Give Me Back My Legions!

by Harry Turtledove

  “Not an Achilles when it comes to looks.” Aristocles said that about every German he set eyes on. The northerners’ blunt features didn’t appeal to him. That was why he surprised Varus when he added, “I’ve seen worse, though—I will say that.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s gone and turned your head!” the Roman exclaimed with a laugh.

  Aristocles tossed his head in an emphatic negative. “Oh, no. Too big and hairy to be really interesting. But… not bad. Better than I expected to find in this gods-forsaken wilderness.”

  “The Germans frown on such sports, same as the Gauls do. Better not to let Arminius know,” Varus said.

  “Savages,” Aristocles said, sniffing. He smiled crookedly. “I’ll get by, sir. I’m not one who can’t make do with women.”

  Like a lot of Roman aristocrats, Varus had a boy now and then for variety’s sake. He strongly preferred the other side of the coin, though. “I rather fancy Arminius myself,” he said. One of Aristocles’ eyebrows leaped toward his hairline; like any sensible slave, he knew his master’s states. Chuckling, Varus went on, “Not that way. But I like him. He puts me in mind of Gaius.”

  “You’re joking!” Aristocles blurted. Even a slave could occasionally be guilty of saying the first thing that popped into his head.

  A slave who did say the first thing that popped into his head could regret it for a long time afterwards, too. But Quinctilius Varus was not a vicious or vindictive man. He had his vices, but that wasn’t one of them. “I don’t aim to adopt him, for heaven’s sake,” the Roman governor said. “He does remind me of my boy, though, the way one puppy will remind you of another. He’s all big paws and curiosity, trying to see how the world works. He happened to study with centurions, not philosophers, but you could do worse.”

  This time, the pedisequus had his wits about him again, and said nothing at all. The slightest twitch at the left corner of his mouth, the tiniest flare of his nostrils, gave some hint of what he thought of the men who were the backbone of the Roman army. Varus missed those. While a slave had to—or had better—pay close attention to his master’s expressions, the converse did not apply.

  Varus changed the subject: “Pretty soon, we’ll start sending soldiers out to collect taxes. About time the Germans find out what they need to do to make proper provincials.”

  “Oh, they’ll love that, they will.” Irony soured Aristocles’ voice.

  His master only shrugged. “If you climb onto a half-broken horse, he’ll do his best to throw you off on your head. But if you don’t break him, you’ll never be able to get up on his back. If we don’t show the Germans that this province belongs to us now and has to follow our rules, then we might as well have stayed on the other side of the Rhine.”

  “I wish we would have, sir,” Aristocles said. “Vetera was bad enough, but Mindenum is… worse than bad enough, meaning no offense to our gallant troops and their stalwart officers.” By his tone, Aristocles aimed to affront every military man in the entire Roman Empire.

  “Well, we’ll be back in Vetera come fall,” Varus said. “By then, I want the natives to get it through their thick heads that this is our land now, and things will go the way they would anywhere else Rome rules.”

  “The sooner you set this place in order, the sooner we can get back to Rome or any other civilized place, the happier I’ll be.” No sarcasm now: the pedisequus spoke with deep and obvious sincerity.

  “There are other places I’d rather be, too,” Quinctilius Varus said. “When Augustus summoned me, I thought he’d send me somewhere else. You know that, Aristocles. This was a surprise, and not a nice one. But being here is also a compliment of sorts.”

  “One I could do without,” Aristocles muttered.

  “I understand that,” Varus told him. “Believe me, I do. If Augustus needs me here, though, how can I refuse him? This is an important assignment, more important than governing Syria was. Syria is a broken horse. As I said, we still have to break Germany. I still have to break Germany.” He thrust out his chin.

  “Breaking this country is the best thing anyone could do to it,” the pedisequus said. “If Augustus wanted a horse trainer here, he should have sent a general, not an administrator.”

  “Tiberius is stuck in Pannonia. I’m sure he’d be here if not for the uprising,” Varus replied. “His ties to Augustus are tighter than mine, and he’s proved himself a soldier, which I haven’t done yet.”

