Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion

A Hunter and His Legion

Praetorian
Series Book III

By Edward Crichton

Copyright 2013

This ebook is licensed for your enjoyment only and is not to be shared, reproduced, resold, or altered in any way.  The author thanks you for respecting his intellectual property.

Acknowledgments

Normally, this is where I thank all the people who I thanked in the acknowledgments sections of my first two
Praetorian
books, but they’re all too busy to read my work now.  Instead, I’ll thank my sister Amanda (who did read it) and Teresa, my new editor who emailed me out of the blue and kindly offered her services… which I sorely needed.  Thanks!

Books by Edward Crichton

The Praetorian Series

The Last Roman (Book I)

To Crown a Caesar
(Book II)

A Hunter and His Legion (
Book III)

Starfarer

Rendezvous with Destiny

Book Two – Coming Fall, 2014

Table of Contents

Haik
u

I –
Revelations

II –
Paradoxes

III –
Generals

IV –
Alexandria

V –
Mediterranean

VI –
Britannia

VII –
Wilderness

VIII –
Anglesey

IX –
Northward

X –
Facepalm

XI –
Answers

XII –
Decisions

Author’s
Note

Starfa
rer

Author’s
Bio

How the F#!% We Got Here

In Haiku

By: Johnathon Archibald Santino III

It was World War
Three,

The year 2021,

And the end seemed close.

Russians and Chinese,

Americans and assholes
,

Fighting each other
.

The war was pointless,

But then I joined a new crew
.

E
nded up in Rome.

I joined a new team.

Badass Special Forces, all

And Hunter came too.

Sent to Syria.

Our mission: Kill
terrorists.

But we
screwed it up.

Time travel exists.

How do I know, you may ask?

I’m in Ancient Rome.

That’s right, ANCIENT ROME!

Met all kinds of cool people
,

Oh, yeah…
ANCIENT ROME!!

We met the Caesars.

Caligula was awesome
.

Claudius
, a dick.

And Agrippina.

Damn, she’s a hot piece of ass
,

But a total B
.

Claudius rebelled.

Caligula reclaimed throne
.

History was changed
.

Caligula dead.

Agrippina was made queen
.

Wasn’t my first choice
…

So she exiled us,

And for years, we were homeless
,

Wandering Europe
.

Guy named Vespasian.

Hunter said he’s the right guy
,

So we went to work
.

Failed to capture her.

Big fight in Byzantium
.

Broke Caesarea
.

I’m struggling here.

Haiku can kiss my big ass
.

Really… f
uck Haiku.

So let’s wrap this up.

Agrippina kicked our
butt,

Again.  Yeah…
again
.

But then others came.

New time travelers
arrived,

and
saved our asses.

They helped us escape.

We went East to Damascus,

To hide and lay low.

I told you I could,

I just knew I could Haiku
.

So F U, Hunter

fin

I

Revelations

Outskirts of Damascus, Syria

October, 42 A.D.

While i
ndistinguishable from each other in terms of function, held within my hands were two objects vastly different in design. In my right was paper, the kind akin to what I remembered as printer paper from the nineties, perforated edges and all, while my left hand held a medium for writing that was heavier, stiffer, and far larger.  It was a piece of papyrus rolled into a cylinder and then flattened, but yet to be opened.  And in each document was information, but while I had no desire to actually read them, I knew I owed it to both authors to try, especially Him.

Him
.

I w
asn’t sure if I was ready to think about Him just yet.

I let my hands fall into my lap,
the weight of my arms heavy upon my legs, just as my shoulders felt around my chest, and my mind within my head.  I looked up and out, surveying the small oasis where we’d made camp, located a few miles east of the ancient Middle Eastern city of Damascus.  The scrub brush desert land around us was vast and desolate, the small blip that was Damascus notwithstanding – a perfect place to hide.  An oasis may have been an obvious place to lay low, but the desert was immense.  With luck, we’d evaded our pursuers long ago, giving us time to regroup and come to grips with our current situation, which again was something I’d rather delay thinking about for as long as I could.

The oasis was
small, no bigger than a basketball court if adjusted properly.  A few stray palm trees dotted its perimeter, lending a certain amount of shade to the area, but bushes and scrubs were the dominate flora in the area, as was the small lake, no bigger than a pond really.

