Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

“So you say,” the other man returned.

“Yes. So I say,” Arminius agreed. “And if you say I lie, you had better say it with something more than words.”

The other man had a spear in his hand and a knife on his belt.

Germans from all tribes carried their weapons everywhere, even to a funeral. The fellow dipped his head to Arminius. “I am ready. Shall we be-gin?”

Sigimerus set an urgent hand on Arminius’ arm. “What if he kills you?” he whispered. “You can’t do this. You risk too much.”

“The gods will not let him kill me,” Arminius said calmly. “And even if they do, you can lead our folk to victory against the Romans. You know everything I’ve done and everything I aim to do. You have the name of a brave warrior, no less than I do. Men will follow where you lead.”

“If you fall, the first thing I’ll do is kill this ass with ears,” Sigimerus growled.

“I’m not going to fall,” Arminius assured him. Then he bowed to Alcus’ brother. He didn’t want to anger the Chauci; he wanted them fighting the legions alongside his own Cherusci and as many other Germans as he could gather. “I mean no disrespect to the fine fighter now lying on his pyre. But you surely are a man of honor yourself. Would you let anyone say you did not tell the truth? How could you show your face among men afterwards if you did?”

“You will do what you will do, and the gods will show us all who has the right of it,” the older man replied.

“Just so,” Arminius said. The Chauci who had been mourning Alcus now buzzed excitedly. Some of them pointed towards Arminius, others in the direction of their fellow tribesman. They argued in low voices. Arminius knew what they were doing: getting their bets down. If he weren’t in the fight, he would have done the same thing. Like most Germans, he loved to gamble. Men who’d lost everything else would bet their own freedom. And, if they lost that, too, they’d go into slavery without a word of complaint and with their heads high.

The Chauci formed a circle around Arminius and the man who’d called him a liar. “You know who I am. Tell me your name, please. I would not kill a stranger.”

“I am Vannius son of Catualda. I had heard that the Cherusci were a rude lot. I see that is not so,” the other man replied.

“We hear those things about the Chauci, too. It must come from living beside each other for so long.” Arminius raised his spear in salute. “Shall we begin?”

“Let’s.” Vannius advanced on him. By the way the fellow held his own spear, Arminius knew him for an experienced warrior. Well, he was a few years older than Arminius: few Germans reached that age without a battle or two under their cloaks. The two men were about the same size. Vannius might have been a little thicker through the shoulders.

Arminius hefted his spear as Vannius stalked closer. If he threw it and hit, he could end the fight before it began. If he threw it and missed, he’d be left with a Roman gladius against a spear with four times the reach. He’d die in short order, in other words.

Vannius had to be making the same calculations. Arminius’ foe showed no sign of wanting to cast his spear. Of course, nobody with a grain of sense would till the instant before he let fly. Why let your enemy get ready to dodge or duck? But Vannius seemed to want to fight it out at close quarters.

I told Father the gods wouldn’t let him kill me, Arminius thought. Was I right, or was I fooling myself? Before he could wonder for more than a fraction of a heartbeat, his right arm went back, then forward again.

He watched the spear fly as if it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t even reach for his sword. One way or the other, he didn’t think it would matter.

Vannius waited till the last moment to start to spring aside. Maybe he was gauging the spear’s flight. Or maybe he wanted to show how brave he was. Whatever the reason, he waited too long. As he tried to fling himself to the right, the spear caught him square in the chest.

He stood swaying for a couple of heartbeats, looking astonished. When he opened his mouth to say something, blood came out instead of words. Blood also bubbled from his nose. He slowly crumpled to the ground.

His feet drummed and scuffed at the grass. Cautiously, Arminius approached him. “Do you want me to give you peace?” he asked, ready to jump back in a hurry if Vannius went for his knife.

But the other man only nodded. He was biting his lip to hold in a shriek now. Wounds often didn’t hurt for a little while. Then, as Arminius knew too well, they did.

He drew his gladius and drove it into Vannius’ throat. The other man twisted and jerked. His life rivered out of him as Arminius pulled out the shortsword and plunged it into the ground again and again to clean off the blood. After a few moments, Vannius lay still, his gaze set and staring. Arminius felt for his pulse and found none. Setting his foot on the corpse’s chest, he jerked out the spear.

He bowed to the wide-eyed Chauci. “He was as brave as any of you,” he said. “I don’t think I ever saw a man die so well. May the gods give his spirit peace.”

“May it be so.” Alcus’ brother spoke for his fellow tribesmen. “You downed him in a fair fight, where he had a like chance to slay you.” He eyed the other Chauci. “Let no one here claim otherwise.”

A few of the man’s tribesmen stirred, but no one challenged him. No one challenged Arminius, either. That relieved him. He didn’t want a blood feud with the Chauci. The Germans could fight among themselves later. They needed to join together now to drive the Romans beyond the Rhine.

And then what? Arminius wondered. Gaul was supposed to be a rich country, richer than Germany. The Romans hadn’t ruled there for even a lifetime yet. Old men remembered when the Gauls were still their own masters. Several German tribes had tried to take new lands west of the Rhine. The Gauls weren’t strong enough to stop them. Unfortunately, the Romans always had been.

