He waited. Eggius didn’t say anything. What could the officer say? If Varus had decided to trust Arminius, nothing he heard was likely to persuade him to do anything else. And he had. And every yard his horse fought to gain made him wish he’ d done it sooner.
Give Me Back My Legions!
XII
“He almost bit, Father! By the gods, he almost did!” Arminius couldn’t hide his own excitement as they made their way north and west, back toward their own country. “He was like a fat trout. He nibbled at the worm, and he never saw the hook.”
“Like a trout, or like a water dragon?” Sigimerus asked. “What would you have done if he’d decided to take your route? What could you have done except let him take it - and eat half a dozen tribes out of house and home along the way? No one in Germany would have loved you after that. And you couldn’t have gathered an army together fast enough to fight him.”
Arminius scowled, not because his father was wrong but because he was right. Rain dripped through the pines. Arminius and Sigimerus both had their cloaks up over their heads. They were both wet even so. The rain also turned the track to mud. They slogged on without complaint - things in Germany had always been like this.
“Next year,” Arminius said. “Next year we can be ready - I’m sure of it. All Varus has to do is take the bait.”
“And then what?” Sigimerus insisted on looking at all the things that could go wrong. “Varus and the Romans see we have an army. So what? They have an army, too. They don’t fight like us, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad at it. If they were, we would have driven them off years before you were born.”
Rain dripping off the end of his nose, Arminius scowled again, for the same reason as before. He knew how good the Romans were. He hadn’t just seen them fight or stood against them - he’d used their system. He not only understood that it worked, he understood how it worked.
In his mind’s eye, he heard Roman trumpets blaring. He saw the swarthy little men moving from marching order to line of battle without wasted motion. He imagined the blizzard of javelins they’d send up, the wall of their big shields, and the way their sharp swords would bite like vipers.
“We have to ruin them before they can deploy.” He’d said that before . His inner picture of the legions getting ready to face a German host only made the words seem more urgent now.
Urgency failed to impress his father. “All very well to talk about it. How do you aim to do it?”
The question was as pointed as a Roman gladius. “We have to take them in a place where they can’t swing from column into line,” Arminius said.
“And where will you find a place like that?” his father asked. “You can wish for one, but it’s not the same thing.”
“I’ll do more than wish. I’ll be traveling this winter anyhow. Everywhere I go, I’ll look for what we need. Sooner or later, I’m bound to find it. Germany isn’t all flatlands and fields. If I keep my eyes open, I’ll find something.” Arminius made himself sound confident.
“I hope you’re right,” Sigimerus said. “Me, I’ll be glad to get home to your mother for a while. And I expect you won’t be sorry to see Thusnelda again, either.”
In spite of the rain, Arminius’ blood heated. “That’s so,” he said. He’d bought relief a few times while staying at Mindenum. Seeing German women selling themselves for silver distressed him, but not enough to keep him from taking advantage of them. He thought his father had done the same thing, though neither asked the other about it. If you were a long way from your woman, you took what you could find.
If she did the same while you were away, you had the right to slit her throat and fling her faithless body into a bog. Men didn’t need to be chaste, but women did.
“You should get a child on her,” Sigimerus said. “That will bind her to you even after passion fades.”
“Good advice.” Arminius smiled wolfishly. “You’d best believe I aim to try.” Both men laughed. Arminius tried to pick up the pace, but the sloppy path wouldn’t let him. “Gods curse this mud,” he said, and laughed again, this time on a different note. “Now I understand why the Romans want to build their roads in our land.”
“So they can get to our women in a hurry,” Sigimerus said: one more gibe with too much truth behind it.
A jay screeched, high up in a pine. Most of the birds were gone now, heading off to the south: toward the Roman Empire. Some stubborn ones stayed through the winter, though. Vultures and ravens and carrion crows squabbled over carcasses regardless of the season. Arminius wanted to glut them on Roman meat. He had a plan. He needed a place.