Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

Not today, though. As promised, Aristocles led Segestes and Masua straight to Quinctilius Varus. The slave managed to disappear the moment Segestes took his eye off him. Segestes wished he hadn’t, for one look at Varus’ face told the German he’d done no good coming to Mindenum.

“What can you possibly tell me now that you have not told me time and time again?” the Roman governor demanded, his voice as cold and cutting as sleet.

“I could tell you you would have done better to listen to me before,” Segestes said. “Your Excellency.”

Varus flushed. He understood that what should have been a title of respect became one of reproach. “I do not believe that to be the case,” he snapped.

“If no, the more fool you,” Masua said in his halting Latin.

Varus did pretend he wasn’t there. Speaking only to Segestes, the Roman said, “I am afraid you have wasted your time and are wasting mine.”

“Will you say the same, sir, after I tell you warriors are gathering on the route Arminius wants you to use?” Segestes returned.

“I have had no report of this, not from friendly Germans and not from Romans, either,” Varus said.

“I am not surprised,” Segestes said. “It would be worth most Germans’ lives to inform on your precious Arminius now. I know for a fact it has already been worth some honest Germans’ lives. And as for your legions… Your Excellency, this is not their fatherland. They see what people want them to see. They hear what people want them to hear. Past that…” He shook his head.

“We are not so blind, nor so deaf, as you seem to think.” Varus sounded as haughty as Sigimerus.

“You are not so wise as you seem to think, cither,” Segestes said.

“I shall have to be the judge of that,” Varus said. “I do not believe you wish me ill, Segestes. I would not leave you at liberty if I did. But I do believe you have become altogether unreasonable about anything that has to do with Arminius. I believe you will blacken his name on any pretext or none. And so, as much as I regret to say it, I do not believe… you.”

Segestes stood. Half a heartbeat later, so did Masua. “You may think you regret to say it now,” Segestes told Varus. “The day will come—and I fear it will come soon—when you regret it in good earnest.”

“Soothsaying?” the Roman governor asked sardonically.

“If you please,” Segestes answered. “But a man does not need to read entrails to know a hanging stone will smash whatever lies below it when it falls at last. Good day, your Excellency. May your days be long. They will be longer if you see you cannot trust Arminius, but I cannot make you do that. Only you can lift the veil from your eyes.”

“I do not believe there is any such veil,” Varus said.

“Yes. I know.” Segestes nodded sadly. “A fool never believes he is a fool. A cuckold never believes his wife opens her legs for another man. But whether you believe or not, others do, by the gods.”

“Farewell, Segestes,” Quinctilius Varus said, his tone even more frigid than before.

“Farewell, sir,” Segestes replied. “If we meet again in a year’s time, you may laugh in my face. I will bow my head and suffer it as best I may.”

“I look forward to it,” Varus said.

“Believe it or not, your Excellency, so do I.” Segestes left with the last word. He could have done without it.

Heat came to Germany but seldom. When it did, as on this stifling late-summer day, it came with a thick blanket of humidity such as Mediterranean lands never knew. Sweating, itching, scratching, swearing legionaries tore Mindenum to pieces.

“Gods, I hope we never have to do this shitty job again,” one of them said.

“Sure—and then you wake up,” another Roman said with a scornful laugh. “We build ‘em. We take ‘em down. Then we build ‘em one more time.”

Quinctilius Varus nodded as he watched the legionaries work. That was what they were for, all right. They were beasts of burden, more clever and versatile than mules or oxen, but beasts of burden all the same.

“Well, I hope the stupid fucking governor makes up his stupid fucking mind one of these years,” the first soldier said.

“Sure—and then you wake up,” the other man repeated. This time they both laughed, the way men will when there’s really nothing to laugh about but the only other choice is to go on swearing.

Somebody behind Varus laughed, too. The governor whirled angrily. Aristocles’ face was as innocent as if he’d never heard anything funny in his life. Arminius and Sigimerus also might have been carved from mirthless marble. Varus fumed, his ears burning. Sometimes even a man of exalted rank could look ridiculous in front of his inferiors.

He pulled himself together. “We’ll be ready to march soon,” he told Arminius.

“Yes, sir. So I see,” the German said. “Your men always do everything very smoothly.”

“Roman efficiency,” Varus said, not without pride. “I expect we’ll show you more of it on the march.”

“Oh, so do I,” Arminius replied. “And I thank you for finally taking me up on the route I offered you.”

Tall, wet-looking, anvil-headed clouds drifted across the sky. The sun played hide-and-seek behind them, but the day got no cooler, no less muggy, when it disappeared for a few minutes. Two days earlier, some of those clouds had let loose in a thunderstorm the likes of which Varus had seldom seen. For all he knew, they might do it again any time—when the legions were on the move, for instance.

“If the weather is better—drier—farther north, that’s the way we want to go,” he said.

Arminius nodded. “Oh, yes. It almost always is.” He nudged his father and spoke to him in their guttural tongue.

Thus prompted, Sigimerus also nodded. “Weather better. Ja,” he said in his dreadful Latin. The last word wasn’t really, but it was one of the handful Varus had learned from the Germans’ language.

“You will see the country I spring from.” Arminius was far more fluent—far more civilized, when you got right down to it.

“Oh, joy. One more bloody flea-bitten pesthole in a land packed full of them,” Aristocles said.

For a moment, Varus wondered why Arminius didn’t draw his sword and try to cut the insolent slave in half. Then he realized the pedisequus had spoken with a straight face and mild tones—and, much more to the point, had spoken in Greek. To Varus, with his fancy education and years of service in the East, it was as natural as Latin. To a rude German, though, it would only be noises.

“Now, now,” Varus said, also in Greek. “It’s his, such as it is. Only natural for him to be proud of it.”

“A swallow must be proud of a nest of sticks and mud,” Aristocles retorted. “That doesn’t mean I want to go out of my way to visit.”

Arminius looked from one of them to the other. When neither offered to translate, the German shrugged his broad shoulders. Maybe he wondered if they were talking about him behind his back, so to speak. If he did, he didn’t look angry about it, the way Varus thought a barbarian would be bound to do.

Clang! A legionary threw an iron tripod into a wagon. The Romans would bury more iron, but not where Arminius or any other German could watch them do it. They didn’t want the savages digging up the metal and hammering it into spearheads and sword blades.

Things did go smoothly. And why not? The soldiers tore Mindenum down every year at this time. They’d had plenty of practice by now. Would they still wreck it at the end of summer twenty years from now? Or would they stay here around the year by then, to garrison a peaceful province? If they don’t, Varus thought, I haven’t done my job.