Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (65 page)

Northern Britannia

March, 44 A.D.

The four of us hadn’t spent long in the clearing after Santino’s surprising
announcement.  I’d sat there quite shocked for a few seconds as realization for why I was so hungry and stiff started making sense.  It was no wonder that Merlin felt so pressed for time there at the end.  Two hours with him had been a month in the real world.  It was a long time to be out of the loop and my first thoughts were of how my friends had interacted in such close proximity with Agrippina for all that time.

I could have spent another month wondering why and how such a time differentiation could
have occurred, but if I’d learned anything from my time with Merlin, it was that sometimes it was best just to ignore the less important questions, which would have been easier to do had my friends given me some information of their own to mull on.

All they’d confirmed
to me was that Helena hadn’t yet given birth, but hadn’t elaborated much more than that as Bordeaux and Boudicca picked me up, set me on a random horse, and helped me stay in the saddle as we rode back to camp.  Santino joined us, but a fourth presence in the clearing, Minicius, lingered under orders to wait until he was certain we were back at camp before returning with the blue orb, but making sure he kept it as far away from me as possible.

It w
as with that order from Santino that I’d finally taken notice of the cottage’s disappearance, replaced with nothing more than a very real looking dead log that simply sat in the snow.  There was nothing there to indicate anything unnatural had been there at all.  After asking my companions about this, Santino had some interesting things to say on it.

“We all watched you go in
side, Jacob,” he’d said as Bordeaux and Boudicca had lifted me atop the horse.  “We watched the door close behind you, heard the sound of it clinking shut and everything, but then it just disappeared!  Artie thought it had simply gone invisible, but Archer walked his horse right through the area.  There was nothing there.  Even the snow looked completely untouched.  All we saw were your footprints leading to the door, and then… nothing.”

I could tell my disappearance had affected him deeply, because his explanation had been as straight forward and devoid of stupidity as I’d ever heard from
him.  He’d gone on to explain that the initial contingent had waited for six hours before they’d decided to go home, sending shifts of two to four individuals to keep watch over the location and await my return.  He’d also said that both the legionnaires and Praetorians had wanted to leave a month ago, but only at the insistence of both Helena and Agrippina had they stayed.  Apparently, both women – for what I was sure were completely different reasons – had demanded that they remain indefinitely.

It was then that I’d asked for more information about Helena, but none had come.  I’d then asked for an update on Agrippina, asking if she was treating them well.  All they’d said was that she was, but it wasn’t like she interacted with them much.  I then asked about the status of the camp,
which was met with very dour looks all around, but again, no explanation.  I’d taken a deep breath, upset at their silence, but remembering Merlin’s advice about not letting my thoughts eat away at me, and asked no further questions, understanding that an explanation would come soon enough.

I
only hoped it came sooner rather than later because my absence from the real world had left me confused and disoriented.  My body felt weak from a month of inactivity and my mind couldn’t understand that.  The more I thought about it, the more disconnected I felt, like my mind and my body had been separated and could no longer function optimally together.  It was an odd feeling, made worse by the fact that I didn’t understand why I wasn’t dead.

A month of complete in
activity and a lack of food and water should have left me a withered husk, but my only conclusion was that Merlin had somehow provided my stomach with sustenance and my muscles with mild stimulation to keep them from atrophying completely, although it hadn’t done much to keep my beard from growing out.  Unwanted facial growth or not, I was thankful, because with the way my friends were acting, I was pretty sure I was going to need my body in working order sooner rather than later.

But despite how horrid my body felt and how
drained my mind was, I was grateful for the simple fact that my friends hadn’t abandoned me.  After everything I’d done in the past few months, I wouldn’t even have been upset had they simply forgotten about me and moved on.  I’d done more than my fair share to earn their distrust and hate, done purposefully on my part or not, and I was grateful for their loyalty.

They’d never understand, but still
I rode my nameless horse to where Santino rode his own, near the tip of our tiny formation.  When I arrived, he glanced at me and nodded in welcome, but didn’t seem nearly as cheery as he usually did.

“Got a minute, John?”  I asked.

“I’ve got more than I know what to do with, Jacob,” he said, leaning over to nudge me with an elbow.  “All thanks to you.”

“About that,” I said, “I can’t thank you enough.  All of you.  After everything I’d done, I’m surprised anyone cared enough…”

“Shut up with that shit, Hunter,” Santino said, although he didn’t sound overly angry.  “We’re not stupid.  The orb is one hell of a drug.  It fucked you up, and we weren’t just going to abandon you.  What kind of friends would abandon their crack addicted friend to get worse and worse and not doing anything about it?”

“
I guess I never really thought about it…”

“Then of course there’s Helena to think about,” Santino continued.  “Honestly, I’m pretty sure most of us would have just left you
r ass to the wolves after all the shit you did, but you know better than all of us just how scary she gets when she’s angry, so we couldn’t just leave you.  She wouldn’t let us.”

I smirked, easily able
to imagine a pregnant, and therefore very quick to anger, Helena.

“And Agrippina?”

“Oh that bitch wouldn’t let us leave either,” he said, fidgeting atop his horse.  “She digs you, Jacob.  Always has.  I’ll never understand what it is, but she’s got a hard on for you, my friend.”

I rolled my eyes.  “After all this, you still don’t know what…”

“Of course I know!”  Santino exclaimed.  “Shit, Jacob, I just wanted to describe her as having a hard on, is all.  That’s funny stuff.”

I
patted his shoulder.

