Give Me Back My Legions!

XVII

Lucius Eggius lurched through the mud. He had a nasty wound on the outside of his right thigh. Blood soaked the strip of cloth he’d tied around it and ran down his leg. It hurt like a bastard. So did several lesser gashes. It wasn’t often given to a man to know the date of his own death. Though not dead yet, Eggius knew when he would die.

Today.

Soon, in fact. The only reason he wasn’t already dead was that no German had decided to come after him instead of some other Roman and finish him off. At first, that had been nothing but luck. (Eggius was no longer convinced it had been good luck.) Later, after so many men fell in the first dreadful barrage of spears, Eggius not only stayed alive but fought back. He’d used his javelins. His gladius had blood on it, though the rain was washing that off. He’d made the barbarians pay for his tanned and scarred hide. And much good it had done him or anybody else.

Shrieks from the southeast said the Germans were still working their way through the Roman column. Under normal circumstances, a Roman army had a considerable advantage over a German army of the same size. Legionaries fought together, deployed together, and enjoyed all the benefits of superior discipline.

“Under normal circumstances,” Lucius Eggius muttered bitterly. Amazing how three words changed everything!

The Romans couldn’t deploy here. There was nowhere to deploy; except for the road, everything was muck and trees. The legionaries couldn’t form a shield wall to ward themselves against enemy spears while they hurled their own javelins. A horrific number of them had died or been put out of action before they ever got their shields off their backs.

Off to Eggius’ left—deeper in the swamp—whooping Germans slaughtered a small knot of Romans who’d managed to put up a bit of a fight before they died. That was about as much as the legionaries could manage.

It wasn’t just the terrain. This battle was lost, and catastrophically lost, the instant the barbarians’ first spears flew. Three legions were getting massacred not least because they couldn’t believe what was happening to them. Too many men were too dumbfounded even to try to fight back. And their fall only made their fellows’ predicament worse, which dumbfounded them, which led to.…

It led to Lucius Eggius calf-deep in clinging ooze. It was liable to lead to three legions wiped out almost to the last man. It was liable to lead to three legionary eagles being lost. Eggius’ jaw dropped. Even after everything that had happened and was happening, that thought only now crossed his mind for the first time. Legionaries guarded the eagles with their lives.

They would rather die than let an enemy seize the sacred symbols of their trade.

They were dying, all right, whether they wanted to or not. And once they finished dying, Arminius would have the prizes he must have craved all along.

Even thinking of Arminius made Lucius Eggius spit in the mud in disgust. Thinking of Arminius also made him think of Publius Quinctilius Varus. He spat again, harder this time. “As soon as the vulture gets done with Prometheus’ liver, it can start gnawing on Varus’,” Eggius growled.

He’d tried to warn the governor of Germany—now there was a title that had just turned into a monstrous joke!—about Arminius. So had gods only knew how manv other Roman officers. Varus didn’t want to listen. His rank meant he didn’t have to.

So he didn’t. And now he was paying for not listening. And so was everybody else.

Eggius limped toward some trees. If he could hide among them till the fighting stopped and the Germans went away, maybe he’d be able to sneak back toward the Rhine later and…

He laughed. In spite of everything, the idea was funny. He didn’t think he could make it to the trees. If he did, he didn’t think he’d be able to hide for long. And even if he concealed himself, he didn’t think he’d ever see the Rhine again.

A guttural shout. A tall blond man pointing at him. Four more barbarians coming along the edge of the track toward him. Two of them carried spears, one a captured Roman gladius, and one a gladius and a spear. One of them had a cut on his left arm. The other three seemed un-wounded.

They would, Eggius thought as he turned and tried to find the best footing he could. Sure as Hades’ house, he wasn’t going to reach those trees. But at least he could—he hoped he could—make the Germans kill him. You didn’t want them to take you alive. Their gods were thirsty for blood, and captives fed them.

“Surrender!” one of the barbarians yelled in Latin. Eggius shook his head.

“You don’t surrender, you die,” the German warned, shaking his spear.

“Now tell me something I didn’t know,” Eggius answered. The barbarian only scratched his head. That must have been more Latin, or harder Latin, than he could deal with. But he didn’t have to deal with it. He had the brute simplicity of sharp iron on his side.

He flung the spear at Eggius. The Roman ducked. The spear grazed his left shoulder as it flew past. The German jumped up and down, shouting something hot and guttural. Plenty of spears lay on the ground, though. He picked up another one and jumped into the muck, heading purposefully after Eggius. Two more savages followed him. They grinned and laughed in anticipation.

Grimly, Eggius set himself and waited. He couldn’t outrun them, not with his leg wound. He had to make the best fight he could. In other words, he was about to die.

