The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (43 page)

As soon as the first wisps of dawn struck my face, I
hauled myself out of bed as soon as I could, nearly delirious from
exhaustion. With a quick knock to wake up my travel companions, I
rushed outside to ready my horse. As I pulled a strap to tighten my
gear along his flank, a sudden shriek from the hotel drew my
attention in its direction before I realized how horribly familiar
the sound was. I sighed, and looked at a few other early risers who
were outside and heard the noise as well. They laughed, knowing
full well what was happening, and when Santino came waltzing out
twenty minutes later with a radiant Agrippina on his arm, they
whooped and hollered at him. He gripped his hands together and
shook them alongside both sides of his head in a celebratory
gesture in response. Whether the ne’er-do-wells outside understood
what he was doing or not didn’t matter. They loved it.

I looked over at him. “Quite the show of stamina
last night you bastard.”

He returned the look. “Yeah, it’s my Italian
blood.”

“How appropriate. Feel any better?”

“Definitely, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that
again. You were right. She’s a freak.”

I had to laugh and roll my eyes at the same time
before mounting my horse and giving him a quick kick. “Don’t worry.
She has two sisters. Maybe one of them will be more to your
liking.”

He smiled at the idea, while I paused to let him
think about it.

“However,” I continued. “I hope you realize you may
have just sired the next emperor of Rome.”

“Yeah, I...” He paused after mounting his own horse.
“Wait, what?”

“Seriously,” I confirmed. “If something happens to
Nero, and Agrippina has a child from your endless fornicating last
night, he may become a Caesar. We can name him Julius Agrippa
Augustus Germanicus Santino Caesar. I like that. Has a ring to
it.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, actually, I’m not. Plus, you may have just
created your own great times a thousand grandfather since you’ve
had relations with a woman from a time period you don’t belong
in.”

“Wait. That can’t really happen.” He thought about
it. “Can it?”

I let him stew for a few seconds before I started
laughing. “No, from what I think I know, it can’t. Just
kidding.”

“Oh, good,” he said, looking laughably relieved.

***

A day and a thankfully quiet night later, the walls
of Rome sprang into sight. Still a few miles out, I could see just
how expansive the city really was, but its walls weren’t what
intimidated me right now, it was the two tiny little dots I saw
flanking the small gateway. If we couldn’t get through those
guards, this mission would be scrubbed before it even began.

Santino and I had opted out of our HK416 rifles,
which were long, somewhat cumbersome, and very hard to conceal.
Instead, Santino had borrowed Wang’s UMP, and I’d taken Helena’s
P90. These were easily concealed beneath our baggy togas, and
billowing travel cloaks, securely tied down to our backs with their
slings. Additionally, we packed night vision goggles, plenty of
Bordeaux’s C-4, a small but extensive medical kit put together by
Wang, and enough ammo to take on a very small army. Most of this we
kept hidden in locally made bags, which did well to conceal our
gear, but weren’t designed like our own to make what we needed
easily accessible.

Hopefully, we wouldn’t let things get confusing, but
as Santino and I well knew, shit happens, and very quickly in our
line of work. We’d stage the rescue while Agrippina distracted
Claudius, grabbing the kid, and moving towards the walls of Rome to
lay down our demo. Then we’d get the hell out of dodge.

Easy.

By the time we reached the gate, I was only slightly
nervous. I figured if everything went according to plan, this
should technically be the hardest part.

I wasn’t really expecting everything to go as
planned.

Things never went as planned.

Luckily, the Praetorians we’d interacted with during
our time in Rome were few, and all in the Primigenia’s camp, so
there would be very few people who could easily recognize us.
Santino could probably pass for a Roman, due to his height and dark
features, and while I’d be a bit more suspicious, my physical
characteristics weren’t completely foreign in the Roman world. I’d
also spent the past few weeks growing out my facial hair, so
hopefully even the ladies who made time to watch me run wouldn’t
immediately recognize me.

