“Wait!” She yelled in heavily accented Latin that was completely unfamiliar to me.
The four time travelers who sat just below them finally reacted, but Archer, Cuyler, and Brewster already had rifles trained on the strangers while Vincent had moved off to my left with his pistol pointed in their direction as well. I couldn’t tell if the intruders recognized what my friends held as weapons or not, but they didn’t make any sudden movements either, although they didn’t appear particularly hostile anyway.
Despite the cold climate, they wore little clothing. Weakly constructed furs covered the men from the waist down to their knees and they wore some kind of moccasins that rose to their skirts. Over their shoulders they wore what looked like suspenders made from some kind of woodland creature. The woman was dressed similarly from the waist down, but instead of the suspender like apparatuses coming over and down her shoulders like the men, she wore a type of furry tube top that covered her stomach and breasts, but leaving her shoulders and arms exposed.
Neither the men nor the woman seemed particularly well dressed for the climate, but they weren’t shivering either. At their feet, I noticed large fur coats pooled around their legs, and I assumed they must have shrugged out of them earlier to appear less threatening; however, the large blades they wore along their backs certainly were. They were sheathed, but it was not difficult to see that they were large and pointy, perhaps some early iteration of the claymore so often seen in places like Scotland during its medieval years.
By now, even the legionnaires had become aware of the intruders, and moved to gather arms and call in the sentry units that had somehow let these four individuals slip through their net, an impressive feat and one worth noting. When our pickets arrived, they moved in on them aggressively, but Vincent held up his hand.
“Stop!” He ordered. “They do not seem belligerent.”
Archer beside me had his primitive looking distant cousin of the M-16 assault rifle shouldered and pointing in their direction.
“For now…” he said, and I had to agree.
Every instinct inside me screamed out to kill them and get the hell out of here before more of their friends arrived, but I beat back such thoughts. It wasn’t easy, and the standoff continued, but Vincent distracted me when he took a step forward and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Want to step in, Hunter, or should I question them?”
I nodded reluctantly and took a step forward. To my right, I noticed that Helena had joined the others and had her shotgun held in a hand and pointed toward the intruders, and I saw Artie hiding behind her shoulder. It was reassuring to see that they were safe, but I thought little of it as I returned my attention to the quartet of individuals.
The men were forgettable, but clearly well suited for warfare. They all had light hair and eccentric mustaches that ranged from blond to red and each were tall and well built, especially when compared to the Romans, but their cold, light colored eyes indicated they didn’t want to be here anymore than the rest of us. The woman, on the other hand, was far more noteworthy. Not simply because there was a woman with a sword before us, but because she looked like she certainly knew how to use it.
She appeared no older than nineteen or twenty, but she was already inches taller than Helena, which is where the similarities between the two ended. While Helena’s skin always seemed perpetually bronze, this woman was as pale as a ghost. Helena’s hair was jet black, while this woman’s was as red as a particularly colorful sunset. Their eyes were more similar but while Helena’s were piercingly green, this woman’s were icily blue, almost silver in appearance.
And she was built.
Like Schwarzenegger built.
Helena was as tough a woman as I’d ever known, but she’d always maintained her feminine curves and grace. The redheaded woman on the other hand could have been an amateur body builder back home, a woman who spent far more time in the free weights section than the cardio area at the gym. Although her feminine frame was still obvious, her muscle definition rivaled Wang’s but her build was more like Bordeaux’s, and she carried herself with immense confidence while simultaneously maintaining body language that made her seem like an official dignitary, diplomat, or ambassador.
Unless I was off my trolley again, I was convinced she could be royalty of some kind.
I stepped around the fire and walked up to her, guessing that she was the leader somehow. I looked her up and down like a piece meat, sizing her up rather than checking her out, letting on like I wasn’t impressed and wasn’t someone to be trifled with.
Which I damn well wasn’t.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“We come not to harm,” was all the woman said, her accent making her sound like she was speaking Klingon with a mouth full of marbles – and like a Klingon, I wondered if the only thing this gargantuan woman would understand from me was a show of force.
“We have been watching you for some time,” she continued, “and have waited patiently for a suitable opportunity to meet you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Santino said from across the fire. “That’s what they always say in the movies before they stab you in the back.”
I ignored him but not his advice.
He was right.
“Why?” I asked her.
“I have been sent to aid you on your quest, Cernunnos.”
Santino wasn’t often right about things, but he was now. Warning lights were going off in the back of my head like a Christmas tree, but I was rarely able to rein in my curiosity.
I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms. “What did you call me?”
She looked to the sky and held her arms over her head. “In a vision I was shown an image of the god Cernunnos floating above a Roman symbol swathed in brilliant red light.”
“In a vision?” I asked skeptically, my right eyebrow rising instinctively.
Vincent stepped up beside me. “She’s talking about the battle two days ago.”
I nodded and took a second to think before deciding this whole story was getting far too ridiculous. I waved a hand in her direction in a shooing gesture.