He didn’t want to. But soldiering had long since shown him you had to do all kinds of things you didn’t want to. One certainty: once he did this, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything else.

That lead German thrust at him. Eggius twisted to one side and stepped forward—he still had one quick stride in him, anyhow. His gladius pierced the barbarian’s belly. The man looked absurdly surprised as he crumpled. Eggius twisted his wrist to make sure the stroke cut guts and killed.

Even before he could clear the sword, the other two Germans speared him. He’d known they would. Nothing to be done about it. He screamed—no dignity when you died, none at all. He fell on top of the barbarian he’d taken with him. After a while—not nearly soon enough—the pain faded and the torch of his life went out.

The baggage train! For many of Arminius’ Germans, the chance to loot three legions’ worth of booty was the only reason they’d joined his force. So many things here, all in one place! Traders from inside the Empire would have charged more for them than any ordinary man could hope to pay. But now anyone with a spear could take away as much as he could carry. Ordinary men could get their hands on things chieftains would envy.

By the time Arminius got to the baggage train, a lot of ordinary men were drunk. One of the things the Romans carried with them was their wine supply. In a close-run fight, that might have meant disaster. As things were, it only served to make them fiercer and, at the same time, more foolish.

Laughing like a loon, a shaggy-haired warrior capered in a transparent silk tunic some high-ranking Roman must have bought in Mindenum and been bringing back to Vetera for his ladylove. The change must have been easy for him, because he’d worn nothing underneath his stout wool cloak. He’d had nothing else to wear. He shook his hips at Arminius. “Aren’t I gorgeous?” he bawled.

“Don’t tear that cloth,” Arminius told him—the big man seemed about to burst from the tunic in several different places. “Have you got any idea how much it’s worth?”

“Why should it be worth anything? It’s hardly here at all.” The warrior put a hand under the fabric to show what he meant. “You can see right through it.”

Patiently, as if to an idiot child, Arminius said, “That’s why. Imagine it on a woman. Imagine it on your woman.”

“Ohhh,” the other German said in a low voice. Because the silk was so transparent, Arminius could see exactly what he thought of that. He liked the idea. Arminius had thought he might. No doubt much more carefully than the fellow had put on the tunic, he took it off again.

Several dozen Romans from the rear of their column—the part that hadn’t been so irretrievably shattered—counterattacked then. They had it all their own way for a moment, because the plundering Germans weren’t expecting anything like that. The legionaries fought with the desperation of men who had nothing to lose. They had to know they wouldn’t get away. They were just trying to sell their lives as dearly as they could, and doing a good job of it.

In their caligae, Arminius would have done the same thing. As it was, he pushed his own men into the fight, and went into it himself. He didn’t want to be seen—he couldn’t afford to be seen—hanging back. He thrust with his spear and then, after some Roman’s sword stroke shattered the shaft, he slashed with his sword. Red drops flew from the blade every time he swung it.

One of the legionaries recognized him. “You traitor dog!” the man shouted. “If I can drag you down to Pluto’s house in the underworld, I will!”

His gladius flicked out, quick and deadly as a striking viper, but Arminius wasn’t there to take the stroke. Quick and deadly himself, he danced away, then returned to the fight. His sword thudded off the legionary’s shield. The man was good; if he hadn’t been good, he would have died a while ago, on this field or on some earlier one.

No matter how good you were, though, nothing saved you from one German when another one tackled you from behind. The legionary let out a despairing wail as he went down. The wail cut off abruptly when Arminius’ sword descended on the back of the Roman’s neck. The stroke hewed halfway through; the legionary’s whole body convulsed. Arminius hacked again, then picked up the man’s head and waved it about.

“That was well struck!” the other German said, nodding to him. “Want to share the bugger’s stuff?”

“You can take it,” Arminius answered. “I have plenty.”

“Obliged,” the other man said. “I think his mailshirt will just about fit me. Sandals, too. The Romans make good stuff. Why can’t we do more things like that?”

“I don’t know,” Arminius said. “But they didn’t know how to win this battle—we did. That counts for more, because now all the good stuff they made is ours.”

“Sure is,” the other warrior agreed. “Get right down to it, and that’s what counts most.”

“That’s what counts for everything,” Arminius said. He looked around. Things seemed to be under control. The counterattacking Romans had done as much as flesh and blood could do—and now almost all of them had met the universal fate of flesh and blood. The last few still on their feet kept fighting hard. They wanted to make the Germans kill them outright, and it looked as if they would get their wish.

Which reminded Arminius… “Where is Varus?” he asked. But the question answered itself. Anybody who’d seen one Roman marching column had seen them all. The commander always placed himself in the same position: not far ahead of the baggage train.