  “Plenty of other sprats in the sea. Plenty of other officers in the army,” Aristocles observed.

  “But not plenty Augustus trusts in command of three legions,” Varus said. “Remember all the civil wars when we were young? We’ve had thirty years with none of that. A general who rebelled with three legions at his back could set the Empire aflame again. Augustus gave me this command not least because he knows I’m loyal to him.”

  He pulled a denarius from his belt pouch and stared at the profile of his wife’s great-uncle gleaming in silver. What would it be like to have his own face on money so the whole world knew what he looked like? He’d had ‘Varus’ stamped on some of the coins he’d issued to the legionaries here, but that wasn’t the same.

  He shook his head. If he challenged Augustus, he would lose. Everyone who challenged Augustus lost. Varus had no stomach for war against his benefactor, anyway. He had little stomach for war against the Germans, either. But he would do what he had to do. He wondered if Arminius would help him. He hoped so. Nothing made subduing a province easier than willing native stooges.

  V

  Caldus Caelius led a column of Romans through the German woods. People spoke of the woods as trackless, but they weren’t really. All kinds of narrow tracks ran through them. Deer had made some, aurochs others, men still others. Deciding which kind was which wasn’t always easy—not if you were a Roman.

  Orders from Mindenum were to be careful, whatever that meant. Caelius knew what it would have meant in more open country: vanguard, rear guard, and flanking parties out to both sides to make sure nobody could sneak up on the main body of troops. Only one trouble: that kind of due diligence was impossible in this terrain.

  Traveling along a path was pretty simple—as long as you marched in single file, or, on what was unquestionably a man-made track, perhaps two abreast. A vanguard too far ahead or a rear guard too far behind could be ambushed and slaughtered before the main force came to its rescue. In this thick forest, flank guards were simply impossible; they hadn’t a prayer of keeping up.

  And so Caelius had a vanguard and rear guard of sorts, but not the sorts he would have wanted. Instead of flank guards, he had extra buccinatores. He had to hope blaring trumpets would make up for lack of protection. The hope wasn’t altogether forlorn: other Roman columns were pushing through these woods, too.

  “One of these days, we’ll have proper roads here,” Caelius said. His sword was sheathed, but he could grab it in a hurry if he had to.

  “Fat lot of good that does us now,” one of the legionaries said.

  Several other men laughed. That meant Caelius couldn’t blister the mouthy soldier the way he wanted to. A clown could get away with all kinds of things. Instead of swearing, Caelius imagined a proper Roman road, broad and solid, well paved and well drained, the trees cut back on both sides to make way for it. That would be a demon of a lot better than this narrow, miserable, meandering track.

  “If Rome needs money so bad, we’ve got to squeeze it out of places like this, we’re all in big trouble,” the wit went on. He’d got away with one joke, so he thought he could get away with two.

  “Oh, put a plug in it, Lucius,” Caelius said. “These Germans are ours now, see? So they’ve got to get used to acting like they belong in the Empire. And that means paying up when it’s time to pay. Simple, right. You’re pretty simple yourself, right?”

  Lucius said nothing. When a superior got on you, nothing was the smartest thing you could say. Caldus Caelius wished again for a Roman highway. The legions could really mov
e down roads like those. And, better yet, they could see what was moving against them.

  A raven croaked, up in a tree. Did that mean the Romans had disturbed it, or had it seen some Germans sneaking through the woods? How could you know before you found out the hard way?

  You couldn’t. When you boiled everything down, that was what you had left. Caelius made sure the sword was loose in its scabbard. If a big enough mob of barbarians jumped his troop, he and all the men he led would die. He knew that. But they’d take a bunch of Germans with them. The natives knew that. It had to be about the only thing that kept them from rising up.

  Somebody—not Lucius, Caelius was glad to note—asked, “Where’s this lousy village we’re heading for?”

  “Not far now,” Caelius said. I hope it’s not far now. If it’s where people say it is and we are where I think we are, it shouldn’t be far. In Germany, you couldn’t take either of those for granted. You couldn’t take anything for granted, not if you wanted to go on breathing. Caldus Caelius was in favor of breathing. He aimed to go on doing it for a long time.

