Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

“If it was any worse ground, it’d swallow us up and we’d never be seen again,” one of the soldiers said.

“Oh, cheer up, Gnaeus,” Eggius said. “At least the barbarians aren’t giving us any grief.”

The legionary was not cheered. “Yes, and that’s all wrong, too,” he answered. “Why aren’t they? It’s . . . suspicious, like.”

“Quinctilius Varus says it’s because they’re finally coming to see we really are their masters.” Eggius, loyal to the idea of Rome if not necessarily to the blue-blooded chuckleheads who represented that idea in Germany, gave forth with the party line.

Gnaeus wasn’t the only soldier who jeered at him - and at Varus. Unlike the governor, the men had been going through these woods for years. They knew the Germans weren’t subdued. So did Lucius Eggius, but he’d given up on trying to get his superiors to see it. Sometimes you could yell till you went blue in the face, and it didn’t do you any good.

He hadn’t been lying to the legionaries. Unlike some of his superiors, he didn’t think that was a good idea. The ground ahead did improve. It was higher, less muddy, less swampy. It didn’t try to suck the caligae off the soldiers’ feet at every step they took.

Eggius glanced toward the sun. At least he could see it. With the beastly German weather, there was no guarantee of that. It neared the western horizon. “As soon as we find a spring or a stream, we’ll camp for the night,” Eggius said.

He didn’t think that would take long, and he proved right. He’d never seen any place for water like Germany. It bubbled out of the ground here, there, seemingly everywhere. When the legionaries found a spring, they began digging in around it. Fortified camps took a lot of work, but nobody grumbled. They bumped up your chances of lasting long enough to get gray hair and wrinkles, and the men knew it.

Ditch. Earthen rampart made from the spoil thrown out of the ditch. Sharpened stakes atop the earthwork. Gates facing the cardinal directions. Main streets running north and south, east and west between the gates. Tents always placed just so inside the square perimeter. Every soldier had a particular job to do, and everybody, through long familiarity, did it without much waste motion.

Torches flared along the rampart, ensuring that the Germans couldn’t sneak up on the camp. Sentries paced the circuit, exchanging passwords and countersigns. Eggius chose Latin words with r’s in them for those. The Romans trilled their r’s, while the Germans gargled theirs. Not even a barbarian who’d served as an auxiliary and knew Roman military customs would be able to fool a sentry. Eggius hoped not, anyhow.

Thinking of Germans who’d served as Roman auxiliaries naturally made Lucius Eggius think of Arminius. When his column left Mindenum, the young German and his father had been installed there, happy as a couple of sheep in clover. Quinctilius Varus thought Arminius a house snake, not a viper.

Lucius Eggius sighed. He hoped the governor was right. He had trouble believing it, but he had even more trouble believing he could change Varus’ mind. Men like that didn’t listen to men like him. To Varus, he was nothing but a craftsman who’d chosen a necessary but nasty way to make a living. No, Augustus’ grand-niece’s husband wouldn’t pay attention to a veteran legionary.

And, since he wouldn’t, what point to brooding about it? No point at all. Eggius shoved it out of his mind. He had plenty of more immediately urgent things to worry about.

When the Romans got moving again the next morning, scouts came trotting back from the woods ahead. That they came back was a good sign in and of itself. “No Germans in there!” one of them called.

“Good,” Eggius answered. He turned to the men he led. “We’ll go on through - double time. The sooner we’re out the other side, the better.”

Before plunging down the path, he made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard. The scouts had done their job, but you could never be sure they’d done enough. Germans were like any other beasts of prey: they were masters at leaping out from hiding.

The trees blotted out the sun. Eggius’ eyes needed a few heartbeats to adapt to the gloom. His nostrils twitched, taking in the spicy scents of pine and fir and the greener, more ordinary odors of oak and ash and elm. Were he a beast himself, he might have sniffed out any lurking barbarians. Or he might not have; maybe the strong odors coming off his own men would have masked them.

Along with the dim light came dankness. The narrow path he followed turned muddy almost at once. His hobnailed marching sandals squelched at every step. He was at the head of the column, too. The going would be worse for the men farther back after their friends had chewed up the track.

Bushes and ferns pushed into the path from either side. It was as if the forest resented having any way through it and was doing its best to reclaim that way for itself. Something large and heavy crashed through the undergrowth off to the left. Before Eggius consciously realized it, his gladius was halfway out of the bronze scabbard.

