Give Me Back My Legions!

by Harry Turtledove

  “I’ll do that, sir.” The pedisequus winked. “Turning into a German, are you?”

  “By the gods, I hope not!” Varus exclaimed. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, Aristocles, but what did I do to deserve that?”

  “Well, sir, the next German I see who likes his wine watered will be the first. Be right back for you.” Aristocles hurried away.

  Rome. Alexandria, Varus thought longingly. Antioch. Athens. His nearest approach to Athens was a Greek slave here in Mindenum. That wasn’t close enough. And the slave was bringing him neat wine at his own request: not only un-Greek but un-Roman as well.

  The trouble was, in Mindenum neat wine was medicinal. Anything that helped you forget you were in Mindenum for a little while was medicinal. He would have used poppy juice if the physicians could have spared it. It was expensive, but he had no better uses for his silver. Still, the reason it was expensive was that it was the only remedy for real, physical pain. He could understand why the doctors didn’t care to use it for anything less.

  Aristocles came back with the wine. “Your health, sir,” he said, handing Varus the cup.

  “Wine will help my health.” The Roman governor poured a small libation on the rammed-earth floor. He drank, and smiled at the warmth sliding smooth down his throat. “Going back to Italy would help it even more.”

  “Going back to Italy would help my health, too. Can we do that?” Aristocles practically quivered with eagerness.

  Quinctilius Varus shook his head. “Not until my wife’s great-uncle gives us leave.” What would Augustus do if he threw up this governorship and went back to Rome on his own? Maybe nothing. Maybe he would understand Varus simply wasn’t the right man for the job.

  Or maybe he would make an example of his grand-niece’s husband. Closer relatives were spending the rest of their lives on small, hot, barren Mediterranean islands. While the weather at a place like that was bound to be an improvement over Mindenum’s, the rest of the arrangements wouldn’t be.

  And the humiliation! If he went home, anyone who remembered him after he was dead would remember him for a sentence in some as yet unwritten history that read something like, “In the thirty-sixth year of Augustus’ reign, Publius Quinctilius Varus was exiled to Belbina for neglecting his duties.” And anyone who cared (if anyone at all cared) would have to consult some geographer’s work to find out where the demon Belbina was.

  To keep from thinking about Belbina (Varus knew too well where the arid rock was, and knew it wasn’t much more than a good piss long, and maybe half that wide), he poured down the wine. The legionaries had fortified Mindenum. The wine fortified Quinctilius Varus. He thrust the cup at Aristocles. “Fill this up again.” When you were talking to a slave, you didn’t even have to say please.

  Aristocles gauged him the way a sailor gauged clouds boiling up to windward. Like a prudent sailor, the pedisequus shortened sail. “Yes, sir,” he said, and not another word.

  He came back with the refilled cup faster than he’d brought it before. Varus poured a very small libation this time. The rest of the wine went straight into him.

  After two of those good-sized cups of potent vintage, he felt like finding a nice, quiet spot somewhere, wrapping his cloak around him, and going to sleep like a dormouse. In Germany, nobody could tell him he couldn’t do something like that if he wanted to. The only person in the whole Roman Empire who could tell him any such thing was Augustus—and Augustus was a long way from Germany.

  But not even Augustus’ designated governor could keep some kind of commotion from starting in front of his tent. “What’s going on now?” Varus asked irately.

  “I’ll go see, sir.” Aristocles went off to find out. He came back sooner than Varus had expected. His expression was altogether unreadable.

  Voice as carefully blank as his face, Aristocles said, “The German named Arminius has returned, your Excellency. His father is with him, as he was last year.”

  “Oh, good!” Varus said. Aristocles’ face took on an expression then. Had Varus tried to name it, he probably would have called it unwatered horror.

  Arminius had wondered whether he would get back to the site of Mindenum before the Romans finished rebuilding it. But no: the camp or town or whatever you called it was a going concern by the time he and Sigimerus came southeast from the country of the Chauci to central Germany.

