A stocky figure mounted to the top of the earthen rampart. The sun gleamed from the Roman’s bald scalp. Arminius smiled and waved. “Hail, your Excellency!” he called. If the smile never reached his eyes, Quinctilius Varus couldn’t hope to notice from that distance.

Sigimerus waved, too. If he didn’t smile so broadly, he was an older man, and carried himself with more dignity. Arminius hoped Varus would think so, anyhow.

And evidently Varus did. He was at least as old as Sigimerus, but he wore a smile wider than Arminius’. “Hail! Welcome!” he said. “I didn’t know if we’d be lucky enough to see the two of you back here this year.”

“Here we are, sir,” Arminius said. “May we come into Mindenum? Your men didn’t seem to want us to.”

“You know how soldiers are,” Varus said. And Arminius did: he was one himself. If the Roman governor wasn’t, or didn’t think of himself as one, why did he hold this position? Smiling still, he went on, “You certainly have my permission to come in. I’m sure I will want your advice again and again on how best to civilize this province.”

Sigimerus growled down deep in his throat. Arminius’ gaze flicked over to his father, but the older man’s expression didn’t change. And the Romans wouldn’t have heard him. Arminius wore his smile like a mask, hiding his fury. What Varus meant by civilizing Germany was taking away its character and its freedom.

“Always a pleasure to help,” Arminius lied.

“Spoken like a Roman citizen - like the member of the Equestrian Order you are,” Varus boomed. After a moment, Arminius realized the Roman governor wasn’t really speaking to him, or wasn’t speaking to him alone. Varus was reminding the legionaries that the man outside was a tame German, a good German. He didn’t say anything to or about Sigimerus. But if the soldiers accepted Arminius, they wouldn’t mind his father.

Arminius drew himself up straight and delivered a clenched-fist Roman salute. Yes, let the legionaries see I can ape their customs. Let them see that I’m a tame German, a good German. And, when the time comes, I’ll show them just how tame and good I am.

None of that showed on his face. He probably had more practice dissembling than any other German since the gods first created his folk. Among themselves, Germans were always altogether honest (unless, of course, they saw some pressing reason not to be, as Segestes had when he broke his pledge to Arminius and tried to give Thusnelda to Tudrus). What they thought of as their innate honesty put most of them at a disadvantage when they tried to deal with deceitful foreigners.

Arminius had been shocked to discover that the Romans reckoned his folk a pack of lying, thieving savages. How could they be so blind? He finally decided that, since the Romans were liars and thieves themselves, they thought other peoples shared their vices.

“Pass in, Arminius. Pass in, Sigimerus,” Quinctilius Varus said loudly. If the sentries tried to go against that now, they would be mutinying against the provincial governor - indirectly, against Augustus himself. The Romans had some fearsome penalties for anyone who dared such a thing.

Any folk that had such penalties was bound to need them - one more argument against Rome and all its ways.

Legionaries mostly held their faces straight as Arminius and Sigimerus walked into Mindenum. They probably wouldn’t have done that if they weren’t under Varus’ eye. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have let the two Cherusci into Mindenum if not for Varus’ orders.

“That one soldier is smiling at us,” Arminius’ father whispered. “What’s wrong with him?”

Arminius got a corner-of-the-eye glimpse of the Roman his father had to mean. Sure enough, the fellow had a broad, welcoming smile plastered across his face. Arminius didn’t think the man was putting it on for Varus’ benefit, either.

“Some of the legionaries must see that the governor is right and that we aren’t dangerous to Rome.” Arminius also spoke quietly, but you never could tell whether somebody with a big nose and sharp eyes was eavesdropping. He could say what he meant even if he used words that said the exact opposite if you took them the wrong way.

“Ah. Of course.” Sigimerus understood him just fine. If a snoopy Roman thought he meant something different . . . well, that was the chance you took when you listened in on conversations not meant for you.

Several legionaries paced the Germans as they walked through the encampment. Our hounds, Arminius thought, or maybe our keepers. He called out to one of them: “Will we stay in the same place we did last summer?”

The Roman seemed embarrassed at being noticed. Arminius wondered why. The only way he could have made himself more obvious was to paint himself blue. After a moment, the man recovered enough to answer, “Yes, I think so.”

“All right. Thanks.” Arminius hadn’t really expected anything else. As he’d seen in Pannonia and here, Roman camps varied little from one place to another or from one time to another. If the legionaries had put them there last year, chances were they’d do the same thing again.

It was boring. It gave ordinary men no room to deviate from the pattern. But it worked. The Romans wouldn’t have conquered so much of the world if it hadn’t. They always camped the same way. They always fought the same way, too. If you offered them battle on ground where they could do what they usually did, chances were they’d make you regret it. No one could doubt that the Germans were the fiercest fighters the gods ever made, but the Roman legions had given them all they wanted and then some for a generation now.

We need to fight them on our own terms, then . . . if we can, Arminius thought. That same notion had spun round and round inside his head ever since he came back from Pannonia. Like so many things, it was easier to imagine than to bring off - as his father hadn’t tired of reminding him. But Quinctilius Varus really did think he was a tame German. That was bound to help. Would it help enough?

XIV

Quinctilius Varus paused halfway through his latest report to Augustus. He knew he sounded as hopeful as things in Germany could possibly allow, and then a little more besides. When you were writing to the ruler of the Roman world, you didn’t want to have to tell him things weren’t going well. Even a man married to Augustus’ grand-niece could spill his career in the chamber pot if he forgot that.

And if, after Varus returned to civilization, anyone asked him why-he’d seemed so optimistic, he could point to the reports he’d got from subordinates all over Germany. He’d kept every single one of them, dating back to the day he’d first crossed the Rhine. And he’d based his optimism squarely on theirs.

He started to write again, then paused with the reed pen only a digit above the papyrus. “Damnation!” he muttered. Of course he made everything in Germany seem good to Augustus, whether it really was good or ... not quite so good. Wouldn’t his own underlings do the same thing with him?

They would if they thought they could get away with it. He was sure of that. They wouldn’t want him breathing down their necks, any more than he wanted Augustus breathing down his. But he had to accept their reports. How else was he supposed to know what was going on?

You could travel all over the province and see for yourself, he thought. But he was shaking his head as soon as the idea formed in his mind. If he spent all his time on horseback and in the sorry camps legionary detachments built for themselves while patrolling the German wilderness, how was he supposed to administer the land between the Rhine and the Elbe? He saw no way.

But he didn’t like having to depend on reports he couldn’t check. “Aristocles!” he called.