Arminius’ grin was gleefully feral. How he wanted to take the Roman general alive! How the gods would love to drink Varus’ blood, to savor his screams as he died a digit’s width at a time. How Arminius himself wanted to gloat in Varus’ face. The Roman, fool that he was, had trusted him. How you could trust anyone who wasn’t your closest kin… Well, Varus had done it. And he’d paid, and Rome had paid with him. Rome would go right on paying for generations to come. Varus wouldn’t last that long.

The last legionary from that counterattacking band went down, a spear through his throat. He’d got himself a quick end. On this field, that made him one of the lucky ones. Arminius didn’t want Varus to share his luck.

“Come on!” he called to the Germans around him. He pointed forward. “Let’s go grab the Roman general!”

That drew less eagerness than he’d hoped. “Why bother?” one of them said. “He’ll get killed pretty soon any which way. And the plunder’s bound to be better here. The plunder here is better than anything!” Several other warrior solemnly nodded.

“We have to make sure,” Arminius insisted. “Besides, I want him alive. The gods in the sacred grove deserve their fair share of his suffering.”

A few of the men nodded, but only a few. The fellow who preferred looting said, “If the gods want him taken alive, they’ll fix it so he is. They don’t need us to do it right now.”

“I’ve got another reason for you to come with me,” Arminius told him.

“Oh? What’s that?” the other German asked.

“I’ll cut your lazy, cowardly heart out if you don’t,” Arminius said.

He braced himself, wondering if he’d have a fight on his hands in the next instant. The other German said, “I’ve killed enough Romans so no man can call me a coward. Lazy? Why not? Only a fool or a slave works harder than he must.”

Since Arminius felt the same way, he had trouble arguing with that. The Romans wouldn’t have agreed; they’d done great things with hard work. But what had it got them in Germany, here at the end? Only death, three legions’ worth of death.

“Come with me, then,” Arminius said. “Kill some more Romans. That still needs doing. And if you do it well, I’ll reward you from my own share of the booty.”

“Now you’re talking like a man!” the warrior exclaimed. “Let’s go!”

Others came with them, too. Even so, Arminius noticed fighters sidling off so they wouldn’t have to quit stealing. He swore at them, but sometimes there was no help for a situation. And the men he did have would probably be enough.

They had to shove their way through more plundering Germans. A couple of times, they almost had to fight their way through their countrymen. Yes, the baggage train drew his folk the way nectar drew bees. And, here and there, small groups of legionaries kept on fighting. A few of them, as mad for things as the Germans, seemed to be defending their personal property. Much good it would do them when they were dead! And dead they were, in short order.

But the sun was sinking in the west. Days were shorter than they had been in high summer. Some Romans might escape in the coming darkness. If Varus turned out to be one of them, Arminius promised himself he would kill the warrior who’d delayed him by talking back. That bonehead might not know what was important, but Arminius did.

Another determined group of Romans: determined enough to die on their terms rather than those of the Germans, anyhow. If that was what they wanted, Arminius and his comrades would oblige them. He struck and slashed like a man possessed. He split a scutum clean in half with a sword stroke, which was supposed to be impossible. The Roman holding what was left of the shield reeled away, terror and awe on his face. Arminius sprang after the fellow and cut him down.

“A god has hold of him,” one of the other Germans said to another. The second warrior nodded. That was what possession meant, wasn’t it?

Arminius didn’t think he was in a god’s clutches. He just wanted Varus. Anything that stood between him and the Roman had better watch out. And, since the legionaries standing in the way couldn’t watch out, they fell, one after another. How much time had they bought their commander? Too much? It had better not be too much!

“Onward!” Arminius roared, hoping he wasn’t too late.

Night was falling, literally and figuratively. When the end came, the best you could do was face it with style. Publius Quinctilius Varus looked around. The end was coming, all right. The end, in fact, was just about here.

An officer with wild eyes and with gore from a missing right ear splashed all over that side of his mailshirt staggered out of the ruination ahead. Varus was shocked to recognize Ceionius. The military tribune had always been so neat, so spick-and-span. No more, no more.

“Let’s surrender, your Excellency!” Ceionius cried. “If we give up now, maybe the Germans will let us live!”

Even at the end of all things, some people could still cling to illusions. Varus had clung to his much too long, but he was free of them at last. As gently as he could, he shook his head. “It’s no use any more,” he said. “We might as well fight as long as we can.”

“But—“ Ceionius said.

“No.” Quinctilius Varus cut him off. “Do as you please for yourself, and good luck to you. But the legions will not surrender.”

“You cursed stupid old fool!” Ceionius shouted. Varus bowed his head, accepting that. With a howl of despair, Ceionius dashed off toward the swamp. Maybe he’d get away. Maybe he’d find a German who would take his surrender and let him live as a slave. Maybe—but Varus didn’t believe it for a moment.

