Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

Under the chief cook’s watchful and anxious eyes, two kitchen slaves - hulking Germans - carried a covered silver tray into the tent doing duty for a dining hall and set it on the table. One of them protected his hand with a big of rag as he grabbed the cover’s handle and pulled it off. Steam and savory smells filled the tent. Varus and the other diners exclaimed in delight. A couple of the soldiers even clapped their hands. What could you expect from such people?

Relief in his voice, the cook said, “Roast boar, your Excellencies, with forest mushrooms, on a bed of cabbage and turnips.”

“I’d never get bored with that,” Lucius Eggius called out.

For a moment, Varus heard it as a hungry man’s commonplace. Then he caught the pun. He sent Eggius a look half respectful, half reproachful. Was the wordplay just luck, or was there more to the officer than met the eye?

Varus decided he didn’t have to worry about it now. He was the highest-ranking man here, so he was entitled to feed himself first and take the choicest gobbet. He did, seizing a smoking chunk of pork generously outlined with dripping fat. His mouth watered.

It tasted as good as it looked and smelled. Varus could imagine no higher praise. Smiling, chewing, he nodded to the cook. That worthy bowed in delight.

Vala Numonius chose next. The cavalry commander’s right hand closed on a slice even bigger and fatter than Varus’. “Good,” Numonius said with his mouth full. “Wonderful!” The cook beamed.

One by one, in order of rank, the Roman officers fed themselves. “Begging your pardon, friends,” one of them said as he took food with his left hand.

“We know you, Sinistrus,” Varus said. The nickname told how thoroughly left-handed the legionary was. His right hand was as clumsy and useless as most people’s left - good only for wiping himself. Varus had known a few other men like that. They always apologized when they fed themselves with what was usually the wrong hand.

The mushrooms were different from the familiar Italian varieties, and also different from the ones Varus had eaten in Syria. Not better or worse, the governor judged, but different. One of the officers spoke to the cook: “You tried these out on beasts before you tried them on us, right?”

“Oh, yes, sir!” the cook said, so quickly that the legionaries laughed.

“Some good news, anyway.” Lucius Eggius’ voice was dry. The Roman officers laughed again. So did Quinctilius Varus. He liked mushrooms, but he also knew you could make mistakes with them. And a mistake with a mushroom was much too likely to be the last mistake you ever made.

Another officer raised a winecup. “Here’s to putting Germany under our thumb once and for all!”

Varus was glad to drink to that toast. The rest of the diners followed his lead. All the same, he heard somebody mutter, “What I’d really like is to put Germany behind me!”

He looked around, trying to make out who’d spoken. But he couldn’t. He didn’t recognize the voice, and no one’s face gave him away. Besides, how angry could he get? He would have liked nothing better than going back to Gaul, going back to Italy, going anywhere but here.

No matter what he would have liked, he had to stay. “By the gods, gentlemen, we will whip this province into shape!” he declared. “And if we have to resort to the lash, that’s what we’ll do. The Germans need to know who their rightful masters are.”

“Hear, hear!” Several officers loudly supported him. Others, though, sat quietly, as if trying to pretend they hadn’t heard what he said. Most of the ones who made a point of agreeing had come north with him the year before. Most of the ones who stayed quiet had been fighting the Germans longer than that.

Were the newcomers too hopeful? Am I too hopeful? Varus wondered. Or were the veterans of this frontier jaded and frustrated because things here hadn’t gone better? Quinctilius Varus decided it had to be the latter. The Germans had stayed pretty quiet even though he’d started accustoming them to taxation. Why wouldn’t they turn into proper Roman subjects if he kept on traveling the road he’d begun?

And he was sure Augustus wouldn’t have sent him up here if the job weren’t doable. If anyone had ever had an instinct for such things, Augustus was the man. The veterans had made a hash of things, that was all, and so they built the Germans up to be bigger and fiercer and stubborner than they really were.

He’d made progress. He would make more. If Augustus thought he could do it, he did, too.

Sometimes the Germans would attack a Roman army without the slightest hesitation. Sometimes a couple of Roman soldiers could amble through the countryside and get nothing but friendly treatment. You never could tell.

Caldus Caelius and two or three buddies were ambling through the countryside now. The legionaries weren’t stupid about it. They’d told their friends back at Mindenum where they were going. If anything happened to them, the legionaries would make the barbarians pay.

