The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (47 page)

“You’re such a tease.”

“Shut up, Jacob.” She tore the blanket covering my
body away and slipped in next to me, pressing herself up against me
gently. She kissed me again and laid her head against my shoulder
as she wrapped an arm across my body carefully. “Don’t worry. The
hero always gets the girl. You’ll just have to be patient.”

***

The nice thing about sieges was that there really
wasn’t much to do.

After I’d awoken for the second time, this time with
Helena deep in sleep beside me, her head resting on my chest
lovingly, I was still too weak to move. It left me with plenty of
time to think, and one of the things that hit me hard was the fact
that Santino and I had failed our mission. Not only had we been
tricked by Agrippina into participating in her so called
humanitarian mission, an embarrassing defeat in of itself, but we
also failed to secure the demolition along the walls, which would
have ended this mess a lot quicker.

Instead, I woke up to find myself in the middle of a
siege, a military blockade of an enemy city with the sole purpose
of starving the city into fighting or surrendering. Sieges could
last for a year, waste precious time, and never left the
disgruntled innocent bystanders of the besieged city all that happy
should there be a change in leadership. What made me feel worse was
the fact I had failed a personal request from Caligula himself. I
dreaded the day I had to get my ass out of that tent and face
him.

I didn’t have to wait long. Only a few hours after
Helena joined me for her nap, Santino still unconscious on the bed
next to me, Caligula had sought me out instead. I hadn’t heard him
enter the tent, and he had snuck up on me as quietly as Santino
ever could. Caught unaware, my first instinct was to get up, only
to find that I still couldn’t move. I felt silly with Helena
practically straddling me, but Caligula didn’t question it.

To my surprise, his expression wasn’t angry, nor did
he seem upset. He hadn’t stayed long, but he reassured me that
while he was sorry we had failed in both missions, he wasn’t upset.
He was just happy we’d be available to fight for him whenever the
siege lifted, but also pressured me for information on Claudius and
his state of mind. I did my best to relay everything I could. He
wasn’t happy to learn of his turn towards insanity, but also didn’t
seem overly surprised. If I had to guess, I would assume he and
Varus had done some more digging into the origins and meaning
behind Remus’ documents, and may have learned what Vincent and I
already knew.

I also tried to apologize to him, as well as tell
him about Agrippina’s suspected role in my capture, but he left
before I could. I wasn’t sure how to feel as I watched his
retreating back, but at least I wouldn’t have to face him later.
Suddenly feeling very tired, I fell back asleep.

Three days later, I finally gained the strength to
get up and begin my rehabilitation. Wang had given me a clean bill
of health, but also let me in on just how close I had come to
death’s door. I had been deprived of food and water for almost two
days, had lost multiple pints of blood, and had my head beaten to
the point where brain damage had only been a few more knocks on the
cranium away. I was lucky to be alive, and as I sat on the table I
had spent the past few days on, trying to kneed feeling back into
my muscles, he had pointed at Santino and practically proclaimed
his survival an act of divine intervention. A man any less willing
to survive wouldn’t have, and Wang diagnosed it was probably
Santino’s drive to annoy people that had kept him going.

With him still bed ridden, Helena and I started my
rehab exactly the way we had done when she’d recovered from her
injuries sustained in 2021. We started with stretches and light
calisthenics, then onto walking and jogging, before I was finally
able to start running again. Santino took a week to get out of bed,
but was soon on his feet and getting stronger as well.

That was two months ago.

During that time, Santino and I pushed ourselves
hard, and it wasn’t too long until we were back at our peak
physical readiness once again. Not that it mattered much. We didn’t
see any signs of the siege lifting any time soon.

Caligula’s initial barrage of artillery had ended
quickly after it had started. Its purpose was mainly to let the
citizens of Rome know he was out there, but its cover for the
rescue operation was still appreciated. As Caligula said before the
operation even began, he had no intention of razing Rome to the
ground, or destroying more property than he needed to. While the
city had burned that night, little real estate was severely
damaged, and the fires had quickly died out thanks in large part to
the rainy spring months.

