Текст книги "Give me back my Legions!"

Автор книги: Harry Norman Turtledove

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“The better to spy on us,” Eggius broke in.

“Oh, nonsense,” Ceionius said. “They’re using our coins, too. They buy wine and pottery and jewelry with them, and they spend them among themselves. Little by little, they’re turning into provincials. Once we finish the occupation, give them twenty years and you won’t be able to tell them from Gauls.”

Eggius sent Varus what the governor supposed was meant to be a look of appeal. Somehow, it only made the man seem more stubborn than ever. “Don’t listen to him, sir,” Eggius said earnestly. “If these savages were going to lay down for us – “

“Lie down, you mean.” Now Ceionius interrupted, to point out the other soldier’s bad grammar. Varus, of course, had noticed it on his own. If an officer couldn’t express himself correctly, how were his superiors supposed to take seriously anything he said?

“If they were going to lay down for us,” Lucius Eggius repeated, his chin jutting forward even farther than before, “they would have done it twenty years ago. They’re rough customers – that’s all there is to it. And there are swarms of them in those little villages. Sometimes we beat ‘em when we fight. Sometimes they lick us. If they didn’t, the country on the far side of the Rhine would’ve made a proper province a long time ago.

Several officers drew away from him, as if he carried something catching. And so he did: tactlessness could kill off even a promising career. Varus almost dismissed him from the council. At the last instant, though, he held back, remembering how Augustus had voiced some of the same worries.

“Anyone can do an easy job,” Varus said. “You need uncommon men to handle a harder one. Augustus has decided that we are the men he needs for this particular job. To my way of thinking, that’s a compliment to every one of us and to every single soldier in Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX. Will anyone tell me I’m wrong there?”

He waited. No one said a word, not even the obstinate Lucius Eggius. Varus had expected nothing different. A bold man could quarrel with a provincial governor. No one had quarreled with Augustus in any serious way for more than thirty years. If you quarreled with Augustus, you lost. Rome had learned that lesson well.

“Since Augustus gave us this job, we’ll find a way to do it,” Varus continued. Nobody disagreed with that, either.

The track wound through the woods. Arminius’ boots squelched in the mud. He slipped and almost fell. He’d traded his Roman caligae– his hobnailed marching sandals – to a farmer for the boots and a meal and a bed. The caligaedidn’t fit the farmer very well, but the iron hobnails made them valuable.

Even if Arminius got less traction on bad ground, he preferred his native footgear. He preferred the soft dirt track to a paved Roman highway, too. March on stone from sunup to sundown and your legs felt like stone themselves when you finally stopped for the night.

Arminius also preferred the way the track followed the contours of the land. Roman roads ran straight as stretched strings. If the straight route was bad, the Romans built it up with stones or dug away hillsides. They were as arrogant in their engineering as they were everywhere else.

He tried to explain that to Chariomerus. The other German didn’t get it. “What’s wrong with taking the short way if you can?” he asked.

“How can the gods love anyone who tears up the landscape the way the Romans do?” Arminius returned.

He got only a stare and a shrug from his traveling companion, who said, “If the gods don’t love the Romans, how come they’re so stinking strong?”

That question was good enough to keep Arminius walking in silence for some little while. At last, he said, “To give us foes worth fighting. That must be it. If our enemies were weaklings, what kind of glory would we win by beating them? Not much. They have to be strong, or they wouldn’t make proper enemies.”

Chariomerus grunted. “But what happens if they’re toostrong?” he asked. “What happens if they beat us?”

“Then we turn into slaves,” Arminius answered. “So do our mothers and our sisters and our daughters and our sweethearts.”

That made Chariomerus shudder. Arminius had known it would. His folk had a greater horror of slavery for its women than for its men. German minstrels sang of battles that had turned when the women on the side that was losing bared their breasts and warned their men they were about to be enslaved, inspiring the warriors to fight with desperate ferocity. A tribe that could claim hostages from among its neighbors’ noblewomen held those neighbors in a grip stronger than iron.

“We mustn’t lose, then,” Chariomerus said.

“And we won’t.” But Arminius sounded more confident than he felt. Roman influence seemed stronger in Germany than it had when he went off to learn how the legions fought. It was much stronger than it had been when he was a boy. People passed coins – Roman coins – back and forth without even thinking about what they were doing. In his younger days, barter had been king of all. He’d gotten better wine from some of the nobles who had him as a guest than he had as a Roman auxiliary. When people found out he’d fought for the Romans, they wanted to try out bits of Latin on him. If those weren’t the early marks of slavery, what would be?

