Silus Meets Graham.

(Before you read, be aware that this is just an excerpt. That is all. As you were.)

Silus was ready to saw up the tribals that now surrounded Nicole in an oddly protective way, but at her chirping voice, he spun on his heel amid the blood and muck to see the assailant.  A bullet whizzed past his head, nearly taking off his helmet, but it met the mark it was intended  for.  The Centurion faltered, alarmed, but then snapped back around when he saw the strange figure.



Silus couldn't even glance over at Nicole, who watched the man as well.  The Centurion shouldn't have been so afraid of someone who looked so helpless, wrapped in gauze, but that someone had just shot a moving target at a moment's notice, and his aim was the surest Silus had ever seen.  Even from here, Silus could read SLCPD SWAT and he knew what it meant, only from hearing Vulpes's stories of Salt Lake City.  



He choked, faltered, and stood stonily in place, not believing what he saw, and then he heard the gravelly voice say quite clearly through all the bandages, ""A slave of the Legion is to be considered the lowest of the low.  They have no intrinsic value apart from the labour of their hands or the fruit of their wombs.  Do you not agree, Centurion?" "



Silus choked and actually did take a step back, and this time he tripped over one of the hacked up tribal bodies in the shallow pool of water.  The tall beast of a man fell rather suddenly, slamming his back against a large red rock and scooting upward, withdrawing his shotgun.  Immediately, the tribals pulled their own weapons in response.



"Graham," Silus said with bated breath, and had he seen the whites of his own eyes he would've been almost ashamed at how like a trapped wild animal he looked.  If there was someone he should fear more than Caesar, it was Joshua Graham, the ex-Legate.  The man was brutal, the worst of the worst, and now a goddamn demon to match.



Graham spoke again.  "I'm surprised at you.  First you save what your leader would call a useless slave, and now you address me by my name, instead of the title the Legion gave me."  The man pocketed his pistol, but the tribals who were protecting him didn't do so quite as easily.  Still feeling as though he were in a dream, Silus lowered his own gun reluctantly.



"You're alive."



"I am.  And so are you, which is a problem to me.  And so is she," now he moved toward Nicole at his authoritative stride, and extended his own blackened, bandaged hand to help her up as Silus gaped openly, "Only because you were the first response."  With two of the tribals' and Graham's assistance, Nicole was brought shakily to her feet, and while a bedecked and feathered helper gave the woman a canteen, Graham now turned his steely blue eyes from Silus to the "slave."




(A FEW MOMENTS LATER IN THE CONVERSATION--SKIPPED SOME FOR LONGEVITY'S SAKE)



Turning back to Silus, Graham said, "A Centurion who flaunts Caesar's laws, and does so blatantly, and yet you have never been censured or punished?  Perhaps you missed your calling and should have been a Frumentarii."


Nicole inwardly groaned.  She knew of Silus' hatred for the spies, Vulpes inparticular.  To be told that he, a proud Centurion (or once was, at least) should have become a spy instead?  It was almost sacrilege.


If anyone else had insomuch as alluded that a suitable job for the hulking man bathed in blood would've been a sneaky spy, Silus would've hacked them to bits right away.  As it stood, however, it wasn't anyone else asking the question.  It was Joshua Graham.  The name should've conjured the image of a well-dressed Mormon missionary with impeccable hair and good intentions, and perhaps a few decades ago it did.  However, a throaty-voiced, charred demon stood in front of him, and Silus said and did nothing in response as Graham withdrew his pistol, almost lazily, as he finished speaking.


He expected a response.  Silus was at an utter loss for words, but finally he managed to say in what he hoped sounded like a calm voice, "Perhaps."



Graham didn't seem to like that answer, because he narrowed his inhuman eyes even lower; Silus realized they were more ethereal than demonic, and that perhaps unsettled him even further.  Maybe Graham hadn't survived the fall, maybe instead he'd been promoted to some destroying angel, ready to reap the---



Before his imagination took the best of him, Silus focused on the 1911.  It was enough to penetrate his armor, but somehow he thought Graham wouldn't bother shooting him anywhere but the head.  There was little point in it.  There was also little point in making a lot of noise to alert his men, because honestly, Nicole was no use alive if they were to be taking care of her, and Silus wasn't in a hurry to spare them Graham's wrath at all.  Indeed, they'd probably shit their skirts, and if he hadn't been in the position he was in, Silus would've laughed.





Graham's eyes widened slightly and he blinked, seeming to reach some conclusion behind his bandages.  Now he tilted his head and strolled through the ankle-high bloody water toward Silus.  He didn't stop until the 1911 was pointed at the side of the Centurion's temple, when Graham moved suddenly, knocking the helmet off Silus's head and into the disgusting water below.  Silus winced both at the splash of more blood, and because Graham had grabbed his thick waves of hair and tore his head to the side, pressing the barrel of the pistol hard to Silus's brow.  The Centurion threw the hand holding the shotgun out in a display of surrender, holding the gun with his thumb on the barrel and his fingers outstretched, the universal "I'm not going to shoot!" stance.  He'd never really used it before.





"You're telling me, Legionary," Graham said with the tiniest hint of disbelief, "You'll sacrifice your life for hers?"



The barrel of that gun really fucking hurt, and Silus was mostly bewildered at the thought that he was going to die by the hand of the Ex-Legate.  



"Yes," he said, grinding his teeth.  



Graham seemed unsure, because he pulled Silus's hair farther.  "And your men, who I've heard are hiding out obliviously nearby?"



"Do what you want," Silus said carelessly, and he tried to console himself in knowing that because Graham did what he said, Nicole wouldn't be harmed.  Likely the man took her for some poor sheltered stupid slave, so he would--



Graham shattered his thoughts.  "I saw this girl handle a gun earlier, before you stormed in to unceremoniously aid her.  She's not a slave.  She doesn't walk like one, she doesn't act like one, and though I'm sure my old partner has changed how he's done some things, I highly doubt giving slaves their own handguns is new on the list."



"She's not a slave, I told you," Silus said almost impatiently.  His head was throbbing, and suddenly Graham backed up, releasing the dark mane of hair and lowering his pistol.  Silus winced and rubbed the top of his head, shocked that he hadn't been shot.......yet.



"Silus."  The way Graham said it, it was drawn out into a snaky breath, and it made the Centurion want to shiver in his big metal boots, and then curl up under his power armor like a turtle in a shell.  He would've much rather preferred to be unnamed, indeed.  "She spoke the truth."



He was talking about Nicole like she wasn't even there, and for some reason that annoyed Silus more than anything else.  Graham was too focused on the Centurion to really pay attention to the almost-nude girl on the bank, but Silus shot her what he hopd was a warning look.  Unpredictable was Graham in a nutshell; he'd never been one to have that self-control Silus prided himself on.



"I remember you," Graham said in a surprised tone.  "Sour boy, not social at all.  Bigger and stronger than any Brahmin we could raise.  You once had a desire to be head Praetorian, a desire that Caesar denied you year after year, unless I'm mistaken."  Now the watery eyes almost twinkled, and as Silus sat as miserably as he ever had there on the rock, Graham finally pocketed his pistol.  "I see we've finally reached disillusion.  I suppose the brute was more intelligent than we gave him credit for being."



Disillusion, yeah.  Silus was still waiting to be shot.



"And now you'll explain to me," Graham said, not leaving Silus's side but turning slowly to the brunette, "who exactly you are, to be traveling with such a man."