Give Me Back My Legions(26)

“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.”





Give Me Back My Legions!


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.”

“It’s like something out of Homer,” Vala Numonius said. Had Eggius seen him in the tavern, he might not have made his crack about upper-crust Romans learning Greek. The cavalry commander was a Roman like that. He showed he knew the Iliad, continuing, “What turned the Greeks against Troy? Paris running off with Helen, that’s what. And what made Achilles angry? Agamemnon keeping Briseis when he had no right to her.”

“And they all fought a bloody big war on account of it.” Eggius knew that much, anyhow. Who didn’t? “We don’t want ‘em doing that here.”

“Me, I wouldn’t mind if they did. The more they kill each other off, the better, far as I’m concerned,” Caldus Caelius said. “I wished they’d all do each other in.” He eyed the statuesque barmaid and appeared to have second thoughts. “Well, the men, anyway.”

“There you go, son,” Eggius said. “Think with your crotch and you’ll always know where you stand.” Everybody groaned. Someone threw a barley roll at him. Showing a soldier’s quick reflexes, he caught it out of the air and ate it. He would have liked to dip it in olive oil, but not much of that made it to Mindenum, either. The Germans used butter instead. Eggius might have acquired a taste for beer, but he drew the line at butter.

“The father is a Roman citizen. So is the fellow who ran away with the girl,” Vala Numonius said.

“An upstanding Roman citizen,” another officer put in, and drew more groans.

Numonius ignored him, proceeding down his own track: “So it must be proper for Quinctilius Varus to sort out the rights and wrongs, whatever they happen to be.”

He’d come to Germany with Varus. He was going to assume the man from whom he’d got the command was right no matter what. That was how the world worked. Eggius understood such things perfectly well. Who didn’t, who hadn’t been born yesterday?

Eggius could still get in a jab or two: “So what will he do, then? Tell them to cut the wench in half, so they both get a share?”

“That’s what the Jews did once upon a time, only with a baby,” Vala Numonius said. “Lots of those crazy Jews in Syria.”