To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (27 page)

In one swift move, he fell off his chair, and rolled under the table, flipping it on its side to rest
it in front of him.  The next thing I saw was his HK416 pointed in our direction, which he kept duct taped to the bottom of the table for this very reason.  Helena had her P90 hidden under Santino’s bed, and I kept
Penelope
over the door inside the apartment’s sole bedroom.

“Get down,” Santino yelled from his defensible position.

“Stand down,” I ordered, but all the same, stepped out of his line of fire.  “It’s Gaius and Marcus.”

“Gaius and Marcus?”  He asked no one in particular.  The two men entered the room, shutting th
e door behind them in silence.

Our apartment was small and rectangular.  The wooden table sat just across the small open space from the door, with a fair sized bed to the right of the entrance.  The only other furniture in the room was a single wardrobe between the bed and the door.  To the left of the entrance was a small room with another bed.

I hauled Helena over to Santino’s bed, sat her down and began the process of removing her blood soaked bandages.

“I recall telling you a long time ago that you weren’t allowed to get hurt anymore,” I told her, pulling out an iodine pad to clean her wounds.

“Right,” she answered.  “You said only you were allowed to get hurt.”

“You’re breaking the rules,” I quipped, holding her foot still as she winced at the cold sting.  “Again.”

“Jacob, if I only let you get hurt, you’d be dead a thousand times over by now.  Probably from your own damn clumsiness.”

“Good point,” I conceded, spraying some antiseptic on her wounds and wrapping a gauze bandage around it. 
I finished her left foot first before starting work on her right.  Meanwhile, Gaius helped Santino turn the heavy wooden table back on its legs.  Santino gave him a proper handshake, grasping his forearms just below the elbow, while giving Marcus a friendly bear hug, lifting the smaller Roman off his feet.  Marcus had saved Santino’s life the day Caligula had been poisoned, and they’d bonded immediately.

I finished with Helena’s second foot as Santino poured steaming cups of tea for each of us.

“I’d stay off your feet for at least a day,” I recommended to Helena, giving them one last look over.

“A whole day?”  She asked, feigning disappointment.  “What ever will I do for a whole day with nothing to do?  In bed?”

“Don’t get any ideas,” I joked with a sly smile, before turning to Santino.  “Hey, Santino, toss me Wang’s medical kit.”

He nodded and went to retrieve the enormous bag Wang had put together years ago.  We had more medical supplies than we knew what to do with, but those were stored away.  Wang’s bag, however, had everything we could ever need at moment’s notice, and everything was organized
so that I could find whatever was needed by touch alone.

I pulled out two giant rolls of gauze, dropped the bag to the floor and handed them to Helena.  I took my shirt off and noticed a large bruise starting to swell exactly where my breathing hurt.

“I think I cracked a rib,” I told her.  “Wrap me up good and tight.”

She gave me a very
annoyed look.  I hadn’t mentioned my injury earlier and she must have been getting very tired of patching me up these days.  She reluctantly rested the end of the gauze against my chest and started to wrap.

“Next time you want to talk about me getting injured, you’d better think again,” she said matter of factly.

“I just wanted to…”

My response was cut
short when she pulled the gauze tight around my chest.  This time it felt like Santino had shoved his scimitar through my rib cage.

“Never mind,” I wheezed.  “I’ll just shut up now.”

Helena nodded curtly, offering me a
humph
.

Ignoring the i
ncreasing pressure and pain Helena was inflicting upon my chest, I tried to ease myself into a comfortable sitting position.  Santino pulled his chair near the bed while she worked on me, and Gaius and Marcus joined us as well.  We all just stared at each other, everyone wondering the same thing.

“So what
the hell are you guys doing here?”  Santino asked, never one for awkward silences and always speaking what was on everyone else’s mind.

Both members of Agrippina’s Sacred Band squirmed in their chairs, before Gaius, the slightly older of the two, stood and paced around the room.  Only a year or so younger th
an me, his face was hard, like any Roman soldier’s and seemed far older than even my own, which had seemed to age a decade in the past few years.

His chiseled features, small nose, inquisitive eyes, dark hair and perpetual five o’clock shadow gave him a look that belonged on the cover of a Harlequin romance novel, even if he was only five and a half feet tall.  Like Marcus, he was short by m
odern standards, but his height was ideal for his kind of work.  Marcus had a similar complexion, but his face was round and more akin to cheery expressions.

Gaius was still pacing, so I gave him some prompting.

“Why don’t you start with…” but I winced again when Helena adjusted her wrapping to go around my right shoulder.

“Sorry,” she apologized.

I gave her a doubtful look before turning back to Gaius.  “Why don’t you start with why you’re dressed like that and why you and your buddies seem so… not Roman.”

“Well, Hunter,” he said nonchalantly, flipping a hand over his shoulder, “you have
you
to thank for that.”

“Me?”  I asked.

“All of you,” he answered, never one for nonsense.  “Agrippina had some interesting ideas for her new Sacred Band after you fled Rome.  Ideas she learned from you.  She had these black suits fashioned after your own combat clothing, although obviously not as advanced, and ordered us to develop a new fighting method that made us more spies and assassins than soldiers.  We even work in pairs, just like you do, as well as in a larger group of eight people.  An
octetus
.”

I assumed an
octetus
was the term for their new squad, taken from the Roman term
octet
– eight legionnaires who shared a tent in a legion camp.

“We may not have your rifles or gear,” he finished, “but we have groomed ourselves into a formidable group.”

