Standing up on top of the wall, George shivered. The day was bright, but cold enough to make him wish for trousers. “We ought to be warmer here than down below,” John said. “We’re closer to the sun, aren’t we?”
“Close enough to bake your wits, anyhow,” Rufus said. John grinned at him, unperturbed. George wished John would stop making jokes. He didn’t think he’d get either of his wishes, but made them anyhow.
He hadn’t told John of the trouble from his joke about Menas--what point? It wouldn’t have abashed the tavern comic, and might have given him ideas for new vile jokes . . . although John, being John, never seemed to have any trouble coming up with those ideas.
Rufus pointed out toward the Slavs. “They look like trying anything?”
“Not today,” John said. “Quiet as the basilica halfway through one of Eusebius’ sermons, except the Slavs are too far away for you to hear them snoring.”
“Oh, John,” George murmured, as he sometimes did when John went too far in the middle of his routine. John took no notice; John seldom took notice of anything. George spoke to Rufus: “I’m not sure he’s right. They were stirring about when we first came up onto the wall, though they haven’t done much the past couple of hours.”
“Maybe they were stirring so quick because they’ve got dysentery going through their camp.” John mimed a man dashing for the latrine. He didn’t need to say anything to be funny; sometimes, as now, he was funnier when he let his body do the talking for him.
Rufus laughed; you couldn’t watch John trying to hurry and at the same time trying to clench every part of himself without laughing. But the veteran said, “Dysentery’s no joke. I’ve been in camps where it came calling. Sometimes more soldiers die of a flux of the bowels than from swords and spears and arrows and what have you.”
George waited for John to crack wise about soldiering’s being a shitty job, but his friend disdained the easy laugh. If he was casting about for one more worthy of his talents, he never got the chance to use it. Instead, he spoke in a voice so flat and unemphatic, it commanded immediate attention and belief: “You were right, George. The Slavs are up to something.”
“They sure are,” Rufus said, both brown eye and blue going wide. His voice rose to a formidable shout: “Sound the alarm! The Slavs are attacking the city!”
The first horns on the wall might have rung out before he shouted, but they might not have, too. Afterwards, George never was sure. He was sure a whole ungodly lot of Slavs were rushing at the wall. Some of them carried picks, others sledgehammers, and still others the big shields he’d noted at the edges of their encampments.
He was slow adding up what all that meant, not least because another host of Slavs, these keeping their distance from Thessalonica, filled the air with arrows. George ducked behind the battlement to snatch an arrow out of his own quiver, stood up quickly to shoot it, and then ducked down once more.
Rufus wasted no more time in taking cover, but Rufus had seen everything once and most things half a dozen times. He knew what the Slavs intended, and announced what he knew to everyone else: “They’re going to try making tortoises and undermining the wall!”
“Have we got enough things to drop on them?” George asked.
“We’re going to find out, aren’t we?” Rufus said, not the most reassuring answer the shoemaker could imagine. The veteran’s bowstring twanged as he shot at a Slav. His curses said he’d missed. While setting another arrow to the string, he went on, “They’re not doing a very good job of it. They should set up the tortoises before they move on the walls--they’d take fewer casualties that way.” His critique of the Slavs’ performance was milder than some he’d given the militiamen on the practice field.
George shot at a Slav carrying one of the oversized iron-faced shields. The fellow clutched at his leg and fell. The shield bounced away. Before he could recover it, three more arrows pierced him. None of them finished him off, though. He managed to get the shield back and slowly crawl away from the fighting. In the abstract, George pitied him; if he lived, he would be a long, painful time healing. At the same time, though, he wished his first arrow had killed the Slav instead of merely wounding him.
He lacked the leisure to contemplate the inconsistency of those two notions. He lacked leisure for anything. His life reduced itself to groping for arrows, nocking them, finding a target, drawing the bow, and letting fly. That Slav was an exception; with most of the shafts he loosed, he had no idea whether he’d hit or missed.