And the Germans around Mindenum had figured that out. Knocking off a Roman soldier here was more expensive than it was worth. Caelius and his friends wore helmets, and swords on their belts - you didn’t want to beg the Germans to jump you - but he wasn’t what you’d call anxious.

Hard to worry about anything with spring burgeoning all around. New bright grass pushed up out of the ground. New shiny leaves were on all the trees that weren’t conifers - and in weather like this, mild and mostly sunny, you could ignore the gloomy needles on the pines and spruces. Flowers blazed across the meadows like stars in the night sky. The air smelled sweet and green.

Birds sang in the trees, throwing out music for anyone who walked by. “Germany wouldn’t be a bad place,” Caelius remarked, listening to a blackbird’s clear notes, “if it stayed this way the year around.”

He came from a farming village south of Neapolis, down near the toe of the boot. He knew the difference between summer and winter there: winter was the rainy season, and it did get cooler than the blazing summer heat. But it rarely snowed, and far fewer trees lost their leaves than they did here. Life down there had a more even pace. He missed it.

One of his friends peered into the woods. “Germany wouldn’t be a bad place,” the other legionary said, “if it didn’t have Germans in it.”

All the other Romans laughed. Caelius wondered why. “You’ve got that right, Sextus,” he said. “Only way to get rid of them is to kill ‘em all, though.”

“Don’t remind me,” Sextus said. “And how many of us would they bump off before we finished with ‘em?”

The sun ducked behind a cloud. Some of the brightness would have gone out of the day even if it hadn’t. “Too stinking many,” Caelius said. “They’re tough - no two ways about it.”

A rabbit bounded across the trail and disappeared into tall grass. Sextus pointed after it. “The barbarians hide just like that, the buggers.”

“There’s a difference,” Caelius said.

“What’s that?” His friend liked being contradicted no more than any other mortal.

“When rabbits hide, they don’t take along spears and swords and bows,” Caldus Caelius said.

Sextus grunted. “Well, so they don’t. And all kinds of things eat them. I wish something would eat up the Germans.”

A local, wrapped in his cloak, rounded a stand of trees up ahead. “Watch your mouths, boys,” Caelius said quietly. “Some of these bastards know Latin. We don’t want to be calling them dogs to their faces.”

“Why not?” another legionary demanded. “It’s what they are.”

“But the officers’ll have our guts for sandal straps if we start a fight for no reason,” Caelius said. The other soldier, a younger man - not that Caelius was very old - muttered under his breath but subsided. Caelius showed the German up ahead a raised, empty right hand.

Slowly, the native returned the gesture. Even more slowly, he came toward the Romans. He was tall and proud and skinny. His cloak had a bronze clasp in the shape of a beast. The creature’s eye was of stone, or perhaps glass paste. That said the German was a man of some substance, though probably not a chief. A real leader would have had a gold or silver clasp for his cloak, and would have worn breeks under it, too. This fellow’s hairy shanks stuck out below the bottom of his cloak. His spear was made for thrusting; it was longer and stouter than the javelins Caelius and his friends used.

“We have no quarrel with you,” Caelius said in Latin. Then he said what he hoped was the same thing, using his scraps of the Germans’ language.

“No? Then go back where you came from.” The barbarian’s Latin wasn’t much better than Caelius’ command of his language. He looked at his spear. He looked at the Romans. Several of them and one of him. If he started a fight, he’d regret it - but not for long. And he’d never do anything else that stupid afterwards. With a sigh, he nodded. “I have no quarrel with you - now.”

Caldus Caelius gave his pal a look that said, See? He might have understood you after all. The one the other Roman returned said something like, Yes, Mother. They grinned at each other. Caelius gave his attention back to the German. “There’s a little village down this path, isn’t there?” he said.

“Why you want to know?” From the anger and alarm in the native’s voice, he was wondering whether the legionaries aim to burn the place first and then rape the women or the other way round.

“I thought maybe we’d buy some of that, uh, beer you people brew,” Caelius answered. He liked wine better - what Roman in his right mind wouldn’t? By all the signs, the Germans liked wine better, too, when they could get it. But all the wine that came to Mindenum started from Vetera. There was usually enough to give each legionary his fair share, but not enough to get drunk on. And so ... Beer would do.

“Ach” the German said: a deep, guttural noise. He nodded again, visibly relaxing. “Yes, there is a village. Yes, there is beer.”