“So,” Santino mumbled, pinching the sides of his forehead, “Agrippina has some grand idea for better bodyguards and makes you figure it out for yourself on how to do it?”

I raised a hand in the air.  “What part of that was confusing?”

Santino shrugged.  “Just inefficient is all.  And lazy on her part.”

“Basically, you are correct,” Gaius clarified.  “She gave us very loose orders to develop something more akin to your method of waging war.  Subterfuge, infiltration, stealth… assassination.  We were to become something she could use more indirectly than a legion.  We borrowed heavily from what you taught us during our days in the
Primigenia’s
camp, but also hired out experts from Persia, Egypt, Germany, India, and as far as the Orient to teach us whatever techniques they knew.”

“Very thorough,” I complimented.

“What about you two?”  Helena asked. “Why is it that of every member of the Sacred Band, you two are a part of this new group of thugs?”  She paused to tie off my wrap as tightly as possible.  “There, Jacob.  I also recommend that you stay off your feet for a day or so,” she finished as she slid off the bed to sit next to me, her shoulder touching mine.

Gaius
and Marcus looked at each other before Marcus spoke up from his chair.

“We are not embarrassed to admit that we are… well… in awe of you.  From the day you defended Caligula with your life, owing him nothing, we both knew you were something special.  Our only regret is that we know we’ll never be as good as you
are.”

“You two handle yourselves just fine on your own,” Santino offered.  “You’re handier with a blade than I am, and that’s saying something.”

“True,” Gaius answered, now leaning on the back of his chair, “but you have abilities we don’t even understand.  That is why when Agrippina called for volunteers for her new unit, we left our command positions and spent the next few years after you left training.  Our entire force was ready only a year ago.”

“So if you’re not Praetorians, then who are you?”  I asked.

“We have no name,” Gaius said with a slight shake of his head.

“Right,” Marcus picked up, right where his friend left off.  “We are still technically members of the Sacred Band, and will serve alongside the Empress should we need to go to war, but unofficially we are on special assignment.  We have no new title,
and while we no longer carry the rank of
primus prior
, we are still Praetorians.”

“Interesting,” I said.

It really was.  Here was another deviation from the timeline.  Rome had always employed assassins, thieves, and spies, but never had there been an official group of well-trained ones, specifically not on the payroll of the empire.  As far as I knew, they’d never had anything akin to something like the CIA or the Hashishin employed by the Ottomans.  Not only that, but they were using fighting techniques we had taught them, and being the crafty Romans they were, had built upon them, probably creating something pretty impressive.  A head of state with these men at their disposal, especially since they were so devoutly loyal, as the Sacred Band most surly was, would have quite an asset at her disposal.

No one said anything for some time.

“I think the real question,” Helena said slowly, “is what are you doing in Byzantium, if you’re not trying to kill us?”

That
was
a great question.  I shifted my look from her to the Romans, waiting for their response.  Both men glanced at one another once again, looking very worried.  Gaius sighed, moved around his chair, and retook his seat.

“We’re looking for the orb,” he said.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Santino said, punching out open hands with each “whoa”, “you mean the blue one?  The one that got us here?”

“You mean as opposed to the red one?”  Helena
joked, inciting Santino to smirk at her.

“The one that
there are actually two of,” I reminded.

“
That is correct,” Gaius continued.  “We seek the orb stolen on the battlefield just after Rome was retaken in Caligula’s name.  No one is sure where it is, but one of our tasks is to find it and retrieve it for the Empress.  She has given us substantial free reign to track it down and obtain it, however we see fit.”

“You mean steal it back?”  Helena scoffed.

“That was not to be our first approach, no,” Marcus answered.  “We hope to purchase it legally.”

“That is correct
,” Gaius said.  “We have a lead here in Byzantium, and the two of us along with the rest of our
octetus
have been asking around the city for any further information.”

“So we ask again,” I said, insistently.  “Why were you chasing us?”

“We were not lying when we said that we didn’t know it was you until you fired on us,” Gaius assured.  “We work in eight person squads and there are three
octeti
here.  The way we work is with one pair from each squad blending in with a crowd, while the other six shadow them on rooftop in this clothing.  These are permanent postings.  Our two crowd operatives were chosen for that roll because they are well versed in numerous languages, while we are not.  Additionally, to keep our chain of command succinct and efficient, those two are in command of the
octetus
, and are privy to more information.  They must have either been given secondary orders by the Empress to capture you, or they recognized you from your Wanted posters scattered around the empire.  When we saw them chasing you, all we saw was a man and a scantily clad woman, and followed as best we could.”

Everyone looked at Helena and smiled.  She blushed, and pulled the edges of her robe near her breasts tighter together, not that she was showing much
before anyway.  She looked around awkwardly before settling on the floor.  Santino reached out and nudged her knee playfully, but she ignored him.

“Please understand,” Gaius said, rising to his feet again.  “We do not have much time.  We need to get back
or our unit will become suspicious.”

I stood as well.

“Gaius, listen to me.  I don’t know what Agrippina has told you about the orb, but it’s dangerous.  It’s the reason we’re here in the first place.  You know this.  You were there the night we arrived.  We…”  I checked myself before continuing, looking at my friends first, remembering that whatever we decided tonight would affect them both as well.  Maybe Helena was right and I was learning.

I turned to Santino first, whose
expression was blank, no emotion either serious or juvenile evident, but when I looked at Helena, all I saw was how tired she was.  Not from the day’s exertions, but from years spent on the run, with no hope.  Her face had to be a mirror of my own.