Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

“So your woman’s got a bulging belly, eh?” Quinctilius Varus said after Arminius presented Chariomerus to him and told him the news.

“Yes, sir,” Arminius replied. The Roman had a bulging belly, too, but only because he made a glutton of himself. Arminius went on, “My clansmate tells me she worries about her health. So does the midwife. And so Thusnelda wants to see me. I’d like to see her, too.”

“There is the matter of guiding us along your much-praised route to the Rhine,” Varus said.

“My father will stay behind with you and the legions, sir,” Arminius said. “He told me himself that he knows the way better than I do.” He smiled. “You know what fathers are like.”

That proved a mistake. Mouth twisting, Varus shook his head. “Not of my own experience. My father . . . passed away when I was quite young.” More to himself than to Arminius, he added, “He always clung to his ideals, even in the midst of civil war - and he paid for it.”

“I am sorry, your Excellency. I did not know,” Arminius said. Chariomerus murmured sympathetically.

“Thank you both. You are kind,” Varus said. “You may go, Arminius. If your, uh, Thusnelda has a boy-child, I hope father and son will know each other for many years.”

“You leave me in your debt, sir.” Arminius knew how he intended to repay Varus, too. He eagerly looked forward to it. And yet, in an odd way, he meant what he said. He didn’t hate Varus for anything the Roman had done, but because Varus was a Roman. For a German who wanted to see his land free, that was reason enough and more.

Varus wrote something on a scrap of papyrus. “Here. Give this to the sentries. They will pass you out with no fuss.”

“Thanks again.” Whatever shame Arminius might have felt, he made a point of stifling it. He and Chariomerus bowed their way out of the governor’s presence. Chariomerus started to say something in their own language. Arminius sharply shook his head. To his relief, his comrade took the point and kept quiet. To have some sneaky Roman understand inopportune words now, when things were coming together . . . Arminius shook his head again. If the plans he’d spent so long laying fell apart because of something like that, it would be too much to bear.

Well, it wouldn’t happen. The pass did help him and Chariomerus leave the camp easily. As Varus had promised, the sentries didn’t fuss at all. The two Germans rode away. “Out in the free land again!” Chariomerus exulted.

Arminius didn’t reprove him, not when they were out of earshot - and bowshot - of the legionary encampment. “Soon the whole land will be free again,” Arminius said. “Very soon.”

The middle of Germany. Three legions. No one dared approach the Romans or challenge them. Anyone foolish enough to dare would have died, either quickly and unpleasantly or slowly and unpleasantly, depending on the soldiers’ mood. But having all the legionaries gathered together in one long, sinewy column reminded Lucius Eggius that everything around them was enemy country.

Whenever they passed by a steading or through a village, it seemed almost empty of warriors. Of course, most German steadings and villages seemed almost empty of everybody. The barbarians didn’t want to meet the legionaries and make friends with them. Had an army of Germans come tramping through Italy, Italian peasants wouldn’t have hung around to greet them, either. Peasants and soldiers were oil and water.

Eggius and Quinctilius Varus were oil and water, too. The camp prefect knew it. All the same, he caught up to Varus the morning after Arminius rode out of camp and said, “Talk with you for a little while, your Excellency?”

“You seem to be doing it,” Varus answered coolly.

“Er - right.” Eggius had guessed this wouldn’t go well. Now he saw how right he was. Even so, he plunged on: “I sure hope that Segestes fellow didn’t know what he was talking about when he said the Germans were getting ready to jump us.”

“Oh, of course he didn’t.” Quinctilius Varus went from cool to irritable in less time than it took to tell.

Eggius sighed. “Yes, sir.” You couldn’t come out and tell a governor he had his head up his . . . But, oh, by the gods, how you wished you could! Since Eggius couldn’t, he continued, “We still shouldn’t take any chances we don’t have to. Better to worry too much and not need to than to need to and not worry.”

“I have nothing against the customary precautions. Do we neglect our encampments? Do we forget to post sentries?” Varus said.

“No, sir. But I was just thinking . . . maybe we shouldn’t have come this way at all.” There. Eggius got it out.

And it did no good. The governor stared at him. “Do you want to turn around and go back? For what amounts to no reason at all?”

“Might be safer if we did,” Eggius said.

Varus stared at him as if he were something sticky and stinky on a sandal sole. “Yes, I suppose it might - if you believe Arminius to be a traitor and Segestes an honest man. Do you believe that, Eggius?”