The movement of traffic into the city was crowded
and slow moving. The constant flow of traders, visitors, farmers,
and other types of people made the road busy and hustled. My
spirits were lifted when I observed that the guards seemed
lackadaisical in their duty, and were just waving people through.
When our turn came up, Agrippina flashed the guards a fantastic
smile, and they wasted no time waving us through, unable to take
their eyes off our female companion.

Through the gates, we made our way to the Palatine
at a leisurely, and hopefully, inconspicuous pace. At the base of
the hill, I noticed Claudius had not sat idle during the winter,
and had spent the time rebuilding the home Bordeaux had destroyed
with just a few pounds of plastic explosive. We abandoned our
horses in a nearby stable owned by Agrippina, just outside the
pomerium
, and backtracked a bit to finish the trip on foot.
Once inside the gated complex, Agrippina issued some last minute
advice.

“My son is kept in a room near the back of the
house, but you won’t be familiar with the layout. Follow the main
hallway. His room will be the first on the right once the hall
meets a cross hallway. There will be guards. Now, there is an exit
near my son’s room. If you face his chamber, take the hallway to
your left. The third door on your right leads to a small storage
area. There is a doorway hidden behind a cabinet at the far end of
the room. Claudius has installed many of these hidden exits in his
home. His paranoia runs deep.”

“Where will you be?” Santino asked.

“Claudius’ room, where he may or may not be right
now. I will head there to make sure he is not home. If he is, I
will distract him while you retrieve my son. If he is not, I will
join you as soon as I can.”

As she spoke, I saw genuine pain and fear in her
face, or at least as good as any impression I’d seen yet.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “This will be a walk in
the park.”

“What does walking in parks have to do with
anything?”

I sighed. “Never mind.” These Romans needed to learn
a few clichés.

“We’ll get him,” Santino comforted.

She nodded, before breaking away from us as we
passed the threshold of the house.

As opposed to the sparse elegance the house exuded
the last time I was here, Claudius’ new décor screamed crazed and
opulent exuberance. The home was littered with statues, paintings
and plants. It looked like an art museum had set up shop in a rain
forest. The displays were random, and many were so obscene I had to
look away.

Santino and I quietly made our way down the hall,
our boots echoing softly on the hard marble. While our togas were
an important part of the plan, we wore much of our combat gear
beneath, save our vests. If we had to fight, we could ditch the
togas, and be at near optimal fighting readiness in seconds.

Following Agrippina’s directions, we made our way
down the long, wide, main hallway. Along the way, we passed
numerous rooms, and more artwork, the latter of which providing us
some concealment as we kept moving. Santino, on point, started to
slow as he approached the end of the hallway before it ended with
another hallway running perpendicular to the one we’d just walked
down. If Agrippina’s directions were right, Nero’s room should just
be around the corner. So far we hadn’t seen any guards, which did
little to ease my nervousness, but when Santino stopped, knelt, and
looked around the corner using a small mirror, he indicated he saw
two of them.

“You go first,” he whispered. “Take out the far
one.”

I moved into position along the opposite wall, ready
to hurl myself down the adjacent hallway. Securing one of my feet
against the wall behind me, I nodded to Santino.

He held out three fingers, slowly counting them down
to a clenched fist. When he did, I leapt into action. Using the
wall as a springboard, I practically flew across our hallway,
rounding the corner in as wide a turn as I could manage. Just as I
caught sight of the guards, who were lazily resting their hands on
the hilts of their swords, I fell into a roll, landing past the
first guard, and right in front of the second. In one fluid motion
I stepped up from the roll and swung my elbow upwards into the
second guard’s jaw. I heard teeth shatter, and felt my elbow
bruise. I ignored the pain and wrapped my arm around the man’s
neck, and stepped behind him, placing him in an effective choke
hold. Using his body as a shield, I turned to face the first guard
while I choked the life from the man I held. My carefulness was
unnecessary, however, as Santino used my distraction to simply walk
up behind the first guard, and shove his knife upwards into the
man’s brain through the bottom of his jaw.

We dropped our fresh kills, opened the door into
Nero’s room, and dragged them inside.

“I thought they only did rolls in the movies,”
Santino wondered, dragging his kill.

