Give Me Back My Legions!

by Harry Turtledove

  “Well, it was partly burned before I got my hands on it. I salted it down, but it’s getting high anyway.” Arminius wrinkled his nose. “Still, I don’t aim to throw it away. I’ll send it southeast, to Maroboduus and the Marcomanni. It will show him what we Germans can do when we set our minds to it.”

  “Won’t it just!” his clansmate exclaimed, eyes glowing. “Oh, won’t it just!”

  Till Arminius’ meteoric rise, King Maroboduus had unquestionably been the most powerful German of all. He’d drawn Augustus’ watchful attention, too. Had the revolt in Pannonia not broken out, he likely would have drawn Augustus’ legions as well. Maroboduus loudly denied he’d had anything to do with stirring up that revolt. Arminius believed not a word of it. He was sure Augustus didn’t, either. But the Roman ruler hadn’t found the chance to attack Maroboduus, and odds were he never would now.

  Thanks to me, Arminius thought proudly. Maroboduus might have stirred up others to fight against Rome. Arminius had done his own fighting, against foes who invaded his land. If the folk of Germany couldn’t see which of those was the greater accomplishment… Arminius couldn’t imagine that his countrymen would be so blind.

  “A Roman who dreamt of ruling us,” his clansmate said. “And what is he now? Nothing but a stinking souvenir!”

  “A stinking souvenir,” Arminius echoed. A slow smile spread over his face. He nodded, half to the other German and half to himself. Yes, he liked that. And it was true of more than Quinctilius Varus alone. Roman hopes for Germany had also fallen into decay. And they were no more likely to rise from the dead.

  Segestes lived quietly on his steading. A good many of his sworn retainers stayed there with him. A few of them—younger men, mostly—had gone off to fight the Romans with Arminius despite what Segestes thought of the man who’d stolen his daughter. Enough remained to fight a war if Arminius decided to try punishing Segestes for staying loyal to the Empire.

  So far, there’d been no signs such trouble was coming, nor even threats. Segestes gave Arminius reluctant credit for that—or maybe Arminius was so enmeshed in great affairs that his woman’s father had fallen beneath his notice. Segestes sighed, out in front of the thatch-roofed farmhouse. He’d always thought of himself as a man of consequence, but he could hardly deny that events had outrun him these past few months.

  “They wouldn’t have if he’d listened to me,” Segestes murmured.

  “What’s that?” one of his warriors asked.

  “Varus,” Segestes said. “If only he’d listened to me. Are there any words sadder than I told you so? The only time anyone ever gets to say them is when it’s already too late for them to do any good.”

  “I never thought of it like that.” By the puzzled expression on the retainer’s face, he didn’t waste a lot of time thinking. He was a good man with a spear in his hands, though. Everyone had his strengths and his failings. Segestes sighed again. His failing was that he’d been born into a German body, not a Roman one.

  He knew what the Romans thought of his folk. He knew that, in Varus’ eyes, he’d been as much a barbarian as Arminius. He sighed once more. Time would have solved that. Had the Romans brought Germany into the Empire, his grandchildren’s grandchildren would have been unquestioned Romans, as babies born in Gaul now were.

  That wasn’t going to happen, not now. Whether Arminius had done something good or bad, men could argue one way or the other. That he’d done something great… nobody could doubt.

  Germany would not be Roman. Three legions gone? Taken all in all, the Roman Empire had no more than thirty or so. One soldier in ten from all the Empire had perished in the swamps and woods not too far north of where he stood. Augustus was a canny man. He wouldn’t risk such a disaster twice. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk it once. But Varus thought he could trust Arminius, and…

  Three or four Roman fugitives had made it here after the battle. Segestes hid them for a little while, fed them, gave them barley cakes and sausage to carry when they left, and sent them away by night. He wished he could do more, but more would have cost him his life if word got out… and word of such things always got out. You did everything you could do, not everything you wanted to do.

  Unless you were Arminius. Segestes’ scarred hands folded into fists.

  Arminius had done everything anyone could have wanted to do.

