Текст книги "Give me back my Legions!"

Автор книги: Harry Norman Turtledove

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Vala Numonius had dropped back by half a length to let Varus precede him. Now he caught up again. “Welcome to Germany, sir,” he said.

“Germany,” Varus echoed. He didn’t seen any Germans here on their side of the river. He didn’t particularly miss them. He’d seen plenty in Vetera: big, fair, noisy men with an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Some of the soldiers’ women were pretty in an exotic way, though. They had plenty to hold on to, that was for sure.

The cavalry commander pointed toward the trees, which had been cut down for several stadia around the bridgehead. A lot of the timber from them probably went into the bridge. “They’re watching us from in there,” Numonius said.

“Let them watch. It will teach them respect,” Varus said.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a German stepped into the cleared ground from among the trees. The man turned around, bent over, undid his cloak, and waggled his pale, bare backside at the Romans. Then he straightened, wrapped the cloak around himself again, and loped off into the woods.

Some of the horsemen behind Varus laughed. Others swore. “So much for respect, sir,” Vala Numonius said.

Biting his lip in rage, Varus pointed out to where the German had vanished. “Seize him! Crucify him!” he shouted.

“Sir, there’s no hope,” said a cavalry officer who’d been on the frontier for a while. “In the forests, they’re like animals. They have dens to lay up in, or they can climb trees like wall lizards wish they could. And he might be trying to lure a detachment right into an ambush.”

He spoke respectfully, as a man had to do when trying to talk a provincial governor out of an order. Varus muttered, still steaming. But he could see that the soldier made good sense. If he fought on this side of the Rhine, he needed to fight on his terms, not the barbarians’.

“Very well,” Varus said heavily. “Very well.We’ll let him get away with that – for now. But the time will come when this whole province learns better. And that time will come soon, by the gods.”

Numonius clapped his hands. “Well said, sir!” he exclaimed. From the other cavalry officer came an unmistakable sigh of relief.

A pale moon shone down on Segestes’ steading. Arminius stood at the edge of the trees, looking things over. The steading seemed quiet, the way it should at night. If things weren’t as they seemed, chances were he would die inside the hour.

He shrugged. If he died, he would die doing what was right, doing what was important. No one would say he’d let Segestes dishonor him. He knew the woman he’d sent here had talked with Thusnelda. She’d told him so herself, after she came away. She wasn’t from his father’s steading, so Segestes would have had no reason to suspect her.

But Arminius didn’t know how Thusnelda felt. The woman who served him – he’d hired her with the fat gold earring he’d taken from the dead Pannonian – hadn’t been able to tell what she thought. She’d kept her own counsel. If she liked this Tudrus, or if she obeyed her father without thinking ... If any of that was true, Arminius would have a thin time of it tonight.

One of Segestes’ dogs let out a tentative bark. A couple of others joined in a moment later. They trotted toward him.

He wore a fat leather sack on his belt. He reached for that instead of his sword. “Come on, boys. Come here,” he called, as if the beasts belonged to his own father.

They weren’t so fierce as they might have been – that was plain. Arminius’ hopes soared. Through the woman, he’d told Thusnelda to feed them as much as they would hold. And now he pulled more chunks of raw meat from the sack and tossed them in front of the dogs.

Greedy as swine, they dug in. Arminius gave them more meat. He kept some in the sack, though: he was certain Segestes had more dogs than these. And, sure enough, two big brutes met him halfway to Segestes’ house. He bribed them the same way as he had the others. They hadn’t made much noise, and quieted down at once. Anybody who gave them meat had to be a friend.

The door. Arminius tapped it, lightly, with a forefinger. That tiny noise shouldn’t bother anyone sleeping in there. But if someone was awake and waiting for it ...

Wassomeone awake and waiting in there? Arminius tapped again, a tiny bit harder. II Thusnelda had fallen asleep in spite of everything, wouldn’t that make the bitterest joke of all?

When the door opened, his hand fell to the hilt of his sword. If she’d betrayed him to her father, if warriors boiled out through the doorway, what could he do but take some of them with him?

“Arminius?” No warriors. Only a tiny ghost of a voice from the darkness inside Segestes’ house.

“Thusnelda?”

She came out into the moonlight then. It shone oil her lair hair and glittered from the jewels – Roman jewels, probably – set into the brooch that closed her cloak. He touched her hand. He hadn’t done that since they were both children. Her fingers were chilly. Not the night, which was mild, but fear.

