Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

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?”

His men snickered. The interpreter grinned. Once the Latin was rendered into the Germans’ language, the headman didn’t seem to appreciate Caelius’ wit. The Roman wondered why.

The chieftain had more than enough denarii to pay the village’s tax assessment. Caldus Caelius took only what he’d been told to. He handed the rest back to the barbarian. “These are yours,” he said. “You see? I am not cheating you.”

“No, you are not.” But the German wasn’t agreeing, for he went on, “You are robbing me. Things should have their proper names.”

One of the legionaries hefted his javelin. “Shall we give him what he deserves for his lip, sir?”

“Do I translate that?” the interpreter asked.

By the way the chieftain eyed that javelin, Caelius guessed he had a fair notion of what the soldier said. “Yes, go ahead,” he said, and the young German did. Caelius continued, “Now translate this, too. No, we don’t hurt him, because he paid what he owed and he didn’t try to fight us. Roman subjects pay taxes. That’s all there is to it, and he’d better get used to the idea. We’ll be back to collect next year, too.”

One growled sentence at a time, the interpreter passed the word along to the headman. The older German looked at him. He spat out one word, then scornfully turned his back.

“What’s that about?” Caelius asked.

“He called me a traitor.” The interpreter shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. These people don’t understand that the Roman Empire has better ways of doing things than they ever dreamt of.”

“Too right they don’t,” Caelius said. “Well, that’s what we’re here for: to fix things so they do understand.” And we’ll teach ‘em the lesson if we have to kill every stinking one of them to do it, he thought. But he kept that to himself; some of these Germans might follow more Latin than they let on, and even the interpreter might not fancy it. He finished, “Now that we’ve done the job here, we go on to the next village and do it again.”

“Yes, sir.” The interpreter smiled. He was a pretty good fellow. Caelius trusted him as far as he would have trusted any barbarian - not quite so far as he would have trusted a Roman, in other words.

Beyond the fields these Germans cultivated, beyond the meadows where their animals grazed, stretched more forests and swamps. Caldus Caelius eyed them without enthusiasm. Germany had far too many of both, or so it seemed to him. He wondered that the place had any room for Germans. But it did, for altogether too many of them. How long would it take to drag them into the Empire one thatch-roofed village and steading at a time?

As long as it took, that was all. He raised his voice to a shout that would reach all the legionaries: “Come on, boys! Time to go find the next place!”

If they were eager, they hid it very well. But they followed him. And their rear guard stayed alert. If the Germans here thought about getting their own back, they thought again right afterwards. Caldus Caelius nodded to himself. One place at a time, all right. He marched on.

Silver clinked in front of the camp prefect as he counted the cash Roman soldiers had squeezed from German villages. When Arminius took service with the Romans, he’d been impressed to see that they had officers in charge of paying their soldiers. That had never crossed his mind till then. German warriors lived on loot and on gifts from the war leaders they followed. A niggardly leader had a hard time getting men to fight for him. Standard wages took care of that.

That the Romans should also have an officer in charge of money coming in only made the German nod. These people were nothing if not disciplined and thorough. They left as little to chance as they could.

Quinctilius Varus came up behind Arminius and his father. “You see?” the Roman said. “My own men wondered whether we would be able to tax Germany, but we manage. Germans use far more silver than they did when I was a boy.”

“That is so,” Arminius agreed. “Germans use coins far more often than they did when I was a boy.” He didn’t think he was half of Varus’ age.

Even Sigimerus nodded. “When I was young,” he said in his slow Latin, “you hardly ever saw a denarius. Now we use them often. The world changes.”

“The world does change.” Varus sounded enthusiastic about it, where Sigimerus, Arminius knew, hated the idea. The Roman governor went on, “You Germans grow ever more civilized, though you may not notice it. You grow ever more ready to become part of the Empire.”

“It could be so,” Arminius said before his father could tell Varus exactly what his opinion was.

“Oh, I think it is.” Varus thought becoming a Roman province would be good for Germany. He needed to think Arminius and Sigimerus agreed with him, or their role in the resistance would end suddenly and unhappily. He continued, “I don’t suppose Julius Caesar would recognize Germany if he saw it today.”