“That’s right, Jonathon… that’s
very
funny stuff…”

“
Damn right, but it’s not like we saw her much while you were gone,” he continued.  “She stayed in her
praetorium
most of the time, only rarely coming to ask for an update on you.”

“Who’d she talk to?”

“Archer mostly, to be honest, which we all found kind of odd.  Sometimes Vincent.  Once me, but that didn’t end very well…”

“Was she ever in the same room with Helena?”

“Are you kidding?”  He said with a quick laugh.  “Do you honestly think Helena would ever voluntarily be caught dead in the same room with Agrippina?  Hell no, especially not these days when it’s not so easy for her to stab Agrippina in the throat anymore.”

I nodded and joined him in
laughter, although not quite so enthusiastically.  The idea of Agrippina spending so much time with Archer worried me.  What was her angle there?  And the answer to why exactly she cared so much about me at all continued to elude me.  I wasn’t sure if she would be sticking around once I returned to camp, or what she would do when I told everyone what I’d experienced, and that uncertainty didn’t exactly leave me feeling optimistic.

“Nothing’s h
appened to anybody, right?”  I asked after a moment.  “Is Artie all right?”

He squinted at me.  “What?  No, she’s fine.  You think we wouldn’t tell you if something had
happened to her?”

I shrugged.  “It’s just that your
entire sit rep has been lacking in information, Santino.  I just want to know what’s going on.”

He
scoffed.  “Won’t need us to tell you soon enough, buddy.  Just find your inner chi or whatever and get ready for it.”

There was no point in asking what the fuck that meant, so I
tried to roll my shoulders, which I managed to do uncomfortably, and looked away.  Something really big must be going on to have Santino acting this way, so I settled myself like he suggested and tried to clear my mind.  I was still processing every single word Merlin had told me and every single image he’d shown me, trying to understand it, and use it to my benefit.  If everything really was as simple as finding the red orb and using it and the blue orb in conjunction to get home, great, but I wasn’t nearly ready to believe my life could ever be
that
easy.

S
omething was bound to go wrong with Merlin’s plan, or he’d purposefully left something out of it, so I had to be ready.  I had to stay focused and keep myself from being lulled into a false sense of complacency, but as we approached the edge of the forest, I discovered there would be little chance of that happening any time soon.

Agrippina’s camp of Praetoria
ns was under siege.

Maybe
two miles off in the distance, her small camp was surrounded by an army of enemy soldiers.  A trench system travelled the circumference of the camp, and fortifications dotted its long, circular line.  It was an impressive sight of siege warfare, one I hadn’t expected from whatever natives called this part of Britain home.

And there was a perfectly good explanation for
that.

Because the besiegers
were not native Britons at all.

They were
Romans.

I dropped my head in defeat at the sight of it.

“Who’d I piss off this time?”  I asked.

Santino chuckled.  “Who do you think?”

I barely needed to.  “Galba?”

“Galba.”

“When did he show up?”  I asked, lifting my head to better analyze Galba’s forces.

“Little over a week ago,” Santino replied.  “And believe me, he didn’t come bearing gifts.”

I raised an arm and pointed toward his army.  “What the hell’s he even doing here?”

“He’s come for Agrippina,” Santino answered, but he didn’t seem finished with his answer.

“And…” I prodded.

“Well, Jake, he’s come for you too.  Apparently, he’s a little sore at how you treated him last time
.  But don’t worry, he doesn’t even blame you.”

“He knows I was affected by the orb?”

“Oh, that?  Fuck no.  He doesn’t know shit about that.  No, he blames Vespasian for giving you so much power and shit to do.  Seems Galba’s about ready to march on Rome himself, take things over, use Agrippina as leverage, and… well you know, put Vespasian’s head on a spike… right next to yours, of course.”

I looked at Santino with a mixture of surprise and confusion.  “He tell you all that?”

He shrugged.  “Not in so many words, but you know Galba.  He’s about as blunt as my elbow and not nearly as eloquent.  I got the gist.”

“Yeesh,” I said, more surprised than worried.  “I didn’t think the guy would take it so personally.”

“He’s a Roman,” Santino said.  “They take
everything
personally.”

“Good point,” I said, but then the worry started to settle in.  “So how are we going to get through all that?”

Santino reached out and clapped me roughly on the back, so hard that I almost fell off my horse.  “Why do you think Helena made me spend sixteen hours a day waiting for your sorry ass?  For my health?”

***

To this day, I still found it surprising when I had to be reminded of how useful Santino could be.  Sneaking into a hostile Roman encampment was never a very good idea, but unlike the last time I had to do it, at least Santino was around this time.

He led us a
round Galba’s trench, giving it a wide berth as we snuck toward a section that seemed less dense.  At least, that’s what Santino told me was the reason why we spent an entire hour sneaking through the shadows provided by the tree line, but I didn’t question him.  I still felt slow and dazed, and my mind’s lethargic state hadn’t improved much since leaving the clearing.  Galba’s Romans could have been flying for all I knew, so I simply followed while Bordeaux and Boudicca did the same.

By the time we ran out of tree line to hide within, I
started questioning Santino’s entire plan, but then I watched as he dismounted from his horse and made his way toward a large clump of bushes hidden behind a denser part of the tree line.  I watched him approach them and waited while he got down on his hands and knees, and crawled into the thicket.  Moments later, he emerged dragging a large satchel behind him, swearing at the same time as he wiped a droplet of blood from his face from a wound he must have sustained in the bushes.  Once he was clear, he stood and angrily threw the satchel in front of him.  Bordeaux and Boudicca knelt beside it and pulled sets of legionary armor from within, followed by swords and other equipment.