  Or had he? Men said he’d intended to cross the Rhine and plunder Gaul—maybe even try to take it away from the Romans. His army got to the river, but it didn’t cross over. What would he do with all those warriors now? How long could he keep feeding them? How long before the galloping shits or chest fever broke out among them?

  Segestes laughed harshly. Arminius had served with the Romans, learning their ways so he could fight them better. Segestes had served with them, too, years earlier. Arminius would have seen how the legions kept themselves supplied. He would have seen how they kept their camps clean.

  And how much good would it have done him? He was dealing with Germans here, not Romans. Supply wagons? Rafts carrying grain along rivers? Segestes laughed again. He knew his own folk hadn’t a prayer of organizing anything like that. German encampments were always filthy, too. The Romans said dirt led straight to disease. From everything Segestes had seen, they knew what they were talking about, as they commonly did.

  “What’s funny, lord?” his retainer asked.

  “Funny? Everything in the world, or maybe nothing at all,” Segestes said.

  The warrior scratched his head. A moment later, he squashed something between his thumbnails. That made Segestes want to scratch, too. “I don’t think I understand,” the younger man said.

  “Well, don’t worry your head about it,” Segestes said. “I don’t think I understand, either.”

  His retainer scratched some more. He didn’t come up with any new vermin—or, if he did, Segestes didn’t see him do it, which was good enough.

  A few days later, a solitary warrior approached the steading. The chieftain’s followers led the fellow to Segestes himself. Three of them stood between the man and Segestes. If the fellow had come with murder on his mind, he’d have to go through them to get at his target.

  “This is poor guesting,” he observed.

  “It is, and I am sorry,” Segestes said. “But times are hard, and I have a strong foe. Can you blame my retainers for staying wary?”

  “When you put it so, I suppose not,” the other man replied. “My news comes from his steading, in fact. You will have heard your daughter gave birth to a boy?”

  “Yes, I know that.” Segestes nodded. One of these days, that grandson might lead him to reconcile with Arminius. One of these days…but not yet. “What of it, stranger?”

  “My name is Alcus,” the newcomer said. “I am sorry to have to tell you the baby is dead. A flux of the bowels, I hear—it was quick, and seemed painless.”

  “Woe!” the retainers cried. They covered their faces with their cloaks.

  “Woe!” Segestes said with them. He too covered his face. Tears ran down his cheeks, so he could uncover himself without shame—no one would think him coldhearted or mean of spirit. In truth, though, he didn’t know what he felt. “You are sure of this?” he asked.

  “I am. There is no doubt,” Alcus said. “My fields lie next to Arminius’—I have the word straight from his retainers.”

  “Yes, it is so, then,” Segestes said. “Woe! Woe, indeed! Always hard when a babe dies untimely.”

  “Harder when the babe is your grandson. I beg you, Segestes—don’t hate me for being the one who brought you the news,” Alcus said. “I know you and Arminius… are at odds. If I had not come, you might not have heard for some time.”

  “True. I might not have.” Segestes wondered if that wouldn’t have been for the best. Reluctantly, he shook his head. The news would have come sooner or later. And, sooner or later, grief would have speared him. Sooner wasn’t better, but it also wasn’t really worse. “I do not hate you, Alcus. You did what you
thought best, and who is to say you did not have the right of it?”

  “Thank you, lord. That is well said.”

  “And I will show you good guesting.” Segestes realized he had to do that if he were not to be reckoned liar and niggard. “Eat as you will of my bread and meat. Drink as you will of my beer, and of my wine from beyond the Rhine. Sleep soft tonight before you fare forth to your farm.”

  Alcus bowed. “You are gracious. You are kind.”

  “Yes. I am,” Segestes said bleakly. “And much good any of that has done me.”

  Rain pattered down on Rome. It was winter: the proper season for rain, as any man who lived round the Mediterranean would have agreed. Augustus was one of those men, and faced a problem common to a lot of them—his roof leaked. A drip near the entrance to his great house plinked into a bowl.