Dogs barked up ahead. “There’s your father’s steading,” Chariomerus said.

“It’s been a long road,” Arminius replied. “My father’s steading – at last. Here I will stay till I can see my way to avenging the insult Segestes has given me.”

When he and Chariomerus came out into the open, four or five dogs rushed toward them. The big, rough-coated, wolfish beasts growled and snarled and bared their formidable fangs. The Romans had dogs like that.

What herdsman or farmer would want any other kind? But the Romans also had small, fluffy, mild-mannered dogs to keep women and children company. They turned good working dogs into toys. They would do the same with – to – Arminius’ folk if they got the chance.

He shouted at the dogs. He didn’t know if that would prove enough – he’d been away a long time. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword. If they kept coming, he would do what he had to do to keep them from biting him. Chariomerus, perhaps less sure of the animals’ temper, drew his blade and widened his stance so he was ready to strike.

But shouting sufficed. The dogs skidded to a stop. A couple of them – beasts Arminius recognized – cocked their heads to one side. He had to laugh at their expressions: they looked like men trying to remember something. Did they know his voice? His scent?

Something a Roman had told him floated up into his thoughts. There was a Greek poem that had an old dog remembering its master in it. He came home alter years and years away adventuring, and the dog died after it realized who he was.

Arminius didn’t know much about the Greeks. He gathered that the Romans thought them very clever. Since Germans thought the same about Romans, that made these Greeks clever indeed . . . didn’t it? If they wereso clever, why didn’t they run things instead of the Romans?

“Hail, Lance. Hail, Speedy,” he said gravely, and scratched the dogs he knew behind the ears. They let him do it, where they would have snapped at a stranger. The other dogs – young ones that had grown up or been born after he went away – eyed Speedy and Lance as if wondering why they would betray a trust like that.

Some Germans were friendly to the Romans. Arminius’ brother was one. And Segestes was another. He always had been. He thought Germany stood to gain more than it lost by coming under the Roman eagle. Arminius had thought he was wrong before. Now the younger man despised any opinion of Segestes’ just because his betrayed fiancée’s father held it.

The commotion from the dogs brought a gray-haired man carrying an axe out to see what caused it. A gray-haired man . . . “Father!” Arminius shouted, and ran to him.

“Arminius!” His father’s name was Sigimerus. He definitely hadn’t been so gray when Arminius went off to learn what he could of Roman fighting. He hadn’t been so stooped, either. He wasn’t an old man, not yet, but the years had a grip on him.

As they embraced, Arminius forgot all about that. “It’s good to see you. It’s good to be home,” he said, and kissed Sigimerus on both cheeks and then on the mouth.

“How is Flavus?” his father asked.

Arminius’ mouth tightened. “The last I heard, he was hale,” he said carefully. “That was ... let me think . . . two months ago, or maybe a little more.”

“The Romans are fools not to put two brothers in the same band, where you could spur each other on,” Sigimerus said.

“The Romans are fools,” Arminius agreed. But he found he couldn’t leave it there: “They don’t care so much about men spurring each other on. They want men who do as they’re told.” He grimaced again. “Flavus has always been good at that.”

His father coughed. “Sometimes obeying is good. I walloped you a lot more than I hit your brother.”

“Yes, I know.” This time, Arminius did leave it there. Taking it any further would have started a quarrel, which he didn’t want. He did say, “Flavus likes fighting for the Romans.”

As far as Arminius could tell, Flavus wished he’d been born a Roman himself. If anything, Flavus was even more pro-Roman than Segestes. Arminius respected the Romans, not least for their ruthlessness. That didn’t mean he wanted to be like them. If anything, it made him more determined to go on being what he was already.

His father heard the edge in his voice. “I know you two don’t see eye to eye. You’re both still my boys.”

“Yes, Father.” Arminius didn’t suppose Sigimerus could say anything else. Despite their disagreements, Arminius didn’t dislike Flavus, either. But he also didn’t trust him. Had Flavus known how deeply Arminius despised, resented, and feared the Romans, they would have found out about it in short order. And, in that case, Titus Minucius Basilus might not have been so willing to let him go back to Germany.

“And since you’re home,” Sigimerus went on, “come into the house and drink some wine with me to gladden your heart.” He nodded to Arminius’ companion. “You, too, Chariomerus, of course. I am in your debt for finding my son and bringing him back to Germany.”