A good many Slavs sprawled in death or writhed in torment on the ground in front of the walls of Thessalonica. Quite a lot of shieldmen reached the walls, though, and raised their shields up over their heads to protect themselves and their comrades with picks and crowbars from whatever the Thessalonicans rained down on them.
“That’s not how Bousas would have taught them to do it,” Rufus said reprovingly. “They should know better, if they learned from a proper Roman.”
“I don’t think this is one of those times when the pedagogue will come across their backsides with a stick if they’re sloppy,” John said. “Sieges aren’t marked on neatness.”
“They’re wasting men,” Rufus insisted.
“They don’t care,” John replied, accurately enough. “You think the Avars are going to break down and bawl because some stupid Slav gets an arrow in the ribs he might have turned if he was careful?” His mobile features suggested an aggressively indifferent barbarian.
Rufus seemed inclined to carry the argument further. George, for once, found himself on John’s side. The Avars had already shown they didn’t care what happened to their Slavic subjects, so long as they got into Thessalonica. And then the Slavs started pounding away at the city walls, a distraction that made both John and Rufus forget what they’d been talking about.
George felt the pounding through the soles of his feet. He seemed to hear it the same way, as if it had traversed his entire body before reaching his ears. The noise or feeling was alarming. If the Slavs could get enough stones out from the bottom of the wall, the masonry above the place where those stones had been would fall down, too. And, since George was standing on top of that masonry…
He grabbed a large stone from a pile on the walkway, picked it up, and, grunting with effort, carried it to the edge of the wall and dropped it on the attackers below. A loud and satisfying crash said it had landed on one of the upheld shields of a tortoise down there. He hurried back to the pile for another stone. He was just about to fling it down onto the Slavs, too, when an arrow hit it and tumbled, spinning, up over his head.
“Thank you, Lord,” he said sincerely, and let the stone fall. Had he not been holding it, or had he already dropped it, the arrow would have pierced him. That was another of those chances of war that did not repay close contemplation.
“Here, pick something they’ll feel,” Rufus said. His stringy, corded muscles bunched as he stooped and seized a rock George reckoned Hercules would have had trouble lifting. Up it came, though. Maybe fighting frenzy impelled the old man. Or maybe, George thought with no small awe, St. Demetrius was once more lending a subtle hand in the fighting. How else could Rufus carry that weight?
George was not the only militiaman to stare as the veteran brought the stone to the edge of the wall and cast it down. Not only did he hear a crash when it hit, but also hoarse screams.
“There’s a tortoise with a broken shell!” John shouted.
Not far down the wall, a couple of Romans lifted a cauldron from a hastily lighted fire, wrapping rags around their hands so the hot iron handles would not bum them. They tipped the boding water in the cauldron over the edge of the wall. George capered in glee at the shrieks that rose immediately afterwards.
The Romans did not get off scot-free there. One of them dropped his half of the cauldron, howling in pain and clutching at the shoulder from which an arrow had suddenly sprouted. “Get down into the city and have that seen to,” his comrade said. The militiaman made his way toward the stairs, hand still clapped over the wound and bright blood running out between his fingers.
Rufus pawed through the pile of stones, casting aside with such fervor those he didn’t care for, everyone nearby had to step lively to keep toes from getting smashed. When he finally found the one he wanted, George stared in astonishment. He had no idea why, or for that matter how, people had carried it up to the top of the wall in the first place. It looked too big and heavy for any two men to lift, let alone one.
Rufus took hold of it. His lips moved silently. Prayer? Curse? George couldn’t tell. The veteran strained-- whatever power was in him, he was pushing it as far as it would go, maybe farther. No. Up came the stone, not so smoothly as the one before but up nonetheless. Staggering a little, Rufus got it to the edge of the wall, set it down so he could pant for a moment like a winded dog, and then, with what looked to be all the strength he had in him, shoved it off.
George heard a crash, but no screams. The feel of the pounding under his feet changed subtly. “I don’t think anyone in that tortoise is left alive,” he said in tones of wonder. “You just wrecked it.”