“If you’re going to do anything,” I pointed out,
“you might as well look good doing it.”

He snickered. A few seconds later, we had the bodies
in the room, and the door shut behind us. We only had one real test
left, and that was making sure the boy didn’t freak out when he saw
us. He was only a baby after all, and I knew as much about them as
I did women, which didn’t inspire much confidence. I could only
imagine Santino knew even less.

Moving further into the room, we took up positions
on either side of the small Roman style crib that rested against
the far wall. We peeked over the edge to see a gurgling and
sleeping baby boy, wrapped in a miniature version of a Roman toga.
The toga even had a little purple seam.

“That him?” Santino whispered.

“Yup,” I replied quietly. “There lies the soul of a
man with the potential to kill untold thousands of men, women and
children.”

Santino regarded him closely. “Kinda cute, ain’t
he?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

The little guy did look kind of cute, especially
with the mini toga on, but my mind refused to feel sympathetic
towards him. Shuddering at the thought of what kind of man he could
become, I bent down to pick him up, but just as I wrapped my hands
around his small body I had to back off because he started to
cry.

I looked at Santino. “I guess we probably should
have thought this through, huh?”

“Here. Let me try,” he offered, reaching into the
crib. Picking the child up, Santino held him out in front of him,
his elbows locked, keeping Nero as far away from his body as
possible. The child didn’t cry though, and both baby and Santino
looked at each other curiously. Apparently satisfied at what he was
seeing, young Nero started gurgling and even cooed at Santino.

“Aw,” I said, “I think you made a friend.”

“Yah,” Santino said with a smile, cradling the child
against his chest. “I guess I did.”

Santino’s motherly glow quickly evaporated once he
patted Nero on the back, enticing the small child to spit up all
over his toga. Santino wrinkled his face in disgust as young Nero
gurgled and giggled at his expense.

I laughed with him. “Come on, mum. We need to get
out of here.”

Santino nodded and placed Nero in a small carrying
cradle, little more than a piece of cloth wrapped and tied into a
type of sling bag. The bag was in common use in ancient Rome as a
baby carrier, and Agrippina had set it up for us before we arrived
in the city.

With the baby secured against Santino’s chest, we
made for the exit. Since Santino was stuck playing babysitter, I
took point this time, no need to place the child at any further
risk. Back in the hall, we continued past the main hallway we had
originally walked down, and counted three doors, entering the last
one on the right. Finding the storage room, just as Agrippina had
said, I located the cabinet and strained muscles to pull it
aside.

And there was the door, again, just as she said.

Maybe she was on our side after all.

Reaching for the handle I gave it a yank, but it
didn’t budge. Frowning, I tried pushing against it, again with no
effect. Frustrated, I threw my entire weight against it, but with
no more success. I leaned closer to the door and analyzed the seam.
I discovered that it had been cemented together, and no matter how
hard I tried, the door wasn’t going to budge.

I turned to face Santino. “We’re burned.”

“Figures,” he replied, pulling out his knife.

I didn’t waste any time replying. Instead, I moved
towards the hallway we’d just come through, and gave it a quick
glance. Still clear. Maybe the door was just another product of
Claudius’ growing paranoia. Quickly abandoning the storage room, I
led Santino back to the main hall. Another quick glance showed the
immediate area to be clear, but with all the flora and fauna in the
area, I couldn’t be sure. Knowing no other way out, I walked as
calmly as I could down the hall.

We were about half way down the hall when doors
started to open up all around us.

From the two rooms in front of us, a half dozen
Praetorians emerged, and took up defensive positions to block our
escape. From behind us, another door opened and only two
Praetorians came out. The first of which was unlucky enough to walk
into Santino’s knife, which he held in a reverse grip, and had
thrust behind him through the man’s neck. The second man went down
after I tore off my toga, pulled out my Sig, and put a round
through his skull. No more Praetorians came from behind us, so we
stood side by side, in defensive positions facing our remaining
attackers. It didn’t take long before I realized we had nowhere to
retreat to, so we held our ground, waiting for our foes to make the
first move.