An embattled centurion not far away shouted for men to go forward and hold off the barbarians a little longer. Quinctilius Varus took him by the arm. The man jumped. His sword twitched, then stopped. Varus realized he’d almost died a little sooner than he’d intended. Well, what difference would it have made? Not much, not now.

He said what he needed to say to the centurion: “I’m sorry. I made a mistake, and we’re all paying for it. My fault—no one else’s. I am sorry.”

“Too late for that, don’t you think?” the other Roman growled.

“Too late for everything,” Varus agreed.

“Ah, bugger it,” the centurion said. “Too late for everything is right. What do you aim to do now?”

“Die,” Varus said simply.

“Want me to do the honors?”

“My slave will attend to it,” Varus replied. “But if you’d be kind enough to take him off quickly after I’m gone, I’d be grateful, and so would he.”

“I’ll tend to it,” the centurion promised. “And then I’ll look for somebody to do the same for me.”

“Thanks,” Varus said, and then, raising his voice till he sounded almost gay, “Aristocles! I’ve found someone to kill you!”

“Oh, thank you, your Excellency!” Relief filled the little Greek’s voice. “Better one of our own than… this.”

His wave took in the madness all around them. The Germans would have assailed them sooner, but a whole great swarm of the barbarians were plundering the baggage train, which wasn’t far behind. Some of the Germans guzzled wine. Others stuffed themselves with barley bread. Still others led off pack horses and murdered the slaves who’d tended them. All the barbarians seemed to be having a rare good time.

Here and there, small groups of Romans fought on. But there was no room for the legionaries to make war as they usually did, and the Germans, who were used to fighting as individuals, had all the better of it.

“I’ll be glad when I’m dead,” the centurion said. “Then I won’t see the savages steal our eagles.”

“I’m sorry,” Varus said again. He knew what the eagles meant to the men who served under them. Three legions were going down here. Was it any wonder their eagles would be lost?

A spear flew through the air. It pierced the soft ground and stood quivering only a few cubits from Varus’ feet. Aristocles said, “Not meaning to rush, sir, but I don’t think we should wait much longer.”

“No, no. Neither do I. If anyone here ever sees Augustus, tell him I’m sorry, too,” Varus said. He drew his sword. He’d never used it in war here—the first blood it would drink in Germany would be his own. He handed it to his pedisequus. “Here you go, Aristocles. I daresay you’ve dreamt of doing this for years. Strike hard!”

If Varus had little experience with the sword, Aristocles had none. A slave—a slave who wasn’t a gladiator, anyhow—caught with a blade commonly died a cruel death. Rome had seen too many slave uprisings and plots for anything else to seem safe. And so the skinny Greek held the blade as if it were a kitchen knife—and as if he didn’t know what to do with kitchen knives.

Sighing, Varus pulled up his tunic and ran his forefinger between two ribs on the left side of his chest. “Put it here and stick it in,” he said, as if he were a girl helping an eager boy lose his cherry. But you only did this once.

Aristocles set the sword in place. He gulped. He closed his eyes. With a horrible grimace, he shoved it forward.

It hurt. It hurt like nothing Varus had ever known before. He knew a certain pride that he didn’t pull away from the blade. He couldn’t help shrieking, though. When the sword came out, he fell to the ground and waited for the end.

It took longer than he’d hoped it would. From what he’d seen, dying always took longer than you hoped it would, and hurt worse. Blood filled his nose and mouth. He felt as if he were suffocating, but he was really drowning, drowning from the inside out.

Aristocles screeched. The centurion had struck him down from behind, by surprise. That wasn’t so bad. But, as Varus’ vision faded, he saw that the soldier needed a second stroke to finish the job. That wasn’t so good. But Aristocles was in no position to complain. And, after a bit, neither was Varus.

Arminius hadn’t slept for a day and a half, maybe longer. Excitement kept him going. He wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

It was all over now. Well, close enough. The Germans still hunted Roman stragglers through swamps and woods and fields. Sooner or later, they’d track down most of them and kill them. A few might get away. Arminius had stopped worrying about it. They would spread fear ahead of them, spread it all the way into Gaul. And behind the fear would come… Arminius.

Three legionary eagles lay at his feet. He knew what the eagles meant to Roman soldiers—knew as well as any German could, anyhow. They defended those eagles to the death. They had defended these eagles so, and now they were dead.

Varus’ head lay at his feet, too. Varus was also dead by the time the Germans found him and took it. His scrawny slave had lain dead beside him. That disappointed Arminius. He’d wanted to offer them to his gods after they watched him offering plenty of other Romans. He shrugged. You couldn’t get everything you wanted. He had more than enough.

A German carrying a wine jar from the Roman baggage train staggered past. He gave Arminius a sozzled grin. “Good!” he said, his broad, extravagant wave taking in—well, everything.