“Good,” Rufus told him. If this was a miracle, it didn’t leave him confused and dazed, as he had been when St. Demetrius spoke through him. Instead, he sounded ready to pick up another stone and heave it down onto the Slavs. That was exactly what he did, though the one he chose this time was small enough not to leave George wondering whether he’d had divine help handling it.
After casting another stone at the Slavs (and not worrying in the least whether he was without sin), George traded arrows with some of the archers down on the ground. When he was shooting--or flinching from shafts flying far too close to his face--he thought about the impossibly large stone Rufus had lifted. Impossibly? He shrugged. Maybe not. Men in battle could do strange things. He’d already seen that for himself, limited as his experience was. If he believed half the tales he’d heard--
There stood Rufus, solid and bandy-legged, about the least likely man (or so anyone with sense would think) through whom God would choose to work a miracle-- but God had already worked one through him, no matter what any man with sense would think. So maybe He had worked two.
“You, George! You fallen asleep there?” the subject of the shoemaker’s musings demanded in his rough soldier’s Latin. “You’ve got no business doing that. John hasn’t been telling his jokes up here, after all.”
“Stick out your tongue,” John told him. Rufus did, a gesture more contemptuous than obedient. A physician would have been proud of John’s wise, thoughtful nod. The words that followed, though, were less than Hippocratic: “I remember George said he was missing one of his files. Now I see where it’s turned up.”
“You go on like that, see where you turn up in a little while,” Rufus retorted. “Somebody else doesn’t do it for me, I’ll put you there.”
John picked up a heavy stone and made as if to throw it at the veteran. “Here--catch,” he said, but then hurled it down on the Slavs.
“Brothers, the lot of us,” George said. He shot at a Slav--and missed. After some halfhearted blasphemy, he went on, “How are we doing? The wall doesn’t feel so much as if termites are nibbling at it.” Were his feet feeling what he wished them to feel, or had the Slavs’ efforts to undermine the wall really slowed down?
Rufus said, “I think you’re right. Lord knows I hope you’re right. But I tell you this--right now I’m not going to stick my head out and look down to the bottom of the wall to find out if you’re right.”
“That’s sensible,” George said. “I’m not, either.”
“It is sensible,” John said, apparently to no one in particular. “How did he ever manage to come up with it?”
“When this fighting is done--” Rufus began in a voice thick with menace. But he broke off, shaking his head. “Ahh, what’s the use? I should have known better than to try making a soldier out of you. But near as I can guess, we may drive the Slavs off this time, but there’s never going to be a time when all the fighting’s done.”
“I pray you’re wrong,” George said, “but I think you’re right.”
“It’s as sure as burying your money back of your house,” Rufus said. He looked around. A couple of militiamen were lugging a great jar of water up the stairs to pour it into the cauldron to heat. More men were carrying stones in upside-down shields.
“Are we going to have enough things to throw down to make them give over before they bring down a stretch of wall?” John asked--the question on everyone’s mind.
“If God is kind, we will,” George answered. So far as he could tell--with the possible exception of Rufus’ lifting those two enormous stones--the fight here was of men against men, not of God against the powers of the Slavs and Avars. He’d meant what he said as a general wish, then, not as a prayer for divine intervention.
Rufus picked up another stone, braved looking out over the wall in that storm of arrows to see where it would do the most good, and threw it down. The crash that came back was particularly loud and satisfying. “That one went where it was supposed to,” John said.
“You’d best believe it did,” Rufus said, flexing his elderly biceps and twisting into a pose that put George in mind of the statue of an athlete from pagan times: or rather, of something the pagan sculptors had never made, the statue of a former athlete as a grandfather.
It put John in mind of something else, “You go prancing around like that anywhere near the baths, they’ll drag you off to gaol for unnatural vice,” he said.
“The most unnatural vice I’ve ever tried is putting up with you,” Rufus said. That prompted John to pull out an arrow and shoot it at the Slavs. Rufus smiled, probably because he’d hoped to accomplish something on that order.