“You’re lucky I don’t crucify you for attacking us,” I said angrily, “but I’m feeling magnanimous tonight, so leave before I change my mind. What you saw wasn’t a vision, it really happened, and I’ve got enough superstitious people tagging along as it is.”
Her expression didn’t change as I turned to leave. Vincent looked at me with his mouth open wide, but I didn’t care. If these people were a part of the shadow force that had been tailing us since Camulodunum, I wasn’t concerned. If they wanted a fight they were more than welcome to one. I would be more than happy to oblige them and send them to their premature deaths right here and now if they pushed me.
But before I could take another step, the fiery redhead pushed past Vincent and put a hand on my shoulder. With even more strength than I expected, she twirled me around to face her.
“The vision came before the battle, Cernunnos, not after. That is why I ordered my horde back to keep them from slaughtering you.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, “sure you did.”
Surprisingly, Wang stepped beside me timidly, looking particularly spooked and frightened. “Hunter, I think you should listen to her.”
I looked down at him at the same moment as the powerful woman before me did, and I noticed her look him up and down just as I had her earlier. Only, her expression indicated she was doing exactly what I hadn’t, namely, checking him out instead of sizing him up as a possible adversary. She towered over him, and Wang never risked a look at her so he never saw how she looked at him, which did not seem platonic in the slightest.
I smacked him on the shoulder, and he jerked in surprise, but managed to look up at me.
“What the hell is your problem, Wang?” I demanded.
He responded by shaking his head like a person with severe mental deficiencies.
“Why should I listen to her?” I asked, t
rying another route
“Because of your name!” He spat out finally, his eyes wide with unfocused fear. “Your name, Hunter!”
“What about it?” I asked, legitimately concerned my old friend was falling off his own trolley.
How odd it would be if I wasn’t actually the first…
Wang looked back at the ground and mumbled his next words. “Your name. Hunter. Cernunnos. Fucking Welsh mythology and fairy tales class in high school. Who knew I’d actually use it. I can’t believe it. I…”
“Wang!” I said sharply, gripping the man by the shoulder. “Snap out of it. What about my name is so important?”
He looked shaken but met my eyes. “Cernunnos is an old Celtic god that is sometimes referred to as The Lord of the Hunt, Hunter. Hunt! Hunter! Hunt! Hunter! That can’t be a coincidence. It just can’t!”
I looked away from him, no longer thinking him insane. There did seem something odd going on here that was beyond my control, beyond anyone’s control. Wang was totally right. There was no way such a word association could have been a coincidence. My head shifted nervously back to the woman who had no way of knowing me, but somehow did.
“Who are you?” I asked nervously.
She smiled proudly and pumped out her chest. “I am Boudicca, Cernunnos. Sworn wife to Prasutagus, king of the Iceni people, defender of all Celtic lands.”
***
There was an audible gasp from behind me, one I knew had to have come from Helena, who now stood face to face with one of the very heroes she’d learned about in university. I looked over my shoulder to see her with a hand covering her mouth, her eyes wide in surprise.
I turned back to the young redhead. “Say again?”
“My name is Boudicca, Cernunnos. Sworn wife to…”
“Yeah, yeah, I got all that,” I said with an upraised hand, extraordinarily amused at this particular woman’s presence, mostly because I was not at all surprised that she was here.
How many historical figures had we randomly bumped into during our time in Antiquity? It was like a supreme being had placed us on a path that allowed us to continue meeting these people. Even Josephus’ father back in Caesarea had seemed almost predestined. The prominent historian, Josephus himself, had been too young to help us or influence our journey, but his father had been a good substitute, but unlike Josephus, while the very young woman before us was also much younger than the prominent figure history remembered, she seemed fully capable and able to help us, if that was in fact her mission here. Perhaps with history as fucked up as it was, she was no longer destined for a place in the history books, no longer predetermined to leave a mark on this planet to remember her by. Maybe, only through her involvement with us – an anomalous outlier in the timeline – could she regain that position of historical significance, and something was driving her toward it.
Hence why she was here.
Maybe.
After everything I’d experienced recently, I was no longer adamant in my stance that there wasn’t some form of divine, supernatural, or just superior presence pushing us along in a specific direction. It would certainly explain a lot. It seemed completely possible that fate was doing everything it could to reorient the timeline away from the one that resulted in Artie 2.0’s world. While it hadn’t succeeded before when the Other Me had died, when Artie 2.0 and company showed up, fate had been given additional variables to play with to make things right.
Or… it was simply an interesting coincidence.
“Cernunnos?”
The voice of the woman claiming to be Boudicca interrupted my thoughts and I suddenly forgot what it was I had been thinking about.
I jerked my head and looked at her. “What?”
“You seemed very far away just now,” she answered.
I shook my head again and tried to understand her presence. I was still figuring it out when Vincent walked up beside me and eyed the tall woman as he whispered in my ear.
