Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

“Thanks,” he said again. The Roman salute was the same, though he thought it sounded better in Latin. A Greek doctor attached to the legion had once told him Greeks said the same thing, too. That was pretty funny, when you got right down to it.

He drank. As soon as he tasted the stuff, he had to remind himself not to screw up his face. However much he wished beer were sweet like wine, it wasn’t. You couldn’t do anything about that. But if you drank enough, beer would do something to you.

“I’ve been up on - over, I mean - this miserable frontier too long,” Sextus said. “Gods help me, I’m starting to like beer.”

“Tell the doctor’s helpers next sick call,” Caldus Caelius said. “Maybe they can cure you.” Then he laughed. “If you like it enough to drink a lot, you will need to see the doctor’s helpers at sick call.”

“So what?” Sextus said. “I’ll be happy while I’m drinking, and that’s what counts.” He dipped his mug full again, then started emptying it.

Caldus Caelius filled his mug again, too. Why not? They were off duty. They might get teased for coming back to the encampment drunk, but they wouldn’t get in trouble.

“You know,” another Roman said, “when you look at ‘em the right way, these German gals aren’t so ugly. They’ve got a lot to hold on to, you know what I mean?” He eyed the girl who’d rolled out the barrel.

Caelius hadn’t drunk himself stupid yet - not that stupid, anyhow. “Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to get too pushy with them, or you’ll bring their menfolk down on us. They like maidens here, same as we do.”

“I know, I know,” the other legionary replied. “For some silver, though, I bet I can get her to go down on her knees for me, or else take it up the rear.”

“If she says no, don’t pester her.” Caelius jerked his chin toward the fields. “We’re outnumbered, remember.”

“Sure, sure,” Sextus said in a way that meant he was paying as little attention as he could. Caldus Caelius and the rest of the legionaries looked at one another. Caelius wondered if they’d have to knock Sextus over the head and drag him back to Mindenum. If he stirred up trouble, that might be the smartest thing the other Romans could do. They’d come for a good time, not to fire the barbarians up against them.

Sextus drew a denarius from his belt pouch. Holding it out in the palm of his hand, he went up to the German girl. She was within a thumb’s breadth of being as tall as he was, and almost as wide through the shoulders. She did have good teeth and a swelling bosom.

Sextus knew even less of the Germans’ language than Caldus Caelius did. He used such rags as he had, as well as some gestures that left next to nothing to the imagination. The girl said something to her older friend. Caelius couldn’t follow it, but they both got the giggles.

“Well, sweetheart?” Sextus asked in Latin.

Instead of slapping him or turning away and walking off in a huff, she led him to one of the farmhouses. When they came out a few minutes later, he wore a sated smirk while she proudly showed the denarius to the other woman.

“Your lucky day,” Caelius said. Sextus’ smirk got wider.

“Hey, if she’ll do him, maybe she’ll do me, too,” another legionary said. He too produced a coin. This time, the negotiations were swifter - the young woman knew what he wanted from her. She gave it to him, too. He was grinning like a fool when he came out of the wattle-and-daub hut. “She’s good,” he declared. “By Priapus, she’s mighty good!”

Caelius went next himself. As long as it was business, as long as the barbarians weren’t getting upset, why not? If he had the chance, he’d grab it. A denarius was more than he would have paid back at Vetera, but so what? He couldn’t think of anything else he’d sooner spend his money on, even beer.

“Lots of silver,” the girl said happily when she took his coin. By the time the day ended, she might become the richest person in the little village. The inside of the farmhouse was gloomy. Caelius stood there while she dropped down in front of him. He set a hand on the back of her head, urging her on. She didn’t need much urging. Neither did he - he spent himself in nothing flat. She spat on the hard dirt floor. He helped her up. They went outside together.

She ended up satisfying all the Romans. They emptied the barrel of beer, too. As Caelius none too steadily made his way back toward the encampment, he couldn’t remember a day he’d enjoyed more.

Arminius stared at the handful of silver the village girl showed him. “Did you people butcher a Roman to get this?” he asked her. “If you did, I hope you hid his body so the legionaries never found out how he died. If one of them gets killed, they avenge themselves on many. Thev - ”

He broke off, because she was laughing at him. “We didn’t kill anybody,” she said. Then she told him exactly how she’d earned the denarii. “They pay so much for so little! Look at all this silver! I never thought I would have so much in my whole life, and it didn’t even take an hour.”

