At last, another legionary waved to him. “Well, come on, then,” the Roman said grudgingly.
“Thank you for your gracious kindness.” Segestes had learned enough from the Romans to appreciate irony. His own stab at it slid off the soldier like rain off the oily feathers of a goose.
“If they try and search us, by the gods, I’m going to break some heads,” Masua said. Like Segestes, he carried a sword and a dagger along with his spear.
“They won’t.” Segestes sounded more confident than he felt. “An insult like that would turn even me against them, and they have to know it.” The legionaries had to know, yes, but did they have to care? By all the signs, Quinctilius Varus cared very little for Segestes’ feelings these days.
The sentries huddled again. Segestes would have bet they were wondering whether to frisk him and Masua. But, when the huddle broke, one of them said, “Pass on through.”
“Thank you,” Segestes repeated, this time more sincerely. He didn’t want a row at the gate, but he too had his pride. He had more than Masua did, truth to tell. His comrade was a man of his sworn band, but he was a chief. If he let the Romans rob him of his pride, what did he have left? Nothing, and he knew it all too well. Fortunately, the issue didn’t arise.
How many Roman encampments had he visited in his time? A great plenty of them—he knew that. Even Vetera, across the Rhine, still plainly showed it had grown from a camp. And Mindenum was one more. They varied in size, depending on how many men they had to hold, but they were all made to the same pattern. Once you’d learned your way around one, you could find what you wanted in any of them.
Here, Segestes found something he didn’t want. Coming up the straight street toward him and Masua was Sigimerus. Arminius’ father and Segestes were about of an age: a little old to fight at the front of a battle line, but both seasoned warriors. They stiffened. Segestes lowered his spear a little, but only a little. Inside the camp, Sigimerus wasn’t carrying a spear. His sword came halfway out of its sheath, but no more than halfway.
Sigimerus greeted him: “You swinehound! You son of a swinehound!”
“Better a swinehound’s son than a swinehound’s father,” Segestes retorted. “If I thought you were worth killing, I’d kill you now.”
“Men better than you have tried,” Sigimerus said. “Ravens and badgers tore them once they were dead, while I still live.”
“I have killed, too,” Segestes said. “After so many, one more—especially a nithing like you—is easy.”
“You can’t do, so you talk,” Arminius’ father jeered.
“You know more about idle talk than I ever will,” Segestes retorted.
Romans gathered to watch the confrontation. They grinned and nudged one another. Segestes knew what they were doing: betting on who would come out alive, or on whether anyone would. Germans would have done the same thing. Also seeing that, Masua said, “You make a spectacle for them.”
“I know,” Segestes answered. He raised his voice to Sigimerus: “Let us go by. I didn’t come here to kill you, no matter how much you deserve it.”
“No—only to spit poison into the Roman governor’s ear.” But Sigimerus let his sword slide back down till the blade was out of sight. “Well, come ahead. Why not? No matter how many lies you tell, Varus won’t listen to you.”
Segestes feared that was true. It had been true every other time he tried to open Varus’ eyes. But what kind of friend to Rome was he if he didn’t make the effort? “Either you know nothing of lies or you know- too much,” he said. “Any man with his wits about him can guess which, too.”
He started forward, Masua a pace behind him and a pace to the left, ready to guard his flank. Slowly and deliberately, as if to show himself no coward, Sigimerus stepped out of their path. “Watch yourself,” Masua said loudly. “He may stab you in the back.”
“I don’t waste treachery on weasels like you two,” Sigimerus said.
“No? You must save it for the Romans, then,” Segestes said. Sigimerus haughtily turned his back.
Anywhere but here, Segestes would have attacked him for that offensive arrogance. He made himself walk by instead. Varus wouldn’t hearken to him if he killed Arminius’ father. He knew that too well.
The governor occupied what would have been the general’s tent in any other encampment. Segestes had expected nothing different: that was where the highest-ranking officer posted himself. For better and for worse, the Romans were a predictable folk.
“Hail, Segestes. Hail, Masua,” said Varus’ Greek slave. Segestes took it as a good sign that the man remembered his comrade’s name. He took it as another when Aristocles continued, “The governor will see you without delay.”
“We thank you.” Segestes had wondered whether Varus would try ignoring him without seeming to, keep putting him off with excuses, each plausible by itself but all together adding up to I want nothing to do with you. No German would play that kind of game; a German who didn’t care to see him would come straight out and say so. But Segestes had enough experience of Romans to know they could be sneakily rude.
Not today, though. As promised, Aristocles led Segestes and Masua straight to Quinctilius Varus. The slave managed to disappear the moment Segestes took his eye off him. Segestes wished he hadn’t, for one look at Varus’ face told the German he’d done no good coming to Mindenum.
“What can you possibly tell me now that you have not told me time and time again?” the Roman governor demanded, his voice as cold and cutting as sleet.
“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 atten
tion 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.
Give Me Back My Legions! Page 26
