Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

More gutturals from the headman. The interpreter listened, then asked him something. The other German shook his head. He laid a hand over his heart, the way his folk did when they took an oath. “He says he just now remembered he might have a little silver,” the interpreter reported. “He says he wasn’t trying to fool you before or anything. He says it just slipped his mind—Germans don’t use coins as often as Romans do.”

That last bit, from everything Caldus Caelius had seen, was true. The rest? He started laughing again. So did several other legionaries who stood close enough to hear what the interpreter said. A Roman officer heard every kind of excuse under the sun from soldiers who’d done what they shouldn’t have and hadn’t done what they should. This chieftain couldn’t have been a worse liar if he tried.

But that wasn’t the point. Collecting taxes was. “Tell him he’d better come up with those denarii right away. Tell him he’d better have enough to pay what Quinctilius Varus says he owes. And tell him that he’ll end up dead if he tries screwing around with a Roman who’s got a nastier temper than I do, and his wife and daughters will be slaves—if they’re lucky.”

That sounded pretty good in Latin. By the time the interpreter got done with it, it sounded even better in the Germans’ language. The headman went red, then white again. He bellowed something—not at Caldus Caelius, but at his own people.

Somebody came out of the biggest house. The man was skinny, unhappy-looking, and barefoot. He wore a ratty, threadbare cloak. If that didn’t make him a slave, Caelius had never seen one.

The way the chieftain yelled at him was another good marker. The skinny man went into a building next to the house—a barn, Caelius guessed—and came out with a spade. It had a wooden blade, except for an iron strip at the bottom where it bit into the ground. The fellow who was holding it called a question to the headman.

“He wants to know where to dig,” the interpreter supplied.

“Right.” Caldus Caelius nodded. If he were the village chieftain, he wouldn’t have wanted a slave to learn where the coin-hoard was buried, either. The man could dig it up some moonless night and be long gone—and able to buy not only freedom but friends before anybody caught up with him.

Muttering under his breath, the swag-bellied headman lumbered over and stamped his foot like a petulant girl. Dig here. He didn’t say it, but he might as well have.

Rich, dark German dirt flew. They had fine soil here. Caelius didn’t like the weather or the local menfolk, but the soil tempted him to settle in Germany once it turned into a proper province. Marry one of these big blond German girls, raise crops and kids, and pass the farm down to them… You could do worse. Plenty of people did.

Thud! Caelius clearly heard the noise, even from where he stood. The spade had hit something that wasn’t dirt. The slave dug a little more, then picked up a small, stout wooden box. He carried it over to the headman. By the way he handled it, it wasn’t light.

Caldus Caelius looked at—looked through—the heavyset German. “It just slipped your mind that you had this?”

He waited for the interpreter to translate. The chieftain didn’t act well enough to hide the hate on his face, either. He said something. “What difference does it make?” the interpreter said. The chieftain tacked on something else. So did the interpreter: “You have it now.”

“That’s right. I do.” Caelius nodded. “So open it up. Let’s see what all you forgot about. We’ll both be surprised.”

When the interpreter sent him a questioning glance, he nodded. The young German translated. The chieftain glowered some more. Caldus Caelius had enough men at his back not to care.

Inside the box was an oiled-leather sack. Caldus Caelius chuckled softly. The German looked daggers at him. Luckily for the barbarian, Caelius affected not to notice. This wasn’t the first German who’d coughed up his cash after protesting that he didn’t have any. Without a doubt, he wouldn’t be the last. The locals still hadn’t figured out that the Romans had heard all their lies and excuses before.

He supposed they would before long. That would make the tax collectors who followed on the army’s heels have to work harder to pry money out of these people. Caelius wasted no more sympathy on the tax collectors than on the Germans.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see the silver. If you forgot it was there, you won’t miss whatever we take, right?”

His men snickered. The interpreter grinned. Once the Latin was rendered into the Germans’ language, the headman didn’t seem to appreciate Caelius’ wit. The Roman wondered why.

The chieftain had more than enough denarii to pay the village’s tax assessment. Caldus Caelius took only what he’d been told to. He handed the rest back to the barbarian. “These are yours,” he said. “You see? I am not cheating you.”

“No, you are not.” But the German wasn’t agreeing, for he went on, “You are robbing me. Things should have their proper names.”

One of the legionaries hefted his javelin. “Shall we give him what he deserves for his lip, sir?”

“Do I translate that?” the interpreter asked.

By the way the chieftain eyed that javelin, Caelius guessed he had a fair notion of what the soldier said. “Yes, go ahead,” he said, and the young German did. Caelius continued, “Now translate this, too. No, we don’t hurt him, because he paid what he owed and he didn’t try to fight us. Roman subjects pay taxes. That’s all there is to it, and he’d better get used to the idea. We’ll be back to collect next year, too.”

One growled sentence at a time, the interpreter passed the word along to the headman. The older German looked at him. He spat out one word, then scornfully turned his back.

“What’s that about?” Caelius asked.

“He called me a traitor.” The interpreter shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. These people don’t understand that the Roman Empire has better ways of doing things than they ever dreamt of.”

“Too right they don’t,” Caelius said. “Well, that’s what we’re here for: to fix things so they do understand.” And we’ll teach ‘em the lesson if we have to kill every stinking one of them to do it, he thought. But he kept that to himself; some of these Germans might follow more Latin than they let on, and even the interpreter might not fancy it. He finished, “Now that we’ve done the job here, we go on to the next village and do it again.”

“Yes, sir.” The interpreter smiled. He was a pretty good fellow. Caelius trusted him as far as he would have trusted any barbarian—not quite so far as he would have trusted a Roman, in other words.

Beyond the fields these Germans cultivated, beyond the meadows where their animals grazed, stretched more forests and swamps. Caldus Caelius eyed them without enthusiasm. Germany had far too many of both, or so it seemed to him. He wondered that the place had any room for Germans. But it did, for altogether too many of them. How long would it take to drag them into the Empire one thatch-roofed village and steading at a time?

As long as it took, that was all. He raised his voice to a shout that would reach all the legionaries: “Come on, boys! Time to go find the next place!”

If they were eager, they hid it very well. But they followed him. And their rear guard stayed alert. If the Germans here thought about getting their own back, they thought again right afterwards. Caldus Caelius nodded to himself. One place at a time, all right. He marched on.

Silver clinked in front of the camp prefect as he counted the cash Roman soldiers had squeezed from German villages. When Arminius took service with the Romans, he’d been impressed to see that they had officers in charge of paying their soldiers. That had never crossed his mind till then. German warriors lived on loot and on gifts from the war leaders they followed. A niggardly leader had a hard time getting men to fight for him. Standard wages took care of that.