The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (27 page)

Vincent cut off the laughter quickly. "All right
people. Before we move out, there’s one last thing. Hunter,
apparently one of Caligula’s closest advisers has some information
regarding how we got here. I informed the emperor that I would send
someone over to talk to him and try and figure this out. God knows,
if anyone can, it’s you. Work on it while we’re gone. We should be
back in about three weeks.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll hold down the fort,” I said, before
giving our modest accommodations a sour look. I shrugged. “Good
luck.”

***

Three weeks later, I was still waiting for Caligula
to send for me. Within that time I learned a very important fact of
life: Santino is much more boring to be around when he doesn’t have
any material to work with, and a depressed squad member and his
equally sarcastic best friend doesn’t offer much material so I
spent most of my time exploring the city on my own.

I couldn’t believe how much I missed Helena.

Now, that would have sounded sappy and pathetic had
we been dating, but we weren’t, so it wasn’t, making me feel only
partially pathetic. I just hoped my friends in the field were all
right, particularly her.

I thought I was about to go insane from boredom when
I was finally summoned by Caligula. I was escorted by two of the
original Praetorians who’d led us to the
Curia
the day we
arrived. Gaius and Marcus were their names, but I had to constantly
remind myself which was which because they were practically carbon
copies of one another. Even so, with Vincent’s help, I’d gotten to
know them fairly well over the past month. We’d taken to each other
like any group of professional military men would.

Nice fellas.

The Praetorians took me within the bounds of the
pomerium
to one of Rome’s numerous libraries. The exterior
facade looked magnificent, but once inside I found myself in a
dimly lit, dust covered room, overcrowded with information decaying
from mold. It was a far cry from the snazzy library I’d worked at
on my college campus, but the musty facility made my inner
historian feel like a kid on Christmas morning. The place was a
gold mine. Besides the hundreds of scrolls lying on what looked
like modern day wine cellar shelves and tables with documents
sprawled everywhere, I spotted the slinky man from the cavern I had
seen almost a month ago.

Finally. Time to get some answers.

Noticing our approach, he nodded to the guards. They
replied by performing an about face and marched out of the room,
leaving the two of us alone. For the longest time, we just stood
there measuring one another up before he started things off.

“My name is Marcus Varus. And you do not belong
here.”

I stepped closer to the man, hoping my size would
intimidate him to the point where he’d be too scared to screw with
to me. Barely a forearm’s length away, the man held his ground and
didn’t so much as blink, as he waited patiently for me to speak
up.

I ground my teeth in annoyance. “You can call me
Hunter, and what do you mean?”

“Just what I said. Your presence here is a mistake
and you must go home.”

I just stared at him, my patience already wearing
thin. That sentence was confusing enough without the added stress
of what I thought he said. Too many ablatives. Or were those
datives? I always got hung up on the grammar.

Taking a deep breath, I slowly straightened my back,
raised my chin up, and pulled my shoulders back. I didn’t have to
do it too often these days, but pulling myself into perfect
military posture gave me a sense of purpose, not to mention a few
extra inches which demanded respect, something this little man did
not show much of towards me.

I loomed over him with my additional inches,
effectively enhancing the image that I was far larger than I really
was. “I don’t have time for twenty questions,” I said grimly. “Now,
how do I get home?”

The man was finally intimidated. Taking a step back,
his throat visibly gulped. “Well, I’m not sure,” he said, his words
stammering indecisively. “What I do know is that those who opened
the doorway thought they would find vast amounts of treasure. Not
human beings. Especially not ones like you.”

“What do you mean, ‘the doorway’? Did it have
anything to do with that sphere?” I couldn’t think of the Latin
word for sphere or ball, so I just mimicked its shape with my
hands. The doorway he was referring to must have meant the portal
that sucked us through time. My limited vocabulary was going to
make this hard enough without Vincent, and trying to determine
archaic terms, and convert them into colloquialisms I could
understand would be another, much harder task.

The man just nodded at my question, wandering
aimlessly around the room before he settled into a chair behind a
table. His eyes moved towards the floor, and he seemed lost in
thought. Maybe he was just trying to bullshit his way out of this
so I didn’t kill him, but then why bring me here at all?

“Look,” I said holding out my hands. “Just calm
down. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. We’ll
work this out together and maybe I can help you get me out of your
life.”

The man perked up at that. We’d only known each
other five minutes, but it was clear he wanted nothing to do with
me. Hopefully, the potential for me leaving was enough incentive to
get him to work that much harder, and get me home.

So he talked.

And talked.

Unlike Vincent, who spent as few words as necessary
to get his points across, Varus had a knack for allegory and long
winded descriptions, of which, he provided no context for. Of
course, that was probably the language barrier’s fault, but it
still took him fifteen minutes to get to the part about documents
found with the sphere, finally getting to something useful.

Helena would have killed him.

“So, when I was presented with the sphere and
documents, I immediately got to work translating them,” Varus
continued. “They are written in an old dialect of Etruscan. I am
one of a very small amount of people who can still read it.”

“Can you date them?” I asked.

“I can only extrapolate its origin from the context
of the writings itself. From that context, I have surmised that
this document may have been written by Remus himself, or someone
working closely with him. Are you aware of who Remus was?”

Remus? Co-founder of Rome? Of course I knew him. If
what Varus said was true, the sphere would be one Rome’s oldest
relics. I had to make sure I played it off cool.

“I have heard of him in passing. What else did they
say?”

“Not very much, unfortunately. It spoke of how he
knew of his brother’s plot to murder him, and that he had known
about the plot for many weeks. Fearful that he would be unable to
thwart his brother’s attempt on his life, he sought help from some
sort of adviser. Apparently, this friend was a druid from the
north, a very powerful one, who, as the document indicates,
possessed great power and abilities over nature. The result of
which, appears to be the blue sphere.”

