Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

“Not an Achilles when it comes to looks.” Aristocles said that about every German he set eyes on. The northerners’ blunt features didn’t appeal to him. That was why he surprised Varus when he added, “I’ve seen worse, though—I will say that.”

“Don’t tell me he’s gone and turned your head!” the Roman exclaimed with a laugh.

Aristocles tossed his head in an emphatic negative. “Oh, no. Too big and hairy to be really interesting. But… not bad. Better than I expected to find in this gods-forsaken wilderness.”

“The Germans frown on such sports, same as the Gauls do. Better not to let Arminius know,” Varus said.

“Savages,” Aristocles said, sniffing. He smiled crookedly. “I’ll get by, sir. I’m not one who can’t make do with women.”

Like a lot of Roman aristocrats, Varus had a boy now and then for variety’s sake. He strongly preferred the other side of the coin, though. “I rather fancy Arminius myself,” he said. One of Aristocles’ eyebrows leaped toward his hairline; like any sensible slave, he knew his master’s states. Chuckling, Varus went on, “Not that way. But I like him. He puts me in mind of Gaius.”

“You’re joking!” Aristocles blurted. Even a slave could occasionally be guilty of saying the first thing that popped into his head.

A slave who did say the first thing that popped into his head could regret it for a long time afterwards, too. But Quinctilius Varus was not a vicious or vindictive man. He had his vices, but that wasn’t one of them. “I don’t aim to adopt him, for heaven’s sake,” the Roman governor said. “He does remind me of my boy, though, the way one puppy will remind you of another. He’s all big paws and curiosity, trying to see how the world works. He happened to study with centurions, not philosophers, but you could do worse.”

This time, the pedisequus had his wits about him again, and said nothing at all. The slightest twitch at the left corner of his mouth, the tiniest flare of his nostrils, gave some hint of what he thought of the men who were the backbone of the Roman army. Varus missed those. While a slave had to—or had better—pay close attention to his master’s expressions, the converse did not apply.

Varus changed the subject: “Pretty soon, we’ll start sending soldiers out to collect taxes. About time the Germans find out what they need to do to make proper provincials.”

“Oh, they’ll love that, they will.” Irony soured Aristocles’ voice.

His master only shrugged. “If you climb onto a half-broken horse, he’ll do his best to throw you off on your head. But if you don’t break him, you’ll never be able to get up on his back. If we don’t show the Germans that this province belongs to us now and has to follow our rules, then we might as well have stayed on the other side of the Rhine.”

“I wish we would have, sir,” Aristocles said. “Vetera was bad enough, but Mindenum is… worse than bad enough, meaning no offense to our gallant troops and their stalwart officers.” By his tone, Aristocles aimed to affront every military man in the entire Roman Empire.

“Well, we’ll be back in Vetera come fall,” Varus said. “By then, I want the natives to get it through their thick heads that this is our land now, and things will go the way they would anywhere else Rome rules.”

“The sooner you set this place in order, the sooner we can get back to Rome or any other civilized place, the happier I’ll be.” No sarcasm now: the pedisequus spoke with deep and obvious sincerity.

“There are other places I’d rather be, too,” Quinctilius Varus said. “When Augustus summoned me, I thought he’d send me somewhere else. You know that, Aristocles. This was a surprise, and not a nice one. But being here is also a compliment of sorts.”

“One I could do without,” Aristocles muttered.

“I understand that,” Varus told him. “Believe me, I do. If Augustus needs me here, though, how can I refuse him? This is an important assignment, more important than governing Syria was. Syria is a broken horse. As I said, we still have to break Germany. I still have to break Germany.” He thrust out his chin.

“Breaking this country is the best thing anyone could do to it,” the pedisequus said. “If Augustus wanted a horse trainer here, he should have sent a general, not an administrator.”

“Tiberius is stuck in Pannonia. I’m sure he’d be here if not for the uprising,” Varus replied. “His ties to Augustus are tighter than mine, and he’s proved himself a soldier, which I haven’t done yet.”

“Plenty of other sprats in the sea. Plenty of other officers in the army,” Aristocles observed.

“But not plenty Augustus trusts in command of three legions,” Varus said. “Remember all the civil wars when we were young? We’ve had thirty years with none of that. A general who rebelled with three legions at his back could set the Empire aflame again. Augustus gave me this command not least because he knows I’m loyal to him.”

He pulled a denarius from his belt pouch and stared at the profile of his wife’s great-uncle gleaming in silver. What would it be like to have his own face on money so the whole world knew what he looked like? He’d had ‘Varus’ stamped on some of the coins he’d issued to the legionaries here, but that wasn’t the same.

He shook his head. If he challenged Augustus, he would lose. Everyone who challenged Augustus lost. Varus had no stomach for war against his benefactor, anyway. He had little stomach for war against the Germans, either. But he would do what he had to do. He wondered if Arminius would help him. He hoped so. Nothing made subduing a province easier than willing native stooges.

Caldus Caelius led a column of Romans through the German woods. People spoke of the woods as trackless, but they weren’t really. All kinds of narrow tracks ran through them. Deer had made some, aurochs others, men still others. Deciding which kind was which wasn’t always easy—not if you were a Roman.

Orders from Mindenum were to be careful, whatever that meant. Caelius knew what it would have meant in more open country: vanguard, rear guard, and flanking parties out to both sides to make sure nobody could sneak up on the main body of troops. Only one trouble: that kind of due diligence was impossible in this terrain.

Traveling along a path was pretty simple—as long as you marched in single file, or, on what was unquestionably a man-made track, perhaps two abreast. A vanguard too far ahead or a rear guard too far behind could be ambushed and slaughtered before the main force came to its rescue. In this thick forest, flank guards were simply impossible; they hadn’t a prayer of keeping up.

And so Caelius had a vanguard and rear guard of sorts, but not the sorts he would have wanted. Instead of flank guards, he had extra buccinatores. He had to hope blaring trumpets would make up for lack of protection. The hope wasn’t altogether forlorn: other Roman columns were pushing through these woods, too.

“One of these days, we’ll have proper roads here,” Caelius said. His sword was sheathed, but he could grab it in a hurry if he had to.

“Fat lot of good that does us now,” one of the legionaries said.

Several other men laughed. That meant Caelius couldn’t blister the mouthy soldier the way he wanted to. A clown could get away with all kinds of things. Instead of swearing, Caelius imagined a proper Roman road, broad and solid, well paved and well drained, the trees cut back on both sides to make way for it. That would be a demon of a lot better than this narrow, miserable, meandering track.

“If Rome needs money so bad, we’ve got to squeeze it out of places like this, we’re all in big trouble,” the wit went on. He’d got away with one joke, so he thought he could get away with two.