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    45 Results in the "Bear House Serials" category


    • VI – The Retreat Cover
      by — Father’s owl mask watches him from the muddy shore, its top trim blackened by battle fire. Aedan’s snowy war prize comes to the water for a drink. She takes her fill before retreating to the grassy bank, where waterlogged cornflowers sate her hunger. Rain stings Aedan’s shoulders, a necessary hurt that washes away his warpaint and admonishes him for losing his fiercest bitches. He sits his bare ass into the pebbled rivulet and spreads his spindly legs. Within the V between his thighs, rushing…
    • XVI – The Month of Honey III Cover
      by — 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…
    • XV – The Month of Honey II Cover
      by — 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…
    • XIV – The Month of Honey – I Cover
      by — The Bucarati kips upon glossy mudflats. The vessel resembles a timber beetle with its tightly bound sales and dangling oars. It slumbers as men till the wet sands beneath its rudder, digging that will ensure the incoming tide washes her away. Alps-born Romans crowd her surface planks. They wear fur over their shoulders and wool on their extremities. None are clean-shaven, not even their newly minted leader, Lucius Scipio Servius, whose beard shines golden like the short coils on his head. His noble…
    • XIII – The Ancalite Wedding (Season Finale) Cover
      by — Lucius Vitus Servius once said that rivalry within ranks festers like flesh rot, and if a general ignores it, he’ll lose a man as quickly as a leg. Julius recalls his old friend’s observation as he watches the murdered man’s son scowl at Kombius, a prince of the continental Atrebates. The more concerning bit of flesh rot, however, is Titus Labienus, who listens with jowls tight in resentment as the noble speaks of his time as an Ancalite prisoner. Before their first campaign on the island,…
    • XII – The Graticule Cover
      by — Bloody waters run deep where the Stour meets the Lug. Two hefty rafts cut a path within pink foaming shallows, where intestines wobble as hungry fish peck at their undersides. The well-adorned passengers bring tightly woven rags to their noses, anything to quell the stench. Slimy crimson sand sucks at Aedan’s feet, but what awaits him beyond the trees makes the discomfort worth it. Flies gather like black rain over a dining table made of human bones. Half-skulls sit upon its gruesome ribcage,…
    • XI – The Tamesa Encounter Cover
      by — Roman horses smell more of their kind across the river as tension shrinks their nerves. A towering palisade stands along the opposite bank, where an elderly man, favoring his staff, stands on a rampart behind it. Wind lashes at his long white hair, exposing facial cracks that prove him the oldest man on this island. “This is as far as you go, Rome!” Ostin the Ageless shows his grasp of Latin. Caesar, the battle king these natives call Kaiser, yells back, “There will be no turning…
    • X – The Price of Pain Cover
      by — One calculates a citizen's measure by grading their 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 kin, sent Planus on a routine inspection of the merchant ships harvesting chalk from…
    • IX – The Slaughter Arena Cover
      by — This violent summer is the hottest in memory. Bitch Face, the pretty Roman, covers the dead farmer and her children while his brothers hack away at her barley field. He casts an anxious gaze across the field at the forest. Deep within the trees, Aedan the Owl squats on a high branch, his foot rising so his toe can scratch the itch behind his ear. He watches Bitch Face, whose rage over a slaughtered lover burns hot, and grins. This rare show of emotion unsettles his cadre of most loyal, awaiting him…
    • VIII – The Sacrifice Cover
      by — This captive burns hot when he sleeps, never waking, no matter how indelicate a druid’s touch. Here lies the beauty of the falls, the lion from his vision. Aedan’s thumb pushes at an eyelid, revealing a lily pad floating in the white, and its dark center widening with exposure to the light. His smooth skin stinks of cooking fire, and his soft nipples taste of roasted rabbit. He sits upon the strapping prisoner and delights in how the man’s muscular gut feels his bare crack. Cock in hand, he guides…
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