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[center][i]Deos made men brave and strong.
To fight for right and face the wrong.[/i][/center]

It was a silly childhood rhyme, but Hesiod had been repeating the words in his head for the last several days. It had became a prayer, more to his childhood than to Deos. The last few days had him pining for a simpler time.

His father had taught it to him when he was a small child hardly old enough to speak. Hesiod had been born on campaign, twenty years ago in the Serapium. The city had been delivered to the Milatids and he had been granted the "Honor" - he didn't understand it at the time - of living in the palace of the extinct line of the long extinct Copsid God-Kings. The people of the pale desert worshiped animals as gods, bearing no human form. Their statues dotted the ancient palace, visages of the worst gargoyles, bent and wrenching with hideous faces twisted in over-exaggerated grins or grimaces shaped in stone. The laughing antelope God, the horrible roaring Shaglion, scores of laughing monkeys and angry ape-men, they had all haunted him at night. Growing up in that palace, he had known few real dangers, but he had been certain that he was going to be eaten by one of the granite beasts all the same. No amount of nurses or servants could convince him otherwise.

It was his father that had finally calmed his nerves. "You have nothing to fear from animals." he repeated the same tired words that the nurses had said. "Principally not those animals." Hesiod did not remember what else had been said that night. He only remembered his father, the flickering torchlight dancing across lotus-flower columns and walls painted with flat river scenes in the overwhelming darkness. Onesimos Milatus had been a young man then, his hair still a curly black with nothing on his face but a small patch of fuzz underneath his nose. To others he must have looked young - a man who had been a boy when Syros first left the homeland to conquer the earth as was his right. To Hesiod, cowering in the dark, his father had been the closest thing to a God that he knew. 

"Deos sent his daughters to look after us." his father had said, "Do not be afraid, child. Those old gods have no power anymore. You are stronger than the dead."

He had taken those words with him throughout his life. It had marched with him across the known world, defeating the enemies of Syros. When they died on the battlefield, they no longer posed a threat. It wasn't until now that his fathers words had been proven wrong. The death of Syros the Indomitable, Syros the Worldwalker, Syros who wore every crown, had been brought about by two dead men.

Hesiod opened his eyes. The world was a blur of red washed in the last traces of darkness. Around him, in the cold that nipped at his nose and chilled his skin, he could hear the horses and the first early risers stirring. The smell of goat-sausage crackling in makeshift helmet pans and the mutters of soldiers talking in hushed voices surrounded him as he slowly remembered where he was. Two days ago, the morning after Syros died, he had been sent to lead the outriders in their search for the Rhumid raiders that had changed the world.

It was a week ago that Galos, the only grown son of Syros the Always-Marching, led a small party to overtake the raiders that had been harassing their efforts across the salt-desert. The Rhumids were a tribal people, and most of their tribes were friends to the Calydonians, but a few had chosen to defy them instead. They had no hope of every succeeding against the armies that Syros had led against Empires - the Rhumids fought unarmored, with wooden spears and yak-hide shields - and their defiance had been no more than a small annoyance. So it was by poor chance that a Rhumid arrow -some whittled shaft tipped in stone - managed to smite the heir and put in motion the greatest calamity to befall them all. 

Hesiod crawled out of his bedroll and brushed the dust off of his linens. Red dust covered everything in the Rhumi desert. It was a fine powder, carved out of the beaten red cliffs that watched over them. Most of the desert was a series of plateaus and rock formations rising out of the dirt like twisted fingers pointing toward the rusty sky. Ice and snow topped the tallest of them, which the dust turned pink and made them look like icing on top of porous stone pastries. The only way through them was a maze of crags and yak trails, which would have been intraversible if not for their Rhumid guides. In some places, it opened up to small spring-fed valleys or oasis's, where they could find grazing ground for their horses or Rhumid tribesmen to trade with. 

And then there was the salt-desert.