Arminius knew a couple of old men who’d fought against the first Roman to invade Germany most of a lifetime earlier. By things his father had said, Sigimerus had known many more, though most of them were dead. No one spoke of Caesar without respect. “He hit hard, he hit fast, and he could talk you out of the brooch on your cloak and make you glad you gave it to him,” was how one of the graybeards summed things up.

Romans said Augustus was as great a man as Caesar had been. Maybe it was true; Augustus had stayed king longer than Arminius had lived, which argued that he was formidable. None of the men he’d sent to try to bring Germany into the Empire came close to matching his quality, though. Tiberius might, but Tiberius was busy in Pannonia. Varus didn’t - he was no warrior, and uneasily aware of it.

But he seemed happy about what the legionaries under his command had been able to squeeze from the Germans. “Before long, we’ll be able to spend the whole year in Germany instead of wintering back in Gaul,” he said proudly. “That will be one more step toward bringing this province into line with the rest of the Empire.”

“So it will,” Arminius said, which let him acknowledge Varus’ words without showing what he thought of them. “But not yet, your Excellency?”

“No, not yet.” Now Varus sounded regretful. “We’ll have to slog back through the mud, through the swamps. . . .” He heaved a sigh.

“You could come farther north, through the land where my tribe lives,” Arminius said eagerly. “I know a route that stays on higher ground, on dry ground, all the way back to the Rhine. It’s longer, but you won’t have to worry about mud for even one step.”

Whether Varus and the legionaries would have to worry about Germans was a different question, but not the one the Roman governor was worrying about at the moment. If Varus decided to go that way, Arminius knew the kind of place where he wanted to lead the Romans. He thought he could gather enough of his own folk around that kind of place to give them a proper welcome, too.

To his disappointment, Quinctilius Varus shook his head. “I thank you for the suggestion, my friend, but I’ll pass this year. We’ve already made plans to use the same route we did before. Sometimes even the gods can’t change plans once they’re made.”

Arminius didn’t dare push too hard. He couldn’t show how disappointed he was, either, not unless he wanted to rouse Varus’ suspicions. “However you please, sir,” he said. “If you enjoy the muck, you’re welcome to it. And if you ever decide you don’t, speak to me of that. My route won’t disappear. It won’t flood, either.”

“Neither will the one we usually use - I hope.” Varus betrayed himself with those last two words. Knowing as much, he went on, “One of these days, Germany will have proper Roman roads. May they come soon.”

“Yes, may they.” As Arminius had so often, he lied without hesitation. Roman roads would tie Germany to the Empire, all right. He understood why Varus wanted them. Nothing could possibly be better for moving swarms of men on foot. Traders and travelers and farmers might use Roman roads, but they were for the legions. Varus’ dream of soldiers marching through Germany along them was Arminius’ nightmare.

“One more step in bringing Roman ways here,” Varus said. Arminius made himself smile and nod. He glanced toward his father. Sigimerus was nodding, too, but no smile lightened his features. Varus, fortunately, didn’t notice.

Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. Rain poured down out of a dark gray sky. The Romans squashing through the mire between Mindenum and the headwaters of the Lupia cursed the gods who oversaw the weather in Germany.

Unlike most of the legionaries, Quinctilius Varus was mounted. That kept him from getting muddy past the knees, the way they did. But he couldn’t have got any wetter in the pools inside a bathhouse. The chilly, drumming, relentless rain stayed in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears.

“A fish could do as well in this as I could!” He had to shout to make himself heard through the downpour.

“That’s a fact, sir.” Vala Numonius shouted, too. “And a fish would be more comfortable in its scales than I am in my cloak.” The wool garment clung to him the way a caul was said to cling to some newborn babes. Varus’ did the same thing. Soaked in rainwater, it was not only clinging but heavy.

The Roman governor’s eyes slid to Aristocles. The slave rode a donkey, so he too was out of the worst of it. But he looked like a drowned mouse. Some of the legionaries had their hair in their eyes. Varus and Aristocles didn’t: the first advantage to balding the governor had discovered. Water dripped off the end of Aristocles’ pointed nose. The pedisequus didn’t say anything, but every line of his body and of his cloak screamed out a reproach.

“One thing, sir,” Lucius Eggius said. “We don’t have to worry about the Germans jumping us in a storm like this.”

