Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (28 page)

For what purpose, I hadn’t a clue, but a voice whispering in the back of my mind told me I’d soon discover the truth.

***

Our journey continued with Boudicca and me taking turns at the lever that propelled the handcart.  Another hour had passed and more miles had been traversed, but while the volcano continued to grow in size, it seemed to grow no closer.  It was like being stuck in traffic, speeding along though we may have been, with our destination inching toward us but with no hope that we’d ever reach it.

I again glanced at the pumping lever that seemed to crash downward with enough force to punch a hole in the ground, and again the idea of scooting toward it grew appealing.  Even a quick and premature death seemed more enticing than the idea of being stuck on this handcar for all eternity with a companion as silent as Boudicca was.  Like a machine, she pumped her arms up and down, over and over, and she never seemed to tire, unlike me, who had spent less and less time at the lever each time I’d taken my turn.  Boudicca had been shouldering far more of the work load, her shifts lasting closer to forty five minutes, and my own a mere twenty.  I hadn’t come to truly realize how frail and weak I’d become in recent months until today.  But Boudicca didn’t complain, and I realized just how fortunate I was to have her with me.

I wouldn’t have had a chance without her.

***

Our railroad ran straight and true, avoiding the numerous obstacles that could have been a real problem.  Rocky and steep terrain, lava pools, chasms with no bottoms that I could see, and landslides were aplenty, yet none barred our way.  Our path had been carved, bridged, or covered in a way that allowed us safe passage through this nightmare.  It was a clear indication, if the rail wasn’t enough already, that there was an intelligent presence somewhere on this world, and it didn’t take a genius to surmise that we were probably heading straight for it.

I’d kept my binoculars trained on the horizon whenever the rail took us to an elevation with clear sightlines, searching for an end to this rollercoaster-of-doom-through-boredom.  But as of yet, nothing had popped out at me, as something surely would since I’d grown pretty good at looking through magnifying scopes over the years.  .

I lowered my binoculars as I sat on the handcart, dropped them into my lap, and sighed.  I was surprised at how frustrated and distracted I felt.  Like curiosity and excitement, such emotions hadn’t been common recently, nor had I had much of a mind for flowery speech or whimsical internal monologues I’d once been so popular for – popular being a relevant term, of course.  Such malarkey had been replaced by a laser-focused mind and cold, steely determination that had left me feeling angry and spiteful for most of my recent memory. 

Which also seemed less prevalent.

Something had changed since stepping foot into this reality, and while I still felt the blue orb’s presence at my feet, its dreadful hate filling me even now, something was… different.

Better.

I looked over my shoulder to peer at Boudicca, noticing her stoic form still diligently pumping at the lever as though she’d only been at it for a minute.  Her face was impassive and unreadable, and I had no understanding of her thoughts or feelings, just as I’d never been able to before.  She was an enigma and I’d been trying to understand her dogged loyalty to me since the day I’d met her.

I waved my hand to catch her attention.  She looked down at me.

“See anything yet?”  I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Helpful as always…” I mumbled, turning away.  I hadn’t expected her to see anything but I’d been hopeful, hopeful that my inability to discern anything of importance had been a character flaw in my abilities, not reality.

I wasn't sure which I’d prefer right now.

***

I was pumping at the lever now, going about the task with fatigue setting in the moment I’d stepped up to the device.  Only fifteen minutes had passed, and my arms already burned with a searing pain I hadn’t felt since the first time I’d ever visited a gym back in college.  Boudicca was asleep upon the platform, curled protectively around the central pole that held the pumping lever.

I glanced down at her youthful and striking face, one that had also spent too much time in the sun and freezing cold.  It was still vibrant and shockingly sharp and beautiful for such a warrior, but just as visible was the world-weariness that told of a person who carried too much responsibility and let that responsibility weigh on them.  Such must have been the fate of any queen or princess whose people were under attack from invaders, losing homes and ground that had belonged to them for as long as their history could remember.

I found my mind drifting just then as I sympathized with Boudicca, understanding full-well what it meant to have the fate of the universe resting on one’s shoulders.  The handcart slowed as my mind wandered in a way it hadn’t done in ages, sympathy for the plight of innocents and rage at the barbarity of the Roman people who had claimed higher station flowing into my mind.  I’d once idolized Roman society, thinking it a thousand, million steps above my own corrupt, stagnant, and de-evolving society; the same one I’d been plucked from once upon a time.  My understanding of Rome, its politics, society, and military acumen, had all been academic and analytic, separated by thousands of years of primary and then secondary sources.  It had been easy to forget how personal their invasions and wars and dominance over foreign territories actually were to those who lived through it. 

On paper, it didn’t seem nearly as horrendous.

But nothing had changed really since Rome’s fall, and whether I was back home or here in the heart of it, I couldn't do anything about it.  At least I couldn’t right now, but with the power of the orbs, I think I could.

But who I was to wield such power?

I would be no better than the rest of history’s power-wielding maniacs, the ones who murdered entire populations on nothing more than a whim.  I was already a part of the club anyway, the man responsible for the destruction of an entire village of Druids.  I’d had them murdered for no other reason than…

“Why have we slowed?”

I shook my head to dislodge my errant thoughts, finding that they evaporated quite easily and were already disappearing from memory.  That, at least, felt familiar.  I raised my binoculars to cover my distractedness and glassed the horizon, lucky that we had clear sightlines so that performing such an action wouldn’t seem suspicious.

