There’s a man sitting on a mountaintop just to the north of Pulpudeva. His name is Commios, and he’s one of the last dozen survivors of the Getae tribe. The war that destroyed his homeland was bloody and violent. Thousands died as the relentless march of the Athenian hoplites brought them closer and closer to the Getae capital, the near-limitless hordes of Thracian warriors charging heedlessly forward only to be threshed like so much wheat by the bristling spears of the impenetrable Greek phalanx. The three Getae cities were besieged and occupied; battle captives were either executed or pressed into slavery; and the encamped army brought plague with them that added to the death toll. It was a war of extermination in all but name, and what survivors remained were all too happy to accept the yoke of Athens knowing the alternative. That is, all except for Commios and his friends, who fled the destruction of Malva to his remote and forbidding mountaintop where he could gaze down at what had once been the prize jewel of the Getae nation.
