Late Afternoon, I.

The Sun. It baked him alive as he tried to open his eyes. Not that it made much difference, but his misplaced helmet that made it halfway into his face provided shade for him to be able to see the sky. He was laying on the sand and was beginning to feel sharp tinglings all over his body. “Something must have gone wrong, and I am probably wounded”, he thought to himself, but his mind was busy with finding an answer to a more pressing question: Where the hell was he? Not something he was feeling pleased to think about, no; but he pondered over the question regardless. As he reflexively reached around his neck and felt a necklace chain, silverwork he remembered, he started caressing it as he tried to make some sense of his lack of awareness.

Early Morning, I.

Everything was going according to plan, well, almost everything. It was a nuisance to witness how swiftly the profligates were able to maneuver on their horses, Parthians, they called themselves and they apparently were proud of their cavalry; perhaps even too proud. But this was to change nothing, not going to stop Marcus, the true first of the Triumvirate and the richest man of all Rome. He decided to save the last bite of his bread for later and stood up to get out of his tent to foresee the final preparations for their decisive march. As he moved the crimson curtain aside, one of his housecarls gave an exceptionally proud grin to him as he stood ready.

Although Marcus frequently forgot this staunch guy’s name, he never failed to reward him properly, intangibly too, as he knew how good of a fighter he was and how dedicated he was to the Roman ideals. As Marcus bowed his head gently to acknowledge the man’s pride, his eyes caught a glimpse of a particularly bright chain of the necklace he was wearing. Although the martial discipline forbade footmen from wearing anything but their standard garbs and armor, Marcus personally made an exception in his case. Owing mostly to the other member of the Triumvirate who gave the necklace to him, Gaius Julius himself, saying something along the lines of: “May (this) fit you well in life and death!”. When someone receives something with this strong of a message, from a formidable man as Julius himself, one ought to be able to wear it wherever; in life, and death.

Plus, the fact that he was much more down-to-earth and has a lot less to do with grandiosity than Julius, the shape of the necklace was yet another reason why Marcus had the man exempted to wear a necklace under his uniform. “Who would want to carry the likeness of a grim torture device around?” was the first thought he had when he saw the necklace. Something to do with “a New Order”, he recalled Julius boasting about but could not remember the details. Marcus was never the man to contemplate that sort of thought, his practicality prevented him from doing so. Neither was he religious enough to sense a subtle heresy that he wanted no part in to begin with.