Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (38 page)

“I know not its local name,” she replied, “but in my vision, I felt it known as: Holy Island.”

Within my chest of constantly growing
jealousy, anger, and anxiety, I felt my heart literally skip a beat – an actual, momentary cessation of its primary bodily function.  A bit of pain filled the chasm that was my chest at that moment, but the feeling subsided quickly and I was simply left with the reality of Boudicca’s words.

It wasn’t that she
had referred to the island as “Holy Island” that bothered me.

It was that she
’d spoken the name in heavily accented, but near perfect English.

“Holy Island
,” I whispered.

I
n English.

Behind me, I heard Wang say under his breath,
“This shite is going to give me a heart attack…”

***

We camped for the night in the shadow of the island, but early the next morning we crossed the narrow straight that separated Holy Island from the Isle of Mona, and hiked toward the mountain in the north that Wang had explained was called Holyhead Mountain – although prying that information from him had been like pulling a kid’s first tooth.  He was more disturbed than ever, as he remembered traveling to Holy Island during a childhood visit to Anglesey, but hadn’t explained much more than that.

And Vincent wasn’t
any more helpful.

It was like living with a pair of ghost hunters too afraid to do their jobs.

Luckily, neither of them attempted to impede our progress, and I appreciated people like Santino and Stryker chiding the two of them into action.  Even Vincent had a sense of pride, and didn’t want to be thought a coward because he was spooked by an island.

Two hours into our march across Holy Island, we came to its narrow most section, so narrow that my contingent of Romans, a few dozen shy of two hundred men, could have held hands and stretched from coast to coast.  We were also clearly much higher than sea level now, but it seemed like we were only bound to climb higher.
  Holyhead Mountain dominated the horizon now, but didn’t seem like a challenging climb even at this distance, although it remained the most discernible landmark on the island.

After
a few more hours of relentless hiking, we arrived to within a few hundred meters of the mountain and the village that was now visible at its base.  Constructed out of mud and sticks, the village was made up of huts that looked like something out of a Monty Python movie – a humorous exaggeration of what actual primitive people would live in, but it was hard to argue with my own two eyes.  Its most troubling feature, however, was that it seemed like every single member of the village had come out to greet us as we grew closer.  A few hundred individuals total, they appeared quite healthy and vibrant, except for the creepy, zombie-like expressions they turned on us, made all the more disturbing by the fact that they had already formed a tunnel of human bodies that directed us toward and up the mountain.

I turned to
Boudicca to find out what the hell was going on, but she ignored me as she led us toward the opening that would allow us entrance between the two lines of people.  The Romans behind me seemed unperturbed by our odd surroundings, but the rest of my party was another story.  I looked over my shoulder and noticed Vincent a few people back and waved for him to catch up, noticing that Wang was sweating despite the cold, mumbling repeatedly to himself that we shouldn’t be here.

“Thoughts?”  I asked when Vincent
finally caught up.

Before answering, he took a moment to study the ritualistic manner in which the people here had gathered.

“Well,” he said, wiping a hand nervously across his brow, “if I had to imagine a scene of Druidic rituals and practices, this would be fairly accurate.”

“Yeah
,” I replied, agreeing completely.  “Think they’re hostile?”

He shook his
head.  “They do not seem to be, and I do not believe they would pose a threat regardless.  Their numbers are not large, unless they are hiding people behind the mountain, although they … they
may
possess other abilities.”

I sighed dejectedly, sick and tired of how superstitious he had become
.

“
Even so, I think you should hold the Romans back,” Vincent advised.

“Right when we might need them most?”

“It would be a sign of good faith.”

I shook my head.  “I’d rather have them and not need them than the other way around.”

He did not reply, too lost in his own thoughts.

If this village was anything like what the Romans had en
countered twenty years from now in my timeline, then it was quite reasonable to assume these people to be the foundation of the last real bastion of Druidic life in Europe.  As Vincent had pointed out, they didn’t seem hostile, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was more to these people than history remembered.

I turned to
Boudicca.  “Thoughts?”

“This is where I was to lead you,” she answered immediately, but
left it at that.

I took in her words, and concluded again that
Boudicca was the true solidifying factor in all this.  Had she not shown up as conveniently as she had, questions would have remained in my mind, but her simple presence seemed enough to prove that there definitely was more to all this.  What that was, I couldn’t yet say, but it was there, and the only way I’d find the answers I was looking for was to push on.

I waved a hand and my contingent fell into step behind me
.  Passing morbid faces and sullen expressions, we marched between the gathered throng of people.  I studied them as I marched, noting that almost all those gathered here were middle aged or older.  There were few individuals my own age, and I only saw two whom I would have thought in their twenties.  Boudicca, in fact, seemed the youngest of them all.  The demographics of this gathering in no way suggested a stable population, but Druidism was ancient, so I knew their children and young people had to be somewhere.

The somber crowd
ushered us silently, the only noise coming from the clinking of armor and weapons from the Romans behind me, but by the time we reached the base of the mountain, I realized it was unrealistic to have them follow.  I signaled for them to hang back, as I surveyed the trail.

