XIV - The Ancalite Wedding

SEASON 1 - FINALE

Skipio pulls on his long-neglected uniform and curses the irony of having carried the rank of praefectus all this time. He unknowingly held the command of over forty cohorts and could’ve utilized them instead of morally burdening his twenty-five most loyal.

On the meadow, his mustering equites await.

Skipio arrives on Luna in full cavalry armor, his helmet comb bearing the colors of a praefectus. More than his most trusted now stand on the field, five across and five deep, with the newly ranking decurion, Actus Ursius, flanking their right.

Skipio gathers his courage and speaks loud enough for the passers-by to hear him.

“I stand before you, ashamed of my actions. In my grief, I polluted each of you with my depravity and my bloodlust. I seek your forgiveness and hope that my actions and those I forced you to partake in did not destroy your humanity as they almost destroyed mine.”

Actus glances at the men before breaking formation.

“None of us blame you, Praefectus,” he speaks for them all. “No apology is warranted, though it is appreciated.”

A collective grunt rises from the cohorts. Moments pass with silence until a joyous roar comes after Skipio tells them they’re all going home.

An early frost coats the meadow, melting away as mid-morning revives the green.

*

Today, the sons of Transalpine Gaul depart Britannia. They gather outside the camp, a thousand strong with their horses, for a march to the coast. A single question bandies among them: why must they return home if the beaten Alpine Gauls pose no threat?

Skipio enters the growing formation atop Luna, whose hide smells of lavender from the nettles in her brush. Unwilling to announce his status as Tribune, his armor bears only a praefectus decoration. He dismounts to oversee his decurio organizing the travel columns, and sudden activity near the front gate draws Luna away.

Skipio follows the horse to Caesar’s tent. He gently scolds her wanderlust as three Gallic chieftains emerge through the flaps, arguing with words that bring no blows. Nearby, a group of disarmed islanders huddle together to watch the tent’s guards.

“How could he do this?” Castor’s boyish shrill disrupts all who hear it. Like the other Alpine sons, he dons armor for the journey home but isn’t happy about it.

“What goes on here?” Skipio asks with Luna’s reins in hand.

“Imperator makes a deal with our enemy,” Castor whispers.

All eyes turn to Skipio.

“This campaign is no longer our affair,” he decides.

“How can you say that?” Castor steps into his path. “They murdered your father.”

“War murdered my father.” Skipio declares as Titus approaches them. “There are bigger issues at home.”

“Bye-Jove,” Titus proclaims. “Your mind has returned,”

“That Ancalite bitch” Castor interjects. “Makes a deal for her and the Owl,”

Planus appears beside Titus. “What are you on about, boy?”

“I’m not a child.” Castor barks. “Stop talking to me as if I am,”

“Decurion!” Skipio snaps. “You’re addressing a Legate,”

Castor comes to his senses. “Forgive me,”

“Emotions run high today,” Planus warns. “Let’s calm them, Castor,”

Skipio steps to him and whispers.

“Is the bitch that killed my father in there?”

“No, friend,” Planus points out. “She’s over there.”

Five soldiers approach, four dragging the woman and her son. Skipio’s heart races, for the spindly druid is clean of his paint and looks very much like the man he encountered on the falls. The morose druid reaches for Luna, whispering the word ‘Looir.’ Soldiers violently yank him onward, and Luna rears onto her back legs.

Skipio snatches her reins and whispers gentle words.

He joins the men, watching the murderous Owl standing alongside his mother, their ankles and wrists bound in ropes. His burn scars pulse in time with his heart. How many druids did he violate and butcher, punishing the Owl in effigy? An exact number stains his thoughts, every face clear in his mind, every act of brutality memorized in gruesome detail.

The real culprit behind his savagery stands without a mask or fiery crown, his milky skin glowing beneath coal-black curls. Raven eyes drift mischievously to Castor, who meets their challenge by unsheathing his dagger.

Skipio extends an arm. “No blood spills before the imperator’s tent,”

Before Castor can protest, Caesar emerges from the tent flaps with a voluptuous woman under his arm. Unlike most women on this island, her teeth are plentiful, and her braided hair is clean.

“Your son awaits you, Lady Avalin,” he says, seeing her off.

The woman moves with the flirtatious grace of a Roman matron, gently touching Titus Flavius’s clean-shaven cheek. “What a beautiful shade you are,” she says.

Her smile dies at Skipio.

“Traitorous cunt,” shouts the Owl’s mother.

