XXVIII – The Lion Roars

The villa and its neighboring urbana sit upon a plateau in the heart of an ancient caldera, its half-moon crown veiled by a lush blanket of oak forests. Minor crops and grazing meadows share this upland, surrounded by a majestic valley of orchards, vineyards, and groves.

Three high walls adorned with vibrant murals enclose the village, with a long two-story housing unit making up the fourth. Skipio lived in those dorms for a time after Father blamed their comfortable villa for his lack of work ethic.

He and Welle traverse the gravel path, and the sights and sounds of the plantation make their hike short. They enter through the storehouse, where the beekeeper’s son stocks honey jugs on shelves above the grain bags and wine casks.

Fourteen households reside here, and the newest are Gallic refugees from Octodurus. One of their sons greets them in the adjacent mill, a boy of thirteen leading a donkey around the circle so the pole it pulls turns a wooden cog that moves the millstone. The boy’s minder, a rotund man with little hair, pauses from untying rye sheaves to deliver a respectful nod to Welletrix.

The blond Gaul raises a covert hand, unaware that Skipio knows of his regal pedigree.

Workshops occupy the narrow branch between the storehouse and the towering village barn. The wall shutters are open on this cool, sunny day, and heat radiates from the blacksmith’s forge. A youthful glassblower slips in from next door, eager to make the most of the metalworker’s stockpile of wood.

Older children scuttle about the village square in preparation for tomorrow’s walnut harvest. Some already wield their long sticks, seemingly for the first time, slapping at one another as if they’re in battle. A mother breaks up their fun, taking the sticks away with promises they’ll get them back at the grove on the morrow.

Several women tend to the village garden. Their heads wrapped in scarves, they gently free the late harvest beets from the soil, carefully preserving their tasty, purple-veined leaves.

Trajan, the plantation’s strapping, thick-nosed overseer, enlists a few elderly men to erect wicker cages around the olive trees. Before the first frost, they’ll wrap the cages in heavy burlap to protect them from the chill. Twenty years his senior, Trajan might’ve been a second father to Skipio if not for his unhealthy interest in teenage girls.

Near the apiary, the last of this year’s apples meet their end in the fruit press. Soon, the large and boxy apparatus will have its oak plates changed out for beech before pressing the late fall grapes.

The chest-high wall around the livestock quarter does nothing to negate the smell. Skipio leads Welle through its swinging timber gate, and he grins as the lithe blond steps gingerly around the pig pens, where ducks waddle the muddy plot without fear of the swine.

Chickens peck over a grassy patch while agile little girls steal eggs from their coop. The donkey shed is empty, the goat hut holds only a mother and her child, and two cows drink noisily as teenage maids yank at their udders.

“Where’s the steers and the sheep?” asks Welle.

“Out to pasture with the horses until the first snow. We’ll need every pound of shit they can manage for winter groundcover,” Skipio tells him, then grins. “Will you be joining us for the spreading days?”

“Absolutely not,” Welle’s blue eyes harden. “Shoveling shit is best left to those born to it.”

“Born to it?” he laughs. “We’re all born to it, Welletrix,”

“I was a city boy, Lord Skipio,” the Gaul claims. “No animal crossed my path that shit bigger than me,”

His laughter lures Portus from the stables. A decade older than Trajan, the little man is the village’s animal doctor, while his daughter, Portia, is the village midwife. He climbs the fermentation yard wall, his stunted body reaching the top to speak with Skipio face to face.

“I gave our girl a good once over,” says Portus, scratching his dark beard.

“Good,” Skipio says. “Her fatigue made sense when she still had her sea legs in Genua, but the constant grazing on the way home made me wonder if she picked up a parasite,”

“Given her condition,” says Portus, arms folded. “Her ravenous appetite makes sense,”

“Her condition?”

***

Skipio kicks over the lectern and finds only a chicken with its neck wrung.

Welle tries to soothe his raging master.

“He’s likely in the kitchen,”

Skipio growls, “He’s chained up for a reason,”

The kitchen offers only Niko cutting pancetta for tonight’s tortellini meal.

Skipio storms into the colonnaded yard.

“Where is my prisoner!”

Vita rushes out from the study. “Indoor voice, please,”

“I’ll speak how I like in my own house!” rails Skipio.

“What’s gotten into you,” she scolds. “Raging like a fool,”

“Where. Is. My. Prisoner.”

Her head bobs like a snake’s. “He’s in the front guest room,”

“The room beside mine?” protests Welle.

Skipio stalks toward the door, but Vita blocks his path.

“Get out of my way!”

“You gave the running of this household to me,”

“The household does not include my affairs!”

