Give Me Back My Legions!

by Harry Turtledove

  “How long do you think those… Germans will stay here, sir?” Aristocles asked.

  He must have swallowed something like barbarians, or perhaps gods-detested, stinking barbarians. Varus knew Aristocles didn’t like Arminius and his father. Finding out how much he didn’t like them might be interesting—and entertaining.

  The Greek’s sallow cheeks went quite pink when Varus asked him about it. “No, sir, I don’t fancy them. They look at me the way stray dogs look at tripes in a butcher’s stall.”

  They did, too. Varus had noticed it. He thought of it as wolves eyeing a crippled fawn, but the pedisequus’ comparison was just as apt. “They can’t help it, Aristocles,” the Roman governor said. “They don’t understand that a peaceable man should be left to live in peace.”

  “I should say they don’t!” Aristocles exclaimed. “That’s why I wish they’d leave.”

  “Well, I find myself with two things to say about that,” Varus replied. “The first is that, however they look at you, they’ve offered you no harm. And the second is that we’ve come to Germany not least to make it into a place where a peaceable man can be left to live in peace.” He chuckled wryly. “We’ve come with three legions to make it into that kind of place, in fact.”

  “Yes, sir.” But Aristocles only sounded dutiful, not amused. That disappointed Varus, who was pleased with the line he’d got off.

  “They are our guests, don’t forget,” Varus said. “That matters here. If I send them away, I’d affront them.”

  “But what if they’ve come here to murder you?” Aristocles blurted.

  That made Quinctilius Varus laugh. He wasn’t especially brave: one more reason he felt uneasy around soldiers, many of whom took their own courage for granted. But he could tell when his slave was jumping at shadows. “If they wanted to murder me, they could have done it a dozen times by now—and they could have sneaked away before anyone knew I was dead. Since they haven’t seized any of those chances, I have to think they don’t aim to do me in. What would murdering me get them?”

  “They would have killed the man charged with bringing Germany into the Roman Empire.” To Aristocles, it must have seemed obvious.

  Varus went on laughing. “Yes? And so?”

  “And so—that!” the pedisequus replied. “Isn’t it enough?”

  “Not if they aim to stop Rome from conquering Germany,” Varus said. “We’d take such revenge that the savages would shriek and wail and hide under their beds for the next hundred years. Vala Numonius would see to that, he and whoever Augustus sent out to replace me. Besides, you’re missing something else.”

  “What’s that?” Like anyone else, slave or free, Aristocles didn’t care to believe he could be missing anything.

  “Arminius is a Roman citizen. He’s a member of the Equestrian Order. He risked his life to put down the rebels in Pannonia and bring that province back under Roman rule,” Varus answered. “So why would he and his father want to work against Rome at all?”

  His Greek slave only sniffed. “Why do all those people say he was doing nothing else but all winter long… er, sir? Seems to me he’s the biggest fraud in the world.”

  The biggest fraud who isn’t a Greek, you mean, Varus thought, but he didn’t care to wound Aristocles’ feelings unless he had to. “I think we heard lies put together by Segestes’ claque. I’ve thought so all along.”

  “Segestes is a Roman citizen, too,” Aristocles said. “He’s been one longer than Arminius has.”

  “As if that proves anything! He’s older than Arminius. And he’s still trying to fix Arminius for running off with his daughter. With Thusnelda… The names these Germans have!” Quinctilius Varus was pleased with himself for remembering hers.

  “Doesn’t that say something about the kind of wolf—uh, man—Arminius is?” Aristocles replied. “He swoops down like a thief in the night and -”

  And Varus couldn’t stop laughing. “I’ll tell you what kind of man Arminius is. He’s a young man—that’s what kind. He goes around with a stiff prong all the time. Didn’t you, when you were that age?” Without waiting for Aristocles to answer, the Roman governor went on, “Besides, it’s pikestaff plain he didn’t steal Thusnelda away against her will. She went with him because she felt like it.”

