Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (40 page)

I smiled as I glanced down at my trusty rifle, resting lazily in my lap, riding contentedly as she waited for her moment to be put to work.  HK416s were particularly reliable rifles, but even Penelope was something special.  While Santino’s had failed him on a handful of occasions since coming to Rome, Penelope had not once misfired or failed me.  Her reliability was the result of all the care and love I’d shown her, having given her a name, a personality, and having dutifully cleaned and maintained her daily. 

She’d never let me down
, because I’d never let
her
down.

Like loyal Felix beneath me, we shared a connection
, and neither of them would ever fail me.  It didn’t matter who I trained Penelope on, whether friend or foe, she’d never let me down.  Unlike the rest of them – Vincent, Santino, Helena, whoever – Penelope would always be there for me.

Always.

***

And then there were the g
rumblings beginning to circulate within the camp.

The pac
e I’d set since leaving Anglesey had been intense, even by the Romans’ already extreme standards.  Their normal marching order called for a dawn wakeup call followed by breakfast, the breaking down of camp, and an all-day march that ended at sunset.  Our current protocol, however, called for an even earlier wake up time and the end of the day came well after dusk now.  It was an arduous pace, even for campaigning legionnaires.  They weren’t accustomed to marching during the winter, especially not one as unforgiving as this one had become.

It was
late January, and the days were naturally short, but I wasn’t about to lose time because nature had decided to hurl everything in its arsenal at us, from snow to ice and everything in between.  It was tough going, but if our final destination was as far north as Scotland, which would be just my luck, I’d rather get there sooner rather than later.  The Roman Empire was still fracturing, and my lack of involvement wasn’t helping.  I’d promised Vespasian that I would help Galba settle the turbulent Britons, but I would do it on my terms.  It seemed best to handle my own shit first before diving back into the political and military situation Rome now found itself in.

O
nly when I had my answers, would I get involved again.

And when that happened, things would be different
this time.

But the legionnaires didn’t seem to understand that.  All they understood was that their legate was working them far harder than any other legate had before, and they weren’t happy
about it.  Under my old first file Fabius’ professional and stalwart command, his subordinates would have been able to keep their underlings in check, but he was back with Galba.  While Minicius was tough, and his men respected him, he was no first file centurion.  He could keep dissident legionnaires in line for now, but I wasn’t sure how long his authority would last.

Only
Boudicca seemed unperturbed by our pace.  Nor was she hesitant about speaking with me, because as the days wore on, she only became more curious.  She knew less about the orb than the others, and didn’t suspect my involvement in the slaughter of the Druids’ village, so she didn’t distrust me either.  She was simply curious, a quirk I could appreciate, and her questions, while endless, had been appropriate.

She wanted to know more about me, the others, and most importantly, the nature of our quest. 
Her curiosity was quite endearing actually, and the fierceness she displayed when I would answer a question in a roundabout way or avoid it all together left quite an impression.  It was not hard to see the defiant and charismatic queen she was destined to become in the young woman before me.

It left me feeling oddly attracted to
her.  All those muscles aside, I found myself growing giddy at the sight of her riding up from the marching column to ride by my side.  I wasn’t sure if the emotions came from a growing sense of isolation, loneliness, or misplaced infatuation, but whatever the source, it was unfortunate that she didn’t seem to reciprocate that attraction.  She’d ride and talk with me for most of any given day, but she was always business.

Wang, on the other hand, seemed to have her full atten
tion.  When she wasn’t with me, most of her time was spent with him.  The small framed Brit looked like an ant next to the exceptionally built woman, and his lack of interest in her made the scene quite humorous.  The two would often ride side by side, saying nothing, Wang doing everything in his power to avoid eye contact with her while she, on the other hand, would constantly sneak glances at him only to look pouty when he refused to return them.

Despite everything, it made for a
n amusing scene to draw some enjoyment from.

As for the rest of them, they continued to plot and scheme against me in private.  While some were less overt about it
and would occasionally ride in sight of me, the others would travel out of sight – but not out of mind.  I hadn’t even seen Helena or Artie since linking back up with the rest of our legionnaires near the straight that separated mainland Wales from the Isle of Mona weeks ago.  I also saw little of Santino or his new buddies, and Bordeaux and Vincent never came around anymore either.  I no longer understood why the latter two didn’t just leave and go back to their families, since it was clear they didn’t want to be here, nor would I miss either one of them if they did.

They’d
all created a distrustful cloud of apprehension around me, and I could feel in my gut that it was only a matter of time before they all turned on me.  I’d spent the past two weeks trying to come up with a plan to ditch them somehow, but I couldn’t think of a way that kept everyone alive.  I was certain my force of legionnaires could overwhelm them if necessary, but I couldn’t guarantee I’d even be left with a century at the end of the engagement.

And
it may end with all of them dead as well.

It hadn’t yet come to that
.

It was growing late in the day as I thought about
this possible outcome.

There was too much at stake here to throw away lives senselessly, and it was w
ith that thought in mind that I realized it was time to provide a show of good faith to the Romans.  I glanced at my watch, still functional despite a large crack that ran through its center, but I could already tell by the dimming sky that dusk was settling in.  Deciding to give the legionnaires a break tonight, I called for a scouting force to locate a suitable camp site instead of continuing our march for a few more hours, as had become the norm.

I caught
Minicius’ eye and signaled with a hand gesture for him to assign a scouting party.  He nodded and peeled off from his marching position and shouted orders.  A timid cheer rang through the nearby legionnaires, but I returned my attention to the snowy path that had been our trail for the past five days – little more than a narrow gap between trees that twisted and bent sinisterly, each and every one a distant cousin of that creepy tree from
Poltergeist
.