“If you continue shouting at me, this conversation ends,”

“This isn’t a conversation, Vita!” His forceful outburst wets his lips. “That druid is a prisoner of war. My prisoner. Not a member of this household in any capacity!”

The servant women gather on the overlook.

“Prisoner, my ass, he’s your sex slave,” she cries. “And he cannot stay in the larder!”

“He’ll stay wherever I put him,” says Skipio.

“You want him dead.” Vita catches his arm. “Because that’s what he’ll be by Saturnalia if kept down there,”

“He’s from Britannia,” Skipio argues. “Those fuckers are far stronger than they look.”

“We only light the larder hearth when the pond freezes,” she contends, stepping into his path again. “And those fires aren’t strong enough to keep a man warm in winter, even by day,”

Skipio rages. “Him being cold isn’t even a situation, Vita!”

“Juno’s tits it isn’t,” she yells. “The chill will kill him faster than anything your filthy mind could conjure,”

Judgment stabs at him from his sister’s eyes, his man servant’s downward stare, and the titters of his snoopy house staff.

“Welle,” he relents calmly. “Put a lock on that door,”

“Already done,” Vita snaps. “I’ve also given him his things,”

“What things?” he barks.

“The crates with his clothes and masks,”

“Those are my spoils, Vita!” Spit flies onto her face. “That druid owns nothing!”

“Is that what he is?” She dabs away his rage with her palla. “One of your spoils?”

“Yes, mine to defile any way I see fit,” he avers, stepping around her, “and it’s high time I remind him of that,”

He grabs the door latch as his sister falls onto his arm.

“You cannot plow that druid’s hole every day,” she shrills. “It’s not a woman’s split. You’ll damage him beyond repair!”

He recoils from her touch as if burned.

“Under my keep of this house,” she begins weeping. “We’ll have a semblance of civility,”

Skipio buries the worst of his thoughts without saying them but resents her weaponized tears. “I’m rethinking my decision, placing you in charge.” He puts his face in hers, yet she doesn’t flinch. “You need to get married, Vita. Get married and move out.”

“Why don’t you go for one of your runs, Lord Skipio,” Welle suggests softly.

“Yes, a jog will extinguish my fire,” he nods. “Please tell Niko to reheat some puls. Ask him to add extra cinnamon,”

“Wine or water, Lord Skipio?”

“Milk,” he answers, stripping off his tunic.

“At this time of day?”

“Of course,” his sister chimes. “Anything to keep that bone in his head from going soft,”

“Marriage, Vita!” Skipio shouts over his shoulder, making her and Welle jump. Then, he calmly adds, “Find a husband, or I will find one for you.”

Frustration burns his bones as he paces on the porch. He is Master of this house by law and therefore responsible for all those in it, including Luna’s situation—yes, Luna!

Back inside, he ignores Vita and kicks open the wooden door that bore his name as a child. On the mantle where he once kept boyhood effigies of Minerva, Diana, and Apollo, is the owl mask that mocked him when the druid stole his horse.

The wily bastard stands on the stairs with his nipple exposed in the gaping neck of a dark smock. Loose vellum pages flap in the breeze—Skipio’s charcoal renderings of Britannia’s best leaves. Steely black eyes shift to the sketchbook lying on the floor.

He dives for it as the agile druid snatches it up and brings it hard across his face. The sting triggers a fury unfelt since the druid cut his father’s throat. He charges at the laughing bastard, who hops free to the high window, and before Skipio can catch a foot, the rangy Aedan slips through the bars like an eel.

Through the house like lightning, Skipio jumps from the porch and races around the enclosed side yard. The quick rascal sprints past the herb garden, through the flowers, and around the villa barn.

Skipio slows to a walk, knowing there’s nowhere to run at the plateau’s edge. He rounds the barn and grins as the druid slides to a stop.

“Jump A-dawn,” he calls out in Greek. “Show me how the owl flies,”

The druid smirks, then casts into a handstand, his smock falling to reveal his upturned cock, and then tips over the side. Mournful thoughts seize Skipio—that the druid would take his life after all they’d been through together.

After scolding himself for being a sop, Skipio peers over the rocky precipice and finds the nimble bitch dexterously swinging his way down from one cypress branch to the next. The pesky limbs growing from the rockface aid the runt’s descent, yet would surely snap before supporting Skipio’s weight.

The shortest portion of the orchard awaits the druid, a mile-wide stretch of rut-lings with no linear path. Mighty oaks stand beyond them, and if Skipio begins running now, he might catch the little bitch as he emerges.

Without haste, he huffs down the plantation road, two dirt paths made from years of cart traffic, and gains traction on the paved route that divides the orchard from the forest.

