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

by Crichton, Edward

  I needed answers to all the things I’d experienced tonight. Answers to how exactly the orb worked and how I’d used it only an hour ago. Answers to Agrippina and how she seemed to know so much. I wanted those answers now more than ever, and while Varus’ note may have the ones I sought, we had more pressing matters to deal with. I passed it to Helena, who tucked it away in a pouch.

  I’ll read it later.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “We were.”

  Archer pursed his lips and glanced at Artie. She wasn’t paying him any attention.

  I tried to push Varus from my mind. I didn’t have time to grieve. Now that we found him, we should get out of here. I started to rise when a loud shout from Santino nearly dropped me back to my seat.

  “Jacob! Get over here! You really need to see this. Bring your pal, the clown.”

  I mumbled under my breath and allowed Helena to help me to my feet. Archer and Artie followed behind us.

  “Santino,” I said as I approached him, “I swear to God, if you ever say I really need to see something ever again, I’m not going to be responsible for what I let Helena do to you.”

  Wang, Vincent, the Romans, the new time travelers, and Santino stood near a bombed out corner of the building, open to the rest of the world. They were all looking through the hole, past the knocked over perimeter wall, towards the north. Those who had optical devices had them trained outside, while Santino turned to face me, anything but a happy expression on his face.

  “Now’s not the time, Hunter,” he said. “Although, I do feel obligated to mention that Hunter and Archer are eerily similar names.”

  I looked at my former friend, and watched him roll his eyes, mumbling under his breath.

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “The problem?” Santino repeated angrily. “Just look out the fucking window.”

  I held my gaze on him for a few seconds before slowly shifting my look in the general direction of his outstretched arm. What I saw stopped me in my tracks.

  Laid out before us were men. Soldiers. Legionnaires. Praetorians. Thousands of them.

  Aw, shit.

  My mind started processing the information as quickly as it could, which wasn’t anywhere near efficient enough. Even with Archer’s reinforcements and additional supplies, we wouldn’t be able to put up a suitable defense. Those of us who’d been in Rome more than thirty minutes were weary after the close call we’d had with Agrippina and it was amazing how much traveling through the orb weakened a person. Archer’s men weren’t showing signs of fatigue yet, but having been there, I knew it was only a matter of time.

  I turned to look at Archer. “Just how many chapters were in my journal, anyway?”

  He met my eyes. “Twelve. Why?”

  “Because I’ve already written eleven… and I’m suddenly feeling the urge to write another.”

  Archer motioned for his men to fall in. “Get ready to move out!” He shouted. “Get the crates and the body bag, but be prepared to stop and offer cover fire. We’re heading south.”

  I swore under my breath. I didn’t need to offer any orders to my people. They were too used to this kind of situation. The two sets of Tweetledees and Tweetledums moved to help the new arrivals with the cargo containers. Each were a little smaller than our original containers, but something told me they wouldn’t even stop a spear, let alone grenades. Finally, Vincent helped Titus on his crushed leg, while Bordeaux picked up Madrina, who was still out cold.

  Meanwhile, Helena and Artie stuck close to me as we gathered up whatever gear we could find. Luckily, our camp was south of this shithole of a building, so we’d be able to recover the rest of our gear, whatever little we had left.

  I tentatively strapped Penelope around my shoulder, while I tossed my bag to Helena. I couldn’t hang on to the heavy rucksack with my arm in a sling, or with the pain in my side. She helpfully accepted it, along with her own, checking her last P90 magazine for ammo. I could see through the clear plastic magazine she only had a dozen or so rounds left.

  I found my rig and slipped it on, keeping it unattached on my bad side. I clipped my pistol holster to my thigh and felt like a complete man once again. I pulled out my Sig, checked that it was loaded, and felt exponentially better knowing I at least had my sidearm to fall back on.

  I caught Archer’s men already blazing a path through the blown out corner of the room, immediately turning south to avoid the approaching horde. Our best bet was to get back to Vespasian, even though we were coming back empty handed. I rushed to catch up to Archer on the way out.

  “I need to know something, Archer. Something that doesn’t make much sense on your end.”

  “And what’s that, Hunter?” He asked pretentiously.

  I almost stumbled at his tone. It suggested dismissal on my part, almost as if I were in his way, or that we were on a need to know basis, and I didn’t need to know.

  I let it pass. “What exactly are you doing here?”

  He looked at me as we ran, his expression all of a sudden very angry. “We’re here because your journal’s final entry had a lot to say. The President was very interested. We’re here because somewhere along the way, something goes seriously wrong.”

  “So?” I replied. “You were in your own timeline before you left, and you seem exactly as I remember. It can’t be that bad.”

  “That’s the problem, Hunter. It is that bad. We’re here because you fucked up beyond measure, and you need to fix it.” He threw me a cocky grin. “And we’re here to help.”

  To be Continued

  A Note from the Author

  Throughout the past four years of my life, as I’ve labored to both write and publish the book you have just read and the one that preceded it, I never considered myself a writer. How could I? Writers are something special. The Great Ones. The Wayne Gretskys of their craft. Guys like Steinbeck and Salinger, or my personal favorites like Herbert and Heinlein. Ladies too. Wonderful writers like Woolf and Austin. Hell, J.K. Rowling.

