Give Me Back My Legions!

by Harry Turtledove

  “Your health,” Sigimerus said, lifting his own cup in salute.

  “Yours.” Arminius copied the gesture. So did his mother and Chariomerus. He drank. He’d tasted better wine, but also plenty worse. He nodded appreciatively.

  “You’ve been thinking about what to do…” Sigimerus prompted. He fiddled with the brooch that held his cloak closed. Because he was wealthy, the brooch was gold, and decorated with garnets red as the wine. An ordinary farmer would have closed his cloak with a bronze pin; a poor man would have made do with a thorn. “If you go after Segestes or Tudrus, we’ll back you.”

  He tensed as he said the words; Arminius could see as much. But he said them anyhow, and didn’t hesitate over them. Arminius loved him for that. “I don’t want to start a bloody feud with Segestes, Father,” he said. “We shouldn’t fight one another now. We should all march side by side to fight the Romans.”

  “You say this, and I think you speak wisely,” Sigimerus said. “Not everyone will, though. Segestes won’t. He’d sooner march with the Romans than against them. I hear that’s part of why he took Thusnelda away from you and gave her to Tudrus. Tudrus loves the Romans, too.”

  “Loves to lick their backsides, you mean,” Chariomerus said.

  “Some of them would like it if he did,” Arminius said. Chariomerus and Sigimerus both made horrible faces. So did Veleda. Men who wanted to use other men as if they were women did what they did in secret among the Germans. You heard whispers about such things, but that was all. Anyone caught doing them died slowly and painfully.

  The Romans didn’t just talk openly about such things. Those who wanted to do them… did them. Arminius had got one of his many shocks inside the Empire when he learned that. He’d got another shock when he discovered it didn’t make them effeminate—not even the ones who were pierced rather than piercing. They fought the Pannonian rebels as bravely as anyone else. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it, but he had.

  “If you don’t aim to start a feud with Segestes and his retainers, what will you do to regain your honor?” His father brought the talk back to the business at hand—and steered it away from what he didn’t care to think about. No flies on Sigimerus.

  “Well, that depends,” Arminius answered. “Is Thusnelda wed to Tudrus, or is she only promised to him?”

  “She is promised,” Veleda said. “She still lives in Segestes’ steading.”

  Arminius breathed a sigh of relief. “That makes things easier.” Even killing Tudrus wouldn’t necessarily have got him Thusnelda if she’d already married Segestes’ comrade. Widows often staved single the rest of their days. With one as young and pretty as Thusnelda, that would have been a dreadful waste, which didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

  Sigimerus nodded. “You have more choices.”

  “Just so,” Arminius said. “But I think I know what I’m going to try…”

  Soldiers gossiped. They didn’t only gossip about who was screwing whom or who was feuding with whom—although, being human, they did waste a lot of time gossiping about those eternal favorites. And, being human, they also wasted a lot of time gossiping about the officials set over them.

  Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX had served together for a long time. Octavian raised them during the civil war against Antony and Cleopatra. A handful of senior centurions had been green kids scooped into the legions more than forty years before. The rest of the men had joined since. There were older legions, and legions that had seen more fighting, but XVII, XVIII, and XIX had nothing to be ashamed of.

  “This Varus… well, he’ll never make a proper general,” Lucius Eggius said. He knew all the men in the tavern with him, and knew—or was as sure as you could be about such things—none of them would go telling tales to the new governor of Germany.

  “His cavalry commander’s not so bad,” said Marcus Calvisius, a centurion from Legion XVIII. He was in his early fifties, a little too young to have been part of XVIII’s original complement. “Doesn’t go around making too much of himself, anyway.”

  “Numonius? Mm, maybe not.” Lucius Eggius weighed whether to give the other newcomer the benefit of the doubt. Alter draining his winecup, he shook his head. “He won’t tell his boss he’s wrong. Varus says, ‘We’ll whip the Germans into shape in an hour and a half.’ And Vala Numonius says, ‘We sure will. An hour and a halt—tops.’ He’s like a lap dog wagging his tail.”

  Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair. It was silver, but his hairline hadn’t retreated by even a digit’s breadth. Add that to a chin like a boulder, and he made an impressive-looking man. “An hour and a half won’t finish the job. You’re right about that, gods know.”

  “A year and a half isn’t likely to finish the job, either,” Eggius said. “I tried to tell ‘em so, but did they want to listen?” He laughed bitterly. “I mean, what the demon do I know? All I am is the bastard on the spot. That counts for nothing. They’ve got orders from Augustus. That counts for everything.”

  “How come Augustus can’t see it’s not as easy as he thinks?” Calvisius grumbled. “He’s a smart guy, right?”

  “He is a smart guy,” Lucius Eggius said. “But even a smart guy can be dumb about places he’s never seen. Augustus never came up here. All he knows is, Germany’s not a proper province yet. He’s mad about it, too. How can you blame him, if you look at things from down in Rome?”

  “Yeah, well…” Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair again. “If you look at things from down in Rome, you don’t know anything about the Germans.”

  All the Roman officers nodded. Somebody said, “We’re up here, and I don’t think we know anything much about the Germans.” The veterans nodded again.

  “They don’t want to turn into a province. It’s about that simple,” Eggius said. He shoved his cup over to the tapman, who poured it full. Fancy aristocrats watered their wine like Greeks or children. He drank his neat. So did his friends. What point to drinking if you didn’t feel it?

  “Gaul’s didn’t want to turn into a province, either. Caesar walloped the snot out of them,” Calvisius said. “Now we’re here, and they don’t mind. Not like that on the other side of the Rhine.”

  Nobody told him he was wrong. Lucius Eggius knew too well that he was right. Cross the Rhine, and you crossed into a different world. Even the trees and the rivers on the east side seemed to hate Romans. As for the people… “Well,” Eggius said dryly, “it’s not like they don’t give us plenty of practice over there.”

  He got a laugh. How many battles had Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX fought on the wrong side of the river? On the far side of the river, Eggius corrected himself. If Augustus said they were going to bring it into the Empire, the land over there wasn’t on the wrong side at all.

  Assuming they could do what Augustus said, of course. Yeah, Eggius thought. Assuming.

  A centurion from Legion XIX said, “Some of the Germans are good guys. Some of them get along with us all right.”

  “Sure.” Eggius nodded. He could feel the wine, all right, but it hadn’t made him stupid yet. He didn’t think it had, anyhow. He knew he wasn’t stumbling over his own tongue. That was good. He took another pull at his cup and went on, “Answer me this, though. How many of those Germans who’re good guys, those Germans who get along with us all right, would you trust at your back when you’ve got other Germans—Germans you know are enemies—trying to do you in from the front?”

  A considerable silence followed. Lucius Eggius considered it. None of his considerations made him very happy. The centurion from Legion XIX didn’t look very happy, either. He got his mug refilled, tilted his head back, and took a big swig: Eggius watched his prominent larynx bob up and down as he swallowed. At last, he said, “Well, there are a few.”

  Most of the Romans who heard that nodded. Lucius Eggius did himself. “Yeah, there are,” he agreed. “But we’ve been trying to turn that miserable mess of trees and swamps and fogs and frogs into a province for a demon of a lo
ng time now. If we were going anywhere with it, don’t you figure there’d be more than a few Germans you could count on when your back was turned?”

  The centurion didn’t reply to that. Nobody else did, either, not right away. Then Marcus Calvisius said, “Well, Eggius, there is one other way to deal with that.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Lucius Eggius said. “Like what?”

  “Kill all the barbarians we can’t trust and make a province with whoever’s left. Why do you think XVII, XVIII, and XIX are here?”

  Eggius did some more considering. When he was done, he let out a grunt. “You’ve got something there,” he admitted. “I do wish we still had Tiberius in command, though. He’s a sour bastard, sure, but nobody ever said he doesn’t know what he’s doing. This Varus… Well, who can tell? Gods rot the stinking Pannonian rebels, anyway.” He set about the business of getting seriously drunk.