  He gave the bowl a jaundiced stare. New leaks started every winter. The men who laid roof tiles always promised that everything would be perfect this time. They always lied, too. Augustus shook his head. In the scale of human calamities, there were plenty worse. His mouth tightened. He knew too much about that.

  He opened the door and looked out. The guards standing outside stiffened to attention. “As you were, boys,” Augustus said, and they relaxed.

  “What can we do for you, sir?” one of them asked.

  “Not a thing. I’m only looking at the weather.”

  “All right, sir. However you please.” The guardsman grinned at Augustus. He had a strong-nosed face with cheekbones that made sharp planes below his eyes. He spoke Latin like the native of Italy he was. All his comrades came from Italy, too.

  In the frightening, frightened days after news of Varus’ disaster came to Rome, Augustus had eased all the Germans—and, for good measure, all the Gauls—out of his personal guard. Most of them, maybe all of them, remained loyal to him, but he dared not take the chance that they would do something to help Arminius. He didn’t cashier them. He did send them out of Rome. Quite a few of them were garrisoning Mediterranean islands these days.

  Against whom were they garrisoning those islands? Pirates? Drunken fishermen? Skrawking sea gulls? Augustus had no idea. But doing things that way had preserved the honor of the Germans and Gauls. If he ever needed them again, he could use them.

  He’d begun repairing the mutilated Roman army, too. The legions he’d raised in the aftermath of the disaster were no match for the ones Arminius had destroyed. He knew that. They held far too many older men, far too many squinting craftsmen and chubby shopkeepers. He’d had to draft men to fill out their ranks at all, which caused no end of grumbling.

  But he’d done it, and he wasn’t about to look back and tell himself he shouldn’t have. Yes, those raw new legions would get hacked to bloody bits if they ever faced rampaging Germans in the field. Augustus knew that. So did the officers under whom the reluctant soldiers served.

  All the same, the new men could fill up forts. They could protect backwaters that needed only a show of force to stay quiet. And, in doing things like that, they could free up better troops to deal with real trouble.

  Augustus sighed. “Cheer up, sir,” one of the guards, said. “The rain’ll make the grain grow.” He was a stubby little fellow, and seemed all the more so when Augustus remembered the hulking blonds who’d protected him before. If you couldn’t trust your bodyguards, though, what were they worth to you? Not even a lead slug.

  “I know, Sextus. I know,” Augustus answered. If Sextus wanted to think the weather was what was wrong, he could. Augustus only wished he could think the same thing himself.

  Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions! How many times had he howled that in his torment? More than he cared to remember. He had no guarantee he wouldn’t start howling it again, either, if the black mood seized him again.

  He’d gone on so long and done so well, maybe he’d started believing he couldn’t make mistakes any more. If so, he’d got a reminder of his own humanity, his own fallibility, far blunter and more brutal than the stinking turds in his chamber pot.

  Forty years. That was how long he’d ruled the Roman world, the Mediterranean world. In all that time, he hadn’t had to pull back his horns very often. Oh, death had forced him to change his mind more than once about his successor. Irony there: he’d been sickly in his younger years—he was often sickly even now—but he’d outlived almost everyone to whom he’d thought to entrust the Empire after he was gone. Still, no mortal could outwit or outreach death.

  Since he’d never had a son of his own body, he supposed Tiberius, his wife’s son from an earlier marriage, would have to do. Tiberius made a fine soldier. He’d proved that in Pannonia. If he hadn’t been busy settling that revolt, he might have proved it in Germany instead.

  Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions! Again, die howl of torment rose unbidden in Augustus’ mind, though he managed not to cry out loud. Those legions were gone, gone forever.

  Tiberius made a good soldier, yes. But did he have what it took to continue the delicate charade Augustus had carried on with the Roman Senate all these years? Augustus held all the power in the Empire worth holding, but he’d artfully pretended to be no more than a magistrate of the Republic. That was likely one reason, and not the smallest one, he’d escaped assassination for so long. People had feared his great-uncle would make himself into a king—and so Julius Caesar died under the knives of men who’d been his friends. Augustus cared little for the show of power. The reality sufficed.