“Good. That’s good.” Caldus Caelius turned to the other Romans. “Come on, boys.”

They sidled past the German. Both they and he stepped out of the path while they did it, so neither side admitted to giving way to the other. Caelius had done that dance of pride before. If you respected a German’s manhood, he wouldn’t feel he had to prove it to you.

Most of the time, anyway.

Caelius looked back over his shoulder once, to make sure the barbarian wasn’t trying to get cute. The German was looking back at the Romans. Their eyes met - locked. Slowly and deliberately, Caelius nodded. So did the German. They both looked away.

“Trouble?” Sextus asked.

“Nah,” Caelius said after a moment’s pause for thought. “Not now, anyhow. He was just . . . checking, you know? Same as me.”

Sextus nodded. “Sure. My neck’s on a swivel every time we leave the encampment.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Caldus Caelius assured him.

The village, such as it was, lay not quite half a mile down the path. Five or six farmhouses stood close together in the middle of the fields the natives worked. Caelius didn’t sneer at it that much. He’d seen cities, sure, but he’d grown up in a place not a whole lot bigger than this one.

Watching the Germans hoeing and planting at this season instead of harvesting still startled him. But what could you expect in a land where it rained in the summertime?

Women tended the vegetable plots, the way they would have in Italy. A lot of the vegetables were familiar, too: onions, lettuces, the indispensable turnips and beets. But the Germans had never heard of garlic. Fools that they were, barbarians that they were, they thought it smelled bad. They grew some roots and leaves the Romans didn’t use back home. Caldus Caelius had tried a few of them. He supposed he could eat them again if he had to, but hoped he wouldn’t have to.

The legionaries didn’t try to get fresh with the gardening women. The Germans hated unwelcome advances at least as much as Italians would have. One squeal from a girl and all the barbarians out in the fields would have come running with mattocks and adzes and whatever else they had out there.

A gray-haired man, bent and stiff with age as old men always were, hobbled out of one of the farmhouses leaning on a stick. Caelius eyed it: it was carved from top to bottom with little animals and men hunting. Clever work, if you had the time to sit down and do it.

Like a lizard, the old-timer soaked up sunshine. He stretched and straightened a little. Scars seamed his arms and legs; he’d seen his share of fighting and then some back in the day. A cataract clouded one of his eyes. The other had stayed clear.

“Pax,” he said to the Romans. Not only his accent but two missing upper front teeth made his voice mushy.

“Pax,” Caelius answered. The old man cupped his free hand behind his ear. “Peace,” the legionary repeated, louder this time.

Still in Latin, the old man went on, “You come for the beer, yes?” He could make himself understood, all right. How much of his fighting had been against the Romans, how much against Germans from other tribes or from this one? Some questions might be better left unasked.

Besides, the barbarian’s query needed answering. “That’s right,” Caldus Caelius said eagerly. The other legionaries seemed happy enough to let him do the talking, but they added smiling nods.

“You have silver?” the graybeard went on.

“Sure do.” Caelius dug a denarius out of his belt pouch. His friends could pay their share later. No matter how much he drank, he wouldn’t forget that they owed him: a denarius was close to a day’s salary for him.

“Ach.” The old man made that guttural noise Germans liked. He held the denarius out at arm’s length so he could examine it with his good eye. The silver coin shone in the sun. He was looking at the reverse, because Caelius could see Augustus’ right-facing profile on the other side. A slow smile spread across the barbarian’s face. “It is good.”

“Sure,” Caelius said. A denarius might be worth a good bit to him, but it was worth a lot more to the native. Since the Germans didn’t mint their own money, they made a big deal of the coins they got from the Romans.

The German said something in his own language. Caelius thought it meant something like Bring it out - I’ve got the cash. That was about as far as his knowledge of the Germans’ tongue stretched.

Two women close by left off gardening and went into the farmhouse. One of them rolled out a good-sized oaken barrel - the barbarians often preferred barrels where Romans would have used pottery. The other woman carried earthenware cups and a dipper carved from wood. She handed each legionary a cup.

“Thank you,” Caelius said in her language. She blinked, then smiled at him. She wasn’t pretty, and she was at least fifteen years older than he was, but the smile turned her from a crone to somebody who might be a nice person.

Down into the barrel went the dipper. The woman who’d handed Caelius his cup filled it for him. “Your health,” she said.