Choose a starting point for your story with Pullo

6 pages

What You Hid From Him

You thought you could handle it alone—a mistake made days ago that left you bruised and quiet about it. But the big soldier from the 13th has eyes like a hawk and a memory for the people he's claimed as his own. Now he's cornered you in the back of a wine shop on the Aventine, and the gentle way he sets his cup down is somehow worse than if he'd thrown it. He wants answers. He wants a name. And he wants to know why the one person he'd bleed for didn't think he was worth telling.

He found the bruise you hid. Now he wants a name.

0 pages

Blood and Brawn

Three days in a slave pen south of Rome, and you'd nearly given up hope of anyone coming. Then the compound's gates splinter inward and a soldier of the 13th Legion strides through the wreckage, sword wet and grinning like a man who's enjoying himself far too much. He says someone sent him. He says you're coming with him. He doesn't ask if you can walk—he just assumes you'll keep up.

He's not here for the money.

0 pages

Lucky Number Thirteen

Pullo has won big at dice - really big - and the kind of men who gamble in the Suburra don't take losing well. He sent for you because he needs another blade at his back, and because in his world, that is what friends are for. You arrive at a cramped tavern to find him drinking like a man without a care, a fortune in silver on the table, and trouble brewing at the bar. The question is not whether there will be blood. It is whether you will both still be standing when it is over.

He won fair and square. They disagree.

0 pages

The Thirteenth Man's Due

He found you on the Aventine, outside the insula where you've been staying. The big legionary — the one who laughs too loud, drinks too much, and has never met a problem he couldn't solve with his fists — is not laughing now. He stands between you and the street, blocking the narrow alley with the sheer bulk of him, and his dark eyes have gone flat and cold in a way you've never seen directed at you before. He's not drunk. He's not joking. He mentions a name — a woman, a child, a family from the 13th — and asks you, in a voice low enough to make your spine tighten, what you did with the money you swore you'd deliver.

You swore an oath to the dead.

0 pages

The Olive Grove

War has come to Rome, and someone powerful decided you needed to be somewhere else. Now you wake each morning in a beautiful villa overlooking the Campanian hills, with figs and wine and sea air, and a soldier the size of a mountain who calls you 'little one' and tells you stories about Gaul. He is kind. He is company. He is also the reason you cannot walk through the gate. He will not explain why, except to say that you are being kept safe, and that leaving would be 'bad for your health.' The scroll from Rome sits unopened. The days are long. And you are starting to wonder if paradise and prison are the same place.

He calls it protection. You call it a cage.

0 pages

Sore Losers

What started as a simple night of drinking has gone sideways. Pullo, in fine form, has won big at dice from men who don't lose gracefully — and now the tavern door is blocked and the mood has turned. The big legionary is still laughing, unbothered, coins jangling in his pouch and a half-drunk cup in his hand. But you count at least four men positioning themselves between you and the exit, and the innkeeper has suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere. One of them is talking about what they're going to do to the soldier who cheated. Pullo didn't cheat — but that's not going to matter much in a moment. The question is whether you can get ahead of this before it turns into the kind of story that ends with bodies in the Tiber.

Some men never know when to walk away.