The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (37 page)

Normal legionnaire training took around six months,
and every day of it started off with a run. Afterwards came sword
training, where centurions taught us the ins and outs of Roman
swordsmanship. Romans fought with the tip of their swords, always
stabbing, and never slashing. A legion fought like a machine,
blocking and stabbing in a seemingly choreographed sequence. It
wasn’t flashy or destined for accuracy in Hollywood, but it was
effective, as many defeated barbarians could attest to. I knew the
basics, and understood why they were so effective, but the others
did not. One time, when Santino tried to slash down at his training
partner with his wooden training sword, a centurion smacked him
with his olive branch, just as he would have with any of his other
trainees. Santino had not been happy, but had learned his
lesson.

We also learned the fine art of spear casting, and
even though I had no intention of trading in my rifle for a
pilum
, I figured it was still a good skill to learn. More
intense training came in swordplay, how to hide behind our shields
and rely on the person next to us for additional protection, as
well as how to snap quick attacks with as little risk as possible.
Legions fought as units, and any individual heroics were frowned
up. Their strength relied on their discipline, maneuverability, and
coordination, philosophies drilled into us harder than pretty much
anything I’ve ever experienced before.

The modern military could take a page out of the
Roman army’s training playbook. As a result of the constant pace of
physical and weapons drills, along with long distance runs, those
of us who needed to shed a few pounds did so easily. Another thing
we learned quickly was how to dig a mean ditch. Along with the
digging came knowledge about Roman camp fortifications, how they
were erected, and what we needed to do to contribute. If we had to
move and build a new camp, the Roman’s made sure everybody could
pitch in and lend a hand.

As for the rest of our wayward companions who had
accompanied us the night we fled Rome, Caligula took to running a
legion camp very efficiently, and Galba happily relinquished full
control to his emperor. Fully recovered within a week, Caligula was
seen walking amongst the troops, and training daily with the camp’s
officers.

The surviving Praetorians from the bloody battle in
his home were commended, and as a group, were elevated to a newly
created position within the Praetorian rank. The one hundred and
five survivors, including Quintilius, who was promoted to the rank
primus pilus
, formed a new sect known as the Praetorian
Sacred Band. The name was a homage to the Sacred Band of Thebes, a
personal bodyguard unit to Thespian kings that contained one
hundred and fifty pairs of lovers. During one battle against the
hoplites of Sparta, they defeated a foe which greatly outnumbered
them, but were eventually slaughtered by Philip II of Macedon,
whose victory removed the Greek city-states authority over the
land.

Unlike their Greek counterpart, the Praetorians were
not required to partake in homosexual activity and create sexual
pairs, but the number of men was set permanently at three
hundred.

Many of the survivors were promoted a rank or two,
and they recruited the remaining men needed from the two Praetorian
cohorts that had joined us in Caere, choosing only those they
deemed feverously loyal. Once merged, the Sacred Band became
Caligula’s flagship unit, and newly promoted Quintilius became the
highest ranking centurion in the camp, even higher than Maximus
Nisus, the legion’s own
primus pilus
. Despite Quintilius’
new position, Nisus took his promotion in stride, aware that
Praetorians were rewarded with special privileges and honors.
Quintilius took the promotion graciously and professionally, and
even though I knew he was booming with pride and happiness, he
never let on that he wasn’t doing anything but his duty.

Gaius and Marcus were also promoted. Originally
holding the rank of optio, a centurion’s second in command, they
were not only promoted to the centurion ranks, but also accelerated
to the rank of
pilus prior
, or “superior file,” the second
highest ranking centurion in a legion.

A Roman legion was simplistic in design, but could
become frustratingly confusing when it came to the specifics of the
chain of command, and the finer details of its construction. A
legion, comprised of around six thousand men, was broken into ten
cohorts, containing slightly less than six hundred men each, which
were broken into centuries. Six thousand was a rounded up number,
most legions containing only slightly more than fifty two hundred
front line soldiers, but when combined with officers,
administrators, and other staff, the number was closer to six.

