What kind of education was Gaius Quinctilius Varus getting in Athens? Arminius had no real notion. Carefully, he said, “I learned much in the Roman army.” I learned how dangerous you people really are.
“I’ll bet you did,” Varus said, but he was still smiling, so he couldn’t suspect what lessons Arminius had drawn from his service. “Nothing like Roman discipline here in Germany now, is there?”
“No, sir.” Arminius spoke nothing but the truth there. It worried him. Unless he caught the Romans by surprise, that discipline made them formidable foes. And how could he surprise them when they sent out scouts in all directions?
“When you Germans gain discipline, I wouldn’t be surprised if you show the world a thing or two,” Varus said. “You need us to teach you what you should know.”
“Your folk taught me a lot when I served.” Again, Arminius didn’t specify what he’d learned.
The Roman governor of his homeland nodded to him. “Good. That’s good. Little by little, Germans will pick up Roman ways. That kind of thing has been happening for a while now on the other side of the Rhine. Some of the Gauls use Latin more than their own language, they really do. Some of them - may the gods strike me dead if I lie - some of them, I say, are even starting to write Latin poetry.”
Arminius tried to imagine Germans writing Latin poetry. If ever anyone from his own folk undertook such a thing, Germany would be a very different place. It would also be a place he had no desire to see.
Nodding again, Quinctilius Varus went on, “Well, I didn’t call you here to have you listen to me going on about how things wrill be a lifetime from now. As long as your woman is with you willingly, this complaint from Segestes can go by the board. But he is a citizen, and you are a citizen, and so it was up to me to get to the bottom of things. I trust you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Arminius said.
“All right, then. You may go.” After another hesitation, Varus added, “I hope I see you again sometime.”
“May it be so.” May I see you on your knees, begging for the mercy you’ll never find. But none of that showed on Arminius’ face. He rose from the stool, bowed, and left the closed-off space that served as Varus’ office. He also left the enormous tent as fast as he could. ‘Never give somebody the chance to change his mind was another thing he’d learned from the Romans.
He jumped onto his horse without needing a leg-up. He would rather have died than asked a favor from a passing legionary. He swung the animal’s head around and left the encampment at Mindenum by the gate through which he’d come in.
“He’s just a boy,” Varus said in slightly surprised tones.
“Rather a large and muscular boy, sir,” Aristocles replied.
“Just a boy,” Varus repeated, as if the pedisequus hadn’t spoken. “A boy, besotted with one of those blond German girls.” He leered; he couldn’t help himself. German women always reminded him of Roman whores. In a mostly dark-haired land, those wigs made the whores stand out. And every time he saw or even thought about the naturally fair German wenches, he couldn’t keep lewd imaginings out of his mind.
“So you are going to let him keep her?” his slave inquired.
“Yes, of course I am. I’d have to start a war to take her away. I’m sure she’s no Helen, and I’m just as sure I’m no Agamemnon,” Varus said. “Unpleasant place to be in, you know - either I make this Arminius angry, or I do the same to that Segestes. Arminius has the girl, and she seems happy enough to be had. As long as she does, her father will just have to find something else to worry about.”
“They’re all barbarians up here,” Aristocles said with a discreet shudder. “Will, uh, Segestes, be so offended you ruled against him that he’ll try to kill you without worrying about what will happen to him the next heartbeat?”
“Pleasant thought.” Varus sent the pedisequus a sour stare. The worst of it was, he couldn’t even rebuke the Greekling, because it was a legitimate question. “I don’t think so,” Varus said after a moment. “For a German, Segestes seemed fairly civilized. Arminius struck me as more likely to imitate Achilles if I took the woman away - except he’d fight instead of sulking in his tent.”
“Not an Achilles when it comes to looks.” Aristocles said that about every German he set eyes on. The northerners’ blunt features didn’t appeal to him. That was why he surprised Varus when he added, “I’ve seen worse, though - I will say that.”
“Don’t tell me he’s gone and turned your head!” the Roman exclaimed with a laugh.
Aristocles tossed his head in an emphatic negative. “Oh, no. Too big and hairy to be really interesting. But . . . not bad. Better than I expected to find in this gods-forsaken wilderness.”
“The Germans frown on such sports, same as the Gauls do. Better not to let Arminius know,” Varus said.
“Savages,” Aristocles said, sniffing. He smiled crookedly. “I’ll get by, sir. I’m not one who can’t make do with women.”
Like a lot of Roman aristocrats, Varus had a boy now and then for variety’s sake. He strongly preferred the other side of the coin, though. “I rather fancy Arminius myself,” he said. One of Aristocles’ eyebrows leaped toward his hairline; like any sensible slave, he knew his master’s states. Chuckling, Varus went on, “Not that way. But I like him. He puts me in mind of Gaius.”
“You’re joking!” Aristocles blurted. Even a slave could occasionally be guilty of saying the first thing that popped into his head.
A slave who did say the first thing that popped into his head could regret it for a long time afterwards, too. But Quinctilius Varus was not a vicious or vindictive man. He had his vices, but that wasn’t one of them. “I don’t aim to adopt him, for heaven’s sake,” the Roman governor said. “He does remind me of my boy, though, the way one puppy will remind you of another. He’s all big paws and curiosity, trying to see how the world works. He happened to study with centurions, not philosophers, but you could do worse.”
This time, the pedisequus had his wits about him again, and said nothing at all. The slightest twitch at the left corner of his mouth, the tiniest flare of his nostrils, gave some hint of what he thought of the men who were the backbone of the Roman army. Varus missed those. While a slave had to - or had better - pay close attention to his master’s expressions, the converse did not apply.
Varus changed the subject: “Pretty soon, we’ll start sending soldiers out to collect taxes. About time the Germans find out what they need to do to make proper provincials.”
“Oh, they’ll love that, they will.” Irony soured Aristocles’ voice.
His master only shrugged. “If you climb onto a half-broken horse, he’ll do his best to throw you off on your head. But if you don’t break him, you’ll never be able to get up on his back. If we don’t show the Germans that this province belongs to us now and has to follow our rules, then we might as well have stayed on the other side of the Rhine.”
“I wish we would have, sir,” Aristocles said. “Vetera was bad enough, but Mindenum is ... worse than bad enough, meaning no offense to our gallant troops and their stalwart officers.” By his tone, Aristocles aimed to affront every military man in the entire Roman Empire.
“Well, we’ll be back in Vetera come fall,” Varus said. “By then, I want the natives to get it through their thick heads that this is our land now, and things will go the way they would anywhere else Rome rules.”
“The sooner you set this place in order, the sooner we can get back to Rome or any other civilized place, the happier I’ll be.” No sarcasm now: the pedisequus spoke with deep and obvious sincerity.
“There are other places I’d rather be, too,” Quinctilius Varus said. “When Augustus summoned me, I thought he’d send me somewhere else. You know that, Aristocles. This was a surprise, and not a nice one. But being here is also a compliment of sorts.”