Avalin avoids the seething woman and puts her hand on Skipio’s armored chest. She turns her eyes to the Owl and speaks to him in their native tongue. “Perhaps some time with this Roman will mature you enough to be worth something before you die.”

“I don’t deserve such kindness,” says the druid.

“I curse you, you traitorous bitch,” his mother snarls. “Your boy won’t live to see the first snow!”

Skipio comes between them.

“And you won’t live to see her son’s death,” he promises as the druid’s lifeless eyes survey his frame.

“Yes, her blood will answer for Lucius Vitus Servius,” Caesar agrees, hand on Skipio’s shoulder. “And her death ends any further quest for vengeance against her bloodline.”

The bitch whispers to her son, keen to know their Latin words. Skipio accepts Caesar’s mandate with a salute, while a seething Castor begrudgingly follows suit.

“Poor, pretty, Bitch Eyes,” the Owl taunts in Greek. “Now, you’ll never get to bleed me out.”

His mother laughs until Skipio cuffs her son in the gut.

“Animal,” she cries. “Hurting my frail little boy!”

Avalin departs, passing the line of Bibroci prisoners led by a centurion. Filing past, the women thank Skipio for his protection, but their leader, the druidess, refuses.

The widest of the chieftains emerges from Caesar’s tent.

His bearded face hardens as his beady eyes set upon mother and son while embracing the druidess.

“Where’s Alon?” the druidess demands.

Skipio knows full well that the mousy man travels with Castor, who steps up with some nonsense about the man escaping to the countryside.

“Escaped my arse,” says the Owl. “Alon would rather be a Roman whore than a Bibroci son,”

Skipio punches him in the stomach once more, dropping the narrow man to his knees.

“You brute,” his mother rails. “Attack a man your own size!”

“Where is he, Owl King?” the chieftain demands.

His mother comes between them.

“Fuck you, you fat fuck!”

Laughter rises among those Romans with an ear for the island’s native tongue.

“I didn’t give you up, Chinny,” says the chieftain.

The Owl’s leg shoots up, and a loud crack comes when his foot collides with the chieftain’s nose. The portly man shrieks in pain, cradling his face. Those observing find it funny, but Caesar isn’t laughing.

Skipio snatches hold of the Owl’s delectable curls, and Luna whinnies as her master drags away her barbarian son.

**

Ciniod follows the Roman brute, tripping over her ropes.

“My blood,” she sobs. “Not the blood of my boy,”

“She offers her blood,” Castor says, following them. “Not her son’s,”

Skipio halts and then wraps a hand around Aedan’s throat. “Tell her that her boy owes me more than blood.”

Castor relays the message and grins when she falls onto Skipio’s feet.

“Please,” she pleads. “Do not take my son’s life,”

Skipio pushes Aedan to his knees and yanks his head back. The druid’s hair smells like campfire, and kissing his forehead salts Skipio’s lips.

“He’ll take his own life by the time I’m through,” he promises, rubbing the kiss away with his chin.

Laughter rises among those gathering around them.

“You never caught me,” Aedan taunts in Greek.

Skipio stares down at the druid, still on his knees.

“Yet here you are, caught!”

“Not by you,” Black orbs defy him. “Servius Tribune,”

Skipio backhands the insolent druid, and for this, he gets a stinging foot across the mouth. Aedan kicks at the Roman again, but the handsome fucker snatches his ankle, forcing him back to the grass before dragging him onward. The sinewy Ancalite poses no threat without one of his weaponized legs.

Skipio merrily tows him to the archery field, a short trip made long by the druid’s resistance. Planus and Castor follow, and Actus arrives as word spreads among the departing legion of the Owl’s capture.

“No,” screams Ciniod on their heels. “My blood, not his.”

A rowdy crowd gathers at the far field where grass gives way to muddy earth. They surround Skipio and his prisoner, and he asks them what he should do with the mighty Owl King. The ideas fly, many violent enough to give a decent man pause.

Skipio plants his sword in the mud and confronts the morose druid. “Rome demands your life, Owl King,” he says in Greek.

“You know my birth name, Skippy-oh,” Aedan taunts. “Say it!”

Ciniod falls to her knees beside her son.

“Why do you bait him?” she demands.

“His violence,” says Aedan, “it delights my soul.”

“What did he say?” Skipio asks Castor, whose upper lip rises in disgust.

“He dares not translate, my friend,” Planus interjects. “Fuel is the last thing your lust needs.”