The breakdown of centuries got pretty confusing, but
each cohort had six centuries, of about eighty fighting men each.
Things got even more confusing, as the first centuries of each
cohort was doubled in size, and depending on what cohort you were
in granted you superiority, and certain centurions of equal rank
still had more power than others...

It didn’t really matter. The system confused even
me.

The end result was Quintilius in complete command of
the Sacred Band, his orders coming directly from Caligula, and
Gaius and Marcus commanding one half of the three hundred man unit.
It was a large honor for the two young men I had come to call
friends, but they took their new posts like any seasoned soldier
would. Caligula had no patience for tribunes in his Sacred Band,
knowing that centurions were the real leaders on the
battlefield.

And so things went.

Training and teaching and training and learning and
training, we were quickly becoming well versed in military history,
legion tactics and strategy, sword handling, horse riding, spear
casting, and ditch digging. While not officially folded into the
legion’s command structure, we were treated as mercenaries may have
been, albeit ones who weren’t paid, and Vincent was invited to
attend all command staff meetings. He ordered me to attend as well,
unofficially promoting me as his second in command, which likewise
garnered me no additional pay. Flattered, I accepted, and spent
another large chunk of my time engaged in strategizing for the
upcoming campaign against Claudius.

To keep me even busier, it was about the time when
the first snow started to fall, in mid-December, that the Romans
assigned us watch shifts to participate in during the course of the
day. Each of us was assigned a different shift, which were rotated
biweekly. My first shift landed me patrolling the ramparts between
midnight and six in the morning. By the grace of God, our gear had
managed to find its way to our camp a few weeks after our arrival,
carried by a few loyal slaves of Caligula’s, and was greatly
appreciated by us all.

We found cold weather gear in the supplies, which
made those long windy nights much more bearable. I didn’t know how
the Romans didn’t freeze to death, but they endured, and somehow
remained healthy. It honestly seemed like a miracle.

My watch shift rarely synced up with Helena’s so we
rarely had time to speak with one another. I missed her during that
time. The sparks we’d felt months earlier had yet to rekindle, but
we cherished the time we spent together nonetheless. It wasn’t
until late January that we were lucky enough to land watch shifts
that kept both of our nights free, and while many of them were
spent talking about our pasts, most revolved around current affairs
and our lives in the Roman world.

We always had plenty to talk about. Over the past
four months, I started a process of lumping more and more
responsibility for our predicament on my shoulders. My actual
responsibility notwithstanding, I took it upon myself, and only
myself, to try to understand our situation and find a way to get
home. And even though it was difficult with little reference, I
wracked my brain around the topic day and night. Neither Varus nor
Caligula had thought to bring the orb or manuscripts with them, so
all I was left with was to think on the subject, something I did in
excess.

The problem was that there wasn’t anyone for me to
talk to. Vincent knew the classics, but time travel was a mystery
to him. Varus knew about the orb, but not how it was related to
time travel. Santino had watched a lot of movies in his day, but
was hardly the guy to go to for an existential debate about
anything. Everyone else fell into one category or another, and it
forced a sense of ownership of the problem onto no one but me.

It was compounded by my new leadership position
within the group when Vincent ordered me to attend Galba’s
meetings. Even there, he took a backseat during the proceedings to
let my more – eclectic – mind cogitate on the issues. Vincent
himself had even become a major internal debate because of those
actions. I’d yet to understand a single decision he’d made in the
half year we’d been stuck here. It all culminated to make my life
extremely stressful, and Helena knew it.

“What’s wrong?” She asked quietly one night, feeling
something was amiss from across the tent.

“Hmm? Oh. It’s nothing,” I replied, likewise keeping
my voice to a whisper.

She shifted onto her side to see me more clearly.
“Come on, Jacob. I know you better than that by now. You have that
far off look again. The one that says you’re trying to wrap your
head around something so complex that no matter how hard you try,
you know you’ll never figure it out. You know, like Santino when
he’s trying to figure out which boot goes on which foot.”