  Less than a quarter of an hour later, the track came out into a clearing. Behind Caelius, the legionaries muttered in glad surprise. The sunshine was cool and watery, nothing like the savage sun of southern Italy that had baked Caelius when he was a naked little boy. Even so, he had to blink several times against the unexpected glare.

  Pigs with a tall ridge of hair on their backs ran for the woods. Pigs weren’t so dumb: they knew trouble when they smelled it. A couple of small, rough-coated ponies and several shaggy cows and scrawny sheep grazed on the meadow. Men and women worked in the fields with scythes and sickles—harvest time was here. They planted in the spring and reaped in the fall. That seemed unnatural to Caelius, who’d grown up in a country where summer rain was a prodigy.

  One by one, the Germans stopped working. They stared at the Roman soldiers. “Deploy,” Caelius said quietly. Maybe he could forestall trouble by showing he was ready for it.

  He had orders—which he didn’t much like—not to antagonize the natives. But he was here in the field, and Varus’ Greek slave, who’d relayed those orders, bloody well wasn’t. Caelius figured he could interpret them as he thought best. If the Germans decided he’d kill them for getting uppity, they’d stay quiet. As far as he was concerned, that was the same as not antagonizing them.

  He did advance toward the people working in the fields without a weapon in his right hand. That made him feel naked, but not nearly so naked as he would have felt without a bunch of legionaries at his back.

  “Hail!” he called in what came fairly close to being the language the Germans used. He knew a handful of other words, but he’d picked them up from joy girls. These large, somber men wouldn’t want to hear them. He went on in his own tongue: “Do any of you speak Latin?”

  “I do,” said a mustachioed barbarian not far from his own age. “Don’t good speak, but speak. You what want?”

  “Taxes,” Caldus Caelius answered.

  “What is—are -taxes?” the German asked. He overtopped Caelius by half a head. A great big sword hung from his left hip. Why would you wear a sword to work in the fields? Because some other savages were liable to jump you- -that was the only answer the Roman saw.

  And this fellow didn’t know what taxes were? Well, he’d find out. Oh, sure! Wouldn’t he just? “You’re a Roman subject now,” Caelius explained. He sounded sympathetic—he couldn’t help it. What were taxes? Oh, my! Shaking his head, he went on, “You have to pay to keep things going.”

  “Pay?” Another word that meant little or nothing to the natives. The Germans mostly didn’t deal in silver and gold, or even in copper. They made no coins of their own, and were just learning to use the ones from Roman mints. They traded sheep for barley, or beer tor boards, or honey for blankets.

  This year, Quinctilius Varus had said the legions could collect taxes in kind. Next year, the Germans would have to start forking over silver like everybody else. One thing: that would make payments a demon of a lot easier to carry away.

  Caldus Caelius stopped woolgathering—although he’d be doing just that, literally, soon enough. “Pay,” he repeated. “You give me some of what you have, and the Empire lives on it.”

  One of the other men, an older fellow, asked the one who spoke Latin something. The younger man with the mustaches answered in the Germans’ incomprehensible, guttural language. The older fellow growled like a mean hound. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword.

  “Tell your kinsman that isn’t a good idea,” Caelius advised. He turned and waved at the hard-faced Roman soldiers behind him. “We don’t want any trouble, but we’re ready for it.”

  The mustachioed man spoke again. The graybeard’s hand fell away from the sword. Hate still smoldered in his pale eyes. The younger man, the one who spoke Latin, didn’t exactly look thrilled, either. “You say we taxes pay. You mean you us rob.”

  “No,” Caelius said. Yes, he thought. “Robbers take whatever they want. We take only a little, only so much from each steading. The law tells us how much we are supposed to get.”

  “Law? This is not law. This is robbery,” the German said. “Could you from my village take without soldiers behind you? No. Of course not. Robbing.”

  “In the Empire, the tax collector comes without soldiers behind him,” Caelius said. “People give him what they owe, and he goes away.” Sometimes. Some places. When the harvest was good two or three years in a row. But it could happen.

