The king didn’t scream, a mere wheezing sound emanating from his lungs instead as he slumped to the ground. I aimed at one of the two remaining guards. All the assassins had been dispatched and his attention was completely on his king. Before I let the guilt eat away at him too much, I shot him in the thigh and he dropped into a deep sleep. Bordeaux dispatched the other guard.
And with that, the battle ended, only ten minutes after it had started. I looked into the red slicked courtroom as my three friends stood within pools of blood. The three of us in the balcony tossed some rope over the ledge and fast roped to the courtroom floor. Everyone, save Wang and me, policed the bodies, securing any evidence of our involvement.
Wang was already kneeling over Herod’s body.
“Is he going to make it?” I asked.
Wang checked Herod’s vitals.
“Santino got him in the shoulder. No internal organs were damaged. His arm will take a while to heal, but he should be fine.”
“Good,” I replied.
Just prior to Santino’s death blow, Helena had shot Herod with a special dart. Instead of containing its typical tranquilizer serum, Wang had filled it with a combination of other serums instead, including some kind of soporific, parasolutrine, I think he said, along with something called paracin trichloride, and morphine of course, along with a few others. When I’d voiced my concerns over the amount of crap Wang was planning to dope Herod with, the small medic had simply smiled and commented that he was curious as to how it was going to turn out as well. But in the end, it had apparently worked, and was the sole reason why Herod hadn’t yelled out in pain after Santino had stabbed him. Morphine works quickly and he probably hadn’t felt a thing, and the other drugs made for a very convincing death scene after Herod had collapsed.
Many people were going to wake up in a few hours, especially the two guards who saw Herod go down. When they find his body gone, things in Caesarea should get much more interesting.
I noticed Santino walk over and hold out his hand. I looked at it and rolled my eyes. Hammering a fist against my other hand three times, I displayed rock while Santino threw out paper. He laughed and clapped me on the back while I moved around Herod’s body and placed my hands under his armpits, the much heavier end. On the count of three, we heaved him off the ground and left the building like ghosts in the night.
Santino caught my eyes and lifted his eyebrows.
“So,” he started, “now, n…”
“Don’t even fucking start!”
Part Three
IX
Besieged
Mission Entry #9
Jacob Hunter
Caesarea, Judea - October, 42 A.D.
Americans have an interesting tradition of meddling in other countries’ affairs. Especially when it came to Communism and the Middle East. Oh, boy, does the American government love knocking off democratically elected, or not so democratically elected, heads of state, just to make sure the new ruler was more to their… liking.
Not that I had a problem with this tradition. It wasn’t a novel practice in world civilization, but it obviously wasn’t an overly popular one… at least depending on who you ask.
I point this out, because I did the ol’ US of A proud a few months back by knocking off a ruling sovereign of my own. Pretty impressive, no?
Well, I thought it was.
Sadly Herod didn’t necessarily think so.
Yeah, so I didn’t kill him. I haven’t gone completely over to the dark side yet. We only faked his death to incite the riot we needed to bring Agrippina here or at least slow her down in Germany. Remember what I said about pissing off the young Jews of the area to the point where their shit finally hits the proverbial fan? Well, Sociologists, you’ll be happy to know that it worked. This place went crazy within a week of Herod’s “death.”
As for Herod… well… let’s just say he was slightly miffed. He lost quite a few good men in the botched assassination attempt and was furious we lied to him concerning our intentions for him and the city.
Not to mention the fact that we had to stab him.
He had not been cool with that.
He ridiculed us, belittled us, yelled at us, and generally tried to make us feel bad for what we did. Especially me. He told us we should be ashamed of our status as Vani, and that if he’d known who we truly were, he would have had us executed immediately, or even worse, turned over to Agrippina.
We gave him a few days to cool down in isolation with us where we tried to explain what we were trying to accomplish… without all the time travel stuff, of course. In the original timeline, Herod never lived to see the rebellion in 66 A.D., but he’d ruled under a compassionate and tolerant leader in the original Claudius. In this new timeline, however, his reign hadn’t been nearly so peachy, and he knew it had been only a matter of time. When he learned how quickly events sped up after his death – how his citizens rallied against Roman rule – his tone steadily shifted to that of acceptance, and soon, he was ready to admit that, perhaps, we’d done the right thing… except for the whole stabbing him thing of course.
Local Zealots preached fanatically about how Rome had come in and ordered the assassination of their beloved king, and how the next step was the complete extermination of the Jewish people. The local procurator, Cuspius Fadus, tried to quell the fires, only to have his home stormed by rioters where he was summarily beaten and executed.
Whoops.
That had been enough for Rome. A few weeks later, the local legion garrison had laid siege to the once great city of Caesarea and went about destroying both it and its citizens. Once the Romans showed up, King Herod revealed himself to his people, offering that he’d escaped capture and that his death had all been a plot to further subjugate the people. He spoke of how proud and touched he was by his fellow Jewish response, and urged them to stand up against the Romans. Thus began the local resistance against Rome, led by Herod. We hadn’t seen him since, mostly keeping to ourselves, and the only additional information we had was that the rebellion had spread well outside of Caesarea and into the surrounding province… but we haven’t received any further intelligence in a while.
