Read Druids for Free Online Page B

for manmaking is a singular honor, Ainvar, yet you have welcomed the boy with your fists. This is a very bad beginning, and the first step shapes the journey. No sooner do the Arvernians acknowledge us as the preeminent druids in Gaul than you embarrass our entire tribe with your behavior.”
    “All the blame isn’t his,” Vercingetorix spoke up. “Nor all the credit yours. I was sent to you because our chief druid is very old and the long winter has enfeebled him. In my opinion, you were simply the next best thing. And this fellow and I fought because I baited him deliberately. I wanted to know what sort of man he is.”
    I wanted to throttle Vercingetorix. How dare he defend me— and insult Menua! I waited for the chief druid to wither him where he stood.
    But Menua never batted an eyelash. In a tone that implied he gave no weight to the opinions of .children, he said, “Like you, young Vercingetorix, until Ainvar undergoes his manmaking he is no sort of man at all.”
    The Arvemian turned his hooded gaze toward me. “Oh, I think he is,” he said softly. ‘ ‘I think this Ainvar is a man.” Then
    he simply walked away.
    I looked at Menua in bafflement to find him laughing with the others. “Two wolf cubs in one sack,” said Grannus. Gobannitio added, “In a moon’s time I’ll collect whichever one of them survives.”
    Everyone seemed to think this was very funny. I was not laughing, however. I was watching the tall lad with the golden hair who was wandering around the walls of our fort as if assessing the strength of the palisade.
    So it was that I met the audacious warrior, irresistible and relentless, whose star we would one day follow where none of us ever thought to go. Vercingetorix.
    Just then Menua’s raven cried from the roof, an omen I had already learned to interpret. The raven’s voice above the bed meant a guest was welcome; I could not aigue.
    30 Morgan Llywelyn
    “If the raven calls ‘Bach, Bach!’ a visitor is a druid from another tribe,” Menua had taught me. “If the cry is ‘Gradh!’ it is one of our own druids. To warn of warriors approaching, the raven says ‘Grog! * If it calls from the northeast, robbers are near;
    if from the door, we can expect strangers. If it chirps with a small voice, saying, ‘Err, err,’ we can expect sickness in the lodge.”
    For Vercingetorix the raven called from just above the smoke-hole, and that same night the Arvemian lad spread his bedding so close to the fire that he blocked all the heat from me.

CHAPTER FOUR
    VERCINGETORIX AND I were able to take instruction for our manmaking together. The eligible youths were divided into groups of three, a powerful number. Each group would be tested as a unit to strengthen the sense of tribal broth-erhood. The Arvemian was not of our tribe but was arbitrarily linked with me by Menua—as was Crom Daral, who would be our third.
    The choice of Crom surprised me. Memories of our friendship came welling back, and I was glad when Menua said I could tell him about the arrangement. I found him throwing spears at a straw target by himself. But in spite of what I thought of as good news, he was cool to me, even though I gave him a fond blow on the shoulder. His face remained closed and sullen. “Did you ask that I be your third?” he wanted to know.
    Before my head recognized the hope hidden in his voice, my mouth blurted out the truth. “No, it was Menua’s decision. He wants us with the Arvemian,”
    “Ah.” Crom half-turned away from me. I observed that his mother’s legacy of uneven shoulders had grown more pronounced, now amounting almost to a deformity, one was so much higher than the other. Poor Crom. If Vercingetorix was gold and
    DRUIDS 31
    I was bronze, between us Crom Daral would be like some dark and baser metal, introduced for what purpose?
    Only the druids knew.
    “Do you like the Arvemian?” he asked abruptly.
    “I don’t know yet. 1 don’t think so.”
    “Do you like him better than