It appeared
steep, although manageable, and the path was clear of debris or obstacles within the tunnel of villagers.  It all seemed very set up, and as we climbed the mountain, I couldn’t help but feel our trip had been designed to take longer than normal.  But then we finally crested a small slope of the trail alongside the mountain and found ourselves on a type of circular ledge that jutted out from it, appearing much like a helicopter landing pad.

“This
… shouldn’t be here,” Wang muttered nervously.

I ignored him.  Two thousand yea
rs was a long time for geographic details to change, but my eyes grew wide when I noticed a number of stone monuments arrayed around the perimeter of the clearing and the half dozen elderly men in robes, not completely unlike the ones worn by romanticized versions of druids back home, but also distinctly different and contemporary.  They had no hoods and their sleeves weren’t nearly as baggy as the ones depicted from old stories or fantasy artwork, but something about their appearance reassured me.

This is where we needed to be.

After all this time.

Finally.

What drew my attention next, however, was the crude altar that they congregated around, one that looked oddly familiar, but not because I was Catholic.  It looked nothing like a church altar, as it had three legs arrayed like a tripod, and was roughly carved from a large stone in the shape of half an egg with its surface carved flat but its bottom half left round.

I turned to
find Vincent staring at the altar intently.

“
What?”  I asked.

“
I… believe I’ve seen that altar before,” he said hesitantly.  “I believe… I believe it is a duplicate of the one we found in Rome.”

I l
ooked at him in confusion.  “When did we find an altar in Rome?”

He finally shifted his attention away from the altar
as he answered.  “The one we found beneath the Temple of Lupercal.  The one in the cave when we first arrived in Ancient Rome.”

I didn’t remember, but I tightened my lips and nodded at the information
.  “Then it looks like we’re on the right track.”

Abruptly,
one of the Druids held up a hand, signaling for us to stop.  We did, but when the Druid lowered his hand a moment later, I took a challenging step forward.  No further indication that we should stay back emanated from the gathered Druids, so I turned around to face those behind me.

“Stay here,” I ordered, but then met
Boudicca’s eye.  “You come with me.”

She nodded and fell into step behind me as the two of
us closed the distance.  Our destination was only a few dozen meters away, but it seemed to go on forever, giving me time to study the gathered Druids.  Each of them were old, ancient really, with sun dried faces and white, stringy hair, but they also carried themselves confidently, and there was determination in their eyes.  None of them batted an eyelash at me or seemed surprised at the fact that I wore clothing and carried weaponry none of them had ever seen before…

That is, un
less they
had
seen me before.

There were seven of them arrayed in a semi-circle around the altar, but it was clear that the man in the center was the guy in charge.  He was
an elderly chap with a long gray beard and a nasty scar that vertically bisected his left eye.  He was also taller than the rest, and was the only one to take a step forward as I stepped up to the altar.

He eyed me evenly, his face blank, and when he spoke, his
words came out in a gravelly, old voice that reminded me of an old Classics professor I’d had a lifetime ago.  In fact, as I peered closer, I saw that he even resembled my old Classics professor as well.  This man’s beard was longer and thinner, but the set of his eyes, size of his nose, and shape of his mouth were all quite similar.

I’d spent a lot of time with that
particular professor while at Dartmouth, wasting much of his time during office hours discussing ancient history and being ridiculed by him for my inability to pick up Greek as easily as I had Latin.  He’d been a mentor to me, at least until I’d dropped Greek after only one semester my junior year.  It had been too much of a time consumer, as I’d found myself literally having to translate lines of Greek every Saturday night in between beer pong throws.  Our relationship had soured after that, and while he’d always been my closest mentor, he no longer looked at me as one of his protégés, as he most certainly had when I’d been an underclassman.

And
like most first time students of my old Classics professor, I hadn’t a clue as to what the man had just said.

I turned to
Boudicca.  “Did you understand him?”

She nodded.
“He indicated that what you seek is not here.”

I looked back at the old man, but then did a double take, and looked back at
Boudicca.  “Wait, did he say
what
I seek or
who
?”

“
It is not entirely clear,” she answered.  “This is not a language I have heard in many years.”

I nodded
in understanding and gestured toward my old Classics professor whom I knew couldn’t possibly be my old Classics professor.  “Can you communicate with him?”

“I believe so, yes,” she answered confidently.

“Good,” I said.  “Just translate everything as we go so that I don’t have to ask for translations all the time, okay?”

“As you say, Hunter.”

I nodded and turned back to the old, craggy, scarred man, searching my mind for the right words to receive the information I needed as quickly as possible.  As I searched and formulated questions, only one thing came to mind, and I realized that I hadn’t thought about the orb in months, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, wondered where Helena had hid it.

“Do you know of the orb?”
  I asked.

Boudicca
translated and the man nodded in affirmation.

“Were you expecting us?”

Another nod.

So far so good. 
Time to muck things up then.

“If
what I seek isn’t here, why did I come here at all?  Why did all the clues lead here?”

“If you had known where to go,” the man said, “then you would
have not needed to come here.”

So
this conversation was going to be like that then… great.

“Helpful…”
I muttered, but held the man’s stare.  “Then where do I need to go?”

“That is for you to learn, and we to never know.”