George threw another rock down on the Slavs himself. The pile of stones on the walkway was much smaller than it had been. Men were still bringing more up to the top of the wall, but not nearly so fast as they were being used. That pile and the others like it had been accumulated over days; they couldn’t be maintained when they were used up in hours. If the defenders ran out before the Slavs had had all they could stand .. .
“If we can’t drive them off like this, will we have to sortie?” he asked Rufus.
“Maybe so,” the veteran said unhappily. “I don’t want to do it, you understand, but I don’t want the wall crumbling under me, either.”
Methodically, almost mechanically, the defenders kept dropping stones and boding water onto the Slavs. They knew they were hurting the foe; the screams and shrieks from the ground said as much. But war, as George had discovered, was not merely a business of hurting the enemy. It meant hurting him more than he could endure. Were the Romans doing that? The Slavs had already shown they could endure a good deal.
Grunting, George lifted and flung another stone. The pile was small indeed now, hardly higher than his knees. Once it was gone, what then? Rushing out and fighting the Slavs seemed a better choice than helplessly staying up here and waiting for the wall to fall down, but neither alternative struck the shoemaker as highly desirable.
“Shall we sortie?” he asked, as he’d done before.
“If we have to, we have to.” Rufus’ face twisted. “Damn me to hell if I like the idea, but damn me to hell if I like the idea of letting the cursed Slavs do whatever they please, either.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” George said. “When the other choice is worse, a bad choice can turn good.”
The militia captain made no reply for a moment. His lips moved as he worked that through. “You’re right,” he said at last. He cocked his head to one side. “You managed to put enough twist on that to make a priest happy.” Not sure whether he was being complimented or mocked, George maintained a discreet silence.
And then John, who left no doubt when he was insulting someone--as he often was--let out a howl of pure joy. “They’re running away!” he shouted a moment later.
George and Rufus shouted, too. George slapped the veteran on the back. Rufus not only endured the familiarity, he grinned wide enough to show off the worn and snaggled teeth still in his mouth. The world soon interfered with that little stretch of unexpected delight, as the world has a way of doing. Rufus, remembering he was a captain, shouted, “Let’s give the bastards a going-away present. Grab your bows, lads!”
Along with the rest of the men on the walls, George shot at the Slavs till they fled out of range. As the warriors from the tortoises withdrew, the archers who had supported them also moved away from the wall. That let the Romans peer down at the ground without the risk of taking an arrow in the face.
“We dented them,” George said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one appeared. It was, in some instances, only literal truth; many of the big, reinforced shields the Slavs had brought up against the walls of Thessalonica were broken, while others had their iron facings badly battered.
A good many dented men lay under the wall, too, men whose shields had proved unable to protect them from the stones and arrows the Romans had showered down on them. A couple of them were almost as badly smashed as poor Father Gregory had been after the Slavic water-demigod hurled him to the cobblestones by the cistern. This too was war. George wished Theodore had come up on the wall beside him, to see the reality of what he thought so great and glorious.
Not all the Slavs who lay below the wall were dead. Groans and shrieks still rose from those whose crushed limbs or bums kept them from retreating with their comrades, and from a couple who dragged themselves along with their hands because they were dead from the waist down.
“Let’s finish them,” Rufus said. Some militiamen had already begun shooting at the helpless Slavs, and precisely aiming stones at those right under the wall. That was a hard, unpleasant business. One by one, the screams and their makers died till none was left.
Into the grim silence following that last death, Rufus said, “I think most of us can come down off the wall now. They aren’t going to be able to nerve themselves for another attack any time real soon.”
“What do we do if you’re wrong?” John asked.
Rufus shrugged. “If you’re still up on the wall, you fight ‘em. If you’re down in the city, you come running back and you fight ‘em. If they’re already down into the city before you get back here, it’s the end, but you fight ‘em anyway, and you keep fighting ‘em till they kill you. Any other questions?”
“What good would other questions do me?” John returned. “You’ve only got one answer.”