  “He fooled her. He tricked her.” The pedisequus was nothing if not obstinate. “And he’s fooling you, tricking you, too. And you’re letting him.”

  “The day a German barbarian can fool a Roman, he’s earned the right to do it,” Varus said. “But I don’t think that day will come any time soon.”

  Aristocles sighed. “Yes, sir. I understand. Once upon a time, we Greeks said, ‘The day a Roman barbarian can fool a Greek, he’s earned the right to do it.’ We didn’t think that day would come, either. But look where we are now. Look where I am now, sir.”

  “We didn’t take Greece by trickery. We took Greece because we were stronger,” Quinctilius Varus said. Aristocles didn’t answer. One of the master’s privileges was the last word. But somehow, even though Varus had it, he didn’t feel as if he did.

  A torrent of guttural gibberish burst from the lips of the German chief or village headman or whatever he was. Caldus Caelius looked to the interpreter, a German about his own age. “What’s he saying?”

  “He hasn’t got any silver,” the young German answered in good Latin.

  “All that meant ‘He hasn’t got any silver’?” Caldus Caelius raised an eyebrow. “Come on, friend. Give me the rest of it.”

  “I’d rather not,” the interpreter said. “He’s upset. If you knew what he called you, you might think you had to do something about it. He didn’t insult you on purpose—I swear to that. He is angry that your governor tries to make him give what he does not have.”

  “Oh, he is, is he? How do you know he hasn’t got it? What happens if we do some digging and find he’s sitting on half a talent’s worth of denarii?”

  “Let me ask him.” The interpreter spoke in his own language. The village chieftain looked appalled—he’d never heard of acting. He blurted out something. The interpreter translated: “He says, ‘You wouldn’t do that!’ ”

  Caldus Caelius laughed in the barbarian’s face. “Tell him we dig in every night when we make our camp. Tell him we don’t mind digging up this louse trap he calls a village. Tell him he can’t run far enough or fast enough if we find silver after he tells us he hasn’t got any.”

  The interpreter did. The chieftain went from fair to pale—to fish-belly, really. His glass-green eyes kept sliding towards a spot behind the biggest house, then jerking away. If Caelius had to tell his men to dig, he knew where he’d have them start.

  More gutturals from the headman. The interpreter listened, then asked him something. The other German shook his head. He laid a hand over his heart, the way his folk did when they took an oath. “He says he just now remembered he might have a little silver,” the interpreter reported. “He says he wasn’t trying to fool you before or anything. He says it just slipped his mind—Germans don’t use coins as often as Romans do.”

  That last bit, from everything Caldus Caelius had seen, was true. The rest? He started laughing again. So did several other legionaries who stood close enough to hear what the interpreter said. A Roman officer heard every kind of excuse under the sun from soldiers who’d done what they shouldn’t have and hadn’t done what they should. This chieftain couldn’t have been a worse liar if he tried.

  But that wasn’t the point. Collecting taxes was. “Tell him he’d better come up with those denarii right away. Tell him he’d better have enough to pay what Quinctilius Varus says he owes. And tell him that he’ll end up dead if he tries screwing around with a Roman who’s got a nastier temper than I do, and his wife and daughters will be slaves—if they’re lucky.”

  That sounded pretty good in Latin. By the time the interpreter got done with it, it sounded even better in the Germans’ language. The headman went red, then white again. He bellowed somethi
ng—not at Caldus Caelius, but at his own people.

  Somebody came out of the biggest house. The man was skinny, unhappy-looking, and barefoot. He wore a ratty, threadbare cloak. If that didn’t make him a slave, Caelius had never seen one.

  The way the chieftain yelled at him was another good marker. The skinny man went into a building next to the house—a barn, Caelius guessed—and came out with a spade. It had a wooden blade, except for an iron strip at the bottom where it bit into the ground. The fellow who was holding it called a question to the headman.

  “He wants to know where to dig,” the interpreter supplied.

