To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (2 page)

Part One

I

Goodwill

I put my pen on the table, leaned back and shook some life into my cramping hand.  I hadn’t written that much since college and the never ending stream of essay tests that was the fate of any history major.  Since then, the only time I’d ever needed to put pen to paper was to sign my name.  All of my correspondence and after action reports back home had been done electronically and I hadn’t written in my previous journals in months.

Kneading
away the soreness between thumb and fingers, I leaned back in my chair and took in the strange surroundings I had somehow found myself in this time – just one of a hundred random towns visited over what seemed like a lifetime.

My companions and I had been on the move ever since we fled Rome all those years ago.  We’d been to Illyria, an old Greek province on the East bank of the Adriatic Sea, East of the Rhine river in German country, made our way to the Iberian peninsula in modern day Spain and Portugal,
spent some time in North Africa, and had toured extensively around Gaul before we wound up here, a small city on the East bank of the Rhone River, in what I remember as southern France. 

After all that time in the ancient world, I’d
gotten quite used to its idiosyncrasies.  While I still missed my home in 2021, I felt at ease in the rustic backcountries and Romanized provinces that Europe was made up of during what was left of the Julio-Claudian dynasty’s reign of power, a time made even shorter by none other than me.  The latest deaths in the family had been the emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula, and the should-have-been emperor, Claudius.  Between the two of them, their rules should have lasted until 54 A.D., but things were no longer as they should be.

Claudius had
been killed on the battlefield and Caligula the victim of poison; the culmination of both events leading to Caligula’s nephew, Nero, becoming the heir apparent.  He was currently too young to rule, so Agrippina the Younger, his mother, had become the first and only sole empress of Rome.

Agrippina.

The woman was best described as a double edged sword, rather than a two sided coin.  Her beauty, poise and allure were equally matched by her cunning, ambition and avarice, both of which she used equally well to achieve her innermost desires.

I shuddered
as my heart raced at the thought of her.  It was a testament to her demeanor and beauty that, as someone who had every right to hate her, I could feel such attraction to her.  There was more to it than her physical appearance, of course, but it certainly helped.  Memories of how she could so easily command a room flooded into my mind, how every head would turn to gape and stare as she strutted about.  The way her large breasts shifted beneath her slinky outfits and her mane of yellow hair tumbled around her shoulders, swaying alluringly with every step she took.  It wasn’t a rare occurance for a man to trip over himself in her presence.

Something I could testify to personally.

But it was ambition that drove her to poison her own brother, and the sole reason for my presence here and why I no longer had a home to speak of.  She had been the tool through which Claudius arranged my capture and torture all those years ago, and after poisoning Caligula, had wasted no time labeling us as enemies of the Republic as well.

We were number one on her most wanted list, with bounties large enough to set someone up for life.  My companions
’ bounties were smaller but labeled as wanted either alive
or
dead, whereas Agrippina wanted me alive and unharmed.  Word had spread quickly around the empire, and Wanted posters had become a common sight throughout its vast expanse of territory.  There was even one here, posted right above my head on the wall behind me, and I knew that as I propped my chair against the wall, my face on the poster was in full display just above my real one.

Fully aware of how exposed I was, I placed my hands behind my neck and drank in my surroundings.

It was dirty, dark, musky, and… homely.  Unlike the bars or clubs back home, this one was devoid of anything meant to actually draw in patrons; such as dollar drafts, bright lights, DJs, scandalously dressed women gyrating to loud, obnoxious techno music and the asshole frat boys who sought such women – and generally failed.  This place wasn’t somewhere people went to have a good time on the weekends, but somewhere people felt obligated to go because there was simply nowhere else.  It was filled with regulars and the occasional drifter like me, and while music was strummed lazily from a corner, the only thing needed to entertain these people were gossip, stories, good jokes, and companionship.

As I sipped a cup of the local, dry vintage wine, I couldn’t help but appreciate the
ir simplicity.  Life wasn’t about obtaining the newest and fanciest gadget, wearing the trendiest clothing or planning the next vacation.  It was about getting by with what you had and trying to enjoy what few moments of leisure was available at any given moment.  Like residents of the Deep South in ante-bellum America, life was slow and lazy, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just different from the progressive hustle and bustle of the world back home.

I sighed at the thought.  It was becoming harder to remember, but life back in
2021 was hardly worth remembering, and perhaps shouldn’t be used in comparison.  For years, the world had been consumed by a war that engulfed every nation on the planet, and even America had been unable to remain immune to the perils of total war.  The Pacific Northwest and southern Border States were constantly in conflict, and while those in the Midwest, South, and East Coast remained without conflict, its residents were just as involved in the war effort as those living in contested areas.  Factories meant to support the massive war machine had pockmarked the land east of the Mississippi, and its people had been pressed into service.

It had been a scene straight out of an old black and white World War II propagandist film about the home front and the impor
tance of its industrial output – only in glorious high definition.

While c
hildren still went to school, the elderly retired and most continued to work their menial nine to five day jobs, life had been unraveling for years.  If the war continued, it was only a matter of time before the war effort became an all-encompassing endeavor and everyone was forced to become involved.

I shook my head.  With every passing day, my memories of home failed more and more to acknowledge how much of
a cluster fuck it had become.  Instead, they reverted back to older, happier memories, muddying my perspective.  In many ways I had no desire or even a reason to go home.  I even almost liked it here.  But I couldn’t live with myself if I one day learned we’d somehow messed with the future, irrevocably altering the lives of billions, all because of my own failings.

