Give Me Back My Legions(126)

Segestes lived quietly on his steading. A good many of his sworn retainers stayed there with him. A few of them - younger men, mostly - had gone off to fight the Romans with Arminius despite what Segestes thought of the man who’d stolen his daughter. Enough remained to fight a war if Arminius decided to try punishing Segestes for staying loyal to the Empire.

So far, there’d been no signs such trouble was coming, nor even threats. Segestes gave Arminius reluctant credit for that - or maybe Arminius was so enmeshed in great affairs that his woman’s father had fallen beneath his notice. Segestes sighed, out in front of the thatch-roofed farmhouse. He’d always thought of himself as a man of consequence, but he could hardly deny that events had outrun him these past few months.

“They wouldn’t have if he’d listened to me,” Segestes murmured.

“What’s that?” one of his warriors asked.

“Varus,” Segestes said. “If only he’d listened to me. Are there any words sadder than I told you so? The only time anyone ever gets to say them is when it’s already too late for them to do any good.”

“I never thought of it like that.” By the puzzled expression on the retainer’s face, he didn’t waste a lot of time thinking. He was a good man with a spear in his hands, though. Everyone had his strengths and his failings. Segestes sighed again. His failing was that he’d been born into a German body, not a Roman one.

He knew what the Romans thought of his folk. He knew that, in Varus’ eyes, he’d been as much a barbarian as Arminius. He sighed once more. Time would have solved that. Had the Romans brought Germany into the Empire, his grandchildren’s grandchildren would have been unquestioned Romans, as babies born in Gaul now were.

That wasn’t going to happen, not now. Whether Arminius had done something good or bad, men could argue one way or the other. That he’d done something great . . . nobody could doubt.

Germany would not be Roman. Three legions gone? Taken all in all, the Roman Empire had no more than thirty or so. One soldier in ten from all the Empire had perished in the swamps and woods not too far north of where he stood. Augustus was a canny man. He wouldn’t risk such a disaster twice. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk it once. But Varus thought he could trust Arminius, and. . . .

Three or four Roman fugitives had made it here after the battle. Segestes hid them for a little while, fed them, gave them barley cakes and sausage to carry when they left, and sent them away by night. He wished he could do more, but more would have cost him his life if word got out . . . and word of such things always got out. You did everything you could do, not everything you wanted to do.

Unless you were Arminius. Segestes’ scarred hands folded into fists.

Arminius had done everything anyone could have wanted to do.

Or had he? Men said he’d intended to cross the Rhine and plunder Gaul - maybe even try to take it away from the Romans. His army got to the river, but it didn’t cross over. What would he do with all those warriors now? How long could he keep feeding them? How long before the galloping shits or chest fever broke out among them?

Segestes laughed harshly. Arminius had served with the Romans, learning their ways so he could fight them better. Segestes had served with them, too, years earlier. Arminius would have seen how the legions kept themselves supplied. He would have seen how they kept their camps clean.

And how much good would it have done him? He was dealing with Germans here, not Romans. Supply wagons? Rafts carrying grain along rivers? Segestes laughed again. He knew his own folk hadn’t a prayer of organizing anything like that. German encampments were always filthy, too. The Romans said dirt led straight to disease. From everything Segestes had seen, they knew what they were talking about, as they commonly did.

“What’s funny, lord?” his retainer asked.

“Funny? Everything in the world, or maybe nothing at all,” Segestes said.

The warrior scratched his head. A moment later, he squashed something between his thumbnails. That made Segestes want to scratch, too. “I don’t think I understand,” the younger man said.

“Well, don’t worry your head about it,” Segestes said. “I don’t think I understand, either.”

His retainer scratched some more. He didn’t come up with any new vermin - or, if he did, Segestes didn’t see him do it, which was good enough.

A few days later, a solitary warrior approached the steading. The chieftain’s followers led the fellow to Segestes himself. Three of them stood between the man and Segestes. If the fellow had come with murder on his mind, he’d have to go through them to get at his target.