Stretching endlessly to the west, the salt-desert carved through the Rhumid mountains like the bed of a long-dried sea. It was miles of cracked milk-white salty soil with no moisture but the occasional foul puddle of stagnate salt water. In its center, the Rhumid mountains looked like far off mirages so distant that it made a person feel hopeless. Fresh food and water had to be carted in from the pale lands to the south, as did feed for their mounts and a variety of other supplies. Syros had ordered the construction of a road to follow the armies across the Rhumid lands. Their march had slowed down as a result, but the men toiled all the same. Stone by stone went in place all because Syros had ordered it. For the Calydonians, their King commanded total authority, and his proposal to conquer the far west promised them wealth beyond what they had taken so far. Traders from the western sea brought heaps of jade, silk, and silver through the bridged straight that connected them to the civilized world. When Syros had announced his plans to conquer the west, his advisers had suggested he do so by sea. Calydon's power had always been at land, however, and the ships of the west were rumored to be like wooden castles, the biggest dwarfing even cities. The only land route was through the Rhumid mountains, and Syros conquered the logistics with his road.

Thinking about all that had been lost when Syros died made Hesiod feel numb, and the cold Rhumid winds did not help. He wrapped himself in the yak fur riding jacket he had purchased from the Rhumids with peppercorns. Wind whistled mournfully through gaps and pours in the blush rock faces, but they were spared from most of it's chill. The sky was still purple, save for the east where the rising sun colored the horizon like an old bruise - red crowning a sickly yellow. 

Across a smouldering campfire, the Rhumid guide Wkantet was grooming a shaggy beast of a yak. Wkantet had the features of his people - the dark, wind burnt skin that was somewhere between beige and grey, the fine black hair and sparse whiskers, the slight, willowy build and bony features. He looked like he was in his middling years, though the hard lives that the Rhumid's lived made them look worse off for their age. He wore a vibrantly dyed shawl, colored like the rainbow, over simpler yak-hide clothes. 

As gentle as a mother nursing her child, the Rhumid pulled a finger-sized knife from his belt and slit the shin of the Yak. Blood colored the animal's thick fur a wet red. Wkantet placed a small wooden bowl full of dried yogurt and mixed it with the blood. The yak did nothing.

Hesiod wiped the dew from inside his bronze open-face helm, feeling the cold of the porous metal beneath his fingers. "If you do that too many times, you will kill it." he said.

Wkantet did not look away. "The Yak can take this once a day. He knows. We nurture each other, man and beast. In this way we are one against nature." 

It was easy to see that the Rhumids relied on their Yak-herds for life. Fur, skin, milk, blood, meat, transport, the animals provided their livelihoods and they loved them for it. Hesiod had known many a rider who treated their horses with the same affection. The relations where built on necessity. Need, and a respect for what that need meant, was the cornerstone of the strongest relations.

Hesiod picked up the light linen cuirass and buckled it on. It was milk-white, trimmed with copper bone-snakes and a stamped iron disk in the center of the chest portraying a swirling snake skeleton. Linen was a soft fabric when left alone, but once made into armor it became a lacquered shell. They dipped strips of the cloth in resinous glue and placed them across a simple leather frame, twenty two layers thick. With little more than a breastplate and a skirt, he had taken to wearing yak-skin pants so that his legs did not stiffen up from the cold. 

A shout rang out, and Hesiod found himself grabbing for his scabbard lying on the ground. The sound of galloping came from the south, and soon a group of riders rode urgently up to the guards at the edge of the camp. They wore dented bronze half-helms and linen breastplates. A pair of banners fluttered above them. One portrayed a snake skeleton - the bone-snake - against a field of green. The wind whipped at it and concealed the words sewn beneath the snake, but Hesiod knew them. The second banner was white on black - an eight spoked wheel centered by a sunburst. 

Wkantet studied the fluttering banners curiously. The outriders themselves had seen no use in carrying them, and he had only seen them in the hustle of larger encampments.

"Are those symbols under those bones... writing, as you have spoken?" he asked. He kept one bony brown-grey hand on the Yak's fur as if he was reaching out for something familiar. 

"The cry of my ancestor Milatides" Hesiod answered, "[i]We live long enough.[/i]" The real cry had been 'We have lived long enough', and though that was a good thing to shout in battle, it sounded desperate outside of war. Milatides had lived long enough to sire a dynasty, for whatever credence that gave to his words. The bone-snake banner meant that his father had sent the messengers.

"And what of the wheel?" Wkantet asked.

Hesiod hesitated. "That is the wheel of creation." he answered. It was carried more as a prayer than out of any sort of necessity. The carriers were looking for protection from the Goddesses. That was troublesome. The armies of Syros had been in disarray following his death. The question of who was to rule, if anyone, was on everybody's mind. Hidden alliances and unspoken schemes had become the order of the day. Hesiod's father Onesimos had felt it was to send outriders in an attempt to find the Rhumid raiders who had killed Galos so they could be brought to justice. It was something, his father had said, that could bring them back together.

