“I want honest war,” Sigimerus said. “Better - a hundred times better - than this game of pretending and lying.”

“Better if we win, worse if we lose,” Arminius said. “Right now, I think we would lose. Not enough of us are ready to fight the Romans. Too many would stand aside and wait to see what happened. And too many traitors to our folk follow Segestes’ path.” Flavus’ path, too, but Arminius didn’t name his own brother. “They’re the true hounds, the ones who want to see Varus as governor here and Augustus as king.”

Kings among the German tribes reigned by virtue of their blood. Their real power, though, depended on their prowess and their wisdom. If they couldn’t get people to follow them, they heard boos and catcalls in the tribal assembly. If they did win approval, the tribe’s menfolk clashed their spears together - the sweetest sound a German leader could hear.

To Arminius, Augustus was a German king writ large. He had to be fierce and clever, for men did his bidding even when far out of his sight. That showed he enjoyed both fear and respect. Arminius wished he knew Augustus’ tricks - he would have liked to use them himself. If all the Germans followed him the way the Romans followed Augustus . . . well, who could say what wonders he might work?

Right now, he had trouble getting even his father to follow him. Sigimerus said, “I think we should just kill Varus, then get away if we can. And if not, we will have given our folk a mark to aim at.”

Among the Germans, if a man died all his designs died with him. Arminius had needed a while to realize the Romans were different. That was one more part of what made them such a menace. “If we kill Varus, Vala Numonius steps into his place till Augustus sends some new governor up from Italy,” Arminius said. “And everything they do, they will do as if Varus still lived - except they will also strike at our folk to avenge his death.”

“That will do,” Sigimerus said. “If they come out of their encampment, we have the chance to beat them.”

“But can we? In the fights that have gone on as long as I’ve been alive, they win at least as often as we do,” Arminius replied. “And when they lose, what do they do? They fall back and get ready to fight some more. We don’t need to beat them, Father. We need to crush them.” He bent down, picked up a clod of dirt, and closed his fist on it. Only dust fell when he opened his hand again.

“Yes. That is what we need,” his father agreed. “How do we get it? You said it yourself - the Romans don’t leave themselves open to such disasters.”

“We have to trick them. That must be how to beat them. It’s the only way I can see,” Arminius said. “If they don’t know something dreadful is about to befall them until it does, they’re ours!”

“If,” Sigimerus said heavily.

“Aren’t we tricking Varus now? You complain we are his hounds, but we both know that isn’t so,” Arminius said. “But does Varus know? If he knew, he would have killed us two weeks ago. Since he thinks he has hounds, he feeds us and houses us.”

“Tricking one man is easy. Tricking an army’s worth of men must be harder, or we would have done it long since,” his father said.

Arminius grunted - his father had a point. Even so ... “If the man we trick commands an army - and Varus does . . .”

“If this Augustus is such a mighty king, he should have found a better war leader than that fellow,” Sigimerus said.

Arminius nodded, for the same thought had occurred to him. “Thank the gods the Roman called Tiberius commands the army in Pannonia,” he said. “That is a man to beware of. If he were here, we could not play these games with him.”

“Let him stay far away, then.” Sigimerus hesitated. “Or maybe not. Some of the things Varus does would rouse our folk against him even if the two of us were never born. Not just taxes, but taxes in coin this year, he says. How many of us can pay in silver?”

“Not many. I know that, even if Varus doesn’t,” Arminius answered.

“I should hope so. And what is this talk about taking our spears away?” His father spat again. “How can a man be a man without a weapon?”

“Many Romans who are not soldiers in the legions don’t carry anything more than an eating knife,” Arminius said. Sigimerus snorted his disbelief. Arminius set a hand over his heart. “It’s true, Father - I swear it.”

“Well, what do they do when they quarrel?” Sigimerus demanded. “With no spears or swords, what can they do?”

“They have lawyers instead,” Arminius said. His father snorted again, this time in fine contempt. Arminius went on, “I scoffed when I first heard it, too. But a Roman told me a spear can only kill you once, where a lawyer can make you wish you were dead for months at a time.”

“Then you kill the lawyer.” Sigimerus was relentlessly practical - or thought he was, anyhow.

Arminius shook his head. “If you do that, Augustus and his servants go to law against you. The Romans have fewer blood feuds than we do, but the king’s justice reaches further with them.”

“Faugh!” Sigimerus repeated contemptuously. “They’re a pretty poor sort of man, if they have to have the king do what they should do themselves.”

“It could be so.” Arminius respected his father too much to quarrel openly with him. “Yes, it could indeed. But I still wish they were a poorer sort of man yet, for then they wouldn’t trouble us at all.”

Quinctilius Varus read the report Lucius Eggius had submitted after his foray through the German backwoods. He paused to rub at his eyes. Eggius would never make a stylist. His spelling and grammar left something to be desired. And his script was cramped and tight. The letters were too small to be easy to read when Varus held the papyrus far enough from his eyes to make them clear.

All things considered, then, the governor was glad enough to set the papyrus down when Aristocles came up to him and said, “May I speak to you, sir?”

“What is it?” Varus would rather have talked with his pedisequus than with most of the soldiers in the encampment at Mindenum. Aristocles was far more clever than they were. And, being a slave, he always gave Varus his full measure of respect - though the Roman governor didn’t put it that way to himself.

“How long do you think those . . . Germans will stay here, sir?” Aristocles asked.

He must have swallowed something like barbarians, or perhaps gods-detested, stinking barbarians. Varus knew Aristocles didn’t like Arminius and his father. Finding out how much he didn’t like them might be interesting - and entertaining.

The Greek’s sallow cheeks went quite pink when Varus asked him about it. “No, sir, I don’t fancy them. They look at me the way stray dogs look at tripes in a butcher’s stall.”

They did, too. Varus had noticed it. He thought of it as wolves eyeing a crippled fawn, but the pedisequus’ comparison was just as apt. “They can’t help it, Aristocles,” the Roman governor said. “They don’t understand that a peaceable man should be left to live in peace.”

“I should say they don’t!” Aristocles exclaimed. “That’s why I wish they’d leave.”

“Well, I find myself with two things to say about that,” Varus replied. “The first is that, however they look at you, they’ve offered you no harm. And the second is that we’ve come to Germany not least to make it into a place where a peaceable man can be left to live in peace.” He chuckled wryly. “We’ve come with three legions to make it into that kind of place, in fact.”

“Yes, sir.” But Aristocles only sounded dutiful, not amused. That disappointed Varus, who was pleased with the line he’d got off.

“They are our guests, don’t forget,” Varus said. “That matters here. If I send them away, I’d affront them.”

“But what if they’ve come here to murder you?” Aristocles blurted.

That made Quinctilius Varus laugh. He wasn’t especially brave: one more reason he felt uneasy around soldiers, many of whom took their own courage for granted. But he could tell when his slave was jumping at shadows. “If they wanted to murder me, they could have done it a dozen times by now - and they could have sneaked away before anyone knew I was dead. Since they haven’t seized any of those chances, I have to think they don’t aim to do me in. What would murdering me get them?”