  The Roman sentries bristled like angry dogs when they spotted Arminius. Varus might enjoy having him around, but they didn’t. Only the governor’s rank kept them from showing how little they enjoyed his company. Even that wouldn’t have sufficed if they were Germans.

  “In the name of your eagle, greetings,” he called to them. He didn’t want the Romans angry at him now. That might ruin everything. Maybe reminding them that he knew and respected their customs would make them happier. He didn’t want somebody knifing him in the back while he was walking through the encampment. If somebody did, he would bet gold against copper that Varus never caught the murderer.

  He didn’t soften up the Romans as much as he’d hoped. “Our eagle has its eye on you,” one sentry snarled. The others nodded. A couple of them let their hands fall to the hilts of their gladii.

  “Careful, now,” Sigimerus said out of the side of his mouth, his lips barely moving.

  “I know,” Arminius answered the same way. When he addressed the Romans again, he raised his voice: “Would you please be kind enough to let his Excellency the governor know I’m here?” If Varus knew, the legionaries couldn’t kill him right here and then claim they hadn’t realized who he was. And the looks on their faces said they wanted to.

  Most reluctantly, one of the sentries went back into the encampment. “May we enter?” Sigimerus asked in his slow, halting Latin. “I am not a young man any more. I get tired standing out here in the sun.”

  He and Arminius had practiced at swords not long after sunup. If he’d been tired then, Arminius hadn’t noticed. Sigimerus might not be quite so fast or quite so strong as he had been when he was Arminius’ age. But he was still fast and strong enough to be dangerous—and he knew every trick all his years of fighting had taught him.

  Shouts rang out inside Mindenum. Arminius hid a smile. His father was probably doing the same thing as he murmured, “See how much they love you?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know,” Arminius said. He raised his voice again: “May we come in? I don’t want to harm my father’s health.” The Romans were like Germans in respecting their elders. And, once he and Sigimerus got into Mindenum, the legionaries would have a harder time throwing them out than they would excluding them in the first place.

  But one of the sentries answered, “Let’s see what the governor’s got to say. If it were up to me…” He didn’t say what would happen then. Arminius drew his own conclusions.

  Another sentry looked over his shoulder. “Here comes his Excellency now!” The legionaries stiffened to attention. They expected their auxiliaries to do the same thing. Arminius had never seen anything so ridiculous in his life, but he’d learned the silly pose. Going along was easier than arguing, especially for one lone man facing a ponderous military machine.

  The Romans thought all of Germany would take the easy road, go along, and submit to their yoke. But the Germans were not one lone man. They outnumbered the invaders. They were more determined than the Romans, too. I’m more determined than the Romans are, Arminius thought. And I can kindle Germany. I can, and I will.

  A stocky figure mounted to the top of the earthen rampart. The sun gleamed from the Roman’s bald scalp. Arminius smiled and waved. “Hail, your Excellency!” he called. If the smile never reached his eyes, Quinctilius Varus couldn’t hope to notice from that distance.

  Sigimerus waved, too. If he didn’t smile so broadly, he was an older man, and carried himself with more dignity. Arminius hoped Varus would think so, anyhow.

  And evidently Varus did. He was at least as old as Sigimerus, but he wore a smile wider than Arm
inius’. “Hail! Welcome!” he said. “I didn’t know if we’d be lucky enough to see the two of you back here this year.”

  “Here we are, sir,” Arminius said. “May we come into Mindenum? Your men didn’t seem to want us to.”

  “You know how soldiers are,” Varus said. And Arminius did: he was one himself. If the Roman governor wasn’t, or didn’t think of himself as one, why did he hold this position? Smiling still, he went on, “You certainly have my permission to come in. I’m sure I will want your advice again and again on how best to civilize this province.”

  Sigimerus growled down deep in his throat. Arminius’ gaze flicked over to his father, but the older man’s expression didn’t change. And the Romans wouldn’t have heard him. Arminius wore his smile like a mask, hiding his fury. What Varus meant by civilizing Germany was taking away its character and its freedom.

  “Always a pleasure to help,” Arminius lied.