  “Amo. Amas. Amat,” Segestes muttered. “Amamum. Amatis. Amant.”

  He was currying a horse. The beast snorted, perhaps at the unfamiliar sounds. Segestes went right on conjugating the Latin verb to love. Then he muttered under his breath in his native tongue. Plenty of Germans would have said—plenty of Germans did say—he was currying favor with the Romans, too.

  He didn’t see it that way. If he had seen it that way, he wouldn’t have done it. How many folk had gone up against Rome? Lots. How many had lost? All of them—you could look west across the Rhine or southeast across the Danube to see the latest examples. Oh, the Pannonians were still kicking and bellowing, like a bull before it went all the way into the stall. That wouldn’t last much longer, though. The Romans were tough, and they had their whole vast empire to draw upon.

  He ran his hand over the horse’s flank and nodded to himself. That was better. Like most horses in Germany, his was a small, shaggy, rough-coated beast. If you didn’t go over it with a curry comb pretty often, it would be all over tangles.

  The horse made a snuffling, expectant noise. He laughed and gave it a carrot. It crunched up the treat. Then it nuzzled his hand, hoping for another one.

  He laughed. “You’re no horse. You’re a pig with a mane and a hairy tail.” He patted the horse and fed it another carrot. When it tried for a third, he shook his head and stepped out of the stall.

  As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Thusnelda was out there playing with a puppy. That would have been bad enough any time. Spoiling a horse was one thing, but Segestes wanted his dogs mean. Why have them, if not toward the steading? With things between him and Thusnelda as prickly as they were…

  He was more inclined to spoil his horse than his daughter. He didn’t see it that way, of course. Fathers never do.

  Thusnelda had been laughing as she tickled the pup’s stomach. When she saw Segestes, her face closed like a clenching fist. She straightened up and turned her back on him.

  “If a man used me like that, I would kill him,” Segestes remarked.

  His daughter spun toward him, but not out of respect. “And you don’t think you’re killing me?” she retorted.

  “What are you talking about?” For a moment, Segestes was honestly confused. Then he wasn’t, but wished he still were. “There’s nothing wrong with Tudrus,” he growled. They had this argument at least once a day. He was sick of it, even if Thusnelda didn’t seem to be. Why hadn’t he set an earlier date for the wedding? Then she’d be out of his hair, and Tudrus would have to worry about her.

  Something had changed, though. That wasn’t just fury in her gray eyes. It was something very much like triumph. “Arminius is back. He’s out of the fight in Pannonia, and he’s hale.” She spat the words in his face.

  He already knew that—he’d heard a couple of days earlier. He hadn’t said a word. But bad news always got where you didn’t want it to. He might have known it would here. “How did you find out?” he asked wearily.

  By the way Thusnclda’s eyes sparked, he’d hear about knowing and not telling her. But that would be later. For now, she could score more points off him with the news itself. “One of the slaves brought word,” she answered. “He said it was everywhere—except here.”

  So she wouldn’t waste time making him pay for keeping it from her. Not now, anyway. He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change a thing.”

  “You don’t think so?” His daughter laughed at him.

  If she weren’t of his own flesh and blood… But she was, so he had to hold his temper down. It wasn’t easy; he was a proud man. “I don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “And I don’t want a family connection with Arminius any more. He hates the Romans too much to make it safe.”

  “You didn’t think so when you pledged me to him,” Thusnelda jeered. “And how can you say that, anyway? He joined the Roman army. You never did.”

  “The man who best knows how to break a cart is one who makes carts,” Segestes said. His daughter stared at him as it he’d suddenly started spouting Greek. He couldn’t have even had he wanted to. Knowing Greek existed put him a long jump ahead of most Germans. With another sigh, he went on, “Arminius joined the Romans to learn how to beat them.”

  “He wants us to be free,” Thusnelda said.

  “Free to brawl among ourselves. Free to run through the woods—and no farther. Free to be as wild as the Wends and the Finns.” Segestes named the most savage peoples the Germans knew.

  “The Finns tip their arrows with bone. They live on the ground, or in huts woven like baskets. They sleep on the ground.” Thusnelda sounded disgusted.