“Let’s get away,” he said, whispering himself.

She nodded. Slowly and carefully, she closed the door behind her. “You got past the dogs.”

“No. They ate me,” Arminius answered. Thusnelda stared at him in blank incomprehension. It was, he realized, a Roman kind of thing to say. He could explain it another time, if he decided to bother. For now, he just went on as if he hadn’t spoken before: “Yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m fine. Let’s get away. You dowant to come with me, don’t you?”

He wished he had the last question back as soon as it came out of his mouth, which was, of course, exactly too late. But Thusnelda said, “Yes,” and that made it stop mattering.

They hurried away from Segestes’ house. When they went past the two dogs Arminius had met halfway there, one of them yawned while the other thumped its tail against the ground. The dogs had to be full to bursting . . . and Thusnelda was with him now, so they were bound to be sure everything was fine.

The other three, the beasts closer to the edge of the clearing, had also had plenty to eat. Thusnelda paused to pat one of them. “Blackie was always my favorite,” she said in a strangely muffled voice.

Arminius realized the muffling was swallowed tears. She wasn’t leaving only Blackie behind. She was leaving everything she’d ever known. Chances were she would never see this place or her kinsfolk again. No wonder she had trouble sounding steady.

He slipped an arm around her waist. “Everything will be all right,” he promised. “I will make sure everything is all right for you from now on. You are my woman now, Thusnelda. You are my wife.”

In the Germans’ language, womanand wifewere the same word. Arminius repeated himself for emphasis’ sake. Latin had two separate words for the two notions. When he asked a legionary why, the fellow-had chuckled and said, “So we can think about women who aren’t our wives – why else?” He’d poked Arminius in the ribs, too, a familiarity the German wouldn’t have put up with from one of his own countrymen.

Germans took their wives’ fidelity seriously. They took few things more seriously. Romans joked about it. When Arminius showed how shocked he was, they laughed at him for a greenhorn. After a bit, he learned to stop showing it, so they stopped laughing. But the shock didn’t go away.

They really thought like that. Their men were seducers, their women sluts. They made lewd jokes about what should have been one of the most important things in the world. And they talked about how they were making the Gauls and Pannonians like them – and about how they would do the same for the Germans once they turned the land between Rhine and Elbe into a province.

To Arminius’ way of thinking, the Romans would be doing it tothe Germans. That was when he decided he had to fight them, come what might.

Thusnelda took his hands in hers and brought him back from the campaigns in Pannonia to this quiet, moonlit night. “I amyour woman,” she said. “I will be your woman, and your woman only, as long as we both live.”

“That’s why I’m taking you away,” Arminius said. If he was also doing it to stick a finger in Segestes’ eye, and in Tudrus’, that was nothing Thusnelda needed to worry about.

She looked up at him. He looked down at her. He bent to kiss her. Her arms came up and went around his neck.

One of the dogs – Blackie? – let out a questioning growl. That didn’t surprise Arminius, even if it did annoy him. He’d seen it before. Animals often thought people were fighting when they were doing something very different.

Evidently, Thusnelda had seen it before, too. “It’s all right. It really is,” she told the dog, and stroked it again. Then she turned back to Arminius. “Come on.”

They hurried away, along the track by which Arminius had come. He looked back toward Segestes’ steading once or twice. The dogs didn’t come after him, and he heard no shouts or cries to make him think anyone but Thusnelda had awakened. Joy glowed in his heart. He’d got away with it!

Thusnelda didn’t look back even once. She’d made up her mind, and she was sticking with what she’d decided.

The moon went down. Darkness enfolded the world. “Spirits?” Thusnelda asked nervously.

“Before they take you, they’ll have to take me first,” Arminius said. He’d never seen – or never been sure he’d seen – a nighttime spirit, which didn’t mean he didn’t believe they were there. Some of the Romans – not all, but some – even laughed at gods and ghosts. If that didn’t prove they were a depraved folk . . . plenty of other things did.

Something hooted. Thusnelda started. “Is that only an owl?” It must have been. No spirits swooped out of the sky to strike. No demons came snarling out of the trees where they commonly hid.

“Nothing to fear,” Arminius said, and slid his arm around her waist. With a small sigh, she pressed herself against him. Her body felt so warm, he marveled that she didn’t light the way ahead like a torch.

