Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (14 page)

I should have flung it away
or snapped my hand back immediately when recognition set in, but I did neither.  I simply held my hand against its smooth, blue surface and looked at it, noticing that while it seemed inert, there was a faint warmth emanating from it, although I assumed such a phenomenon could have been caused by the sun.

I breathed out a quick breath, thankful I hadn’t
activated it.

While I’d
snuck the orb out before, I’d always taken extra care not to make skin contact with it, which seemed like a reasonable precaution, but that didn’t answer the mystery of why it was here now or how it had come to sit upon my nightstand in place of my much more desirable wine jug.  Since I was fairly certain it couldn’t move on its own, my first thought was that someone must have brought it here. 

But who?

Did I have a mystery on my hands that would only serve to confound me at every turn? 

Had it been Colonel Santino in the slave quarters with the Roman
gladius
who had committed the deed?

Or perhaps the orb really was an 80s B-Hor
ror movie-type creature, stalking me.

I sighed as I pulled the orb off the shelf and into my lap.  I really didn’t have the time or the patience to steer this story into
the mystery section and out of the action/adventure genre.  I hadn’t the mind for compiling alibis and questioning witnesses, and I certainly couldn’t ask anyone I trusted to do it for me.  The second they knew I had the orb again, they’d immediately assume I’d gone looking for it myself, and had concocted the mystery plot to simply throw them off my trail.

Agatha Christie’s D
etective Poirot would have seen right through such a thinly veiled guise in a matter of…

Wait, what was I thinking?  I hadn’t actually
gone looking for the orb myself.

Had
I?

I…

“Lieutenant Hunter?”

At the sound of the voice I scrambled to hide the orb. 
It was distant, still a few steps away, so I had maybe five seconds to think of something.  I flung my head from side to side, searching for somewhere to hide it, but finally decided to simply sit on it, hoping the giant bulge under my butt wouldn’t show that noticeably through the hammock.

With a second left, I composed
myself and turned to my curtain-drawn entranceway, just in time to see Technical Sergeant Patricia Martin draw the curtain aside.  Her short hair was disheveled and her eyes looked tired, as though she too had just awoken.  I let out a breath of relief at the sight of her, knowing I couldn’t have hidden the orb from Helena, but then I shook my head angrily, covering my fear.

“What did I tell you about the rank stuff, Patricia?”  I asked.  “We don’t use it much around here
anymore.  We’re all in this together.  Call me Jacob, or Hunter if that’s all you can manage.”

She didn’t look sheepish at her mistake, but simply nodded.  “Sorry, Jacob.  Old habits…”

“Die hard, I know,” I supplied for her.  “No big deal.”

She cocked her head to the side.  “I was going to say
‘are hard to let die’ but I like yours better. 
Die hard
.  Nice.”

“Oh, my God…” I mumbled as
I pinched my nose and shut my eyes, but I managed to recover from my annoyance quickly. “So what are you doing here?”

“Sorry,” she said, back to business, “but your presence is required
above deck.”

I groa
ned.  “Why?  Did Santino or Wang set something on fire?”

“I… don’t think so, but I really don’t know.  Santino asked me to g
et you.  Quite rudely actually.  I was still sleeping.”

“Get used to it,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “Thanks, Pat.  I’ll be up in a second.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice hard, but then she disappeared without further explanation.

I held my eyes on the spot she’d just vacated and shook my head again.  Even more idiosyncrasies I had to f
igure out.  Great.  Just what I needed.

I pushed it from my mind as I pulled the orb out from under me and sta
red at it again.  I still hadn’t confirmed what it was that made it work in some instances but not in others, but I knew I wasn’t going to figure it out now.  I hopped out of my hammock and found my small Roman-style footlocker I’d recently pressed into service.  I opened it up and spread out my little treasures, making space for the orb.

Helena wouldn’t go snooping in here so it seemed
like the best place to hide it.

Once the space was clear, I lowered
my newest treasure into place gently, and with one last longing look at the orb, I placed a spare t-shirt over it, closed the locker’s lid, and then immediately forgot why I’d pulled my footlocker out from beneath my cabinet to begin with.

***

After washing up, I found the stairs that led to the deck and started my ascent, banging my head on a low cross beam in the process.  A burst of pain exploded from my forehead, and my body sent a hand to clutch it soothingly.  My other hand went up to brace myself against the offending crossbeam, and I let myself just hang there for a while, my eyes squeezed painfully shut.  When the initial shock wore off, I straightened and glared at the offending piece of wood, but grudgingly didn’t try to get even with it, knowing I’d then have two body parts that hurt.  With one last sneer in its direction, I finished my climb and emerged into a scene straight from the movies.

The
re were men climbing the beams and masts that held the ships sails, others were literally “swabbing the deck,” while even others cleaned swords or practiced hand to hand combat.  Although we left most of the legionnaires below deck to keep a low profile, we’d set up a rotation schedule that allowed each of them an hour of time in the fresh air every day.  They enjoyed the looseness of time above deck, but there was always a centurion around that never let things get too unruly.  In fact, one of my more junior centurions was currently running a static calisthenics drill with some of the legionnaires and Archer’s troops, save for Patricia Martin who had arrived above deck only a minute before I had, and Alex Cuyler, who was asleep.