He knew what prostitutes were. He’d used a couple himself, to slake his lusts while he served among the Roman auxiliaries. Up till now, Germany had known little of such notions, probably because so few coins circulated here. But if the country came under Roman rule, if money spread here till it was as widely used as anywhere else in the Empire . . . how many girls like this one would there be?

Her father wasn’t helpful. “She didn’t do anything that made her no maiden,” the man said. “As long as she bleeds on her wedding night, nothing else matters. And she will. My wife made sure of that.” He held up his middle finger to show how.

“But . . .” Arminius wanted to hit him. “She sold herself!”

“Got a good price, too,” the other German agreed. “These Romans must have silver falling out of their assholes, the way they throw it around. Plenty of chieftains with less than we’ve got now.” He eyed Arminius.

“Do you have that much?”

“Yes,” Arminius said flatly. If the other man challenged him, it would give him the excuse he wanted to murder the fellow. But the man just stood there outside of his steading, a foolish grin on his face. Arminius tried again: “Don’t you see? Before the Romans set up their cursed camp near here, your daughter never would have done anything like this.”

“I should say not,” the girl’s father answered. For a moment, Arminius thought he’d reached him. Then the wretch continued, “Before the Romans came, nobody could’ve paid anywhere near so well.”

“We have to get rid of them,” Arminius insisted. “They’ll ruin us if we don’t.”

The older man stared at him in what Arminius hoped was honest incomprehension. “Why do you want to get rid of them when they’re making us rich? I can spend some of this silver at their camp for things they have and we don’t. My little girl wants some fancy combs for her hair. Hard to tell her no when she was the one who made the money, eh?

I can even buy wine if I want to. Like I said, I might as well be a chieftain myself.”

“You might as well be a swine,” Arminius said.

“I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got no cause to talk to me that way.” The villager didn’t reach for a spear or a sword. He was brave enough running his mouth, but not when he had to back up his words.

So it seemed to Arminius, anyhow. He didn’t think about what it might be like to confront a large, fierce, well-armed stranger only a little more than half his age. People half Arminius’ age were children; he didn’t need to fear them.

He didn’t need to fear the shameless girl’s father, either. He turned his back and strode away. If his scorn made the other man respond, he would do what he had to do - what he wanted to do. But, regretfully, he didn’t think it would. And he turned out to be right.

He wondered if he could make it out of the village without being sick. He managed, but it wasn’t easy. The Romans purposely changed the way the folk they conquered did things. He’d heard about that in Gaul, and seen it with his own eyes in Pannonia. They were like potters working with soft clay, shaping it into whatever they wanted.

They also changed people - and peoples - without meaning to. If they hadn’t set up their encampment so close to this village, that man would have stayed an ordinary fellow. Oh, chances were he never would have been a hero or any kind of leader, but Arminius wouldn’t have wanted to wipe him off the sole of his shoe like a dog turd, either. The man never would have been proud of how much his daughter could make going down on her knees.

And he wouldn’t have worried about fancy combs or wine. The Romans might not have known that they used such things as weapons, but they did. Too many Germans craved what they lacked and the Romans had. Wine and luxury goods had bought too many chieftains - Arminius’ fists clenched as he thought of Thusnelda’s father.

Silver - no matter how you got it - could buy lesser men, too. And if the Romans bought enough men and women, if they persuaded them the way of life inside the Empire was better than their own . . . what then? Why, the folk of Germany would turn into Romans. They would be taxpayers, slaves, the way the Romans themselves were slaves.

Arminius shook his head. “By Tuisto and Mannus, it will not happen!” he vowed. Tuisto was a god born of the earth. Mannus, Tuisto’s son, was reckoned father of the German folk. Mannus’ three sons were said to be the ancestors of the three divisions of German stock. Some people gave Mannus many more sons, men whose names matched those of the various German tribes. Maybe they were right - how could anyone now know for sure? But Arminius preferred the simpler arrangement.

He wanted things simple in his Germany, too. He wanted his folk to stay free, the way it had always been. And he wanted to drive the Romans back over the Rhine. He would have liked to drive them farther still, but he didn’t suppose the spineless Gauls would help.

Men like the gleeful pimp back in that village made him wonder if even his own folk would help.

IX

When Quinctilius Varus rode forth from Mindenum, he rode forth with the idea that he was somebody and needed to be seen as somebody. He much preferred civilian clothes to a general’s muscled corselet and scarlet cloak, but conscientiously donned them anyhow.