  “Right.” Caldus Caelius nodded. If he were the village chieftain, he wouldn’t have wanted a slave to learn where the coin-hoard was buried, either. The man could dig it up some moonless night and be long gone—and able to buy not only freedom but friends before anybody caught up with him.

  Muttering under his breath, the swag-bellied headman lumbered over and stamped his foot like a petulant girl. Dig here. He didn’t say it, but he might as well have.

  Rich, dark German dirt flew. They had fine soil here. Caelius didn’t like the weather or the local menfolk, but the soil tempted him to settle in Germany once it turned into a proper province. Marry one of these big blond German girls, raise crops and kids, and pass the farm down to them… You could do worse. Plenty of people did.

  Thud! Caelius clearly heard the noise, even from where he stood. The spade had hit something that wasn’t dirt. The slave dug a little more, then picked up a small, stout wooden box. He carried it over to the headman. By the way he handled it, it wasn’t light.

  Caldus Caelius looked at—looked through—the heavyset German. “It just slipped your mind that you had this?”

  He waited for the interpreter to translate. The chieftain didn’t act well enough to hide the hate on his face, either. He said something. “What difference does it make?” the interpreter said. The chieftain tacked on something else. So did the interpreter: “You have it now.”

  “That’s right. I do.” Caelius nodded. “So open it up. Let’s see what all you forgot about. We’ll both be surprised.”

  When the interpreter sent him a questioning glance, he nodded. The young German translated. The chieftain glowered some more. Caldus Caelius had enough men at his back not to care.

  Inside the box was an oiled-leather sack. Caldus Caelius chuckled softly. The German looked daggers at him. Luckily for the barbarian, Caelius affected not to notice. This wasn’t the first German who’d coughed up his cash after protesting that he didn’t have any. Without a doubt, he wouldn’t be the last. The locals still hadn’t figured out that the Romans had heard all their lies and excuses before.

  He supposed they would before long. That would make the tax collectors who followed on the army’s heels have to work harder to pry money out of these people. Caelius wasted no more sympathy on the tax collectors than on the Germans.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see the silver. If you forgot it was there, you won’t miss whatever we take, right?”

  His men snickered. The interpreter grinned. Once the Latin was rendered into the Germans’ language, the headman didn’t seem to appreciate Caelius’ wit. The Roman wondered why.

  The chieftain had more than enough denarii to pay the village’s tax assessment. Caldus Caelius took only what he’d been told to. He handed the rest back to the barbarian. “These are yours,” he said. “You see? I am not cheating you.”

  “No, you are not.” But the German wasn’t agreeing, for he went on, “You are robbing me. Things should have their proper names.”

  One of the legionaries hefted his javelin. “Shall we give him what he deserves for his lip, sir?”

  “Do I translate that?” the interpreter asked.

  By the way the chieftain eyed that javelin, Caelius guessed he had a fair notion of what the soldier said. “Yes, go ahead,” he said, and the young German did. Caelius continued, “Now translate this, too. No, we don’t hurt him, because he paid what he owed and he didn’t try to fight us. Roman subjects pay taxes. That’s all there is to it, and he’d better get used to the idea. We’ll be back to collect next year, too.”

  One growled sentence at a time, the interpreter passed the word along to the headman. The older German looked at him. He spat out one word, then scornfully turned his back.

  “What’s that about?” Caelius asked.

  “He called me a traitor.” The interpreter shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. These people don’t understand that the Roman Empire has better ways of doing things than they ever dreamt of.”

  “Too right they don’t,” Caelius said. “Well, that’s what we’re here for: to fix things so they do understand.” And we’ll teach ‘em the lesson if we have to kill every stinking one of them to do it, he thought. But he kept that to himself; some of these Germans might follow more Latin than they let on, and even the interpreter might not fancy it. He finished, “Now that we’ve done the job here, we go on to the next village and do it again.”

  “Yes, sir.” The interpreter smiled. He was a pretty good fellow. Caelius trusted him as far as he would have trusted any barbarian—not quite so far as he would have trusted a Roman, in other words.