  “Spoken like a Roman citizen—like the member of the Equestrian Order you are,” Varus boomed. After a moment, Arminius realized the Roman governor wasn’t really speaking to him, or wasn’t speaking to him alone. Varus was reminding the legionaries that the man outside was a tame German, a good German. He didn’t say anything to or about Sigimerus. But if the soldiers accepted Arminius, they wouldn’t mind his father.

  Arminius drew himself up straight and delivered a clenched-fist Roman salute. Yes, let the legionaries see I can ape their customs. Let them see that I’m a tame German, a good German. And, when the time comes, I’ll show them just how tame and good I am.

  None of that showed on his face. He probably had more practice dissembling than any other German since the gods first created his folk. Among themselves, Germans were always altogether honest (unless, of course, they saw some pressing reason not to be, as Segestes had when he broke his pledge to Arminius and tried to give Thusnelda to Tudrus). What they thought of as their innate honesty put most of them at a disadvantage when they tried to deal with deceitful foreigners.

  Arminius had been shocked to discover that the Romans reckoned his folk a pack of lying, thieving savages. How could they be so blind? He finally decided that, since the Romans were liars and thieves themselves, they thought other peoples shared their vices.

  “Pass in, Arminius. Pass in, Sigimerus,” Quinctilius Varus said loudly. If the sentries tried to go against that now, they would be mutinying against the provincial governor—indirectly, against Augustus himself. The Romans had some fearsome penalties for anyone who dared such a thing.

  Any folk that had such penalties was bound to need them—one more argument against Rome and all its ways.

  Legionaries mostly held their faces straight as Arminius and Sigimerus walked into Mindenum. They probably wouldn’t have done that if they weren’t under Varus’ eye. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have let the two Cherusci into Mindenum if not for Varus’ orders.

  “That one soldier is smiling at us,” Arminius’ father whispered. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Arminius got a corner-of-the-eye glimpse of the Roman his father had to mean. Sure enough, the fellow had a broad, welcoming smile plastered across his face. Arminius didn’t think the man was putting it on for Varus’ benefit, either.

  “Some of the legionaries must see that the governor is right and that we aren’t dangerous to Rome.” Arminius also spoke quietly, but you never could tell whether somebody with a big nose and sharp eyes was eavesdropping. He could say what he meant even if he used words that said the exact opposite if you took them the wrong way.

  “Ah. Of course.” Sigimerus understood him just fine. If a snoopy Roman thought he meant something different… well, that was the chance you took when you listened in on conversations not meant for you.

  Several legionaries paced the Germans as they walked through the encampment. Our hounds, Arminius thought, or maybe our keepers. He called out to one of them: “Will we stay in the same place we did last summer?”

  The Roman seemed embarrassed at being noticed. Arminius wondered why. The only way he could have made himself more obvious was to paint himself blue. After a moment, the man recovered enough to answer, “Yes, I think so.”

  “All right. Thanks.” Arminius hadn’t really expected anything else. As he’d seen in Pannonia and here, Roman camps varied little from one place to another or from one time to another. If the legionaries had put them there last year, chances were they’d do the same thing again.

  It was boring. It gave ordinary men no room to deviate from the pattern. But it worked. The Romans wouldn’t have conquered so much of the world if it hadn’t. They always camped the same way. They always fought the same way, too. If you offered them battle on ground where they could do what they usually did, chances were they’d make you regret it. No one could doubt that the Germans were the fiercest fighters the gods ever made, but the Roman legions had given them all they wanted and then some for a generation now.

  We need to fight them on our own terms, then… if we can, Arminius thought. That same notion had spun round and round inside his head ever since he came back from Pannonia. Like so many things, it was easier to imagine than to bring off—as his father hadn’t tired of reminding him. But Quinctilius Varus really did think he was a tame German. That was bound to help. Would it help enough?

  XIV

  Quinctilius Varus paused halfway through his latest report to Augustus. He knew he sounded as hopeful as things in Germany could possibly allow, and then a little more besides. When you were writing to the ruler of the Roman world, you didn’t want to have to tell him things weren’t going well. Even a man married to Augustus’ grand-niece could spill his career in the chamber pot if he forgot that.

