Sigimerus pulled the rawhide latch cord and shoved the door open. “Veleda!” he called. “Look who’s here at last!”

Arminius’ mother was spinning wool into thread. She sprang off the wooden stool where she sat - a Roman luxury, bought from a trader - and hurried over to hug and kiss him. “So good to see you home!” she said between kisses.

“It’s good to be home, too,” Arminius answered. “I only wish I didn’t have to come back for a reason like this.”

His father, who was pouring the wine, growled down deep in his throat like an angry hunting hound. “Segestes didn’t just insult you when he took Thusnelda away and swore her to this wretch of a Tudrus,” he said. “He put the whole family in the shade, and everyone who follows us. Whatever you want to do to pay him back, you’ll have plenty of men behind you.”

“I’ve told him the same thing,” Chariomerus said.

“I would have known it even if you didn’t say a word,” Arminius replied. “I’ve been thinking about things all the way back from Pannonia. . . . Ah, thank you, Father.” He took an earthenware cup from Sigimerus. A German potter had made the cup; the sweet-smelling red wine inside came from some land the Romans ruled.

“Your health,” Sigimerus said, lifting his own cup in salute.

“Yours.” Arminius copied the gesture. So did his mother and Chariomerus. He drank. He’d tasted better wine, but also plenty worse. He nodded appreciatively.

“You’ve been thinking about what to do. . . .” Sigimerus prompted. He fiddled with the brooch that held his cloak closed. Because he was wealthy, the brooch was gold, and decorated with garnets red as the wine. An ordinary farmer would have closed his cloak with a bronze pin; a poor man would have made do with a thorn. “If you go after Segestes or Tudrus, we’ll back you.”

He tensed as he said the words; Arminius could see as much. But he said them anyhow, and didn’t hesitate over them. Arminius loved him for that. “I don’t want to start a bloody feud with Segestes, Father,” he said. “We shouldn’t fight one another now. We should all march side by side to fight the Romans.”

“You say this, and I think you speak wisely,” Sigimerus said. “Not everyone will, though. Segestes won’t. He’d sooner march with the Romans than against them. I hear that’s part of why he took Thusnelda away from you and gave her to Tudrus. Tudrus loves the Romans, too.”

“Loves to lick their backsides, you mean,” Chariomerus said.

“Some of them would like it if he did,” Arminius said. Chariomerus and Sigimerus both made horrible faces. So did Veleda. Men who wanted to use other men as if they were women did what they did in secret among the Germans. You heard whispers about such things, but that was all. Anyone caught doing them died slowly and painfully.

The Romans didn’t just talk openly about such things. Those who wanted to do them . . . did them. Arminius had got one of his many shocks inside the Empire when he learned that. He’d got another shock when he discovered it didn’t make them effeminate - not even the ones who were pierced rather than piercing. They fought the Pannonian rebels as bravely as anyone else. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it, but he had.

“If you don’t aim to start a feud with Segestes and his retainers, what will you do to regain your honor?” His father brought the talk back to the business at hand - and steered it away from what he didn’t care to think about. No flies on Sigimerus.

“Well, that depends,” Arminius answered. “Is Thusnelda wed to Tudrus, or is she only promised to him?”

“She is promised,” Veleda said. “She still lives in Segestes’ steading.”

Arminius breathed a sigh of relief. “That makes things easier.” Even killing Tudrus wouldn’t necessarily have got him Thusnelda if she’d already married Segestes’ comrade. Widows often staved single the rest of their days. With one as young and pretty as Thusnelda, that would have been a dreadful waste, which didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Sigimerus nodded. “You have more choices.”

“Just so,” Arminius said. “But I think I know what I’m going to try. . . ”

Soldiers gossiped. They didn’t only gossip about who was screwing whom or who was feuding with whom - although, being human, they did waste a lot of time gossiping about those eternal favorites. And, being human, they also wasted a lot of time gossiping about the officials set over them.

Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX had served together for a long time. Octavian raised them during the civil war against Antony and Cleopatra. A handful of senior centurions had been green kids scooped into the legions more than forty years before. The rest of the men had joined since. There were older legions, and legions that had seen more fighting, but XVII, XVIII, and XIX had nothing to be ashamed of.

“This Varus . . . well, he’ll never make a proper general,” Lucius Eggius said. He knew all the men in the tavern with him, and knew - or was as sure as you could be about such things - none of them would go telling tales to the new governor of Germany.

“His cavalry commander’s not so bad,” said Marcus Calvisius, a centurion from Legion XVIII. He was in his early fifties, a little too young to have been part of XVIII’s original complement. “Doesn’t go around making too much of himself, anyway.”

“Numonius? Mm, maybe not.” Lucius Eggius weighed whether to give the other newcomer the benefit of the doubt. Alter draining his winecup, he shook his head. “He won’t tell his boss he’s wrong. Varus says, ‘We’ll whip the Germans into shape in an hour and a half.’ And Vala Numonius says, ‘We sure will. An hour and a halt - tops.’ He’s like a lap dog wagging his tail.”

Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair. It was silver, but his hairline hadn’t retreated by even a digit’s breadth. Add that to a chin like a boulder, and he made an impressive-looking man. “An hour and a half won’t finish the job. You’re right about that, gods know.”

“A year and a half isn’t likely to finish the job, either,” Eggius said. “I tried to tell ‘em so, but did they want to listen?” He laughed bitterly. “I mean, what the demon do I know? All I am is the bastard on the spot. That counts for nothing. They’ve got orders from Augustus. That counts for everything.”

“How come Augustus can’t see it’s not as easy as he thinks?” Calvisius grumbled. “He’s a smart guy, right?”

“He is a smart guy,” Lucius Eggius said. “But even a smart guy can be dumb about places he’s never seen. Augustus never came up here. All he knows is, Germany’s not a proper province yet. He’s mad about it, too. How can you blame him, if you look at things from down in Rome?”

“Yeah, well . . .” Marcus Calvisius ran a hand through his hair again. “If you look at things from down in Rome, you don’t know anything about the Germans.”

All the Roman officers nodded. Somebody said, “We’re up here, and I don’t think we know anything much about the Germans.” The veterans nodded again.

“They don’t want to turn into a province. It’s about that simple,” Eggius said. He shoved his cup over to the tapman, who poured it full. Fancy aristocrats watered their wine like Greeks or children. He drank his neat. So did his friends. What point to drinking if you didn’t feel it?

“Gaul’s didn’t want to turn into a province, either. Caesar walloped the snot out of them,” Calvisius said. “Now we’re here, and they don’t mind. Not like that on the other side of the Rhine.”

Nobody told him he was wrong. Lucius Eggius knew too well that he was right. Cross the Rhine, and you crossed into a different world. Even the trees and the rivers on the east side seemed to hate Romans. As for the people . . . “Well,” Eggius said dryly, “it’s not like they don’t give us plenty of practice over there.”

He got a laugh. How many battles had Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX fought on the wrong side of the river? On the far side of the river, Eggius corrected himself. If Augustus said they were going to bring it into the Empire, the land over there wasn’t on the wrong side at all.