To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (43 page)

That put our best swordsmen in
play on the ground and our best shooters up top in support.  The three of us opted against our rifles, replacing them with air guns and our remaining tranquilizer darts.  Most of what occurred tonight relied on theatrics, and we couldn’t overplay our hand by allowing a few overly curious inspectors discover bullet wounds.

“ETA,
one mike,” Vincent reported for the last time.  “Good luck.”

I sent back a double click.  Vincent and Madrina would now be falling back from their lookout position, making ready our escape, just in case.  We had spent considerable time hashing out this plan, and we were completely confident it would work.  We had the upper hand and the enemy was dancing to our tune.  Even so, I stretched my neck and tried to get comfortable.  No matter how easy a mission was, the nervousness
and adrenaline never left me.

I didn’t have much time to think on it as fifty eight seconds after Vincent’s transmission, a horde of malcontents burst into the courtroom.  Some seemed drunk, others alert, but they were all tense and ready for a fight.  They didn’t make any preamble by ordering Herod to come quietly.  They simply charged forward.

Herod’s guards advanced in return, ready to meet the interlopers.  As for Herod’s retinue, many fled through the small door in the back of the room, but some stayed.  They armed themselves and made ready to protect their sovereign.  Finally, near the rear of advancing assassins, came three other men: Santino, Titus and Wang. 

They had two
, very specific mission instructions.

Not to kill indiscriminately.

Ensure Herod’s survival.

They were to defend themselves if they were attacked by either side, but they had to leave
people alive for when I decided the right moment had come.

Tracking my first target carefully,
I fired.

My tranq dart found its target, about three men back in the advancing horde.  As he stumbled and fell to the ground, many more behind him tripped over his fallen body.  When the two forces met,
Herod’s guards lost little ground.  They were braced and well able to receive the oncoming blow that hit them in a haphazard fashion thanks to my intervention.  However, once the assassins regained their footing, the tides quickly turned, and Herod’s guards were systematically pushed back.

Bordeaux, Helena, and I continued to provide fire support, but only at specific targets.  We didn’t need to be too fancy.  Wang and Santino were handling themselves with little problem down there.  Both were more skilled wit
h a sword than even most Romans, Wang from his martial arts training and Santino from watching too many movies.  Titus, however, had learned the trade from his biological father as he matured, but had never faced combat.  As we got to know him, the fact quickly became evident that while, theoretically, his skills surpassed those of any of us, there was still the question of his complete greenness in battle, but both Vincent and Helena had vouched for him.  Vincent knew him better than all of us and Helena knew what it was like to be thrust into a situation with other seasoned operators, where you either had to kill or watch your new friends die.  She saw in him what she had felt all those years ago: a willingness to prove himself.

So, we only fired when we feared one of our friends were in danger.  We knew the assassins would wake up
sooner or later once the tranq darts wore off, but that was all part of the charade.  All we needed to do was to keep it to a minimum for the time being.

The battle continued, with Herod’s side continuing to lose ground, even though our friends below had inconspicuously switched sides during the confusion of the battle and were now fighting
against the assassin’s.

I decided now was a good time to do a head count.  I tallied
nine assassins, five guards, and three goofballs.  That would have to do.

“Do it,” I said
into my microphone.

There was no reply
, but there was no doubt everyone received my message.

Almost i
mmediately, Wang and Titus turned on anyone around them, creating utter chaos in the already disorderly battle.  Wang skewered a guard through the right bicep, while Titus managed to nearly decapitate one of the assassins that left the man’s head dangling.  Santino didn’t bother with either, instead focusing his attention solely on Herod.

The King of the Jews hadn’t sat idly by while his men defended him, but
hefted sword and shield as well.  It was a noble gesture, and it almost made me feel bad for what we were about to do.  Santino didn’t catch the sentiment.  He stalked around behind Herod as the king dueled with one of the last assassins, while Wang did his job by knocking out Herod’s dueling partner with the hilt of his sword, following it up by shoving Herod, just enough so that he faced Santino.

The man’s body turned
and he immediately saw Santino looming before him.  Santino face betrayed no hint of what was to come, but after performing a quick check to make sure some of the guards were watching, he plunged his sword deep into Herod’s chest.

T
he king didn’t scream, a mere wheezing sound emanating from his lungs instead as he slumped to the ground.  I aimed at one of the two remaining guards.  All the assassins had been dispatched and his attention was completely on his king.  Before I let the guilt eat away at him too much, I shot him in the thigh and he dropped into a deep sleep.  Bordeaux dispatched the other guard.

And with that, the battle ended, only ten minutes after it
had started.  I looked into the red slicked courtroom as my three friends stood within pools of blood.  The three of us in the balcony tossed some rope over the ledge and fast roped to the courtroom floor.  Everyone, save Wang and me, policed the bodies, securing any evidence of our involvement.

Wang was already kneel
ing over Herod’s body.

“Is he going to make it?”  I asked.

Wang checked Herod’s vitals.

“Santino got him in the shoulder.  No internal organs were damaged.  His arm will take a
while to heal, but he should be fine.”

“Good,” I replied.

