Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (60 page)

“Will I ever learn the truth?”  I asked

“In time, perhaps, but not from me.”

“
More of your centuries of honed intuition at work?”

He smiled.  “Who said anything about centuries?”

I shook my head as I gestured back toward the frozen trio.  “You were right about one thing, Merlin.  This had gone on
way
too long, and I’m starting to lose attention.”

Merlin
nodded in understanding and raised a hand toward his more ancient counterpart, but then he hesitated.  “You realize it won’t be hard to cut this part down a little when you write your book, right?  Just have Helena edit it.”

“
Just fucking start the movie again!” I yelled, throwing a hand toward the twins.

“
All right, all right.  I don’t know how she puts up with you…”

I glared at him, but his smile simply widened to look just like one of Santino's as the show finally resumed.

“Wait!”  I called out as something came to mind.

The scene paused again, and now it was Merlin’s
turn to look at me impatiently.  “What is it?”

“Why did you need to pause it
at all?  Why not let the other you explain all this to them?”

Merlin looked at me
steadily.  “Because they already knew enough.”

B
efore I had even a second to think on that revelation, the scene restarted.

“Faustulus… father…”
Romulus stammered, “…but such power, so easily accessible… It is a great responsibility.”

“It is,” the
other Merlin confirmed, “which is why I entrust it to you, my sons. Such potential I see in you, more than I’ve seen in over four hundred years…”

I shot Merlin a look,
and he flicked an embarrassed face at me, but didn't say anything.  I shook my head and turned back to the focus of this particular story.

“…
but I do not bestow these gifts on you easily, which is why I offer each of you only one half of the old god’s third power.  Alone you have been given something powerful, but only together will you change the universe.”

“Old
‘god’…” I whispered.  “Singular?”

Merlin didn’t say anything.

Romulus clutched his red orb to his chest like a newborn, dropping his eyes to study it intently before meeting his father's eyes steadily. There was love in their eyes, the kind shared between a father and son who respected each other greatly, and understood each other more than any other two people.  There was no question that Merlin had legitimate feelings for these boys, it was only a question of the source of that love that eluded me.

Unlike his brother, however, Remus seemed less pleased with their situation.  He held his orb in a single, massive hand down near his leg, like it was something that didn’t really concern him or was something of menial importance.  Interrupt
ing the moment Romulus and the other Merlin were sharing, Remus took an imposing step toward his “father” and spoke.

“But Faustulus, why not
grant each of us complete power?  It would be more efficient that way.  The two of us, acting independently, could do far more simultaneously than if were we restricted to working together.”

The
other Merlin turned his head, opened his mouth to speak, but then stood suspended in time again.  I turned back to my Merlin who looked as sad as I’d yet seen him yet look.

“I should have known then and there.”

“Known what?”  I asked.

He replied simply with an upraised arm.  I followed the arm,
unsurprised to find that we were no longer in the tent of Romulus and Remus.  The scene had shifted again, and Merlin and I now stood out on one of the great hills of Rome with the sun shining down on us brilliantly.  I retrieved my sunglasses once again and placed them over my eyes, the sudden shift to daylight nearly blinding me again.

“
One month later…” Merlin whispered, his voice acting much like a subtitle in a movie indicating the very same thing.

I saw nothing in my immediate field of vision, so I turned around, but when I did, I took a step back in surprise at what I saw.  Where little more than a camp
of tents had stood no more than a month ago, the makings of a city stood just beside it on a hill.  Small but lavish buildings and paved streets dominated the area, carefully organized in a tight, neat grid.  The city was not quite recognizable, but something about it made me instantly understand that this must have been Rome.

I turned to Merlin.  “All of this in just one month?”

“With great power…” Merlin uttered, again in a whisper.

I looked back toward
the city and shook my head in wonder.  What I saw before me was beyond amazing.  It was an engineering feat unparalleled even in the modern world.  There, this city would still be little more than a field of grass, as it would have taken them years just to plan the city, let alone begin the process of hiring workers and gathering resources.

Truly amazing.

On an impulse, I started walking toward the ancient beyond ancient city of Rome.  Merlin, as always, fell into step beside me.  As we grew closer, I was able to notice a wall being erected around the city.  From this vantage point, I surmised that it was perhaps only half complete, but it, like the city behind it, was both opulent and seemed highly effective as defensive barricades go – at least it would be once it was complete.

I
strode down the hill and toward the city with purpose, but pulled up just short of entering it when a commotion to my left drew my attention.  I looked and saw Romulus standing atop a completed portion of the wall, thirty feet above the ground.  He was looking away from the city with a hand held up and pointing in that direction, gripping his red orb with the other.  I tracked his outstretched arm and saw Remus standing on the field before the wall, a good forty meters away.  I took a step forward but something else caught my eye.  A bird was only a foot away from me, suspended in motionless flight, an indication that the scene before me was paused again.

I turned
to Merlin, waving an arm toward Romulus and Remus.

“Don’t tell me this is actually going to happen.”

“It is.”

I shook my head in disbelief.  “Amazing. 
Simply amazing.”

“What is?”  Merlin asked
, his voice indicating he was curious.