Only when he turned to head down the stairs into Thessalonica did the comic’s shoulders sag and his stride lose its jaunty spring. “Mother of God, I’m so tired,” he said over his shoulder to George, who was a couple of steps above him. “If those bastards keep coming after us like this, sooner or later they’re going to break in.”
“If they can keep coming at us, I think you’re right,” George answered. “But we’ve given them a fine set of lumps every time they’ve tried. How many men did they lose today? It had to be hundreds. Rufus is right--they’ll take a while getting over that.”
“Maybe you’re right,” John said. “Maybe Master One Blue and One Brown is right, too. But maybe not. You think the Avars care how many Slavs the ravens peck the eyes out of? It’s like spending other people’s money. If Paul tells me I can drink all I want at his place and he’s paying for it, why should I stay sober?”
“People aren’t miliaresia,” George said. “After a while, the Slavs will start saying no when the Avars send ‘em out against the wall to be slaughtered.”
“And a fat lot of good that will do them.” John jumped off the last step. “If they don’t come out here against the walls, the Avars will do the job on them for us, sure as God made the world in seven days.”
George thought that over. He decided the tavern comic was probably right. “I don’t think I’d care to be a Slav right now,” he observed.
“Leave the ‘right now’ out of it, if you please,” John said. “I can’t think of any time I’d want to be a Slav.” He turned off at the side street that led to the furnished room where he lived.
On reflection, George couldn’t think of any time when he would have wanted to be a Slav, either. He waved to John, who, filled with himself as he often was, didn’t see or didn’t notice--in any case, John didn’t wave back. Sighing, George headed on home himself.
Several people on the street had blankets over their tunics like sad excuses for cloaks. George didn’t blame them. Now that he wasn’t up on the wall fighting for his life, he realized how raw the day was and wished he had a cloak himself. As was the way with such things, wishing did him little good. Along with wishing, he hurried. That not only made him a little warmer than he would have been otherwise, it also got him home sooner.
George was growing resigned to gasps of relief and excited exclamations whenever he walked through the door into his shop. They helped him understand why armies, whenever they could, fought far from home. It wasn’t so much to keep their own lands from being ravaged, as he’d always thought. More likely, it was so the soldiers could get away from their families and not have them fretting every minute of the day and night.
“Are you all right, Father?” Sophia said now, hurrying toward him. “You’ve got blood on your tunic.”
“Do I?” George looked down at himself. “Why, so I do.” He pulled the hem of the tunic up a little so he could inspect his legs. “It isn’t mine. I’ve said that before and been wrong, so I wanted to make certain this time and not look foolish.”
“What was it now?” Irene asked in a voice so flat and dull from holding in worry that it might as well have been a scream. “We hear people running and people shouting, but we never really know what’s going on till you come home. We’re always afraid till then, too.”
“I’m all right.” George held up both hands so his wife could see as much. Then he stood on one leg like a stork, and then on the other. That made Sophia and Theodore laugh, and even Irene’s smile was a little warmer than dutiful. He went on, “What was it now? The Slavs tried knocking down the foundations of the wall. It didn’t work.
We killed a lot of them and made the rest run away.”
Put that way, it sounded easy, the result seeming foreordained. The few sentences said nothing of the way the wall had shuddered under George’s feet when the Slavs attacked it with picks and pry bars, nothing of the fear that it would do more than shudder, and would come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho in the Bible story. George felt not the least bit guilty at keeping such knowledge from his family. He wished he had no part of it himself.
Theodore said, “I’ll bet you butchered them.”
“We hurt them,” George agreed tonelessly. “I was thinking at the time that you should have been there.” Theodore looked proud till he went on, “Seeing what a man looks like after a rock this big” --he gestured with his hands-- “lands on his head would keep you from going on and on about what you don’t begin to understand.”
Sophia made a small, disgusted sound. Irene looked down at the leather strap she was sewing to a sandal and didn’t say anything. Theodore did think about what his father said; George gave him credit for that. But it didn’t sink in. George could see as much.
