Mark Paren
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Everything posted by Mark Paren
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Could be a misunderstanding.
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The order came down plain and unglamorous, the kind of duty nobody in the officers' mess had troubled to compete for: a detail to escort a grain shortfall and a wagon of replacement harnesses south along the river road to Asciburgium, gone two days if the weather held, three if it didn't. Gnaeus took the command with the particular sourness of a man who understood exactly how small an honor he'd been handed, and made no effort to hide it from the men assembling in the grey half light before the
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Rome had a few hundred dominant years left, but it’s not the case for all civilizations.
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The might that was Rome until it wasn’t. Thanks for commenting.
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Thanks, I appreciate your support.
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I was hoping the harness scene with Marcus and the two boys was enough of a reprieve. There will be more calm scenes interlaced with the tension.
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Marcus found Titus and Decimus crouched together outside the stable block, a wooden bowl of polish between them and the better part of Lucius’s cavalry harness spread across a cloth like the pieces of some disassembled puzzle, and stopped a moment just to watch before either of them noticed him. “You have to go in circles, small ones, or it streaks.” Titus held up his own strip of bronze, turning it proudly to catch the light, entirely absorbed in his own expertise. “I’ve been polishing Mas
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You’ve cut to the core of it. Will they choose loyalty to their people or to each other or in the end, will they have a choice? Thank you for the comment.
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I had many of the same questions. Not much is known about the level of same sex tolerance of the first century Germanic tribes. It gave me some leeway. Thank you for the comment..
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“Oooofff...Has Ingomar been cast as a man with no country because of who he loves...Can there ever be a future for him in his homeland? Is there the promise of a possible future standing with Rome and with Marcus?” I could tell you, but it might spoil the fun 😉. Thanks for commenting.
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Thanks. An acknowledgment like yours means a lot to me.
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A rider found him at the practice yard three mornings after the supper at Lucius’s table, a kinsman of his father’s sent hard on a lathered horse: the assembly had been called, and both Ingomar and his cousin were wanted home for it before the moon turned. Ingomar made him repeat it twice, standing in the mud with his own sweat still cooling on him, and felt something in his chest go still and careful in a way he recognized from childhood, the particular quiet that came before a thing he could n
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Vetera had not changed in their absence, though Marcus found himself changed enough that it took him the better part of a day to recognize the camp as the same place he’d left. The same mud, the same drums marking the watches, the same smoke rising thin over the same rows of tents. He moved through it now the way a man moves through a room he has outgrown without meaning to, familiar and slightly too small at once. Training resumed the next morning as though it had never paused. Gnaeus gree
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Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to know that my story resonates with readers in the way I intended.
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I can tell the history hasn’t been lost on you. You’ve picked up exactly the tensions I hoped would surface. I’ve kept faith with the true story for the most part, though I’ve bent it slightly here and there, the way a story sometimes insists you must.
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Loyalties will be tested.
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They did not speak of leaving until it was already happening, the horses saddled and the fire's ash scattered before either of them found words for it. Marcus looked back once, at the grove's dark canopy closing over the path behind them, and felt something in his chest tighten around the leaving the way a hand tightens around something it isn't ready to set down. He did not say so. He suspected he did not need to. Ingomar rode a while in a silence that felt different from his usual unhurri
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What a wonderful quote! I must admit that I was unaware of it, but yes, the poem is very fitting for this point in the story. Thank you, you’ve triggered an exploration of Walter Scott.
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Thanks, this will probably be the shortest chapter of the story.
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The gold had gone out of the light by the time either of them moved, sliding first to amber and then, by degrees too gradual to mark, to the deep blue-gray that meant the grove was closing itself for the night. Marcus felt it more than he saw it, a coolness settling into the air where the warmth had lain against his shoulder a moment before, and understood, with a small reluctance, that stillness could not be asked to last forever, however much he might have wished it. "We should have a fir
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You’re reading it perfectly. One more contemplative chapter and things start happening.
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Slow burn, but the fire is catching.
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The gates of Vetera fell behind them a little after dawn, the fortress's noise thinning by degrees into birdsong and the steady rhythm of hooves on packed earth, until Marcus, glancing back once at the wooden walls receding into the morning haze, found he could no longer distinguish the shouted orders of the training yard from the ordinary business of any distant, indifferent world. "You look like a man leaving somewhere he's not certain he's allowed to leave," Ingomar observed, riding easi
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Petronus is an ass and Marcus is alone and vulnerable.
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Marcus is a typical horny sixteen year old with an impressive older man offering him attention. He's only human. We’ve all been there.