“I was glad to do it.” Chariomerus stayed polite, but he didn’t deny-that Sigimerus did indeed owe him something. One of these days, he would call in the debt, either from Sigimerus or from Arminius.

The farmhouse was a wooden building, about forty cubits long and fifteen wide. Four posts running down the centerline supported a steeply pitched thatched roof that shed rain and snow. Stalls for the family’s cattle and horses and pigs and sheep adjoined the eastern wall; the hearth was against the western wall, under a window, so in good weather a lot of the smoke escaped. On freezing winter nights the window was shuttered and the animals came inside with the people. It made the place crowded and smoky and smelly, but that was better than losing livestock.

Sigimerus pulled the rawhide latch cord and shoved the door open. “Veleda!” he called. “Look who’s here at last!”

Arminius’ mother was spinning wool into thread. She sprang off the wooden stool where she sat – a Roman luxury, bought from a trader – and hurried over to hug and kiss him. “So good to see you home!” she said between kisses.

“It’s good to be home, too,” Arminius answered. “I only wish I didn’t have to come back for a reason like this.”

His father, who was pouring the wine, growled down deep in his throat like an angry hunting hound. “Segestes didn’t just insult you when he took Thusnelda away and swore her to this wretch of a Tudrus,” he said. “He put the whole family in the shade, and everyone who follows us. Whatever you want to do to pay him back, you’ll have plenty of men behind you.”

“I’ve told him the same thing,” Chariomerus said.

“I would have known it even if you didn’t say a word,” Arminius replied. “I’ve been thinking about things all the way back from Pannonia. . . . Ah, thank you, Father.” He took an earthenware cup from Sigimerus. A German potter had made the cup; the sweet-smelling red wine inside came from some land the Romans ruled.

“Your health,” Sigimerus said, lifting his own cup in salute.

“Yours.” Arminius copied the gesture. So did his mother and Chariomerus. He drank. He’d tasted better wine, but also plenty worse. He nodded appreciatively.

“You’ve been thinking about what to do. . . .” Sigimerus prompted. He fiddled with the brooch that held his cloak closed. Because he was wealthy, the brooch was gold, and decorated with garnets red as the wine. An ordinary farmer would have closed his cloak with a bronze pin; a poor man would have made do with a thorn. “If you go after Segestes or Tudrus, we’ll back you.”

He tensed as he said the words; Arminius could see as much. But he said them anyhow, and didn’t hesitate over them. Arminius loved him for that. “I don’t want to start a bloody feud with Segestes, Father,” he said. “We shouldn’t fight one another now. We should all march side by side to fight the Romans.”

“You say this, and I think you speak wisely,” Sigimerus said. “Not everyone will, though. Segestes won’t. He’d sooner march with the Romans than against them. I hear that’s part of why he took Thusnelda away from you and gave her to Tudrus. Tudrus loves the Romans, too.”

“Loves to lick their backsides, you mean,” Chariomerus said.

“Some of them would like it if he did,” Arminius said. Chariomerus and Sigimerus both made horrible faces. So did Veleda. Men who wanted to use other men as if they were women did what they did in secret among the Germans. You heard whispers about such things, but that was all. Anyone caught doing them died slowly and painfully.

The Romans didn’t just talk openly about such things. Those who wanted to do them . . . did them. Arminius had got one of his many shocks inside the Empire when he learned that. He’d got another shock when he discovered it didn’t make them effeminate – not even the ones who were pierced rather than piercing. They fought the Pannonian rebels as bravely as anyone else. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it, but he had.

“If you don’t aim to start a feud with Segestes and his retainers, what willyou do to regain your honor?” His father brought the talk back to the business at hand – and steered it away from what he didn’t care to think about. No flies on Sigimerus.

“Well, that depends,” Arminius answered. “Is Thusnelda wed to Tudrus, or is she only promised to him?”

“She is promised,” Veleda said. “She still lives in Segestes’ steading.”

Arminius breathed a sigh of relief. “That makes things easier.” Even killing Tudrus wouldn’t necessarily have got him Thusnelda if she’d already married Segestes’ comrade. Widows often staved single the rest of their days. With one as young and pretty as Thusnelda, that would have been a dreadful waste, which didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Sigimerus nodded. “You have more choices.”