Aedan watches the virile Roman strip off his armor.

“Curse me,” Ciniod hisses. “You’re in love with this fucker,”

Aedan turns to her. “Love. Is this what love feels like?”

“Oh, my boy, I never thought you capable.” His mother softens, and the corners of her mouth lift. “Is this really what you want?”

Aedan nods slowly.

“He’s going to kill you,” she warns him. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Someday.” His crooked smirk comforts her. “But not today,”

Skipio kneels and cuffs the Owl by the back of his neck.

“Enough talking, A-dawn,” he growls in Greek. “It’s time for my cock to poke that throat.”

Aedan lewdly opens his mouth and pushes out his tongue.

“Oh, I should’ve known.” Ciniod swings her head as the crowd laughs. “Should have known you’d kill me one way or another with that narrow ass of yours,”

Joy sparks in Aedan’s eyes, the first she’s seen of it since he became a man. He wrenches free of the Roman and embraces her. Her mind returns to their first walk on the beach when his toddling delight meant more to her than life itself.

Ciniod undoes her sinew belt.

“He’s yours,” she shouts, taking the Roman’s arm and looping the cord around it and her son’s. “For better or worse, more times worse, I reckon.”

Laughter erupts from Roman watchers versed in her language.

“Skipio’s a married man now,” Planus exclaims, inciting the crowd again.

“I’ve never been able to deny you, you little shit,” she says, her son’s head rising. “Get on with it. I’d rather you do it than them.”

Without warning, Aedan’s narrow blade drags across her neck.

The crowd retreats a pace, collectively gasping as Aedan puts a hand on his mother’s seeping wound and lays her down slowly. Then, he flicks a handful of blood at the Roman.

Skipio’s eyes sting from the red, forcing him back as Castor jumps into the fray, his dagger out.

“You’ll pay for killing Drusus,” he snarls, until a swift backflip strikes him in the jaw, sending a tooth skyward.

The mob cheers, their gaiety becoming a roar when Skipio tosses an unconscious Castor at them.

The druid rips off his smock, revealing a pale chest. With his smile bent, he yanks the waistband of his tartan britches up to his navel and begins cartwheeling around the circle. The soldiers move back as he cycles past them, widening the arena for their Tribune. No one dares touch the acrobatic man, while his opponent, brawny arms folded, watches with steely calm.

Aedan’s wheel comes undone as he liberates a sword from an unsuspecting infantry soldier and tosses it at the Roman bastard’s feet. Another flip vaults him backward over a horse, his feet striking its rider so Aedan can swipe his lance.

Skipio takes his sword in hand, then collects the other given to him by the druid. He stands sure as the bony Aedan prances toward him, spear twirling in a dexterous hand.

“You want to poke my throat?” Aedan taunts in Greek. “You got to fight for the privilege.”

Overcome with joy, Skipio begins their dance with a thrust. Aedan hops back as the Roman drives forward, and soon they coast across the circle, exchanging deft swings, quick dodges, and cunning stabs.

The mob collectively inhales when the Owl sunders a sword from their Tribune, but as the nimble man vaults into the air, their leader catches an ankle and hammers him to the ground. A spry leg sweeps their Tribune behind his knees, but he crab-walks to a fallen sword before recovering his feet.

Skipio races down the backflipping druid, both blades swinging like whirlwinds. His body burns like a struck flint as Minerva guides his eyes through the druid’s acrobatics. He tosses aside a sword and reaches for that bulbous ankle.

The agile Aedan finds himself caught, but before the Roman slaps him to the ground, Aedan wraps himself around him like a serpent, striking his taut backside with the spear’s shaft.

Skipio growls from the sting and lobs the druid skyward, but as he comes back down, he twists around and tosses the lance.

Aedan sticks the landing, but a slight miscalculation buries the spear’s iron tip between Skipio’s feet. Without a second to spare, he punches the man in his gorgeous mouth. Skipio swings his sword, slicing the belt around the druid’s trousers.

Another backflip allows Aedan to quickly shed his britches, sending them into Skipio’s face. Clearing the tartan from his eyes, Skipio finds the scrawny druid struggling to free the spear from the ground.

A sword splits the lance’s hilt, sending Aedan over the Roman’s head. Before the Lion can turn, Aedan lands a kick to his spine. Skipio swings his sword back at the pain, his elbow finding purchase with Aedan’s face.

