Give Me Back My Legions(4)

“When my father conquered Gaul, he did it in one campaign, and the conquest stuck,” Augustus said fretfully. He was Julius Caesar’s sister’s grandson. But he was also Caesar’s heir and adopted son, and he’d taken advantage of that for more than half a century now. The comparison still had to weigh on him, though, for he went on, “I’ve been sending armies into Germany the past twenty years. They mostly win when they fight the Germans, but the country isn’t subdued yet. And it needs to be. A frontier that runs from the Elbe to the Danube is much shorter and easier to garrison and cheaper to maintain than the one we’ve got now, on the Rhine and the Danube. I could hold it with far fewer soldiers.”

“Yes, sir.” Varus suspected Augustus had got to the root of things right there. Augustus had been cutting the army down to size ever since winning supreme power. Paying soldiers was the most expensive thing the Roman government did. A shorter frontier would mean he didn’t have to pay so many of them.

“Besides,” Augustus added, “the Germans are a pack of troublemakers. They sneak over the Rhine and raid Gaul. They helped stir up the Pannonian rebels - they’ve given them aid and comfort, too. I want them suppressed. It’s about time. We’ve played games with them for too cursed long.”

A cold wind seemed to blow through the little room. You’ll answer for it if you don’t suppress them. Augustus didn’t say that, but Varus knew he meant it. The ruler of the Roman world rewarded success. He punished failure, failure of every kind. His own daughter Julia had languished on a hot, miserable island for years because of infidelity and vice. No, he didn’t fancy people who couldn’t live up to what he expected of them.

Licking his lips, Varus asked, “What kind of force will I have to bring the Germans into line?”

“Three legions,” Augustus answered. “The XVII, the XVIII, and the XIX. They’re all solid outfits. I’d give you even more if Tiberius didn’t have a full-sized war on his hands. But three should be plenty for the job. We have made progress in Germany. We just haven’t made enough.”

“Three legions!” Varus echoed. After Augustus’ cuts, there were only thirty all through the Empire. Excitement coursed through the younger man. He would command close to twenty thousand elite soldiers. Once he pacified Germany, people might not think of him in the same breath as Julius Caesar, but they would remember him. They’d remember him forever. He inclined his head to his wife’s great-uncle. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

“I wouldn’t give you the men if I thought you would,” Augustus said.

Arminius led half a cohort of German auxiliaries down a trail in western Pannonia. A town called Poetovio lay not far away. The Roman legion to which his Germans were attached had retaken it from the Pannonian rebels a few days before. Deserters from the enemy said the Pannonians wanted to take it back; their warriors still prowled the neighborhood.

“Keep your eyes open!” Arminius called in his own guttural language. “We don’t want these barbarians giving us a nasty surprise.”

Some of the Germans chuckled. As far as the Romans were concerned, they were even more barbarous than the Pannonians. But they’d taken service with Rome. Why not? Augustus was a good paymaster. The Pannonian rebels weren’t, which meant that few Germans had gone over to them.

One of the soldiers said, “Nothing to fear in open woods like these. The rebels couldn’t set up a proper ambush even if they wanted to.”

“Keep your eyes open anyway,” Arminius answered. The other German nodded, but it was the kind of nod a man gave a chief he was humoring. Arminius recognized it; he’d used that kind of nod often enough himself.

And the other warrior had reason enough to use it here. By German standards, these woods were open. Pannonia lay south of the Danube and also well to the east of the lands of the Cherusci, Arminius’ tribe. It was warmer, drier country than he was used to. Woods here were full of oak and ash and other broad-leafed trees. They were nothing like the dark forests of Germany, with pines and spruces growing close together, with a formidable understory of bushes and ferns, and marshes and swamps and bogs ready to swallow up a traveler unwary enough to wander off the track.

Rome had pushed her border up to the Danube in these parts only a generation earlier: not long after the legions reached the Rhine. Tidy, thrifty Augustus wanted to push east to the Elbe, which would shorten the frontier by hundreds of miles and let him use fewer legions to garrison it. The Pannonians hadn’t much minded at first, not till they saw that permanent occupation went hand in hand with higher taxes than they’d ever known - till they discovered they were enslaved, in other words. Then they rose under two men named Bato and a third called Pinnes. They’d put up a good fight, but the Romans were wearing them down at last.