“Good,” Arminius agreed. And so it was.

More Germans led lines of captured legionaries, their hands chained, off toward the oak groves where they would be sacrificed. Even now the dying cries of men being offered to the gods rose in the distance. His folk often worried about whether the gods got enough to eat. They wouldn’t have to worry for a long time, not after the bounty the gods were enjoying now.

Here and there, two or sometimes four Romans carried an unconscious comrade toward the sacrificial groves. Nobody wanted to waste any of this enormous feast for the gods. If a man still breathed, his spirit was nourishment.

Sigimerus came up to Arminius and bowed before him. “You did it,” he said. “You truly did.”

“Germany is free,” Arminius said. “The Romans will never dare stick their noses across the Rhine again. We’ll visit them on their side before too long.”

“I do believe we will.” His father sounded almost dazed at the size of their triumph. “And after that…” He shook his head. Plainly, he couldn’t imagine what might happen after that.

Well, neither could Arminius. But he was sure he would think of something when the time came.

When Caldus Caelius came back to himself, he thought he was dead and being punished in Tartarus. His head ached as if it had been smashed to pieces—and so it nearly had. He needed a little while to realize he might have been better off if he were already dead.

He tried to raise a hand to his throbbing brow. Both hands came up—they’d been chained together. The links between the manacles clanked as they moved. Why would anyone have… ? Slowly, realization returned. “Oh,” he muttered. “The battle. We must have lost.”

If you lost a battle to the Germans, what happened next? No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he got an answer of sorts. A shriek rang out that made him wonder if he hadn’t been right when he first regained consciousness. Maybe he really had landed in a realm of eternal punishment.

No matter how much his battered head hurt, he made himself turn it so he could see where that shriek came from. A moment later, he wished he hadn’t. Several Germans were holding down a legionary—the luckless Roman was also chained, just like Caelius—while another barbarian slowly and clumsily decapitated him. The screams subsided into a gurgling wheeze. Blood poured out onto the damp ground and spattered all over the Germans.

At last, the sword—it was a Roman gladius—found its way between two neck vertebrae. With a grunt of satisfaction, the German held up the dripping head. To Caldus Caelius’ horror, the head wasn’t just dripping. Even after it was severed from its thrashing body, it blinked several times before its eves finally sagged shut. Its mouth might have tried to shape a word. Caelius hoped that was his imagination, but feared it wasn’t.

The other Germans congratulated the one who’d done the beheading. He grinned and shuffled his feet as if he’d never deserved such praise before. Then he carried the Roman soldier’s head over to one of the nearby oaks. He used a leather thong to tie it to a low-hanging branch. Other legionaries’ sightlessly staring heads already hung there. Still others were spiked to the trunk. Nor was that the only tree sprouting such fruit. The whole grove was full of butchered Romans. The iron stink of blood clogged Caelius’ nostrils.

And things only got worse. Along with heads and other pieces of legionaries hung the eagles of Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX, as well as the lesser emblems from the cohorts that made up the beaten legions. Seeing them there, offerings to the grim German gods, wounded Caldus Caelius almost as much as the rest of the atrocities put together. He wished he could die of shame. He wished he could die any way at all, so long as it happened fast.

A big German came over and looked down at him. The man wore a legionary’s helmet at a jaunty angle and carried a legionary’s shortsword in his right hand. And he proved to speak Latin, too, for he said, “You are the one called Caldus Caelius, eh?”

“That’s right,” Caelius answered automatically. “Who the demon are you?”

“My name is Ingaevonus,” the barbarian answered. “Do you remember me?”

Caelius started to shake his head. Then he stopped, not only because it hurt but because he did remember. “That village,” he croaked.

Ingaevonus nodded. “Yes. That village. My village. Taxes.” He spat the word out through his mustache. “We do meet again, eh?” He thought-fully hefted the gladius.

“Yes.” Caldus Caelius forced the word out through dry lips. He didn’t want to show fear, though the barbarian had to know he felt it.

“I kill you,” Ingaevonus said. “I kill you slow, Roman. I kill you nice and slow, Caldus Caelius. I go think how to do it, then I come back, eh?” He ambled off, testing the sword’s edge with his thumb. Over his shoulder, he added, “Won’t be long.”

Not nearly far enough away, another legionary started screaming for his mother. The Germans were gutting him, the way they might gut a slaughtered boar. But they hadn’t slaughtered him first. They drew out his bowels a few digits at a time, laughing as they worked. The legionary kept on screaming. One of the barbarians had a new idea. He cut again, lower. The Roman wailed again, higher. The German stuffed what he’d cut off into the man’s mouth to muffle the noise.

