Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

“Yes. That is what we need,” his father agreed. “How do we get it? You said it yourself - the Romans don’t leave themselves open to such disasters.”

“We have to trick them. That must be how to beat them. It’s the only way I can see,” Arminius said. “If they don’t know something dreadful is about to befall them until it does, they’re ours!”

“If,” Sigimerus said heavily.

“Aren’t we tricking Varus now? You complain we are his hounds, but we both know that isn’t so,” Arminius said. “But does Varus know? If he knew, he would have killed us two weeks ago. Since he thinks he has hounds, he feeds us and houses us.”

“Tricking one man is easy. Tricking an army’s worth of men must be harder, or we would have done it long since,” his father said.

Arminius grunted - his father had a point. Even so ... “If the man we trick commands an army - and Varus does . . .”

“If this Augustus is such a mighty king, he should have found a better war leader than that fellow,” Sigimerus said.

Arminius nodded, for the same thought had occurred to him. “Thank the gods the Roman called Tiberius commands the army in Pannonia,” he said. “That is a man to beware of. If he were here, we could not play these games with him.”

“Let him stay far away, then.” Sigimerus hesitated. “Or maybe not. Some of the things Varus does would rouse our folk against him even if the two of us were never born. Not just taxes, but taxes in coin this year, he says. How many of us can pay in silver?”

“Not many. I know that, even if Varus doesn’t,” Arminius answered.

“I should hope so. And what is this talk about taking our spears away?” His father spat again. “How can a man be a man without a weapon?”

“Many Romans who are not soldiers in the legions don’t carry anything more than an eating knife,” Arminius said. Sigimerus snorted his disbelief. Arminius set a hand over his heart. “It’s true, Father - I swear it.”

“Well, what do they do when they quarrel?” Sigimerus demanded. “With no spears or swords, what can they do?”

“They have lawyers instead,” Arminius said. His father snorted again, this time in fine contempt. Arminius went on, “I scoffed when I first heard it, too. But a Roman told me a spear can only kill you once, where a lawyer can make you wish you were dead for months at a time.”

“Then you kill the lawyer.” Sigimerus was relentlessly practical - or thought he was, anyhow.

Arminius shook his head. “If you do that, Augustus and his servants go to law against you. The Romans have fewer blood feuds than we do, but the king’s justice reaches further with them.”

“Faugh!” Sigimerus repeated contemptuously. “They’re a pretty poor sort of man, if they have to have the king do what they should do themselves.”

“It could be so.” Arminius respected his father too much to quarrel openly with him. “Yes, it could indeed. But I still wish they were a poorer sort of man yet, for then they wouldn’t trouble us at all.”

Quinctilius Varus read the report Lucius Eggius had submitted after his foray through the German backwoods. He paused to rub at his eyes. Eggius would never make a stylist. His spelling and grammar left something to be desired. And his script was cramped and tight. The letters were too small to be easy to read when Varus held the papyrus far enough from his eyes to make them clear.

All things considered, then, the governor was glad enough to set the papyrus down when Aristocles came up to him and said, “May I speak to you, sir?”

“What is it?” Varus would rather have talked with his pedisequus than with most of the soldiers in the encampment at Mindenum. Aristocles was far more clever than they were. And, being a slave, he always gave Varus his full measure of respect - though the Roman governor didn’t put it that way to himself.

“How long do you think those . . . Germans will stay here, sir?” Aristocles asked.

He must have swallowed something like barbarians, or perhaps gods-detested, stinking barbarians. Varus knew Aristocles didn’t like Arminius and his father. Finding out how much he didn’t like them might be interesting - and entertaining.

The Greek’s sallow cheeks went quite pink when Varus asked him about it. “No, sir, I don’t fancy them. They look at me the way stray dogs look at tripes in a butcher’s stall.”

They did, too. Varus had noticed it. He thought of it as wolves eyeing a crippled fawn, but the pedisequus’ comparison was just as apt. “They can’t help it, Aristocles,” the Roman governor said. “They don’t understand that a peaceable man should be left to live in peace.”

“I should say they don’t!” Aristocles exclaimed. “That’s why I wish they’d leave.”

“Well, I find myself with two things to say about that,” Varus replied. “The first is that, however they look at you, they’ve offered you no harm. And the second is that we’ve come to Germany not least to make it into a place where a peaceable man can be left to live in peace.” He chuckled wryly. “We’ve come with three legions to make it into that kind of place, in fact.”