The lithe bastard lands belly first onto the mud, regaining his senses as a kill shot reveals itself. Skipio marches toward him, sword raised with murderous intent, until the druid rises to his hands and knees. ♡ Small white buttocks crown a hairless bridge to a clean-shaven ball sack. Hanging flaccid, between those narrow legs, is that deliciously large manhood. ♡

Venus whispers that any man can fuck a face, but Skipio Servius isn’t just any man.

Aedan shakes the blow from his head, but before he finds his feet, a muscular body falls upon him like a weighted net.

“Bring me some oil,” Skipio cries, and the mob cheers.

Titus orders his archers to disperse, but most ignore him as their Tribune stands and lifts the flailing druid by his neck. The skeletal Celt’s limbs flit about like a rabbit held at the ears, his girthy arousal bobbing for all to see.

Skipio forces the druid to his knees and, crouching behind him, presses his scarred chest to Aedan’s face.

“Are my wounds hot?” he growls in Greek. “They burn me every day, A-dawn,”

Teeth cut into Skipio’s pectoral, an agonizing reward for his cruelty. He bounces the druid’s head off his knee, clutching those black curls to keep his prize from falling to the mud.

Aedan cannot contain his desire, so many blows coupled with the taste of blood. A strong hand grips his arousal, jerking it violently as hot breath invades his ear.

Titus sounds the horn, forcing most to disperse while Planus and Actus watch the druid lustily arch his back and wantonly cry out. Suddenly, the druid’s cock empties its heat over Skipio’s fingers.

The Roman shoves him away as if poisoned, but Aedan picks himself up, turns on his knees, and yanks aside the man’s tunic. Eyes wet with desire, the druid undoes the hip-knot of Skipio’s loincloth and takes his length into his bloody mouth.

A talented tongue cracks every nerve Skipio possesses, and those long fingers work his foreskin with a whore’s masterful skill. Aedan takes the Roman’s monstrous flesh to the hairs, choking and bringing up enough thickness to fill his hand. He slathers it onto his crack before turning and presenting his hole like a bitch in heat.

Coarse desire vents like a volcano.

Skipio snakes an arm around the druid’s knobby hips and guides his cockhead into the man’s darkened crack. Driven one last time to resist, the druid kicks back, striking Skipio’s corded groin with his heel. Aedan flips onto his back, eager for the fist that comes for his mouth. One strike follows another until his senses join the clouds.

Blood masks the giddy druid’s face, the most alluring thing Skipio’s witnessed in all his many violent couplings. He rolls the punch-drunk druid onto his stomach and hooks an arm under his waist. One shove takes him in, the druid’s tightness pinching his foreskin. Aedan bears down, his insides swallowing the Roman’s flesh as he lets out a contented wail.

Skipio’s soul croons with the druid, his dream to be buried deep within his flesh until the world ends and the heavens fade. Lost in their violent tryst, the Lion and the Owl trade vile grunts and cling to one another like rutting animals.

Those watching silent as deadly enemies rut like crazed animals. This isn’t justice or retribution. It is an open door to a brothel room that makes many leave in disgust. Others follow them, uncertainty masking their mugs. Actus joins the exodus, undone by the sordid scene before him.

Skipio’s heart melts as the druid’s cock spits without a coaxing hand. His desires crest stronger than they ever have before, and he empties himself in the druid with a guttural cry.

Aedan presses his face and his belly into the mud, content for the first time in his short, miserable life.

Skipio sits in the mud, arms resting on his raised knees. Pearly juice drips from the druid’s ashy cleave, a vision that satisfies Skipio more than it should.

Castor falls beside him. “What are you doing?” He shoves the dagger at him. “Kill him, Skipio, and be done with it!”

Aedan lazily flops onto his back.

“My lion,” he murmurs in Greek, long fingers scratching into the mud. “You’re as fierce as the day you came out of the reeds.”

“Am I fierce?” whispers Skipio.

“The fiercest thing alive,” says the druid, baring his crimson-stained teeth. “And you’re mine,”

The Roman ponders cutting his heart out and feeding it to the druid.

“If you ever cared for me,” Castor’s wailing cuts through the fever dream. “You’ll send him to the underworld,”

Luna appears beside them. She folds her front legs and lays her long muzzle across the druid’s neck. “Looir,” the druid whispers, arm crooking over her mane.

Skipio pitches the dagger away as Castor sobs beside him.

“Oh, Venus,” Planus whispers as he walks away from it all. “You conspire with Mars to test and bless our dear Skipio.”