The arrival of the messengers dashed Hesiod's confidence. They looked frightened, and tired. When the camp-guard pointed them to Hesiod, the first rider gave him a look so mournful that it sent a chill riding down his spine.

"General Hesiod." the first rider said as they rode up. Their banners lost the wind and hung down limply as he spoke.

"Captain Hesiod." Hesiod reminded. "What news do you bring?"

"You are needed back." the messenger said, his voice hasteful. "The situation on the salt-flat has worsened. All men are being called back."

"How is my father?" Hesiod asked nervously, "My brother?" 

"You need to see him." the messenger replied tentatively. "Things are heading toward war." 

Hesiod nodded. War. He knew it had became nearly inevitable, but he had hoped - perhaps passed a shadow of a real chance - that they would succeed in coming to terms. Now it was clear that this was not true. The families of Calydonia, who had conquered the world behind Syros the Peacemaker, were going to tear each other apart. 

He looked at the men who had gathered around him and nodded again. The small encampment began to pack up quickly. What didn't go on horseback piled into Wkantet's yak-back packs. Hesiod gave a sharp whistle and waited. Around the corner of a sharp patch of weeping red rock, Titan bounded with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and blood-red slober painting the fur around his muzzle.

Titan was a War Mastiff - the biggest of the large Calydonian breeds of work dogs. The smaller breeds were the size of wolfs, and were found everywhere in the homeland guarding the homes of peasants or herds of goat. The larger breeds fulfilled more specialized roles - guarding important people, hunting, fighting in the pit. None of them could stand against a War Mastiff. Titan was common for his breed - he was as tall as a pony and his limbs were trunks of muscle. He had a brown-red brindle coat that danced in the morning light. Calydonian horses were breed alongside the dogs, and both animals grew used to each other. Foreign horses were frightened of the massive hounds, however. A pack of mastiffs following a Calydonian detachment of horse often meant the difference between victory and defeat. 

Titan fell in step as Hesiod mounted his horse. It was a Copsid breed - a horse breed by the people of the pale desert to move swiftly. The Copsid's preferred mares for this reason. Their horsemen took to battle unarmored and they strafed their enemies with bows and javelins before riding off. Hesiod has gained a healthy respect for them, and he preferred them over the bulky Calydonian war horses.

Wkantet climbed upon his yak as if it were a horse. It was a thick, hairy beast with stumpy legs and a drooping head, but it surprised Hesiod with how fast it could move. The yak could keep up with their horses at a trot, though any faster and it was forced to lag behind. This might have been a disadvantage in the open plains, but the paths that winded through the jagged rusty towers of the Rhumid desert were uneven and rocky. There was no place in the mountains to bring a horse to it's full speed.

Wkantet kept pace on top of his shaggy mount, sacks and pots swaying gently from the poles that straddled the animal's back. He pulled his woven rainbow shawl closer to him as they left the shadow of a wind-breaking rock. His eyes were on Titan, and he kept a distance from the huge mastiff as it ambled contentedly between them.

"Your Big King..." Wkantet said slowly. It sounded like he was unsure how to proceed, because he did not know the words or because he was afraid of offending. "Do you have no way... no tradition of finding another to fill his chair?"

"His throne." Hesiod corrected politely. "Sons are usually favored, unless another family member is preferred by the priesthood. But Syros left behind no family..." 

This wasn't strictly true. Queen Lyca, the mother of Galos, still lingered somewhere. She had retreated to mourn after her husband's death, and Hesiod had heard nothing of here since. Naturally, she was not in the line of succession. Some blamed her for their disarray. Several times throughout her life, she and Syros had announced that she was with child. Only once did the pregnancy produce a living heir. 

"No family?" Wkantet said incredulous. "Pah. No brothers, no uncles?"

"Solon, our King's father, was the only royal survivor of the Pinkblood Plague from a century ago. It killed near half the country, as old men like to tell. Like many in his generation did, Solon feared the end of his line and sired many sons and daughters. Syros had been first child."

"But the brothers and sisters... they do not live?"

