Title: Tidewrack, Chapter 1
Pairing: Esca/Marcus
Length: 5.7k
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mention of stillbirth
eagle_rbb prompt: Movie verse; canon era; AU - On the way to Britain, Marcus's boat sinks; meanwhile Marcus is the sole survivor and is rescued/captured by Esca and his clan.
Art: by
bassinoA/N: Many apologies. I'd meant to post this complete as I've never missed a deadline before but due to circumstances outside my control, I've had to settle on posting chapters daily till it's done. Many, many thanks to
bassino for all the beautiful art that inspired this, along with encouraging notes ♥
“There.”
“Naw. I'm telling you, leave it be.”
“I don't know. Esca . . . ?”
“Spirit's gone. No sense in tending to it now. It's soon to rot, nothing more.”
“I swear it. It moved.” Brice poked again at the sodden lump at their feet with the butt of his spear. “There, you see? It lives, I'm certain.”
The others stared dubiously at Brice, then at Esca before looking back at the body. They'd been gazing down at the unmoving figure long enough that the cold was starting to bite through Esca's tunic now they were no longer moving and the wind had picked up, winter not long off and the edges of last night's storm remaining. Foolish to come out all this way without his cloak, but the work of the hunt had kept him warm up till now. He raised his fingers to his mouth to heat them with his breath, his knuckles tired and stiff with inaction, and jerked his head towards the body on the ground.
“You go look closer, then, if you're certain.”
“Naw. Ceane, you go.”
“I will not. Aldwen?”
“Why me if not you? Touch him with your own fingers, not mine.”
“I'll poke at him again. You'll see. All of you, watch close.”
“He must've been borne on the storm surge.”
Lieven's talent for speaking aloud that which was clear to everyone with two eyes had been with him since childhood. Esca dampened down the want to explain to Lieven that they'd all heard the storm, and they'd all calmed the horses and goats all through the night, and they'd all heard the children wailing as the women had raced to soothe them, and heard the drenched reeds of the roof rattling and whistling as each one fought to tear itself from its bond and throw itself into the rages above, leaving behind no shelter for those beneath . . . instead Esca followed his father's tolerance of the simpleton and smiled, as patient as he could be, placing a hand on Lieven's shoulder and squeezing in encouragement.
“I think you're right, Li'. Must'v e been a big wave bringing him this far up into the mouth.”
“But why don't we touch him?” Lieven's answering proud smile crumpled after a second, suddenly unsure of itself. “I remember that he's with the Mother and is no longer a man, like how the awd man teaches, but still we can't check his clothes for Roman gold? That dinnit make sense to me.”
“We're unsure if he's truly dead or in an unnatural sleep.” The dank pallor of the figure's flesh said to Esca it had to be the first. “If he's with the Mother, we don't want his death on us without that which he should've carried with him, if he'd been one of ours. He's not, but it makes sense to go careful with anything to do with the nether worlds. The awd man says you can never be certain with matters of death. But, if he's sleeping due to sickness or sorcery, well, I don't want to take the touch of that home with us. You understand? Either way, he could be a danger we'd do right not to mess with.”
“You think he's cursed?”
Li's eyes grew round, his soft, damp mouth increasingly fretful as the others also traded worried looks, Brice poking at the body with a little more care as Esca chewed at the end of a strand of hair in thought and wondered how best to move away from this. The night wasn't far off and would be wound tight around them as it was before they'd made it home, so far with nothing to show for the hunt. Everything went to ground after a storm like last night's. He should have heeded the omen. He should have recognised it right from their first, useless chase. They were still waiting for his word, so Esca looked around at his small group, finding them all staring at him.
“The coast tribes feel more than most how hungry the sea is and how hard Barin's appetites are to fill. Right?”
“Aye.”
“I dinnit know much about that . . .”
“If he spits you out alone on the wave of his brother's storm as he feasts on them you've sailed with, doesn't look good for you, does it? We should leave this one be. The Mother will take care of his bones. He's in her hands now.”
“But if he still lives . . .”
Esca's nerves twisted themselves tighter as exhaustion began to leech the colours from the skies above, his eyes and mind foggy with frustration. He'd always been hot-headed, but was better now at keeping his passions held tight since he'd become a true man, equal to any. Most days, though, not all. Some days his patience would desert him as it did now, and his arm ached to rise up, smacking Brice around the head with the nub of his staff.