“Yes, sir.” But Aristocles only sounded dutiful, not amused. That disappointed Varus, who was pleased with the line he’d got off.

“They are our guests, don’t forget,” Varus said. “That matters here. If I send them away, I’d affront them.”

“But what if they’ve come here to murder you?” Aristocles blurted.

That made Quinctilius Varus laugh. He wasn’t especially brave: one more reason he felt uneasy around soldiers, many of whom took their own courage for granted. But he could tell when his slave was jumping at shadows. “If they wanted to murder me, they could have done it a dozen times by now - and they could have sneaked away before anyone knew I was dead. Since they haven’t seized any of those chances, I have to think they don’t aim to do me in. What would murdering me get them?”

“They would have killed the man charged with bringing Germany into the Roman Empire.” To Aristocles, it must have seemed obvious.

Varus went on laughing. “Yes? And so?”

“And so - that!” the pedisequus replied. “Isn’t it enough?”

“Not if they aim to stop Rome from conquering Germany,” Varus said. “We’d take such revenge that the savages would shriek and wail and hide under their beds for the next hundred years. Vala Numonius would see to that, he and whoever Augustus sent out to replace me. Besides, you’re missing something else.”

“What’s that?” Like anyone else, slave or free, Aristocles didn’t care to believe he could be missing anything.

“Arminius is a Roman citizen. He’s a member of the Equestrian Order. He risked his life to put down the rebels in Pannonia and bring that province back under Roman rule,” Varus answered. “So why would he and his father want to work against Rome at all?”

His Greek slave only sniffed. “Why do all those people say he was doing nothing else but all winter long . . . er, sir? Seems to me he’s the biggest fraud in the world.”

The biggest fraud who isn’t a Greek, you mean, Varus thought, but he didn’t care to wound Aristocles’ feelings unless he had to. “I think we heard lies put together by Segestes’ claque. I’ve thought so all along.”

“Segestes is a Roman citizen, too,” Aristocles said. “He’s been one longer than Arminius has.”

“As if that proves anything! He’s older than Arminius. And he’s still trying to fix Arminius for running off with his daughter. With Thusnelda . . . The names these Germans have!” Quinctilius Varus was pleased with himself for remembering hers.

“Doesn’t that say something about the kind of wolf - uh, man - Arminius is?” Aristocles replied. “He swoops down like a thief in the night and -”

And Varus couldn’t stop laughing. “I’ll tell you what kind of man Arminius is. He’s a young man - that’s what kind. He goes around with a stiff prong all the time. Didn’t you, when you were that age?” Without waiting for Aristocles to answer, the Roman governor went on, “Besides, it’s pikestaff plain he didn’t steal Thusnelda away against her will. She went with him because she felt like it.”

“He fooled her. He tricked her.” The pedisequus was nothing if not obstinate. “And he’s fooling you, tricking you, too. And you’re letting him.”

“The day a German barbarian can fool a Roman, he’s earned the right to do it,” Varus said. “But I don’t think that day will come any time soon.”

Aristocles sighed. “Yes, sir. I understand. Once upon a time, we Greeks said, ‘The day a Roman barbarian can fool a Greek, he’s earned the right to do it.’ We didn’t think that day would come, either. But look where we are now. Look where I am now, sir.”

“We didn’t take Greece by trickery. We took Greece because we were stronger,” Quinctilius Varus said. Aristocles didn’t answer. One of the master’s privileges was the last word. But somehow, even though Varus had it, he didn’t feel as if he did.

A torrent of guttural gibberish burst from the lips of the German chief or village headman or whatever he was. Caldus Caelius looked to the interpreter, a German about his own age. “What’s he saying?”

“He hasn’t got any silver,” the young German answered in good Latin.

“All that meant ‘He hasn’t got any silver’?” Caldus Caelius raised an eyebrow. “Come on, friend. Give me the rest of it.”

“I’d rather not,” the interpreter said. “He’s upset. If you knew what he called you, you might think you had to do something about it. He didn’t insult you on purpose - I swear to that. He is angry that your governor tries to make him give what he does not have.”

“Oh, he is, is he? How do you know he hasn’t got it? What happens if we do some digging and find he’s sitting on half a talent’s worth of denarii?”

