He might own taenons of good land, but the moment he was ostrakr, that land became anyone’s to own. He might try to defend it with the strength of his own arm, but what is one man to do when three or four – or fifty – walk onto his farm and declare their intention to take it from him? He dies fighting, or he leaves it all behind.
The same applies to his house, his slaves, all his possessions. And if some stranger takes a fancy to his wife or his daughter, then it is his own spear, and that alone, which will preserve their honour. There is no recourse to the courts, to the assembly, or even to the assistance of friends and neighbours. He is ostrakr – he no longer exists.
Mercenaries forsook their cities when they took up the red cloak, though there were far fewer of them around now than there had been – so many had died with the Ten Thousand that a kind of tradition had been lost, and even now the true, contracted fighting man who fought by the code of his centon was something of a rarity. Such men were ostrakr also, but they at least had the brotherhood of their fellows to fall back on. They exchanged one polity for another.
A man who had nothing to fill up the framework of his world was naked in the dark, and must subsist with the tireless wariness of the fox until he somehow found a way to become a citizen again, to come in from that darkness.
That is what Phaestus had meant to do.
He stood now wrapped in bear-furs which he had bartered from a group of drunk goatherder men over the campfire of the night before. They had been good men, rough and ready as all were who lived up in the highlands with no city to call their own. Up here it was still the world of the clan and the tribe, a more ancient place. But still, men belonged to something. They looked after those of their own blood.
It was a white, frozen world this high in the hills, and the Gosthere Range was a marching line of blinding-bright giants all along the brim of the horizon, the sky as blue and clear as a robin’s egg above them. Here, winter had already come into its own, and the drifts were building deep, the dark pinewoods locked down in frozen suspension, and the rivers narrowed to fast flowing black streams between broadening banks of solid ice, the very rocks bearded with foot-long icicles.
The goatherder men had been bringing their flocks and their families down into the valleys for the winter, and were glad to trade: furs and dried meat for wine and pig-iron ingots. They had haggled hard over the wine and then shared it out liberally afterwards, for such was their nature.
These were the original strawheads of the high country, from whom Phaestus’s own people had come. The dark-skinned lowlanders might sneer at them, but they at least did not burn down cities and enslave populations. All they wanted was grazing for their animals, a place to pitch their dome-shaped tents of weathered hide, and room to roam. They were a picture, perhaps, of how the Macht had lived in the far and misty past. Perhaps.
Phaestus watched them go, and raised his spear to answer the headman’s departing salute. Ten families, perhaps thirty warriors and a hundred women and children and old folk. A unit more cohesive than the citizenry of any city.
If only life were that simple, Phaestus thought.
He had grown a beard to keep the wind from his face, and it had come out as grey as hoar frost. His plump wife had lost some of her padding and had stopped complaining about having to sleep on the ground. And his son had become a man right in front of his eyes, discarding the preening sulks of the adolescent in a few short weeks.
Exile had been good for him, young Philemos. Dark like his mother, and inclined to amplitude like her, he had become an angular young man who took to this life of exile as though he had been waiting for it to happen. There was that much, at least, to be thankful for. The two girls were a different matter.
Phaestus turned in his tracks to regard the straggling little column on the slope below him. One mule had died already, and the rest were overburdened. They would have to dump more of their possessions, pitifully few though they were. His complete collection of Ondimion was already in a snowdrift two days back, a sacrifice which had wrenched his heart. But there was no need to read of drama in a scroll when it was the stuff of their daily lives now.
Tragedy, revenge; yes, that is what life hinges around. The poets had it right after all.
He looked north, at the furrowed valleys and glens of the Gostheres, white in a dreaming world of snow.
That old word they used, from the ancient Machtic – nemesis. That is what I am, Phaestus thought.
His son joined him, scratching and grinning. “These bearskins have lice in them, father. Are we to become barbarians to survive?”
“Yes,” Phaestus said. “That is exactly what we must be. But not forever, Philemos.”
“I hope not – I can’t listen to my sisters carp and moan for much longer. I love them dearly, but I would also love to clash their heads together.”
Phaestus laughed, his white teeth gleaming in his beard. “Now you know how I have felt these last few years. The women are unhappy, and rightly so -this is not their world, up here. Everything they have known has been taken away from them – the least we can do is bear their carping without complaint. That is what men do.”
“We’re soft. I had not thought so until we were with the goatherder people last night. I think their women are tougher than us.”
“They breed them hard, this high,” Phaestus said, and his smile faded. “Your mother and sisters are folk of the city, lowlanders, but my people came from the highlands, and it is in your blood too. It’s well to remember that. The clans of the mountains are not savages – not like the goatmen, who are worse than animals. They are ourselves, in a purer state. What we write down, they keep in their heads, and their sense of honour is as refined as our own. As soon as they sat across a fire from us last night, we were part of their camp, and had some threat come upon us, we would all have fought it together.”
“And if we had cheated them in the bargaining?”
“They would have considered themselves fools for being cheated – that is what such barter is about. But you cross them in a matter of honour, Philemon, and they will kill you without mercy, and all your family. You must remember that.”
“I will.” The boy sobered.
“Good lad. Now, get back down and help with the repacking and, for Phobos’s sake, don’t overload the mules. They have a long journey still to make. Send Berimus up to me.”
“Yes, father.”
Phaestus watched him go.
Seventeen years old, and ostrakr. It’s still an adventure to him – he has no real idea what it means.
Berimus stood silently for some time before Phaestus spoke to him, and when he did his tone was entirely different, harsh and cold as the mountain stone below the ice.
“Are all the preparations made?”
“Yes, master.”
“I am no longer your master, Berimus. You are no longer a slave.”
He turned around. Berimus was a small man, built as broad as an oak door, with a nut-shaped head of dark hair and lively grey eyes. The same age as Phaestus, he looked ten years younger, a compact, muscular version of the tall patrician with the pepper-grey beard, who looked him in the eye.
Phaestus handed him a clinking pouch of soft leather.
“That is all we have left, but it should be enough. You won’t need it up here in the hills, and do not show it – it will only make trouble.”
“I know.” “Once you reach the lowlands, show someone in authority this.” Phaestus produced a sealed scroll of parchment. He rubbed the red wax with one finger.
“This is the seal of Karnos himself. Any official of the hinterland cities will recognise it, and will assist you. Make due west – it’s four hundred pasangs to Machran. Do not let the ladies tell you otherwise. My wife will think to command you – do not let her. You are a free man now, but still my steward, and the man I trust most in the world.”