Hence why Helena and I were currently sitting atop one of the few surviving towers the city still had, playing our role as sniper support to the besieged citizens:
To make sure the rebellion lasted as long as possible, at least in this city.
Every night we’d come up here, or one of the other remaining high points, and dissuade at least two dozen legionnaires from invading the camp. That was generally enough to stall any potential large scale invasions for the immediate future.
We were only facing one problem.
We’re finally running out of ammo.
Our shortage is forcing us to pick our targets more selectively to conserve what we had left, and we still didn’t know if Agrippina was going to show up or not, but I was still confident she will.
The woman loves getting her hands dirty with unruly men.
It was kinda her calling card.
Anyway, Helena’s just finished setting up shop for the night, so I might as well end this. There isn’t much more to say. I do want to officially apologize to Herod – and to history – for what I did. He may have grudgingly accepted what we did to him, but I still get the feeling he doesn’t like me, so I want it on record that I’m sorry. Desperate situations call for desperate solutions, and we need to put things right and get home…
We’re willing to do anything at this point.
Anything.
Well… adios amigos.
“Do you think you’ll stay in the military when we get home?” Helena asked.
“Hmm?” I replied, blindly trying to place my journal back in my bag.
“The military. Will you stay in if we get home?”
“Hmm.” I said, pulling out my binoculars and laying them against my bag, scanning the horizon. “I haven’t thought about it to be honest…” I paused. “Check, check, two
tangos, twelve o’clock, six hundred yards out. At least, I try not to. Why do you ask?”
“Because I have been thinking about it,” she answered, squinting through her scope. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, actually. For a few weeks now.”
“Such as…” I prompted distractedly.
“What my life will be like for one. What I’ll do with it, another,” she paused. “Like what kind of boyfriend you’ll be when life is more...” she fired off two rounds, “… normal. Tangos eliminated.”
I confirmed her kills and marked them on a kill sheet I’d been keeping since the siege began, tracking numbers and troop movement. I placed the binoculars in front of my eyes again, but thought better of it and turned to look at Helena instead. She was seated a few feet to my left and sat Indian style on a rock that placed her about a foot or so above my position. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, holding her rifle in a way that balanced it across her body and in the crook of her elbow, the stalk against her shoulder like always. Using her knees as support, the position was extremely comfortable and very efficient for sniper work.
“You mean in a place where romantic Friday night outings, like tonight, won’t be filled with killing Romans? Sounds dreadful.”
She didn’t respond, a frown forming on her lips.
“Come on,” I joked, looking back through my binoculars. “That was kinda funny.”
Her lips twitched. “Maybe a little,” she relented before sighing. “I guess I’ve just been fantasizing too much. Giving myself false hope as to how our lives could be if we weren’t here. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”
“Can’t be any more than usual,” I said, still scanning the horizon.
She didn’t answer, and when I glanced back at her again, I saw that she was frowning.
I had to admit, she had been acting strange lately, even more so than a few months ago. Her level of patience with Santino and I seemed to be at an all-time low. We weren’t that much worse than normal, but she was displaying less patience with us than ever. And then there was the physical part. Always waking up early and wandering off on her own during the day, and her pain attacks seemed to occur more frequently these days. Something was bothering her, and her silence on the matter had made me thinking she was turning into me.
Except I knew better than to tell her that.
“Hey, with the two of us,” I said, hoping to cheer her up, “it’s got to be pretty fantastic.”
“I have my doubts to be honest,” she said, her voice filled with an odd mix of honesty and playfulness. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re cute, occasionally humorous and a nice guy when you want to be, but something tells me you’re going to be no better than most lazy American men. The ones who want little more from their women except sex and having someone to bring them food.”
I winced, trying to hide the expression by turning back to my scope. She wasn’t completely wrong. I hated dating. I liked my “me time” and would generally prefer just staying home or hanging out with friends, like back in college when all we’d do is play Beer Pong all night. Of course, I preferred having a woman do those things with me, and after all this time, I knew that any part of my normal life would only be that much more complete with Helena in it.
That said, the old beat up couch I had back home was one of the things I missed the most these days.
“Are you kidding?” I asked excitedly. “We’ll do lots of stuff. It’ll be great. Like this, just without the Romans, and the killing, and the running, and the…” I trailed off, Helena’s point finally hitting home.
What we had together here in Rome was really little more than a happy product of convenience and necessity than an honest relationship. We loved each other, sure, but if we were ever faced with the atmosphere to build a true relationship, like any twenty first century couple, would we cut it?
“Okay,” I sighed. “Give me the bad news.”
Her tone immediately perked up and lightened.
