Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

IV

When Lucius Eggius was in Mindenum, he drank more beer than wine. The locals brewed beer, so it was cheap. Every amphora of wine came cross-country from Vetera. Sutlers made you pay through the nose. Varus could afford fancy vintages whenever he pleased, maybe. As a prefect, Eggius was a long way from poor. But he wasn’t made of money like a provincial governor, either.

“You know what else?” he said after a blond German barmaid brought him a fresh mug. “Once you get used to it, this horse piss isn’t so bad.”

“It isn’t so good, either,” another Roman said. “And here’s the proof - even the cursed Germans buy wine when they can afford to.”

“Wine’s in fashion, that’s why,” Eggius said. “Same way as every Roman who thinks he’s anybody has to learn Greek so everybody else can see how clever he is, that’s how the Germans drink wine. It lets ‘em think they’re as good as we are, so they do it.”

“It must get ‘em mighty drunk, too, if they’re dumb enough to think like that,” the other officer came back, and got a laugh from the soldiers who filled the drink shop.

“Oh, come on. Give me a break. They do like to ape us. Everybody knows that,” Lucius Eggius said. “Sometimes it even comes in handy, like when they go to Varus on account of their woman-stealing instead of starting their own private war. We’d just get sucked in if they did.”

“We’re liable to get sucked in any which way,” said a young soldier named Caldus Caelius. “Her father’s a big shot, and so is the guy she was promised to, and the guy who ran off with her, too.”

“It’s like something out of Homer,” Vala Numonius said. Had Eggius seen him in the tavern, he might not have made his crack about upper-crust Romans learning Greek. The cavalry commander was a Roman like that. He showed he knew the Iliad, continuing, “What turned the Greeks against Troy? Paris running off with Helen, that’s what. And what made Achilles angry? Agamemnon keeping Briseis when he had no right to her.”

“And they all fought a bloody big war on account of it.” Eggius knew that much, anyhow. Who didn’t? “We don’t want ‘em doing that here.”

“Me, I wouldn’t mind if they did. The more they kill each other off, the better, far as I’m concerned,” Caldus Caelius said. “I wished they’d all do each other in.” He eyed the statuesque barmaid and appeared to have second thoughts. “Well, the men, anyway.”

“There you go, son,” Eggius said. “Think with your crotch and you’ll always know where you stand.” Everybody groaned. Someone threw a barley roll at him. Showing a soldier’s quick reflexes, he caught it out of the air and ate it. He would have liked to dip it in olive oil, but not much of that made it to Mindenum, either. The Germans used butter instead. Eggius might have acquired a taste for beer, but he drew the line at butter.

“The father is a Roman citizen. So is the fellow who ran away with the girl,” Vala Numonius said.

“An upstanding Roman citizen,” another officer put in, and drew more groans.

Numonius ignored him, proceeding down his own track: “So it must be proper for Quinctilius Varus to sort out the rights and wrongs, whatever they happen to be.”

He’d come to Germany with Varus. He was going to assume the man from whom he’d got the command was right no matter what. That was how the world worked. Eggius understood such things perfectly well. Who didn’t, who hadn’t been born yesterday?

Eggius could still get in a jab or two: “So what will he do, then? Tell them to cut the wench in half, so they both get a share?”

“That’s what the Jews did once upon a time, only with a baby,” Vala Numonius said. “Lots of those crazy Jews in Syria.”

He’d been with Varus before, then. Lucius Eggius had figured as much. “Jews and Germans. Two sets of crazy barbarians. They deserve each other,” he said.

“No doubt,” Numonius said. “They aren’t just crazy, either. They’re two of the stubbornest sets of barbarians anybody ever saw, too.” He sighed. “Furies take me if I know how we’ll ever turn either lot into proper Romans, but I suppose we’ve got to try.”

“Sure.” Eggius finished his latest mug of beer. He looked around for the barmaid. There she was, trying to talk to Caldus Caelius. Except for what had to do with her trade, she knew next to no Latin. Caelius spoke none of her tongue, either. Eggius didn’t know whether the barmaid would ever make a proper Roman, but Caldus Caelius, with or without the Germans’ language, was doing his best to turn her into an improper one.

When he reached under her shift, she poured a mug of beer over his head. He swore, spluttering like a seal. He started to get angry, but the rest of the Romans laughed at him. If they all thought it was funny, he couldn’t very well slap the barmaid around.

