Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

Behind the rampart they’d built, the German warriors seethed like boiling soup. They jumped up and down, nerving themselves for the fight ahead. They brandished their spears. They brandished them, yes, but nobody threw one. They all understood what the plan was. And if that wasn’t a gods-given miracle, Arminius didn’t know what would be.

His own right hand clutched a spearshaft tight enough to whiten his knuckles. He was ready himself, ready and then some. But he too needed to wait. This was the one chance he’d have. He had to remember that. If he moved too soon, if the Romans got a chance to recoil and to fight on ground that gave them any kind of chance… In that case, who could say when his folk would be able to try again with the odds on their side? Who could say if they ever would?

More horsemen rode past, and more still. The Romans were going through the motions of protecting their van, but their leaders didn’t really believe trouble was anywhere close. That attitude rubbed off on the men. They were laughing and joking and grumbling about the weather and bragging of what they’d do to the whores once they got back to Vetera. They weren’t paying so much attention to what lay around them as they might have.

The rain did make it harder for them. On Arminius’ side of the barricade rose a growing hum and murmur of excitement. He’d charged every leader here and in the woods off to the right—which held even more warriors—with keeping his men quiet. The chieftains were doing what they could, but it wasn’t enough. Arminius fidgeted like a man with the shits. Killing wasn’t near enough for the loudmouthed fool who betrayed his comrades because he couldn’t shut up.

But the Romans never twigged. The drumming rainfall muffled the noise from the German host. Truly the gods favor us, Arminius thought. When we conquer, we have to give them rich offerings indeed.

He peered out again. The last Roman cavalrymen were going by. There would be a little gap, and then… Oh, and then!

“When?” someone beside him asked. For a wonder, the other German didn’t look out to see for himself. It wasn’t Roman discipline—it wasn’t anything close to Roman discipline—but it was more than Arminius could reliably expect from a man of his own blood.

“Soon,” he answered. “Very soon.” Here came the foot sloggers. Arminius waved. The chieftains were supposed to be waiting for that signal. They were supposed to ready the fighters who’d accompanied them and to pass it on to the men in the woods. Had Arminius been leading legionaries or auxiliaries, he would have been confident that what was supposed to happen really would. With his own folk, he could only hope.

Very soon indeed. He could see the Roman foot soldiers’ faces through the rain. They looked less lighthearted than the riders. And well they might—they were doing the work themselves, not letting their mounts carry them along.

As soon as the first rank passed that bush… Arminius had promised himself that as soon as he came back from his long stretch lulling the Roman, lulling Quinctilius Varus in particular.

Idly, he wondered how things would have gone had Varus not had a son about his age. He shrugged. I would have found some other way to do what wanted doing, he told himself. Was it true? He thought it was, which was all that really mattered.

On came the legionaries. Closer… Closer… The nearest man in the lead rank had a long chin and a broken nose. Arminius’ right arm went back on its own, as if freed at last from some unjust imprisonment.

“Cast!” he roared. His arm shot forward. Like an eagle, like a god’s thunderbolt, his spear flew free.

Caldus Caelius kept staring at the little rise off to the left of the track. It just didn’t look the way it should have. He’d tried getting some of the Romans near him to pay more attention to him. He hadn’t had much luck. They didn’t want to think about funny-looking landscape. All they wanted to do was get through this gods-despised muddy stretch of ground and make tracks for the Rhine. Since that was all he really wanted, too, how could he blame them?

When you got right down to it, he couldn’t.

Somebody shouted something. It didn’t sound like Latin. Caelius’ head snapped to the left, toward that hillock. But the cry sounded closer than the reverse slope should have been.

He wasn’t the only one who heard it. “What the demon?” another Roman said, his hand dropping to the hilt of his gladius.

Something sliced through the air. No—several somethings. No again—a swarm of somethings. For an instant, Caelius thought the cry had flushed a flock of birds, or perhaps even came from the throat of one of them. Only for an instant. Then, suddenly, horribly, he knew exactly what those somethings were, and he knew he and all the Romans with him had been betrayed.

The spears reached the top of their arcs. Some of them clattered together in the air. A few, knocked spinning, fell short. But most of them crashed down on the head of the Roman column.

Like his comrades, Caldus Caelius marched with his scutum slung over his back. The big, heavy shield would have been impossibly awkward on his arm. It was for battle, not travel. And so the shields did no good as the spears struck home.

One of the spears came down not half a cubit in front of Caldus Caelius’ foot and stood thrilling in the mud. Another pierced the thigh of the legionary marching to his left. The man stared at the shaft and the spurting blood for a couple of heartbeats, more astonished than in pain. Then reality caught up with amazement. He shrieked, clutched at the spear and at his leg, and crumpled.

A soldier two men to Caldus Caelius’ right took a spear through the throat. He made horrible gobbling noises, gore pouring from his mouth in place of words. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he too slumped to the muck of the track the Romans were following. In a sense, he was lucky: he didn’t suffer long before oblivion seized him. There were plenty of worse ways to go.

Caelius wished he hadn’t had that thought. How many worse ways would he see before this day died? And what sort of end will I find for myself? he wondered fearfully.

He turned to find out how the rest of the soldiers were faring. The answer was simple: worse than he could have imagined in his most dreadful nightmare. That enormous volley of spears had wrecked the head of the column. Dozens—no, more likely hundreds; maybe even thousands—of legionaries were down, some mercifully dead, more wounded and thrashing and screaming their torment and terror up to the wet, uncaring sky. The agonized din made him want to stuff his fingers in his ears.

More cries came from the Romans’ left. Those weren’t wails of pain but fierce, triumphant bellows. The Germans realized what they’d done with their shattering volley. Well, they could hardly not realize it, could they? They might be barbarians, but they weren’t stupid barbarians. They’d just proved that, by the gods!

They proved it again a moment later. They’d built ways to get up and over the curving rampart that concealed them. They dropped down on the near side and loped toward the legionaries. And they rushed out of the dark woods next to the rampart. Jove’s thunderbolt could not have struck the Romans a harder blow than those deadly spears.

“Fight!” Caldus Caelius yelled, shrugging out of his pack and drawing his sword. “We’ve got to fight them, or they’ll slaughter us like sheep! Deploy! Form line of battle!”

He wasn’t the only legionary shouting orders like that through the wounded soldiers’ howls and screams. Here and there, Romans did their best to obey. But the presence of their injured comrades not only demoralized them but also hampered their efforts to form up.