Since she didn’t, his eyes had to get used to starlight. Little by little, darkness seemed less absolute. Wotan’s wandering star blazed high in the south, shining brighter than any of the fixed stars. The Romans had the arrogance to believe they could figure out why and how the wandering stars moved as they did. What answer did any proper man need but that the gods willed it so?

The dim gray light was, at last, enough to show him the place he remembered passing on the way to Segestes’ steading. “Here,” he said softly. He led Thusnelda off the path and out onto the little meadow he’d found. “Here you will become my woman in truth.”

“Yes,” she said, even more quietly than he. No going back from this, not for her. Once she’d lost her maidenhead, she was either a wife or a trull – nothing in between. The Romans might joke about women’s appetites, but not Arminius’ folk.

He undid the brooch fastening his cloak and spread the warm wool garment on the grass. Then he also unfastened Thusnelda’s. He spread it on top of his. “The best bed I can make for you,” he said, “and the grass is soft.”

“It will do, because you are here with me,” she said.

He quickly shed his shoes and tunic and trousers. Under his clothes, he wore tight-fitting linen drawers, which proved he came from a wealthy family. Bv the time he pulled down the drawers, Thusnelda was naked, too. He wished the moon still shone – he wanted to see her better. Foul-mouthed as the Romans were, they had a point about that: it added something.

Well, touch would have to do. They lay down together. He explored her with hands and lips. Then, when he couldn’t stand to wait any longer, he poised himself above her. “Oh,” she said in a low voice when he went into her. He met resistance – she wasa maiden. “Oh!” she said again, louder and less happily this time, as he pushed hard. “You’re splitting me in half!”

“No,” he said, breaking through. “It’s like this the first time for women.”

“My mother told me the same thing. I thought she was trying to frighten me so I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t supposed to.”

Arminius hardly heard her. Intent on his own building delight, he drove home again and again. Soon, he gasped and groaned and spent himself. Stroking her check, he said, “You aremy woman now.” And your carrion crow of a father won’t take you back no matter what.

Varus had thought Vetera was the back of beyond – and it was. To a cosmopolitan man, a man used to Athens, to Syria, to Rome, Vetera had seemed the edge of the world. Now that Varus found himself in Mindenum, he would have given a considerable sum to go back to Vetera once more.

Vetera was on the ragged edge of civilization – no two ways about it. When you went from Vetera to Mindenum, when you traveled from the frontier between Gaul and Germany into the heart of the German wilderness, you fell off the edge.

The soldiers and a handful of sutlers who traded with both them and the Germans were the only men from the Empire for many miles in all directions. But for the encampment on the Visurgis, this was Germany,pure and simple. Some other fortified camps – Aliso was the strongest – along the west-flowing Lupia led back toward the Rhine. From Mindenum, one of these days, legionaries could press on toward the Elbe, Augustus’ ultimate goal.

For now, Varus thought it no small miracle that this Roman island persisted in the midst of the German sea. The endless woods stretching away to north and south, east and west, the tops of the trees rhythmically stirred by the wind, put him in mind of waves scudding across the Mediterranean.

When he spoke that conceit aloud, the officers from Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX didn’t quite laugh in his face, but they came close. “When you see waves on the North Sea, sir, you forget everything you thought you knew about ‘em before,” said a bluff prefect named Lucius Caedicius. “The ones on the Mediterranean . . . well, they’re nothing but babies alongside of these.” Several other men nodded.

Absurdly, Varus felt compelled to defend the honor of the sea that was a Roman lake. “Well, but we don’t sail on the Mediterranean half the year, for fear of what it might do.”

“That’s so, sir,” Caedicius agreed, and Varus smugly thought he’d made his point. But the prefect continued, “You can get waves like that the year around in the North Sea, and bigger ones come winter.”

“Oh.” The Roman governor of Germany felt obscurely punctured.

Varus discovered to his dismay that the Germans around Mindenum paid their taxes in grain and cattle and fruit – when they paid them at all. That made a painful contrast to Syria, where the tax collectors used a system older than the Roman occupation, older than the Greek occupation that preceded it, and probably older than the Persian occupation that preceded the Greek. In Syria, the Empire took every copper it was entitled to. Here . . . ?

“They need to use coins with us,” Varus told anyone who would listen to him – and, since he was the governor, everyone had to listen to him. “Coins, by the gods! How do we know what a cow is worth, or a basket of apples, or a local measure of barley? The natives must go home laughing at the way they cheat us.”

