Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

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?”