To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II)

by Crichton, Edward

  Finally, Santino had stood in front of the mirror earlier today and rehearsed his demeanor, facial contortions and dialect for hours, and by the time he was done, he’d become a completely different person. When we’d departed a few hours ago, Santino’s Latin had a distinguishable Greek dialect, his eyes suggested he was a born haggler, his smile was nowhere to be seen, and he had the personality of a trader who thought he was much better at his job than he really was, even if had the repertoire and eclectic inventory to back it up. He was arrogant and cocky, natural for Santino, but also an unprepared nincompoop, someone who’d lucked his way through life… also probably natural for Santino.

  I zoomed in my scope just a bit to get a better look at their figures.

  “A fine night indeed, sir,” the dealer replied. “I do enjoy these early morning dealings as well. I just hope you brought enough money to carry on as long as needed.”

  Santino placed his hands on his stomach and chuckled brassily. “We’ll just see if your little item is worthy of a place amongst my ware.”

  “That will not be a problem, sir,” the man said, and I knew he had to be smiling. “I feel you will be most impressed.”

  Santino harrumphed in dismissal, and looked around the stadium’s entrance, waiting for his fellow barterer to show up.

  The guy was late. If Gaius wasn’t bullshiting us, then the other buyer would be one of his Praetorian buddies. There was no doubt he wouldn’t show up alone, so I glassed the rooftops looking for anybody dressed in black.

  It seemed clear.

  I clicked my PTT button. “3-2, 3-1. Do you have a visual on possible tangos?”

  “Negative, 3-1,” Helena replied. “All clear so far.”

  “Copy,” I transmitted.

  I shook my head. Something felt off about this. Professionals like Gaius and Marcus’ Praetorians wouldn’t be late unless they had good reason, or were perhaps scouting the place as well. I felt safe almost seven hundred yards away, but even so, I manipulated the touch screen on my forearm to flip through the image from the fisheye cams on my eye piece. I knew it would have contacted me if they’d sensed any movement already, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

  I wasn’t surprised when I found nothing. We were very far away and well hidden. My scope even had a honeycomb patterned cover over the front lens to reduce the chance of lens flares from incoming light.

  Still, something didn’t feel right.

  I tilted my rifle to look down the road Santino had just been traveling on. I saw two men dressed in dark clothing make their way towards the plaza. As soon as they turned the corner, they became instant targets. They walked up to the dealer and waited, offering no form of greeting.

  The dealer seemed nonplussed by the fact the other buyer hadn’t come alone, but ignored it and began his transaction.

  “Greetings to you all,” he began. “Thank you for displaying interest in the item I have brought here tonight. I believe you will find it most fascinating. If you have any questions, now would be the time to ask them. If you will begin, sir.…” he trailed off, indicating one of the Praetorians.

  Both men remained silent, failing to offer their names.

  “Fine,” the dealer replied. “And you, sir?”

  “Xanthias,” Santino said. Xanthias the slave had been one of the characters in my Greek text books back in college. Like Santino, he had been a lazy bastard who never listened to his owner, Dicaeopolis. “I have but one question. Where did you acquire this item?”

  That was the only question any of us wanted to know. We knew the rest.

  “It was an inheritance,” he replied. “My uncle obtained it four years ago. He was a legionnaire with the XV Primigenia, but died last year while on campaign in Britain. His personal items were returned to our family in Greece, and I found the item you will be bidding on tonight. Trust me, sir, it was completely legal. A spoil of war.”

  Spoil of war, my ass. This asshole’s uncle must have stolen it from Varus sometime after the Battle for Rome. There had been six thousand men in that legion, along with an equal number of auxilia, and while they all knew me, I’d only interacted with an extremely small number of them. Most of them were good men, but there were always a few brigands in a group. I wondered if the man even knew what he was taking.

  The dealer continued to chat when Helena’s voice cackled in my ear.

  “Contact. Eleven o’clock, your position.”

