Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!
“I could tell you you would have done better to listen to me before,” Segestes said. “Your Excellency.”
Varus flushed. He understood that what should have been a title of respect became one of reproach. “I do not believe that to be the case,” he snapped.
“If no, the more fool you,” Masua said in his halting Latin.
Varus did pretend he wasn’t there. Speaking only to Segestes, the Roman said, “I am afraid you have wasted your time and are wasting mine.”
“Will you say the same, sir, after I tell you warriors are gathering on the route Arminius wants you to use?” Segestes returned.
“I have had no report of this, not from friendly Germans and not from Romans, either,” Varus said.
“I am not surprised,” Segestes said. “It would be worth most Germans’ lives to inform on your precious Arminius now. I know for a fact it has already been worth some honest Germans’ lives. And as for your legions . . . Your Excellency, this is not their fatherland. They see what people want them to see. They hear what people want them to hear. Past that . . .” He shook his head.
“We are not so blind, nor so deaf, as you seem to think.” Varus sounded as haughty as Sigimerus.
“You are not so wise as you seem to think, cither,” Segestes said.
“I shall have to be the judge of that,” Varus said. “I do not believe you wish me ill, Segestes. I would not leave you at liberty if I did. But I do believe you have become altogether unreasonable about anything that has to do with Arminius. I believe you will blacken his name on any pretext or none. And so, as much as I regret to say it, I do not believe . . . you.”
Segestes stood. Half a heartbeat later, so did Masua. “You may think you regret to say it now,” Segestes told Varus. “The day will come - and I fear it will come soon - when you regret it in good earnest.”
“Soothsaying?” the Roman governor asked sardonically.
“If you please,” Segestes answered. “But a man does not need to read entrails to know a hanging stone will smash whatever lies below it when it falls at last. Good day, your Excellency. May your days be long. They will be longer if you see you cannot trust Arminius, but I cannot make you do that. Only you can lift the veil from your eyes.”
“I do not believe there is any such veil,” Varus said.
“Yes. I know.” Segestes nodded sadly. “A fool never believes he is a fool. A cuckold never believes his wife opens her legs for another man. But whether you believe or not, others do, by the gods.”
“Farewell, Segestes,” Quinctilius Varus said, his tone even more frigid than before.
“Farewell, sir,” Segestes replied. “If we meet again in a year’s time, you may laugh in my face. I will bow my head and suffer it as best I may.”
“I look forward to it,” Varus said.
“Believe it or not, your Excellency, so do I.” Segestes left with the last word. He could have done without it.
XV
Heat came to Germany but seldom. When it did, as on this stifling late-summer day, it came with a thick blanket of humidity such as Mediterranean lands never knew. Sweating, itching, scratching, swearing legionaries tore Mindenum to pieces.
“Gods, I hope we never have to do this shitty job again,” one of them said.
“Sure - and then you wake up,” another Roman said with a scornful laugh. “We build ‘em. We take ‘em down. Then we build ‘em one more time.”
Quinctilius Varus nodded as he watched the legionaries work. That was what they were for, all right. They were beasts of burden, more clever and versatile than mules or oxen, but beasts of burden all the same.
“Well, I hope the stupid fucking governor makes up his stupid fucking mind one of these years,” the first soldier said.
“Sure - and then you wake up,” the other man repeated. This time they both laughed, the way men will when there’s really nothing to laugh about but the only other choice is to go on swearing.
Somebody behind Varus laughed, too. The governor whirled angrily. Aristocles’ face was as innocent as if he’d never heard anything funny in his life. Arminius and Sigimerus also might have been carved from mirthless marble. Varus fumed, his ears burning. Sometimes even a man of exalted rank could look ridiculous in front of his inferiors.
He pulled himself together. “We’ll be ready to march soon,” he told Arminius.
“Yes, sir. So I see,” the German said. “Your men always do everything very smoothly.”
“Roman efficiency,” Varus said, not without pride. “I expect we’ll show you more of it on the march.”
“Oh, so do I,” Arminius replied. “And I thank you for finally taking me up on the route I offered you.”
Tall, wet-looking, anvil-headed clouds drifted across the sky. The sun played hide-and-seek behind them, but the day got no cooler, no less muggy, when it disappeared for a few minutes. Two days earlier, some of those clouds had let loose in a thunderstorm the likes of which Varus had seldom seen. For all he knew, they might do it again any time - when the legions were on the move, for instance.