With the sun setting on the horizon before me, the
spot was quite beautiful, tainted only by the thoughts that raced through my mind and the pain that emanated from my side whenever I twisted or pulled in the wrong direction.  But pain I was trained to deal with, and my mind could be placated when I concentrated hard enough, yet nothing could remove the foul existence of the two documents held firmly within my hands.

I looked at them again.

In that moment, instead of debating which to read, I tried to discern how such unassuming objects could feel so heavy in my hands.  Paper and papyrus.  Fifty pound dumbbells they were not, yet they felt even heavier, so much so that I had trouble lifting them from my knees to hold at eye level again.

But
I did.

As I looked at them
, I knew the object in my left hand could wait.  The papyrus.  The information contained there was likely more important, but the only thing that could truly soothe my curiosity and frustration was held in my right hand.

I gave the papyrus one last
long look before leaning to my left and placing it within the bag that rested comfortably next to the rock I was perched on.  A second bag just to the side of it caught my eye, but despite wandering fingers that inched in that direction, I fought off the urge to grab for it.  With a clenched fist, I straightened carefully to avoid further discomfort in my side.  I tried to relax my upper body but winced at even that slight gesture, and took a moment to lift my shirt and prod the thick bandage that covered my entire left flank, from nipple to shoulder blade.  Its former whiteness was now a pale red around its edges, but a darker streak ran right through its center.

I suppressed a gag reflex from the sight of it, and turned to look
out over the water at nothing in particular, carefully repositioning my shirt over my midsection at the same time.  But after a few moments of quiet introspection, I again returned my attention to the paper held before me.  Six in total, each page contained two columns of information.  On the right side of each page were photographs of a tattered and ancient piece of paper with a barely legible but familiar scrawl written upon it, and on the left was a transcription of these photographs – or so I was told.

I separated the first page from the rest and turned it over a few times and back again, inspecting its quality.  It didn’t appear digitally rendered
and enhanced, as I would have expected of such a thing from my own home, but more as if someone had simply taken both the original document and the transcription, placed them on a copy machine, and ran them off onto a single piece of paper together.

Considering what I alre
ady knew about where the paper came from, I couldn’t say I was surprised.

I placed the sheet back with its
siblings and stared at them again without reading, preparing myself as I had done every night for the past few days.  On each of those nights, I’d sit upon the very rock I sat upon now, and would look out over the small body of water, unable to read that which I had already written once before…

In another life
time.

In an entirely different life
completely.

Written b
y another me.

The Other Me.

I’d kept a journal for about the past six months of my life, something those of us in the military liked to call after action reports: a self-reflection of prior missions and an outlet for arranging thoughts.  I’d written nine entries and my friends had provided two others, but somehow, someway, a twelfth entry existed within my hand.

They’d told me
I’d written it.

But
I hadn’t written it.  Not me.  Not exactly.  It had been
another
me.

An alternate
me.

The Other Me.

The one that hadn’t made it.  A me that had died, initiating a chain of events that led this very document to reside within a cargo container for two thousand years before it was finally found, and then brought back to
me
, the actual me, the me right now.  It had spent two thousand years rotting away in the desert only to travel back in time to the day it had been created – just three days ago.

I squinted at the top page, but
a sudden dimming of light delayed my inevitable reading of it.

I looked up again
, noticing that the sun had just kissed the horizon, and that dusk was upon us.  At first I considered myself saved from the task before me, but then fate, as it always seemed to do, intervened.

“Here, Jacob.
”

The voice
was close, only a foot or so behind me, and I marveled at either the interloper’s stealth or my own distractedness.  Either way, I didn’t bother to turn, as I already knew who it was by the sound of her voice alone.  But even if I hadn’t, I knew there was only one female in our group who would risk approaching me in a time like this.

Preceding her was a bright green glow,
the radiant light produced from a simple glow stick used by millions of raving teenagers back home.  She held it out by my shoulder and I accepted it with my free hand, nodding in thanks for the gift.  I clipped it to the collar of my shirt, letting it dangle in front of my chest, and I suddenly had plenty of light to read by.