  And if, after Varus returned to civilization, anyone asked him why-he’d seemed so optimistic, he could point to the reports he’d got from subordinates all over Germany. He’d kept every single one of them, dating back to the day he’d first crossed the Rhine. And he’d based his optimism squarely on theirs.

  He started to write again, then paused with the reed pen only a digit above the papyrus. “Damnation!” he muttered. Of course he made everything in Germany seem good to Augustus, whether it really was good or… not quite so good. Wouldn’t his own underlings do the same thing with him?

  They would if they thought they could get away with it. He was sure of that. They wouldn’t want him breathing down their necks, any more than he wanted Augustus breathing down his. But he had to accept their reports. How else was he supposed to know what was going on?

  You could travel all over the province and see for yourself, he thought. But he was shaking his head as soon as the idea formed in his mind. If he spent all his time on horseback and in the sorry camps legionary detachments built for themselves while patrolling the German wilderness, how was he supposed to administer the land between the Rhine and the Elbe? He saw no way.

  But he didn’t like having to depend on reports he couldn’t check. “Aristocles!” he called.

  “Yes, sir?” As usual, the pedisequus appeared with commendable haste.

  “I’d like to speak with Ceionius for a bit. Fetch him, if you’d be so kind.” Some Romans would have said Varus wasted politeness on a slave. But a little honey made the gruel more appetizing. It wasn’t as if politeness cost anything.

  “I’ll bring him directly.” Aristocles hurried away.

  While Varus waited, he wrote a little more of the report. Some inspiration seemed to have oozed out of him, but he persisted even so. Augustus expected to be informed on how Germany was doing. And what Augustus expected, Augustus got. More than a generation of his rule had proved that.

  If Aristocles couldn’t find Ceionius, if he brought Lucius Eggius back instead… Varus wouldn’t be very happy about that. The two camp prefects were as different as chalk and cheese. You could reason with Ceionius, while Eggius, curse him, was as stubborn, as cross-grained, as any man ever born. He didn’t have nearly enough respect for his betters.

&n
bsp; To the governor’s relief, his slave returned with Ceionius. “Hail, your Excellency!” the prefect said, saluting. “What do you need today?”

  “I expect you’ll know, ah, reliable centurions in most of the detachments we’ve got wandering through Germany,” Varus said.

  Lucius Eggius might not have caught his drift. Ceionius did. Leaning forward and lowering his voice, he asked, “Reliable in what way, sir?”

  “If some of their superiors are trying to gild lead in their reports, that’s something I should hear about, don’t you think?” Varus said.

  By the camp prefect’s vulpine expression, he did think so. “It’s something I ought to hear about, too,” Ceionius murmured. He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, sir, I’m sure I can find centurions like that. Quietly letting them know what you need will take a bit of doing, but I can manage it.”

  “I thought you might be able to,” Varus said. “The more ways we have to learn what’s really going on, the better. And, as you say, best to do it under the rose.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir. Off the top of my head, I can think of three or four men who’d be perfect.” Sketching another salute, Ceionius hurried away.

  Aristocles had listened, as discreetly as if he were part of the tent canvas. “Not bad, sir. Not bad at all,” he said.

  “Who knows whether these field commanders truly are doing all the wonderful things they claim?” Varus said. “If some of them are lying and I can show they are, that will make all of them tighten up.”

  “Just so.” Aristocles dipped his head in agreement. “Do you need anything else from me right now, sir?”

  “No. You may go,” Varus said. The pedisequus vanished as smoothly and quickly as he’d manifested himself. Varus attacked his report for Augustus with renewed vigor. He might not tell Claudia Pulchra’s great-uncle things weren’t perfect here, but at least he could come closer to the truth himself.

  Varus paused once more, muttering to himself. He was setting spies on his subordinates now, to make sure they did what they told him they were doing. He was a good enough administrator. Realistically, though, the Empire had plenty of others just as capable, even if they didn’t enjoy his connections.