  My body automatically tracked my rifle towards the area Helena indicated, and I saw exactly what we were looking for. The two men wore tight fitting clothing, probably black, but I couldn’t tell due to the green tint of my scope. Each man had a gladius, or Roman short sword, encased in a sheath strapped to their backs. Along their belts was an assortment of pouches, as well as a half dozen throwing knives held in place by what resembled shotgun shell pockets. One man had a compact bow across his back as well, along with a quiver of arrows at his thigh. The other man had no bow or quiver, but had an additional blade at his waist.

  I looked around for other contacts and found them easily. I spotted nine other pairs, each similarly armed, and encircling Santino’s position unnoticed.

  “Eighteen count,” I told Helena.

  “Twenty two,” she corrected. “Four more atop the hippodrome.”

  I glassed the entrance and high walls of the stadium and saw the four she was referring to.

  “Confirmed, twenty two tangos.”

  “Wait one,” she said. A minute later, I heard her voice again. “Confirmed, twenty two tangos.”

  I hadn’t spotted anymore either. “Confirm positive ID on Georgia or Missouri?”

  “Negative.”

  That wasn’t good news. Either Gaius and Marcus weren’t here, which unless my math was really that bad couldn’t be the case, or they hadn’t activated the infrared beacons I had given them. Either way, it could prove detrimental to the mission.

  “Solid copy, prepare to engage on my mark.”

  She double clicked her radio.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. My forehead glistened slightly with nervous perspiration, but I forced myself to focus, grasping for all that training thrown at me over the course of my career. It wasn’t my ass on the line. It was Santino’s. It was my job to keep my cool when there were others relying on me. I continued to observe the interlopers, waiting for them to do something that would force me to end them.

  “So,” I heard the dealer say in my ear, “let us begin the bidding.”

  “Wait,” Santino said. “Can we not see the object, first?”

  “Of course. How silly of me.”

  The man maneuvered a simple satchel from his back and pulled out a spherical item wrapped in a dark cloth. He carefully unwrapped the package, revealing one of the blue time traveling orbs. As I looked at it through my scope, I half expected to feel some kind of connection with it like I had the last time I was near it, but I was happy to note that I felt nothing. It appeared inert, its color and texture appearing more like a blue bowling ball than the glowing magical device that got us here.

  “It’s a blue… ball,” Santino said, unimpressed.

  “Yes, but observe,” the dealer replied.

  Still holding the orb with the cloth in his left hand, he reached out with his right and poked it with a finger on his right. Immediately, the orb began to shine brightly.

  Well, shit.

  Did this guy possess the same blood line Varus and I did?

  He had to. It was the only explanation for his ability to activate it.

  Right?

  How many more people were there that could control this thing?

  I winced, expecting the jolt of intense pain that accompanied the time travel process, but felt nothing. When I opened my eyes I saw that we were still in Byzantium. I looked through my scope again, zooming it in as far as I could, and looked at the orb. Once again, I saw clouds swirling within it, like observing a hurricane from outer space, but nothing else. No shapes
, objects, or human forms were evident within, and the only thing I could theorize was that there was no one on the other end of the orb, whether they were calling or answering.

  I wondered why not.

  I pulled back the power on my scope, resetting it for an accurate shot. Both Santino and his haggling opponent appeared shocked at what they saw. All three men stumbled back a step before regaining their composure.

  “Most impressive,” Santino said. “Quite the spoil of war, indeed.”

  “Yes, it is very beautiful. The glow will dim over time until it becomes opaque once again. Now, Mr. Xanthias, if you will, the starting bid is three hundred…”

  “Enough of this,” the Praetorian exclaimed loudly. “I claim this object in the name of the Empress of Rome, Augustina Agrippina.”

  The seller huddled his arms against his chest, resting the ball protectively against his body.

  “You have no such authority,” he countered.

  “Indeed,” the Praetorian said, pulling his sword from his belt. Without pause, he stabbed the dealer through the chest. Reacting out of pain and surprise, the man stumbled backwards, throwing his hands over his head as he fell. The orb flew from his grip and Santino, quick on his feet, reached out and snagged it. Still playing the Greek merchant, he took a few steps back, cradling the spherical object and holding out his free hand in a Heisman-like pose.

