Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

“Thank you,” Arminius replied. Admitting he’d overheard the conversation would have been rude, even if the Roman had to know he had. The rule among the Germans was much the same.

Aristocles bustled into the back of the tent. He and Varus went back and forth in Greek. Arminius had learned a couple of curses in that language, but didn’t speak it. Then the pedisequus returned. “I have the honor of escorting you into the governor’s illustrious presence,” he told Arminius.

“Good,” the German said. About time, he thought. Some of his folk would have come right out and said so. He might have himself, before he went off to Pannonia to learn Roman ways. Having learned them, he tried to use them to advantage.

Publius Quinctilius Varus sat in a chair with a back, which proved him a very important personage indeed. He didn’t rise when Arminius came before him. Arminius stiffened to attention, as he would have to a senior Roman officer on campaign, and shot out his right arm with his fist clenched.

Varus smiled. He waved Arminius to a stool. “So you’re the chap who’s too fond of his lady love, are you?” he said. Was he laughing at Arminius or with him? The German couldn’t tell. He often had trouble figuring out what Romans meant.

Straight ahead, then. “No, sir. It wasn’t that. Segestes hurt my honor when he took her away from me and tried to give her to Tudrus.”

“Tried to give . . . Yesss.” Varus stretched out the last word. He frowned at Arminius. “This Segestes says some hard things about you.”

Arminius weighed the words - and the frown. Varus was about his father’s age, but a very different man. Sigimerus was tough and hard, like seasoned timber. Romans could be like that; Arminius had met plenty who were. Varus wasn’t. He didn’t seem like a fighting man to the German. The Romans had people who did nothing but gather supplies for their armies - quartermasters, they called them. The notion had never occurred to the Germans, but it worked. Maybe Varus was stamped from that mold.

Or maybe he really was a fighting man no matter how he looked. With the Romans, you never could tell. Arminius had met one military tribune who acted more like a woman than a proper man had any business doing. But the fellow was a terror, a demon, on the battlefield.

How to reply? With a smile and a shrug he used like a shield to hide what he was really thinking, Arminius said, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? If he can make me look bad, he doesn’t seem like a fool and a liar and an oathbreaker himself.”

“This, uh, Thusnelda.” Varus pronounced the name badly. He put this in front of a lot of Germans’ names, as if they were things, not people. “She is happy with you?”

“Yes, sir!” This time, Arminius didn’t hesitate at all.

Quinctilius Varus noticed. He might not be a fighting man, but he wasn’t stupid. Amusement glinted in his dark eyes. “I see,” he said. “And you’re happy with her, too, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I am.” How could Arminius explain it to the Roman? “I did not take her because I thought we would be happy, but I am glad we are.”

The glint became a smile - a small smile, but a smile even so. “How old are you, Arminius?”

Before the German answered, he had to count on his fingers. “I am twenty-four, sir. Why?”

“Because you make me jealous,” Varus said. “It is so easy to be happy with a woman - almost any woman - when you’re twenty-four. When you’re thirty-four or forty-four or fifty-four . . .”He sighed.

Arminius’ mother and father took each other for granted. They were content with each other, anyhow. Happy? He’d never wondered about it. He knew the Romans’ laws let them change wives - and, for that matter, husbands - almost as readily as they changed clothes. His folk did things differently. Maybe that meant German men and women had to make the best of each other.

As for fifty-four ... To twenty-four, fifty-four was a journey greater than the one from Germany to Pannonia and back again. Fifty-four was a journey greater than one from Germany to Rome itself and back again. Arminius could imagine going down to Rome. He’d seen Roman towns in Pannonia, and along the Rhine. He imagined the imperial capital as something like a bigger version of one of those, something like an outsized legionary encampment.

He couldn’t imagine fifty-four at all. An old man, aching, with bad teeth and short wind? Varus didn’t seem as ancient as all that, but he was graying and balding. He’d seen better days, all right. At the height of his own strength, Arminius felt a sudden, startling sympathy - almost pity - for the Roman.

He also knew what Varus had to be thinking. Varus wouldn’t want trouble from the Germans. A governor who wasn’t a soldier wouldn’t want anything but peace and quiet. If Arminius gave them to him . . .

“I do not seek a blood feud with Segestes,” Arminius said. “This I swear, by my gods and yours. I have Thusnelda. She is enough. She satisfies my honor. I do not need to spike her father’s head to a tree.”

Quinctilius Varus’ mouth twisted. Too late, Arminius realized he might have left off that last sentence. The Romans worshiped effete gods who drank blood, but not man’s blood. How strong could they be if they turned their backs on strong food?

Then Varus chuckled, and then he smiled a broad smile. “You may be a Roman citizen, but some of your ways are still German,” he observed.

“It is so,” Arminius said simply.

“But you do pledge that this matter is over now, as far as you are concerned?” the Roman official persisted.

“I said it. I meant it,” Arminius answered.

Varus smiled again - wistfully. “No, you are not altogether a Roman. What we say and what we mean too often have little to do with each other. A pity, but the truth. When you say something, I believe I can rely on it.”