No volley of spears. No screaming German warriors. With a shaky chuckle, another Roman said, “Only an animal.”

“Right.” Lucius Eggius kept his own voice under tight control as he let the shortsword slide down again. “Only an animal.”

A bear? An aurochs? An elk? He’d never know. Now that silence had returned, he could tell himself it didn’t matter.

He could tell himself, yes. But he couldn’t believe it.

The woods didn’t just seem to squeeze in on either side. Eggius felt, or imagined he felt, the canopy of leaves and branches pressing down on him. Maybe everything would close in, like a great green hand making a fist. And when the fist opened again, he wouldn’t be here anymore. Maybe the whole Roman column wouldn’t be.

He laughed at himself. He told himself that was nothing but nonsense, moonshine. This time, he did manage to convince himself he was right. Some Romans had far more trouble going through these forests than he did. They really believed the trees were closing in on them - they didn’t just have brief vapors about it. Cold sweat dripped off them. They went pale. Their hearts pounded and raced. Only coming out into the open again could cure them.

Eggius wondered how a German would feel out in the Syrian or African desert. Would he think the landscape was too wide? Would he feel tiny and naked under the vast blue dome of the sky? Would he shudder and shake, wishing he could draw forest around him like a cloak? The Roman wouldn’t have been surprised.

Double time. It wasn’t just to give the natives less of a chance to set a trap among the trees. It was also to get out of this horrible place as fast as the Romans could.

Roads. Roman roads crisscrossing Germany. Roman roads arrogantly cutting through forests and swamps. Wonderful Roman roads, with the trees cut back far enough on either side to make bushwhacking impossible. They couldn’t come soon enough, not as far as Lucius Eggius was concerned.

“Bring on the engineers,” he muttered. So what if he was an officer? He would gladly have carried a hod. Anything to make sure the men who came after him didn’t have to endure . . . this.

“What did you say, sir?” a legionary asked.

“Nothing.” Getting overheard embarrassed him.

“I sure am sick of these trees,” the soldier said. “What I wish more than anything is that we had some decent roads through the woods.”

“Well, now that you mention it, so do I.” Eggius shook his head. He might have known his men would be able to see the same thing he did. They weren’t fools. Well, except for the tact that they’d got stuck in Germany they weren’t.

After what seemed like forever, Eggius saw sunlight ahead. Even though he’d been double-timing it through the forest, he broke into a run. Before long, he stood at the edge of a meadow and some fields. He breathed hard, as if he were coming up from underwater.

Some scrawny German cattle grazed in the meadow. Some scrawny German herdsmen kept an eye on them. As soon as Lucius Eggius came out of the woods, the barbarians let out several raucous halloos to warn the village a couple of furlongs away. Then they trotted purposefully toward him, hefting their spears as they came.

More Romans, moving almost as fast as he was, emerged from the forest behind him. “What do those buggers think they’re up to?” one of them asked. He pointed toward the approaching Germans.

“I could be wrong, but I don’t expect they’re bringing us wine and dancing girls.” Eggius’ voice was dry.

By then, the Germans were no longer approaching. Seeing themselves outnumbered, they lost their appetite for murdering strangers. They stopped short; one of them jabbed the butt of his spear into the ground to help himself stop even shorter. Quite suddenly, they all went pelting back the way they’d come. They did some more hallooing as they ran. Now they sounded alarmed, not wolflike.

More Germans came from the fields and out of the village: a surprising number of them. Bastards must breed like flies, Eggius thought. Had he come with an ordinary tax-collecting party, the savages might have overwhelmed them. But he had a real fighting column behind him, a column designed to show the natives that Roman might could penetrate even the deepest, darkest corners of Germany.

“Deploy into line of battle,” he called to the legionaries as they came out of the woods. “Let them see what they’re up against. Maybe that’ll make ‘em think twice before they try anything stupid.”

“And if it doesn’t, we’ll clean this miserable place out.” Eggius didn’t see who said that. Whoever he was, he sounded as if he looked forward to it.

Over by the village, the Germans had started to form a battle line of their own. Looking at the swarm of Romans deploying as they debouched from the woods, the locals started arguing among themselves, shaking fists and brandishing spears. Not all of them wanted to commit suicide, anyhow.

Other Germans started running for the trees on the far side of the village. Both sexes here wrapped themselves in cloaks most of the time, so Eggius had trouble being sure, but he guessed those were the women trying to get away. Yes, some of the fleeing shapes were smaller, so they had their brats with them.