“Will you leave it be?”
“But I dinnit -”
“Artio's tits, Brice, if you've that sure and that concerned we're doing wrong by a living creature, quit your poking and go check him closer, else let it be.” Brice pulled his spear back, shifting from foot to foot as Esca stared him down. “No? Any of you? Good. Let's get back up the hill, then, or we're falling down it and breaking our bones by nightfall.”
They were only a few footsteps away when the thing on the ground groaned. One by one they all paused in their steps and turned back to look at the figure, Esca's annoyance ramping up further as Brice started turning in circles with excitement at being in the right, looking from face to face and pointing with all his might.
“You see? I said it, that he lives. You all heard.”
“Might be best we let him alone as it is.” Esca was the only one of them who hadn't started the short walk back to look.
“But we can't leave him here to breathe his last . . .” Aldwen's words dribbled and quit as Esca focused in his direction.
“So he lives, so what? If we take him, others might come to find him. You want to explain to my father why we have Roman dogs barking at our doors? 'Cause that's what'll happen, and it won't be me telling him the how and the why of it. They sniff out their own sure as pigs find muck.”
“He's only a man. Before he was a Roman, he was a man first. A babby, but a man, not a Roman.” Lieven was maybe the only one who could make Esca pause. How innocent his question was, how it considered nothing of safety or war, only blood and bones and breath, and what was beneath, and the beating of a heart. “I'm not wrong, am I?”
They were all looking at him again, waiting for him to choose what was right, Esca knew it. He breathed out his nose, feeling the winds tangling his hair and chasing shivers down his spine, a whisper of words around his ears. The first thing he'd seen this morning as he'd gone outside to get away from the morning fire's smoke was something he'd never forget, a rope of horror tying knots into his gut as he'd watched the dying storm gusts blow a great, battle-scarred bird out of its chase. An eagle flying backwards was never going to be an omen of a successful hunt, its skylark escaping into a low-lying cloud. It had been clear as rain pooling in his cupped hand. The Mother had spoken to him and, in his eagerness to lead, Esca hadn't listened.
Think you're worthy? We'll see, Mac Cunoval. Show me yourself.
Esca forced himself to look at the figure lying there on the ground, its skin damp and tinged with blue, lips lined in grey, slack as if breath no longer passed between them. The abrupt, unnatural line of how the dark hair had been cut above the closed eyes was unmistakably in the fashion of those who would see Esca and his family in chains, those who'd herded them like beasts, cutting them off from their brothers of the north, and disrupting trading chains with their monstrous camps. Esca knew what his own brothers would do, knew it with absolute certainty, but what his father's advice would be remained a blank inside his mind. Whatever it was would be the right thing. Esca might have three times the wisdom of most of his kin but, no matter the years that passed or whoever dared throw a challenge at his feet, his father bettered any man known.
“You're not wrong, but we'll have to get him up the hill to the horses yet, and night's almost on us. That's too much, there's no time.”
“I'll carry him, on my back. I can. I'm strong, Esca. I can do it.”
“No, Li', you will not, not alone. He's almost as big as you from the looks of it.”
They watched him still, waiting for Esca's word as his father's son. The clouds were drawing in, heavy and angry, bruised by the storm and promising another before the night was out, and Esca knew that he couldn't leave a man to the wilds and the winds, drowning in stinging rains, or a death alone, unfought and unwitnessed. Not even his enemy, not without it weighing on him. A death like that would hang on him and taint everything. The man on the ground moaned again, a ragged sound barely raising above Esca's own breath, pitiful and full of sickness. To help him was the wrong thing to do, Esca felt it in every part of him. He feared he was going to do it anyhow.
“Alright, alright. I give in. We'll take him back, see if the awd man can't bring the spirit back to him. Don't see it doing us a spit of good.”
One by one, the lads slapped Esca on the shoulder and back, pleased he hadn't allowed a man to die out here, alone, away from the warmth of the fire and the comfort of song. Their approval didn't lift his mood any. The half-circle of them stood around the body again, their faces turned downwards to watch as Esca edged closer, using his foot to push at the man's shoulder to turn him over onto his back. Eyes flickered open, the whites of them rolled upwards, closing again as a grunt left the man's soaked chest, the sleek, dark head raising up for a moment as if he meant to wake before it fell back to the ground once more. Dead, finally. Maybe? Would the Mother blame him if Esca prayed it were so?