“Just so,” Arminius said. “But I think I know what I’m going to try. . . ”

Soldiers gossiped. They didn’t only gossip about who was screwing whom or who was feuding with whom – although, being human, they did waste a lot of time gossiping about those eternal favorites. And, being human, they also wasted a lot of time gossiping about the officials set over them.

Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX had served together for a long time. Octavian raised them during the civil war against Antony and Cleopatra. A handful of senior centurions had been green kids scooped into the legions more than forty years before. The rest of the men had joined since. There were older legions, and legions that had seen more fighting, but XVII, XVIII, and XIX had nothing to be ashamed of.

“This Varus . . . well, he’ll never make a proper general,” Lucius Eggius said. He knew all the men in the tavern with him, and knew – or was as sure as you could be about such things – none of them would go telling tales to the new governor of Germany.

“His cavalry commander’s not so bad,” said Marcus Calvisius, a centurion from Legion XVIII. He was in his early fifties, a little too young to have been part of XVIII’s original complement. “Doesn’t go around making too much of himself, anyway.”

“Numonius? Mm, maybe not.” Lucius Eggius weighed whether to give the other newcomer the benefit of the doubt. Alter draining his winecup, he shook his head. “He won’t tell his boss he’s wrong. Varus says, ‘We’ll whip the Germans into shape in an hour and a half.’ And Vala Numonius says, ‘We sure will. An hour and a halt – tops.’ He’s like a lap dog wagging his tail.”

Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair. It was silver, but his hairline hadn’t retreated by even a digit’s breadth. Add that to a chin like a boulder, and he made an impressive-looking man. “An hour and a half won’t finish the job. You’re right about that, gods know.”

“A year and a half isn’t likely to finish the job, either,” Eggius said. “I tried to tell ‘em so, but did they want to listen?” He laughed bitterly. “I mean, what the demon do I know? All I am is the bastard on the spot. That counts for nothing. They’ve got orders from Augustus. That counts for everything.”

“How come Augustus can’t see it’s not as easy as he thinks?” Calvisius grumbled. “He’s a smart guy, right?”

“He isa smart guy,” Lucius Eggius said. “But even a smart guy can be dumb about places he’s never seen. Augustus never came up here. All he knows is, Germany’s not a proper province yet. He’s mad about it, too. How can you blame him, if you look at things from down in Rome?”

“Yeah, well . . .” Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair again. “If you look at things from down in Rome, you don’t know anything about the Germans.”

All the Roman officers nodded. Somebody said, “We’re up here, and I don’t think we know anything much about the Germans.” The veterans nodded again.

“They don’t wantto turn into a province. It’s about that simple,” Eggius said. He shoved his cup over to the tapman, who poured it full. Fancy aristocrats watered their wine like Greeks or children. He drank his neat. So did his friends. What point to drinking if you didn’t feel it?

“Gaul’s didn’t want to turn into a province, either. Caesar walloped the snot out of them,” Calvisius said. “Now we’re here, and they don’t mind. Not like that on the other side of the Rhine.”

Nobody told him he was wrong. Lucius Eggius knew too well that he was right. Cross the Rhine, and you crossed into a different world. Even the trees and the rivers on the east side seemed to hate Romans. As for the people . . . “Well,” Eggius said dryly, “it’s not like they don’t give us plenty of practice over there.”

He got a laugh. How many battles had Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX fought on the wrong side of the river? On thefar side of the river,Eggius corrected himself. If Augustus said they were going to bring it into the Empire, the land over there wasn’t on the wrong side at all.

Assuming they could do what Augustus said, of course. Yeah,Eggius thought. Assuming.

A centurion from Legion XIX said, “Some of the Germans are good guys. Some of them get along with us all right.”

“Sure.” Eggius nodded. He could feel the wine, all right, but it hadn’t made him stupid yet. He didn’t think it had, anyhow. He knew he wasn’t stumbling over his own tongue. That was good. He took another pull at his cup and went on, “Answer me this, though. How many of those Germans who’re good guys, those Germans who get along with us all right, would you trust at your back when you’ve got other Germans – Germans you know are enemies – trying to do you in from the front?”

A considerable silence followed. Lucius Eggius considered it. None of his considerations made him very happy. The centurion from Legion XIX didn’t look very happy, either. He got his mug refilled, tilted his head back, and took a big swig: Eggius watched his prominent larynx bob up and down as he swallowed. At last, he said, “Well, there are a few.”

