A Hunter and His Legion (The Praetorian Series Book 3)

by Edward Crichton

  They were obviously identical, with the same broad forehead, high cheekbones, strong jaw, and prominent noses. They were handsome young men with faces that would grow hard in ensuing years, but in a way that would only make them more endearing to those who followed them. However, there were subtle differences in the set of their eyes and the way in which they composed themselves that distinguished one from the other.

  Despite having just lost their wrestling match, Romulus seemed tougher and more physical than Remus, perhaps more aggressive and action-oriented too, while Remus seemed more introspective. It would not be difficult to imagine Remus as the general who devised the battle strategy while Romulus carried it out on the battlefield.

  I couldn’t exactly explain where these deductions were coming from, but I chalked it up to Merlin’s influence. It was possible he was giving me the ability to read into the personal character of these two individuals for one reason or another for some future purpose.

  That or they were just that transparent.

  Or gods.

  Either way, I filed the information away for further thought as the gathered men slowly calmed themselves and the other Merlin lowered Remus’ arm. He turned to Romulus and reached for his arm now, and as one, lifted both twins’ arms high in the air. As expected, the roar was even louder this time, and I had to wait a good ten minutes before it quieted again, and the other Merlin put their arms down together.

  “And to the victors,” the other Merlin shouted, “go the spoils.”

  “Really, Faustulus,” Romulus said humbly, “that isn’t necessary. I believe Remus would agree that the terms of our wager is award enough.”

  “Hey!” I whispered sharply. “They’re speaking English!”

  Merlin smacked me on the arm, but didn’t say anything.

  “Hush yourself, brother,” Remus said. “Let our father revel in our glory a little more. I, for one, will accept his kind gift.”

  “Father?” I whispered again.

  Either Merlin was Mars himself or their biological human father, a name that had escaped all history books, or perhaps he was just impersonating Faustulus, the human shepherd that had taken them from their suckling she-wolf and had raised them to be shepherds as well.

  Again, there didn’t seem a point in asking, so I simply crossed my arms and continued to watch.

  The other Merlin turned an eye on young Romulus, who smiled meekly, which didn’t seem in character for the tough looking lad, but gestured with his head that he was in agreement. There was a series of laughs and chuckles from the gathered men, but it wasn’t chiding or insulting.

  Such scenes must have been quite normal.

  The other Merlin smiled proudly, truly like a father who saw real greatness in a beloved son destined to change the world, an expression I’d never seen on my own father’s face, a thought that nearly caused me to miss what happened next. In the blink of an eye, the other Merlin reached his right hand into the billowing sleeve covering his left arm, and immediately pulled it free to reveal something in his hand.

  It was the blue orb.

  I felt the presence of my own orb resting comfortably against the small of my back, and a chill went down my spine as I thought about it, but seeing the orb in the other Merlin’s hand seemed far more ominous.

  “Steel yourself, Jacob,” Merlin ordered commandingly. “Do not let its power touch you.”

  That was easy for him to say, but the concern seemed unnecessary. While the chill I’d felt hadn’t been comforting, it also hadn’t seemed associated with the dark emotional firestorm within me that normally preceded some kind of option to soothe it.

  I shook my head to clear it just in time to see Remus reach out and take it from his “father’s” grasp. He took it confidently and held it out before him, and stared into it longingly with an expression I had to think was a reflection of my own when I too looked at the orb, but then the last thing I expected happened. A brilliant blue flash burst from the orb, and I was certain everyone had been thrust into some distant, unknown land, much as my friends and I had been five years ago. I couldn’t believe the other Merlin’s recklessness by giving something so powerful to someone so primitive. It was extraordinarily irresponsible, and I braced myself for a Tyrannosaurus Rex storming into this assembly of men to swallow Remus whole, thus ending the mystery of his death.

  Except, as the light dimmed and blinded eyes cleared, the gathered group, Merlin and myself included, remained where we were. Nothing had happened. No one moved, not even Romulus, but everyone else looked at Remus with odd expressions on their face. Odd because they weren’t of stunned disbelief, but of inspired wonder, like they’d encountered such miracles all the time and were reverent of such occurrences.

  And something about that was beginning to send more than just a chill down my spine. I was beginning to grow frightened at what was transpiring here. There was something not right here, something that smacked in the face of everything thought known about this time period and its residents.

  “Merlin…” I whispered. “You’ve got to explain something to…”

  “Just watch,” he replied, but not angrily.

  So I did.

  Remus raised the orb over his head with both hands, tilting his head back to look up at it.

  “A miraculous gift, father,” he exclaimed. “I thought such devices lost to civilization generations ago. What does this one do?”

  “Patience, young Remus,” the other Merlin said happily, “for this gift is not yet complete. There is more…”

  As he spoke, he shot his left hand into his right sleeve this time, and again pulled it free to reveal another object.

  It was another orb, identical to the last…

  …only…

  …this one was red.

  A billion questions flew through my mind, but it was in such a state of shock that I couldn’t process anything of what I saw. Nor did the other Merlin give me much of a chance as he promptly handed the red orb to Romulus, who took it in a similar fashion as Remus had, but unlike his brother, seemed to have just as many questions as I did.