“Here.” He tugged at the strapping he'd tucked into his belt back home, nodding at Brice and Aldwen to get moving. “We should fasten his wrists if he means to wake on us. His feet, too.”
“Aye. I'll take his ankles.”
“I'll fetch off with Li' to cut some withies.”
“Fast as you can.”
Esca worked neatly as he could with hands close to numb, fingers slipping on the man's skin, wet with rain and the salt dregs of the sea. It was good the others understood Esca so easily, that he meant to tie the man and lift him on a frame, as they would have had their stalking had been successful in taking home the stag they'd been tracking half the day. But this not-dead man, this Roman, was near as solid as a stag, broad and strong, the weight of him a worry in more ways than the fact of carrying him the distance back.
This was no piece of salt-worn driftwood, no broken oar or strange shield, no looping strand of kelp longer than three men lying head to foot like those things sometimes puked up by a skittish sea. This was a strange seed carried here from distant lands, ready to bury itself in the soils of Esca's home and grow into something that could poison them all. So he tied his knots tighter, the pale skin beneath marked in white, as bloodless as dried bone.
-
“He lives. He'll continue to live, longer than you or I, I dare say. If you allow it.”
“Is there pestilence or pox about him? Roman witchery?”
“Naw.” The awd man shook his head, wiping some stinking balm off his hands, the scent stinging Esca's eyes. “No witchery, not on this one. He has the salt sickness, nothing much more. There's the one nasty wound, a few scratches here and there. Dare say he deserves every one of them, and it won't take a big Roman bastard like him long to wake from it all.”
Not now your whelp brought him to the comfort and care of our hearthstone, he won't. Esca could hear the accusation within every word out of the awd man's mouth, his father nodding and stroking over his beard like he always did when thinking on something long and deep.
“We cannit keep him here much longer than it'll take to scout a trading wagon to sell him on to. Sooner he's on his feet and looking worth someone else's food, the better. Do what you can to hurry it along.”
“There's something else . . . he had this tucked in his tunic.” The awd man tossed something that Esca's father caught with one hand, Esca craning his head up over his father's shoulder to see a roughly-carved wooden stub in his father's hand. Two wings, a head poised, a curving, lethal beak . . . the shadow of his omen passed across Esca's chest once more followed by misgivings skittering across his skin, lifting the hairs on his arms until they stood on end. “He's healthy, not a chieftain but not common born, well-nourished. He carries their idol. Someone will be looking for him.”
“And, as I have said, we'll take him down to Modh soon as he's back standing in those fancy shoes of his.”
“Or you could have your boy here slit his thick throat, much as he should have done -”
“You don't question me, awd man. You weren't there.”
The awd man didn't acknowledge Esca's interruption, continuing on as if Esca hadn't surged forward in indignation, held back by his father's hand against his chest.
“Rather than cradling the head of the snake all the way to lay it at our feet -”
“Enough.” It was as though Esca's father said it as much for Esca as for the awd man.
“And risking our homes . . . Tell me otherwise, and I'll trust your word, sir.”
“What d'you want me to say, hm? I'm listening, Cawrie. He knows he's a brat,” Esca shook off his father's hand as it ruffled his hair, brushing it back out of his eyes as his father carried on speaking like he wasn't there. “But we don't send boys to kill Romans. Not with the choice we ourselves made not many days since.”
“I'm not a boy.”
Esca's words sounded more petulant than he'd meant, and made him more of a boy than either his father's or the awd man's remarks had. He bit his lip, determined to become silent as he seemed to do less damage that way.
“No, son, you're not, but those with you were. I don't know that even I could cut the living seam of a man's throat under the trusting eyes of Lieven Mac Balloch.”
“He's bringing them closer. I don't like it, Cuno.” The awd man wouldn't address Esca's father that way if any other of his father's counsel were here, his black eyes narrowed as they glittered at Esca across the fire and dared him speak again.
“You don't have to. Get the cur on his feet so we can rid ourselves of him and whatever Roman lice he carries on him by the moon's end. Esca's to help you, in whatever manner will speed the days.”
“What? But, wait, I cannit . . . Da? Wait.”
Whatever protests Esca wanted to make would have to wait, his father already up and on his feet, pushing his way out of the awd man's house as Esca scrambled to follow.
“Come walk with me, son. He'll be back at your hand soon, awd man. Continue your works.”