“If the weather is better - drier - farther north, that’s the way we want to go,” he said.
Arminius nodded. “Oh, yes. It almost always is.” He nudged his father and spoke to him in their guttural tongue.
Thus prompted, Sigimerus also nodded. “Weather better. Ja,” he said in his dreadful Latin. The last word wasn’t really, but it was one of the handful Varus had learned from the Germans’ language.
“You will see the country I spring from.” Arminius was far more fluent - far more civilized, when you got right down to it.
“Oh, joy. One more bloody flea-bitten pesthole in a land packed full of them,” Aristocles said.
For a moment, Varus wondered why Arminius didn’t draw his sword and try to cut the insolent slave in half. Then he realized the pedisequus had spoken with a straight face and mild tones - and, much more to the point, had spoken in Greek. To Varus, with his fancy education and years of service in the East, it was as natural as Latin. To a rude German, though, it would only be noises.
“Now, now,” Varus said, also in Greek. “It’s his, such as it is. Only natural for him to be proud of it.”
“A swallow must be proud of a nest of sticks and mud,” Aristocles retorted. “That doesn’t mean I want to go out of my way to visit.”
Arminius looked from one of them to the other. When neither offered to translate, the German shrugged his broad shoulders. Maybe he wondered if they were talking about him behind his back, so to speak. If he did, he didn’t look angry about it, the way Varus thought a barbarian would be bound to do.
Clang! A legionary threw an iron tripod into a wagon. The Romans would bury more iron, but not where Arminius or any other German could watch them do it. They didn’t want the savages digging up the metal and hammering it into spearheads and sword blades.
Things did go smoothly. And why not? The soldiers tore Mindenum down every year at this time. They’d had plenty of practice by now. Would they still wreck it at the end of summer twenty years from now? Or would they stay here around the year by then, to garrison a peaceful province? If they don’t, Varus thought, I haven’t done my job.
That led to another thought. If I don’t do my job, what will Augustus do to me? Varus had already brooded about some of those possibilities. Disgrace. Exile. A desert island miles and miles from anything but another desert island. Even if he escaped all those, failure would bring Augustus’ disapproval down on him, and Augustus’ disapproval was colder than any blizzard on the Rhine.
I’d better not fail, then, he told himself.
“Did you ever hear it rains less up on the other side of the hills than it does down here?” Lucius Eggius asked Ceionius.
The other camp prefect shook his head. “No. But I never heard it rains more there than it does here, either. So that should be a wash. These Germans are like so many Syrian fig-sellers: they’ll tell any kind of lie to get you to go their way. But I think it’ll work out all right.”
“Hope so,” Eggius said. “This stinking trail sure isn’t everything it ought to be. We had what was almost a proper path - not a real road, on account of it wasn’t paved, but a path, anyhow - going straight west from Mindenum. This scrawny little thing isn’t anything like it.”
“It’s all right as long as we’re in the meadows. I just don’t like it when it twists through the woods.” Ceionius returned to his previous theme: “Don’t worry about it, Lucius. Like I say, Germans lie all the time. Do you know what that old fox of a Segestes said to blacken Arminius’ name while you were out on patrol?”
“Tell me,” Eggius urged.
“He said warriors were heading off to jump us somewhere.” Ceionius laughed. “I’d like to see ‘em try.”
“I wouldn’t.” Eggius wasn’t laughing. “I passed through a bunch of half-empty villages and steadings this summer. The old men who’d stayed behind claimed their fighters were off getting ready to go to war against the Chauci. If they were getting ready to go to war against us instead ...”
“You always were more jittery than you need to be,” Ceionius said.
“I’ve got more experience with the Germans than you do,” Lucius Eggius replied. “No such thing as being too jittery around them. They always try to come up with sneaky new ways to screw us over. I’d better talk to Varus.”
“He won’t listen,” Ceionius predicted.
That struck Eggius as much too likely. Even so, he said, “I’d better
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Ceionius warned him as he booted his horse forward. A stubborn man, Eggius nodded and pressed on.
He had a demon of a time catching up to Varus. The trail did dive into a forest. Tree trunks pressed close on either side. Marching legionaries could hardly squeeze in close to make way for him, no matter how he shouted and swore. Regardless of his rank, they swore back at him.
There was the governor’s Greek slave, up on his donkey. And there was Quinctilius Varus himself, laughing and joking with Arminius. Eggius was no courtier, but even he could see this wasn’t the time to beard Varus. As well tell a man his dog killed ducks while the beast was licking its master’s hand.
