Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair. It was silver, but his hairline hadn’t retreated by even a digit’s breadth. Add that to a chin like a boulder, and he made an impressive-looking man. “An hour and a half won’t finish the job. You’re right about that, gods know.”

“A year and a half isn’t likely to finish the job, either,” Eggius said. “I tried to tell ‘em so, but did they want to listen?” He laughed bitterly. “I mean, what the demon do I know? All I am is the bastard on the spot. That counts for nothing. They’ve got orders from Augustus. That counts for everything.”

“How come Augustus can’t see it’s not as easy as he thinks?” Calvisius grumbled. “He’s a smart guy, right?”

“He is a smart guy,” Lucius Eggius said. “But even a smart guy can be dumb about places he’s never seen. Augustus never came up here. All he knows is, Germany’s not a proper province yet. He’s mad about it, too. How can you blame him, if you look at things from down in Rome?”

“Yeah, well…” Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair again. “If you look at things from down in Rome, you don’t know anything about the Germans.”

All the Roman officers nodded. Somebody said, “We’re up here, and I don’t think we know anything much about the Germans.” The veterans nodded again.

“They don’t want to turn into a province. It’s about that simple,” Eggius said. He shoved his cup over to the tapman, who poured it full. Fancy aristocrats watered their wine like Greeks or children. He drank his neat. So did his friends. What point to drinking if you didn’t feel it?

“Gaul’s didn’t want to turn into a province, either. Caesar walloped the snot out of them,” Calvisius said. “Now we’re here, and they don’t mind. Not like that on the other side of the Rhine.”

Nobody told him he was wrong. Lucius Eggius knew too well that he was right. Cross the Rhine, and you crossed into a different world. Even the trees and the rivers on the east side seemed to hate Romans. As for the people… “Well,” Eggius said dryly, “it’s not like they don’t give us plenty of practice over there.”

He got a laugh. How many battles had Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX fought on the wrong side of the river? On the far side of the river, Eggius corrected himself. If Augustus said they were going to bring it into the Empire, the land over there wasn’t on the wrong side at all.

Assuming they could do what Augustus said, of course. Yeah, Eggius thought. Assuming.

A centurion from Legion XIX said, “Some of the Germans are good guys. Some of them get along with us all right.”

“Sure.” Eggius nodded. He could feel the wine, all right, but it hadn’t made him stupid yet. He didn’t think it had, anyhow. He knew he wasn’t stumbling over his own tongue. That was good. He took another pull at his cup and went on, “Answer me this, though. How many of those Germans who’re good guys, those Germans who get along with us all right, would you trust at your back when you’ve got other Germans—Germans you know are enemies—trying to do you in from the front?”

A considerable silence followed. Lucius Eggius considered it. None of his considerations made him very happy. The centurion from Legion XIX didn’t look very happy, either. He got his mug refilled, tilted his head back, and took a big swig: Eggius watched his prominent larynx bob up and down as he swallowed. At last, he said, “Well, there are a few.”

Most of the Romans who heard that nodded. Lucius Eggius did himself. “Yeah, there are,” he agreed. “But we’ve been trying to turn that miserable mess of trees and swamps and fogs and frogs into a province for a demon of a long time now. If we were going anywhere with it, don’t you figure there’d be more than a few Germans you could count on when your back was turned?”

The centurion didn’t reply to that. Nobody else did, either, not right away. Then Marcus Calvisius said, “Well, Eggius, there is one other way to deal with that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lucius Eggius said. “Like what?”

“Kill all the barbarians we can’t trust and make a province with whoever’s left. Why do you think XVII, XVIII, and XIX are here?”

Eggius did some more considering. When he was done, he let out a grunt. “You’ve got something there,” he admitted. “I do wish we still had Tiberius in command, though. He’s a sour bastard, sure, but nobody ever said he doesn’t know what he’s doing. This Varus… Well, who can tell? Gods rot the stinking Pannonian rebels, anyway.” He set about the business of getting seriously drunk.

“Amo. Amas. Amat,” Segestes muttered. “Amamum. Amatis. Amant.”

He was currying a horse. The beast snorted, perhaps at the unfamiliar sounds. Segestes went right on conjugating the Latin verb to love. Then he muttered under his breath in his native tongue. Plenty of Germans would have said—plenty of Germans did say—he was currying favor with the Romans, too.

He didn’t see it that way. If he had seen it that way, he wouldn’t have done it. How many folk had gone up against Rome? Lots. How many had lost? All of them—you could look west across the Rhine or southeast across the Danube to see the latest examples. Oh, the Pannonians were still kicking and bellowing, like a bull before it went all the way into the stall. That wouldn’t last much longer, though. The Romans were tough, and they had their whole vast empire to draw upon.

He ran his hand over the horse’s flank and nodded to himself. That was better. Like most horses in Germany, his was a small, shaggy, rough-coated beast. If you didn’t go over it with a curry comb pretty often, it would be all over tangles.

The horse made a snuffling, expectant noise. He laughed and gave it a carrot. It crunched up the treat. Then it nuzzled his hand, hoping for another one.

He laughed. “You’re no horse. You’re a pig with a mane and a hairy tail.” He patted the horse and fed it another carrot. When it tried for a third, he shook his head and stepped out of the stall.

As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Thusnelda was out there playing with a puppy. That would have been bad enough any time. Spoiling a horse was one thing, but Segestes wanted his dogs mean. Why have them, if not toward the steading? With things between him and Thusnelda as prickly as they were…

He was more inclined to spoil his horse than his daughter. He didn’t see it that way, of course. Fathers never do.

Thusnelda had been laughing as she tickled the pup’s stomach. When she saw Segestes, her face closed like a clenching fist. She straightened up and turned her back on him.

“If a man used me like that, I would kill him,” Segestes remarked.

His daughter spun toward him, but not out of respect. “And you don’t think you’re killing me?” she retorted.

“What are you talking about?” For a moment, Segestes was honestly confused. Then he wasn’t, but wished he still were. “There’s nothing wrong with Tudrus,” he growled. They had this argument at least once a day. He was sick of it, even if Thusnelda didn’t seem to be. Why hadn’t he set an earlier date for the wedding? Then she’d be out of his hair, and Tudrus would have to worry about her.

Something had changed, though. That wasn’t just fury in her gray eyes. It was something very much like triumph. “Arminius is back. He’s out of the fight in Pannonia, and he’s hale.” She spat the words in his face.

He already knew that—he’d heard a couple of days earlier. He hadn’t said a word. But bad news always got where you didn’t want it to. He might have known it would here. “How did you find out?” he asked wearily.