In Victrix – Assaph Mehr

If you’ve called Felix, I’ll render any help I can, just to be in on this.” “If you want to catch the boni with their pants down, shame them publicly, I think your position as a tribune is uniquely suited to aid us,” I said. Hippolyta put a hand on Aurelia’s shoulder. “You said trust Felix. And if the tribune can get N’gala back, isn’t it worth his favour?” Aurelia nodded slowly. I provided Clodius with a succinct precis. “I was brought in on another matter but, since then, things have escalated.

Hippolyta’s daughter had been taken, presumably to put pressure on Aurelia. What the kidnappers didn’t know, is that Aurelia had manumitted both Hippolyta and her daughter, and now they find themselves holding a freed citizen, technically a plebeian in danger. As for the men responsible, we know for fact it’s Titus Betucius Barrus.

Just this morning, we saw The Elephant with the child, dragging her away when we tried to rescue her from where she was kept. And Betucius is a henchmen of Titus Annius —” “— Milo,” Clodius said with me. His eyes lit up and he grinned mischievously. “Yes, we’ve run into each other before. It will be an absolute pleasure to assist you. Do you know where they’ve taken her?” “Milo’s house. I used an incantation to locate her earlier today, but we couldn’t rescue her. Betucius escaped with the girl, and we followed them to Milo’s doorstep.

We left a watchman to ensure they don’t move her. It’s an impasse at the moment. He knows we’ve seen her alive and taken to his house, but we cannot press him publicly without evidence lest he rush to kill the girl and dispose of her body. We must act quickly, and our problem is his guards. This morning it was Betucius and a few of his muscled goons.

Copyright (c) Assaph Mehr 2024 If you downloaded this book without purchase from a pirating site, please read it with the author’s compliments. If you enjoy it, please consider purchasing a legal copy to support the author in writing further books. Please also leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads – it helps! All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanic, by photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Explicitly, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. Purple Toga does not accept any story or artwork generated using AI systems. This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental — with the notable exception of a few long-dead Greek and Roman artists and philosophers.

Book cover design and layout by, Ellie Bockert Augsburger of Creative Digital Studios. www.CreativeDigitalStudios.com Cover design features: Blue Cloaked Figure in Empty Desert By rolffimages / Adobe Stock Roman Colosseum Lights at Sunset By davidsonlentz / Adobe Stock Published by Purple Toga Publications, Tasmania, Australia. ISBN 978-0-9944493-7-5 2nd printing OceanofPDF.com To all the women in my life: Much love and admiration for all you had to go through. OceanofPDF.com INTRODUCTION By Harry Turtledove, Historian and SF&F’s Grandmaster of Alternate History What I most enjoy about In Victrix is that Assaph Mehr’s Egretia is Rome as the Romans themselves imagined it to be.

Magic really works. Curses curse, love philtres create love, oracles do predict the future, and on and on. The genuine Romans enacted laws against magic not because they thought it was a fraud but because they thought it wasn’t, and feared what it would do if widely practiced. Even early Christians didn’t oppose magic because it was ineffective, but because it was, in their view, impious.

You will also learn a lot about how many obscure, little-known aspects of Roman society. You’ll pick up some handy Latin profanities and obscenities, for sure. If, just to give one example, you’re confused about the distinction between irrumatio and fellatio, you won’t be once you get through the book. You’ll also soak up quite a bit about the Romans’ language in general. Mark Twain famously said he would sooner decline two beers than one German adjective, and the sentiment applies all the more to Latin, which has more cases, each with its own particular endings.

Assaph navigates all this with grace and ease.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 5ab88d33e025501e
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 5,854,476 bytes (5.583 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780994449375
• Pages: 340
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 592.9 minutes
• Total Words: 118,580
• Total Characters: 666,886
• Average Words per Page: 348.76
• Average Characters per Page: 1961.43

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