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    50 Results with the "Historical" genre


    • XVII – The Month of Honey IV Cover
      by — 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…
    • 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 legionaries 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…
    • XIII – The Ancalite Wedding 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 glower 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 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…
    • XI – The Tamesa Encounter Cover
      by — 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…
    • X – The Price of Pain Cover
      by — 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…
    • IX – The Slaughter Arena Cover
      by — 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…
    • VIII – The Sacrifice Cover
      by — Here lies the beauty from the falls, the lion from his vision. His Roman captive burns hot when he sleeps, never waking no matter how indelicate the druid’s touch. Aedan’s thumb pushes at an eyelid and reveals a lily pad floating in the white, its dark center growing with exposure. Smooth skin stinks of cooking fire and soft nipples taste of roasted rabbit. He sits, relishing how that muscular gut feels against his bare crack. Cock in hand, he grazes the tip over the Roman’s swollen bottom…
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