From the Novel, The Sacred Band

Two Sacred Bands meet on the battleplain of Chaeronea…

Before Tempus can reply, the storm god has his say and lightning flares sky-wide. Thunder breaks loose above, clouds blocking the road to heaven that had shined softly in the stars. There’s almost no time between blinding-white slashing of the sky and thunderclap. Horses squeal and neigh.

In the bright sheet lightning, men and chariots moving slowly are revealed, coming up softly – not quite sneaking – from the other Sacred Band’s tents, leather wraps upon their horses’ hooves. This tactic didn’t affront Critias; he would have done the same. Survival has its own etiquette.

And what do the Theban hoplites see in this extended rending of the sky, this white-bright glory of Enlil’s lightning? The future, but not theirs: paired cavalry fighters; formed ranks of armored death; grim men on their tall horses with lightning limning weapons tailored to the task; men spoiling for a fight if the gods allowed – the Sacred Band of Stepsons, out from shadows and the dark.

Wanting neither too much to live nor too much to die….

Tough talk. The Thebans were not so tough now, in Sanctuary, ripped away from all they’d known and all they’d cherished but life itself and one another.

As he rode his dappled Trôs horse south along the White Foal through summer streets, blessedly alone on this warm gray morning, Tempus knew he’d been right to do it: to bring his new Sacred Banders here where everything was always wrong, where venal fools played at small men’s games and battles even smaller.

Sanctuary is changed, a mere decade’s difference, nothing very daunting to a man who’s seen centuries come and go. The streets wind the same way; people scrabbling for a living scramble now, as people always do, to reestablish normal life in a wild storm’s wake.

The Sacred Band of Thebes needed Sanctuary, a place to acclimate and integrate with his Stepsons. Here they would learn new ways: burn their dead as Stepsons do; thank the gods; and meet new challenges where honor and glory are enough. They are his now, and would step up to even greater things: fight for life itself, and everlasting freedom of the human spirit. But not yet. Like Sanctuary, throwing off the damage of the storm, they needed to put their backs into tomorrow, not cry for yesterday.

The Thebans must heal, to join with his greater Sacred Band. Damaged and wounded, ripped and sundered, they sojourned now in a strange new country. At least they were not in the country of the dead.