“I do not believe there is any such veil,” Varus said.
“Yes. I know.” Segestes nodded sadly. “A fool never believes he is a fool. A cuckold never believes his wife opens her legs for another man. But whether you believe or not, others do, by the gods.”
“Farewell, Segestes,” Quinctilius Varus said, his tone even more frigid than before.
“Farewell, sir,” Segestes replied. “If we meet again in a year’s time, you may laugh in my face. I will bow my head and suffer it as best I may.”
“I look forward to it,” Varus said.
“Believe it or not, your Excellency, so do I.” Segestes left with the last word. He could have done without it.
XV
Heat came to Germany but seldom. When it did, as on this stifling late-summer day, it came with a thick blanket of humidity such as Mediterranean lands never knew. Sweating, itching, scratching, swearing legionaries tore Mindenum to pieces.
“Gods, I hope we never have to do this shitty job again,” one of them said.
“Sure - and then you wake up,” another Roman said with a scornful laugh. “We build ‘em. We take ‘em down. Then we build ‘em one more time.”
Quinctilius Varus nodded as he watched the legionaries work. That was what they were for, all right. They were beasts of burden, more clever and versatile than mules or oxen, but beasts of burden all the same.
“Well, I hope the stupid fucking governor makes up his stupid fucking mind one of these years,” the first soldier said.
“Sure - and then you wake up,” the other man repeated. This time they both laughed, the way men will when there’s really nothing to laugh about but the only other choice is to go on swearing.
Somebody behind Varus laughed, too. The governor whirled angrily. Aristocles’ face was as innocent as if he’d never heard anything funny in his life. Arminius and Sigimerus also might have been carved from mirthless marble. Varus fumed, his ears burning. Sometimes even a man of exalted rank could look ridiculous in front of his inferiors.
He pulled himself together. “We’ll be ready to march soon,” he told Arminius.
“Yes, sir. So I see,” the German said. “Your men always do everything very smoothly.”
“Roman efficiency,” Varus said, not without pride. “I expect we’ll show you more of it on the march.”
“Oh, so do I,” Arminius replied. “And I thank you for finally taking me up on the route I offered you.”
Tall, wet-looking, anvil-headed clouds drifted across the sky. The sun played hide-and-seek behind them, but the day got no cooler, no less muggy, when it disappeared for a few minutes. Two days earlier, some of those clouds had let loose in a thunderstorm the likes of which Varus had seldom seen. For all he knew, they might do it again any time - when the legions were on the move, for instance.
“If the weather is better - drier - farther north, that’s the way we want to go,” he said.
Arminius nodded. “Oh, yes. It almost always is.” He nudged his father and spoke to him in their guttural tongue.
Thus prompted, Sigimerus also nodded. “Weather better. Ja,” he said in his dreadful Latin. The last word wasn’t really, but it was one of the handful Varus had learned from the Germans’ language.
“You will see the country I spring from.” Arminius was far more fluent - far more civilized, when you got right down to it.
“Oh, joy. One more bloody flea-bitten pesthole in a land packed full of them,” Aristocles said.
For a moment, Varus wondered why Arminius didn’t draw his sword and try to cut the insolent slave in half. Then he realized the pedisequus had spoken with a straight face and mild tones - and, much more to the point, had spoken in Greek. To Varus, with his fancy education and years of service in the East, it was as natural as Latin. To a rude German, though, it would only be noises.
“Now, now,” Varus said, also in Greek. “It’s his, such as it is. Only natural for him to be proud of it.”
“A swallow must be proud of a nest of sticks and mud,” Aristocles retorted. “That doesn’t mean I want to go out of my way to visit.”
Arminius looked from one of them to the other. When neither offered to translate, the German shrugged his broad shoulders. Maybe he wondered if they were talking about him behind his back, so to speak. If he did, he didn’t look angry about it, the way Varus thought a barbarian would be bound to do.
Clang! A legionary threw an iron tripod into a wagon. The Romans would bury more iron, but not where Arminius or any other German could watch them do it. They didn’t want the savages digging up the metal and hammering it into spearheads and sword blades.
Things did go smoothly. And why not? The soldiers tore Mindenum down every year at this time. They’d had plenty of practice by now. Would they still wreck it at the end of summer twenty years from now? Or would they stay here around the year by then, to garrison a peaceful province? If they don’t, Varus thought, I haven’t done my job.
That led to another thought. If I don’t do my job, what will Augustus do to me? Varus had already brooded about some of those possibilities. Disgrace. Exile. A desert island miles and miles from anything but another desert island. Even if he escaped all those, failure would bring Augustus’ disapproval down on him, and Augustus’ disapproval was colder than any blizzard on the Rhine.
I’d better not fail, then, he told himself.
“Did you ever hear it rains less up on the other side of the hills than it does down here?” Lucius Eggius asked Ceionius.
The other camp prefect shook his head. “No. But I never heard it rains more there than it does here, either. So that should be a wash. These Germans are like so many Syrian fig-sellers: they’ll tell any kind of lie to get you to go their way. But I think it’ll work out all right.”
“Hope so,” Eggius said. “This stinking trail sure isn’t everything it ought to be. We had what was almost a proper path - not a real road, on account of it wasn’t paved, but a path, anyhow - going straight west from Mindenum. This scrawny little thing isn’t anything like it.”
“It’s all right as long as we’re in the meadows. I just don’t like it when it twists through the woods.” Ceionius returned to his previous theme: “Don’t worry about it, Lucius. Like I say, Germans lie all the time. Do you know what that old fox of a Segestes said to blacken Arminius’ name while you were out on patrol?”
“Tell me,” Eggius urged.
“He said warriors were heading off to jump us somewhere.” Ceionius laughed. “I’d like to see ‘em try.”
“I wouldn’t.” Eggius wasn’t laughing. “I passed through a bunch of half-empty villages and steadings this summer. The old men who’d stayed behind claimed their fighters were off getting ready to go to war against the Chauci. If they were getting ready to go to war against us instead ...”
“You always were more jittery than you need to be,” Ceionius said.
“I’ve got more experience with the Germans than you do,” Lucius Eggius replied. “No such thing as being too jittery around them. They always try to come up with sneaky new ways to screw us over. I’d better talk to Varus.”
“He won’t listen,” Ceionius predicted.
That struck Eggius as much too likely. Even so, he said, “I’d better
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Ceionius warned him as he booted his horse forward. A stubborn man, Eggius nodded and pressed on.
He had a demon of a time catching up to Varus. The trail did dive into a forest. Tree trunks pressed close on either side. Marching legionaries could hardly squeeze in close to make way for him, no matter how he shouted and swore. Regardless of his rank, they swore back at him.