  And yeah, maybe even guys like Crichton.

  Just not this Crichton.

  Writers make it look effortless, and it shows in their product. Writers may struggle to get where they are, but once they’ve reached the mountaintop, they rarely disappoint those mere mortals beneath them. Sure, many of them have an army of alpha readers, agents, editors and publishers, all of whom have the simple job of ensuring the product is as good as it can be, but it doesn’t matter. Even without all that, Writers are amazing and do what few can even dream of doing.

  But I’ve dreamt of it for years, and the end result is what has been laid out on these pages before you, and other pages you may have already read or are soon to read. It’s not much. Just my humble attempt at doing what the greats do so effortlessly: entertain others with original stories.

  And despite it all, I’m proud of my efforts. I know you must have slopped through some distracting grammatical errors, dumbly placed commas…, , inane character quirks, and questioningly dumb decision making capabilities, but the story is what it is. Nobody’s perfect, like Helena likes to say, least of all the author, me, who is in fact only human. Perhaps if my wife had more time to read my work or if my friends would actually turn in edited drafts of the stuff I give them or if I’d taken more writing courses instead of history classes back in college, this story may have been something more.

  But despite all that, I’m completely happy with my work. Proud of it. Ecstatic to share it with the world in fact. Because every story I write is like a new baby entering my life. No matter how it turns out, I’ll always love it and will always be there to support it. No matter what quirks it accumulates over the years and trials it has to endure, I’ll always be there for it. And with some luck, I’ll have made some good friends along the way who share in my love for it, willing to support it as much as I do.

  That’s all I can really ask for, and I hope you’ll be there for the ride.

  Coming Soon

  Keep Reading fo
r a look at the third book in the ongoing Praetorian Series: A Hunter and His Legion, due out in the Winter of 2013:

  Not quite as far in the future as last time…

  “Quick to the point, I see,” Vespasian remarked. “Why don’t you introduce your friends first?”

  I started with Artie and Archer. I made no mention of the fact that they had just arrived, or that Artie was my sister. Vespasian gave her a curious look as he made his way to grasp her hand, maybe noticing she wasn’t the military type, maybe thinking she was attractive, I didn’t know. He already knew Gaius and Marcus, who simply saluted smartly as he passed by. He kissed Helena’s hand, just as he did last time we’d met, my frustration at the gesture the same then as it was now.

  “Can I marry him yet?” Helena whispered to me in English.

  I ignored her and finished by introducing Santino, who looked as uninterested as usual, but Vespasian perked up at the name.

  “Ah,” he remarked, “so you are the ‘funny one’ then.”

  Santino turned to me and smiled, “I’ve always liked that Galba.”

  I rolled my eyes. Of all of us, Santino was the only one our old Roman comrade, Galba, had liked.

  None of us had any idea why.

  “I have something for you actually,” Vespasian remarked causally, making his way towards his chest.

  Only taking a few seconds to rummage through his gear, he brought out a long, thin object wrapped in a heavy cloth. He brought it to Santino, who looked at it stupidly before accepting the gift, only to continue looking at it stupidly. Noticing his hesitancy, Vespasian beckoned for him to open it. As opposed to a kid on Christmas morning, Santino gingerly gripped the cloth and peeled it away slowly, carefully.

  I leaned in for a better look but all I could see was something metallic and sharp. Santino squinted at it curiously, as though trying to piece together the puzzle of what the object could be before revealing it completely. The process was agonizingly slow, and I couldn’t even care less what it was. Either Santino was acting particularly stupid, which wasn’t hard to imagine, or whatever he was holding was familiar to him.

  Finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Santino ripped open the cloth to reveal a long fixed blade knife. But not just any knife. His knife. The one he had lost all those years ago the day we tried to recover Agrippina’s baby, Nero. He’d thrown it at the then villain of this story, Claudius, but it had been intercepted by one of the Caesar’s Praetorians.

  It was an incident that had oddly bothered him ever since.

  I’d never understood his attachment to the thing until only a year ago after Helena had bought him a replacement blade, a twelve inch curved blade, reminiscent of an Arabian scimitar. I had caught him one day daftly balancing the knife by the blade on the tip of his fingernail. A clever party trick, to be sure, but it was also something he did when something was bothering him. I’d about had enough of his annoying sorrow over his lost knife, so I’d confronted him on it. For someone who treated women like disposable paper cups, his attachment to the thing was disconcerting, and my curiosity had been driving me insane.

  His story had been surprisingly heartfelt.

  I never knew much about his family, something he’d always been reluctant to talk about, but I knew he had a younger half-brother still in high school, but other than that, his family story was a void. As it turned out, Santino had been very close with his father, a bond formed living on the mean streets of one of New York’s seedier areas. His father had been a welder, a salt of the earth blue collar man who worked hard just to put food on his family’s table every night.

  As a hobby, his father collected knives. Everything from kitchen tools, to ornate decorative ones, to military grade ware. His collection was immense, but he never squandered his money at the expense of his family. It was his only hobby.

