Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion

by Edward Crichton

  “Whoa, wait a second, Hunter,” he said. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”

  He asked his question with a finger directed toward Penelope.

  I shrugged. “The interrogation’s taken long enough. We need to get moving.”

  Archer shook his head. “Let them do their jobs, Hunter. We’re already setting up camp a half mile from here so there’s no rush.”

  I looked between the two men in disbelief. “What are you two, best buddies all of a sudden?” I looked at Santino accusingly. “You abandoning me so quickly, bestie? Some friend you turned out to be.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Santino accused, his voice steady.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You fucking heard me, Hunter,” Santino said, jabbing a finger into my chest. “No one else has the balls to say it, but you’re nuts. Wigging the fuck out. You’d better take a cold shower one of these days because you’re on a downward spiral toward crazy tow…”

  I whacked his arm with one of my own, dislodging his hand from my chest.

  “Quit you’re fucking whining, Santino,” I said. “Now let me through.”

  I pushed past him swiftly, the two of them too slow to stop me. With another step I was through the circle of legionnaires who loomed over their captives threateningly, while two of their comrades did the actual questioning. One noticed me as I stepped through the perimeter and moved out of the way, making a show of bowing to my authority and command – quick thinking that elevated the good cop/bad cop charade he might have been going for.

  I reached down and grabbed the nearest captive by his animal skin top, hauling him to his feet. He was a very large man but I was drawing on a strength fueled by determination and energies beyond my understanding. I pulled him up as easily as picking up a feather and thrust my nose into his face as I pressed him against a tree.

  “We gave you no cause to attack us, so why?”

  The man showed no fear but shook his head nonetheless. I turned to the legionnaire who had been the chief interrogator.

  “Translate,” I ordered.

  He did so but still the man refused to answer. I dropped him back to the ground and looked around. Beside the fallen man were four other individuals, two of them female who looked as fierce and capable as the men. Neither were as strikingly attractive from the head up as Boudicca, nor as impressive physically from the neck down either, but they certainly appeared to be able fighters in their own right. The one directly beside the man I’d initially questioned seemed to shift closer to him almost inadvertently, and I also noticed she happened to be the prettier of the two as well.

  I flicked my head in her direction but kept my eyes on the man. “Is this one yours?”

  The legionnaire translated.

  The man didn’t answer but his face provided all the answers I needed. I frowned at the man. “You leave me no choice then.”

  The legionnaire was in the midst of translating as I drew Penelope, aimed her at the woman’s forehead and –

  “Jacob, no!” Santino cried.

  – squeezed the trigger.

  By the time his words registered in my mind, my finger had already tightened, but all that emanated from Penelope was a slight “clicking” noise – the kind associated with a misfire. I looked at my rifle questioningly, not understanding what exactly had happened. Since Penelope had never misfired before I wasn’t quite sure how to react. I ejected the bullet from the rifle’s ejection port and caught it clumsily. I looked at it curiously but couldn’t find a flaw in its craftsmanship. It was possible it had gotten exceptionally wet and was rendered useless or was just a simple dud. I dropped it into a pocket and released the magazine from its well and blew on the lead bullet before slapping the magazine back into place, all the while our hapless prisoners watched in confusion.

  I aimed at the woman again and squeezed the trigger, but again nothing happened.

  I ejected the magazine and slapped home a fresh one, but still the rifle did not fire. Frustration was beginning to grow in me like a weed, clawing its way from my chest and into my mind like a vengeful spirit. Over and over and over, I pulled the trigger only to have nothing happen, leaving nothing more than a series of bullet shaped holes in the snow beside me.

  What had just happened was more than impossible.

  There was simply no way that many bullets could just misfire without cause.

  It was a miracle.

  Unless the problem was with Penelope.

  I looked at her and slapped in yet another fresh magazine but it too failed to fire. Round after round after round would not ignite, and a thought in the back of my mind convinced me my pistol would do no better.

  Deep in my chest, where all this time I’d subconsciously contained all my negativity, something snapped. It wasn’t a bone or an artery or a valve, but something in there broke open, and I could no longer contain the swell of emotion that I’d been carrying with me for years.

  With the maniac clumsiness of someone who’d completely lost control, I struggled to unclip Penelope from the sling around my neck, but when I did, I gripped my rifle by the barrel, and flung it over my head at the nearest tree like a Viking hurling an ax. It hit with such force that I was sure it would snap in half, but it stubbornly remained intact. Perhaps a little scratched and dented but little more.

  Its durability only made things worse.

  I scrambled toward it, only dimly aware of the surprised expressions on the faces of all those around me, and retrieved it, only one thing to say coming to mind before I summarily bashed it against the trunk of the tree over and over and over again.

  “Et tu?”

  With the words spoken, the evisceration began, and I had no plans of stopping until my rifle was crushed to a fine powder in my hands. Finally, the silence among the men was broken by the sound of Santino yelling for the legionnaires to get out of his way. They apparently had no problem with it now because seconds later, Santino’s powerful grip was pulling on my shoulder. The suddenness of the motion caused me to drop the rifle and it fell at the base of the tree in a clatter of pieces and parts, joining all the rest that had already broken free.