  “Please, please, we can work something out. Name your price.”

  The Praetorian took a step towards him, pointing his sword at Santino’s neck.

  “This can end two ways,” the man told Santino. “Both end with your death. All you control is its swiftness.”

  Santino didn’t respond verbally, but his body language did his speaking for him. His posture straightened, his fear resided, and he was grinning from ear to ear. The two Romans, including the one holding the sword, shifted on their feet in surprise at how quickly the man before them had suddenly grown a spine.

  “You really don’t want to do that,” Santino informed them calmly, already placing the orb in a bag of his own, cocky as ever. “There’s a very pretty lady out there who’s got your number, and I don’t mean that in a good way.”

  “What?!” The Praetorian growled, only slightly more lost than I was. He moved forward again, just enough to obscure my shot. “Hand it over, fool!”

  Santino sighed and looked at the ground, shaking his head.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, buddy.”

  As soon as he finished his warning, he took a quick step to his left. He looked over his shoulder, glanced around and seemed satisfied with his new position. The two Romans looked at each other in confusion. Santino stood there, rocking on his feet, clapping his hands and snapping his fingers impatiently. Looking just as confused as everyone watching him by now, he glanced around again, then at his watch, before he smacked his thigh in realization. He took another step to the left and pointed his finger at the Roman like a pistol, snapping his hand back, mimicking the firing of a “gun.”

  Nothing happened.

  Santino looked at his hand in confusion. He smacked his wrist with his other hand, and tugged on his thumb, as though he were unjamming it. Apparently satisfied at whatever he had been doing, he took careful aim once again and “fired.” This time the armed Roman’s neck exploded in a stream of arterial blood and gore. Behind him, the other Roman fell backwards as a small crater formed near his left shoulder blade. Both men crumpled dead before they hit the ground.

  “What took you so long?” Santino asked, putting his ear piece in place.

  “Sorry,” Helena replied. “I didn’t want it to look too easy.”

  “Women,” he said. “Always making things more difficult than they really are.”

  I ignored their banter as I focused on Helena’s precision shot. She’d angled it perfectly and aimed at one of the few spots on a person’s body that allowed a bullet to penetrate with enough force while still remain intact so that it could successfully kill a second target behind the first. Her suppressor equipped DSR1 hadn’t even made a peep from anyone else’s perspective but her own, and I hoped the superstitious Romans actually thought Santino had shot their friends.

  I quickly shifted my aim towards the rooftops. I saw the Romans hesitate for a few seconds, but it wasn’t long before the seasoned warriors drew swords and knocked arrows to bows.

  “You might want to start running, 3-3,” I suggested. “You’re about to have incoming.”

  I didn’t bother to look and see if he heard me or not. Instead, I rested my crosshairs on the biggest threat I could find, a Roman with his bow loaded and the string pulled back to his ear. I was in the zone now, and I didn’t hesitate, but before I pulled the trigger, his head exploded.

  “Tango down,” Helena confirmed.

  It still amazed me just how good a shot she was. I gritted my teeth, but smiled.

  If she wanted a challenge, fine.

  Her bolt action rifle and five round magazines gave me a slight advantage over her. After every shot she had to manually reload another round into the chamber, whereas my semi-automatic SR-25 could fire with each pull of the trigger, and I had twenty rounds to fire before I needed to reload. I moved my reticule to the dead man’s partner and put a round through his chest, ending his life before he even knew his buddy had gone down. The spent casing flew from my rifle’s ejection port into a mesh bag I attached to catch them.

  No sense leaving any additional evidence behind.

  Four down, twenty to go.