Maybe he should have talked about the men who’d had rocks fall on them but didn’t die right away, the men with crushed limbs or broken backs. Maybe he should have talked about the men who’d screamed and screamed after a cauldronful of boiling water came down on them. Maybe he should have-- He shook his head. None of it would do any good, not till Theodore saw it for himself and, more important still, understood in his belly that it could have been he as easily as any luckless barbarian.
“I’m not afraid,” Theodore said, which so decisively proved he’d paid George no attention that the shoemaker, instead of uselessly arguing with him, walked over to his bench to get to some of the work the siege had kept him from doing.
He’d just picked up his awl and noted how smoothly the wooden handle fit against his palm and fingers when Irene said, “Will you come out back with me, please, dear? I want to know whether you think the fennel is ready for picking.”
George muttered under his breath. Irene knew far more about the herbs she grew back there than he did. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked his opinion about them. The last time he’d offered it unasked, she’d made a point of ignoring him. And he had more work to do in less time than he’d ever known before. He started to say as much. Before he did, though, he looked over at his wife. Without a word, he set the awl down on the bench and walked out with her to have a look at the fennel.
“Seems fine to me,” he said, pointing at the wispy, light green plants that stood almost as tall as he did.
Irene gave him the stare she reserved for times when she caught him being deliberately obtuse. “Of course it’s fine,” she said with an edge to her voice. “But I can’t very well talk about Sophia right there in front of her, can I?”
“Why not?” George asked. “You talk about me when I’m right there all the time.”
Irene’s left foot began tapping the muddy ground of the herb garden, a sure danger sign. “How much do you know about Constantine, the son of Leo the potter?” she asked.
“Say, as much as I know about any of the young men who live on this street,” George answered. “He doesn’t wear baggy tunics with puffy sleeves and cut his hair short the way the young toughs do, so I suppose he’s not so bad as some. Why do you want to . . ?”
His voice traded off. Looking back, he realized it should have traded off a couple of sentences sooner. Irene’s foot was tapping harder, which showed exactly how stupid he’d been. “Yes, that’s right,” she said, as if he’d asked the right question. “Sophia has noticed him. She’s done rather more than notice him. This morning, she told me she thought he was the sweetest thing God had made since the fruit in the Garden of Eden.”
“Oh.” George suppressed a strong urge to retch. “Oh, dear.” He’d never particularly noticed young Constantine. What he had noticed was a fellow huskier than most whose beard, which he did not shave very well, had some red patches in it that were startling when seen with the dark hair on top of his head. “Is she serious, or is it just.. . foolishness?” That wasn’t the word he wanted, but he couldn’t find a better one.
“She thinks she’s serious, so she might as well be,” Irene answered, a thought convoluted enough to have made Bishop Eusebius proud.
“Am I going to have to talk to Leo?” George asked, and then, as much to himself as to his wife, “Do I want to talk to Leo?” As he had asked it, he answered his own question: “Constantine’s not the worst match I can think of.”
“No, he’s not,” Irene agreed. “But he’s not the best, either. We have to think about this, and we have to see whether Sophia changes her mind again day after tomorrow, too. I remember there were boys who--” Now she was the one who broke off.
George waggled a finger at her. “Ha! I’m usually the one who makes mistakes like that.” With his wife still flustered, he went on, “Some of the boys who might have caught her eye, well, I think I’d be praying the Slavs and Avars would sack the city before the wedding.”
“God forbid.” Irene’s voice was serious, but her eyes danced. “As you said, it could be worse. I was wondering if Theodore had his eye on anyone in particular, but he hasn’t shown any signs of that. It won’t be long, I expect.”
“No, but for now he hasn’t.” George said nothing more. At Theodore’s age, he’d had his eye on every pretty girl who walked past the open door, but he’d left it to his parents to find him one with whom to make a life. His gaze flicked back to Irene. Would he have chosen her on his own? He didn’t know, but his mother and father had done well by him.