So, the siege would endure, either starving the
people of Rome into surrendering, or sallying out in a counter
attack.

Rome was many things, but self-sufficient it was
not. It had grain supplies that could feed its citizens, but they
wouldn’t last forever. By the time Augustus took power seventy
years ago, Rome had just finished fighting its third civil war in
the past one hundred years, the last between Augustus himself and
Marc Antony. The population of the empire, and the city itself, was
at an all-time low. Now, however, more than a half century later,
and another forty after Augustus enacted his legislation
encouraging Romans to marry and have children, Rome was reaching a
population level that it would soon find overwhelming.

Twenty five years from now, during Nero’s reign, a
fire would engulf the city, last nine days, and reduce entire
sections of the city to rubble. Nero would later take advantage of
his newly cleared land to build his golden house on top of the
destroyed territory. During the fire, however, grain supplies were
lost, and the very real revelation that Rome’s citizens might
starve occurred to many. While Nero had actually done a good job in
rationing out the grain, and not dancing with his fiddle during the
fire as Suetonius records, had Rome been ready for such a disaster,
they may have been able to feed everyone, despite the loss of
supplies during the fire.

As fate would have it, just as during the fire of 64
A.D., one of the few things hit during the initial artillery
barrage was the city’s grain supplies. It wasn’t a major blow, but
any loss to their reserve of food brought the city that much closer
to starvation.

Vincent and I determined that Rome’s grain supplies
probably wouldn’t last the eight months Caligula’s experts
predicted. They just didn’t have all the facts, let alone
hindsight. Even so, we’d be here for a while.

To complete the siege, our legionnaires had spent
days digging trenches and ditches three hundred yards or so away
from the walls to encircle the entire city. The trench system was
meant to contain the inhabitants as well as provide defense if the
legion was attacked. Aiding our effort were two natural
phenomena.

The first lucky break was the fact that Rome hadn’t
expanded to its largest point yet. The Aurelian walls hadn’t been
built, and its defensive line was still the city’s original Servian
Wall. The second blessing was the Tiber River, which worked as a
natural barrier to the West. The legion merely took up residence in
the
Campus Martius
, which also lay outside the walls, but
between them and the Tiber. Additional troops were also stationed
on the opposite side of the river, effectively shutting down the
city in the west.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “all roads lead
to Rome”, there were many points of entry for us to contain. The
via appia, aurelia, cassia, claudia valeria, flaminia,
salaria
, and other smaller ones were all roads that accumulated
in Rome, and each needed to be blocked. Therefore, each road
received two centuries of legionnaires and a varied number of
auxilia. Each century constructed a camp, much like the larger
version they had wintered in on either side of the road. On the
road, they placed wooden beams, attached together in a cross
bracing. These barriers reminded me of the anti-landing craft
barricades the Nazis had placed along the shore of Normandy prior
to D-day. The remainder of the legion was spread out along the
trench network at set intervals in small camps, no bigger than a
couple of tennis courts.

Most of these camps were provided with artillery
pieces such as an onager. The word onager literally translated as
“ass”, a reference to how it kicked like a donkey when fired. It
was basically a catapult, and while it was highly inaccurate, it
was still able to throw heavy objects far distances. They scared
the hell out of people, but weren’t overly efficient.

Finally, scattered around the trenches were the
legion’s cavalry auxilia, who would be handy if the defenders
decided to counter attack. Their quick response time would allow
them to react to a breakout along the lines anywhere in a matter of
minutes.

Caligula’s command camp was the largest of all. It
held us, his sacred band, his two loyal Praetorian cohorts, and the
Primigenia’s
first cohort. It was located between the
via
cassia
and
aurelia
, on the west bank of
the Tiber, near where the Vatican would one day stand.

