“I don’t know, Father,” Arminius said. “Pannonia plants in spring and reaps in the fall, the same as we do. The Romans kept talking about how funny that was.”

“Well, I wasn’t there,” Sigimerus said - a polite way of skirting an argument. His foot came down in mud. He pulled it out and scraped the muck off on some dying grass. “I wish I weren’t here, too.”

“If you know a better track that goes north, you should have told me about it,” Arminius said. This one snaked north and west along the edge of a bog. The reasonably hard ground was wide enough for three or four men abreast, no more.

Sigimerus pointed. “It does get a little better up ahead - just a couple of bowshots up ahead, as a matter of fact. The ground up there gets higher, and. . . . Are you listening to me, Arminius?” He raised his right hand, as if he were on the point of cuffing his son for not paying attention. But that was only old habit. Arminius was too big to cuff, even if he wasn’t listening.

And he wasn’t. He was looking at the higher ground Sigimerus had pointed out. By the way he was looking at it, he might have seen the Germans’ fierce gods feasting there.

Sigimerus stared. Try as he would, he couldn’t see or even imagine the gods there. Because he couldn’t, he went on grumbling: “When I was a young man, we respected our elders. We didn’t forget they were there.”

“I’m sorry, Father.” Arminius didn’t sound very sorry. “It’s just that -”

“What?” Sigimerus snapped.

“Now I know what to tell the Chauci,” Arminius said. Sigimerus spent the next two days trying to get him to explain what he meant. To the older man’s disgust, Arminius wouldn’t. His smile, though, was even broader and more self-satisfied than it had been when he brought Thusnelda home from Segestes’ house.

Quinctilius Varus had just sent away a German girl when Aristocles tapped on his door. Varus grumbled to himself; the pedisequus was pushing things by bothering him so soon. Couldn’t a man have some leisure to enjoy the afterglow? Had Varus been as young as the girl, he would have enjoyed another round. In his fifties, he’d have to wait a day or two - or three - no matter how many leeks and eggs and snails he ate. Not even oysters would help much, and they’d likely spoil by the time they got here from the coast.

And so, grouchily, he said, “What is it?”

“Please excuse me, sir,” Aristocles said as he came in, “but there’s someone here I think you’d better see.”

“Oh, really? Who?” Varus asked. The first person he thought of who might fit that bill was a messenger from Augustus. If the rebels in Pannonia had surrendered or been crushed, if Tiberius was on his way to finish the job in Germany . . . Varus wouldn’t be affronted. By the sweet gods! he thought. I could go home!

But a glance at his slave’s face told him the news wasn’t that good. Voice faintly apologetic, Aristocles answered, “The distinguished German gentleman named Segestes.”

Varus knew that, as far as Aristocles was concerned, there was no such thing as a distinguished German gentleman. He also knew Segestes was about the last person he wanted to see. “I don’t suppose you could tell him I’ve gone down to Italy to get the hair in my nose and ears trimmed?” he said.

Aristocles tossed his head. “I don’t think he’d be happy to hear something like that, sir. He did come all this way. . . . He talks as if he thinks he has important news.”

“The only trouble with that is, he always thinks he has important news, and he’s been wrong every time so far.” Quinctilius Varus heaved a sigh. “Oh, very well. You can’t really tell him to turn around and go on back to Germany. Take him to the small dining room and give him wine and whatever else he fancies. I’ll be along soon.”

“I’ll do that then, sir.” The pedisequus bobbed his head and hurried out of the bedchamber. With another sigh, Varus draped himself in his toga. Roman fashions weren’t made for winters like this. He understood why the Germans wore breeches under their cloaks. He wished he could himself, but what people would say if a Roman governor started aping the barbarians did not bear thinking on.

He did put on thick wool socks that rose almost to his knees. He could wear those without loss of dignity, and his wife’s female slaves had knitted him several pairs. Trousers would have covered more of him, but the socks were better than nothing. They did help keep his feet warm, anyhow.

When he walked into the small dining room, Segestes was drinking neat wine and eating figs candied in honey. The German jumped to his feet and clasped Varus’ hand. “Your Excellency!” he said in his gutturally accented Latin.

“Good day, Segestes. Always a pleasure to see you.” One thing long experience in Roman politics had done for Varus: he could lie with a straight face and a sincere voice. “What brings you to Vetera today?”

A Roman might have used polite evasions for a while. Segestes’ words were as blunt as his features: “About what you would expect. I bring you news of Arminius. It is not good news, not for anyone who cares about Rome and the Roman province of Germany.”

Quinctilius Varus poured wine for himself; the house slaves had thoughtfully left two cups on the table. “Well, tell me what it is.” He went on doing his best to sound friendly. But he felt he was going through the same thing more often than he wanted, as if he kept burping up fish that hadn’t been quite right to begin with.

“He has gone up to the north, to talk with the Chauci.” Segestes’ wintry eyes widened to show what a wicked deed that was.

“And why has he gone there?” Varus asked patiently. He wasn’t altogether sure Arminius had; he disliked taking Segestes’ word for anything. He kept quiet about that. If the German thought Varus reckoned him a liar, things might take an unpleasant turn.

“They dwell far from Mindenum, sir. The power of the legions is not much felt in their land. And they have been a strong, fierce tribe for many years. Why else would Arminius go to them but to seek their help in his fight against Rome?” By the way Segestes laid things out, he might have been a Greek geometer drawing in the dust with a stick to prove a theorem.

Suddenly and powerfully, Varus missed the warm sun of Athens, missed the bright sky, missed standing in the shade of an olive tree with gray-green leaves as a Greek geometer drew his figures and then erased them with his sandal. He missed everything the sun and the tree and the geometer stood for, too. He missed civilization.

He’d never dreamt his work would involve extending civilization to Germany. Dealing with this wolfish savage told how hard the job was and would be. And, as far as Varus could see, Segestes hadn’t proved his theorem now, any more than he had any other time he trotted it out.

“Did you hear Arminius speaking to these Chauci? Do you know for a fact what he said to them?” the Roman governor asked.

“Did I hear him? No.” Segestes shook his big head. Like so many Germans, he towered over Varus. Varus didn’t like it. His unwelcome guest went on, “But I know what he must have said.”

“How?” Varus demanded, perhaps more bluntly than he’d intended. The wine he’d poured himself was as neat as Segestes’. Unmixed wine kept you warm in the wintertime. It also mounted straight to your head.

“I will tell you how, sir.” Segestes might have drunk more than one cup himself. Bright red spots burned on his cheekbones. His teeth seemed uncommonly long and sharp as he continued, “I know because, if I stood before the Chauci blazing with hatred for Rome, it is what I would say.”

“Ah. There we have it.” Varus pounced. “Why do you claim Arminius blazes with hatred for Rome? You will have heard, I suppose, that he and his father guested with me at Mindenum this summer? They showed no hatred then.”