No one had any idea
where we were going, where we were, or who exactly the natives in the region were.  We were in uncharted territory, and even Boudicca, who’d sent her contingent of troops home, had never ventured this far north before.  Nary a soul had we seen since leaving the Isle of Mona, and the local wildlife had abandoned us as well.  Not only had fresh game like rabbits and deer disappeared, which wasn’t necessarily a problem since the legionnaires were well provisioned for months, but also anything that creeped, crawled, swam, or flew.  At night, the sounds of the wilderness were startling silent, with little more than the howling of wind through bare branches to keep us company.

It had
more than just my former friends worried now, as some of the legionnaires began suspecting that the murdered Druids back on Holy Island had somehow cursed us, and that their vengeful spirits were harrying us in an attempt to lead us toward a grisly end.  I was fairly certain such superstition was just that, but even I couldn’t completely shake the feeling that we were being watched, tracked, corralled… or worse.  There was undoubtedly some form of energy in this winter wonderland that I couldn’t quite understand.  At night it could be quite terrifying, especially alone and isolated inside my
praetorium
.  Every time a horse neighed or a legionnaire swore loudly, cutting through the silence of night, I would jolt out of bed or up from my desk for fear of some ghastly spirit haunting us.  Other random cries of fear or wails for comfort would come from the camp, either joining my own or in response to some other calamitous occurrence.  It left the camp a ghostly, ominous place, and made it difficult to fall asleep at all for fear of the boogeyman.

Even thinking about it now had my heart racing, acting like a pump that
continuously fed the growing reservoir of negative emotion in my chest.  Always growing, never shrinking, and always on the verge of bursting, I forced myself to calm down when I noticed a pair of centurions pass by me at a quick trot with a handful of legionnaires and engineers behind them.  As always, they would run ahead and get to work making camp wherever they saw fit before sending back a man or two to lead us to our final destination.  While suitable terrain had grown more difficult to find the further north we travelled, the routine nature of their assigned task gave me a sense of calm and I felt immediately better.

I settled myself, both physically and mentally, and waited for their return, but then a
centurion hit the dirt in a sprawl a few dozen meters in front of me, a pair of arrows lodged through his neck, crisscrossing each other at its center.  There was a brief pause when his companions processed what had happened to him, but then they too were perforated by a barrage of arrows that came at them from all directions.

“Defensive formation!” 
Minicius yelled, understanding the situation before anyone else.

To their credit
, the legionnaires were quick to respond.  Raising shields and locking them into place, my legionnaires flawlessly shifted their marching order into their famous
testudo
formation.  Acting like the shell of turtle, their overlapping shields created a defensive barrier that protected them from incoming missiles that approached from any direction.  As long as the spirits who taunted us didn’t raise spears from below our feet, the Romans could withstand any missile barrage.

Unfortunately,
Felix and I were significantly less protected, a fact Felix quickly discovered when an arrow found itself lodged in his rump.  I wasn’t sure how or why the single arrow had missed me to bury itself into my horse’s ass instead, but it must have been some form of signal, because it wasn’t long before hundreds more joined it.

Arrows came at me from all directions except from
ahead, but I was saved by Felix who wasn’t stupid enough to stick around and play the part of a stationary target dummy.  He took off like a drag car gunning it off the line and galloped toward the clump of fallen legionnaires a few dozen meters ahead of me.  I glanced behind me in time to see maybe three dozen arrows protruding from the ground Felix had just vacated, clustered in a neat little circle almost too accurate to believe.

My attention was directed forward again when Felix leapt over the bodies of my fallen men.  He came down roughly and I was jerked forward, another random and inadvertent motion that saved my life when I felt a number of arrows
whiz past the back of my neck and others, too many to count, plink off my body armor.  It also allowed me to see the five men and two women who ran out in front of us, their spears held before them threateningly.

But like most horses, Felix was too smart to go blindly running into a clump of sharp s
ticks.  He quickly veered to the left but his forward momentum kept him moving in his original direction, and he very nearly tripped over himself.  To compensate, he dug his hoofs into the snow but started to slide toward the enemy on a patch of ice like a souped-up street racer performing a power slide. In that same moment, I instinctively drew my pistol, extended my arm, and with controlled squeezes of the trigger, fired off seven rounds in quick succession.

As I fired, the ice beneath Felix must have
disappeared, because he suddenly jerked to a stop, nearly pitching me off of him again.  He started hopping in place and spinning about in fear and pain, so without thinking, I reached back and snapped the arrow in his rump.  I knew there wasn’t much of a point to the action, but it would at least shorten the length of the arrow to help it from snagging on something and causing further torment to poor Felix.  He reared at the action but to my surprise, calmed down.  I patted his mane and finally remembered the enemy combatants I had just shot.

I turned, expecting them to
still be alive and advancing on me, but I found each of them sprawled out on the ground.  Half were dead, while most of the rest were writhing in the throes of death, but one was on his feet, clutching a wound at his shoulder, his face awash in confusion at what I had just done to him.  The two of us locked eyes for only a second, before he sprinted toward me, his spear hefted over his good shoulder.  I lifted my pistol into a firing position near my waist and fired at the man like a cowboy in a shootout.  The bullet clipped him in the neck, nicking his jugular and causing a weak spray of arterial blood to gush from the wound.  I was lucky enough to avoid being sprayed as the man fell to the ground steps away, one hand clutching his neck the other grasping for me.