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

by Crichton, Edward

  “We believe so,” Marcus answered. “We are still alive.”

  “That is true,” Gaius picked up, “but when we told her we had been following another lead, therefore avoiding certain death, I immediately felt she didn’t believe us.”

  “Did you tell her about the orb?” I asked.

  “We did,” Gaius responded. “She was not happy. Especially when we told her we suspected your involvement. No one saw her for two days, but as Marcus said, we are still alive, even though reassigned.”

  “Reassigned where?” I asked, it finally dawning on me that I had no idea why these two were actually here.

  “I’ll get to that,” he answered, “but there’s more about Germany. Despite the empress’ blunderings and lack of strategic acumen, her legions are not amateurs. In fact, while many of our brothers lie dead who shouldn’t, the legions are killing far more Germans than they’re losing, and they have already pushed north of the Danube.”

  I whistled. If that were true, they were carving out more land for the empire than even Trajan did a hundred years from now.

  “In fact, there is talk of peace amongst the Germans. They’re breaking, but it could be another three years before they break completely. There are even non-aggression talks amongst many Sarmatian tribes, who have been rallying to stall our progress should we subjugate Germany.”

  “So, why the problem?” Vincent asked, just as curious as I was about all this. “If the legions are in fact doing so well, why have things changed so much?”

  Gaius looked back at me. “Because you got what you wanted. Agrippina is coming. She hopes to quell any future recalcitrant behavior here through diplomatic efforts. She’s left Galba in charge of the campaign in Germany.”

  “Galba?” Bordeaux asked, still untrusting of our old ally. “What about Vespasian?”

  “As I told you,” Gaius replied, “we were reassigned. Our current role is to protect Vespasian. Agrippina has sent him here to put down the rebellion along with two of the German campaign’s legions, including the XV Primigenia.”

  I looked at Vincent. He was shaking his head when he glanced at me, and when our eyes met, we started laughing together.

  “What is so funny?” Marcus asked.

  “Nothing,” I answered, shaking off the last laugh. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Twenty five years from now, it was none other than Vespasian himself whom the emperor Nero sent to put down this rebellion. It was frustratingly hilarious how the timeline was constantly repositioning itself, screwing with my sense of humor in the process. Were we changing things or not? It was impossible to tell anymore, but if things kept falling into line like this, maybe we had nothing to worry about after all. Maybe the timeline would be just fine – just like that.

  “So why are you two here?” Helena asked, always tackling the most important questions.

  “Vespasian wishes to speak with you,” Gaius answered,” but we do not know what about. All we know is that he is aware of our friendship and has asked us to assure you that you will not be harmed. He also asks that only two of you go.”

  “Great,” Santino said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “When do we leave?”

  “You’re not going,” I said offhandedly. I was about to ask Gaius for clarification when Santino interrupted.

  “What?” He asked, his face obviously upset. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going,” Helena answered for me.

  Santino looked at me, his eyes searching passionately for clarification.

  “She’s right,” I said, switching to English. “First of all, she’s my swim buddy, and yours is laid up right now…“

  “Actually, Hunter,” Wang said, rotating his ankle easily, “I’m good to go now. I should be one hundred percent by…”

  I shot him a look and he clammed up, taking the hint.

  “If anything is going to happen out there,” Helena said from the crook of my arm, “whether Vespasian is setting us up or not, it’s going to happen to the both of us. I’m not going sit around wondering if he’s all right or not.”

  “Besides,” I picked up, “we don’t need you obfuscating things.”

  “No problem there,” Santino whined childishly, “because I don’t even fucking know what ‘obfuscating’ means.”

  “It means to make something more complicated than it already is, Mr. Linguist,” Helena chided.

  “Easy for you to say, Mr. Oxford,” he grumbled like a moping teenager, with his arms crossed against his chest, head down.

  Poor guy. He probably just wanted to get out of the city for a few hours. Although, I wasn’t sure what kind of tail he was expecting to find in a legion camp.

  “When is Vespasian expecting us?” I asked, ignoring his tantrum.

  “Tomorrow after midnight,” Gaius answered

  “Great,” I replied, rising to my feet and offering a hand to help Helena up. “We’ll be ready.”

  ***

  Twenty hours later, Helena and I made our way through the dying city with our two Roman friends.

  Oddly, we didn’t have much trouble. Only a few days ago, the hours between sunset and sunrise were exceedingly treacherous for both the city’s defenders and attackers. The besieging legion, whoever it was, probably the II Traiana Fortis if memory served correct, would use the cover of darkness to probe their way into the city, and its defenders would do everything it could to defend themselves.

  Every night was filled with pitched skirmishes throughout the city, only to end by day break, followed by more shelling of the city by Roman artillery throughout the day. Those of us from the future faired rather well, only needing our swords once or twice, but the method was wearing heavily on the Jewish population. If not for our presence, this siege may have lifted weeks ago. We weren’t in Masada. This wasn’t a fortress. It was a city. A lush and beautiful one.

  At least it had been.

  As for the ease of our escape, I knew it must have had something to do with Vespasian. If Gaius and Marcus were to bring us to see him unharmed, the most prudent thing to do for the man commanding the besieging legions was to cease hostilities.