“Oh? Why not?” Varus had been worrying about just that.

“Don’t be silly, sir,” Eggius said. Before Varus could decided whether to be affronted, Eggius went on, “The savages would have as much trouble moving as we do.”

“Ah.” That hadn’t occurred to Varus. “Yes, one man’s miseries are every man’s miseries, aren’t they?” In spite of the deluge, he smiled, pleased with himself. “I’ve heard aphorisms I liked less.”

Vala Numonius also smiled. Eggius’ shrug loosed a small freshet from his shoulders. Varus wondered if he knew what an aphorism was. Career soldiers were more cultured than Germans, but sometimes not much more.

That reminded the Roman governor of something. “We might have been able to steer clear of all this.” His horse chose that moment to step into a deep puddle - the poor beast couldn’t see where to put its feet, after all. Varus had to grab its mane like a tyro and hang on for dear life to keep from getting pitched headlong into the slop.

Neither Vala Numonius nor Lucius Eggius laughed at him. It could have happened to them, too, and they both knew it. After Varus was securely seated once more, Numonius asked, “What do you mean, sir?”

“Arminius told me of a route back to the Rhine that never floods,” Varus replied. “If it’s raining when we leave Mindenum next fall, to the crows with me if I don’t think I’ll let him show it to us. I don’t care if it is longer, if it means we don’t have to put up with this again.”

“I didn’t think there were any places in Germany that never flooded,” Eggius said. “Are you sure that blond bastard isn’t hiding something under his cloak . . . sir?”

He tacked on the title of respect too late to do himself any good. Better, in fact, if he’d left it off altogether. The slit-eyed look Quinctilius Varus sent him had nothing to do with the rain. “Why would you think showing us a better route smacks of treachery?” Varus inquired.

“I didn’t say that, sir.” This time, Eggius used the title without hesitation. But it was too late to mollify Quinctilius Varus. “I’d sure want to make sure the route was good before I used it, though.”

“Do you imagine a Roman citizen - and a member of the Equestrian Order - would intentionally mislead his fellows?” Varus asked in tones colder than the rain.

“He may be a Roman citizen, sir, but he’s still a German, too.” Lucius Eggius was stubborn.

So was Varus. “He may still be a German, but he is a Roman citizen. Like you, he’s risked his life for Augustus and for Rome.”

He waited. Eggius didn’t say anything. What could the officer say? If Varus had decided to trust Arminius, nothing he heard was likely to persuade him to do anything else. And he had. And every yard his horse fought to gain made him wish he’ d done it sooner.

XII

“He almost bit, Father! By the gods, he almost did!” Arminius couldn’t hide his own excitement as they made their way north and west, back toward their own country. “He was like a fat trout. He nibbled at the worm, and he never saw the hook.”

“Like a trout, or like a water dragon?” Sigimerus asked. “What would you have done if he’d decided to take your route? What could you have done except let him take it - and eat half a dozen tribes out of house and home along the way? No one in Germany would have loved you after that. And you couldn’t have gathered an army together fast enough to fight him.”

Arminius scowled, not because his father was wrong but because he was right. Rain dripped through the pines. Arminius and Sigimerus both had their cloaks up over their heads. They were both wet even so. The rain also turned the track to mud. They slogged on without complaint - things in Germany had always been like this.

“Next year,” Arminius said. “Next year we can be ready - I’m sure of it. All Varus has to do is take the bait.”

“And then what?” Sigimerus insisted on looking at all the things that could go wrong. “Varus and the Romans see we have an army. So what? They have an army, too. They don’t fight like us, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad at it. If they were, we would have driven them off years before you were born.”

Rain dripping off the end of his nose, Arminius scowled again, for the same reason as before. He knew how good the Romans were. He hadn’t just seen them fight or stood against them - he’d used their system. He not only understood that it worked, he understood how it worked.

In his mind’s eye, he heard Roman trumpets blaring. He saw the swarthy little men moving from marching order to line of battle without wasted motion. He imagined the blizzard of javelins they’d send up, the wall of their big shields, and the way their sharp swords would bite like vipers.

“We have to ruin them before they can deploy.” He’d said that before . His inner picture of the legions getting ready to face a German host only made the words seem more urgent now.