“This is why the Pannonians rose up against Rome, Father,” Arminius said, even before the last legionary went off into the woods.
“Yes, I understand that,” Sigimerus said. “I always understood it here.” He tapped the side of his head with his left forefinger, then added, “Now I understand it here, too.” He cupped his testicles with his right hand.
“Well, then?” Arminius exclaimed. The looks on the faces of the other men at the steading were bad enough. The expressions his mother and Thusnelda and the other women wore seemed ten times worse. Their scorn burned like the mix of oil and brimstone and pitch Roman armies used to fire forts that held out against them. If men couldn’t protect their chattels, could thev protect their women? If they couldn’t protect their women, did they really have any balls?
But his father asked, “And how are the Pannonians doing in this war of theirs?”
Automatically, Arminius answered with the truth: “They’re losing. It will all be over in a year or two.”
“And you think we would do better because . . . ?” Sigimerus let the question hang in the air. By the way he asked it, he didn’t think his son had any good reply.
“Because the Romans had plenty of time to rope down the land before the people who live there rebelled,” Arminius said. “There were already Roman towns in Pannonia, towns full of retired Roman soldiers and their families. Roman traders were everywhere, too. The colonists helped the legions, and the traders heard about the rebels’ moves even before they made them. If we give Rome the same chance, she’ll rope us down the same way. Then we’ll lose when we do try to fight.”
He watched Sigimerus gnaw on his lower lip. His father’s unhappy gaze traveled to the women again, and grew more unhappy still. “If we rise and we lose, we’re worse off than if we hadn’t risen at all. It will spoil our strength for years - maybe forever.”
“If we don’t rise, we become the Romans’ slaves,” Arminius said. “By the gods, if we don’t rise we deserve to become the Romans’ slaves! We deserve to pay taxes every year.”
That made Sigimerus flinch. Arminius had thought it would. “Taxes!” his father spat, using the Latin word as Arminius had. “This is nothing but a fancy Roman name for stealing. They haven’t had the nerve to try collecting them before. And what did that fellow mean when he said they wouldn’t take animals next year? Was he talking about barley, or did he mean they would grab a slave - or maybe one of our own folk?”
“Neither one, I think,” Arminius said. “He meant we would have to pay in denarii - in silver.”
“That’s even worse!” Sigimerus said. He was a chief - he had silver, and even gold. But the Germans got their coins in trade from the Romans. And now the legionaries would expect people to give them back?
“You see what I mean, then,” Arminius said.
“But you’ve fought for them. Flavus is still fighting for them.” Sigimerus’ mouth twisted - all of a sudden, he didn’t like reminding himself of that at all.
Arminius grimaced, too. “My brother is like Segestes - the Romans have seduced them both.” He was careful to keep his voice down so Thusnelda wouldn’t hear him. He didn’t run down her father when she was in earshot: he saw no point in stirring up trouble when he didn’t have to. But when he did . . .
“I wasn’t finished,” Sigimerus said. “You and your brother have fought for them. I’ve fought against them. Call them as many names as you please, but they make deadly foes. If we rise - even now, before the land is roped down, as you say - we are too likely to lose. And to lose would be our great misfortune.”
That only made Arminius grimace again. He’d seen the legions in action in Germany and in Pannonia. He knew from the inside out how formidable they were. Well-equipped and orderly to a degree no high-hearted German would have tolerated for a moment, the Romans had plenty of practice holding down folk who didn’t want to be held. Pannonia was giving them even more, as if thev needed it.
“We have to take them on when they aren’t at their best,” he said, thinking aloud.
“How?” his father asked bluntly.
It was an important question, however much the younger man wished it weren’t. It was, in fact, the important question. “I don’t know yet,” Arminius admitted.
“Well, you’d better walk small till you figure it out - if you ever do,” Sigimerus said. “Otherwise, the Romans will make you sorry. Not just you, either. They’ll make all the Cherusci - all the Germans - sorry.”
Arminius tried to imagine a catastrophe that would affect all the German tribes, from the Chamavi and Tencteri pressed hard against the Rhine to his own Cherusci in the German heartland to the Marcomanni under King Maroboduus north of the Danube (Maroboduus quietly encouraged the Pannonian rebels, but only quietly - he didn’t want Roman legions marching after him next) to the Gotones far away in the east. The Gotones had kings, too, but they were so far away that Arminius didn’t know the names of any of them. What kind of catastrophe would be big enough to make all those tribes feel it?
The question suggested its own answer. A Roman province stretching from the Rhine east to the Elbe would bring most of the German tribes under Augustus’ rule - would enslave them, in other words. The Gotones would still lie beyond Rome’s reach, but they would need to change their way of doing things, too. And if - no, when - the eagles decided to lunge forward again . . .
“I have to find a way, Father. We all have to,” Arminius said. “If we don’t, they’ll own us. Have you seen that camp of theirs, that Mindenum?”
“I’ve heard about it,” Sigimerus said.
“That’s not enough,” Arminius said. “I saw plenty of legionary camps in Pannonia. I lived in one, fought in one, while I learned what they did and how they did it. But Mindenum, by all the gods, Mindenum is the biggest one I ever set eyes on. None of the ones in Pannonia comes close. And in Pannonia, at least the Romans can say they already rule the place. We’re still free - or we think we are. Mindenum says something different.”
“If we rise and we lose, that would be worse than not rising at all, bec - ” Sigimerus said.
“Yes, you told me that before,” Arminius interrupted impatiently.
His father went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “Because it would geld us at the same time as it gave them the excuse to tighten the shackles on our fatherland. We can’t afford that. I think we’re lucky to have held out against them as long as we have.”
“I promise, Father: when I set us in motion against them, we won’t fail,” Arminius said. “Or if we do, I won’t live to see it.”
“I gladly accept the first part of that oath. May the second part not come to pass,” Sigimerus said.
“Yes. May it not. But we must fight the Romans. Even the Gauls fought the Romans, though they lost.” Like most Germans, Arminius looked down his straight nose at the folk who lived in Gaul. Gallic tribes had settled a good part of Germany, till Germans drove them out of it. Germans would have occupied the west bank of the Rhine, had the Romans - not the natives - not driven them back. Against the Roman legions, honors were about even so far. That thought brought Arminius back to his main idea, “The Gauls fought well enough to keep their honor. If we roll over to show our bellies like whipped dogs, we will have none - and deserve none.”
“Dead men may have honor, but they cannot eat of it,” Sigimerus said.
“True enough. But those who come after them will remember them for aye. Their names will live in song - and deserve to,” Arminius said. “Better that than to live a long life and be forgotten like any other slaves - and deserve to be.”
His father sighed. “I cannot persuade you to set this aside?”