  And it was a welcome respite.

  After all our years cut off from our home I’d recently found myself caring less and less about humanity in general. I’ve killed without remorse, ending the lives of those who may have lived long lives without my intervention, and with each life I take, I simply lost interest. I tried to pretend it wasn’t my fault, having witnessed so much death that it was no longer so easy to appreciate the importance of human life. Here in Caesarea, when I’d pass a fallen Jew or legionnaire both, I felt nothing, even if it had been by my hand.

  I guess all that mattered to me was the timeline, not the lives that helped make it what it was, and even then I wondered if I really cared or not anymore.

  It’s why this break felt so good.

  Helena was another story. Starting a few years ago, with every life she took, her emotional struggle to rationalize her guilt became more and more evident in her. The woman hadn’t been bred to kill on this kind of scale. She’d joined the military for that age old adage of, “meet new people and see the world” bullshit. She’d needed something, anything, to separate herself from the life she had been living, and joining the military had been the best option at the time

  She may have been an Olympic medaling sharpshooter, but she’d hoped to leave her old life behind, especially that of a trained marksmen. She could have spent her entire military career having never fired a weapon. But what was she going to tell her instructors once they learned of her background? No? Had she not accepted any of the choices forced on her, she could have been drummed out of the military and sent back to her restrictive life and oppressive father.

  I sighed as I thought about her. It was amazing how horribly ironic her story was. Here she was joining the military to escape the rule and dominion of her father, only to have the military force her to use her natural abilities in a w
ay she never wanted. It had been a testament to her integrity and fortitude that when she’d been forced to deliver by protecting her teammates’ lives, she actually had delivered.

  But it shouldn’t matter.

  Every death since was my fault, not hers, and the fact that she couldn’t accept that made it all the worse, and the first few years had been the worst of all. After many an operation, she would sometimes find some lonely patch of solitude where she could just sit and cry softly to no one but herself, even as far back as our time in the Primigenia’s winter camp. For the longest time, I’d let her do it alone. I’d thought it was what she needed, but ever since that time she caught me checking up on her, when she’d ran into my arms and sobbed like I’d never seen before, that I always tried to be there for her.

  Every time I took note of her grief, my heart ached, but the fact that she was now hardened to that pain made it only worse. Now, she acted without remorse when it came to killing in the line of duty. She was still an emotional woman, but after all her time here, she’d become a stone cold killer. That’s why whenever I saw her face after she put someone in their grave, I died a little inside.

  As it did whenever I was reminded of her near death experience. Her pain attacks. Vincent’s lost arm. Claudius. Caligula. Agrippina. My life in Ancient Rome. Thousands of lives lost. All my fault. It’s why I had to set things straight. I had no idea if Vespasian could fix everything. Not completely. Logic and history says he can, and should Rome come out even a smidge better, and perhaps the rest of history, who’s going to fucking blame me for it? Not me. And mine is the only opinion I needed to appease. All I wanted was some peace, something I wasn’t sure I could find anymore.

  I almost laughed. I often wondered why my mind tended to wander during the times it should be focused most; the times when my life and others’ were at stake. I hadn’t a clue. Maybe it made me sharper. We’d made it this far, after all, which incidentally was the entrance to the legion camp.

  A simple wooden door, the gate was our first indicator that this camp was only temporary, meant for campaign use only. Its defensive stakes, ditch, palisade, and rampart were there, but it wouldn’t hold off an invasion like some of the other forts I’d been in before, but this particular one was built just like all the rest, and that meant a straight jaunt through the middle of the camp, right for the praetorium.

  As we passed through the threshold, Helena and I were greeted by unfamiliar looks from unfamiliar legionnaires. I’d expected expressions of awe, curiosity and, in Helena’s case, lust, but none of the legionnaires displayed such emotions. We were instead met by looks of anger and hatred. Many of these men probably recognized us from the thousands of “Wanted” posters displayed throughout the empire, or were perhaps wondering why these people who’d come from the city they had just been besieging, were suddenly and nonchalantly strolling through their camp.

  Helena shared a worried look with me, and she tucked in close. She gripped her P90 and brought it close to her chest, while I shouldered Penelope as well. While we were mostly sure Vespasian didn’t want us dead, if we were going to die, it was going to be guns blazing and together.

  But as we quickly approached the center of the camp, fewer and fewer looks came our way. Within minutes, we found ourselves at the entrance of the praetorium, and both Gaius and Marcus walked inside while we waited. A few minutes later, important looking military and administrative figures offered us dirty looks as they were hastily escorted from the tent by Marcus while Gaius remained inside.

  “You can go inside, now,” Marcus informed us once they were gone.

  I nodded and took a step forward, but he rested a hand against my chest and stopped me.

  “Your weapons, Hunter,” he said.

  I held his gaze for a few seconds, but he didn’t flinch. After another second, I nodded and unclipped my rifle from its 3-point sling draped across my shoulder. I handed it to him, while Helena did the same. I tried to step forward again, but Marcus halted me just as he had before.

  “All of them,” he said, with a flick of his eyes towards my pistol.