I chuckled. “You always know what to say to cheer a
guy up.”

“I know,” she said playfully. “So what’s wrong?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I hate to sound like a
broken record here, but I just can’t shake the feeling that somehow
we’re here for a reason, and I don’t mean just in this camp, but in
Rome, in 38 A.D. Based on the decisions Vincent’s made since we
arrived here I can’t help but think this whole thing is a setup.
Somehow he knew we’d get sent here, and he knew that sphere would
do something crazy, and now he’s on some kind of mission he hasn’t
filled the rest of us in on. Except, everything we’ve done since
we’ve been here is a mistake, and as a result, we’ve totally fucked
everything up.”

“Are you sure you even deserve an answer?”

My eyebrows furrowed. “Of course I do. It’s my fault
we’re here to begin with and I deserve to know everything I can to
try and figure out a way home.”

“Maybe that’s not really you’re responsibility
either,” Helena insisted.

“Not my… How can you say that? If not me, then
who?”

She sighed and looked away. “If you want my advice,
then I say you should forget about it, but if it means that much to
you, talk to Vincent. Get him to talk to you.”

“I guess. To be honest, I’ve been hoping to avoid
that conversation. Have him come out to us on his own.” I took a
breath and thought. She had a point that the longer I let this
fester, the worse it was going to get. I had to clear my own
conscience and there was only one way to do that.

“I’ll talk to him.”

***

If Helena had been right about one thing, it wasn’t
that talking to Vincent would make me feel better, but that by
talking to him I would at least find the truth. I wished I’d never
even tried.

A few mornings after we had talked, I’d went looking
for Vincent. I found him eating breakfast with a number of
centurions, talking and laughing with the fellow career military
men. I loitered around the area while I waited for him to finish
his breakfast, before approaching and asking politely if we could
talk. He excused himself from his buddies, and took a walk around
the camp with me.

We spent the first two laps discussing camp gossip,
which believe it or not, was prevalent, the weeks itinerary, and
the weather, everything but what I had intended to confront him on.
He noticed I was keeping something back, and demanded I just come
out with what was bothering me.

So I did.

“Sir. Prior to our arrival here in Rome, did you, or
any of your superiors, have any preconceived notions or
intelligence regarding the methods, means, or motives behind how we
got here?” I’d practiced the line over and over in my head for
months, but I’d never had the guts to ask. I wasn’t sure if I
feared a reprimand or the truth more.

Vincent continued walking around the camp, thinking
deeply before answering my question. “Yes.”

I snorted out a laugh. Of course he did. There were
too many plot holes in this story for him not to have.

“So, are you going to tell me, or am I going to end
up with a horse’s head in my bedroll tomorrow morning?”

“I’m not going to kill you, Jacob. You have a right
to know.” He sighed, and I felt frustration flowing off of him. “It
wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did. We had no idea things
would turn out like this.”

“Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

He took a deep breath before continuing. “Six years
ago, in 2015, papal historians were conducting routine research in
the Vatican archives when they came across a document which spoke
of a means to change the past. From what I was told, and from what
I’ve learned here, I assume that document was the very same one you
and Varus had discussed, or at least a copy. I assume so because
the historians indicated it was written in a very old language,
Etruscan they guessed, which proved nearly impossible to translate.
However, it had numerous notes, scribblings and translation
attempts scrawled all over it, as well as on attached notes. I
assume the document you saw had no such writing?”

“No, sir. It didn’t.”

“You see? I’ve been learning from your little
lectures. The notes must have been written sometime between now and
when we found the sphere, as more and more people attempted to
unlock its secrets, before it somehow wound up in our archives,
lost and forgotten. Anyway, the few discernible facts historians
pulled from the notes were about a blue sphere. At first, we
thought nothing of it, until a news report surfaced in 2016
concerning the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities break in. The one in
Cairo.”