Hesiod shook his head soberly. "Peris died earlier in the first conquests, defending his brother. His sister Nora brought her own death at a young age, jilted by some courtier boy who she claimed to love. Mela, his other sister, died of a fever that also took the newborn son Orum. Braddus died... he just died, no reason could be explained, while he was enjoying the company of three camp followers. And the youngest, Mordici, led the royal navy and went missing on patrol during a storm."

Wkantet was silent for a moment. "Such bad luck. Solon must have upset the justice of the earth in terrible ways."

Hesiod said nothing. He knew little about the Rhumid beliefs and kept quite about them. He knew that there were men who hid among the ranks had spied for apostates to report to the priests, and the priesthoods were a complication he had no interest in tangling with.

He began to catch the faint sour scent of the salt-plain. It was getting closer. The image of it - the alabaster expanse, so white that it made the red horizon seem clearer and brighter. It was perfectly flat, save for the foothills that met it in the pink salty dust at the edge of the plain. The thought of that place pained him. It reminded him of the games.

Syros had been seated on a makeshift dais, built from cheap wood pirated off of broken wagons and used barrels. Red silk and purple velvet had been draped haphazardly onto poles in order to protect Syros and his queen from the hateful sun. It did not matter how unfinished it looked - When Syros stepped onto the dais, with his resplendent golden armor decorated with the faces of the Goddesses and draped with fine purple silk, no amount of rotting wood could take away from his magnificence. He had seen sixty eight summers, and he had ruled for fifty of them. Fifty bloody summers. Looking at him, nobody doubted that he had conquered the known world. He was halfway from six feet to seven, with shoulders as broad as a bear and the face of a man made to be King of other men - strong, sculpted, with a fatherly warmth. His hair had turned gray in his old age, but Hesiod could remember when it was still a bushy brown.

The competitions followed one another. There was wrestling and boxing, archery and shot-put, followed by foot races of the two and three legged kind. They lasted for a week - the morning filled with competition, and the evenings given to feasting and drinking. On the final day, a chariot race was held. Syros watched from the dais. Hesiod had no handle of chariots, but Onesimos knew them well. Hesiod had watched proudly as his father took to the race against the other families, big and small. Scylla, the War-Woman, had scandalized the racers when she chose to enter the contest, as did Gregorios the eighty two year old retired royal guard who had chafed under the insults of younger men, and Htet-Wen, a Rhumid who had been eager to learn the ways of the Calydonians. 

For three rounds the race had done been a whirl of excitement. Onesimos had followed directly behind Gregorios, trying to pass the old man to no avail. Scylla held the front of the race, while Htet-Wen had failed to gain any advantage. The rest of the field had been a blur of chariots with the banners of their families blazing behind them. The bone-snake flew in the center, behind Gregorious simple guardsman's shield and in front of a chariot flying a banner of red with the scale of law and sword of war in its center. Scylla's multi-headed monster against blue-gray seemed to be winning.

And then Gregorious died. It had not been obvious at first, but something in the old man's body had given out and his life fled him immediately. In his old age, he had the wisdom of strapping his feet in place, so it was not clear what was happening when he slumped to the side. His horses followed suit - well trained war beasts who would go anywhere until the last minute. They barreled through the crowd, and all of the cheering ceased. People got out of the way, but the frightened animals would have nothing of it. Kicking and dashing, they were wild, and when Syros approached them his immortal words could not quiet them.

"Be still." he said.

A horse responded by kicking him in the head. He fell, and he was trampled.

Soon, they were going downhill and the flat-white of the salt desert could be seen on the distant horizon through the dagger peaks of the red Rhumid mountains. The Milatid camp had been hastily brought up amongst scrub-choked hillocks and broken boulders. Titan bounded ahead, pink dust following his trail. A watchtower had been hastily erected by forcing a pole into the ground and tying a knotted rope to its top. The watcher stood on a simple plank of boards, and he watched Hesiod with sadness in his eyes. Hesiod felt uneasy. He has seen the same look in the eyes of the messengers who came to retrieve him.

The scene Hesiod arrived to was not what he expected. A host of hoplites, some battered and bloodied, gathered mournfully around a funeral pyre. The oil-slicked wood had been raised on stilts, providing a bed for the corpse to lay. Green banners flailed in the angry wind, twisting the thin-ribbed bonesnake noisily in the air above. They looked at Hesiod with their heads bowed down. For some, it looked like prayer, while others looked as if they were ashamed. 