With that thought in mind, I remembered we couldn’t go home yet
, and why.

I shifted my attention back to the men and women around me.  They seemed gloomy and certainly unfriendly towards strangers.  Only the barmaids
seemed to pay us any attention – barmaids who were also quite attractive.  I suppose they had to be.  It took more than a steady wine pouring hand to squeeze as much money as possible from passing travelers just like Santino, who sat at the end of the bar with an attractive, red headed barmaid in his lap.  He laughed and joked with her innocently so I ignored them, analyzing the remaining patrons instead.  I had already classified some as potential threats, an old habit born from years of service in the military and a few missions that had me play the part of spy more than operator.  Cross-referencing nervous eye contact with body posture and clothing style had made it easy to identify those I had to worry about.

But m
y precautions were merely just that.  I was confident no one would try anything out here.  Despite Agrippina’s best efforts to vilify us, our reputation was generally positive in the empire’s back country.  Crime in the Roman Empire was more than rampant, its issues plaguing the empire far more than they did in the modern world.  Kidnappings, murders, thefts, battery, sexual crimes, and the like were no more prevalent than they were back home, but there was no one here to help them.  There was no real police force or justice system to protect them, so with nothing else to do, we’d taken on the role of Sheriffs of the Roman Empire, available for hire to anyone with a grievance that could use a helping hand and met our minimum moral standards.  After a few months, we had achieved the moniker,
Vani
, the plural form of the Latin word,
vanus
, which in this context meant, “shadow” or “stealth,” in reference to how we did business.

R
eal sneaky like.

Which is what brought us to this dingy tavern
today. 

We were on a mission to help a grieving Roman widow
, who lost her husband and two sons to roaming vagabonds who had raided her Gaulic villa.  The family had been of equestrian class, upper echelon Roman business owners with more money than they knew what to do with.  They had been vacationing in the lush Gaulic countryside when the attack had happened.  Her only surviving family member was her seventeen year old daughter, who had been taken by the bandits. God only knows what they had in mind for her, but she’d been captured over a week ago, and the question of her survival was uncertain.

I glanced at my watch, one of the few bits of modern equipment still operational thanks to the rechargeable power o
f the sun.  It also remained a useful tool because while Romans had no such device, they could still tell time fairly accurately.

I noted that it
was just before noon on this cloudy and cool spring day.

T
ime to start paying attention.

I finished my surveillance and
looked at the last person of note in the building.

She was seated across from me, her back to the door and her head leaning over a bowl of stew
that she was voraciously shoveling into her mouth.  She wore tight fitting combat fatigues made out of a water resistant but breathable material lined with Kevlar, arranged with protective polyethylene gel pads.  The pads were squishy when inert, but turned as rigid as titanium when impacted by any sizable force.  They were comfortable and protective, the next generation of body armor back home.

Draped over her back was a grey color
ed cape of local design – typical wear for travelers.  Its exterior was nondescript, but had been modified as reversible, with the side now pressed against her back outfitted with numerous strips of multi-colored frayed cloth.  It was a make-shift ghilli suit, not as efficient as the full body suits she and I had, but one that was useful in a pinch if needed.  It had been her idea, and one that had become quite useful over the years.

Her hair was tied
back messily with sticks and more modern feminine hair products, but some of it dangled to either side of her face, obstructing her feeding motion and constantly finding its way into her stew.  She had grown it so long that it fell to the small of her back now, just above her backside.  Currently, it looked as though it hadn’t been washed in weeks and dirt and grime covered her lovely face as well.  The poor woman hadn’t bathed in days, and the way she ate suggested she hadn’t eaten in just as long either.

She looked horrible, but I knew what lay behind the filth.

Her delicate features, some combination of German and Turkish that had first come together back when Istanbul was still Constantinople, had produced a rare beauty.  Light chestnut skin, black hair, but German features with full lips, high cheekbones, wide open eyes, and neat eyebrows made her a sight to see.

Helena noticed my inspection, and while still leaning over her bowl, looked up at me with those vibrant green eyes that almost seemed to glow.

“What?”  She asked as broth streamed down the side of her mouth.

I laughed.  She was a mess, not even pausing to swallow before she spoke, apparently still famished while she worked on her second serving.  Even so, she was well within her rights to look as she did and gorge herself like she was.  She’d been in the field for the past three days, and probably hadn’t had much time to eat or refresh herself.  It had been her turn to retrieve supplies from our hidden cache
that remained hidden about a day’s march away.  She’d returned a few hours ago but hadn’t been able to relax until just now, having posted herself a few miles away from the tavern, waiting for our targets to arrive.  When she sighted them an hour ago, she indicated they were taking their time, but on their way.  Thirty minutes later – now – she was sitting across from me, a fresh batch of God-knows-what awaiting her eager spoon

She
’d brought with her another journal from the cache, a spot we had discovered after a delivery had found its way to us a few months after we’d fled Rome.  It contained all the gear we’d brought with us from the future with a brief note.  All it said was,
“G & M, Amici”
.

“G & M, Friends”.

It was from our Praetorian friends Gaius and Marcus.  Of all the people we could trust in our new lives, they were amongst the foremost, and it must have been a pain in the ass for them to arrange for the delivery of our supplies.  Those containers were damn heavy.