PALLAS COMITATUS

You come across a group of men around a fire. 

You’re tired, you’re hungry. Your throat is so parched you can hardly speak. Your heart beats so loud you can barely hear. 

You’re scared. 

You’re being hunted. 

Your whole life you’ve been hunted. By the nagging sense of lack, of frustration, of angst that accompanied even your fondest memories. By marketeers and profiteers. But the last few years it’s felt different. It feels more literal, like your enemies have finally revealed themselves. 

You want to stand up to them, to show them that you’re a free man, to defy them! But can you?

You want to escape! But to where? 

You want to fight! But how? 

And here you are. Alone. Facing a camp of men. And women. And children. They’re singing while some dance. They pass a horn as they hail their gods, their ancestors, their heroes, and one another. “The women and children … don’t they know?” you wonder as you watch how proudly and joyfully they encircle the fire. “Don’t they know how horrible the world suddenly became?”

Then you notice at least six men with rifles facing away from the reverie, facing the darkness you inhabit, watching intently for men like you.  

How have you come? As a friend? As an enemy? If the former, how will you greet them? What have you to offer? If the latter, how will you evade them? You’re alone. You’re being hunted. What do you do? Right now. What do you do?

If you had a group of men with you, would it change your decision? Would it have made a difference this whole time? 

What you wouldn’t give for a few competent men. Men who are loyal to you and to each other. Men who could be counted on to be here with you and to help win this moment. Men with unbreakable bonds tied with mutual sweat and earned respect.

Men who would’ve been together for how many Yules, now? How many times has Orion crossed the night sky since these men would’ve embraced the fate of seemingly chance encounters to become oath-bound to one another; sworn to become worthy of one another, of their gods, and of their ancestors; sworn to responsibility for each other’s strength and vitality, and the well-being of each other’s family?  “Has it really been so long?” these men would ask themselves … and their answer would come when they see their nearly grown sons preparing to join what they created. 

What you wouldn’t give for such a group of men, right now – a clan, a wolf lodge, a pack, a warband – to stand at your side and celebrate your successes and mourn your losses, to grasp your shoulders and look into your eyes as they give you honors, to protect your back when your diligence faulters, or to crawl through the woods and face its dangers when the forces of tyranny are amassed on your trail.

These men, who traveled the currents to battlefields, fairs, and lecture halls, looking for a renaissance that could not be found but only created; men who strive not for truth but for values; men who know from history that universal abstractions amount to dust in the wind when the forces that impose them crumble to ruin; men who know from myth that the gods favor the strong, the competent, the courageous, the loyal, and the devout.   

Men like us. The men around that fire.