“I am glad of that, sir,” Arminius said. And so he was. When he spoke to his own folk, he was indeed the soul of truth. When he spoke to Romans . . . He’d learned enough from the invaders to know how to turn their own arts against them. He could dissemble and never let on. He could, not to put too fine a point on it, lie. He could, and he did.

“All right, then. Go home. Stay there quietly. Enjoy your woman, this, uh, Thusnelda.” No, Varus couldn’t come close to pronouncing the German name. He went on, “I will tell this Segestes that there is to be no feud. He will hearken to me.”

He is your dog, Arminius thought. Again, what went through his mind didn’t show on his face. “It is good,” he said. “I thank you.”

Varus waved that aside. “It’s all right, son,” he said, and paused thoughtfully. “Do you know, you remind me a little of my own son. You’re bigger, you’re fairer, but something about the way you hold your head. . . .” He laughed. “Something about the way you hold back, too, so you don’t tell me off.”

Arminius was alarmed, but only for a moment. This Roman hadn’t looked into his heart and seen his hatred for the Empire. No, Varus, an older man, had looked at a young man and seen one eager to be free from the restraints older men put on him. Varus didn’t need to be a wizard to do that. He only needed to be a man who remembered what being young was like.

Sure enough, he went on, “Gaius is in Athens now, finishing up his education.” He paused again. “Come to think of it, you’ve had a bit of an education in Roman ways yourself, haven’t you? Not the same kind of education, but an education even so.”

What kind of education was Gaius Quinctilius Varus getting in Athens? Arminius had no real notion. Carefully, he said, “I learned much in the Roman army.” I learned how dangerous you people really are.

“I’ll bet you did,” Varus said, but he was still smiling, so he couldn’t suspect what lessons Arminius had drawn from his service. “Nothing like Roman discipline here in Germany now, is there?”

“No, sir.” Arminius spoke nothing but the truth there. It worried him. Unless he caught the Romans by surprise, that discipline made them formidable foes. And how could he surprise them when they sent out scouts in all directions?

“When you Germans gain discipline, I wouldn’t be surprised if you show the world a thing or two,” Varus said. “You need us to teach you what you should know.”

“Your folk taught me a lot when I served.” Again, Arminius didn’t specify what he’d learned.

The Roman governor of his homeland nodded to him. “Good. That’s good. Little by little, Germans will pick up Roman ways. That kind of thing has been happening for a while now on the other side of the Rhine. Some of the Gauls use Latin more than their own language, they really do. Some of them - may the gods strike me dead if I lie - some of them, I say, are even starting to write Latin poetry.”

Arminius tried to imagine Germans writing Latin poetry. If ever anyone from his own folk undertook such a thing, Germany would be a very different place. It would also be a place he had no desire to see.

Nodding again, Quinctilius Varus went on, “Well, I didn’t call you here to have you listen to me going on about how things wrill be a lifetime from now. As long as your woman is with you willingly, this complaint from Segestes can go by the board. But he is a citizen, and you are a citizen, and so it was up to me to get to the bottom of things. I trust you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Arminius said.

“All right, then. You may go.” After another hesitation, Varus added, “I hope I see you again sometime.”

“May it be so.” May I see you on your knees, begging for the mercy you’ll never find. But none of that showed on Arminius’ face. He rose from the stool, bowed, and left the closed-off space that served as Varus’ office. He also left the enormous tent as fast as he could. ‘Never give somebody the chance to change his mind was another thing he’d learned from the Romans.

He jumped onto his horse without needing a leg-up. He would rather have died than asked a favor from a passing legionary. He swung the animal’s head around and left the encampment at Mindenum by the gate through which he’d come in.

“He’s just a boy,” Varus said in slightly surprised tones.

“Rather a large and muscular boy, sir,” Aristocles replied.

“Just a boy,” Varus repeated, as if the pedisequus hadn’t spoken. “A boy, besotted with one of those blond German girls.” He leered; he couldn’t help himself. German women always reminded him of Roman whores. In a mostly dark-haired land, those wigs made the whores stand out. And every time he saw or even thought about the naturally fair German wenches, he couldn’t keep lewd imaginings out of his mind.

“So you are going to let him keep her?” his slave inquired.

“Yes, of course I am. I’d have to start a war to take her away. I’m sure she’s no Helen, and I’m just as sure I’m no Agamemnon,” Varus said. “Unpleasant place to be in, you know - either I make this Arminius angry, or I do the same to that Segestes. Arminius has the girl, and she seems happy enough to be had. As long as she does, her father will just have to find something else to worry about.”

“They’re all barbarians up here,” Aristocles said with a discreet shudder. “Will, uh, Segestes, be so offended you ruled against him that he’ll try to kill you without worrying about what will happen to him the next heartbeat?”

“Pleasant thought.” Varus sent the pedisequus a sour stare. The worst of it was, he couldn’t even rebuke the Greekling, because it was a legitimate question. “I don’t think so,” Varus said after a moment. “For a German, Segestes seemed fairly civilized. Arminius struck me as more likely to imitate Achilles if I took the woman away - except he’d fight instead of sulking in his tent.”

“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.”