“You look . . . magnificent, sir,” Aristocles murmured, tightening the fastenings that held the corselet’s breast and back pieces together.

Did that little pause conceal the word ridiculous? Varus suspected it did, but he couldn’t prove it, and the slave would only deny everything. What else did slaves do? Better not to pick a fight you had no hope of winning. Instead, Varus said, “I aim to overawe the barbarians. Let them see Roman might, personified in me. Let them see, yes, and let them despair of resisting.”

“Of course, sir,” Aristocles said. It might have been agreement. Or it might have been, You must be joking, sir.

Again, Varus couldn’t prove a thing. Again, he had sense enough not to try. Instead, cloak swirling around him, he strode out of the tent. A cavalry officer standing outside gave him a clenched-fist salute.

The officer also gave him a leg-up. He settled himself in the saddle. He would have preferred a litter, but he could ride tolerably well. The Germans, for their part, had made it very plain that they despised litters. They didn’t think a man had any business being carried by other men. To Varus’ mind, that was only one more proof they were barbarians. He hated having to cater to local prejudices. But, since he did want to impress, he found himself with little choice.

Vala Numonius rode with him. So did a troop of stolid cavalrymen. The Germans could still overwhelm them if they wanted to badly enough. But he had enough Romans with him to put up a stout fight. And the Germans had to know his murder would lead to vengeance on a scale they could barely imagine. Varus felt safe enough.

Besides, the village where he was going was supposed to be friendly. The locals had begun holding assemblies to talk about what they should do, very much as villagers in Italy might have done. So reports said, anyhow. One thing Varus had learned in his administrative career: if you trusted reports, if you didn’t go out and see for yourself, sooner or later something would bite you in the backside.

Probably sooner.

“We’ll make Roman subjects out of them yet,” he said to Vala Numonius.

“Gods grant it be so,” the cavalry commander answered. “But we could build a new Rome in place of our encampment here, and I still wouldn’t be sorry to see the last of this miserable country. No olive oil. No wine. Too cursed many Germans.”

“I know what you mean,” Varus said. “Still, Augustus didn’t send me here to fail. We collected taxes from them last fall. We’ll take more this time around - see if we don’t - and most of it in silver. Half the battle is getting them used to the idea of paying. Once they are, once they don’t grab for their spears every time the tax-collector comes around, we’ll be on the road to triumph.” He hastily chose a different word: “To victory.”

“I understand, sir,” Numonius assured him.

Since Augustus became the supreme leader in the Roman world, generals couldn’t aspire to a proper triumph: a procession through the streets of Roman acclaiming them for what they’d done. Their victories were assumed to come in Augustus’ name and at his behest. If you said you wanted a triumph of your own, it was almost the same as saying you wanted Augustus’ position.

Varus . . . wouldn’t have minded having it. He didn’t think he’d get it after Augustus died, though. Of Augustus’ surviving kin, all the signs pointed to Tiberius. Not only had he been (disastrously) married to Augustus’ daughter, he was also Augustus’ wife’s son and a first-rate soldier to boot. Overthrowing him would take a civil war, and Rome had seen too many.

But Tiberius was within a year or two of Varus’ age, and childless. If he died fairly soon . . . In that case, people might look to me, Varus thought.

A branch hanging down from an oak into the narrow path swatted him in the face and snuffed out his daydreams of imperial glory. “Never mind building a new Rome here, Numonius,” he said. “What we need to build in this benighted place are some decent roads.”

“You’ve thrown a triple six with that, sir!” Vala Numonius exclaimed. “It won’t be easy or cheap, though. So much of this country is swamp or bog or mud or something else disgusting.”

“We can do it,” Varus said. “Back a lifetime ago, the Germans never dreamt we could bridge the Rhine and punish them for sticking their noses into Gaul. Caesar showed them how ignorant they were. And proper highways would be worth their weight in gold here. Except along rivers, we have a demon of a time getting troops where they need to go.”

“Don’t I know it!” Numonius rolled his eyes. “Horsemen have an even worse time pushing down these narrow, twisting tracks or slogging through the mud than foot soldiers do.”

“Yes, I can see how that would be so.” Varus’ decisive nod was patterned after the one Augustus habitually used. “Roads, then. As soon as we decide it’s safe enough for the engineers to start working on them. Or maybe even a little before that.”