Just prior to Santino’s death blow, Helena had shot Herod with a special dart.  Instead of containing its typical tranquilizer serum, Wang had filled it with a combination of other serums instead, including some kind of soporific, parasolutrine, I think he said, along with something called paracin trichloride, and morphine of course, along with a few others.  When I’d voiced my concerns over the amount of crap Wang was planning to dope Herod with, the small medic had simply smiled and commented that he was curious as to how it was going to turn out as well.  But in the end, it had apparently worked, and was the sole reason why Herod hadn’t yelled out in pain after Santino had stabbed him.  Morphine works quickly and he probably hadn’t felt a thing, and the other drugs made for a very convincing death scene after Herod had collapsed.

Many people were going to wake up in a few hours, especially the two guards who saw Herod go down.  When they find his body gone, things in Caesarea should get much more interesting.

I noticed Santino walk over and hold out his hand.  I looked at it and rolled my eyes.  Hammering a fist against my other hand three times, I displayed rock while Santino threw out paper.  He laughed and clapped me on the back while I moved around Herod’s body and placed my hands under his armpits, the much heavier end.  On the count of three, we heaved him off the ground and left the building like ghosts in the night.

Santino caught my eyes and lifted his eyebrows.

“So,” he started, “now, n…”

“Don’t even fucking start!
”

Part Three

IX

Besieged

Mission
Entry #9

Jacob Hunter

Caesarea, Judea - October, 42 A.D.

Americans have an interesting tradition of meddling in other countries’ affairs.  Especially when it came to Communism and the Middle East.  Oh, boy, does the American government love knocking off democratically elected, or not so democratically elected, heads of state, just to make sure the new ruler was more to their… liking. 

Not that I had a problem with this tradition.  It wasn’t a novel practice in world civilization, but it obviously wasn’t an overly popular one… at least depending on who you ask.

I point this out, because I did the ol’ US of A proud a few months back by knocking off a ruling sovereign of my own.  Pretty impressive, no?

Well, I thought it was.

Sadly Herod didn’t necessarily think so.

Yeah, so I didn’t kill him.
I haven’t gone completely over to the dark side yet.  We only faked his death to incite the riot we needed to bring Agrippina here or at least slow her down in Germany.  Remember what I said about pissing off the young Jews of the area to the point where their shit finally hits the proverbial fan?  Well, Sociologists, you’ll be happy to know that it worked.  This place went crazy within a week of Herod’s “death.”

As for Herod… well… let’s just say he was slightly miffed.  He lost quite a few good men in the botched assassination attem
pt and was furious we lied to him concerning our intentions for him and the city.

Not to mention the
fact that we had to stab him.

He had
not
been cool with that.

He ridiculed us, belittled us, yelled at us, and generally tried to make us feel bad for what we did. 
Especially me.  He told us we should be ashamed of our status as
Vani
, and that if he’d known who we truly were, he would have had us executed immediately, or even worse, turned over to Agrippina.

W
e gave him a few days to cool down in isolation with us where we tried to explain what we were trying to accomplish… without all the time travel stuff, of course.  In the original timeline, Herod never lived to see the rebellion in 66 A.D., but he’d ruled under a compassionate and tolerant leader in the original Claudius.  In this new timeline, however, his reign hadn’t been nearly so peachy, and he knew it had been only a matter of time.  When he learned how quickly events sped up after his death – how his citizens rallied against Roman rule – his tone steadily shifted to that of acceptance, and soon, he was ready to admit that, perhaps, we’d done the right thing… except for the whole stabbing him thing of course.

Local Zealots preach
ed fanatically about how Rome had come in and ordered the assassination of their beloved king, and how the next step was the complete extermination of the Jewish people.  The local procurator, Cuspius Fadus, tried to quell the fires, only to have his home stormed by rioters where he was summarily beaten and executed.

Whoops.

That had been enough for Rome.  A few weeks later, the local legion garrison had laid siege to the once great city of Caesarea and went about destroying both it and its citizens.  Once the Romans showed up, King Herod revealed himself to his people, offering that he’d escaped capture and that his death had all been a plot to further subjugate the people.  He spoke of how proud and touched he was by his fellow Jewish response, and urged them to stand up against the Romans.  Thus began the local resistance against Rome, led by Herod.  We hadn’t seen him since, mostly keeping to ourselves, and the only additional information we had was that the rebellion had spread well outside of Caesarea and into the surrounding province… but we haven’t received any further intelligence in a while.

Hence
why Helena and I were currently sitting atop one of the few surviving towers the city still had, playing our role as sniper support to the besieged citizens:

To make sure the rebellion lasted as long as possible, at least in this city.

Every night we’d come up here, or one of the other remaining high points, and dissuade at least two dozen legionnaires from invading the camp.  That was generally enough to stall any potential large scale invasions for the immediate future.

W
e were only facing one problem.

We
’re finally running out of ammo.

Our shortage is forcing us to pick our targets
more selectively to conserve what we had left, and we still didn’t know if Agrippina was going to show up or not, but I was still confident she will.

The woman loves getting he
r hands dirty with unruly men.

It was kinda her calling card.

Anyway, Helena’s just finished setting up shop for the night, so I might as well end this.  There isn’t much more to say.  I do want to officially apologize to Herod – and to history – for what I did.  He may have grudgingly accepted what we did to him, but I still get the feeling he doesn’t like me, so I want it on record that I’m sorry.  Desperate situations call for desperate solutions, and we need to put things right and get home…

We’re willing to do anything at this point.