Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

Here, Segestes found something he didn’t want. Coming up the straight street toward him and Masua was Sigimerus. Arminius’ father and Segestes were about of an age: a little old to fight at the front of a battle line, but both seasoned warriors. They stiffened. Segestes lowered his spear a little, but only a little. Inside the camp, Sigimerus wasn’t carrying a spear. His sword came halfway out of its sheath, but no more than halfway.

Sigimerus greeted him: “You swinehound! You son of a swinehound!”

“Better a swinehound’s son than a swinehound’s father,” Segestes retorted. “If I thought you were worth killing, I’d kill you now.”

“Men better than you have tried,” Sigimerus said. “Ravens and badgers tore them once they were dead, while I still live.”

“I have killed, too,” Segestes said. “After so many, one more - especially a nithing like you - is easy.”

“You can’t do, so you talk,” Arminius’ father jeered.

“You know more about idle talk than I ever will,” Segestes retorted.

Romans gathered to watch the confrontation. They grinned and nudged one another. Segestes knew what they were doing: betting on who would come out alive, or on whether anyone would. Germans would have done the same thing. Also seeing that, Masua said, “You make a spectacle for them.”

“I know,” Segestes answered. He raised his voice to Sigimerus: “Let us go by. I didn’t come here to kill you, no matter how much you deserve it.”

“No - only to spit poison into the Roman governor’s ear.” But Sigimerus let his sword slide back down till the blade was out of sight. “Well, come ahead. Why not? No matter how many lies you tell, Varus won’t listen to you.”

Segestes feared that was true. It had been true every other time he tried to open Varus’ eyes. But what kind of friend to Rome was he if he didn’t make the effort? “Either you know nothing of lies or you know- too much,” he said. “Any man with his wits about him can guess which, too.”

He started forward, Masua a pace behind him and a pace to the left, ready to guard his flank. Slowly and deliberately, as if to show himself no coward, Sigimerus stepped out of their path. “Watch yourself,” Masua said loudly. “He may stab you in the back.”

“I don’t waste treachery on weasels like you two,” Sigimerus said.

“No? You must save it for the Romans, then,” Segestes said. Sigimerus haughtily turned his back.

Anywhere but here, Segestes would have attacked him for that offensive arrogance. He made himself walk by instead. Varus wouldn’t hearken to him if he killed Arminius’ father. He knew that too well.

The governor occupied what would have been the general’s tent in any other encampment. Segestes had expected nothing different: that was where the highest-ranking officer posted himself. For better and for worse, the Romans were a predictable folk.

“Hail, Segestes. Hail, Masua,” said Varus’ Greek slave. Segestes took it as a good sign that the man remembered his comrade’s name. He took it as another when Aristocles continued, “The governor will see you without delay.”

“We thank you.” Segestes had wondered whether Varus would try ignoring him without seeming to, keep putting him off with excuses, each plausible by itself but all together adding up to I want nothing to do with you. No German would play that kind of game; a German who didn’t care to see him would come straight out and say so. But Segestes had enough experience of Romans to know they could be sneakily rude.

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.

XV

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.

That led to another thought. If I don’t do my job, what will Augustus do to me? Varus had already brooded about some of those possibilities. Disgrace. Exile. A desert island miles and miles from anything but another desert island. Even if he escaped all those, failure would bring Augustus’ disapproval down on him, and Augustus’ disapproval was colder than any blizzard on the Rhine.