  “What have you done, Jacob?” Santino asked with a tone that suggested I had just murdered my own mother instead of a worthless piece of junk well past its prime.

  The two of us looked down at the mangled mess that had once been my beloved rifle, but the sight of it only served to lift a heavy weight from my shoulders. Its broken presence beneath my feet seemed to alleviate every bit of tension I’d ever felt, replacing those dark emotions with a freshness, satisfaction, and with the soothing reminder that similar acts in the future would make me feel the same. The death of Penelope and the joy I’d felt at it symbolized the solidification of my focus on the orb and its secrets. I no longer needed a thing from my former life, just the resolve and determination to continue onward.

  “What have you done?” Santino whispered again, but I was hardly listening as I turned back to the original man I’d questioned.

  “Why did you attack us?” The question came out calmly and evenly despite the sweat gleaming on my forehead and my chest heaving after my earlier exertion.

  The man seemed terrified now, maybe wondering what I would do to him considering what I’d just done to an inanimate fucking object, perhaps wondering if I’d start torturing him now instead of killing him outright.

  His answer came slowly in his ancient, guttural language, and I waited for the legionnaire to translate, which he did cautiously.

  “He says we attacked them first.”

  “Ridiculous,” I said, the legionnaire translating. “You’re the first locals we’ve encountered in weeks. We were just moving through.”

  The man responded totteringly, and even though I couldn’t understand him, it wasn’t hard to detect that he was repeating the same few lines over and over.

  The legionnaire shook his head as he translated. “He keeps repeating that we attacked h
is tribe first, Legate, but there is an undertone of vengeance in what he’s saying. He seems to think that we did something horrible to his people.”

  I nodded slowly and straightened to loom over the captured individuals. I glanced behind me to see Santino carefully sifting through the snow, collecting the pieces of my broken rifle. During my quick look, I noticed Archer moving to help. I shook my head and returned my attention to the legionnaire.

  “Kill them,” I ordered evenly. “Leave this guy for last.”

  “Legate?” He asked.

  “Do it,” I snapped.

  Before the words were even out of my mouth, I heard the sound of cold steel piercing flesh followed by the piercing shriek of a woman too surprised to really feel the true effect of pain. Within seconds the scream subsided into silence but not before a handful of others had joined it only to die out in turn. I’d already turned away and started walking from the scene when I heard the last man cry out, his lingering far longer than the others.

  We’d already wasted too much time here.

  ***

  Nothing seemed to change in this wintery shithole that was Ancient Britain, just an endless ocean of empty, eerie trees and narrow passageways between them. The sea was still somewhere off to our left and countless miles of land to our right. Wildlife continued to elude us and though the legionnaires preferred a wholly vegetarian diet while on the march to keep them energized and light on their feet, the occasional reward of spit-fired meat had escaped them for far too long, which combined with continued forced marches allowed poor morale to fester. My centurions were working extra hard keeping them in line, but I didn’t have time to worry about a rebellion, because we were almost there.

  I could feel it.

  I felt a lot of things these days. Some bad, some good, others exhilarating, most unexplainable. My mind worked in overdrive as thoughts came and went, flying through my consciousness at a rate I could barely process. Thoughts darted in and out so quickly that at times I’d find myself staring at nothing in particular for minutes on end with no recollection of the passage of time. Yesterday, Boudicca had found me slumped in my saddle in a position she said I’d held for over an hour. She said she’d thought me to be meditating, but I hadn’t remembered a second of it had I been.

  Other times I would mumble to myself endlessly to the point where my mouth would grow completely parched. Felix especially got most of my attention as I found myself talking to him more and more, and I was growing more comfortable with the fact that he seemed to reply, although we hadn’t done much talking lately.

  It was too damn cold for talking.

  The temperature had dropped precipitously in the past few days to hover well below freezing, and I had been forced to supplement my warmest cold weather gear with a blanket just to keep myself from freezing to death. Felix, too, was bundled up like an Eskimo, and we rode in plodding silence, but as a strong gust of wind whistled through the tree branches above me, I snapped my head up and around at the sound, grimacing in pain at the movement. It must have been hours since I’d last moved my head, and the sudden twisting of my neck combined with the cold left it feeling like I’d just attempted to tear it from my shoulders.

  I groaned as the action of returning my head to its forward facing position felt no better. Once I was settled again, I began a series of exercises of rolling my head around in a circle and tilting it against each shoulder, stretching out its kinks and warming it up, and I decided it would be a good time to flex my toes within my booted feet as well. Each foot may have been covered in three socks surrounded by a heavy duty boot, but my socks weren’t much better off than my boxer shorts these days, and I wasn’t sure I had any left that didn’t have at least one hole in it. It was an odd issue to have, made worse by the fact that I couldn’t buy anymore socks, and I was certain I’d cut off both my feet for a fucking Target and its endless supplies of them right about now.