“Just wanted to do a quick scan,” I reported.  Boudicca lifted herself from the platform and nodded.  Despite the brevity of her nap, she didn’t seem groggy in the slightest.  I glanced down at her.  “Is that all right?”

“Of course,” she answered, rising to her feet.  “Do you see anything?”

“Same old same old,” I said, tracking from left to right.  “Not much to see out here.  Just rocks, lava, the volcano, black holes, more rocks, black hol…”

I trailed off, something peculiar catching my attention.

Boudicca noticed right away.  “What do you see?”

“I see…” I peered more closely, not believing my own eyes.  “What the hell do I see?”

“What, Jacob?”

“It’s… a building.  A complex of buildings.  Just at the base of the volcano.  We’re still a long way out, but I can see them.  Barely.”

“A… complex?”  Boudicca whispered, perhaps not understanding the Latin equivalent.  “Do you refer to a village or small town perhaps?”

“Sure,” I replied, unable to look away, “but I don't think it’s like any village you’ve ever seen before.  Come on, let’s get a closer look."

***

We spent the next thirty minutes closing the gap between our previous position and the volcano, which was now all I could see in any direction save behind me.  My initial disbelief at its scale had passed long ago, and it now appeared as common and pedestrian as a fire hydrant on the side of the road, but my interest had now shifted to the complex of buildings at its sprawling base.

Once we’d traveled about as far I was willing to go, Boudicca and I hopped off the handcart, leaving it behind.  Logic and common sense indicated that the rail would have taken us directly to the complex, but I wasn’t about to simply waltz in there without reconnoitering the area first.

We’d stopped the handcart in a low valley, just before it opened up, leveled off, and revealed our presence.  A low berm currently separated us from the view I needed to perform my recon, so I silently gestured for Boudicca to follow me, and moved out.  I ran quickly, but crouched over, not an easy task with all the equipment I was carrying and with the muscles in my upper body burning from our trip on the handcart.  But my legs still worked fairly well, and I ran up the low hill, dropping to a prone position just before I reached the summit.  Boudicca fell beside me and we crawled to the top carefully.

I dropped my sniper rifle into a firing position the second I had a clear line of sight, and situated myself behind my rifle like I’d done a million times before.  I shrugged off my pack and passed Boudicca my binoculars.  She accepted them and placed them against her eyes while I buried my right eye in my scope, and got my first good look at the complex before us.

And immediately determined this wasn't going to be easy.

The complex consisted of maybe fifty buildings sprawled around one another in a patchwork design that spanned the length of a football field and extended up the volcano in layers, perhaps ten high.  There was no rhyme or reason to the complex's construction, built as though the designer had
intended
for it to appear as convoluted and confusing as possible.

Perhaps that had, in fact, been his intention.

The buildings, ranging in size from storage sheds to ten floor apartment buildings, were constructed with primitive materials, perhaps adobe or even some kind of clay.  Each structure was connected by a series of external catwalks or covered walkways, making the entire complex appear as though it was dreamed from the mind of a demented kindergartener hell bent on creating the galaxy’s most confusing jungle gym.

There were doors and ramps scattered along its base and clear entry points that I took careful note of.  There were also guard towers, although they weren’t equipped with concertina wire and spotlights like one would see in a World War II movie.  In place of such elaborate setups, these guard towers were simple platforms situated atop narrow cylindrical towers and were accessible only by rope dangling from their ledges.

And like any good complex straight from a classic James Bond film, there were guards and henchmen aplenty manning the entire complex.

Except… I only assumed they were human. 

They were human in shape.  They stood like humans.  And they had human faces, although one looked no different than the last, their features practically indistinguishable from one another, just a bunch of unremarkable and bland expressions.  But they didn’t move much like humans.  In fact, they didn’t move very much at all.  They were just… standing there.  No patrols, no guard rotations.  They were barely even shuffling their feet.  Heads bobbed subtly to remind me that they weren’t statues, their chests seemed to rise and fall as though breathing, and their eyes shifted a bit in their sockets.  It was the most lackadaisical approach to guard duty I’d ever seen before.

Clay statues, wax mannequins, clones, I didn't know what these interchangeable individuals were exactly.  They had no visual personality and little distinguishing elements between them – except that they were all targets.  I shifted a little behind my scope and devised a battle plan.

I turned to Boudicca.  “Thoughts?”

“They appear quite odd,” she answered, her eyes still peering through my binoculars.  She’d long ago stopped asking questions about our technology and had simply accepted their functions, as any good soldier would.

“I meant in terms of a tactical approach,” I clarified.

She didn’t shrug or shift in her position, doing nothing to jeopardize the stalwart warrior façade she’d cultivated so well – probably because it wasn’t a facade at all, but who she truly was.  Instead, she looked more closely through her binoculars and took a few seconds before responding.

“Stealth is how you make war, Cernuous, not I.  We are but two individuals, and you cannot possibly hope to kill all of them with your weapon from here before one of them calls an alarm.”

“No, probably not,” I agreed, continuing my own analysis of the complex.

“We should divide,” she said.  “I will fight the enemy alone while you guard me with your weapon.  When all are dead, you can join me and we will enter the structure together.”

I pulled away from my scope and looked at her.  “There's a lot of them down there…”

She returned my look, her hard but angular face as determined as ever.  “I am prepared to do what I must for you.  That was the task handed to me by the god whose name you carry.”

“Boudicca…” I started remorsefully, suddenly very regretful that she’d been roped into all of this.  “I told you before it wasn’t a god you communed with, just a guy too powerful and manipulative for his own good and you already did what he told you to do. I already met him.  For all the good that did me…”