“Maybe you should have everyone stand down, Hunter…”
I kept my eyes on Boudicca suspiciously as I slowly turned to face our gathered force at his suggestion. Her eyes never left mine but at least they seemed neutral in presentation, nothing treacherous, deceitful, or even lustful present behind them – the latter of which being a pleasant surprise for me when encountering women in antiquity.
“Stand down,” I finally ordered my team with a wave of my hand.
They looked at each other nervously, but all of them lowered their weapons and grew more relaxed. I scanned my eyes across each of their faces, noticing that while their defensive postures were lowered, they didn’t appear very welcoming as they milled about cautiously, their movements suggesting they were taking up better positions to contain Boudicca and her men.
Only Wang and Vincent remained at my side, but Wang was forced to do everything he could to avoid Boudicca’s roaming gaze. After a while, he didn’t seem able to take it any longer, so he awkwardly strolled away, but Boudicca never took her eyes off of him.
“Where does he hail from?” She asked, having to look over my shoulder now as Wang continued to beat his retreat.
“Who Wang?” I asked as I hooked a thumb over my shoulder in his direction. “He’s a local actually. Born and raised just south of here.”
“You lie, Cernunnos,” she said with a challenging tone, finally returning her attention to me.
She looked at me with an angry look, but I nodded at her reassuringly. “I don’t actually, but I can’t blame you for not believing me. He’s single by the way.”
Her eyes squinted briefly in surprise. “Of course he is just one man, Cernunnos.”
“Never mind,” I said, no longer annoyed that these people couldn’t understand a simply idiom. “But stop calling me Cernunnos. I’m not a god.”
Not yet, came a random thought.
“I know this,” Boudicca said, “but it is how you were presented to me in my vision.”
“Just call me Hunter,” I said.
“Hoont-her,” she said slowly with her crude accent. “What does it mean?”
“In my language the word ‘hunt’ means to stalk and kill prey,” I explained in Latin but using the English term so that she could get the gist, “and a ‘hunter’ is someone who does this.”
“I see. A good name then. I too am a… hunter,” she said, pronouncing it reasonably better than she had most of her Latin words.
I smiled and patted her arm but quickly yanked it away, freaked out by how hard and beefy it was. “Great. Then we should get along just fine.”
The men under her command tensed at the contact but she shooed them away with the flick of her chin. They obeyed and moved off in silence.
“That is good Hunter, for we have much to accomplish.”
“Why do people always say things like that?” I mumbled to myself, but held out my hand to lead her toward our fire. She understood and stepped forward. The two of us took a seat upon fallen logs cattycorner to each other, and I couldn’t help but get a pretty impressive show of the muscles on her legs and upper back as she moved and sat. She cut an impressive figure, and while the rest of us were certainly no slouches, I couldn’t help but make a mental note not to mess with her.
Once the two of us were comfortable, Vincent, Archer, Gaius, and Marcus came to sit near us as well while everyone else scattered. Wang was nowhere in sight, and I could see Santino and Artie walk off together toward somewhere, but they were out of sight before I could see where. To my right, I saw Helena sitting with her back to a tree, only her side profile visible, her hand resting upon her protruding stomach. Her head was tilted back against the tree and her eyes were cast upwards, looking at God knew what.
I ignored her.
I turned to Vincent who sat nearest me. “Feel free to jump in whenever you want, Vincent, but make sure you translate for Archer so he can keep up.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. Archer’s Latin had grown… serviceable, but wasn’t nearly good enoug
h to completely follow a conversation.
I turned to Boudicca, who was already staring back at me and seemed to have something on her mind.
“Curious about something?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s just that your appearance and weaponry is mystifying. I did not expect such things from my vision. Also, there are women with you. I knew not that Rome employed female warriors. It is all most confusing…”
“We’re what you would call unique,” I explained. “Don’t expect to see anyone else look like us around here.”
She nodded. “I would expect not. My vision made it clear that I was to embark on a most particular task, and that I should expect to experience much I did not understand.”
“Let’s talk about this vision,” I said, and waited for her to explain, but when she remained silent, I spoke again. “Give me details.”
She looked surprised by my line of inquiry, but did not hesitate. “The night after my warband was repulsed outside the city you call Camulodunum nearly two weeks ago, I was gifted with a vision as I slept about how I was to continue my struggle against Roman aggression.”
I glanced at Vincent, who shrugged. He’d been a pretty pious Catholic for as long as I’d known him, and I assumed he still was – although we didn’t talk about it much anymore – and I knew he wouldn’t necessarily rule out the idea of a “vision from God.”
I was a little more skeptical, but who was I to judge anymore?
“Go on,” I prompted.
“I was told to come here,” she explained. “To the Isle of Mona where I would meet a powerful man who had the ability to control the fate of the entire world. It was shown to me that I would be made aware of him before reaching the isle, accompanied by a red light in the sky and the raining of fire. At first, we thought your contingent of Romans were a raiding force, but when we saw the light, I ordered my warriors back. I knew then that within your group was the man I sought, although I did not know who I was looking for specifically until just now.”
Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion Page 26