  Without socks, would I be forced to wrap my feet in the linens worn by the legionnaires to keep my feet warm? Would my feet even fit in my boots anymore? How much longer did my boots even have?

  I jerked my legs angrily like a toddler stamping his feet at not getting his way, and Felix dropped his head back in preparation for an increase in speed. I reached out quickly to pat his neck, pulling back on the reins with the other.

  “Don’t bother, Felix,” I whispered close to his ear. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

  Felix answered with another of his all-too-knowing neighs and immediately settled down.

  I nodded in satisfaction and sat back, ready to reluctantly endure a thousand more years of riding through this winter wasteland as long as my answers were still out there. I settled in and bundled my blanket under my chin again, shivering around the cold but remembering to bend my neck and wiggle my toes every few minutes.

  I was just about relaxed when a runner plodded through the snow in my direction.

  My immediate instinct was to draw on him but then I noticed he was one of the legionnaires normally assigned to flanking duty. I raised a fist in the air, wincing again this time because I’d neglected to stretch my arms and shoulders as well, but at my signal, Minicius tiredly called for a halt, and the entire contingent of legionnaires stopped on a dime.

  I waited impatiently for the man to reach my side, setting my posture so that I sat commandingly atop Felix and put on my business face. When he arrived, I was immediately upset that he’d taken as long as he had since emerging from the brush. He wasn’t out of breath or perspiring but still he took a moment to compose himself.

  “Speak!” I demanded.

  The man blinked in surprise but then shook his head as though clearing it from a stupor and answered. “Legate, we have found something.”

  I fidgeted angrily. “If your next words don’t explain what it is you’ve found, I will sentence you to the fustuarium!”

  The man cringed at the threat, not wanting to suffer the march through a tunnel of his fellow legionnaires ordered to beat and stone him to death as he ran the gauntlet. Even if he survived, and had therefore escaped further punishment, he would still be banished from the legion.

  “My apologies, Legate,” the man said politely, but my expression wasn’t impressed. The man quickly understood and hurried to his next point, realizing that his last words hadn’t actually been an explanation. “A Roman legion fort has been erected a short march from here.”

  “What?”

  The man nodded vigorously to reiterate his point. “It is as I say, Legate. There is a Roman fort not too far from here. Its size indicates there may be as many as two legions within. We cannot explain it.”

  I sat there silently, waiting patiently with my eyes closed.

  Almost two minutes passed while the legionnaire stood there, shivering in the cold, waiting for me to say something before he finally grew the balls to interrupt my thoughts.

  “Legate?”

  I opened my eyes, and sighed at the sight of him. “I was hoping you’d disappear.”

  “Legate?”

  I ignored him and turned to Minicius. “Organize a scouting party, Centurion. Lead the party yourself and get to the bottom of this.”

  Minicius looked confused. “The bottom of what, sir?”

  I smiled, finding that I was starting to enjoy myself whenever I confused these local yokels with my fancy talk. “Just find out who calls the fort home and make sure they’re friendly.”

  He saluted crisply. “At once, Legate!”

  ***

  Three hours had passed and I was growing frustrated.

  I’d ordered the legionnaires to make temporary camp as we waited for Minicius to return, a rest that was much welcomed. They’d cheered and applauded the call for a break, but I’d shot the nearest legionnaires a venomous look and those in the immediate area quickly focused on erecting temporary barricades instead of cheering. It hadn’t taken more than a handful of seconds before the remaining legionnaires got the point and did the same.r />
  The local vegetation was sparse, just a few shrubs and trees that made up a forest so thinly populated that I could barely refer to it as a forest at all. It allowed for clear sight lines in all directions but also a few trees to sit back and relax against, as I was doing just now against a tree barely out of its sapling years. It was thin and flexible, which I found quite comfortable to lean against. Before me was a small fire and Felix stood munching on something he’d found in the snow just beside me.

  Besides Felix, I was completely alone. The nearest clump of legionnaires sat maybe two dozen meters from my position and I couldn’t even see my former friends. Even my rifle was gone, left to rot in a forest till the end of its days, destined to be found by some kid digging in the dirt two thousand years from now, a relic of a bygone era that no one will understand and even fewer will believe. It made me think of that kid Xenophon back in Byzantium and his possession of my butterfly knife. Because of Archer, I knew the knife would become some ancient, unsolved mystery that would stump scientists and archeologists for millennia, a thought I recently found hilarious.

  I chuckled to myself, but the chuckles quickly changed to coughs. I hacked and sputtered for half a minute before settling down, and sniffed away built up mucus in my nose.

  I thought I’d been getting a cold for a couple of days now, but hadn’t been sure until just now. It was an odd sensation since I’d always been a pretty healthy guy, rarely ever experiencing bouts of sickness. While the exterior of my body was beat to shit, with more scars than I could begin to count, my internals had always worked just fine.

  Until now, it seemed.

  I grunted and retrieved my water containing CamelBak. I held it out and looked at it, noticing the duct tape that patched up the hose and bladder in a number of places, and it seemed that my CamelBak too was on its last legs.