  They didn’t stand a chance as Helena and I began to systematically take them apart. Another archer pointed his bow as Santino ran and I shot him in the shoulder, spinning him to the ground. I put another round in his chest to make sure he stayed down. His partner noticed his friend’s death, having no idea what happened to him, the cough of my rifle barely passing beyond my building, and took off running. I tracked him as he ran past five IR patches, so I adjusted my scope instinctually for 550 yards and pulled the trigger as he tried to leap between buildings. The bullet caught him just as he launched himself from the rooftop. He went limp at the impact and lost control over his jump, plummeting between the buildings.

  I saw another Roman by himself, 475 yards away, and shot him in the chest.

  “Four tangos down,” I communicated to Helena.

  “Seven for me,” she reported, much to my annoyance. “But we have another problem. Enemy reinforcements coming in from the west. I count at least fifty.”

  I shifted my body so that my rifle faced further to the west and saw just what Helena was describing. Fifty or so armed and dark clad men came running in our direction. There was only one anomaly amongst the group – well two actually. It seemed like Gaius and Marcus had decided to join the fight after all, because I clearly saw two IR strobes pulsating amongst the group as they ran towards Santino, who had finally made it to the rooftops. An arrow flew a foot from his head and I tracked its progress back to the source, removing the man with a shot to the stomach. I also saw one of the Praetorian runners, hot on his heels, only to be taken out by another surgical strike to the neck by Helena.

  This was not good. Because of how Agrippina’s ninjas had positioned themselves prior to Helena’s first kill, Santino only had one direction he could run in. The problem was it threw off my ability to continue covering his withdrawal. Luckily, we’d prepared for that potentiality.

  I clicked my radio. “I’m bugging out to Hide-3.”

  “Copy,” Helena replied, for once too busy to transmit the double clicks.

  I got to my feet, tossed the SR-25 into a large bag shaped like a bloated rifle, picked up Penelope, shouldered both rifle and gear bags, and took off from my position, heading southwest. Last night Helena and I located a third hide that we could use if the battle moved too far north into the city as it appeared to be doing now. Tall buildings were about to block my line of sight in a few minutes with Santino running in that direction. Helena’s position to the west,
however, was higher off the ground than any other point in the city and allowed her to stay put, but in order for us to maintain an effective field of fire, we had found a third hide on a tower near the coast of the Propontis. It was relegated to the secondary position because its line of sight into the courtyard in front of the Hippodrome was negligible.

  I huffed under the weight of my gear but I didn’t stop. I knew where all the big jumps were, having rehearsed the route a number of times last night, so I plowed through the darkness at top speed. The only impediment along the way was a clothes line that held large sheets drying in the summer breeze, an obstruction that was not there last night. When I rounded the corner, I ran headlong into it, entangling myself in the white linens. It only slowed me down for a second, and I was just glad Helena hadn’t seen it.

  I tore them off and pitched them off the side of the building, forcing my head to stay in the game. The tower was in sight now, and I had been out of the fight for almost two minutes now. I hadn’t heard anything over the radio that would make me worry about Santino, just Helena’s constant updates on enemy KIA, but that didn’t mean the situation wasn’t deteriorating because of my absence. The intel Gaius and Marcus had provided indicated there’d only be twenty four Praetorians here, not seventy four, and those extra numbers were an obvious snag in our mission.

  Approaching my last jump, I pushed my body as hard as I could, this last one being the longest. Making my leap, I reached out to grab the ladder that would take me to the roof of the tower. Missing the ladder or failing to grasp the handles would end in a quick death, but even my overwhelming klutziness wasn’t going to get me killed now.

  Luckily, the jump was more successful than I could have ever hoped for, and I secured myself easily. Taking a quick pause to catch my breath and with a quick exertion of strength, I pulled myself upwards, rung by rung. Reaching the roof, I retrieved my SR-25 and rested its’ bipod on the low wall encircling the circumference of the roof, and focused on the advancing Praetorians.

  They were getting smarter. Word must have gotten to them that something was killing them from afar, and had adopted defensive measures that included zigzagging, stopping intermittently as they ran, even skipping, and others stole my signature move: rolling. I had eight rounds left in my original magazine and took careful aim at the advancing troops, who were now spread out and running from my left to right across my field of vision.