  But the hobby ended when Santino was thirteen and had discovered his father dead in his bedroom, paramedics later diagnosing it as a heart attack. The very next day, a package came in the mail addressed to Santino’s father. Young Santino had opened it to discover the same knife he had carried with him ever since. It was the last in his father’s collection, and the only one Santino had decided to keep. His mother had sold the rest in preparation for their move away from New York after she had remarried and gave birth to his half-brother.

  I glanced at Santino, who stood dumbstruck by what he saw balancing in his palm. I’ve seen him speechless before, embarrassed to the point of sulking, sad, happy, but never what I was seeing right now. He looked as though his life was complete or that he had somehow reclaimed a piece of his lost soul.

  “How?” He stuttered. “Where?”

  Vespasian smiled. “It was sent to me during my time in Germany. It had a note on it saying to deliver it to, ‘the funny one.’ At the time, I had no idea what that meant as Galba had yet to inform me of you people.”

  “Who sent it?” Santino asked

  “The note was simply signed: Varus.”

  Now Santino looked almost heartbroken. He dropped his hands to his lap, and his jaw hung open slightly. Every second Santino had spent around Varus, he had spent it pestering, annoying and bullying him. But now he’s learned that the man who had once probably hated him had in fact risked his life to send him his knife back, a man who was now dead, a man Santino had pestered even upon their last meeting.

  I wondered if the reality of Varus’ death had truly hit him until just now.

  Slowly, he looked back up at Vespasian.

  “Thank you.” He said, about as speechless as it came for him.

  “You’re welcome,” Vespasian said. “We’ve sharpened it for you.”

  In response, Santino tossed the knife in the air and caught it on the palm of his hand, balancing it upright by the handle. He flipped it again and caught it before spinning it around his finger like a Wild West cowboy would do his gun, managing to sheath it in his belt in one fluid process.

  Winking at Vespasian, he said, “thanks.”

  Vespasian nodded, amused, and turned back to me.

  “So, now that formalities have been taken care of, let us get down to business.”

  “I hope you mean the business of crucifying this man,” Herod remarked from the corner.

  Vespasian turned. “Herod, I am sorry about your shoulder, but please, leave it be. There are bigger forces at work here beyond Judea.”

  “Is that so?” Herod asked. “Please enlighten me.”

  “Sorry,” I interrupted, “but you don’t need to know.”

  “Do not speak to me, traitor.”

  I rolled my eyes and bluntly said, “We need to go to Alexandria.”

  “Then go,” Vespasian said. “You do not need my help to get there. If you leave now you could be there in a matter of days.”

  “Well...” I said, dragging it out like children would do with their parents. “Alexandria isn’t our final destination, and where we’re going may require a little help.

  “What kind of help.”

  “The military kind.”

  Vespasian waited patiently for me to continue.

  “I need a few cohorts of legionnaires, an equal amount of auxilia, enough equipment for three times that size of a force, and enough naval vessels to transport it all from here to...” I hesitated, wondering if maybe I’d overplayed my hand, “to Britain.”

  Vespasian scoffed. “Is that all?” He asked nonchalantly.

  “What?!” Herod’s face was growing redder by the minute and his disposition was quickly degrading. “You are not honestly considering helping these people.”

  “I’m not considering anything,” Vespasian snapped. “Yet.”

  At this point, I wasn’t sure what the enigmatic Roman was thinking. It was completely possible that he had already somehow deduced that I would come to him with these exact same demands or he could just be as clueless as Herod.

  “So, is that all?” Vespasian asked again. “I wonder if I should consider such a
request insulting, especially since you have returned without Agrippina as we’d agreed.” He waved a hand. “Besides, this city, and this man here especially,” he said indicating Herod, “are in quite a state of disarray, and we should not forget how fractured this once great empire has become, oddly enough, all thanks to you and your actions.”

  I glanced at Artie and Archer, wondering if their Prophesy of Doom’s origin was about to be explained right now.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  Vespasian casually made his way to his desk before answering my question. Herod moved to stand behind the Roman, his good arm folded across his chest, clutching his injured one. I was still amazed how familial these two were. Up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea Herod and Vespasian had ever even met.

  “It seems you are the catalyst for a great many things, Jacob Hunter,” Vespasian said matter of factly. “I know little of Rome’s history from where you come from, but from what little I have learned from Galba, I have surmised that it went on for quite a time after the reign of Caligula. Is this correct?”

  “Yes, quite a while longer. Five hundred years more. Fifteen hundred more some would argue,” I finished making the tired argument that Rome’s true existence lasted until the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, a fact that sadly only a select few college students ever learned.

  “Well then,” he said, “it seems we have quite the problem then.”

  “Can you please get to the point,” Helena asked, never one for historical digressions.

  Vespasian smiled even though I suspected he had nothing to smile about.

  “The vast empire of Rome has fractured,” he said. “Rebellions have flared up everywhere. The Germanic peace in the North has come to an end and Sarmatia has made veiled threats to attack our legions there, justifying it as self-defense. Gauls are growing restless in the West, the Parthians are ready to advance into Anatolia, and the senate of Rome is completely divided on what to do. They’re as frightened as Vestal Virgins on a windy day.”