  Beyond the fields these Germans cultivated, beyond the meadows where their animals grazed, stretched more forests and swamps. Caldus Caelius eyed them without enthusiasm. Germany had far too many of both, or so it seemed to him. He wondered that the place had any room for Germans. But it did, for altogether too many of them. How long would it take to drag them into the Empire one thatch-roofed village and steading at a time?

  As long as it took, that was all. He raised his voice to a shout that would reach all the legionaries: “Come on, boys! Time to go find the next place!”

  If they were eager, they hid it very well. But they followed him. And their rear guard stayed alert. If the Germans here thought about getting their own back, they thought again right afterwards. Caldus Caelius nodded to himself. One place at a time, all right. He marched on.

  Silver clinked in front of the camp prefect as he counted the cash Roman soldiers had squeezed from German villages. When Arminius took service with the Romans, he’d been impressed to see that they had officers in charge of paying their soldiers. That had never crossed his mind till then. German warriors lived on loot and on gifts from the war leaders they followed. A niggardly leader had a hard time getting men to fight for him. Standard wages took care of that.

  That the Romans should also have an officer in charge of money coming in only made the German nod. These people were nothing if not disciplined and thorough. They left as little to chance as they could.

  Quinctilius Varus came up behind Arminius and his father. “You see?” the Roman said. “My own men wondered whether we would be able to tax Germany, but we manage. Germans use far more silver than they did when I was a boy.”

  “That is so,” Arminius agreed. “Germans use coins far more often than they did when I was a boy.” He didn’t think he was half of Varus’ age.

  Even Sigimerus nodded. “When I was young,” he said in his slow Latin, “you hardly ever saw a denarius. Now we use them often. The world changes.”

  “The world does change.” Varus sounded enthusiastic about it, where Sigimerus, Arminius knew, hated the idea. The Roman governor went on, “You Germans grow ever more civilized, though you may not notice it. You grow ever more ready to become part of the Empire.”

  “It could be so,” Arminius said before his father could tell Varus exactly what his opinion was.

  “Oh, I think it is.” Varus thought becoming a Roman province would be good for Germany. He needed to think Arminius and Sigimerus agreed with him, or their role in the resistance would end suddenly and unhappily. He continued, “I don’t suppose Julius Caesar would recognize Germany if he saw it today.”

  Arminius knew a couple of old men who’d fought against the first Roman to invade Germany most of a lifetime ea
rlier. By things his father had said, Sigimerus had known many more, though most of them were dead. No one spoke of Caesar without respect. “He hit hard, he hit fast, and he could talk you out of the brooch on your cloak and make you glad you gave it to him,” was how one of the graybeards summed things up.

  Romans said Augustus was as great a man as Caesar had been. Maybe it was true; Augustus had stayed king longer than Arminius had lived, which argued that he was formidable. None of the men he’d sent to try to bring Germany into the Empire came close to matching his quality, though. Tiberius might, but Tiberius was busy in Pannonia. Varus didn’t—he was no warrior, and uneasily aware of it.

  But he seemed happy about what the legionaries under his command had been able to squeeze from the Germans. “Before long, we’ll be able to spend the whole year in Germany instead of wintering back in Gaul,” he said proudly. “That will be one more step toward bringing this province into line with the rest of the Empire.”

  “So it will,” Arminius said, which let him acknowledge Varus’ words without showing what he thought of them. “But not yet, your Excellency?”

  “No, not yet.” Now Varus sounded regretful. “We’ll have to slog back through the mud, through the swamps…” He heaved a sigh.

  “You could come farther north, through the land where my tribe lives,” Arminius said eagerly. “I know a route that stays on higher ground, on dry ground, all the way back to the Rhine. It’s longer, but you won’t have to worry about mud for even one step.”

  Whether Varus and the legionaries would have to worry about Germans was a different question, but not the one the Roman governor was worrying about at the moment. If Varus decided to go that way, Arminius knew the kind of place where he wanted to lead the Romans. He thought he could gather enough of his own folk around that kind of place to give them a proper welcome, too.