Give Me Back My Legions(15)

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 were so 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.