“Magic?” I asked. Even though I had suggested it
myself a month ago, I never really believed it. “You’re joking,
right??

“I too find the subject distasteful and hard to
believe, yet, here you are.”

True. At least we agreed on something, and he did
make a good point.

“So what does it do?” I asked. “Exactly.”

“Besides bring annoying plebeians to my door in
search of my aid?”

As we had moved our conversation to chairs, seated
across from a table, I couldn’t impose my height over the man.
Instead, I leaned back in my chair, and put my hands behind my
head. Wearing a tight, short sleeved t-shirt, I flexed my biceps,
which, I had to give myself credit for, are in pretty darn good
shape. He looked at my arms, and then at my face, before
continuing.

“Does everything come down to physical violence with
you? Are you just like those thousands of legionnaires who have
nothing better to do than kill each other and fight in the dirt
like children?”

I gave him a smile. “Of course. But I can make a
swell turn-over cake as well.”

He looked at me, obviously not understanding the
reference. Frustration and annoyance obvious on his face, he picked
up where he left off. “Apparently, the sphere is meant as a gateway
to a vast treasure and the downfall of those who uphold the legacy
of Remus’ brother, Romulus. The Senate, I believe, felt that by
treasure Remus meant money, and of course, with enough money
anything can be accomplished. I can only imagine their surprise
when you and your friends arrived instead.”

“But why is it that we came here at all? Nothing
happened until I touched the sphere, but I wasn’t the first to do
so.”

“There was an obscure mantra at the bottom of the
document, nearly indecipherable. What I could make out of it said
something along following, ‘the gateway shall bring treasure of
unfathomable power. Once the relic has felt the touch from my
loins, all the power of our descendants shall become theirs.’ There
is more, of course, but from what I gather, it would seem that
perhaps those who are blood kin to Remus have the ability to
utilize the sphere. But I do not understand what roll you play, as
it would seem it was only the two of us who came in contact with
the sphere. I know the Senate’s lackeys kept it wrapped in a cloth.
Yet, the two of us cannot be related. My family has always been
very small. ”

I barely heard anything past, “Senate’s lackeys…” my
mind completely focused on the table, deep in thought. Everything
was starting to fall into place. I only needed one last piece of
evidence to prove my train of thought.

I looked up and began a thorough inspection of
Varus’ face.

After two thousand years I had little hope of
finding any similarities between the two of us. The differences
alone were enough to dissuade any further inspection, but I was
persistent. The man was short, whereas I was tall. He had black
hair, instead of my brown, his face was round, mine was lean and
hard. We didn’t share a single similarity.

Except for one.

There it was. Staring right back at me. His eyes
were nearly identical to mine. Inquisitive, just as Pope Gregory
had said, with the same shade of ambiguous gray that could look
either blue or green depending on our surroundings.

I got them from my mom.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to confirm the
definite
possibility
that he may be some long lost
descendent of mine. It wouldn’t be enough in a court of law, but it
was something. I was astonished. But then something else hit me.
One would think meeting a two thousand year old descendent would be
enough fun for one night, but if Varus was reading the document
correctly, not only was he a descendent of mine, but we were both
direct descendants of Remus.

Now that fact definitely struck a chord. A direct
descendent of Remus?

Awesome.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The sheer amount
of family trees that spiderwebed down the millennia was amazing. It
made the possibility that everyone in the 21st century was
descended from somebody famous very likely. If you truly took your
bible to heart, one would argue that we were all cousins, descended
from Adam and Eve.

I hadn’t even known Remus had any children. It was
always my impression that he and his brother were barely out of
their teenage years before Remus was killed, but I couldn’t be
sure. Maybe Vincent can fill me in on the details later. What I did
know was that their mother, Rhea, bore them not by any human
father, but by the god, Mars. That was just a myth, of course, but
it would certainly explain my own absolute awesomeness, not to
mention my gray eyes. Mar’s sister was Minerva, or Athena in Greek,
and was regularly referred to as “Gray-eyed Athena” in
mythology.

I’m going to choose to believe the god/eye color
similarity had to be a coincidence.

Yah. A coincidence. I wasn’t even going to touch on
that one.

I continued to stare into the eyes of my great times
a thousand grandfather or uncle, and frowned. I had always hoped to
be descended from a Roman, but I always wanted him to have been a
bad ass centurion, leading men into combat and dying for glory, not
some bookish nerd. Granted, as Santino so astutely pointed out, I
was pretty much a big nerd at heart as well.

“Any of your family in the army?” I asked him.

“No. Why?”

Damn.

I was about to ask him what he made of all of this
when his eyes widened, and he quickly stood up, his head bowing
reverently. Surprised at his sudden change in attitude, I glanced
over my shoulder to see another man enter the room. He was tall,
blond, handsome, and had the same short, curly haired hair cut
Julius Caesar had made so popular. It was the man I’d seen at the
Circus maximus
. The one I’d skeptically deduced as
Claudius.

I rose as well, and bowed my head just to fit
in.

The man smiled a smile I determined lacked any kind
of warmth or genuine happiness. The sinister kind. He held out his
hands, a failed attempt at friendliness. There was something about
him that immediately made him unlikable.

“Varus,” the man said, stepping forward to embrace
him in a bear hug. “My friend. How good to see you. It has been
awhile since I have seen you in the library.”

“Yes, well, my duties to your nephew have kept me
fairly occupied these past few months.”

His nephew? This had to be Claudius. I couldn’t
believe it. I had never, not once, read an account of the man that
didn’t claim he was weak, feeble, and prone to stutters and
twitches. He was a lame ugly duckling, not a stud quarter back! Who
was this man?