“Don’t worry. It’s not that bad. First, you take me dancing three times a month, out to eat every Thursday night, with something fancy at least once month. We’ll also need an activity like hiking or rock climbing, something to get your lazy ass off the couch and keep you in shape. Finally, you must agree to go to a play, ballet, opera, or musical. Four times a year.”
I was speechless. ‘Not that bad?’ It was everything but. That was an extremely belligerent set of demands for someone who preferred their couch and Chinese takeout over just about anything. I had to put an end to this before she got too carried away.
I looked back at her. “It’s obvious you’ve added my personality as a variable into your equation to ensure an objective decision.”
She pulled her eye from her scope and offered me a mischievous smile. “I try.”
“Funny. Well, here’s the compromise. I’ll give you dancing once a month, dinner every week is fine, but the fancy stuff needs to be reserved for special occasions only, and I’d rather hike since rock climbing seems too strenuous, but only as long as we get to camp as well.”
“Haven’t we camped enough over the years?”
“Yah, but this time with no Santino.”
She returned her eye to her scope and grinned. “Deal. But dancing twice a month.”
I gritted my teeth and groaned. “What is it with you women and dancing? Is that all you ever did?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Especially when I was in America. I was there with three of my Oxford girlfriends after all, and honestly, there’s not much else to do in your country for a group of pretty European college girls. Papa arranged for our attendance at many trendy hot spots in New York, L.A., Miami… We were quite popular, actually. Many men…”
“Great, I get the picture,” I said hastily. “Spare me the details.”
She laughed at me. “What about the theatre, Lieutenant? Don’t tell me, the momma’s boy that you are, that you didn’t attend plays all the time and actually found yourself liking them?”
She was right again, of course, at least about part of it. I couldn’t count how many times my father and I had been tricked, under false pretenses of dinner at a fancy restaurant, into going to God knows how many plays and musicals as well.
It was the only time he and I ever bonded over any aspect of our lives.
Although, I had to admit that after the fifth or sixth time, I actually found myself enjoying The Nutcracker, and I did have a soft spot for The Fiddler on the Roof. I’d never actually tell anyone that, of course, but that still didn’t make me a fan.
“I’ll give you twice a year, but never during football season, especially the playoffs. Check, check. Two tangos, two o’clock, sector 4H.”
“What is it with you American men and your American football?” She asked, throwing my question back at me, panning her rife to her right. “Bunch of men hitting each other. It’s barbaric… tangos eliminated.”
“It’s an institution!” I nearly yelled, looking for additional targets. “It’s what every American man lives for. And since we’re on the subject, I have but one stipulation for you then as well.”
“This should be good,” she joked.
“Oh, it is. In regards to football, first of all, you will attend ever tailgating party I do. There, you will wear a beer can helmet, colored face paint, and a jersey of my choosing. Additionally, you will wear booty shorts and tie off your jersey in a way that exposes your stomach. Once properly attired, you will consume excessive amounts of alcohol, hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, and steak at said tailgating parties, but still maintain a sexy waistline and firm ass. In addition, you will flirt and cavort with each and every one of my friends, making them excessively jealous of your all-encompassing hotness, allowing me to throw it in their faces at a later date. Finally, you will love every minute of it, from the shirts vs. skins flag football games where you will, of course, be a skin, to the end of the night where we’ll have to carry Santino home because he’s too drunk to d
o it himself.”
I let out a long breath and cracked my neck at the exertion.
“You’re not implying that Santino’s going to be living in our basement… are you?” Helena asked.
“Maybe,” I said quietly.
Helena looked at me and sighed. “You’ve been planning this for a while.”
“Since the moment I met you,” I replied.
“Really? Even after I almost knocked you out and made it seem like I wanted nothing to do with you?”
“It was love at first sight,” I partially joked.
She replaced her eye into her scope, a half smile creeping onto her face. “I’ll think about the shorts.”
“Hey, the only wardrobe appeal you’re going to get is if you add thigh high football socks.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, laughing.
I smiled too. We were going to be fine. No matter what challenge we faced, we’d push through it. We’d gone through enough over the years, and even more over the past one. There was no way some petty dispute like my drinking directly from the milk carton was going to break us up.
Although, she’d really better prepare herself for that one.
Of course, neither one of us discussed what life might be like should society be different from how we remembered. I think I could survive an alteration to the timeline like the Yankees being the worst team in Baseball history, but if life as we knew it ends up beyond recognition, it might just be worth staying in Rome. It’s why we had to stop Agrippina in Germany, and get her to back down. Placing a good emperor like Vespasian on the throne now would probably do little to make history better for Rome, but it would allow him to fix all the shit Agrippina has broken, and ensure Nero doesn’t do anything worse. If I had to guess, if we succeeded, even after all the deaths, history wouldn’t change too much. There would be differences, I was sure, but the vast majority of the social, political and military decisions would remain unchanged.
To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) Page 31