Trying might not have been such a good idea anyhow. She was an inch taller than Caelius, and almost as wide through the shoulders. If she had a knife, she’d be deadly dangerous. And, as Eggius knew all too well, Germans always had knives, or a way to get hold of them.

Sighing, he waved to the barmaid himself. She came over and refilled his mug. He didn’t try to feel her up. She nodded, acknowledging that he didn’t. In Germany, winning a nod like that came close to a triumph. Lucius Eggius sighed again, and proceeded to get very drunk.

Arminius ground his teeth when he got a good look at Mindenum. It wasn’t that the legionary camp didn’t look familiar. It did; he’d seen plenty just like it when he campaigned in Pannonia. This one was bigger, because it held more men. Otherwise, it was as much like any of the others as two grains of barley.

No: what infuriated him was that this enormous encampment sat on German soil. The Romans had built it as if they had every right to do so. They’d thought the same thing in Pannonia. The locals there were trying to throw them out, but Arminius didn’t think they’d be able to do it. The Romans had already got too well established.

And if they got well established here, the Germans would have a demon of a time throwing them out, too. Arminius scowled. He was cursed if he’d let some slab-faced Roman seal-stamper tell him and his folk what to do. He was cursed if he’d let the Romans crucify his kinsmen who presumed to disobey, too.

Careful, he told himself. You can’t show what you think. If you do, you won’t get free of this place. Dissembling didn’t come naturally to Germans. His folk were more likely to trumpet what they aimed to do than to hide it. But the Romans themselves had taught him that lying had its uses. He needed to show this Quinctilius Varus what a good student he made.

He urged his mount forward. It let out a manlike sigh. It was a small horse, and he was a large man. Carrying his weight couldn’t have been easy. Well, carrying Rome’s oppressive weight wouldn’t be easy for Germany, either.

He rode down toward the porta praetoria, the encampment’s northern gate. Varus’ tent would lie closer to that one than to any of the others. Supply wagons came in from the west. The Romans would have brought their goods as far up the Lupia as they could: easier and cheaper to move anything massive by water than by land. But Mindenum lay east of the Lupia’s headwaters, right in the heart of Germany.

If I were at war with the Romans now, I could cut off their supplies as easily as I snap my fingers, Arminius thought. How much good would that do him, though? The legionaries would fight their way back toward the Rhine, plundering as they went. The forts along the Lupia and the ships that sailed it could help them, too. They had a formidable force here - people said three legions, and the camp looked big enough to hold them. Cutting their supply line would infuriate them, but probably wouldn’t destroy them: the worst of both worlds.

“Halt! Who comes?” a sentry called, first in Latin and then, with a horrible accent, in the Germans’ speech. The Romans were alert. Well, in this country they had to be, or they’d start talking out of new mouths cut in their throats. They made good soldiers. They wouldn’t have been so dangerous if they didn’t.

Arminius reined in. “I am Arminius, Sigimerus’ son,” he answered in army Latin. “Not only am I a Roman citizen - I am also a member of the Equestrian Order. I have come in answer to a summons from Publius Quinctilius Varus, the governor of Germany.” The chief thief among all you thieves, was how he translated that in his own mind.

A minute’s worth of muffled talk followed. Whatever the sentries had expected, that wasn’t it. Arminius advanced no farther. Roman citizen or not, he would have been asking for trouble if he had. He knew how sentries’ minds worked. They were like dogs who carried spears. They had to decide for themselves whether he’d thrown them meat.

When one of them showed himself, Arminius knew he’d won. “You are expected, son of Sigimerus,” the man said. Somebody might have expected him, but these fellows hadn’t - not right away, anyhow. The sentry went on, “One of us will escort you to the governor’s quarters. Come ahead.”

“I thank you.” Arminius urged the horse toward the entranceway.

Inside the fortified encampment, Roman soldiers went about their business. They seemed as much at home as they would have inside the Empire. As far as they were concerned, they were inside the Empire - they brought it with them wherever they went. Arminius’ hands gripped the reins till his knuckles whitened. The gall they had! The arrogance!

A few Germans fetched and carried for the soldiers. Slaves? Servants? Hired men? It hardly mattered. They were traitors to their folk.

A pretty woman stepped out of an officer’s tent. Her fair hair blew in the breeze. When she saw Arminius, she squeaked and drew back in a hurry. She wasn’t quite dead to shame, then. She didn’t want a fellow German to know she was giving herself to an invader.