If the Romans were cast out of Germany, though, wouldn’t they also be thrown into disarray in Gaul? Then the Germans could burst forth in a vast wandering of peoples. They could lay hold of all the living space they craved and deserved.

And, with the Romans all topsy-turvy, who could stop the German tribes? No one, Arminius thought exultantly. No one at all!

Shoveling. Chopping. Hammering. Sawing. Endless profanity and obscenity. By now, Quinctilius Varus was far more familiar with the sounds that went into making a legionary encampment than he’d ever dreamt he would be. Like the phoenix, Mindenum was rising from its own ashes once more. Varus remembered thinking it would make a fine provincial town one day.

The only trouble was, he didn’t want even the finest provincial town. He wanted Rome as a lover longed for his beloved. He wasn’t perfectly faithful to Rome. Alexandria would have done. So would Antioch, from which he’d ruled Syria. And if Athens was good enough for his son, it was good enough for him as well.

Mindenum wouldn’t make an Athens, an Antioch, or an Alexandria for the next two thousand years. And Mindenum wouldn’t make a Rome for . . . well, forever.

But it would make a place from which to administer Germany for another summer. One of these years, Varus supposed it would make a place from which to administer Germany the year around. He devoutly hoped somebody else would govern Germany by then. If a man wasn’t allowed to return to even the dubious civilization of Vetera ... he would be a mighty unhappy man after a while.

He would if he was anything like Varus, anyhow. Some stolid soldier might enjoy the kind of town Mindenum would be by then. Plenty of officers seemed to like Vetera well enough. No accounting for taste - or lack of taste.

“Would you care for a cup of wine, sir?” By the slight slur in Aristocles’ voice, he’d already had a cup of wine, or several cups, himself. He went on to explain why: “If you drink a bit, you don’t notice the racket so much. Or at least I don’t.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Varus said. “Why don’t you make it a cup of neat wine, as a matter of fact?”

“I’ll do that, sir.” The pedisequus winked. “Turning into a German, are you?”

“By the gods, I hope not!” Varus exclaimed. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, Aristocles, but what did I do to deserve that?”

“Well, sir, the next German I see who likes his wine watered will be the first. Be right back for you.” Aristocles hurried away.

Rome. Alexandria, Varus thought longingly. Antioch. Athens. His nearest approach to Athens was a Greek slave here in Mindenum. That wasn’t close enough. And the slave was bringing him neat wine at his own request: not only un-Greek but un-Roman as well.

The trouble was, in Mindenum neat wine was medicinal. Anything that helped you forget you were in Mindenum for a little while was medicinal. He would have used poppy juice if the physicians could have spared it. It was expensive, but he had no better uses for his silver. Still, the reason it was expensive was that it was the only remedy for real, physical pain. He could understand why the doctors didn’t care to use it for anything less.

Aristocles came back with the wine. “Your health, sir,” he said, handing Varus the cup.

“Wine will help my health.” The Roman governor poured a small libation on the rammed-earth floor. He drank, and smiled at the warmth sliding smooth down his throat. “Going back to Italy would help it even more.”

“Going back to Italy would help my health, too. Can we do that?” Aristocles practically quivered with eagerness.

Quinctilius Varus shook his head. “Not until my wife’s great-uncle gives us leave.” What would Augustus do if he threw up this governorship and went back to Rome on his own? Maybe nothing. Maybe he would understand Varus simply wasn’t the right man for the job.

Or maybe he would make an example of his grand-niece’s husband. Closer relatives were spending the rest of their lives on small, hot, barren Mediterranean islands. While the weather at a place like that was bound to be an improvement over Mindenum’s, the rest of the arrangements wouldn’t be.

And the humiliation! If he went home, anyone who remembered him after he was dead would remember him for a sentence in some as yet unwritten history that read something like, “In the thirty-sixth year of Augustus’ reign, Publius Quinctilius Varus was exiled to Belbina for neglecting his duties.” And anyone who cared (if anyone at all cared) would have to consult some geographer’s work to find out where the demon Belbina was.

To keep from thinking about Belbina (Varus knew too well where the arid rock was, and knew it wasn’t much more than a good piss long, and maybe half that wide), he poured down the wine. The legionaries had fortified Mindenum. The wine fortified Quinctilius Varus. He thrust the cup at Aristocles. “Fill this up again.” When you were talking to a slave, you didn’t even have to say please.

Aristocles gauged him the way a sailor gauged clouds boiling up to windward. Like a prudent sailor, the pedisequus shortened sail. “Yes, sir,” he said, and not another word.

He came back with the refilled cup faster than he’d brought it before. Varus poured a very small libation this time. The rest of the wine went straight into him.

After two of those good-sized cups of potent vintage, he felt like finding a nice, quiet spot somewhere, wrapping his cloak around him, and going to sleep like a dormouse. In Germany, nobody could tell him he couldn’t do something like that if he wanted to. The only person in the whole Roman Empire who could tell him any such thing was Augustus - and Augustus was a long way from Germany.