Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (38 page)

I expected Remus to once again haul me to my feet to exact further torture on me, but the hand was gentle, almost cautious as it touched me.  I looked up, expecting to see Agrippina or maybe even Boudicca, but when I made eye contact with the hand’s owner, I was again left wondering if I wasn’t, in fact, in some kind of dream.

“Merlin?”  I asked, peering deeper into the old wizard’s eyes that, while physically resembling those I remembered, seemed different.  Gone was the slight glint of constant amusement or the twinkle of mischievousness, nor was his mouth turned up in his usual small smile that often concealed the meaning behind his words, hiding them in half-truths, riddles, and questions without answers.

But worst of all, I didn’t see recognition there.  He looked at me like I was a total stranger, and I realized this man wasn’t Merlin at all.  He was only Faustulus, a man who had existed seven hundred years before I’d ever met his future self, the one who’d taken on the mantle of Merlin. 

The man shook his head at my question and placed a hand on his chest.

“Faustulus,” he said, but it barely sounded like the word I identified as
faustulus
, his accent so thick and his pronunciation so odd that I barely understood him.

I was still processing his name when he reached his hands under my arms and lifted me to my feet with a strength that belied his wizened visage.  Finding my footing, I looked at him and nodded my thanks, but further interaction with Faustulus was cut short by the sight of Remus arguing with another man, another man who could have easily been his clone.  They were nearly exact duplicates, except for the fact that Remus appeared slightly older, although not so much that it was immediately obvious.

There was only one person he could be.

Romulus.

Despite it all, I was still amazed, almost awestruck, but I’d experienced too much for such a sight to leave me a babbling, mouth-breathing teenager at the sight of him.

Remus held his brother by the collar of his tunic, speaking intently, almost yelling, about something I couldn’t understand but had a few assumptions about regardless.  A few words popped out at me, things like: treachery, ambush, my brother, and few other choice words.  It was then that I realized they had to have been speaking Etruscan or some derivation of the dead language or at least something similar…
or
it was some other completely foreign and long forgotten language I’d never heard of before.

By now I was growing aware of another scuffle occurring around me, and I realized that we were under attack, probably by the troops under Romulus’ command, the shepherd turned soldiers that had helped him recover his grandfather’s throne.  I absorbed their scuffle in a glance, and immediately surmised the Praetorians would have no problems holding them at bay.  They were a far superior fighting force; better armored, equipped, trained, and disciplined.  The one hundred or so Praetorians here could hold out against a force twenty times larger for a week if need be.

I looked away, searching for Agrippina and Boudicca, finding them a few steps away, the latter still under guard.  They seemed to be growing more and more irrelevant in all this, so I ignored them and turned to Faustulus, trying to plead for help using my facial expressions alone.

“Do something!”  I told him.  “Fix this.  They’re your responsibility!”  But he didn’t seem to understand me at all.  I growled and looked away. “For crying out loud, you’ve always been useless.”

He ignored me and turned to face Romulus and Remus, a concerned look on his face.  He immediately stepped toward them, leaving me alone with nothing but my thoughts.

What could he do?  I wanted to think he had some tricks up his sleeves, some kind of stun gun or mesmerizing gizmo that could incapacitate the twins, or at least just Remus.  Maybe he had some kind of portable portal thing he could use to send them to Time-Out Land, making them stand in a cosmic corner for a few hours to cool off.  Considering what he’d been capable of doing to me in his little cottage, a thing so far beyond my understanding of reality, he must have been able to put all this right.

But he didn’t do anything.  He simply approached Remus with his hands held out in front of him, his tone benevolent and understanding, like an actual father trying to comfort his toddler after he’d done something that had really worked himself up.  I watched, hoping beyond hope that he was a better father than a sage-old mentor, but then Remus lashed out and struck Faustulus across the check, sending the old man flying much as I had a number of times in the past half hour.

He landed roughly, hitting the ground with a thud, very near where the orbs had ended up after I had dropped them.  To my surprise, Faustulus rose to his feet almost immediately, apparently unfazed by his impact, and continued to plead with Remus in their language that sounded more and more like gibberish than anything approaching a real language.  But Remus wasn’t having any of it, and Romulus was incapable of interfering, a dozen Praetorians now subduing him with
pila
pointed at his body.  Remus let out a lengthy speech, his tone furious, his mannerisms wild, and his eyes crazed, and I hadn’t a clue what would happen next. 

He was really pissed, and I supposed I didn’t blame him.  Being locked away in a cage to contain all cages for centuries couldn’t have been particularly fun.  Romulus and Faustulus probably had no idea what he was talking about, or, at least, couldn’t empathize with him since they’d only just sent the other Remus away mere seconds ago.

And Romulus, against what I assumed was his character, look terrified.

Finally, coming to the end of his speech, Remus pointed at the orbs and seemed to order Faustulus to retrieve them, who hesitated, his face awash in compassion and confusion, in apparent denial that Remus was involved in anything so nefarious.  But when Remus took a threatening step forward, Faustulus waved his hands like a madman, pleading for him to stop before he shuffled over to where the orbs lay.  He didn’t bother paying me any more attention, but then why should he?  He didn’t know me anymore than I knew Romulus.

His walk to the orbs was short, and he quickly leaned down so that he could pick them up.  Without hesitation, he wrapped his hands around them and started to rise, but then he stopped, hesitating completely, his body rigid and bent over with a straight back.  The hesitation lasted a full two seconds, but only I seemed to notice.  Without further prompting, Faustulus straightened, wheeled around, and took two steps toward the twins, but on this third step, his head turned so that he could face me.

And then he winked at me.

I blinked in surprise.

Had he just been playing along all this time?!  Had he known exactly who I was long before I even arrived here, or had inutility known as soon I had?  What the hell had happened that had enticed him to wink at me?