  He wasn’t so sure about Tiberius. Tiberius didn’t suffer fools gladly. If the Conscript Fathers got pushy… Tiberius would do whatever he had to do to remind them where power really lay. They wouldn’t like that. Tiberius wouldn’t care. Different parts of the Roman government shouldn’t squabble with one another.

  Augustus had to hope they wouldn’t. He saw no one but Tiberius to whom he could hand over the reins. Death had cut down his other choices. When he was gone, all this would be his stepson’s worry.

  And so would Germany. Bringing it into the Empire as Julius Caesar had brought in Gaul would have been Augustus’ greatest legacy to his successor. It would have been, but it wouldn’t be now. Augustus knew he would never—could never—mount another campaign to annex Germany. The Rhine and the Danube would remain the Empire’s frontiers.

  Maybe, after enough time had passed, Tiberius would be able to avenge this defeat. Even as the thought formed, Augustus shook his head. Some wounds were just too large, too deep. Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!

  Again, Augustus kept the shriek inside him. The first few weeks after the catastrophe, he couldn’t even manage that. All his servants flinched whenever he cried out. Varus would have flinched, too, were he not beyond any reproaches but the gods’.

  Arminius, curse him, had managed what only death had done before: he’d made Augustus withdraw from a policy he’d set his mind to. If Germany was not to be Roman, it would stay… German. It would stay squalid, it would stay barbarous, it would stay independent. It would stay troublesome. Augustus could see that. He had to hope it wouldn’t become too troublesome too soon.

  Three days later, a courier down from the Danube reached the great house on the Palatine Hill. He spoke to the grooms. One of the guards spoke to one of Augustus’ senior servants. The freedman approached Augustus himself. “Sir, I think you would do well to see this man, to hear him, to see the burden he bears.”

  “Send him to the anteroom, then. I’ll see him there.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did Augustus remember that was where he’d seen the messenger who brought word of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest. Quinctilius Varus… Augustus spat into the bosom of his toga to turn aside the evil omen.

  The courier looked nervous when Augustus strode into the small antechamber. Augustus knew that meant nothing. Couriers coming before him mostly looked nervous. At the man’s feet lay a large leather sack. Augustus’ nostrils twitched—a faint foul odor rose from it.

  “Well?” Aug
ustus pointed toward the sack. “What’s that in aid of?”

  “Sir, let me give you this first. It will explain better than I can.” The man handed him a letter festooned with the usual wax seals and ribbons.

  “Very well.” Augustus broke the seals and unrolled the letter. The script was small and none too neat. After struggling with it for a moment, Augustus passed it to his servitor. “Read this to me.”

  “Of course, sir,” the freedman said. “I begin: ‘I am Gaius Libo, a wine merchant and a Roman citizen. I am at the court of King Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, north of the Danube. King Maroboduus has no letters himself. He asks me to write to you to explain the gift this letter comes with.’ ”

  Augustus pointed to the sack again. “Whatever’s in there?”

  “That’s right, sir,” the courier said.

  “All right.” Augustus turned back to his servitor. “Go on.”

  “Yes, sir. ‘Not long ago, Maroboduus received from Arminius, another German princeling, the head of the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus. Maroboduus says he has no quarrel with you and no quarrel with Varus. To show this, he sends you the head for burial.’ ”

  “Ah,” Augustus said, to give himself a moment to gather his thoughts. Then he asked the courier, “Do you know if this is truly Varus’ head? Or is it the head of some nobody Maroboduus is using to curry favor with me?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. I never met the gentleman alive, and I would not recognize him,” the courier said. “I also have to tell you the head is not in the best of shape. But I have heard that Arminius did send Varus’ head to Maroboduus.”

  “Yes. I have heard the same thing,” Augustus said unhappily. Even more unhappily, he went on, “Take the head out of the sack. If anyone is likely to recognize poor Varus, I am the man.”

  He could have summoned Julia Pulchra or her son—no, the younger Quinctilius Varus was studying in Athens. But he would not have done that to his grand-niece, and he couldn’t do it to the peaceable youth. He’d seen battlefields and their aftermath, even if not for many years.