Caldus Caelius shuddered. His chains clanked again. If Ingaevonus needed ideas… “Not me,” Caelius muttered hoarsely. “He wouldn’t do that to me.” But how could he possibly stop the barbarian?

If the Germans wanted to, they could have done it to him already. They seemed to be picking most of the men they tormented at random.

A savage would point at a Roman, a couple of others would seize him, and then they would set to work to see how much horror they could pack into the end of his life.

No one had pointed to Caelius yet. But Ingaevonus would, and soon. Maybe they’d waited for him to come to. They did prefer their victims aware and suffering till the end.

“Not me,” Caelius whispered again. If he’d had a sword, he would have fallen on it. If he’d had a dagger, he would have hoped it could reach his heart, or else slashed it across his throat. If… But what he had was a head already half shattered and a stout set of manacles and chains.

And then, amidst the stench of blood and the worse stench of terror, sudden mad hope flowered in him. If he could use the manacles to finish the job of crushing his skull… But what if he couldn’t? His laugh sounded more than a little mad, too. If he couldn’t, how was he worse off?

He pulled himself to a sitting position. That drew the Germans’ notice, as he’d feared it would. One of them shouted for Ingaevonus. Three more strode toward him, anticipatory grins on their faces. Now or never flashed through his mind. He smashed at himself with all his fear-fueled strength. The last thought he ever remembered having was I hope I spoil their fun.

Vala Numonius’ horse stumbled south and west. The poor beast was on its last legs. The Roman cavalry commander—the Roman fugitive in a land all traps and snares for Romans—urged it on even so. If it foundered, when it foundered, he’d have to use his own legs, and it’s were swifter.

He was, he hoped, still ahead of the news of Quinctilius Varus’ army. He’d seen a few Germans working in their farm plots. They hadn’t paid him much special attention. They still thought of him as a Roman soldier, not as a fugitive from black disaster.

As long as they thought of him so—as a man who was dangerous to approach, as a man who would be avenged if he fell—he was fairly safe. But he knew better, or worse. Even if they didn’t, he knew he was nothing but a runaway. He also knew that scores, hundreds, maybe even thousands of Roman fugitives cluttered the German landscape. The barbarians might not have to hear the news. Just seeing so many Romans wandering at random over the countryside could be plenty to tell them the legions had met catastrophe.

And that wasn’t Vala Numonius’ only worry. Oh, no—far from it. Sooner or later, the cavalry commander knew he’d have to sleep. A German could come up to cut his throat or knock him over the head, and he’d never know it till too late. The legionaries joked about waking up dead if they got stuck in the middle of enemy country. Numonius didn’t think those jokes were funny, not any more he didn’t.

Maybe worse yet was that news and rumor would go right on spreading while he slept. They were liable to get ahead of him, even if he still had a lead on them for the moment. If they did… If they did, the Germans would know he didn’t have the Empire’s might behind him now. They would know he’d suddenly become fair game. And they would hunt him.

He rode past a farm. Women and boys and one graybeard with a crooked back worked in the fields. No warriors. The Romans had wondered about that on their way north. Vala Numonius’ mouth quirked in a bitter grin. By the gods, he didn’t wonder anymore! Sometimes, though, knowledge came at too high a cost. People talked about that all the time. Now Numonius understood it in his belly, in his balls.

The barbarians all stared at him as he went by. They would know where their menfolk had gone, and why. But they wouldn’t—he prayed they wouldn’t—know what had happened. Maybe Numonius was only a scout, with a victorious Roman army not far behind him.

Maybe I am—but I’m not. The nonsense formed of itself inside his mind. It was one more measure of how worn he was. He wondered whether his horse’s head was full of moonshine, too. More nonsense. He was starting to have trouble even recognizing it.

He still had half a loaf of barley bread left. When it was gone, he’d need to buy food from the Germans, or steal it from them. The commander of the Roman cavalry, reduced to chicken thievery! Well, better that than being reduced to what had happened to the poor, sorry foot soldiers.

Numonius was glad when the track went into the woods and he couldn’t feel the Germans’ pale eyes on him anymore. The barbarians watched him like wolves watching a sick, staggering doe. If it fell over, they would feed. If it didn’t, they could catch something else before long.

He hated the German woods. Everything seemed to close in on you. You couldn’t see any farther than you could spit. Anything might lurk in there and lunge out at you. Anything. Wolves. A bear. A wide-horned aurochs, as fearsome as any meat-eating brute. Germans, the most fearsome brutes of all. You’d never know danger drew near till too late.

But when every breath was danger, the woods didn’t seem to matter so much. And, if the hunted couldn’t see far, neither could the hunters. Vala Numonius slid off his horse and led it away from the track. Then he tied it to a sapling and went back and covered its tracks, and his, as best he could. He didn’t know it his best would prove good enough, but you had to try.

