Tina Anderson
Stories
3
Chapters
74
Words
152.3 K
Comments
0
Reading
12 h, 41 m
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This violent summer is the hottest in memory. A pretty Roman takes the time to cover the dead farmer and her children while his brothers hack away at her barley field. Aedan the Owl squats on the highest branch, his foot rising to scratch the itch behind his ear with a toe. He sees Bitch Face, whose rage over a slaughtered lover burns hot, and smiles, a rare show of emotion that unsettles his cadre on the forest floor. The leader of this Roman harvest, known on the wind as Gaius Trebonius, grows…-
109.5 K • Ongoing
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One calculates the measure of a citizen by grading his empathy, benevolence, and financial worth. One measures a soldier’s value by the skill of his kills, his labor, and years in service. Sadly, no rubric exists for a citizen who is also a soldier. Planus ruminates on such things in the shadow of Skipio’s recent brutality, all the while haunted by memories of rescuing him from the sea. That day, Caesar, his leader and cousin, sent Planus on a routine inspection of the merchant ships harvesting chalk…
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109.5 K • Ongoing
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Roman horses smell more of their kind across the river as tension hangs heavily and tightens their nerves. A durable palisade guards the opposite bank, with an elderly man favoring his staff on a rampart behind it. Wind lashes at his long white hair, revealing facial cracks that prove him the oldest man on this island. “This is as far as you go, Rome!” cries Ostin the Ageless, his grasp of Latin impressive. “I do have an offer for you if you’re willing to entertain it,” Caesar, the Roman battle…
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109.5 K • Ongoing
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Bloody waters run deep where the Stour meets the Lug. Two rafts enter the pink foaming shallows, cutting through loose intestines that wobble from the pecking of hungry fish. Slimy crimson sand sucks at the druid’s feet, but what awaits him beyond the reeds proves his discomfort worth it. Here, flies scatter like black rain and reveal a dining table made of human bones. Half-skulls sit upon its gruesome ribcage, each ghoulish bowl heavy with a stew of eyes, ovaries, and testicles. Cut tongues and…
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109.5 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…-
109.5 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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109.5 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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109.5 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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109.5 K • Ongoing
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In the populous list of ills women must endure, shame comes written in the darkest ink. Lucia Vita Servia is a petite sort with wide hips and an ample bosom. Her large eyes, far too blue for Roman tastes, stem from ages-old Gallic blood, the kind tainting many a provincial household in the Alps. Welletrix, a reedy Helvetian sent home by her brother some years past, stands at the threshold of her room holding a steaming mug. “May I come in?” he asks, and when she nods, he enters and places the mulled…
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109.5 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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109.5 K • Ongoing
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