Harry Turtledove - Give Me Back My Legions!

But when every breath was danger, the woods didn’t seem to matter so much. And, if the hunted couldn’t see far, neither could the hunters. Vala Numonius slid off his horse and led it away from the track. Then he tied it to a sapling and went back and covered its tracks, and his, as best he could. He didn’t know it his best would prove good enough, but you had to try.

Half a bowshot away from the path, he gnawed on the barley bread. It was dense and chewy. Bread made from wheat flour would have risen better. It would have tasted better, too. But it wouldn’t have packed so much nourishment into such a small space. For soldiers who had to carry their own rations, that mattered more.

He gave the horse a couple of bites of bread, too. That was all he had for the animal. A few ferns and weeds grew in the gloom under the forest canopy. The horse nibbled at those. It raised its head and gave Numonius a reproachful look, as if to say, You work me to death, and then all I get is this?

“Sorry,” he told it, his own voice a weary whisper. “Carry me back across the Rhine and I’ll fill you full of oats and barley. By Epona, I will.” Maybe the Gallic horse-goddess would hearken to his prayer here in the German woods. Plainly, the gods of his own folk held no power here.

He lay down beside the horse. No matter what the risks, he simply had to sleep. He’d soon be a babbling idiot if he didn’t, liable to tell the Germans he was on the run even if they hadn’t already figured it out. That most of them knew no Latin while he had only a handful of words in their tongue bothered him not at all. Once he lay down, nothing bothered him. Bare ground might have been Jupiter’s divinely soft bed up on Mount Olympus.

He didn’t wake up with his throat cut. Maybe Epona was listening. Maybe it was just luck. Whatever it was, he had to make the most of it. He found a few mushrooms growing not far from where he’d lain. He didn’t know German mushrooms well, but stuffed them into his mouth anyhow. If they poisoned him… well, so what?

His horse wanted nothing to do with mushrooms. All it wanted was rest. He couldn’t have cared less. A convenient stump made mounting easier than it would have been otherwise, but he knew he would have managed one way or another. A cavalryman had to be able to vault into the saddle from flat ground. So did a cavalry commander who expected his men to follow him. Vala Numonius met the requirements.

How many of his men had followed him away from the trapped foot soldiers? How many of them still lived? How many Roman infantrymen still did? Not many, he feared. Three legions, thrown onto the sacrificial altar and butchered.

What would Augustus say when he learned? Maybe I can be the one who brings the news to Rome, Numonius thought. That dignified his flight with purpose.

Of course, it had had purpose all along. If survival wasn’t a purpose, he couldn’t imagine what would be. But the Germans had a purpose, too: slaughtering Romans. Theirs seemed more likely to be fulfilled than his, curse them.

He managed to find the track again. Without it, he might have wandered in circles till he starved… or till the barbarians found him. But he still had a chance to get away.

The track came out into open country as abruptly as the trees had swallowed it. Vala Numonius could ride faster—could flee faster—now. But who were those horsemen out there ahead of him? More Romans, he feared. If they’d got ahead of him in the night, word of the Germans’ victory would have, too.

And so it proved. Now the barbarians who spotted him didn’t stare and wonder what he was up to. They knew he was on the run. They pointed and shouted and came after him. He booted the horse up into a shambling, drunken trot, so the spears some of them flung fell short.

Dogs ran howling after the horse. Vala Numonius supposed they were dogs, anyhow; they obeyed better than wolves would have, no matter what they looked like. They terrified a brief gallop out of the horse. Then, no matter how Numonius screamed at it and beat it, it decided it could run no more, and stood still.

That was the last thing he wanted. Barbarians loped toward him behind the dogs. Few of them were in the prime of life, which didn’t mean their spears couldn’t kill him. Knowing he was in trouble deeper than the sea, he slid down from the horse’s back and started to run.

Some of the dogs gave chase. He slashed one in the snout with his cavalry sword, which was longer than the gladii foot soldiers carried. The horrible beast yelped in surprise and pain and fell back, bleeding. He hoped the others would turn on it, but no such luck. Another gray, sharp-eared beast darted forward to snap at his leg. He killed it.

But while he fought the dogs, he couldn’t flee their masters. Here came the Germans: youths and even one rugged blond woman who must have fancied herself a warrior. A sword was a perfectly good weapon against a pack of dogs. Against spears with three or four times the reach? That was a different story.

“No,” Vala Numonius whispered. “Please, no.” The Germans’ eyes were paler than their dogs’. That was the only difference between them, for both sets held death. The barbarians moved to surround the cavalry officer. He turned this way and that, about as helpless and hopeless as his horse.

The Germans surged forward. Before too long, it was over—but not nearly soon enough to suit Numonius.

Before Arminius could lead his swarms of Germans into Gaul, he had to finish driving the Romans out of his own country. Destroying three legions wasn’t quite enough—almost, but not quite. Several Roman fortresses persisted east of the Rhine. The men those forts sheltered might prove dangerous if he just forgot about them, and so he set out to reduce the forts one by one.

Having served in the Roman auxiliaries, he knew a little something about siegecraft. What he failed to take into account was that the average German knew nothing, or perhaps a bit less. And the legionaries shut up inside the wooden palisades knew they would die horribly if his men broke in. Not many Romans had escaped the massacre of Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX, but some few had, and spread word of what had happened there to the garrison troops. To his surprise, it made the men in the forts determined, not afraid.

Aliso caused the most trouble. It stood on the south bank of the Lupia, not far east of where the smaller river joined the Rhine near Vetera. The Roman garrison inside Aliso was large and very stubborn.

Speaking soldiers’ Latin, Arminius shouted to the legionaries: “If you surrender and come out, I swear I will let you keep your arms and march back to Gaul with no more attacks. I will give hostages to prove it.”

A centurion came up to the edge of the palisade to answer him. Arminius recognized the Roman officer for what he was as much by his ingrained arrogance as by the transverse crest on his helmet. “No!” the man shouted. “You wouldn’t be howling out there if you hadn’t cozened Quinctilius Varus and murdered his men. The promises you make aren’t worth piss.”

Every word of that was true, which only infuriated Arminius the more. He shook his fist at the Roman. “You’ll pay,” he said. “When we break in, we’ll give you all to our gods, a fingernail at a time.”

“Come ahead and try.” The centurion spat in his general direction. “I don’t think you can do it, you bald-bottomed son of a whore. I bet your asshole’s as wide as a tunnel, from all the times you had Varus’ cock up you.” To make sure Arminius—and his followers—understood him, the Roman said that again, pretty fluently, in the Germans’ language.

“You turd with legs! I’ll see how far your lying guts can stretch when I lay hold of you!” Arminius bellowed in blind fury.