Give Me Back My Legions(54)

Here, some Romans felled trees. Others trimmed them. Others hoisted them into position on the palisade. Others dug a trench around the ring of sharpened tree trunks. Others took the spoil from the diggers’ work and shaped it into a rampart. And still others stood to arms, ready to ward the laboring legionaries against surprise attack.

“How can we stop them?” Sigimerus seemed gloomier still. “They’re like ants or bees, aren’t they? A big hive of Romans . . .” He ruefully shook his head.

“They can sting, all right,” Arminius said. “But you put your finger on it yourself - so can we. Somehow, we have to arrange it so we meet them on ground that gives us the edge. Then . . . we strike!”

“That sounds good, son. But a lot of things that sound good aren’t so easy to bring off,” Sigimerus said. “Just look at the swinehounds. They’re ready for anything. You can tell. They’d almost thank us for wading into them. It’d give them the chance to make us sorry we were ever born.”

“Too right. I remember an ambush in Pannonia. The Pannonians thought they were ambushing us while we made camp, but it turned out to work the other way around,” Arminius said. “Minucius - the military tribune who led us - picked a spot near some woods, so the enemy could gather there and think he was safe. But we figured they were in there, and we were out in the open, so we had plenty of room to deploy when they showed themselves. Oh, we made them pay!” He smiled at the memory - he’d fought well and his side had won, even if it was also the Romans’ side.

His father’s expression came closer to despair. “If they always take such pains, how will we ever beat them?”

“I said it before - they have to make a mistake,” Arminius answered. “They aren’t gods, Father. They’re men, and little men at that. They make mistakes all the time, just like us. We have to get them to make the kind of mistake that serves our need.”

“Yes, you said that before, too.” Sigimerus sounded like a man talking to a young, foolish son, trying to get him to see his foolishness. “What you haven’t told me is how you propose to do it.”

“I haven’t told you how because I don’t know.” Arminius sounded like the young, foolish son, admitting what he would sooner deny. “But there has to be a way.”

“Why?” Sigimerus asked relentlessly. “You want the Romans to be stupid, and you’ve just spent all this time explaining to me how clever they are. Clever people are clever because they mostly don’t do stupid things.”

“Mostly!” Arminius seized on the word like a drowning man grabbing hold of a log. “That doesn’t mean they’re perfect. They aren’t! No one is smart all the time.”

“No one is smart all the time,” his father agreed. But he wasn’t looking at the Romans as they built their fortress-camp right in the middle of Germany. No - he was looking straight at Arminius.

The younger man’s cheeks and ears might have caught fire. “We can beat them,” Arminius insisted. “We have to beat them. If we let them go on the way they’re going, they will enslave us.” He stuck out his chin in defiance: of Sigimerus, of the Romans, of everything in the world that dared opposed his will. “Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Sigimerus sighed. But this time he looked at the Roman soldiers chopping and sawing and hauling and digging and building. He sighed again. His face said a great many things, none of them happy. All he said, though, was, “If we try and we fail, Germany wears the chains of slavery forever.”

“She wears them if we don’t try, too,” Arminius answered. “She’s bound to wear them then. But if we fight and win, she’s free, free forever!”

His father looked at the Romans once more. This time, he said not a word.

Quinctilius Varus didn’t like to sit up when he dined, but even a chair with a back was a luxury in Mindenum. A couch - a whole set of couches - would have made these bluff, straightforward soldiers grumble. Varus knew that, no matter how little he cared for it. He also knew he had to get along with the officers. It was not only that they were the men who carried out his orders. If he didn’t stay on good terms with them, he had no one but his slaves to talk to. In this straitened place, that wasn’t enough.

Under the chief cook’s watchful and anxious eyes, two kitchen slaves - hulking Germans - carried a covered silver tray into the tent doing duty for a dining hall and set it on the table. One of them protected his hand with a big of rag as he grabbed the cover’s handle and pulled it off. Steam and savory smells filled the tent. Varus and the other diners exclaimed in delight. A couple of the soldiers even clapped their hands. What could you expect from such people?