I hadn’t a clue, but I didn’t care either.  This was it, the moment I’d been waiting for, the sign I’d needed to know that Merlin/Faustulus had a plan and would rectify this whole thing.  All I needed to do was wait a little longer and hope his signal was loud and clear.

Faustulus returned to Remus with my orbs, but it was then that I realized that Remus already had a pair in his hands.  They must have been the twins’ original orbs, the ones they’d used during their scuffle in time and space, the same ones I’d found seven hundred years from this point in time.

How confusing.

Instead of handing the orbs to Remus, as I expected, Faustulus held onto them, bowing before Remus in submission as he rejoined the twins.  The three conversed again in hushed tones, not that I could understand them anyway, so I looked around for Boudicca.  When I found her, I met eyes that were already bouncing around in my direction, waiting.  We looked at each other almost immediately, and when we did, I gave her the slightest of nods, hoping she understood to be ready for my signal to act.  She nodded back, ever so slightly, and I assumed she understood.

I turned back around, just in time to see Remus walking in my direction, his little powwow with his family unit over.  He walked steadily, undaunted by the raging battle around us, his long strides bringing him to me in just a few seconds.  He stopped and looked down at me, his expression seething with hate and anger, and then he spoke.

“Your part in this is at an end, Jacob Hunter,” he said, his voice betraying nothing.  “I would thank you for bringing me here, but it is not as though you had a choice in the matter.”

“So now what?”  I asked.  “Throw Romulus and Faustulus in the prison meant for you and build… Remustown instead of Rome?  Sorry, but
Rome
is much catchier.”

Remus smiled, a toothy grin filled with menace and just a little bit of crazy.  “Why build an empire when one is already waiting for me?  As you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I haven’t the patience to wait longer than even that.  And now, Jacob Hunter; time traveler, dimension hopper, soldier, scholar, and imbecile, a man guilty of nothing more than being so unfortunately unlucky, destined for nothing and chosen by no one… your reward…”

In that second, behind that insane grin and wild eyes, I saw the desire to kill.  I saw my own death in there, lurking as though it had been destined for me ever since the beginning.  And why not?  I wasn’t needed anymore for this story to reach its happy conclusion. 

My sister was still out there.

I closed my eyes and waited, but nothing happened, so I peeked.  Remus hadn’t moved.

“You are so morbid, Jacob,” Remus said.  “I will not kill you.  Even you do not deserve such a fate.  However… you are a threat, a potentiality for disaster, and I cannot have you meddling in my affairs.  Therefore, I will leave you here.”

I glanced left, then right, taking in the conflict around us.  “Here?  They’ll kill me!”

That’s when I threw out a hand and gripped him by the arm.  It was among the worst mistakes I’d ever made, and too many of them had already been quite legendary.  He shrugged out of my grasp with ease and shot out a hand to grab me by the neck.  He lifted me off my feet, and I felt pressure build in my head and around my collar, wondering how much more I could take before my head popped free from my body – probably well after I lost consciousness, which I could already feel happening as my vision blurred and narrowed.

But before I could waste another second struggling for air, Remus dropped me to the ground, and a quick look up told me why.  Boudicca was on the move, apparently assuming Remus’ attack as the signal I’d thought Faustulus would send me – who stood miles and miles away, doing nothing.  She moved with such strength and fluidity that it seemed silly that I had once worried about safety, especially when Agrippina had wrapped her up and placed a knife to her throat.  It helped that her guards hadn’t expected her to act, and they paid for their negligence when she threw one of them over her shoulder, somehow managing to twist at the waist so that the man flew into his comrade.

A sword was in her hand, pilfered from someone nearby, and she was already moving toward Remus.  She was silent as she attacked, poised and prepared, probably having spent the entire time we were here planning her assault.  She was a warrior, much as the history books had hinted, but of a degree that rivaled many of the best who’d garnered far more recognition by historians.  She was so fast, closing the gap between us in only a few quick strides, sword cocked to the side, already thrusting forward.

But Remus was faster.  Far faster.  She’d practically already been on top of him in the moment he’d dropped me, her sword inches from his ribcage the second he’d reacted.

His hand shot out in a low blocking motion, and batted the sword aside with his forearm.  It created a bit of a gash there, causing a thin stream of blood to trickle, but he barely even seemed to notice as his other hand went straight for her neck, much as he had grasped me mere moments ago.

Boudicca tried to thrust the sword again, but she was off balance, her center of gravity shifted after Remus had lifted her off the ground, and the sword flailed wildly until he gripped it by the blade and yanked it free.  She struggled against him, trying to rip his hand away from her neck with fingers clawing uselessly, her legs kicking furiously, trying to find purchase against his abdomen or groin, most swinging wildly without effect.

She was pacified, and everyone knew it except her, most of all Remus who looked down at me, his face very angry.  “Let this be a lesson.”

That was all he said, nothing more, nothing less, before he cranked his hand to the left, the tendons in his forearm flexing, snapping Boudicca’s neck with an audible crack.  Her head jerked to the side and then listed uselessly, dangling under its own weight, and she was probably already dead.

Remus tossed her at my feet like a ragdoll, her head landing at an obscene angle relative to the rest of her once strong body, her eyes managing to roll in a way that directed them right at me.  I stared at them and watched as the life essence that was once Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, drained from her.  I watched as the light faded from her eyes, the spark that had made her so unique fading completely, turning her body into just another nameless victim in a never ending conflict that had already spanned millennia and will do so for millennia more.  I reached out a hand from my seated position and placed it on her hair, amazed at how soft it felt.  But despite what had been a sudden and senseless death of a woman I’d thought a friend, and had respected more than just about anyone else I’d met in this wretched place, I was surprised at how little sadness I felt.