“One I could do without,” Aristocles muttered.
“I understand that,” Varus told him. “Believe me, I do. If Augustus needs me here, though, how can I refuse him? This is an important assignment, more important than governing Syria was. Syria is a broken horse. As I said, we still have to break Germany. I still have to break Germany.” He thrust out his chin.
“Breaking this country is the best thing anyone could do to it,” the pedisequus said. “If Augustus wanted a horse trainer here, he should have sent a general, not an administrator.”
“Tiberius is stuck in Pannonia. I’m sure he’d be here if not for the uprising,” Varus replied. “His ties to Augustus are tighter than mine, and he’s proved himself a soldier, which I haven’t done yet.”
“Plenty of other sprats in the sea. Plenty of other officers in the army,” Aristocles observed.
“But not plenty Augustus trusts in command of three legions,” Varus said. “Remember all the civil wars when we were young? We’ve had thirty years with none of that. A general who rebelled with three legions at his back could set the Empire aflame again. Augustus gave me this command not least because he knows I’m loyal to him.”
He pulled a denarius from his belt pouch and stared at the profile of his wife’s great-uncle gleaming in silver. What would it be like to have his own face on money so the whole world knew what he looked like? He’d had ‘Varus’ stamped on some of the coins he’d issued to the legionaries here, but that wasn’t the same.
He shook his head. If he challenged Augustus, he would lose. Everyone who challenged Augustus lost. Varus had no stomach for war against his benefactor, anyway. He had little stomach for war against the Germans, either. But he would do what he had to do. He wondered if Arminius would help him. He hoped so. Nothing made subduing a province easier than willing native stooges.
74
V
Caldus Caelius led a column of Romans through the German woods. People spoke of the woods as trackless, but they weren’t really. All kinds of narrow tracks ran through them. Deer had made some, aurochs others, men still others. Deciding which kind was which wasn’t always easy - not if you were a Roman.
Orders from Mindenum were to be careful, whatever that meant. Caelius knew what it would have meant in more open country: vanguard, rear guard, and flanking parties out to both sides to make sure nobody could sneak up on the main body of troops. Only one trouble: that kind of due diligence was impossible in this terrain.
Traveling along a path was pretty simple - as long as you marched in single file, or, on what was unquestionably a man-made track, perhaps two abreast. A vanguard too far ahead or a rear guard too far behind could be ambushed and slaughtered before the main force came to its rescue. In this thick forest, flank guards were simply impossible; they hadn’t a prayer of keeping up.
And so Caelius had a vanguard and rear guard of sorts, but not the sorts he would have wanted. Instead of flank guards, he had extra buccinatores. He had to hope blaring trumpets would make up for lack of protection. The hope wasn’t altogether forlorn: other Roman columns were pushing through these woods, too.
“One of these days, we’ll have proper roads here,” Caelius said. His sword was sheathed, but he could grab it in a hurry if he had to.
“Fat lot of good that does us now,” one of the legionaries said.
Several other men laughed. That meant Caelius couldn’t blister the mouthy soldier the way he wanted to. A clown could get away with all kinds of things. Instead of swearing, Caelius imagined a proper Roman road, broad and solid, well paved and well drained, the trees cut back on both sides to make way for it. That would be a demon of a lot better than this narrow, miserable, meandering track.
“If Rome needs money so bad, we’ve got to squeeze it out of places like this, we’re all in big trouble,” the wit went on. He’d got away with one joke, so he thought he could get away with two.
“Oh, put a plug in it, Lucius,” Caelius said. “These Germans are ours now, see? So they’ve got to get used to acting like they belong in the Empire. And that means paying up when it’s time to pay. Simple, right. You’re pretty simple yourself, right?”
Lucius said nothing. When a superior got on you, nothing was the smartest thing you could say. Caldus Caelius wished again for a Roman highway. The legions could really move down roads like those. And, better yet, they could see what was moving against them.
A raven croaked, up in a tree. Did that mean the Romans had disturbed it, or had it seen some Germans sneaking through the woods? How could you know before you found out the hard way?
You couldn’t. When you boiled everything down, that was what you had left. Caelius made sure the sword was loose in its scabbard. If a big enough mob of barbarians jumped his troop, he and all the men he led would die. He knew that. But they’d take a bunch of Germans with them. The natives knew that. It had to be about the only thing that kept them from rising up.
Somebody - not Lucius, Caelius was glad to note - asked, “Where’s this lousy village we’re heading for?”
“Not far now,” Caelius said. I hope it’s not far now. If it’s where people say it is and we are where I think we are, it shouldn’t be far. In Germany, you couldn’t take either of those for granted. You couldn’t take anything for granted, not if you wanted to go on breathing. Caldus Caelius was in favor of breathing. He aimed to go on doing it for a long time.
Less than a quarter of an hour later, the track came out into a clearing. Behind Caelius, the legionaries muttered in glad surprise. The sunshine was cool and watery, nothing like the savage sun of southern Italy that had baked Caelius when he was a naked little boy. Even so, he had to blink several times against the unexpected glare.
Pigs with a tall ridge of hair on their backs ran for the woods. Pigs weren’t so dumb: they knew trouble when they smelled it. A couple of small, rough-coated ponies and several shaggy cows and scrawny sheep grazed on the meadow. Men and women worked in the fields with scythes and sickles - harvest time was here. They planted in the spring and reaped in the fall. That seemed unnatural to Caelius, who’d grown up in a country where summer rain was a prodigy.
One by one, the Germans stopped working. They stared at the Roman soldiers. “Deploy,” Caelius said quietly. Maybe he could forestall trouble by showing he was ready for it.
He had orders - which he didn’t much like - not to antagonize the natives. But he was here in the field, and Varus’ Greek slave, who’d relayed those orders, bloody well wasn’t. Caelius figured he could interpret them as he thought best. If the Germans decided he’d kill them for getting uppity, they’d stay quiet. As far as he was concerned, that was the same as not antagonizing them.
He did advance toward the people working in the fields without a weapon in his right hand. That made him feel naked, but not nearly so naked as he would have felt without a bunch of legionaries at his back.
“Hail!” he called in what came fairly close to being the language the Germans used. He knew a handful of other words, but he’d picked them up from joy girls. These large, somber men wouldn’t want to hear them. He went on in his own tongue: “Do any of you speak Latin?”
“I do,” said a mustachioed barbarian not far from his own age. “Don’t good speak, but speak. You what want?”
“Taxes,” Caldus Caelius answered.
“What is - are -taxes?” the German asked. He overtopped Caelius by half a head. A great big sword hung from his left hip. Why would you wear a sword to work in the fields? Because some other savages were liable to jump you- -that was the only answer the Roman saw.