  “Then your men are without penises born,” the German said. It was a funny-sounding insult, but Caelius had no trouble understanding what it meant. The barbarian went on, “And what do your penisless men get for these taxes your robbers from them steal?”

  “Roads. Baths. Courts. Soldiers who keep the peace so they don’t have to worry about getting robbed and murdered. Things they can’t do for themselves—things you people here don’t have yet.”

  “But they lose their freedom.” That was not a question.

  Caldus Caelius shrugged. “Who cares if you’re free if you’re stuck in the middle of the woods and nobody ten miles away even knows you’re there? The Empire reaches from Gaul to Syria. You could go trading to any of those places. You could be a soldier and serve anywhere. Augustus has German bodyguards even now.”

  “Dogs,” the German said, and spat on the ground. “I am no dog. I am wolf.”

  “Look, friend, I don’t care if you’re a dog or a wolf or a purple hedgehog. You’ve got to pay any which way,” Caldus Caelius said. “That’s what my orders are, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

  “And if I want to fight instead?” the German asked.

  Caelius glanced behind him. The native’s gaze followed his. The legionaries looked tough and ready for anything. Caelius’ mailshirt jingled on his shoulders as he shrugged. “Well, you can do that. You won’t like what comes of it, but you can.”

  The German weighed the odds. Unless Caelius missed his guess, the fellow was also weighing his pride. Was getting his whole clan slaughtered worth it to him? He spoke in harsh gutturals to his countrymen. They went back and forth in that grunting, coughing language.

  At last, the German asked, “How much you make us pay?”

  Now they were at the stage of doing business. Caelius tried to hide his relief; he didn’t want the barbarian to think he was gloating—even if he was. Sounding as matter-of-fact as he could, he answered, “For a village of this size, two cows or eight sheep—or eight denarii, if you’ve got em.

  “No denarii,” the German said, as if the idea was ridiculous. In his mind, it probably was. He went on, “We give you, you take, you away go, you us alone leave?”

  “That’s the idea,” Caldus Caelius agreed. He didn’t say the Romans would be back to collect the tax next year, too, and the year after that, and the year after that. One thing at a time. And, with any luck at all, he wouldn’t be the one who came back to this village.

  More back-an
d-forth in the Germans’ language. The barbarians didn’t like it. Well, who in his right mind did like paying taxes? You did it, and you thanked your gods you didn’t have to cough up more.

  “We give you eight sheep, then,” said the man with the mustache. “You take them and you go. What is your name?”

  “I’m Caldus Caelius,” Caelius answered. “What’s yours, friend, and why do you want to know?”

  “Caldus Caelius.” The German said it two or three times, tasting it, fixing it in his memory. “Well, Caldus Caelius, I myself call Ingaevonus. Maybe we meet again, the two of us. We see who then remembers.”

  “Anywhere you please, Ingaevonus.” Caelius knew he made a mess of the big man’s name, but he didn’t care. “Any time you please. With your friends or without them. With mine or without them, too.”

  Ingaevonus looked at him in surprise. “It could be, after your own fashion, you have the makings of a man.” Before Caelius could even get mad at him for doubting it, the German turned away and started yelling in his own language. A couple of pimple-faced brats yelled back at him. He shouted them down. Caelius didn’t know what he said, but it sounded like a storm roaring through bare-branched winter trees.

  The older fellow behind Ingaevonus put in his copper’s worth, too. The young punks stopped arguing. They trotted off, rounded up the sheep, and brought them back to Caldus Caelius. “Here. You take,” one of them said in fragmentary Latin.

  “Thanks,” Caelius answered dryly. The kid, by the look on his face, wanted the Roman’s liver the way the vulture wanted Prometheus’. He probably hated all Romans on general principles.

  Hate them or not, though, he’d picked up some of their language. Just about all the Gauls spoke some Latin these days, even if they still used their own tongue when they talked among themselves. Old-timers in the legions said a lot fewer people on the west side of the Rhine had known Latin when they were first stationed there. It would probably work the same way in Germany over the next thirty years.