“Aye, I will do. I'll heal the brute. Assisted or no.”
If only his father's footsteps weren't so long. Esca had to hurry to keep up, reaching out to grab his father's elbow and pull him to a halt soon as they were past the kettle fires and out the earshot of the women.
“I cannit be helping the awd man, Da. I've still the hunt now the storm's done with, the rushes won't be finished with yet, Aicright's leg needs tending to as he's still not walking right, and I've got to keep an eye on Kinnon's work till my armour's finished. He'll have me prissied up like a girl in flowers if I don't.”
“Hold your whining, wee one. You brought him here, the Roman snake, just as Cawrie says. You.” His father leaned over to grab a strip of drying goat off a nearby wooden frame, biting a chunk off then offering it to Esca. “And so it's your titty he'll make suck of till he's gone. Seems fair.”
“Does this mean that you are angry with me, and this is my punishment?”
Esca took the meat from his father, picking at it with his fingers more for something to occupy himself with rather than any need to fill his belly. His cheeks burned, the tips of his ears glowing hot as his father gave him a pitying smile around his mouthful.
“No, I was not and am not angry. Surprised with what you brought back, maybe, but not angry. It was your hunt, Esca. Yours alone. You led, the others followed.”
“Aye, sir. I know.” Only respect held him here. It held him firm, carved from stone, as he listened to his father's words and tried not to let his anger build.
“Then you must know the decisions you make must be made neat. You're a man of rank now, a warrior, known by my name. His life was the choice you made in that name, so his care is up to you, nobody else. So this,” The stubby wooden carving was thrust into Esca's hand as the goat was lifted out of it, his father's eyes rather less solemn than the rest of his face as he turned away, already chewing again. “Is yours, as is the rest of him. Get him ready for Modh, fat as a hog, clean behind the ears. You've got -”
“Till the moon turns, aye, I heard. But Da, the awd man? How will it look to everyone, me, your son, cleaning his pots and obeying his every word?”
“It will look as if you are taking your responsibilities as my third son seriously, when before you dinnit have to.” His father took Esca by both shoulders, squaring Esca up to him before looking him directly in the eyes. “You forget all I've taught over your years. A warrior fights with . . . ?”
“. . . With this.” The words and actions came so easily to Esca after so long following his father's example. He laid a hand over his heart.
“With this.” He tapped a finger against his head, making his father nod approvingly.
“What else?”
“With these.” Esca palmed his balls over his trousers before making his final gesture, reaching back to his arse cheek to give it a squeeze. “And with this.”
“That's right. We all get knocked on it, son, once or twice. Your strength grows each time you get back up, bruised and damp. Humbling yourself to help the awd man heal the slave, that you spared, does nothing but prove to all that you're the only true possessor of your will, no matter what others may think of where that will took you. The awd man has his reasons for keeping an eye on you, but he'll respect your work. I swear it.”
Esca wondered what he'd do if his father was ever wrong about something. Maybe the skies themselves would fall. “Domhn and Cathal won't ever let me forget this, me heeding the awd man like some woman or prentice.”
“That's what brothers are for, to remind you of your shortcomings where a doting father might fail.” His father's head lifted as a shout came from across the drifting smoke now the wind had shifted over to beyond the charcoal pits, his attention as sought after as it ever was and ever had been, long as Esca could remember. “Get on, now. Don't let your pride keep you from learning from Cawrie. He's the awd man for a reason, Esca.”
“I know, sir. I do.”
Esca reminded himself of that as the awd man set him about tidying the corner of the house the Roman was in then he reminded himself of it again as he cleaned and bound each of the Roman's wounds one by one, Esca's fingers too clumsy for Cawrie's liking, the awd man tutting and sucking at his lips in disapproval. Every one of the man's unconscious moans and shuddering breaths would chase tension around Esca's body like children dancing around a fire, trying to catch embers before they faded. He ignored them best he could as he stripped the remaining wet cloth from the Roman's skin, each handful a mass of salted wool and linen, the flesh beneath muscled hard, pale with cold. Then again when the awd man had him washing the remaining salt from the sleeping Roman, a woman's work, Esca trying not to soak the bandages as he scrubbed colour back into the skin.
He'd never figured out why the elder watched him as closely as he did. Cawrie had always singled Esca out for comment and criticism where the other young men escaped his notice altogether, but maybe this was his chance to show the old fuck that Esca had more to him than his name alone. He worked until the Roman's body was clean, a healthful pink starting to touch the skin at his chest and hips, cock no longer shrivelled with cold but instead lying plump and soft as a spring catkin over his stomach.