Half a bowshot away from the path, he gnawed on the barley bread. It was dense and chewy. Bread made from wheat flour would have risen better. It would have tasted better, too. But it wouldn’t have packed so much nourishment into such a small space. For soldiers who had to carry their own rations, that mattered more.

He gave the horse a couple of bites of bread, too. That was all he had for the animal. A few ferns and weeds grew in the gloom under the forest canopy. The horse nibbled at those. It raised its head and gave Numonius a reproachful look, as if to say, You work me to death, and then all I get is this?

“Sorry,” he told it, his own voice a weary whisper. “Carry me back across the Rhine and I’ll fill you full of oats and barley. By Epona, I will.” Maybe the Gallic horse-goddess would hearken to his prayer here in the German woods. Plainly, the gods of his own folk held no power here.

He lay down beside the horse. No matter what the risks, he simply had to sleep. He’d soon be a babbling idiot if he didn’t, liable to tell the Germans he was on the run even if they hadn’t already figured it out. That most of them knew no Latin while he had only a handful of words in their tongue bothered him not at all. Once he lay down, nothing bothered him. Bare ground might have been Jupiter’s divinely soft bed up on Mount Olympus.

He didn’t wake up with his throat cut. Maybe Epona was listening. Maybe it was just luck. Whatever it was, he had to make the most of it. He found a few mushrooms growing not far from where he’d lain. He didn’t know German mushrooms well, but stuffed them into his mouth anyhow. If they poisoned him… well, so what?

His horse wanted nothing to do with mushrooms. All it wanted was rest. He couldn’t have cared less. A convenient stump made mounting easier than it would have been otherwise, but he knew he would have managed one way or another. A cavalryman had to be able to vault into the saddle from flat ground. So did a cavalry commander who expected his men to follow him. Vala Numonius met the requirements.

How many of his men had followed him away from the trapped foot soldiers? How many of them still lived? How many Roman infantrymen still did? Not many, he feared. Three legions, thrown onto the sacrificial altar and butchered.

What would Augustus say when he learned? Maybe I can be the one who brings the news to Rome, Numonius thought. That dignified his flight with purpose.

Of course, it had had purpose all along. If survival wasn’t a purpose, he couldn’t imagine what would be. But the Germans had a purpose, too: slaughtering Romans. Theirs seemed more likely to be fulfilled than his, curse them.

He managed to find the track again. Without it, he might have wandered in circles till he starved… or till the barbarians found him. But he still had a chance to get away.

The track came out into open country as abruptly as the trees had swallowed it. Vala Numonius could ride faster—could flee faster—now. But who were those horsemen out there ahead of him? More Romans, he feared. If they’d got ahead of him in the night, word of the Germans’ victory would have, too.

And so it proved. Now the barbarians who spotted him didn’t stare and wonder what he was up to. They knew he was on the run. They pointed and shouted and came after him. He booted the horse up into a shambling, drunken trot, so the spears some of them flung fell short.

Dogs ran howling after the horse. Vala Numonius supposed they were dogs, anyhow; they obeyed better than wolves would have, no matter what they looked like. They terrified a brief gallop out of the horse. Then, no matter how Numonius screamed at it and beat it, it decided it could run no more, and stood still.

That was the last thing he wanted. Barbarians loped toward him behind the dogs. Few of them were in the prime of life, which didn’t mean their spears couldn’t kill him. Knowing he was in trouble deeper than the sea, he slid down from the horse’s back and started to run.

Some of the dogs gave chase. He slashed one in the snout with his cavalry sword, which was longer than the gladii foot soldiers carried. The horrible beast yelped in surprise and pain and fell back, bleeding. He hoped the others would turn on it, but no such luck. Another gray, sharp-eared beast darted forward to snap at his leg. He killed it.

But while he fought the dogs, he couldn’t flee their masters. Here came the Germans: youths and even one rugged blond woman who must have fancied herself a warrior. A sword was a perfectly good weapon against a pack of dogs. Against spears with three or four times the reach? That was a different story.

“No,” Vala Numonius whispered. “Please, no.” The Germans’ eyes were paler than their dogs’. That was the only difference between them, for both sets held death. The barbarians moved to surround the cavalry officer. He turned this way and that, about as helpless and hopeless as his horse.

The Germans surged forward. Before too long, it was over—but not nearly soon enough to suit Numonius.

Before Arminius could lead his swarms of Germans into Gaul, he had to finish driving the Romans out of his own country. Destroying three legions wasn’t quite enough—almost, but not quite. Several Roman fortresses persisted east of the Rhine. The men those forts sheltered might prove dangerous if he just forgot about them, and so he set out to reduce the forts one by one.

