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And he knew very well what Julius Caesar had done. With characteristic energy, Caesar bundled the Usipetes and the Tencteri back into the German forests. And then he went after them. In ten days, his engineers bridged the Rhine. The German tribes fled before him. He stayed on the east bank of the Rhine for eighteen days, then went back and finished conquering Gaul.
And he left the problem of conquering Germany for another day - for another generation, as it turned out. For me, as it turned out, Varus thought. Marching through Germany was easy enough. Holding the place down, really subjecting it, wasn’t. Plenty of Romans had proved that, too.
One of his servants intertwined the fingers of both hands, forming a cup into which Varus could step. With help from the leg-up, he swung over his horse’s back and straightened in the saddle. A mounting stone would have served as well, although a leg-up from a man better suited a commander’s dignity. If he had to, Varus thought he could vault into the saddle with no help at all, like a proper cavalryman. But only a barbarian, and a stupid barbarian at that, would do things the hard way when he didn’t have to.
Once seated on the horse, Varus nodded to Vala Numonius. “Let’s cross,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” The cavalry commander nodded. They both urged their mounts forward. The rest of the cavalry detachment followed. The horses’ hooves drummed on the bridge over the Rhine.
It was built on exactly the same principle as Caesar’s. Roman engineers had fixed two sets of piles in the riverbed. The upstream piles leaned with the current, the downstream against it. They were about twenty-five cubits apart. Trestles slanting against the current on the down-stream side helped support the structure. Upstream, a timber breakwater protected the bridge from logs or fire rafts or anything else the barbarians might aim at it.
“Once we subdue the Germans, we’ll get a proper bridge with stone piers, not this military makeshift,” Varus said.
“That would be splendid, sir,” Numonius replied. “A sign of civilization, you might say.”
“Civilization. Yes.” Once again, Varus fondly remembered Syria. He remembered Rome. He remembered Athens, where he’d stopped on the way back from Syria - and where he, like his son, had studied as a young man. He remembered seeing for the first time the Parthenon and all the other wonderful buildings up on the Acropolis. By the gods, that was civilization for you!
This . . . The day was cool. The sky was a grayish, watery blue. The sun seemed half ashamed to shine. He was riding away from a legionary camp - which, in these parts, counted as an outpost of civilization. He was heading for . . . The gloomy forests that stretched on and on east of the Rhine warned him what he was heading for.
Foot soldiers followed the cavalrymen. One thing the Romans had learned from painful experience: wherever they went in Germany, they went in force. Small parties of men were all too likely to disappear. Better not to tempt the barbarians into doing what they weren’t supposed to.
Varus’ horse stepped off the bridge and onto the muddy ground on the east bank of the Rhine. Its hooves stopped echoing. They made the usual thumping and squelching noises instead.
Vala Numonius had dropped back by half a length to let Varus precede him. Now he caught up again. “Welcome to Germany, sir,” he said.
“Germany,” Varus echoed. He didn’t seen any Germans here on their side of the river. He didn’t particularly miss them. He’d seen plenty in Vetera: big, fair, noisy men with an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Some of the soldiers’ women were pretty in an exotic way, though. They had plenty to hold on to, that was for sure.
The cavalry commander pointed toward the trees, which had been cut down for several stadia around the bridgehead. A lot of the timber from them probably went into the bridge. “They’re watching us from in there,” Numonius said.
“Let them watch. It will teach them respect,” Varus said.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a German stepped into the cleared ground from among the trees. The man turned around, bent over, undid his cloak, and waggled his pale, bare backside at the Romans. Then he straightened, wrapped the cloak around himself again, and loped off into the woods.
Some of the horsemen behind Varus laughed. Others swore. “So much for respect, sir,” Vala Numonius said.
Biting his lip in rage, Varus pointed out to where the German had vanished. “Seize him! Crucify him!” he shouted.
“Sir, there’s no hope,” said a cavalry officer who’d been on the frontier for a while. “In the forests, they’re like animals. They have dens to lay up in, or they can climb trees like wall lizards wish they could. And he might be trying to lure a detachment right into an ambush.”
He spoke respectfully, as a man had to do when trying to talk a provincial governor out of an order. Varus muttered, still steaming. But he could see that the soldier made good sense. If he fought on this side of the Rhine, he needed to fight on his terms, not the barbarians’.
“Very well,” Varus said heavily. “Very well. We’ll let him get away with that - for now. But the time will come when this whole province learns better. And that time will come soon, by the gods.”
Numonius clapped his hands. “Well said, sir!” he exclaimed. From the other cavalry officer came an unmistakable sigh of relief.
A pale moon shone down on Segestes’ steading. Arminius stood at the edge of the trees, looking things over. The steading seemed quiet, the way it should at night. If things weren’t as they seemed, chances were he would die inside the hour.
He shrugged. If he died, he would die doing what was right, doing what was important. No one would say he’d let Segestes dishonor him. He knew the woman he’d sent here had talked with Thusnelda. She’d told him so herself, after she came away. She wasn’t from his father’s steading, so Segestes would have had no reason to suspect her.
But Arminius didn’t know how Thusnelda felt. The woman who served him - he’d hired her with the fat gold earring he’d taken from the dead Pa
One of Segestes’ dogs let out a tentative bark. A couple of others joined in a moment later. They trotted toward him.
He wore a fat leather sack on his belt. He reached for that instead of his sword. “Come on, boys. Come here,” he called, as if the beasts belonged to his own father.
They weren’t so fierce as they might have been - that was plain. Arminius’ hopes soared. Through the woman, he’d told Thusnelda to feed them as much as they would hold. And now he pulled more chunks of raw meat from the sack and tossed them in front of the dogs.
Greedy as swine, they dug in. Arminius gave them more meat. He kept some in the sack, though: he was certain Segestes had more dogs than these. And, sure enough, two big brutes met him halfway to Segestes’ house. He bribed them the same way as he had the others. They hadn’t made much noise, and quieted down at once. Anybody who gave them meat had to be a friend.
The door. Arminius tapped it, lightly, with a forefinger. That tiny noise shouldn’t bother anyone sleeping in there. But if someone was awake and waiting for it ...
Was someone awake and waiting in there? Arminius tapped again, a tiny bit harder. II Thusnelda had fallen asleep in spite of everything, wouldn’t that make the bitterest joke of all?
When the door opened, his hand fell to the hilt of his sword. If she’d betrayed him to her father, if warriors boiled out through the doorway, what could he do but take some of them with him?