“Let me ask him.” The interpreter spoke in his own language. The village chieftain looked appalled - he’d never heard of acting. He blurted out something. The interpreter translated: “He says, ‘You wouldn’t do that!’“

Caldus Caelius laughed in the barbarian’s face. “Tell him we dig in every night when we make our camp. Tell him we don’t mind digging up this louse trap he calls a village. Tell him he can’t run far enough or fast enough if we find silver after he tells us he hasn’t got any.”

The interpreter did. The chieftain went from fair to pale - to fish-belly, really. His glass-green eyes kept sliding towards a spot behind the biggest house, then jerking away. If Caelius had to tell his men to dig, he knew where he’d have them start.

More gutturals from the headman. The interpreter listened, then asked him something. The other German shook his head. He laid a hand over his heart, the way his folk did when they took an oath. “He says he just now remembered he might have a little silver,” the interpreter reported. “He says he wasn’t trying to fool you before or anything. He says it just slipped his mind - Germans don’t use coins as often as Romans do.”

That last bit, from everything Caldus Caelius had seen, was true. The rest? He started laughing again. So did several other legionaries who stood close enough to hear what the interpreter said. A Roman officer heard every kind of excuse under the sun from soldiers who’d done what they shouldn’t have and hadn’t done what they should. This chieftain couldn’t have been a worse liar if he tried.

But that wasn’t the point. Collecting taxes was. “Tell him he’d better come up with those denarii right away. Tell him he’d better have enough to pay what Quinctilius Varus says he owes. And tell him that he’ll end up dead if he tries screwing around with a Roman who’s got a nastier temper than I do, and his wife and daughters will be slaves - if they’re lucky.”

That sounded pretty good in Latin. By the time the interpreter got done with it, it sounded even better in the Germans’ language. The headman went red, then white again. He bellowed something - not at Caldus Caelius, but at his own people.

Somebody came out of the biggest house. The man was skinny, unhappy-looking, and barefoot. He wore a ratty, threadbare cloak. If that didn’t make him a slave, Caelius had never seen one.

The way the chieftain yelled at him was another good marker. The skinny man went into a building next to the house - a barn, Caelius guessed - and came out with a spade. It had a wooden blade, except for an iron strip at the bottom where it bit into the ground. The fellow who was holding it called a question to the headman.

“He wants to know where to dig,” the interpreter supplied.

“Right.” Caldus Caelius nodded. If he were the village chieftain, he wouldn’t have wanted a slave to learn where the coin-hoard was buried, either. The man could dig it up some moonless night and be long gone - and able to buy not only freedom but friends before anybody caught up with him.

Muttering under his breath, the swag-bellied headman lumbered over and stamped his foot like a petulant girl. Dig here. He didn’t say it, but he might as well have.

Rich, dark German dirt flew. They had fine soil here. Caelius didn’t like the weather or the local menfolk, but the soil tempted him to settle in Germany once it turned into a proper province. Marry one of these big blond German girls, raise crops and kids, and pass the farm down to them . . . You could do worse. Plenty of people did.

Thud! Caelius clearly heard the noise, even from where he stood. The spade had hit something that wasn’t dirt. The slave dug a little more, then picked up a small, stout wooden box. He carried it over to the headman. By the way he handled it, it wasn’t light.

Caldus Caelius looked at - looked through - the heavyset German. “It just slipped your mind that you had this?”

He waited for the interpreter to translate. The chieftain didn’t act well enough to hide the hate on his face, either. He said something. “What difference does it make?” the interpreter said. The chieftain tacked on something else. So did the interpreter: “You have it now.”

“That’s right. I do.” Caelius nodded. “So open it up. Let’s see what all you forgot about. We’ll both be surprised.”

When the interpreter sent him a questioning glance, he nodded. The young German translated. The chieftain glowered some more. Caldus Caelius had enough men at his back not to care.

Inside the box was an oiled-leather sack. Caldus Caelius chuckled softly. The German looked daggers at him. Luckily for the barbarian, Caelius affected not to notice. This wasn’t the first German who’d coughed up his cash after protesting that he didn’t have any. Without a doubt, he wouldn’t be the last. The locals still hadn’t figured out that the Romans had heard all their lies and excuses before.

He supposed they would before long. That would make the tax collectors who followed on the army’s heels have to work harder to pry money out of these people. Caelius wasted no more sympathy on the tax collectors than on the Germans.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see the silver. If you forgot it was there, you won’t miss whatever we take, right?”