  “To the Romans, we look the way the Finns look to us,” Segestes said.

  “Then the Romans are stupid!”

  Segestes shook his head. “They aren’t. You know they aren’t. They have all kinds of things we don’t, and they don’t fight one another the way we do,” he said. “I want us to live the way they do. So does Tudrus. Is that so bad?”

  “We should be free.” Thusnelda might have been listening to Arminius. Before he left, she probably had on the sly.

  “What good does that do us? Knowing things, living in peace—those do us some good,” Segestes said.

  Thusnelda stuck her nose in the air. Segestes wondered if Tudrus could charm—or beat—the nonsense out of her. He hoped so.

  III

  Back before Publius Quinctilius Varus was born, two German tribes invaded Gaul. If not for Julius Caesar, they might have taken it away from the natives before the Romans could. If not for my wife’s great-uncle’s great-uncle, Varus thought, bemused. That his father had killed himself rather than yielding to his wife’s great-uncle’s great-uncle he forgot for the moment. He remembered little about Sextus Quinctilius Varus. Augustus he knew very well indeed.

  And he knew very well what Julius Caesar had done. With characteristic energy, Caesar bundled the Usipetes and the Tencteri back into the German forests. And then he went after them. In ten days, his engineers bridged the Rhine. The German tribes fled before him. He stayed on the east bank of the Rhine for eighteen days, then went back and finished conquering Gaul.

  And he left the problem of conquering Germany for another day—for another generation, as it turned out. For me, as it turned out, Varus thought. Marching through Germany was easy enough. Holding the place down, really subjecting it, wasn’t. Plenty of Romans had proved that, too.

  One of his servants intertwined the fingers of both hands, forming a cup into which Varus could step. With help from the leg-up, he swung over his horse’s back and straightened in the saddle. A mounting stone would have served as well, although a leg-up from a man better suited a commander’s dignity. If he had to, Varus thought he could vault into the saddle with no help at all, like a proper cavalryman. But only a barbarian, and a stupid barbarian at that, would do things the hard way when he didn’t have to.

  Once seated on the horse, Varus nodded to Vala Numonius. “Let’s cross,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” The cavalry commander nodded. They both urged their mounts forward. The rest of the cavalry d
etachment followed. The horses’ hooves drummed on the bridge over the Rhine.

  It was built on exactly the same principle as Caesar’s. Roman engineers had fixed two sets of piles in the riverbed. The upstream piles leaned with the current, the downstream against it. They were about twenty-five cubits apart. Trestles slanting against the current on the down-stream side helped support the structure. Upstream, a timber breakwater protected the bridge from logs or fire rafts or anything else the barbarians might aim at it.

  “Once we subdue the Germans, we’ll get a proper bridge with stone piers, not this military makeshift,” Varus said.

  “That would be splendid, sir,” Numonius replied. “A sign of civilization, you might say.”

  “Civilization. Yes.” Once again, Varus fondly remembered Syria. He remembered Rome. He remembered Athens, where he’d stopped on the way back from Syria—and where he, like his son, had studied as a young man. He remembered seeing for the first time the Parthenon and all the other wonderful buildings up on the Acropolis. By the gods, that was civilization for you!

  This… The day was cool. The sky was a grayish, watery blue. The sun seemed half ashamed to shine. He was riding away from a legionary camp—which, in these parts, counted as an outpost of civilization. He was heading for… The gloomy forests that stretched on and on east of the Rhine warned him what he was heading for.

  Foot soldiers followed the cavalrymen. One thing the Romans had learned from painful experience: wherever they went in Germany, they went in force. Small parties of men were all too likely to disappear. Better not to tempt the barbarians into doing what they weren’t supposed to.

  Varus’ horse stepped off the bridge and onto the muddy ground on the east bank of the Rhine. Its hooves stopped echoing. They made the usual thumping and squelching noises instead.

  Vala Numonius had dropped back by half a length to let Varus precede him. Now he caught up again. “Welcome to Germany, sir,” he said.