“That historians could get so much
just flat out wrong about Roman history,” I replied, “but stories of Remus leaping over Romulus’ wall, the key event that drove Romulus to murder his twin brother, or as certain legends go, managed to survive for almost three thousand years.  That’s what’s going to happen, isn’t it?  Unless you’re fucking around with me here…”

“I most certainly am not, Jacob.”

“Amazing then,” I muttered.  “But that wall is thirty feet high!”

“Just watch,” Merlin said.

I nodded and turned as time resumed, just in time to have the nearby bird fly right into my face.  I batted my arms at it as it tried to claw my nose off, but was lucky to defeat it with minimal injury.  I shot a glance at Merlin, spitting out a feather as I did.

“Sorry,” he said.

I glared at him but the commotion between Romulus and Remus saved him from feeling the torment of my gaze.

“This is a fruitless argument
!”  Romulus shouted down at Remus from the wall.  “You may have won the right to choose your choice of locations for our new city first, but
I
won the actual choice of where to build it!”

“An unfair decision, brother!”  Remus shouted back.  “
It is no fault of my own that the mating pattern of birds precludes my chosen location as the superior one.  It is of no surprise that you saw more than I!”

“Good grief,” I muttered.  “Did you really entrust
the fate of the universe to a pair of kids who actually relied on augury to determine where they were going to build their city?”

“Hush,” Merlin shot back.

I rolled my eyes but did as I was told.

“Silence your whining, brother!”  Romulus shot back.  “We both agreed on the terms.  It was all the men would understand.  Father assured us it was the best course of action.”

“
Father
…” Remus grumbled, his voice dripping with disdain, “…I am not quite convinced of his impartiality in all of this as well.”

“Again with your
whining, Remus,” Romulus said, clearly impatient.  “I tell you, it grows old.”

I crossed my arms
but then held out a hand toward them.  “Seriously, Merlin, these two schmucks?”

Merlin looked
at the sky as he shook his head but didn’t say anything.  The two twins continued throwing jibes and insults at each other, and I was beginning to think this seemingly epic brawl was going to turn into nothing more than a pissing match between irritated brothers.  My suspicions of just that grew with every passing moment, but then Remus pulled his orb from behind his back.  It was a simple gesture but something about it seemed threatening.

“And m
y orb is useless!”  Remus yelled, shaking his fist with one hand and waving the orb in the air with the other.  “It serves me no purpose to revisit my own past and nothing more unless used in concert with your orb, while you can go off and play in other worlds without the need for me!  I will not stand for it!  We achieved everything to this point together, and I will not merely reside in your shadow now.  I refuse!”

Romulus, to his credit, did not appear angry or upset.  He simply stood patiently atop his wall and extended both hands to his sides, his right hand still gripping his orb.  “You are my brother, Remus, but if you wish to challenge me, you are free to do so.  I welcome you
into my city by going through or around my wall, but if you attempt to go over it… you will be well met by me personally!”

I suddenly felt myself walking forward again, too interested in what was
to come to realize what I was doing.  The air was as still as I’d ever experienced it before, and for a second I thought Merlin had stopped time again, but the distant rustling of leaves and the patter of feet off in the distance proved that not to be the case.

I looked
to Romulus, still atop his wall, his arms spread wide, and then to Remus, who now knelt in the grass coiled like a viper.  The man looked ready to jump, but even after everything I’d seen, I didn’t for a second entertain the thought that he was about to jump thirty feet in the air and cross such a distance.  Such athleticism was beyond even these impressive young men.

But then he did.

Like a flash of lightening, Remus no longer knelt in the grass but was sailing through the air directly toward Romulus.  He wasn’t flying, that much was clear, but the angle and approach of his path indicated he had, without a doubt, jumped, and looked to be on a course to clear the wall with room to spare.  I watched the leap with an open mouth, viewing it like the slowest tennis volley ever hit, my head tracking Remus left to right as he flew.  He looked so graceful in the air, like it was something he did all the time, but then his grace ended when he crashed into Romulus.

Even for a being I assumed equally powerful as the god-like Remus, the momentum behind his
brother’s leap was too much for Romulus to stop, and the pair of twins fell backward off the wall together.  They dropped like stones but halfway before they impacted the street below, they winked out of existence.

They were gone.

I ran to about where they should have hit the ground, but found nothing.  There wasn’t a trace of their existence, let alone the orbs they carried.  I looked to Merlin, who stood beside me as if he’d been there all along.

“Where did they go?”  I asked in shock.

“In all honesty, Jacob, I do not know.”

“How can you not know??”

“Because they went somewhere I could not follow.”

The answer came to me immediately.  “The orbs!”

Merlin nodded.

“But which one?  The red or the blue?  Did they go somewhere in time?  Or into another dimension?”

“Again, I do not know.”

I pulled back a few steps and surveyed the scene.  If this was the moment i
n history where Romulus murdered his twin brother, igniting the chain of events that would lead Roman civilization down the path I’d learned about in school, then whatever had just happened, wasn’t yet finished.  I looked up suspiciously and confirmed that Merlin had stopped time again by seeing even more suspended birds frozen mid flap.

“What happens next?”
I asked.

Merlin held out his hand to indicate the ground just to his right.  “Back away, Jacob.”

I did as I was told, moving to stand beside him, and when I arrived, time started again and the brothers immediately winked back into existence, but then I realized my eyes must have played a trick on me, because it became instantly clear that only Romulus had returned.