To the crows with you if you do, Eggius. The camp prefect could hear what Varus wasn’t saying as well as what he was. Picking his own words with care, Lucius Eggius replied, “Sir, I don’t like taking chances any which way. If we don’t have to, I don’t think we ought to.”

“Well, I don’t think we are,” Varus said. “And that settles it.”

How right he was. When the governor of a Roman province decided something, the only man who could overrule him was Augustus. And Augustus was in no position to overrule Varus about this, even on the unlikely assumption that he would. Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were stuck with Varus’ decision. Eggius just had to hope the governor was right.

Vala Numonius was waiting to see the governor when Lucius Eggius left Varus’ presence. “Everything seems to be going well enough,” the cavalry commander remarked.

Eggius eyed him with something close to loathing. “Easy for you to say,” he growled. “If things get buggered up, you and your boys can gallop off. The rest of us, we’re just in for it.”

“Do you think we’d do that? Do you?” Vala Numonius sounded deeply affronted. “We’re all in this together, and there’s no reason to worry about any fighting. The Germans are as peaceful as they’ve ever been.”

“Too peaceful,” Eggius said. “His Excellency isn’t worrying enough, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t. I’m sure the governor didn’t, either,” Numonius said pointedly. “Have you been dropping your own worries in his lap?”

If you haven’t. I will. That was what he had to mean. Eggius glared at him, then shrugged. “Say whatever you cursed well please,” he answered. “He won’t hear anything from you that he hasn’t heard from me. Maybe he’ll even listen to you. I can sure hope so.”

Numonius edged past him as if afraid he had something catching. Lucius Eggius knew too well he didn’t. If the truth were contagious, it would have spread more. The cavalry commander was more likely to spread good, old-fashioned slander.

“I hope everything is all right, sir,” Aristocles said as Eggius stormed out of Varus’ tent.

“So do I,” Eggius answered. “I wouldn’t bet more than a copper on it, though.”

Clouds piled up in the northwest, tall and thick and dark. The wind blew them toward the marching Romans. Quinctilius Varus’ nostrils flared. If that wasn’t the wet-dust odor of rain on the way, he’d never smelled it.

Curse it, Arminius had told him rain wasn’t so likely in these parts. Varus looked around before remembering the German was off seeing to Thusnelda. Then Varus looked for Sigimerus. He didn’t see Arminius’ father, either.

He did see Aristocles, who, as usual, rode his donkey instead of a horse. And the Greek slave saw him, too. “Ah, your Excellency - ?” he said, as insolently as a man could use an honorific.

“What is it?” Varus snapped - he could hear the testiness in his own voice.

As he’d known Aristocles would, the pedisequus pointed out the obvious: “I hate to say it, your Excellency, but it looks like rain.”

“If you hate to say it, then keep your miserable mouth shut,” Varus growled.

“I’m sorry, sir.” Aristocles didn’t seem to know whether to sound scared or hurt.

Quinctilius Varus sighed. Owning a man, holding his life in your hands, could make you feel pretty big. It could also make you feel pretty small if you struck at him for something that wasn’t remotely his fault. Sighing again, Varus said, “Nothing you can do about the weather. Nothing anybody can do about it, worse luck.”

“That’s true, sir.” Aristocles was nothing if not relieved. If Varus felt like striking out at him, what could he do about it? Nothing, as he had to know too well.

After looking around again, the Roman governor felt his frown deepen. “Have you seen Sigimerus lately?”

The slave’s neck twisted as he too looked this way and that. “No, sir, I haven’t. He’s got to be somewhere, though.”

“Everybody’s got to be somewhere.” This time, Varus looked up to the heavens. The clouds were darker and closer, the smell of rain more distinct. Unhappily, he clicked his tongue between his teeth. “But where the demon is Sigimerus right now?”

Aristocles made as if to peer inside his belt pouch, which drew a snort from Varus. “I haven’t got him,” the Greek said.

“Well, neither have I.” Varus looked around one more time. No, still no sign of Sigimerus. He called to one of the Roman cavalrymen riding nearby: “Find me Arminius’ father. I need to talk to him.”

“Yes, sir.” The rider sketched a salute. He told off two or three other horsemen of lower rank. They worked their way forward and back through the long column, calling Sigimerus’ name.

“That’ll flush him out.” Aristocles might have been talking about a partridge hiding in the brush - or, given how carnivorous Sigimerus seemed, a sharp-clawed wildcat rather than a helpless, harmless, hapless bird.

