JL: Seven Sons

Seven Sons

The Areid: Prologue #0

Author’s Proof

…

A Crackpot Book

Lynn Lockhart Publisher

…

Dust Cover

Ode was bundled off from Temesa, in Hellenic Italy, across the Adriatic Sea, to an island town he had never known existed, to be there sold, along with seven other youths of about 12 years. On the very advent of manhood, when boys of free men and citizens were admitted into the town guard to patrol the countryside for the community, he was reduced to a fearful tool. Ode, bastard to a lame goatherd and a shamed cook, found himself on a strange pier, in an uncaring land, alongside seven strange boys of far off lands, gathered for sale before a hard man. Recalling campfire harping with Father, Ode reached within for a muse to inspire a prayer against the rod raised by their overseer.

Extended Dust Cover

The Areid, or “Warstory” is the tale of Alexander’s rise to Kingship, to his conquest of the world, related from the perspective of some of the nameless youths who became men in his wake, men hardened at the keen edge of his pathological will. Books 1 through 7 follow the narrative of Arrian’s, Alexander’s Expedition. Seven Sons, the prequel to the Areid, develops the viewpoint characters, and the narrative voice, from among the youthful war-slaves inducted into the ranks of Alexander’s most useful and most loyal unit, the tribal Agrianes.

Time & Place

Seven Sons dawns on the wind-wracked Aeolian Sea, between the worlds of the Hellenes, Latins and barbarians. The story begins in October 337 B.C., the season for harvests, for royal marriages, for the sale of orphans and the sons of slaves in their 12th year, and for “pillage and trading, generally,” [1] introducing the plight of the narrator, also of the nature and circumstances of those Seven Sons of man gathered to War whom Fate has assigned as his fellows. This prologue to the Areid, closes in October 336 B.C., in murder-haunted Macedonia, between Mount Olympus and the Winedark Aegean Sea, on the eve of the Greatest War.

Dedication

For Hesiod, betrayed, bullied, defrauded, ostracized and murdered, in about 700 B.C., at the foot of the very mountains where Alexander would bring the vengeance torch in 335 B.C.

…

Inspirational Text

“The destiny idea is the furthest limit to which it [our investigation] can penetrate… Every impulse proper to one’s self has an expression, and every impulse alien to one’s self makes an impression… Time gives birth to space, but space gives birth to time… within it, duration, a piece of perished time, resides as a property of things. …as being in this space, we know that we have a duration and a limit… simultaneously with the awakening of inner life marks the frontier between child and man.”

-Oswald Spenglar, Decline of the West, Macrocosmos

The great scholar of our rise and fall, assures us, that our modern, “western” quest for infinity comes from the Chaldeans of Babylon, whose numerological probing into the infinite horrified the “classical man” of Hellenic Antiquity who dared so much, within, what they perceived was a contained world. That world was inhabited by elemental powers, surrounded by the impassable river Ocean, underhaunted by the shadowed deeps of chained powers and bound souls; the very skies above roofed by a heaven accessible only by heroes invited by the Father of Gods and Men, he who held even Time and Forethought in unbreakable chains. [2]

Narrative Voice/Minor Protagonist

(The modern location)

Ode, slave bastard/shepherd of Temesa (Southern Italy)

The person of Ode is based on Hesiod, Theognis, Saint Patrick and David Evans.

Protagonists/Seven Sons

The circumstances of the enslavement of the following youths are drawn from Xenophon’s Estate Management, Baybars from Sir John Glubb’s Soldiers of Fortune, concerning the Mameluke slave soldiers, also the lives of James Revel, William Moraley, Peter Williamson and Isrаel Potter sold into the American Plantations, and, from Antiquity the Good Swineherd of The Odyssey, the various herdsman of Sophocles [3] Oedipus Rex, and the soldier keeping watch in Orestes by Aechylus.

#1. Milo of “Sheep,” orphan of Kroton (Southern Italy)

#2. Aptus or “Skillful,” slave/bastard of Rome (Central Italy)

#3. Rudy, Keltic captive of Near Alpine Gaul (Northern Italy)

#4. Goat, Dardanii captive of Illyria (Serbia)

#5. Lucky, Messenian runaway (Southern Greece)

#6. Kit, Scythian slave/thief (Ukraine)

#7. Spider, bastard orphan of Agriania (Bulgaria)

…

Political Cast

Longarus of the Agrianes, Alexander of Macedon, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, Aristotle the Stagirite, Nearchus, son of Androtimus of Crete, Erigyius and Laomedon, sons of Larichus, Demaratus of Corinth, Horn the Batavian, Delores of Thunder Grove.

Activities of the political cast will not rise above support for the historical record set down by Arrian from sources, including Ptolemy, Aristobulus and Nearchus who campaigned with Alexander and wrote of their deceased king. The lack of accounts concerning Alexander’s year in the western and northern mountains leaves Ode’s tale with the task of representing a possible popular tradition that will support the activities of Alexander and the Agrianes in these regions, and elsewhere, from late 336 through 323 B.C.

…

Seven Sons, Frame

The story is structured according to a bard’s responsibilities when cast by Fate among better fellows upon a bitter wake. The tale itself is understood to represent a brazen crucible upheld by three legs, above a fire tended by soot-veiled Fate, under the shadowed forest hunted by War, who rests between killings on a bed covered with the flayed skins and scalps of those warriors he has slain. The three part structure is knit with four extraneous efforts intended to weave the powers gathering about weary mankind in keeping with Menander’s notion of the godly mind.

Contents

… Woe Torn, Overture

… Sons of Sorrow: Chapters 1-7

… AllMuse, Prayer

… Sons of Sluts: Chapters 8-14

… Demon Song, Ode

… Sons of Swords: Chapters 15-21

…. War Sworn, Oath

Notes

-1. Arrian, Alexander’s Expedition, Book 1, description of the Danube.

-2. Khronos and Prometheus.

-3. Sophocles composed some of his latter work while in exile at the Macedonian court, a place where kings were in regular communications with herdsman who watched the mountainous western and northern borders.