He didn’t soften up the Romans as much as he’d hoped. “Our eagle has its eye on you,” one sentry snarled. The others nodded. A couple of them let their hands fall to the hilts of their gladii.
“Careful, now,” Sigimerus said out of the side of his mouth, his lips barely moving.
“I know,” Arminius answered the same way. When he addressed the Romans again, he raised his voice: “Would you please be kind enough to let his Excellency the governor know I’m here?” If Varus knew, the legionaries couldn’t kill him right here and then claim they hadn’t realized who he was. And the looks on their faces said they wanted to.
Most reluctantly, one of the sentries went back into the encampment. “May we enter?” Sigimerus asked in his slow, halting Latin. “I am not a young man any more. I get tired standing out here in the sun.”
He and Arminius had practiced at swords not long after sunup. If he’d been tired then, Arminius hadn’t noticed. Sigimerus might not be quite so fast or quite so strong as he had been when he was Arminius’ age. But he was still fast and strong enough to be dangerous - and he knew every trick all his years of fighting had taught him.
Shouts rang out inside Mindenum. Arminius hid a smile. His father was probably doing the same thing as he murmured, “See how much they love you?”
“Nothing we didn’t already know,” Arminius said. He raised his voice again: “May we come in? I don’t want to harm my father’s health.” The Romans were like Germans in respecting their elders. And, once he and Sigimerus got into Mindenum, the legionaries would have a harder time throwing them out than they would excluding them in the first place.
But one of the sentries answered, “Let’s see what the governor’s got to say. If it were up to me . . .” He didn’t say what would happen then. Arminius drew his own conclusions.
Another sentry looked over his shoulder. “Here comes his Excellency now!” The legionaries stiffened to attention. They expected their auxiliaries to do the same thing. Arminius had never seen anything so ridiculous in his life, but he’d learned the silly pose. Going along was easier than arguing, especially for one lone man facing a ponderous military machine.
The Romans thought all of Germany would take the easy road, go along, and submit to their yoke. But the Germans were not one lone man. They outnumbered the invaders. They were more determined than the Romans, too. I’m more determined than the Romans are, Arminius thought. And I can kindle Germany. I can, and I will.
A stocky figure mounted to the top of the earthen rampart. The sun gleamed from the Roman’s bald scalp. Arminius smiled and waved. “Hail, your Excellency!” he called. If the smile never reached his eyes, Quinctilius Varus couldn’t hope to notice from that distance.
Sigimerus waved, too. If he didn’t smile so broadly, he was an older man, and carried himself with more dignity. Arminius hoped Varus would think so, anyhow.
And evidently Varus did. He was at least as old as Sigimerus, but he wore a smile wider than Arminius’. “Hail! Welcome!” he said. “I didn’t know if we’d be lucky enough to see the two of you back here this year.”
“Here we are, sir,” Arminius said. “May we come into Mindenum? Your men didn’t seem to want us to.”
“You know how soldiers are,” Varus said. And Arminius did: he was one himself. If the Roman governor wasn’t, or didn’t think of himself as one, why did he hold this position? Smiling still, he went on, “You certainly have my permission to come in. I’m sure I will want your advice again and again on how best to civilize this province.”
Sigimerus growled down deep in his throat. Arminius’ gaze flicked over to his father, but the older man’s expression didn’t change. And the Romans wouldn’t have heard him. Arminius wore his smile like a mask, hiding his fury. What Varus meant by civilizing Germany was taking away its character and its freedom.
“Always a pleasure to help,” Arminius lied.
“Spoken like a Roman citizen - like the member of the Equestrian Order you are,” Varus boomed. After a moment, Arminius realized the Roman governor wasn’t really speaking to him, or wasn’t speaking to him alone. Varus was reminding the legionaries that the man outside was a tame German, a good German. He didn’t say anything to or about Sigimerus. But if the soldiers accepted Arminius, they wouldn’t mind his father.
Arminius drew himself up straight and delivered a clenched-fist Roman salute. Yes, let the legionaries see I can ape their customs. Let them see that I’m a tame German, a good German. And, when the time comes, I’ll show them just how tame and good I am.
None of that showed on his face. He probably had more practice dissembling than any other German since the gods first created his folk. Among themselves, Germans were always altogether honest (unless, of course, they saw some pressing reason not to be, as Segestes had when he broke his pledge to Arminius and tried to give Thusnelda to Tudrus). What they thought of as their innate honesty put most of them at a disadvantage when they tried to deal with deceitful foreigners.
Arminius had been shocked to discover that the Romans reckoned his folk a pack of lying, thieving savages. How could they be so blind? He finally decided that, since the Romans were liars and thieves themselves, they thought other peoples shared their vices.
“Pass in, Arminius. Pass in, Sigimerus,” Quinctilius Varus said loudly. If the sentries tried to go against that now, they would be mutinying against the provincial governor - indirectly, against Augustus himself. The Romans had some fearsome penalties for anyone who dared such a thing.
Any folk that had such penalties was bound to need them - one more argument against Rome and all its ways.
Legionaries mostly held their faces straight as Arminius and Sigimerus walked into Mindenum. They probably wouldn’t have done that if they weren’t under Varus’ eye. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have let the two Cherusci into Mindenum if not for Varus’ orders.
“That one soldier is smiling at us,” Arminius’ father whispered. “What’s wrong with him?”
Arminius got a corner-of-the-eye glimpse of the Roman his father had to mean. Sure enough, the fellow had a broad, welcoming smile plastered across his face. Arminius didn’t think the man was putting it on for Varus’ benefit, either.
“Some of the legionaries must see that the governor is right and that we aren’t dangerous to Rome.” Arminius also spoke quietly, but you never could tell whether somebody with a big nose and sharp eyes was eavesdropping. He could say what he meant even if he used words that said the exact opposite if you took them the wrong way.
“Ah. Of course.” Sigimerus understood him just fine. If a snoopy Roman thought he meant something different . . . well, that was the chance you took when you listened in on conversations not meant for you.
Several legionaries paced the Germans as they walked through the encampment. Our hounds, Arminius thought, or maybe our keepers. He called out to one of them: “Will we stay in the same place we did last summer?”
The Roman seemed embarrassed at being noticed. Arminius wondered why. The only way he could have made himself more obvious was to paint himself blue. After a moment, the man recovered enough to answer, “Yes, I think so.”
“All right. Thanks.” Arminius hadn’t really expected anything else. As he’d seen in Pannonia and here, Roman camps varied little from one place to another or from one time to another. If the legionaries had put them there last year, chances were they’d do the same thing again.
It was boring. It gave ordinary men no room to deviate from the pattern. But it worked. The Romans wouldn’t have conquered so much of the world if it hadn’t. They always camped the same way. They always fought the same way, too. If you offered them battle on ground where they could do what they usually did, chances were they’d make you regret it. No one could doubt that the Germans were the fiercest fighters the gods ever made, but the Roman legions had given them all they wanted and then some for a generation now.