, I agreed. But the thought chilled me just the same.
    k ‘For this aspect of your education in druidry, Aberth the sacrificer will be your instructor, of course,” Menua informed me.
    Of course.
    It was whispered that Aberth loved shedding blood for its own
     
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    sake, that it gave him the sort of pleasure other men found in women.
    He came for me at dawn. Standing in Menua’s doorway, with his narrow features half concealed by the folds of his hood, Aberth infected the air with a chamel reek. I drew back involuntarily.
    His thin lips tightened over his teeth and his eyes glittered. “You do not welcome me, Ainvar?” he asked mockingly.
    “I welcome you as a free person.” My voice was thin.
    Aberth looked past me to Menua. “That isn’t a very warm greeting for such an auspicious occasion. Has mis man no enthusiasm for sacrifices?”
    “He has not yet had his deathteaching, so he isn’t fully prepared. In the normal course of events … but the pattern has presented us with the sacrifice of the Senones long before Ainvar was ready for