To help strengthen the defenses, Vincent had
assigned us to patrol the trenches in our swim pairs occasionally
throughout the day. The trenches, miles long, proved good exercise,
as well as a warm up for what was to come.

On the tenth day of the siege, a supply train was
intercepted trying to sneak supplies into the city. A ridiculous
undertaking considering the blockade, but nonetheless, a caravan of
some fifty wagons tried to breach our lines and move into the city.
Only two days after I had started limping my way around the camp, I
wasn’t able to participate in the take down, but I did watch it
from the ramparts.

The blockade runners were pressing their horses to
full speed as they traveled down the street. Calmly and
efficiently, a few dozen legionnaires posted themselves on the
paved road, and planted stakes. Unable to dig them into the dirt,
they positioned rocks to act as fulcrums, and planted a foot on the
blunt side to keep them angled. The Romans managed to erect a
barrier of overlapping sharp sticks, three rows deep, while they
hunkered down behind their shields.

Horses were by no means stupid animals, and unlike
in the movies where they would ride straight into their impending
doom, these horses noticed the obstacles, and quickly veered out of
the way. The turn forced them to slow just enough for more
legionnaires to board the wagons and eliminate the passengers. The
camp had gained additional supplies and horses, and the city of
Rome continued to wan.

On the thirtieth day of the siege, Helena and I were
on patrol, approaching one of the small picket stations
sporadically placed along the trench system. We arrived to good
cheer, as every legionnaire loved the sight of us. Well, at least
the sight of Helena, but I tried to imagine they liked me too.
Besides, it was always humorous to watch them scramble over one
another just to seem more important in the eyes of the only woman
they’d seen in months and had grown to adore.

Completing nearly half of our trip around the
trenches, we took a break in the small outpost. In the center were
temporary troop quarters and a small dining area, and along the
perimeter of the trench was a small rampart that ran around the
perimeter of the camp with another ditch system on the other side
for added protection. Helena and I climbed one of the walls, and
rested our rifles along the railing.

I’d lost Helena’s P90 after failing to escape the
Domus Augusti
, and after Caligula came to see me that first
day, I had feared that when she woke, she’d forget about our happy
reunion and remember that I had lost her gun. Thankfully, Claudius
had kept everything he’d confiscated from Santino and me in a room
close by. It had been breached and cleared as well, and Helena and
Wang had recovered their lost weapons. The only thing missing was
Santino’s knife. He was still lamenting its loss.

But thank God we’d found Helena’s weapon. She might
have hurt me.

She left her DSR-1 back in our tent, preferring the
lighter weapon for our long patrols, so she pulled out a small
monocular, and scouted the walls of Rome, looking for any sign or
disturbance while I sighted through my scope. I frowned when I saw
a small gate opening in the walls, and a small contingent of men
rushing out in our direction. Maybe four hundred or so in total.
Some rode horses, but most were running on foot, and none of them
wore the armor, so I assumed they were civilians.

I flicked my safety off, and Helena and I opened
fire on the oncoming men. They were close enough that I could have
picked them off the walls had I the chance, but the defenders had
learned that lesson early in the siege when Helena’s kill count
reached four tribunes and ten centurions, all from the city’s
Praetorian cohorts.

Just as we had done defending Caligula’s home,
Helena fired single and precise shots, even with her smaller gun,
while I fired in controlled bursts. The enemy had to cross around
three hundred yards of open ground before they reached the outer
ditch, and we made them pay for it. We must have shot more than a
quarter of their strength before they finally reached our outpost.
Immediately, Helena and I abandoned the ramparts to let the more
experienced legionnaires handle the initial onslaught. We lobbed a
few grenades into the intruders’ dense ranks just for good measure
before jumping off the walls and into our trenches. When the
grenades went off, twenty legionnaires cast their
pila
into
the enemy ranks, impaling only a handful here and there before the
enemy got their acts together and started scaling our wall.