  I took a deep breath and retrieved my Sig, slapping it roughly into his waiting hand. “You sure he’s not going to kill us?”

  “Hunter, if he wanted you dead, you already would be.”

  “Thanks for that,” I grumbled as Helena bravely pulled me behind her into the tent.

  The interior of the command tent was just like all the other ones I’d seen. Relatively small, about the size of half a tennis court, and spartanly furnished. A chest, cabinet, desk, bed, and a few extra chairs were the room’s only furnishings, but there were a few oddities. A five foot tall broadsword was prominently displayed on a rack, its dark metal contrasting harshly against the white crispness of the tent’s canvas walls, as did a set of double bladed battle axes that hung crisscrossing one another. I wagered they were mementos from the only inhabitant’s previous two campaigns in Britain and Gaul.

  As for the inhabitant, I was taken aback by his presence; by his looks, his countenance and years of anticipation. Just under six feet tall, he had dark, almost black hair, a broad nose that completely suited his face and severe eyes that didn’t seem capable of missing a thing. He was built like a wrestler, a popular sport these days, even if it was nothing like modern day Greco-Roman wrestling, which was also, in fact, neither Greek nor Roman. He also had an interesting scar on his right cheek, not like Santino’s, but a simple line from his temple to chin.

  I thought back to all the busts and sculptures of the man I’d seen during my college years. None of those facsimiles resembled this man at all, even one in particular that I normally associated with the man; a representation of him struck maybe twenty five years from now. Even so, there was something fundamentally familiar about him.

  Vespasian.

  Finally.

  But most surprising was that he also seemed happy, even jovial. He rose to his feet and moved towards us, reaching out with his arm, which I gripped just before the elbow.

  “Greetings!” He hailed in an impressively deep voice. “You must be Jacob Hunter. I have heard much about you.”

  I smiled and tried not to look intimidated by this confusing man.

  “All good things I hope,” I said awkwardly.

  “Perhaps,” he said, still smiling, before turning to Helena. “And this must be the lovely Helena… van Strauss? Am I saying that correctly?”

  Helena smiled as well, even more embarrassed than I was. “Yes, yes you are.”

  “Wonderful,” he boomed. “It is an honor to meet you as well. The tales of your beauty precede you greatly. Tell me. Is it true you can turn men to stone on a whim?”

  She looked at me, completely flushed.

  “Well,” she said like a love sick teenager, hooking a thumb in my direction, “maybe only this one.”

  He belted out a rich laugh. “I have heard you two are together. Congratulations! Your marriage must be happy and bountiful.”

  “It’s not like that…” we both started, before cutting ourselves off. I stood as confused as I was embarrassed. This man was nothing like I imagined he would be. He didn’t seem like most people, let alone like most Romans.

  “Bah! If two people can fall in love and still fight wars with each other and not against one another, then you have something truly special indeed.”

  An interesting platitude. I hoped he was right.

  “Now,” he said, his joyful attitude draining immediately, “we have much to discuss. Please sit.”

  “Such a charmer…” Helena whispered in English as we moved to our seats.

  “Don’t get any ideas, honey,” I replied with a smirk.

  As Helena and I maneuvered into our chairs, Vespasian took a seat behind his desk, folding his hands in front of him. He rested them on the desk while he waited for us to get comfortable. He took a deep breath, and in an instant, the cheerful man who’d hit on Helena and shook my hand was gone, replaced by a very stern author
ity figure. My spider-sense spiked and I knew something was wrong, something that told me our meeting wasn’t going to be all shits and giggles after all.

  “So,” Vespasian began, making eye contact with Helena and I equally, “I have made a very good friend over these past few months. I must admit, I am almost embarrassed to say that before our campaign in Germany, I considered him little more than an arrogant ass, already past his prime. However, as the fates would have it, he and I grew quite close as we worked together, and I found myself liking him as more than just a colleague.”

  I gulped. I had a feeling where this was going.

  He continued. “As we campaigned this past summer, he amused me with many stories, the particularly interesting ones revolving around events that occurred four years ago. The stories themselves weren’t of particular surprise, as I had heard them many times amongst camp gossip and with my legates over dinner.” His eyes drilled through mine as I tried to maintain my composure. He didn’t seem convinced that I had any idea what he was talking about. “Oh, you know the ones. The stories about Caligula and a group of people from… well… that part isn’t always so clear. However, what made this man’s rendition of these tales all the more interesting was that he seemed to know more than most. Do you know who I am speaking of?”

  I cleared my throat and fidgeted in my chair. Helena didn’t seem particularly comfortable either. The tone in the room had shifted completely. How easy it had happened was unsettling.

  “Galba?” I answered.

  “Galba, indeed,” he said with a slow nod of his head. “You should know that when he first told me these stories, I did not believe him. How could I? Claudius a traitor? An orb of magical powers? Time traveling soldiers from an era of flying machines that can reach Luna and weapons that can destroy entire cities? Ridiculous! Yet…” He paused, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, his chin held up by his hands. “…here you are. Tell me; is it true your weapons can kill from miles away?”

  I deferred to Helena.

  She shrugged, smiling meekly. “Yes, but it isn’t easy.”