Eggius sat his horse between two massive oaks till Ceionius finally came up. Ceionius eyed him. “You didn’t say anything.”
“That’s right,” Eggius admitted. “How could I? He had Arminius right there with him. You think he would have paid any attention to me?”
“No.” Ceionius couldn’t help adding, “Told you so.”
“Ahhh - “ But Eggius didn’t say anything about the other officer’s mother. You could do that with a close friend, but Ceionius wasn’t one. He might think Eggius meant it, and things could end in blood if he did. “Maybe I’ll try again later,” Eggius said.
“Sure.” Ceionius didn’t believe a word of it. Since Eggius didn’t, either, he couldn’t even call him on it.
Arminius wanted to caper like a colt. He wanted to dance for joy. The Romans were doing exactly what he wanted them to do. If not for the training in duplicity they’d given him, he might have betrayed himself. He couldn’t believe things were going this well.
The only person he could talk to was his father, and then only in tiny whispers at night in their tent. “Just don’t get too excited, that’s all,” Sigimerus said. “It may not work as well as you hope.”
“I know,” Arminius answered. “Believe me, I know. But it may, too. And if it does, by the gods - !”
“Worry about it then.” In his own way, Sigimerus was as practical as a Roman. “In the meantime, get some sleep.”
Most of the time, Arminius would have had no trouble sleeping. What else could you do after the sun set, especially without a warm, friendly woman to keep you awake for a while? He could hear legionaries snoring in the encampment. He could hear mosquitoes buzzing, crickets chirping . . . and sentries exchanging password and countersign as they patrolled the rampart they’d built a few hours earlier. Yes, Romans were hard to surprise, curse them.
A couple of days later, Chariomerus rode up as the legionaries were readying the night’s camp. Arminius’ clansmate clasped hands with him and with Sigimerus. “What are you doing here?” Arminius asked the other German. He was ever so conscious of the listening legionaries, and hoped Chariomerus was, too. The wrong words, even in their own language, could mean disaster.
“When you left for Mindenum, you left Thusnelda with child,” Chariomerus said.
Sigimerus allowed himself a rare smile. “I shall be a grandfather!” he exclaimed.
“If the gods grant it,” Chariomerus said. “The confinement has been rough. The midwife is worried about Thusnelda - she fears her hips may be too narrow for an easy delivery. And Thusnelda wants nothing more than to see you again, Arminius.”
“I would be there soon enough anyhow,” Arminius said, frowning. “The governor counts on me to show him the way north and west.”
“Go to your woman, son,” Sigimerus said. “I am here. I can bring the Romans along as well as you can - I’ve known the way longer than you’ve been alive.” He used his own tongue, as he almost always did. The legionaries would have wondered why he suddenly started spouting Latin with his son and the other German. Some of them would follow what he was saying now regardless of the language he used.
“I promised his Excellency that I’d do it,” Arminius said.
“Go talk with him. Take Chariomerus with you. Let him tell the governor what he just told you. Varus will give you leave to go home. He is a fine man, an understanding man.” Sigimerus spoke with a perfectly straight face. Arminius admired his father. He hadn’t thought the older man could act so well.
He had to hide his own admiration. The Romans shouldn’t see it. Dipping his head, he said, “I will do as you say. Come on, Chariomerus.”
Arminius wasn’t surprised when Aristocles greeted him with “This must be your fellow tribesman” outside of Varus’ tent. News flashed through a legionary encampment quick as lightning, as it did through a German village.
“Just so.” Arminius introduced Chariomerus to him, then went on, “He brings news from my home. We need to speak of it with his Excellency.”
“Let me find out if he can see the two of you,” the Greek slave said. Chariomerus looked worried. Arminius reassured him with his eyes. Aristocles always said things like that - they made him seem important. But Arminius was confident Varus would meet with him and Chariomerus.
Sure enough, when the pedisequus came back he beckoned them on without another word. Maybe someone could have made something of Chariomerus’ relieved grin, but Arminius didn’t think so. Anybody would take it to mean that Chariomerus was glad he wouldn’t have to waste his time standing around outside. If Arminius hadn’t known the circumstances, he would have taken it that way himself.
“So your woman’s got a bulging belly, eh?” Quinctilius Varus said after Arminius presented Chariomerus to him and told him the news.