A few yards ahead, the druid flits past like a low-flying crow, vanishing into the trees as Skipio arrives. Inside the forest, protruding roots form knotty paths up a steep rise where large leaves of red and yellow form a vivid blanket untouched by running feet.

Skipio stops within the crux of three massive oaks, his chest heaving and his heart pounding. “A-dawn!” He then hollers in Greek. “Luna is in foal!”

The wind stirs the treetops, making a noisy rustle.

“I may be hung like one of her brothers,” the druid’s voice comes from above. “But I assure you, her foal isn’t mine,”

The gangly bitch looks down on him from a high branch.

“You’re responsible for her situation,” Skipio declares. “You took an elite Roman battle mare and turned her into a field slut!”

“I’ve done that to plenty an acolyte,” the druid brags, “but never a horse,”

“You let her run loose, and now she’s caught!”

“I led that horse to field,” says the druid, arms folded. “But I didn’t make her slut,”

“You get your narrow ass down here, now!”

The druid’s bony jaw comes out.

“I think I’ll remain here for a bit,” he muses. “Perhaps you should go on one of your runs and cool down, Skippy-O,”

Skipio unclenches his fists and forces himself to settle.

“Did you even think about how this might kill her?” he asks. “She’s not a broodmare, A-Dawn,”

Remorse creeps into the druid’s face. “I’ve delivered two foals in my life, I won’t let her die,”

“Will you come down here,” he asks. “Please,”

The druid casts to a handstand and wheels around the branch several times. His rangy feet rise when he releases it, and he reaches through his spread legs to catch the one beneath. He swings to another handstand, his smock falling to his upper body as he revolves around it before letting go and landing effortlessly.

“Where’d you learn your moves?” Skipio grins. “Missing a piece of backbone? I wager you can suck your own cock, can’t you?”

The druid wraps his arms around an oak’s mammoth trunk. “These trees have such thin skin.” His fingers dance over a smooth patch. “It peels so easily, revealing the muscle underneath.”

Skipio cannot ignore his growing arousal.

“My father told me the mightiest trees grow north of the Tamesa.” The druid raises his smock and presses himself against the tree. “Forests full of potent oaks, some too big to get your arms around.” He grinds into the oak, his hand groping one of the tree’s bulbous knots.

Skipio grabs himself through his trousers, his attention set on the gnarly roots peeking out through fiery leaves.

“Tell me,” The druid’s throaty voice entices. “Does this one’s legs offer a proper throne to pleasure yourself upon, Skippy-O?”

That damn Bibroci spoke the truth—this druid bitch spied on him in Britannia, watching him from high in the trees while he jerked his juices out beneath them.

Skipio rushes into the druid, pinning his lean body to the trunk and savoring the man’s cool skin and bony shoulder blades against his chest.

“What did you see, A-dawn?” Fingers lace into those black curls and yank back the druid’s head. “Did you watch me, you perverse little cunt?”

The wiry man pushes his little ass against Skipio’s arousal. A smile spreads across that weirdly alluring face. White teeth appear and stink of marigolds. Lazy lids barely rise as eyes roll in pleasure.

Skipio frees himself and stabs his manhood into the druid’s lower back.

Suddenly, an elbow jabs hard into his ribs, bringing pain to his gut. He stumbles back, raising his head in time to catch the druid’s toes across his temple. Through such delightful pain, he rushes, hooking the druid’s slender torso in his arm and dragging his flailing body down onto the leaves.

This early season brings a motley collection of pliable foliage, their softness forming a quiet bed for their fight, one that escalates in fits and starts until a right hook proves too strong and renders the druid unconscious.

“Shit,” Skipio grouses, cruelly tapping his lover’s sternum. “Wake up, A-dawn, come on now,”

A low groan escapes the druid, who bears his bloody teeth in a smile.

Skipio takes an ankle in each hand and folds the druid until his crack rises and his rangy feet sink into place alongside his big ears. The druid grunts, his obtuse face alive with a ferocity that mirrors his rage from the day of their final fight in camp.

“I promised my sister I wouldn’t plow your ass today,” Skipio leers, milling his shaft against the druid’s balls. “Do you really wish to make a liar out of me?”

“My hole is from Britannia,” he contests. “It’s tougher than it looks,”

Skipio releases him. “Do you understand Latin?”

Feet box his ears and pull him down for a kiss.

Tongues dance, and blood leaves an excitingly foul taste upon his tongue. When teeth threaten his lips, he leans back and forces the scrambling druid onto his belly.

“When I’m done rearranging your guts,” he murmurs in his ear and grabs one of those little buttocks, squeezing until it provokes a whine. “I’m going to make a proper meal of these,”

The druid punches Skipio’s backside with the ball of his foot.

“Get on with it, Fuckface, before I fall asleep!”