  “But Faustulus,” he said as he looked at the orb, “there have never been two at a single moment. Has there ever…”

  “Hush, Romulus,” the other Merlin scolded, much as my own Merlin had done with me. The other Merlin looked back to Remus, who had lowered his own orb and looked at Romulus jealously, but he looked away glumly when the other Merlin gave him a stern look and took the orb from him. The other Merlin looked back to Romulus, and took his orb as well.

  He held one in each hand and brought them together so that the clinked off each other.

  “The two of you represent an ideal,” he said, glancing at Remus and then Romulus and back again. “Much has been lost in recent generations, but I see such greatness in the two of you that I foresee a time for the return of old things. You’ve each been bestowed with a great gift,” he said as he carefully returned each orb to the proper twin’s grasp. “Used in conjunction, the two of you can achieve wondrous things that will bring about a resounding peace to the land for thousands of generations.”

  The boys looked at each other nervously, but it was Remus who turned to Other Merlin. “How do we operate them?”

  Merlin looked up at the large and intimidating boy, and smiled. “In good time, young Remus, but for now, your true reward. It is time to choose a location for the capital of your new empire. Come. Remus, I believe you have earned first choice.”

  I expected the other Merlin to lead the young twins from the stage and out onto the hills of what would soon be the land that becomes Rome, but instead, everything around me winked out of existence and changed. Merlin and I had returned to my old restaurant, and we were already seated at the bar.

  “You look like you could use another beer,” Foxtrot Alpha said as she stood on a stool at the far end of the bar, reaching for a replacement bottle of liquor that I knew was stored up there. Normally, my young self would have done tha
t for her, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  “Make it a tall one,” I said, barely even hearing my own words, “and a double shot of whatever will fuck me up the quickest.”

  ***

  Merlin sat beside me patiently for the few minutes it took Foxtrot Alpha to prepare my order, watching me curiously. When she finally returned with my beer and shot, she seemed rebuffed by my lack of interest in her as I unceremoniously drained a quarter of my beer in one hard pull. Without skipping a beat, I picked up the shot, dropped it in, and with little effort, drained every last drop of liquid before slamming the glass down and belching loudly.

  “Impressive,” Merlin commented from beside me.

  My head rotated on its own, and I glared at him.

  “I suppose you have a lot of questions…” he said, trailing off, perhaps expecting me to interrupt him, but I didn’t. I simply sat there, frustration coursing through every vein in my body, rightfully so for once I thought. He flicked his eyes to the side nervously at my silence. “Where would you like me to start?”

  I ignored him and signaled for Foxtrot Alpha to bring me another round. I waited patiently, and when she returned, I repeated what I’d done with the first drink, managing to belch more loudly this time. A young couple in a nearby booth looked at me in disgust. I glowered at them and hurled my glass squarely at the man’s face, but it simply bounced of his forehead and crashed to the ground without him even flinching. He shook his head and went back to his date.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, turning back to the bar. After all that alcohol, I didn’t feel even remotely drunk. Just mad. I picked up a nearby steak knife and started carving into the bar distractedly.

  “I don’t believe a thing you just showed me,” I said. “Not a bit of it. This is a dream. A hallucination. Or if it’s not, you’re just fucking around with me for your own sick enjoyment. I don’t have a clue as to who or what you really are, and I couldn’t really care less anymore.”

  I stabbed my knife into the bar and pushed myself away, leaving it to wobble in place as I made my way into the back of the restaurant, where all the business happened. I took an immediate right upon entering and found a high cabinet with a gap between it and the ceiling. Having to stand on my tip toes, I reached up and found exactly what I was looking for. Gathering them in a bundle beneath my arm, I marched back to Merlin, and threw what I’d found on the bar in front of him.

  “There’s my thirty rolled silverware. I’m ready to clock out and go home now.”

  I twirled on the heel of my foot, and made for the exit. I passed by the hostess station in a hurry, not even giving Victoria’s Secret, who stood there rearranging a seating order, another glance.

  She looked up at my passing. “Thanks for coming to the…”

  “What home exactly are you going back to, Jacob?”

  The voice was Merlin’s, from just behind me, and I stopped. I looked at the restaurant’s outer doors, at their windows specifically, and saw Agrippina and my group of friends still diligently waiting for me outside of Merlin’s cottage. Like before, they still seemed suspended in time, but just seeing them gave me cause to rethink my decision.

  What home did I have?

  I hadn’t had one in half a decade, but still I remained stubborn. “Home is where the heart is,” I said, dropping my chin against my chest, “and my heart is with Helena.”

  “A touching sentiment, Jacob, but you know as well as I how little it means when you are cut off and removed from everything else you hold dear.”

  I looked up, noticing that the windows had reverted to their actual form, and that I could see Merlin behind me in the reflection. “Is that another subtle hint at your origin story?”

  He spread his arms wide. “I’ve already shown you far more than I ever should have, but yes, it is. I, much like you, do not belong here.”

  I turned to face him, taking a step forward. “Then why the dog and pony show? What’s the point of all this?”