“Sir, the Germans are only just learning about coins. I think you’ve heard that before,” Lucius Caedicius said. “They mostly swap back and forth, like.”

“I don’t care what they do amongst themselves. That’s not my worry.” Varus would gladly have sacrificed an ox in thanksgiving that it wasn’t his worry, too. “But this is supposed to be a Roman province now. When the Germans deal with us, they should act like proper provincials.”

“You said it, sir: this is supposed to be a Roman province,” the prefect replied. “But there’s a difference between what it’s supposed to be and what it is. A dog is supposed to be your friend, but sometimes he’ll bite you anyhow.”

A lot of the other Roman officers seemed to feel the same way. Their attitude left Varus fuming. How was he going to do the job Augustus had given him if the men who were tasked with helping him tried to thwart him instead? Whenever he rounded on them, they denied with oaths that they intended doing any such thing. But what they intended and what they did – or didn’t do – seemed very different to him.

He found he preferred dealing with the Germans to his own folk. With the natives, at least, he knew where he stood. They seemed to lack the refined hypocrisy with which too many Romans armored themselves against the world. When a German said he would do something, he would. When a Roman said he would do something, he would . . . if he felt like it, or if he decided it was to his advantage.

And when a German had a problem, it was commonly a simple kind of problem, one a man could easily deal with. A chieftain paid a call at Mindenum. The German didn’t come alone, of course; one measure of a man’s status here was the size of his retinue. One of the fierce-looking men in his retinue, a certain Tudrus, was also an aggrieved party.

Varus received the two of them in the fancy tent that did duty for a governor’s palace here. He served them wine, as if conferring with equals. In a way, he was: Segestes had been granted Roman citizenship. On advice from his officers, Varus didn’t water the Germans’ wine. To the barbarians, such moderation was only Roman foolishness.

Segestes did handle the thick neat vintage well enough. Tudrus drank a good deal but said little, content to let his chieftain speak for him. Which Segestes did, in slow, accented, but perfectly comprehensible Latin: “I come to you, leader of the Romans, because my sworn man and I have been wronged by another man who is a Roman citizen.”

“Go on, please,” Varus said. If he remembered rightly, he’d learned about this quarrel back in Vetera.

“I will do that.” Segestes had impressive natural dignity. He was tall and lean, his fair hair graving and his bushy mustache also streaked with snow. “You may have heard that my daughter, Thusnelda, was betrothed to Tudrus here.”

The other German stirred. “Yes. It is so.” He spoke much less Latin than Segestes did.

“I have heard something of this.” Varus sipped from his cup. He’d had his wine mixed half-and-half with water. To his way of thinking, even that was strong.

“Thusnelda was betrothed before, to a man named Arminius,”

Segestes went on. “As I say, I bring this matter before you not least because he is also a Roman citizen.”

“I see.” Varus wasn’t sure he did. But he asked what seemed the next reasonable question: “What did this, uh, Arminius do to make you break off the connection?”

“He aims to rebel against Rome. Because of this, I want nothing to do with him.” Segestes spoke with care. He had to pause now and then to remember an ending for a noun or verb. He went on, “I have been a friend to the Romans ever since you began to bring your power into Germany. That is more than twenty years ago now. I think our folk will gain by coming under the Empire. Ask any of your long-serving officers. They will tell you I speak truth.”

“I believe you.” Varus did. Not even a German would be silly enough to spout a lie so easily checked. Varus took another sip from his winecup. It bought him a few heartbeats in which to ponder. “Why do you say Arminius is a rebel? That is a serious charge. What will he say when I ask him about it?”

“He will give you whatever lies he thinks he needs,” the chieftain replied. “He will say he joined the auxiliaries because he wanted to help Rome. But he is like a snake. He colors himself like grass, so you do not see him before he strikes.” He spoke in his native tongue to Tudrus, who nodded vehemently.

“How old is he? How old is your daughter?” Varus asked. “Is she past the age of consent?”

Segestes looked unhappy. “Thusnelda has twenty years,” he said reluctantly. “Arminius has four or five more. But I am the father here. You Romans know what it means to be the father.”

In theory, a Roman paterfamiliashad all but absolute power over his descendants. In theory, yes. In practice, the law whittled away at that power year by year. Varus had no idea whether a German father was also, in essence, a paterfamilias.His interest in what passed for law among the barbarians was greater than his interest in falling on his sword, but not a lot greater.