“Leave your mopping, fire needs building up. He's too chilled and it's set his blood to thickening.”
The stench of the grease Cawrie was smearing into the soles of the Roman's big feet was turning Esca's gut. He swallowed the sickness, glad of the chance to get out into the air.
“Shall I fetch more water while I'm at it? Pot's near simmered dry. And you should eat, it's been half a day.”
The awd man shook his bald head without looking at Esca, focused entirely on his task, the beaded braids beside his long, tangled beard swinging with the movement. “I'll eat when he does. You go stuff your stomach, though, if you must.”
“No, I'll wait, if that's what is best.”
“There's no best or worst, Esca Mac Cunoval.” The hands continued, old and gnarled, rubbing the rancid ewe's butter into the sleeping Roman's heels. “There's what will work, and that changes man to man. If it dinnit work, it's nothing. Not bad, not good, nothing but the breath wasted speaking of it.”
“You think I flap my tongue too much? Is that why you don't like me?”
Was that a smile? Difficult to tell, here in the dark as they were, one lamp and the fire lighting their work, the raggedy beard hiding Cawries' lower face. But that might have been a smile. It was Cawrie's first towards him if it was, Esca knew that much.
“You dinnit need me to like you. You need to build up the fire, as I asked, nothing more or less.”
“But what about the water?”
“I'll leave that to you, third son. Use the mind the Mother gave you. Simple enough, no?”
Everything was always a test with Cawrie. That might have been easier to bear, had Esca known what exactly he was being tested for.
-
The sharp inhale caused by waking from a dream set Esca to coughing, too close to the fire as he was, smoke stinging his nose and throat. He rolled away from the heat by practice and instinct, his thoughts lagging behind his waking body with how the stag's corpse had near swallowed him whole, the cage of its ribs cold and solid around him, its heart beating against Esca's cheek with the same rhythm as the beating wings of the crowd of black crows filling the skies, the stink of the stag's guts, the fear that wasn't leaving him . . . Esca lay on his back panting between coughs, letting the nightmare ease out on each breath. A dream. That was all. It was gone.
He opened his eyes to stare up at the crossing rafters above, letting the sounds of sleep wash over him to carry away the last of the dream, the murmurs of the dreams of others washing his spirit clean of any remaining fear. From across the fire, right over close to the door, came the smacking of flesh, Esca recognising his mother's moans and his father's determined grunts as they carried quietly across the crackle of the fire's glow. Esca shifted away, facing the humming fire again and giving his parents their time together without his attention, even if it was them who'd probably woken him in the first place.
Maybe he could burrow back into the dreaming world if he tried again. It felt like a long time from dawn, the deathly moment where little stirred outside but the air and the ghosts of the lost. Esca tilted his face back towards the fire, closer than he'd usually be, tucking his head deeper into his arms as he tried to pull the soft tide of sleep over his head again, a glint of light from across the fire catching his eye before he closed them for good.
It was the Roman dog, his eyes half-open and shining in the fire light, two gilded slits looking at him. No, not a dog, a snake. Esca felt his chest grow tight, the beating of his heart hiccuping then speeding as he examined the Roman's face for signs of struggle or fight. It had been him who'd caused Esca's nightmare, as dragging that half-sleeping body had been like hauling a stag's bloodied carcass, the man's feet stumbling between Esca, Ceane and Lieven as they'd carried him into the great house.
“You're awake? You hear me?”
Esca tried to keep his words low, not wanting to disturb his father, nor those sleeping around him. The Roman's eyes sparkled as they seemed to try to focus more tightly on Esca, although the man's mouth remaining slack and confused as it had been in sleep. The sickness looked like it was still on him, no understanding behind those eyes as the man dropped his head back to the ground and swallowed heavily as if his stomach was turning on him.
“Hey, you. Yes, you,” As the man sleepily opened his eyes again, rolling his head just enough to be able to look at Esca. “So you do hear me. Tested your hands yet? No? Wouldn't bother, neither. They're bound, along with your feet.”
The man's eyes were stuttering open and closed, the tip of his tongue darting out to moisten his cracked lips.
“Ah, you're thirsty. Suppose I better fetch you some water.”