  “Because I believe you can succeed where they failed.”

  “I don’t understand. Succeed where? How? All I want to do is go home and you already told me the orb can’t do that.”

  “No,” Merlin said with a nod, “the blue orb cannot. At least not by itself.”

  His sudden seriousness was infectious.

  “Show me.”

  ***

  It was night now as we again walked through Romulus and Remus’ settlement.

  A busy night, it was filled with raucous story-telling and heavy drinking, punctuated by the shouts from one man or another waged in a friendly bout of fisticuffs. It was an unruly camp, scattered and unorganized, lacking in noise discipline and security measures, completely unlike the Roman legions that would, apparently, be the spiritual successors of this army, but I wasn’t necessarily surprised. I’d only seen a miniscule part of this world, so small that my observations were barely worth anything at all, but since seeing Rome as nothing more than a series of rolling hills, it wasn’t hard to imagine this world was so vast and underpopulated that entire armies could go weeks or months without encountering anyone worth fighting. In a world like this, I supposed there wasn’t much of a need for security or mission discipline. It was only in a world like Agrippina’s, or the world that I was trying so hard to return to, where a lack of discipline could get you killed as easily as being on a long sea voyage without vitamin C.

  But operational security was the last thing on my mind as we walked toward a large tent near the center of the haphazardly constructed camp. It was four times as large as any other dwelling, appearing much like a miniature circus tent, complete with an opening at its apex, and smoke billowing from it much like a chimney.

  I gazed at the smoke for only a moment before dropping my head and quickening my pace. Merlin seemed unconcerned by my impatience and determination, and said nothing as he matched me step for step until we reached the entrance. I paused, wondering for a moment if I really wanted to see what Merlin brought me here to see, but immediately decided that I did.

  We entered quietly, a precaution that seemed hardly necessary upon witnessing the scene before us. The other Merlin or Faustulus or Mars or Whoever The Fuck He Was, stood between Romulus and Remus near the fire at the center of the tent. Arranged around them were cushions and rugs scattered throughout, with spoils of war piled everywhere – everything from coinage to weaponry. It looked much like an Arab Sheik’s tent might in the late nineteenth century, but everything was far less opulent and splendid.

  Of all the spoils however, two stood out easily. The other Merlin again held the pair of orbs in his hands, holding the blue one near Remus and the red one near Romulus. The twins stared at their respective orbs intently, eagerly, while the other Merlin glanced between them casually. None seemed poised to speak in that moment, but then the other Merlin opened his mouth wide, as though preparing to bellow a great oration.

  But then he stopped mid motion.

  Or, more accurately, time stopped around him.

  “I apologize, Jacob, but I have to interject here,” Merlin said beside me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I have to explain what the orbs do.”

  I was too excited by his proclamation to ask why the other Merlin couldn’t just do the same, as I assumed he was about to do, so I simply nodded vigorously and enticed him to explain. He sighed, and I couldn’t help but feel like he was still in contention with himself over everything he was showing me. I continued to wonder why, but wasn’t about to interrupt him now.

  “The blue orb you understand…” Merlin said finally, “… to some extent at least. With it, a user can travel through time. It is quite simply – perhaps too simply – a time machine.”

  He paused, so I felt it was okay to ask a question.

  “But why a ball?” I asked, but then thought of a better question. “I mean, how a ball? It’s a ball!”

  “Would you prefer this, perhaps?” Merlin asked as he gestured off t
o my right. I looked, and saw what looked exactly like a perfectly functional DeLorean, but not just any DeLorean, but the exact one from Back to the Future II, complete with Mr. Fusion and everything.

  I turned back to Merlin, my mouth open wide. “Can I actually use that?”

  “Unfortunately, no. In this case, the DeLorean there really is nothing more than a figment of your imagination.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Indeed,” Merlin said as he gestured behind me. “Perhaps you’ll enjoy this as well?”

  I turned quickly, but saw nothing more than an empty phone booth.

  “A phone booth?”

  “Bill and Ted?” Merlin asked, leading me on.

  “Oh right!” I exclaimed. “A little before my time, but I remember.”

  “Perhaps this then?” He said with a flick of his hand to my right.

  I looked and saw a large, blue box that said POLICE BOX near the top on all four corners.

  I tried to think as I gazed at it. “That’s the thing from Dr. Who, right?”

  “Correct.”

  I shook my head. “Never could get into it.”

  “A pity. I myself enjoyed the reboot pilot.”

  He waved his hand and all three objects disappeared, and I felt the little kid in me vanish along with them. I turned back to Merlin, looking dejected, but determined to understand.

  Merlin started to pace. “You recognize each of those things as time machines because you come from an era when the idea of time travel has become enriched in modern pop culture. The fictional understanding of it has become quite commonplace in your world, and I place considerable emphasis on the word fictional, but in this age, the idea of time travel is nearly non-existent. Imagination, quite bluntly, is rather limited.”

  “So you created as simple a time machine as possible,” I deduced.

  Merlin shook his head. “I already told you that I did not create the device itself, but I crafted the orb as a physical analog for it so that the people of this time could understand it. Simplicity, as you stated, was key.”