“Meaning no disrespect to you or your friend,” he said, “but sometimes a woman will do what she will do whether her father wants her to or not. Sometimes she’ll do it becauseher father doesn’t want her to. Did this Arminius kidnap her, or did she go with him willingly?”

Tudrus asked a question in the Germans’ language – probably wondering what Varus had said. Segestes answered in the same speech before returning to Latin. “She went of her own will,” he admitted, even more reluctantly.

“Well, then, my dear fellow . . .” Varus spread his hands. “What do you expect me to do? I am only a governor. I am not a god, to make her undo what she has already done.”

“You are the governor, yes,” Segestes said. “You can order Arminius to give her up. You can punish him for sneaking on to my land and stealing her.”

“Yes, I supposed I could do those things,” Varus said. “But then what? Would her match with your friend here go forward as if, uh, Thusnelda never left your home?” He’d heard the Germans valued their women’s chastity far more than Romans did. That struck him as something which would have been admirable if it weren’t so futile.

Segestes and Tudrus went back and forth in their language. In his bad Latin, Tudrus said, “It to go forward anyhow.”

“I ... see.” Varus wondered if he did. Was Tudrus so loyal to his chieftain that he would accept damaged goods from him? Or was he so eager to lie in a young girl’s arms that he didn’t care if he wasn’t the first? With a Roman, Varus would have judged the second more likely. With one of these savages, who could say?

“Tudrus is of my tribe. He is of my clan. He is of my band,” Segestes said, as if that explained everything. Maybe, to him, it did.

“And this Arminius?” Varus inquired.

“He is of my tribe,” Segestes said. “I would not have sent Thusnelda away from the Cherusci.” The choking guttural with which he began the tribe’s name sounded badly out of place in a sentence intended to be Latin. He went on, “But past that, no. Tudrus is far closer to me: another reason I like this match better.”

“Well, I will summon Arminius. I will hear what he has to say,” Varus said. “But if he does not want to give up your daughter, and if she does not want to leave him . . .” The Roman spread his hands again. “There are such things as accomplished facts. You may not like them. I can’t blame you if you don’t. Sometimes, though, you have to accept them and go on from there. Life is like that.”

Segestes looked unhappy. When he translated for Tudrus, his companion looked unhappier yet. “I think you are making a mistake, sir,” he said. “If you Romans are going to rule in Germany, you cannot be so mild. You must be strong.” He and Tudrus got to their feet. They bowed, and then left the tent without waiting for Varus’ permission.

“Strong,” Varus murmured. He led three legions. Of course he was strong. Of course Rome was strong. Segestes didn’t understand the difference between strength and restraint – or, more likely, the barbarian simply didn’t care.

Arminius had never imagined he could be so happy. He’d taken Thusnelda from her father for his honor’s sake. What he’d felt about her didn’t have much to do with it. He hadn’t had any strong feelings about her for her own sake. How could he, when he hadn’t known her well?

But he knew her now. He’d lain with her once to seal the bargain of her giving herself to him rather than to her father or to Tudrus. And he’d lain with her every chance he got after that, just for the sake of lying with her. He’d never dreamt anyone could be so beautiful or give him so much pleasure.

He’d never realized that anyone who gave him so much pleasure would naturally seem beautiful to him. He was still very young.

And Thusnelda was as delighted with him as he was with her. He knew he’d hurt her the first time – a man couldn’t help it. After that, though . . . After that, she was as eager as he was, which said a great deal.

The two of them amused his father. “I ought to throw a bucket of cold water over you, the way I would with dogs coupling in front of the door,” Sigimerus said.

“Why?” Arminius protested. “We don’t do it in public. We always put our cloaks up around the bed. No one can see us.” Nobody in any German household had more privacy than that.

His father chuckled. “No one can see you, maybe, but that doesn’t mean no one can hear you. Your woman yowls like a wildcat.”

“Well, what if she does?” Arminius had noticed that, too. He took pride in it, as reflecting well on his own manhood.

Before Sigimerus could tell him anything different, one of the house slaves dashed in from outside, calling, “Lord! Lord’s son! Half a dozen Romans are riding up the path toward the steading!”

“Romans!” Arminius exclaimed. Half a dozen Romans might ride some distance through Germany. In a time without overt war, the locals might not want to try to ambush them. Too great a chance one or more would get away – and Roman retribution was something the Germans had learned to be wary of.