Having served in the Roman auxiliaries, he knew a little something about siegecraft. What he failed to take into account was that the average German knew nothing, or perhaps a bit less. And the legionaries shut up inside the wooden palisades knew they would die horribly if his men broke in. Not many Romans had escaped the massacre of Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX, but some few had, and spread word of what had happened there to the garrison troops. To his surprise, it made the men in the forts determined, not afraid.

Aliso caused the most trouble. It stood on the south bank of the Lupia, not far east of where the smaller river joined the Rhine near Vetera. The Roman garrison inside Aliso was large and very stubborn.

Speaking soldiers’ Latin, Arminius shouted to the legionaries: “If you surrender and come out, I swear I will let you keep your arms and march back to Gaul with no more attacks. I will give hostages to prove it.”

A centurion came up to the edge of the palisade to answer him. Arminius recognized the Roman officer for what he was as much by his ingrained arrogance as by the transverse crest on his helmet. “No!” the man shouted. “You wouldn’t be howling out there if you hadn’t cozened Quinctilius Varus and murdered his men. The promises you make aren’t worth piss.”

Every word of that was true, which only infuriated Arminius the more. He shook his fist at the Roman. “You’ll pay,” he said. “When we break in, we’ll give you all to our gods, a fingernail at a time.”

“Come ahead and try.” The centurion spat in his general direction. “I don’t think you can do it, you bald-bottomed son of a whore. I bet your asshole’s as wide as a tunnel, from all the times you had Varus’ cock up you.” To make sure Arminius—and his followers—understood him, the Roman said that again, pretty fluently, in the Germans’ language.

“You turd with legs! I’ll see how far your lying guts can stretch when I lay hold of you!” Arminius bellowed in blind fury.

“Come ahead and try,” the centurion repeated calmly, and stepped away.

Arminius bellowed orders. The Germans shot flight after flight of arrows at Aliso. Then, roaring like angry bears to fire their spirits, they rushed toward the fort with scores of scaling ladders. If rage and ferocity could overcome skill and a strong position, Arminius’ followers would do it.

But they couldn’t. The Romans dropped stones on the Germans who threw bundles of brush into the ditch around the palisade. They shot at them through holes drilled into the floor of their walkway. With hardly any risk to themselves, they used forked branches to reach out and overturn scaling ladders that did get placed against the walls. They poured boiling water and sizzling oil on the Germans swarming up the ladders.

In spite of everything, a few Germans did make it to the top of the palisade—but only a few. They didn’t last long up there. In a fight like that, the armored, disciplined, and desperate Romans had every advantage.

Cradling a horribly burned arm, a German who’d fallen off a ladder groaned, “They fight dirty.”

And so they did. Arminius acutely felt his folk’s ignorance of siege-craft. When he served with the legions in Pannonia, he’d seen the variety of engines and stratagems the Romans could roll out against a strongpoint that presumed to resist them. But having seen such things didn’t mean he could duplicate them. He didn’t know how to make the catapults that flung darts or thirty-pound stones farther than a man could shoot an arrow. Nor were Germans miners. He couldn’t order them to tunnel under Aliso and make the palisade fall over.

Even if he could have given that order, he wouldn’t have. He knew too well he couldn’t hold his army together long enough to let mining work. They would run out of food from the surrounding countryside pretty soon. One more trick of Roman siegecraft, he realized now when it was too late, was the stream of wagons that kept besiegers fed. Roman armies didn’t come down sick as often as those of the Germans, either. He couldn’t make his own men keep their camp clean and orderly, and he couldn’t stop them from dumping waste upstream from where they drew drinking water. They would have laughed at him had he tried.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to stay outside of Aliso long, he kept trying to break in, hurling his warriors at the palisade again and again. Maybe luck would be with them, as it had been before. Maybe the Romans would despair. If they didn’t fight back with all their might, the German tide would surely lap over them and wash them away.

No matter how Arminius hoped either or both of those things would happen, neither did. The legionaries inside Aliso might have been some of the last Romans left alive on this side of the Rhine, but they fought as if they still thought they would turn Germany into a peaceful province any day now.

After a week of fruitless assaults, Sigimerus took Arminius aside and said, “This isn’t working, son. If we’re going to take Gaul away from the Empire, we can’t waste any more time hanging around here.”

“We can’t leave these legionaries in our rear, either,” Arminius answered. “One more try. They can’t hold us out forever.”

Maybe the Romans couldn’t. But they could hold the Germans out during that last assault. And, as Arminius had feared, a flux of the bowels and a coughing sickness broke out among his men. They started getting hungry, too. And word came that the Romans were rushing soldiers to the Rhine from all over Gaul.

Men began streaming away from Aliso and heading for their homes. Arminius cursed and wept and pleaded, all to no avail. The Germans had one great deed in them, but not two. Watching his army break up, he gloomily wondered if the same held true for him.