Hesiod understood immediately. His heart hit him with waves - first sorrow, then fear, then hate. The feelings mixed within his mind, a swirl of anxiety, and he leapt off his horse and dashed toward the pyre. His hands pulled him up the ladder with wartime energy, thrusting to the top.

Onesimos, Patriarch of the Milatids and father to Hesiod, had died grievously. He still wore the soiled green tunic he had been murdered in, the cloth around his stomach blackened with thick crusty blood. His body had turned pale, but faint hints of deadly bruised pools still lingered on his flesh. Hesiod pulled his father's corpse to him, letting the cool congealing blood oozing from his fatal wounds stain his pure-white armor. Tears burned like salt on his eyes. He was an orphan now, the child of two dead parents. His thoughts turned to his brother, who was no doubt unfeelingly staring at his books, counting every turnip and pinching every coin. It was no fault that he had no feelings, but in a moment like this it hurt Hesiod to think how little his brother cared about anything.

"Who did this?!?" Hesiod shouted, his voice hoarse.

"The other Patriarchs killed him. They are accusing everyone who was in that race. Scylla fled. You're father..." Rocles shouted up. Rocles was a grizzled old hoplite - a Veteran of twenty years who captained the vanguard. He wore a bushy beard the color of smoke, and his skin was windburned and scarred. 

"My father... the father of us all!" Hesiod could feel the anger in his own voice. It heated him, and filled him with murderous thoughts. "He loved Syros, our King! Whatever plot he has been accused of is a plot against us and our people!"

There was a silence. He had their attention. Wiping the dampness from his eye with the linen of his sleeve, he looked down at them. They were hoplites dressed in bronze and leather and armored linen, hefting spears with metal tips. Others were dressed in common clothing, wearing a piece of armor or two at best - usually helmets, but some wore spaulders or greaves. There were archers too, floppy straw hats protecting their eyes from the sun. Some men had swords or daggers hanging at their sides, while some had nothing more than their first weapon. A company of Rhumid warriors had joined them as well, holding square wicker shields painted in bright colors. They were mostly unarmored, though some wore wooden chest-plates that protecting only their front, while others had been granted pieces from their Calydonian allies. The Rhumids all had the same brown-grey coloring, and their bony faces were stern.

"Did you fight for my father?" Hesiod yelled. "Did your blood flow around him like a moat, or did you abandoned the fight?" Deep inside, he wanted to blame them. They did not seem rebuked by his words. Rather, they stood and stared grievingly.

"Your brother ordered it." Rocles stated. "He wished us to join your first, before out march."

"Did you agree with this?" Hesiod answered. The old veteran nodded. Hesiod understood. They could not have fought there unprepared. They were looking for their next commander, for somebody to gather around. They were looking for him.

"We will avenge him!" Hesiod screamed, drawing his sword and pointing it toward the heavens. "The forces that conspired against us will remember that we did not live as goats in the herd! We a lions in the rushes! Look to your spears, men, because you'll be shoving them up their asses soon enough!"

An angry hoot echoed through the ranks once, than twice. "Come on, boys." Rocles added. "We have lived long enough!"

"We have lived long enough!" the soldiers echoed in turn. They began to form lines, riled by the call to war. Spears glistened in the rising sunlight and salty dust blushed in the air. Hesiod mounted his horse and found Wkantet, who had came to the small company of Rhumid warriors. His hand was placed on the shoulder of their leader.

"Be strong, but do not die. I do not want to tell your mother that you have died." he said to the tallest of the Rhumid's - a man of average a height that would be average to a Calydonian but was tall for the men of the red mountains. He had lighter gray-beige skin and wore a snow-leopard pelt over his clothing. 

"I will fight true, cousin." the Rhumid said. "Our people made me champion for such a task. My spear will find its target and my name will be worthy."

Hesiod felt a twinge of guilt for leading them onto the battlefield in a war they had no part in. It had never bothered him before, but the death of his father was fresh on his mind and he was nursing a sadness filled with hate. "Who is your cousin, Wkantet?" Hesiod asked.

"Heitut. He is the champion of my people." Wkantet said mournfully. "We did not think this was a fight we would see."

"Neither did we." Hesiod muttered. "But we will see it."