An average Pannonian was as quick on his feet as an average German or Roman (even though the Romans had short legs, they were formidable marchers). But that wasn’t what a pursuit was about. If the Pannonians wanted to stick together and not get cut down one at a time, they had to move at the pace of their slowest men. The Romans and Germans on their trail steadily chewed up the ground between the forces.

One of the Pannonians shouted something. Arminius heard the words clearly, but couldn’t understand them. That proved the enemy was the enemy. Like most of the auxiliaries with him, Arminius had grown fluent in Latin. He still sometimes muttered to himself, going through a declension or conjugation, but he made himself understood - and he followed what Romans said to him. Pannonian, on the other hand, was only gibberish to him - and to the Romans as well.

The rebels stopped retreating and formed a battle line. Long odds against them: longer, Arminius thought, than those against throwing a triple six in a dice game. But sometimes long odds were better than sure ruin, and sure ruin faced the Pannonians if they kept trying to run away. Maybe a fierce charge would make their pursuers think twice.

Maybe. But Arminius didn’t believe it, not for a moment. “Be ready!” he called to his fellow Germans. “They’re going to try to bull through us.”

“Let them try,” one of the big, fair men said. Several others nodded. Arminius smiled. No, his folk had never been one to back away from a fight.

That officer shouted something. Sure as demons, the Pannonians charged Arminius’ band, not the legionaries. The Germans’ looks, bronze helmets, and smaller shields all declared them auxiliaries rather than regulars. The enemy officer had to think that made them the easier target. Well, he could think whatever he pleased. Thinking it didn’t make it so.

“Sedatus!” the Pannonians yelled, and, “Succellus!” One of those was their fire god; the other was a smith, who carried a hammer. They were using sharper tools now.

They showed almost Roman discipline as they bore down on the Germans. His own men fought with better discipline than they would have back in their native forests. Past that, Arminius indulged in no comparisons. With numbers on their side, and with the legionaries swinging up to help them, it shouldn’t matter much.

Of course, even if the Germans and Romans would win in the end, a man still might get killed in the middle of the fight. The Pannonians loosed a volley of javelins at Arminius’ auxiliaries. A German screamed when one of the light spears pierced his right arm. Another javelin thudded into Arminius’ shield. The Pannonians had copied Roman practice to the extent of using a long shank of soft iron on their javelins. The shank bent when the javelin went home. Arminius couldn’t throw it back, and yanking it out of the shield would take time he didn’t have. He threw the fouled shield aside. Fighting without one would have bothered a Roman. It left Arminius more vulnerable, but it didn’t bother him a bit - he was used to going into battle with no more than spear and sword.

He jabbed at the man in front of him. The Pannonian used his big, heavy legionary-style shield well, holding it between Arminius’ spear and his vitals. His stabbing sword flicked out like a viper’s tongue. But he couldn’t reach Arminius with it, not when the German’s spear made him keep his distance.

They might have danced like that for some little while, each trying to figure out how to spill the other’s blood. They weren’t alone on the battlefield, though. Another German threw a fist-sized rock that clanged off the Pannonian’s helmet. Without the ironworks on his head, it would have smashed in his skull. As things were, he staggered and lurched like a man who’d just taken a fist to the chin. He dropped his guard, too. Arminius sprang forward and jabbed his spear into the fellow’s thigh, just below his iron-studded leather kilt.

The Pannonian howled in pain. He crumpled like a discarded sheet of papyrus - a comparison that never would have occurred to Arminius before joining the auxiliaries. The German chief stabbed again, aiming to finish him. But, even wounded, the Pannonian was wily: He used his shield like a turtle’s shell, covering himself with it as best he could. Arminius went on to fight another man. The wounded Pannonian couldn’t get away. Once the fight was over, somebody would cut his throat or smash in his head. All the wiliness in the world wouldn’t save him then.

Even among Germans, Arminius was a big man. The Pannonian he came up against next was even bigger, and much thicker through the shoulders. The fellow screamed something at him. Since it was in the Pannonian language, Arminius understood not a word of it. Seeing as much, the warrior shouted again, this time in Latin: “Futter your mother!”

“Your mother was a dog, and your father shat in her twat,” Arminius retorted. Latin wasn’t his language, either, which hadn’t kept him from learning to swear in it.

Roaring with rage, the big, burly Pannonian rushed at him. He aimed to knock Arminius down with his heavy shield and then stab him - or, if he was furious enough, kick him to death. What he aimed for wasn’t what he got. Arminius sidestepped like a dancer and then used a flick of his spearpoint to tear out the Pannonian’s throat. It was as pretty and precise a stroke as he’d ever made. He was proud of it for days afterwards.

Blood fountained from the Pannonian’s neck. He clutched at his throat, trying to stem the tide of gore. It was no use - Arminius knew a killing stroke when he gave one. The big man’s knees went limp as overcooked cabbage. He fell, and his armor clattered about him.

Romans liked to say things like that. It was a line from a poem, though Arminius thought the poem was in Greek, not Latin. He knew there was such a thing as Greek, and that Romans with a fancy education spoke it, but it remained a closed scroll to him.

And he had no time to worry about poetry anyhow, whether in Greek, Latin, or his own tongue. Another Pannonian was trying to murder him. The man’s thrust almost pierced him - the son of a whore even fought like a Roman. The fellow sheltered behind his own big scutum. Beating down his guard wouldn’t be easy. Arminius’ slashes gashed the thick leather facing of the Pannonian’s shield, but that didn’t harm it and certainly didn’t harm him.

Then the legionaries slammed into the rebels’ flank. After that, the fight wasn’t a fight any more. It was a rout. The Pannonians realized what they should have seen sooner: they were desperately outnumbered, out in the open, and had no hope of reinforcement, nor any strongpoint to which they might escape. They were, in a word, trapped.

Arminius’ foe suddenly had to face two other German auxiliaries, as the men they’d been fighting took to their heels. He had no trouble holding off one foe. He couldn’t turn enough directions at once to hold off three. One of the other Germans hamstrung him. He went down with a wail. Arminius’ stroke across his throat finished him off.

“This is the way it’s supposed to work!” said the auxiliary who’d wounded him, wiping blood from his blade on a grassy tussock.

“By the gods, it is,” Arminius agreed. “Let’s finish the rest of them. The looting should be good.”

“So it should. We don’t want to let those Roman greedyguts take more than their share, either, the way they like to do,” the other man said.

“I was thinking the same thing a little while ago,” Arminius replied. “Come on! We don’t want to let any of these cursed fools get away.”

He loped after the Pannonians, who were frankly fleeing now. The westering sun stretched his shadow out ahead of him. The other Germans followed. War made a grand game - when you were winning.

Quinctilius Varus stepped from the gangplank to the pier with a sigh of relief. He didn’t like traveling by ship, which didn’t mean he couldn’t do it at need. He’d got from Ostia - Rome’s port - to Massilia by sea faster than he could have by land. The rest of the journey, up to the legions’ base by the Rhine, would have to be by land.