The Fourth Rome Read Online Free PDF Page B

speaker.
    Pauli checked the flat document safe on the left side of his belt where it counterbalanced the weight of his long cavalry
     sword. “All right,” he said to Flaccus. “Let’s go see the governor.”
    He strode through the long gateway with the swaggering arrogance of a man in the emperor’s personal service. Augustus used
     foreigners, mainly Germans, for his bodyguard. He knew they’d be loyal because if something happened to the emperor, the guards
     were friendless in a hostile city. Augustus’ adopted father, Julius Caesar, had dismissed his foreign guards when he returned
     to Rome in 44 BC since he didn’t think he needed barbarians to protect him from his fellow citizens.
    Caesar’s confidence in Roman loyalty was an error that none of his successors repeated; and it was clear to all that a man
     who guarded the emperor’s life was a man whom only the emperor could discipline.
    “So,” Pauli said to his guide as they walked down the log street. “How does the governor get along with Germans, then?”
    “Oh, he’s close as this with some of them,” Flaccus said sourly. He held up his middle and index fingers twined. “Sigimer
     and Arminius, now, I shouldn’t wonder if they were asshole buddies to our noble Varus.”
    The Roman was walking at a military pace but quick-stepping to keep abreast of the much taller man. He looked up at Pauli.
     “Arminius was a horse guard, too,” he said. “Guess you probably knew him. Maybe you’re even related?”
    Pauli snorted. “Hermann, that’s Arminius if you want to make a Roman of him, wasn’t a real guard,” he said. “He’s a prince,
     you see. Tiberius brought him back to keep around Rome for a few years. If you called him a hostage you wouldn’t be far wrong.
     I’m no fucking prince.”
    He spat into a rat wagon wheels had worn in the roadway. The logs would have to be replaced soon. “Besides,” he added, “I’m
     an Ubian and Hermann’s Cheruscan. A bunch of cowboys wandering around with the seat out of their britches, that what the Cherusci
     are.”
    “Well, he’s good enough to have dinner every day with our noble governor,” Flaccus said. “Varus doesn’t know the name of a
     Roman citizen in this camp below the rank of tribune. It wasn’t like this under Tiberius, you can bet your life.”
    The combined headquarters of the three legions was in line with the gate on the camp’s main north-south street. Flaccus had
     turned left instead and was leading Pauli past officers’ housing to an open area near the west rampart. About a hundred people
     were present, most of them standing. A file of ten soldiers guarded a dais under a purple awning. Everyone else was either
     German or wore a toga, the uncomfortable formal garment whose use was limited to Roman citizens only.
    “Hell of a thing to see in the middle of Fritz country, isn’t it?” Flaccus said, voicing Pauli’s thought.
    It was one thing to know that Varus took a disastrously civilian view of administering a region that hadn’t been fully conquered,
     much less pacified. It was another thing to see the governor holding court just as he would have done if he’d been assigned
     to the administration of Athens or Marseilles.
    A thought made Pauli stumble. “We’re going to have to repave these streets pretty quick,” Flaccus said apologetically. “This
     time Varus is going to want stone, and tell me
that’s
not going to be a bitch on soil this weak.”
    You’re not going to have to repave the camp,
Pauli thought.
In a few days you ’re all going to be dead.
    An ARC Rider knew that everyone on the horizons he visited would die before he was born, but he didn’t often look around himself
     and realize that tens of thousands of people in his immediate vicinity would die almost at once. There’d been a team in Nagasaki
     on August 8, 1945. Pauli had heard that two members had retired shortly after they returned to ARC Central.
    “Wait here,” Flaccus