Eggius told off a couple of dozen legionaries, two of whom could speak the Germans’ language after a fashion. “Come forward with me,” he ordered. “We’ll parley.” He raised his voice to address the rest of the Romans: “If the barbarians jump us, kill ‘em all. Hunt down the cunts, too.” By the noises they made, he thought they would enjoy obeying those orders.

He advanced, his little bodyguard spread out behind him and on both flanks. He kept both hands away from his weapons and displayed them palm out to show they were empty.

A German stabbed the butt of his spear into the ground and came forward. The middle-aged man also showed off his empty hands. He stopped just out of javelin range and asked, “What are you doing here?” in halting but clear Latin.

Won’t need the interpreters, Eggius thought. Good. “We are passing through our province,” he answered. “Will you give us food and beer?” Asking for wine around here was hopeless.

“Your province?” the German said bleakly, and then, more bleakly still, “What befalls us if we feed you not?”

“Well, you can always find out,” Eggius said with his sweetest smile.

The German muttered something his mustache muffled. One of the Romans who followed the local language stirred. Eggius pretended not to see him. He didn’t care whether the locals loved him, only whether they obeyed. “We will give you,” the German said, and then some more things Eggius affected not to notice. The Roman smiled again. Why not? He’d won.

XI

Arminius was used to sleeping in a tent surrounded by other tents full of soldiers loyal to Rome. His father wasn’t. Sigimerus wasn’t used to eating Roman rations, either. They seemed to agree with him; his breeches were tighter than they had been when he came to Mindenum.

He seemed unhappy even so. He did have the sense not to talk about it inside the encampment. By the nature of things, Mindenum had no privacy. But Arminius could see something was wrong. He and Sigimerus went for a walk outside the fortified perimeter.

“Tell me what it is, Father, before you burst like a sealed stewpot forgotten in the hot coals,” Arminius said.

Sigimerus turned a look of pure hatred on Mindenum. Fortunately, they were too far away for any sentries to make out his expression. “We are that gods-cursed Roman’s hounds!” he said. “His hounds, I tell you! We eat from his hand, we sleep in his kennel, we lick his face and roll over to show him our bellies. Faugh!” He spat in the grass.

“He thinks we’re his hounds,” Arminius answered. “That’s what he needs to think. If he thinks we’re anything else, he’ll close his hand on us instead of patting us with it.”

“I want honest war,” Sigimerus said. “Better - a hundred times better - than this game of pretending and lying.”

“Better if we win, worse if we lose,” Arminius said. “Right now, I think we would lose. Not enough of us are ready to fight the Romans. Too many would stand aside and wait to see what happened. And too many traitors to our folk follow Segestes’ path.” Flavus’ path, too, but Arminius didn’t name his own brother. “They’re the true hounds, the ones who want to see Varus as governor here and Augustus as king.”

Kings among the German tribes reigned by virtue of their blood. Their real power, though, depended on their prowess and their wisdom. If they couldn’t get people to follow them, they heard boos and catcalls in the tribal assembly. If they did win approval, the tribe’s menfolk clashed their spears together - the sweetest sound a German leader could hear.

To Arminius, Augustus was a German king writ large. He had to be fierce and clever, for men did his bidding even when far out of his sight. That showed he enjoyed both fear and respect. Arminius wished he knew Augustus’ tricks - he would have liked to use them himself. If all the Germans followed him the way the Romans followed Augustus . . . well, who could say what wonders he might work?

Right now, he had trouble getting even his father to follow him. Sigimerus said, “I think we should just kill Varus, then get away if we can. And if not, we will have given our folk a mark to aim at.”

Among the Germans, if a man died all his designs died with him. Arminius had needed a while to realize the Romans were different. That was one more part of what made them such a menace. “If we kill Varus, Vala Numonius steps into his place till Augustus sends some new governor up from Italy,” Arminius said. “And everything they do, they will do as if Varus still lived - except they will also strike at our folk to avenge his death.”

“That will do,” Sigimerus said. “If they come out of their encampment, we have the chance to beat them.”

“But can we? In the fights that have gone on as long as I’ve been alive, they win at least as often as we do,” Arminius replied. “And when they lose, what do they do? They fall back and get ready to fight some more. We don’t need to beat them, Father. We need to crush them.” He bent down, picked up a clod of dirt, and closed his fist on it. Only dust fell when he opened his hand again.