Varus heard legionaries shouting “Sigimerus!” louder and louder and more and more insistently. What he didn’t hear was Arminius’ father answering. “Where could he have got to?” Varus said.

“He doesn’t seem to be anywhere close by,” Aristocles replied, which wasn’t what the Roman governor wanted to hear.

A little later, the horseman Varus had first asked to find Sigimerus came back and said the same thing in different words: “Sorry to have to tell you, sir, but curse me if it doesn’t look like the miserable bugger’s gone and given us the slip.”

“But how could he?” Quinctilius Varus’ wave took in the thousands of marching legionaries. “So many of us, only the one of him.”

The cavalryman shrugged stolidly. “Wouldn’t have been that hard - begging your pardon, sir, but it wouldn’t. Suppose he goes off into the woods a couple of hours ago. If anybody asks him, he says he’s easing himself or something like that. But chances are nobody even cares. He doesn’t mean anything to ordinary soldiers except for being one more nuisance they’ve got to keep an eye on.”

“Well, why didn’t they keep enough of an eye on him to notice that he didn’t come out of the woods?” Varus demanded. The cavalryman’s guess struck him as alarmingly probable.

He got another shrug from the fellow. He could figure out what that meant even if the horseman didn’t feel like putting it into words. He himself might care about Sigimerus, if for no other reason than that the German was Arminius’ father. Ordinary Romans, though, wouldn’t be sorry if the barbarian disappeared.

“It wouldn’t look so bad if he’d told you he was going off to keep Arminius company,” Aristocles observed: one more thing Quinctilius Varus didn’t care to hear.

“Shall we beat the bushes for him, sir?” the cavalryman inquired. “The boys’d like that - you bet they would. More fun than hunting a wild boar or an aurochs, even if we couldn’t butcher him or roast him over hot coals once we caught him.” He smiled thinly. “Or maybe we could, though we wouldn’t eat him after he cooked.”

Reluctantly - reluctantly enough to surprise himself - Varus shook his head. “No, better not,” he said. “He may still have left for some innocent reason.”

“Huh,” the horseman said: a syllable redolent of skepticism.

“He may,” Varus insisted. “And Arminius is a true friend. He wouldn’t stay one if we hunted his father with hounds.”

This time, the cavalryman’s shrug suggested that he couldn’t care less. Varus was surprised again - surprised and dismayed - when Aristocles shrugged exactly the same way.

Before the Roman governor could say anything, a drop of water splashed down onto the back of his left hand. He stared at it in amazement. Where could it have come from? Well, you idiot, where else but . . . ? Varus looked up at the dark and gloomy heavens. Another raindrop hit him in the right eye.

“So much for Arminius as weather prophet,” Aristocles said, brushing at his cheek.

“He did warn me that he couldn’t promise.” Varus’ voice sounded hollow, even to himself. Before long, it started to rain in earnest.

“Come on!” Arminius called. “You can do it! We can do it! And we have to do it fast, too!”

German warriors built slabs of turf they’d cut into a concealing protective rampart on a hillside. Arminius also cut and carried and stacked. When he said we, he meant it. He wasn’t asking the men he’d called together to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.

He made a point of being very visible as he labored. The warriors weren’t from his small sworn band, or his father’s larger one. Most of them weren’t even Cherusci. They would have been battling amongst themselves if he hadn’t persuaded them to try to deal with the Romans first. They might yet, and he knew it. He had to keep them loyal to him till the legions arrived. After that . . .

After that, he would either be the biggest hero Germany had ever known - or he’d be dead. Whichever way things turned out, he wouldn’t have to worry about fractious followers after the fight.

“Arminius!” somebody called.

He threw his chunk of turf into place and waved a grimy hand. “Here I am!”

“They’re coming!” the German said. “They’re not far! And - “

Arminius didn’t let him go on. He yelled, “They’re coming!” himself. His voice reached all the working warriors. Some chieftains had that knack. Most Roman officers did. The Romans could teach a man how to make his voice bigger. Arminius had learned the trick from them.

How the Germans cheered! Suddenly, this seemed real to them. They could do it. They would do it. They were less steady than Roman legionaries, less steady even than Roman auxiliaries. But they had more fire. With the goal plainly there in front of them, they would work like men possessed. For how long? Arminius wondered. For once, the question answered itself. For long enough.

The messenger came up to him. “There’s something more,” the man said, in tones not meant for the rest of the men.