Most of the Romans who heard that nodded. Lucius Eggius did himself. “Yeah, there are,” he agreed. “But we’ve been trying to turn that miserable mess of trees and swamps and fogs and frogs into a province for a demon of a long time now. If we were going anywhere with it, don’t you figure there’d be more than a few Germans you could count on when your back was turned?”

The centurion didn’t reply to that. Nobody else did, either, not right away. Then Marcus Calvisius said, “Well, Eggius, there is one other way to deal with that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lucius Eggius said. “Like what?”

“Kill all the barbarians we can’t trust and make a province with whoever’s left. Why do you think XVII, XVIII, and XIX are here?”

Eggius did some more considering. When he was done, he let out a grunt. “You’ve got something there,” he admitted. “I do wish we still had Tiberius in command, though. He’s a sour bastard, sure, but nobody ever said he doesn’t know what he’s doing. This Varus . . . Well, who can tell? Gods rot the stinking Pannonian rebels, anyway.” He set about the business of getting seriously drunk.

“Amo. Amas. Amat,”Segestes muttered. “Amamum. Amatis. Amant.”

He was currying a horse. The beast snorted, perhaps at the unfamiliar sounds. Segestes went right on conjugating the Latin verb to love.Then he muttered under his breath in his native tongue. Plenty of Germans would have said – plenty of Germans didsay – he was currying favor with the Romans, too.

He didn’t see it that way. If he had seen it that way, he wouldn’t have done it. How many folk had gone up against Rome? Lots. How many had lost? All of them – you could look west across the Rhine or southeast across the Danube to see the latest examples. Oh, the Pannonians were still kicking and bellowing, like a bull before it went all the way into the stall. That wouldn’t last much longer, though. The Romans were tough, and they had their whole vast empire to draw upon.

He ran his hand over the horse’s flank and nodded to himself. That was better. Like most horses in Germany, his was a small, shaggy, rough-coated beast. If you didn’t go over it with a curry comb pretty often, it would be all over tangles.

The horse made a snuffling, expectant noise. He laughed and gave it a carrot. It crunched up the treat. Then it nuzzled his hand, hoping for another one.

He laughed. “You’re no horse. You’re a pig with a mane and a hairy tail.” He patted the horse and fed it another carrot. When it tried for a third, he shook his head and stepped out of the stall.

As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Thusnelda was out there playing with a puppy. That would have been bad enough any time. Spoiling a horse was one thing, but Segestes wanted his dogs mean. Why have them, if not toward the steading? With things between him and Thusnelda as prickly as they were . . .

He was more inclined to spoil his horse than his daughter. He didn’t see it that way, of course. Fathers never do.

Thusnelda had been laughing as she tickled the pup’s stomach. When she saw Segestes, her face closed like a clenching fist. She straightened up and turned her back on him.

“If a man used me like that, I would kill him,” Segestes remarked.

His daughter spun toward him, but not out of respect. “And you don’t think you’re killing me?” she retorted.

“What are you talking about?” For a moment, Segestes was honestly confused. Then he wasn’t, but wished he still were. “There’s nothing wrong with Tudrus,” he growled. They had this argument at least once a day. He was sick of it, even if Thusnelda didn’t seem to be. Why hadn’t he set an earlier date for the wedding? Then she’d be out of his hair, and Tudrus would have to worry about her.

Something had changed, though. That wasn’t just fury in her gray eyes. It was something very much like triumph. “Arminius is back. He’s out of the fight in Pannonia, and he’s hale.” She spat the words in his face.

He already knew that – he’d heard a couple of days earlier. He hadn’t said a word. But bad news always got where you didn’t want it to. He might have known it would here. “How did you find out?” he asked wearily.

By the way Thusnclda’s eyes sparked, he’d hear about knowing and not telling her. But that would be later. For now, she could score more points off him with the news itself. “One of the slaves brought word,” she answered. “He said it was everywhere – except here.”

So she wouldn’t waste time making him pay for keeping it from her. Not now, anyway. He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change a thing.”

“You don’t think so?” His daughter laughed at him.

If she weren’t of his own flesh and blood . . . But she was, so he had to hold his temper down. It wasn’t easy; he was a proud man. “I don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “And I don’t want a family connection with Arminius any more. He hates the Romans too much to make it safe.”

“You didn’t think so when you pledged me to him,” Thusnelda jeered. “And how can you say that, anyway? He joined the Roman army. Younever did.”

“The man who best knows how to break a cart is one who makes carts,” Segestes said. His daughter stared at him as it he’d suddenly started spouting Greek. He couldn’t have even had he wanted to. Knowing Greek existed put him a long jump ahead of most Germans. With another sigh, he went on, “Arminius joined the Romans to learn how to beat them.”

“He wants us to be free,” Thusnelda said.

“Free to brawl among ourselves. Free to run through the woods – and no farther. Free to be as wild as the Wends and the Finns.” Segestes named the most savage peoples the Germans knew.

“The Finns tip their arrows with bone. They live on the ground, or in huts woven like baskets. They sleep on the ground.” Thusnelda sounded disgusted.

“To the Romans, we look the way the Finns look to us,” Segestes said.

“Then the Romans are stupid!”

Segestes shook his head. “They aren’t. You know they aren’t. They have all kinds of things we don’t, and they don’t fight one another the way we do,” he said. “I want us to live the way they do. So does Tudrus. Is that so bad?”

“We should be free.” Thusnelda might have been listening to Arminius. Before he left, she probably had on the sly.

“What good does that do us? Knowing things, living in peace – those do us some good,” Segestes said.

Thusnelda stuck her nose in the air. Segestes wondered if Tudrus could charm – or beat – the nonsense out of her. He hoped so.

III

Back before Publius Quinctilius Varus was born, two German tribes invaded Gaul. If not for Julius Caesar, they might have taken it away from the natives before the Romans could. If not for my wife’s great-uncle’s great-uncle,Varus thought, bemused. That his father had killed himself rather than yielding to his wife’s great-uncle’s great-uncle he forgot for the moment. He remembered little about Sextus Quinctilius Varus. Augustus he knew very well indeed.

And he knew very well what Julius Caesar had done. With characteristic energy, Caesar bundled the Usipetes and the Tencteri back into the German forests. And then he went after them. In ten days, his engineers bridged the Rhine. The German tribes fled before him. He stayed on the east bank of the Rhine for eighteen days, then went back and finished conquering Gaul.

And he left the problem of conquering Germany for another day – for another generation, as it turned out. For me, as it turned out,Varus thought. Marching through Germany was easy enough. Holding the place down, really subjecting it, wasn’t. Plenty of Romans had proved that, too.

One of his servants intertwined the fingers of both hands, forming a cup into which Varus could step. With help from the leg-up, he swung over his horse’s back and straightened in the saddle. A mounting stone would have served as well, although a leg-up from a man better suited a commander’s dignity. If he had to, Varus thought he could vault into the saddle with no help at all, like a proper cavalryman. But only a barbarian, and a stupid barbarian at that, would do things the hard way when he didn’t have to.

Once seated on the horse, Varus nodded to Vala Numonius. “Let’s cross,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” The cavalry commander nodded. They both urged their mounts forward. The rest of the cavalry detachment followed. The horses’ hooves drummed on the bridge over the Rhine.

It was built on exactly the same principle as Caesar’s. Roman engineers had fixed two sets of piles in the riverbed. The upstream piles leaned with the current, the downstream against it. They were about twenty-five cubits apart. Trestles slanting against the current on the down-stream side helped support the structure. Upstream, a timber breakwater protected the bridge from logs or fire rafts or anything else the barbarians might aim at it.

“Once we subdue the Germans, we’ll get a proper bridge with stone piers, not this military makeshift,” Varus said.

“That would be splendid, sir,” Numonius replied. “A sign of civilization, you might say.”

“Civilization. Yes.” Once again, Varus fondly remembered Syria. He remembered Rome. He remembered Athens, where he’d stopped on the way back from Syria – and where he, like his son, had studied as a young man. He remembered seeing for the first time the Parthenon and all the other wonderful buildings up on the Acropolis. By the gods, that was civilization for you!

This . . . The day was cool. The sky was a grayish, watery blue. The sun seemed half ashamed to shine. He was riding away from a legionary camp – which, in these parts, counted as an outpost of civilization. He was heading for . . . The gloomy forests that stretched on and on east of the Rhine warned him what he was heading for.

Foot soldiers followed the cavalrymen. One thing the Romans had learned from painful experience: wherever they went in Germany, they went in force. Small parties of men were all too likely to disappear. Better not to tempt the barbarians into doing what they weren’t supposed to.

Varus’ horse stepped off the bridge and onto the muddy ground on the east bank of the Rhine. Its hooves stopped echoing. They made the usual thumping and squelching noises instead.