Bear House Collective
Stories
1
Chapters
27
Words
87.1 K
Comments
0
Reading
7 h, 15 m
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Lucius Vitus Servius once said that rivalry within ranks festers like flesh rot, and if a general ignores it, he loses a man as quickly as a leg. Caesar recalls these words as the departed man’s son glowers silently while Kombius, a prince of the continental Atrebates, speaks of his time as an Ancalite prisoner. The concerning bit of flesh rot, however, is Titus Labienus, who eavesdrops with jowls tight in resentment. On their first trip to Britannia, they sent Kombius ahead to the island with a mixed…-
87.1 K • Ongoing
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Bloody waters run deep where the Stour meets the Lug. Aedan steers their raft into the pinkish foam, passing loose intestines that wobble as hungry fish take their due. Onshore, slimy crimson sucks at his feet, but he thinks only of what awaits beyond the reeds. A dining table made of human bones greets him along the brush line. Half-skulls sit upon its ribcage top—ghoulish bowls filled with a stew of eyes, ovaries, and testicles. Tongues and cocks frame a centerpiece of stacked hands, and upon the top…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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Roman horses smell more of their kind across the river’s narrowest portion. A timber barrier tops the opposite bank; its rampart is empty but for an elderly man favoring his staff—long white hair flaps on the wind, with rumors that he’s the oldest druid alive. “This is as far as you go, Rome!” The archdruid’s grasp of Latin impresses, but his following words confuse his compatriots. “I do have an offer for you,” Flaming heads rise along the wall, their masks swiveling in…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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One calculates the measure of a citizen by scaling his empathy, benevolence, or financial worth. One measures a soldier’s value in the skill of his kills, the ditches he digs, or how many miles he marches. Sadly, no rubric exists for a citizen who is also a soldier. Planus ponders this conundrum while observing Skipio. Nightmares from that night on the sea haunt him. Planus had been visiting the merchant ship that day, curious about the process of refining the raw materials for chalk. The fireball…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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The Bucarati kips upon glossy mudflats. A timber beetle with her tightly bound sales and dangling oars, she slumbers while men till the wet sands beneath her rudder so the incoming tide washes her away. Alps-born legionaries crowd the surface planks, fur over their shoulders and wool on their extremities; none are clean-shaven, not even their newly minted leader, Lucius Scipio Servius, whose beard is the same color as short, golden coils crowning head. A skeletal Celt crouches at his feet, his gaunt jaw…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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Strong fingers tighten around his spindly arm, dragging him until his feet remember their function. Such rough handling sweetens the pot, as does every grope, grasp, and growl. A new timber jetty stretches to the Krokodilo, who wears a reptilian eye on each side of her keel. Weather-worn triangular teeth line her narrow battering ram, and two banks of oars dangle from her sides, the long overhanging the short. Aedan counts twenty-five, meaning a total rowing complement of fifty. All make way for the…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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Twenty-two days find them at Gades, where the narrowest waterway divides the northern isle of Eritheia from its southern sister, Kothinusa. A patchwork of linen canopies spread with barely a sliver between them while trade and circumstance carry on loud enough to rouse the dead. The air carries a disgusting mix of shit and saltwater, but Aedan inhales deeply with his face in the sun. His captor tugs at the sinew cord, irritating his neck; it’s a shameful use of his mother’s blessing but a suitable…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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Malaca shows her Phoenician roots with an overabundance of stone and the absence of timber. Roman horses trot over her rocky jetty, each eager for a roomy stable with ample feed and fresher water. Scipio comes ashore with Planus and Titus to heave their ship into dry-dock. Much lighter without her cargo of men, horses, and grain, the Portuna Harena floats along a man-made canal. Her destination is a massive shed with concrete colonnades capped by a double-thatched roof. Two hundred Romans strip down and…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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Farewells are the worst things. Sometimes. His cage’s wooden walls lay in a stack, and the oars, upright in bronze brackets, rest without their rowers. Even the desk and its stool sit alone, with no sign of the well-dressed supervisor. A shadow on the ramp becomes his Roman—the red-comb helmet under his arm shimmering in a lone ray of sun. A thicker tunic peeks out from his modest breastplate, and wool leggings run from its leather skirt to his boots. “Let’s go, A-Dawn.” He tosses a xanthous…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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The northern road bends east, avoiding another of Saturn’s lost stones. They enter Clastidium, an unremarkable collection of stables, eateries, and toilets catering to a daily procession of riverboats and bridge-crossers. “You’re selling water,” Planus scolds the teenage merchant, “when the Padus flows just eighty paces away,” “It flows, awight,” says the young man, unable to articulate his ‘R’s,’ “With the shit, piss, and spunk of evewy pewson living hew,” Titus hands the…
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87.1 K • Ongoing
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