Esca's whisper was followed by a crack from one of the larger logs slowly crumbling into smoldering cinders between them. It caught the man's attention, his throat moving again as he swallowed and frowned into the fire. Then something beyond Esca's shoulder drew the Roman's scrutiny over to where Esca's father was still ploughing the furrow of his mother's fields. The twin knife cuts of the Roman's eyes widened, firelight flickering within, heavy brow coming down like a storm cloud as he frowned and stared, mouth open. Esca reached out around the edge of the fire with his foot and kicked the Roman's ankle hard as he could, shaking his head as the eyes sought out his again.
“That's not for you to watch, you nor any other man. What, you've never seen it before? Romans don't fuck? Or are you borne from beasts, like I've heard?”
The sickness weighed too heavy on the Roman for any answer, his eyes rolling in his head as they closed, throat moving again twice before, with a great heave, the man's body convulsed and puked a surge of watery vomit over his chin, chest and shoulder where he was lying on his side. It soaked the tunic and blanket Esca had wrapped him in along with the woollen pad beneath his body. Esca pushed himself up, crawling around to the Roman in a hurry, his father's ragged cry of triumph reaching his ears as he rolled the man over onto his bound fists. He seemed as lifeless as he'd been at the base of the hill, spat out by the sea. He wasn't breathing, throat blocked as his big body began to quake beneath Esca's hands, neck stretching as muscled and thick as Esca's thigh as his sleek head pushed backwards into the dirt.
He lives or he dies, and you hold him. What would you show me, Esca Mac Cunoval? What is your will?
The words coiled around the smoke in the air as Esca's fingers moved to grab the front of the tunic, turning the Roman onto his side once more as Esca began to hammer on the man's back as he'd seen Cawrie do all those years back. The body he rained blows down on was nothing like the wet scrap the women had pulled from between Esca's mother's legs, a daughter wreathed in heather as pale purple as her skin as his mother had cradled her and wept for a full three days. Would this make the Roman fight for a last breath, just as it had Esca's sister? Would anybody weep over his death if it did not?
The cry of desperation Esca made sounded in his ears like his father's had a moment ago as he straddled the Roman's hips and shook him, a dog with a rat. Why couldn't he let the man die? He should, it was clear. Anger and hurt pinched at Esca's sides as the man's eyes opened hazily, looking up at Esca in perfect calm, no question to them, no heat or sign of sense. They regarded Esca before closing tight as the man lurched and coughed up another mouthful of sickness, splattering Esca's hands and arms with a sour stink. Then the body fell back, breathing this time, mouth open and gasping as the unnatural sleep again overtook.
“Leave him be, son. Let him rest.”
His father's hands guided Esca from where he still sat across the Roman, crushing his tied wrists into the sodden bedding beneath him.
“He needs water, and I should clean up -”
“No, son, he needs to allow his strength to grow. Go get your mother back to sleep, I'll keep an eye on this one for you. The fire masks the stench and the women will clear the mess come morning.”
His father only had a cloak thrown around his lower nakedness against the chill of the air, squatting as he was next to Esca, poking the nose of a new log into the fire as Esca wiped his hands clean on his blanket. The flare from the disturbed cinders lit his father's face up, just a flash, showing how lined the skin around his eyes had become, the lighter streaks in the front of his hair and in the beard at the sides of his mouth.
“You don't need the sleep yourself?”
“Naw, I'm up now. You'll not rest right if your mind's on this one.”
Esca's mother's arm came around his shoulder as he curled up with his back against her warmth, her sleepy mumble curling into his hair with her fingers a mix of love and nothingness. He'd always slept best next to her. Maybe if he had a wife, just as his mother so nagged him, he'd sleep well next to her, held like this against her belly, sharing warmth and breath as their spirits would join to chase the dreams away so they wouldn't come to him anymore.
He opened his eyes one last time, unable to stop himself as he looked, the beating of his heart heavy in his mouth as he stared at the Roman's shoulders, how strong the neck of him was. How his skin had been freckled darker across his shoulders than Esca had seen before, how the hair surrounding his cock had been fine and near black in the dark of Cawrie's small house. How the muscles of the Roman's stomach had clenched in sleep as Esca had washed the salt from his balls and his thighs, and how his balls had lifted, a tight, round pouch, his legs each as long and strong as those of a horse. He should've let him die. Esca had known it, all along, but he'd planted the seed anyhow.