The legionary leading Arminius was blind to the byplay. “Here y’are,” he said. “You can tie your nag up in front of his tent.” The Roman also used army Latin. Equus was the formal word for horse. He said caballus instead. Arminius would have, too. And a German pony was a nag by Roman standards.

Going into the tent didn’t mean Arminius got to see Quinctilius Varus right away. He hadn’t thought it would. The Roman governor might be busy with someone else. Even if he wasn’t, he would make Arminius wait anyhow, to impress on the German his own importance. The tent was big enough to be divided into several rooms by cloth partitions. The man perched scribbling on a stool near the entry flap had to be a secretary, not Varus himself.

Because he was a prominent man’s secretary, he reflected his master’s glory. “And you are - ?” he asked, though he had to know. By his tone, he seemed to expect the answer, Nothing but a sheep turd.

Arminius might have tried to kill a German who sneered like that. But he knew how to play Roman games, too. “Arminius son of Sigimerus, a Roman citizen and a member of the Equestrian Order,” he replied, as he had to the sentries. “Who are you?”

“Aristocles, pedisequus to the governor.” The secretary sounded prouder of being a slave than Arminius did of being his father’s son. No German, no matter how debased, would have done that. Arminius wouldn’t have known what to make of it if he hadn’t seen it before among Roman slaves. The pedisequus added, “The governor will see you soon.”

“Good. Thank you.” Arminius swallowed his anger. You had to when you dealt with these folk. If you didn’t, you threw the game away before you even started playing.

Aristocles went back to his scribbles. Arminius knew what writing was for, though he didn’t have his letters. He also knew Aristocles was subtly insulting him by working while he was there. And he had to keep standing while the slave sat. That was an insult, too.

But then, as if by magic, another slave appeared with wine and bread and a bowl of olive oil for dipping. Arminius liked butter better. He didn’t say so - to the Romans, eating butter branded any man a savage. He and plenty of other German auxiliaries had heard the chaffing in Pannonia.

Maybe this Aristocles was waiting for him to complain. The skinny little man would glance at him sidelong every so often. Arminius ate and drank with the best Roman manners he had. Maybe they weren’t perfect by the slave’s standards, but they proved good enough.

Voices rose and fell in one of those back rooms. One of them had to belong to Varus. Arminius listened while pretending he was doing nothing of the kind. A German who’d never had anything to do with Romans would have cupped a hand behind his ear to hear better. So would a lot of legionaries. But Roman chieftains played the game by different rules. Having claimed the status of a Roman chieftain himself, Arminius had to show he knew those rules.

The Romans were talking about keeping Mindenum supplied. They didn’t seem to see any problems. No, that wasn’t necessarily so: they didn’t want Arminius to hear about any problems they saw. They were bound to know he was waiting out here. They were bound to know he was listening to them, too, whether he showed it or not. He hid his curiosity. They hid the truth. Romans used silence and misdirection far more than Germans did.

After a while, the voice Arminius guessed to be Varus’ said, “Well, that should about cover it, eh, Numonius?”

“Yes, sir,” the other voice replied. “I’ll add to the patrols. Nobody will get away with anything - I promise you that.”

“I wasn’t worried - I know how you take care of things,” the first voice said. “Now I’ve got to talk with that fellow who ran off with the girl.” The voice’s owner sighed, as if Arminius wasn’t worth bothering with.

“I’m sure you’ll set things straight, sir,” Numonius said. Arminius fought not to gag. Roman underlings flattered those who ranked above them in ways the Germans found disgusting. So much of what the Romans spewed forth was obvious nonsense. If their superiors believed it, they had to be fools.

But fools couldn’t have conquered so much of the world. Fools couldn’t have built up the army in which Arminius had served, the army that held this fortified encampment deep inside Germany. Which argued that high-ranking men couldn’t truly believe all the flattery they got. Why insist on it, then?

The only answer he could find was that Romans didn’t think they were great unless others acclaimed them. A German knew what he was worth all by himself. A Roman needed somebody else to tell him what a splendid fellow he was. Then he would nod and smile - modestly, of course - and say, “Well, yes, so I am. How good of you to notice.”

Numonius came out. He was short and skinny and bowlegged: he looked like a cavalry officer, in other words. The nod he gave Arminius was somewhere between matter-of-fact and friendly. “The governor told me he would see you in a little while,” he said.