I turned
my attention sternward toward a raised portion of the deck that held the ship’s wheel.  Helena was currently there, leaning against the railing, chatting with Santino, who looked considerably different than he had last night.  I made my way toward them, throwing a visibly winded Archer a smirk which he returned with a glare.

The trip only took a few seconds
, and I bounded up the steps to the second level two at a time, and finally got a good look at Santino as he turned to face me, causing me to pull up short on the last step and simply stare.

He was wearing a
makeshift three point hat, had an eye patch over his left eye, wore a puffy shirt open to his waist, and also wore loose fitting linen pants tucked into his combat boots.  He’d also grown out his beard again, and looked just like…

A fucking pirate.

“When the hell did you think this one up?”  I asked him, finally taking the last step up to the stern deck.

“Oh,” he said easily, “this
scheme came to me years ago.  I was just waiting for us to get a boat.”

He took a step toward me with a fake limp, and I almost expected to see him with a peg leg
, but luckily he hadn’t gone so far as to ask Wang to surgically remove one of his legs just for the joke.  Once he was beside me, he grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to face the forward mast.

“Check that
out,” he said.

I looked
and found the black cloth he’d been working on last night, flapping violently in the afternoon breeze.  Upon it was a white symbol ubiquitous amongst all early modern pirates.

A skull and crossbones.

The Jolly Rodger. 

I smacked my forehead with the palm of my hand
.

“Pretty gnarly, right?”  He asked excitedly.

Helena was chuckling in the background and I forced myself to glance back at the flag again.  It was childishly done, nowhere near what you saw in a movie, but the image was obvious.

I placed my hand on Santino’s shoulder
and looked at him.  “You have serious issues, my friend.”

He winked at me.
“Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He punctuated his announcement by drawing
a curved sword from a scabbard at his waist, another costume ensemble he must have picked up from Middle Eastern Caesarea, and leapt down the half dozen stairs to the deck below, landing with his knees bent and his hands out in front of him like he was preparing to wrestle.

“Aarg
h, ye maties!”  He growled at Archer and his breathless cohorts.  “Ye scallywags ain’t got yer sea legs yet!  Avast!”

My eyes went
wide as I watched him prance about the deck, yelling and cussing in his pirate accent.

Helena wal
ked up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.  “He’ll never change.”

“
Unfortunately, you’re probably right,” I replied.  “I just hope the other kids don’t make fun of him too much when we send him off to school someday.”

She smiled.  “Let’s hope.”

I turned to face her and took her left hand in my own.  I gave her a smile and inspected her face, noticing that she looked a little tired, perhaps sick.

“Feeling all right?
”  I asked.  “The sea making you queasy at all?”

“No worse than usual, which thankfully hasn’t been that bad anyway,” s
he said with a frown.  “But if the water gets any rougher, that may change.  My mother once told me that her pregnancy with me had been pretty easy, no real sickness to speak of, so luckily it seems that I’m in the same…” she paused and smirked at me, “boat as she was.”

I had to smile.
  “Funny.”

“I thought so, but I have to admit, this morning
was a little rough.”

“Sorry,” I said.
“I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Oh, you’ve already done enough as it is, Lieutenant
Hunter,” she said with a sly smile.  “This is entirely
your
fault, after all.”

“Mine?”
  I replied flippantly.  “I’m completely innocent in all this.”

“Uh-huh, sure you are.  If you were so innocent, you wouldn’t have done this to me without
at least marrying me first.”

Her tone was light hearted and playful, but
it did sting a little.  We’d never really talked about marriage, but it was something I knew we both really wanted.  I only wish I knew how to go about doing it around here.

“Well,
” I said, “if that’s really what you want, I did name Santino as my first mate.”

She looked at me blankly, not understanding
.

“You know
,” I continued, grabbing her arm and leading her toward the deck’s inner railing so that she could look out at those below us.  “As captain, technically I have the power to marry people at sea…” I paused for affect, “…and so does my first mate.”

She stared at me with the same wide eyes I
’d had when watching Santino frolic about the deck a minute ago, and we turned in unison to find him maneuvering a wooden plank out over the port railing.

He weigh
ed it down with some ballast and demanded someone, “Walk the plank!  Aaaaargh!”

Stryker immediately shoved Brewster toward
him, and others gathered in on the fun by grabbing her arms and leading her toward the plank. She struggled and pleaded but Santino held his sword high and ordered her forward, and I only prayed he wasn’t stupid enough to actually go through with it.  In order to absolve myself of any responsibility should he do so, I turned back to Helena and folded my arms across my chest, and saw her already staring at me angrily.

“You can’t marry people,” Helena accused.  “That’s just one of your stupid movie things.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her.  “Are you sure?”

“No.  Way
,” she said, poking my chest with a finger.  “That isn’t even remotely funny.”

I laughed
as I rubbed my struck chest.  “It’s a little funny.”

“Not.  Even. 
A little.” She said with a series of small punches.

***

A few days later, and with thankfully all hands still aboard, the grand city of Alexandria came into view on the horizon.  I stood at the helm, my sweaty hands gripping the wheel tightly, surprised at how excited I was.  Every time I encountered something new in this lost place in time, I was surprised at how giddy I became.  Despite my recent jaded disposition, discovering new locations or artifacts still enthralled me, and helped me focus by pushing the angry and moody portions of my mind away, locking them up and allowing me a fresh perspective.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that I was about to bear witness to not one, but two, of the greatest wonders of the ancient world that were lost two thousand years before I was born: