Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (18 page)

“Anglesey.”

Helena glanced between them.  “What’s that?”

I too had never heard of it, and was just as curious.  Both Wang and Vincent looked startled again, but Vincent was able to bring himself around
first and answer.

“Anglesey is an island o
ff the northwest coast of Wales,” he said, pointing at the map.  “Today it’s known as The Isle of Mona, and it’s probably not on this map because a large mountain range almost completely obscures it from view from mainland Wales.  It’s… an interesting place.”

I didn’t bother trying to understand the odd tone in his voice, realizing that t
he Isle of Mona was definitely a place I’d heard of before, but my brain was having trouble remembering where.

“Ah, yes,” Rumella commented.  “I have heard of it.  A place where…”

His voice trailed off and stopped completely when a look of shock and confusion crossed his face.  His eyes turned and bored into mine, and I found myself feeling sadness before I had any idea why.  The emotion lingered for only a half second, until Rumella dropped his chin to his chest and looked down, and we both discovered an arrow protruding from his left pectoral.  His eyes went back to mine and he started to say more, but then he slumped to the table, dead.

“Ninja-thingy!”
Wang shouted with an arm pointed toward one of the windows.

I followed his finger to see one of Agrippina’s black clad… ninja-things…
situated on the windowsill, a bow in his hand.  Wang was already leaping over the table toward him, pulling a pistol from his bag in the process, and I wasn’t very far behind him.

Helena rose to her feet
as well, but I pushed her back down.  “Stay here!  We’ll get him.”

“I’m coming wi…”

“Stay here!”  I shouted before turning to Archer.  “You make sure she stays here.  Head back to the group if we’re not back in fifteen minutes.”

The cocky former friend of mine
nodded in deference to my order, probably guessing if something happened to Helena after I’d put him in charge of her, that I really would kill him.

Without another glance at
her, I bounded after Wang, retrieving my bag and the pistol within.  I jumped at the window, fully willing to fling myself through it when I finally noticed the precarious drop to the water below.

I pulled myself short and looked around, craning my head
upwards as I heard Wang’s shout, “Grab the rope!”

As he spoke, a rope fell from the sky and land
ed in my face.  I grabbed at it, found my grip, and pulled myself hand over hand to the roof.  I had to climb maybe twenty five feet before I pulled myself over a low ledge and onto a flat surface, panting at the endeavor and feeling pain in my side from my old wound.

I looked around, squinting in
to the night but couldn’t see a thing.  I checked my bag but remembered I’d left my NVGs behind.  Instead I pulled out my radio, plugging the earpiece into my ear.

“Who’s
on overwatch?” I asked into the coms, directing my question to whoever was on duty as our lookout.  Whoever it was, I knew he or she would be positioned in one of the tallest buildings in the city, with a complete 360 degree view.

“Cuyler here.”

Good.  The sniper.

I didn’t waste any more time. 
“Where’s Wang?”

“He’s heading south-southeast of your position, about
one hundred and fifty meters ahead of you.”

I sent him a double click, assuring him I received his information, took a deep breath, and started running along the rooftop for
yet another nocturnal, rooftop chase scene.  I picked up speed and fought to catch up to Rumella’s assassin.

Rumella.

Just another victim I was responsible for, and one who had just told us everything Agrippina needed to jump a step ahead of us.

“Update,” I
requested into the coms.

“Course correction: e
ast.  One hundred ten meters and closing.”

At least I was learning something about Cuyler through all of this: h
e was damn efficient.

I shifted my direction slightly to the
left and kept on running, jumping over small gaps in buildings, climbing a few walls, and once I’d left the library’s immediate area and found myself in a residential neighborhood, dodged around and through laundry dangling from ropes strung between structures.  After one particular jump, after almost missing the gap completely thanks to an annoyingly hung sheet, I landed roughly on my right ankle and rolled it over, but I fell into the roll, somersaulting myself back to my feet and avoiding more permanent injury.  It would hurt, but it’d be fine.

My
left side was another story.

“Break n
orth,” Cuyler calmly relayed to me.  “Seventy five meters.”

I did as I was told and pivoted to the right once again
, finally noticing that I’d been running parallel with the waterway.  Now, as I broke north, I was heading straight for it.  As I ran, I felt something chitter against an adobe wall next to me, but I ignored it.  A second later, I felt the wind along my right cheek breeze past me, but again I ignored it.

“Missile fire,”
Cuyler reported.

“Yeah, no shit,” I sent back to him.

I zigzagged a bit to ensure whoever was taking potshots at me never found a clear shot, and I heard the clatter of a few more missed arrows around me, but none came as close as the first two.  In a few more seconds I saw Wang ahead of me, hot on the heels of the assassin, the Mediterranean Sea only a dozen buildings away, and wondered where the assassin thought he was going.

As if on cue, I saw a medium sized ship sail in from the east
, slowing as it approached our position inland, and I found the source of the arrow barrage.  I aimed my pistol at one of the assassin’s friends aboard the ship, and fired an entire magazine in his direction, but an enormous wall of fire suddenly ignited a few dozen meters in front of me.  I skidded to a stop, throwing up a hand to shield my eyes from the blaze, and noticed that the fire was between Wang and the assassin as well, forcing my friend to pull up short before he careened into the flames. I looked west and saw a ninja with a torch, who summarily tossed it aside and ran.

The wall of fire
spread, encompassing many buildings in both directions.

There was no way we could catch them now
.  All I could do was wonder if I’d just been responsible for the destruction of the great library by allowing this fire to happen, and I was so mesmerized by it that at first I didn’t feel the sudden prick in my leg. It took me a few seconds, but I finally decided to look down and notice what had caused the bit of pain, only to discover an arrow protruding from my thigh.  That’s when it started to hurt, and when the blood started to spurt from it, and my instincts immediately suggested that the femoral must have been nicked.  Realization sunk in and I fell to the roof, clutching my leg in pain and fear.

“Medic!
”  Cuyler shouted into the com, and Wang turned at the call and rushed in my direction.  He arrived ten seconds later and immediately attended to my leg.

“Wang, it’s my femoral
!” I yelled, blinding pain seething through my body.  I grabbed my friend’s neck with a bloody hand and pulled him close.  “God, there’s so much blood!”

But
Wang didn’t seem nearly as concerned as I was.

“Hunter, what the bloody Christ are you talking about?  You’ll be fine.  You were shot with an arrow not bludgeoned with a
bloody battle axe.  There’s barely any blood at all.”

I stared at him as my chest rose and fell heavily, near out of breath.  W
hen I looked back down, I found nothing like the disaster I’d just witnessed.  He was right.  Barely any blood at all.  The arrow may have been lodged in my leg, but it went clean through muscle and little else.  It still hurt, but not nearly as bad as it had seconds ago, and Wang’s neck was also clear of any blood I may have left there from my hand.

“Just give me a second to patch you up,” he said,
but then looked at me.  “But just so you know, I’m not telling Helena.”

I glared at him
and tried to steady my breath.

What
was happening to me?

Just
like the scene at the courtyard, both visions had seemed just as real as reality.  I’d felt the overwhelming pain in my leg, had felt the blood splatter against my face, and had seen it smear Wang’s neck, but now it was all gone.  There was something going on here.  Something going on in my head.  But I wasn’t even sure if the orb was at fault, since both episodes had occurred after Helena had already hidden it from me, and I hadn’t seen it since.

What was happening to me?

I reached for the radio to distract myself.  “Update?”

“They
escaped,” Cuyler reported.  “I put down six archers targeting you from the boat, but the one who lit the fire only took one in the stomach.  He may still be alive.”

Efficient, professional, and deadly.  Six kills in only a few minutes with the confusion of the fire was pretty impressive.

“Help me up,” I ordered Wang, my sudden brush with death nearly forgotten.  While the memory of the pain lingered, I no longer felt any effects from my phantom wound.  It was nothing more than a memory now, as though it had happened twenty years ago.

Wang nodded and bent over to wrap his arm around my back before hauling me up.  My leg was on fire, and I quickly found that
walking to be painful, but with Wang’s help, we hobbled around the extent of the fire, which was thankfully already burning itself out, and found the man who Cuyler had shot through the stomach.  Wang let me go and rushed over to him, and gripped the downed man by the arm and flipped him over, pressing his knee into the man’s wound.

“Where are they going, mate?” He asked the assassin calmly, adding the “mate” in English.

“I do not know,” the assassin said in immense pain as he tried to push Wang’s knee from his stomach.

Wang put on his tough guy face and shook the man by
his shoulders.  “How did you know we were here?”

The black clad figure slowly removed his face mask before answ
ering, but then his muscles failed him and his head fell to the ground.

“Oi!  Don’t you go dying on me,” Wang ordered.  “How did you know we were here?
?”

The man came around br
iefly, offering a bloody smile, but then he collapsed again.  Wang checked his pulse, but clearly didn’t find one.  He stood up and walked back to me.

“
Well that was cheeky,” he offered.

I looked at him, deadpan
ned.  “Cheeky? 
Really
?”

***

Once the fires burned themselves out with minimal damage to the area, Wang cased the scene for clues about our attackers.  Unfortunately, they had been thorough, and had left nothing behind except their deceased comrade.  After finding nothing of use on his body, Wang carried him to the low cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and summarily discarded the body into the water.  He then retrieved the few shell casings left over from the discharge of my pistol, cleansing our involvement, and helped me back up and supported me as we hobbled our way to the hideout with the help of Cuyler guiding us in.

It was
over a mile away, and it took us half an hour to reach it, but halfway there, I noticed something move above us.  I glanced up to see a man rappelling from the building next door, dressed in the gray and black camouflage our new friends had brought with them.  Upon touching down, he tugged on the rope and it fell along with its grappling hook.  He wound it up as he made his way toward Wang and me.

“You a
ll right?”  Cuyler asked.

I shrugged.  “S
ure.  What’s another scar among so many?”

Cuyler didn’t say anything,
but I could tell from his eyes, even in the dim night sky, that he empathized.  It spoke a thousand words, and I was surprised he had no other insight or unsolicited advice to offer me – as most of our group always seemed to have in abundance, welcome or not.  Instead, he hooked himself beneath my other shoulder and helped Wang support my weight as we traveled the last half mile to our apartment.

And I
found myself unable to
not
like the guy.

When we arrived, we found Helena
leaning against the doorjamb, her arms crossed against her chest, not looking very happy.  I wondered if she’d been listening in on the radio during our chase scene as the three of us passed by her and into the room, none of us having the guts to even look at her.  She shut the door behind us and escorted us to the nearest table, at the far end of the room.  After setting me down, Cuyler immediately got out of the way while Wang helped me remove my robes and take off my pants so he could inspect the arrow. I also took off my shirt to inspect my wounded side, which thankfully seemed fine.