Sigimerus cursed Segestes as foully as he knew how. “What will you bet he’s complained of you to their chief?” he said.

Arminius hadn’t expected that. But he was a Roman citizen, and so was Segestes. If Thusnelda’s father had found a way to use that against him ... If so, Segestes really was a devious Roman, where Arminius wore hiscitizenship as a disguise.

“What do you want to do, son?” Sigimerus asked. “We can kill them if we have to.”

“We aren’t ready to stand against Rome if we do,” Arminius replied, and his father didn’t try to tell him he was wrong. He grimaced. “Let me go talk with them and see how serious this is.”

He stepped outside. The day was cool and gray: a usual enough German day. The Romans had almost reached the steading. They were not big men, but the horses they rode were large by German standards. They could look down on him, as few Romans on foot could do. Their faces were all planes and angles and imperious noses; their dark eyes showed him no more than polished jet might have.

“I am Arminius, Sigimerus’ son,” he said in Latin. “I am a Roman citizen. What do you want of me?” His father and the slave stood behind him. Sigimerus’ hand rested near his swordhilt, but not on it.

“Hail, Arminius,” one of the Romans said, shooting out his clenched fist in the salute his folk used. “Publius Quinctilius Varus, the governor of Germany, summons you to his lodging at Mindenum, so that you may explain your conduct in the matter of the abduction of the daughter of another Roman citizen.”

All those genitives thrown in his face one after another . . . The horseman was trying to make things difficult for him. But Arminius followed, though he wasn’t sure his father did. “Am I under arrest?” he asked. If the Roman told him yes, he might have to fight. By German standards, Roman notions of justice were harsh and arbitrary.

But the fellow shook his head. “No. I am to inform you that this is an inquiry only.”

“Do you take oath by your gods that you tell me the truth? Do you take oath by the eagle of your legion that you tell me the truth?”

“By my gods and by the eagle of Legion XVIII, Arminius son of Sigimerus, I tell you the truth,” the Roman horseman replied without the least hesitation.

Romans were born deceitful. Not many of them, though, were depraved enough to swear falsely an oath like that. Arminius had seen that Roman soldiers put their legion’s eagle, the symbol of their comradeship, even above their gods. Warriors who could be skulkers and villains in other ways would lay down their lives without a murmur to keep their eagle safe.

“Do you swear I will go free afterwards?” he asked.

“I cannot do that. It is for the governor to judge. But he has a name for fair dealing,” the cavalryman replied.

Arminius considered. He knew how badly Segestes had wronged him. Any fool could see as much. If this Varus even half deserved the reputation the Roman said he had . . . Arminius noted that the fellow had not tried to cozen him with a lying promise. That argued that he did take his oath seriously.

It also helped Arminius make up his mind. “I will go with you,” he said. “Your governor will use me justly.” I hope.

“He is not only my governor. He is the governor of all of Germany,” the Roman said.

No one did or could govern all of Germany. The very idea made Arminius want to laugh. But he didn’t. All he said was, “Let us go.”

IV

When Lucius Eggius was in Mindenum, he drank more beer than wine. The locals brewed beer, so it was cheap. Every amphora of wine came cross-country from Vetera. Sutlers made you pay through the nose. Varus could afford fancy vintages whenever he pleased, maybe. As a prefect, Eggius was a long way from poor. But he wasn’t made of money like a provincial governor, either.

“You know what else?” he said after a blond German barmaid brought him a fresh mug. “Once you get used to it, this horse piss isn’t so bad.”

“It isn’t so good, either,” another Roman said. “And here’s the proof – even the cursed Germans buy wine when they can afford to.”

“Wine’s in fashion, that’s why,” Eggius said. “Same way as every Roman who thinks he’s anybody has to learn Greek so everybody else can see how clever he is, that’s how the Germans drink wine. It lets ‘em think they’re as good as we are, so they do it.”

“It must get ‘em mighty drunk, too, if they’re dumb enough to think like that,” the other officer came back, and got a laugh from the soldiers who filled the drink shop.

“Oh, come on. Give me a break. They do like to ape us. Everybody knows that,” Lucius Eggius said. “Sometimes it even comes in handy, like when they go to Varus on account of their woman-stealing instead of starting their own private war. We’d just get sucked in if they did.”

“We’re liable to get sucked in any which way,” said a young soldier named Caldus Caelius. “Her father’s a big shot, and so is the guy she was promised to, and the guy who ran off with her, too.”