Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

At last, the German asked, “How much you make us pay?”

Now they were at the stage of doing business. Caelius tried to hide his relief; he didn’t want the barbarian to think he was gloating—even if he was. Sounding as matter-of-fact as he could, he answered, “For a village of this size, two cows or eight sheep—or eight denarii, if you’ve got em.

“No denarii,” the German said, as if the idea was ridiculous. In his mind, it probably was. He went on, “We give you, you take, you away go, you us alone leave?”

“That’s the idea,” Caldus Caelius agreed. He didn’t say the Romans would be back to collect the tax next year, too, and the year after that, and the year after that. One thing at a time. And, with any luck at all, he wouldn’t be the one who came back to this village.

More back-and-forth in the Germans’ language. The barbarians didn’t like it. Well, who in his right mind did like paying taxes? You did it, and you thanked your gods you didn’t have to cough up more.

“We give you eight sheep, then,” said the man with the mustache. “You take them and you go. What is your name?”

“I’m Caldus Caelius,” Caelius answered. “What’s yours, friend, and why do you want to know?”

“Caldus Caelius.” The German said it two or three times, tasting it, fixing it in his memory. “Well, Caldus Caelius, I myself call Ingaevonus. Maybe we meet again, the two of us. We see who then remembers.”

“Anywhere you please, Ingaevonus.” Caelius knew he made a mess of the big man’s name, but he didn’t care. “Any time you please. With your friends or without them. With mine or without them, too.”

Ingaevonus looked at him in surprise. “It could be, after your own fashion, you have the makings of a man.” Before Caelius could even get mad at him for doubting it, the German turned away and started yelling in his own language. A couple of pimple-faced brats yelled back at him. He shouted them down. Caelius didn’t know what he said, but it sounded like a storm roaring through bare-branched winter trees.

The older fellow behind Ingaevonus put in his copper’s worth, too. The young punks stopped arguing. They trotted off, rounded up the sheep, and brought them back to Caldus Caelius. “Here. You take,” one of them said in fragmentary Latin.

“Thanks,” Caelius answered dryly. The kid, by the look on his face, wanted the Roman’s liver the way the vulture wanted Prometheus’. He probably hated all Romans on general principles.

Hate them or not, though, he’d picked up some of their language. Just about all the Gauls spoke some Latin these days, even if they still used their own tongue when they talked among themselves. Old-timers in the legions said a lot fewer people on the west side of the Rhine had known Latin when they were first stationed there. It would probably work the same way in Germany over the next thirty years.

That wasn’t Caldus Caelius’ worry. “You have paid the tax for this village, Ingaevonus,” he said in loud, formal tones. To his own men, he added, “Now we take the tax back to Mindenum.”

They would look like a pack of fools doing it, too: all these legionaries escorting eight skinny sheep. But overwhelming force had its advantages. The Germans weren’t going to try to take back their miserable beasts.

“You know what’d be funny?” a soldier said as they headed off toward their camp.

“What’s that, Septimus?” Caelius asked.

“If another bunch of our guys hit that village by mistake and try to squeeze eight more sheep out of those natives. You think that big fellow with the fur on his lip wouldn’t go up like Mount Etna?”

Caldus Caelius thought about it. Then he chuckled. “Crucify me if he wouldn’t.”

Laughing and joking, the Romans trudged back to Mindenum.

Arminius scowled in black fury as Roman soldiers led a horse and two sheep away from his father’s steading. Sigimerus and the other men there were also angry, but there were too many legionaries to fight. Trying would have meant throwing German lives on the dungheap.

“This is why the Pannonians rose up against Rome, Father,” Arminius said, even before the last legionary went off into the woods.

“Yes, I understand that,” Sigimerus said. “I always understood it here.” He tapped the side of his head with his left forefinger, then added, “Now I understand it here, too.” He cupped his testicles with his right hand.

“Well, then?” Arminius exclaimed. The looks on the faces of the other men at the steading were bad enough. The expressions his mother and Thusnelda and the other women wore seemed ten times worse. Their scorn burned like the mix of oil and brimstone and pitch Roman armies used to fire forts that held out against them. If men couldn’t protect their chattels, could thev protect their women? If they couldn’t protect their women, did they really have any balls?

But his father asked, “And how are the Pannonians doing in this war of theirs?”

Automatically, Arminius answered with the truth: “They’re losing. It will all be over in a year or two.”

“And you think we would do better because… ?” Sigimerus let the question hang in the air. By the way he asked it, he didn’t think his son had any good reply.

“Because the Romans had plenty of time to rope down the land before the people who live there rebelled,” Arminius said. “There were already Roman towns in Pannonia, towns full of retired Roman soldiers and their families. Roman traders were everywhere, too. The colonists helped the legions, and the traders heard about the rebels’ moves even before they made them. If we give Rome the same chance, she’ll rope us down the same way. Then we’ll lose when we do try to fight.”

He watched Sigimerus gnaw on his lower lip. His father’s unhappy gaze traveled to the women again, and grew more unhappy still. “If we rise and we lose, we’re worse off than if we hadn’t risen at all. It will spoil our strength for years—maybe forever.”

“If we don’t rise, we become the Romans’ slaves,” Arminius said. “By the gods, if we don’t rise we deserve to become the Romans’ slaves! We deserve to pay taxes every year.”

That made Sigimerus flinch. Arminius had thought it would. “Taxes!” his father spat, using the Latin word as Arminius had. “This is nothing but a fancy Roman name for stealing. They haven’t had the nerve to try collecting them before. And what did that fellow mean when he said they wouldn’t take animals next year? Was he talking about barley, or did he mean they would grab a slave—or maybe one of our own folk?”

“Neither one, I think,” Arminius said. “He meant we would have to pay in denarii—in silver.”

“That’s even worse!” Sigimerus said. He was a chief—he had silver, and even gold. But the Germans got their coins in trade from the Romans. And now the legionaries would expect people to give them back?

“You see what I mean, then,” Arminius said.

“But you’ve fought for them. Flavus is still fighting for them.” Sigimerus’ mouth twisted—all of a sudden, he didn’t like reminding himself of that at all.

Arminius grimaced, too. “My brother is like Segestes—the Romans have seduced them both.” He was careful to keep his voice down so Thusnelda wouldn’t hear him. He didn’t run down her father when she was in earshot: he saw no point in stirring up trouble when he didn’t have to. But when he did…

“I wasn’t finished,” Sigimerus said. “You and your brother have fought for them. I’ve fought against them. Call them as many names as you please, but they make deadly foes. If we rise—even now, before the land is roped down, as you say—we are too likely to lose. And to lose would be our great misfortune.”