“I can guess what you’re thinking,” Irene said, and laughed a little. That laugh meant she wasn’t guessing: she knew he’d eyed all the girls when he was younger. She continued, “With Sophia, it’s not anything we have to worry about right away, I don’t think. But if she’s still serious come summer--”
“All right,” George said Summer seemed farther away than Jerusalem, farther away than Gaul, farther away than the island that was supposed to be beyond Gaul, the island whose name, for the moment, he’d entirely forgotten. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. That would bother him till he remembered, no matter how useless knowing the name of an immensely distant island now surely infested with barbarians was.
He grunted. Thessalonica was infested with barbarians. To think of them, he didn’t need to worry about. . . “Britain!” he said happily.
“What are you talking about?” Irene asked.
Before he had to come up with an answer, Sophia called, “How much can the two of you say about fennel, anyway?”
“They’re not talking about fennel,” Theodore said in a voice George didn’t think he was supposed to overhear. “They’re talking about one of us--unless they’re talking about both of us.”
“I know that,” Sophia replied indignantly, as if her brother had mistaken her for a halfwit. “But I don’t want to come right out and say it, do I?”
George suffered a coughing fit at the same time as Irene made wheezing noises, the way some people did when flowers bloomed in springtime. Had their children been a little farther away--on the island of Britain, for instance, George thought--both of them would have howled laughter.
As they went back inside, Irene found a way to make them both serious again. She asked, “Now that the Slavs and Avars have found they can’t knock the wall down with crowbars and such, what do you think they’ll try next?”
“I don’t know if they’ve found they can’t knock the wall down this way,” George answered “I just think the Slavs took as much punishment as they could stand right then, which may not be the same thing.” He considered. “They seem to be taking turns, soldiers one try, powers the next We still don’t know all the different powers they have, but my bet is, we’ll find out.”
“Find out what?” Theodore asked when they came into the workroom.
“Find out who’s been trying to listen to every word we say,” his father answered with a growl that concealed memories of trying to find out what his own parents had been up to when he was Theodore’s age and younger.
“Is the fennel all right?” Sophia asked, mildly enough to keep George from thinking she was practicing one of John’s routines.
“The fennel is fine,” George said. “The two of you, on the other hand, are nosy. Irene, which of them do you suppose is nosier than the other?”
“Both,” Irene said, which confused George but confused Theodore and Sophia even more, thereby accomplishing its purpose.
Claudia came in with the sandal George had repaired not long before. Now it had two broken straps, not just one. Despite that detail, Claudia said, “You didn’t fix this very well, George.”
“I am sorry,” George replied, examining the damage. “If you use a shoe to hit people, you know, it won’t wear so well as it would if you only walked in it.”
“That’s not very good.” Claudia’s voice was indignant. Not only did irony roll off her like dye from a well-greased area of leather on a boot, she also remained as convinced nothing was ever her fault as if she were an aristocrat rather than an artisan’s wife. “Shoes should be strong enough to stand up to whatever you do to them.”
“I’ll try to get this back to you in a couple of days,” George said resignedly He knew he wasn’t going to make her see the world or her place in it any differently. What Dactylius saw in her--except someone bigger and stronger and fiercer than he--was beyond the shoemaker.
Claudia’s pale eyes flashed fire. “A couple of days?” she said.
Not being married to her, George could take a firmer line than her husband. “Yes, a couple of days, I’m afraid,” he answered. “I have a lot of work here that I’m trying to do, and I don’t have a lot of time to do it. You can blame that on the Slavs and Avars, if you like, along with everything else.”
“I do. Oh, I do,” Claudia said. “They’ve done nothing but make my life miserable ever since they got here. As far as I’m concerned, they ought to go away and never come back.”
“As far as I’m concerned, they ought to go away and never come back, too,” George said, though he concerned himself with the Slavs and Avars more for what they were liable to do to Thessalonica as a whole than for how they were inconveniencing him in particular.
Claudia let out a melodramatic sigh she probably meant to be martyred instead. “All right, George. A couple of days, since you’re the one who says so.” She swept out, dissatisfied but doing her best to bear up under the disappointment: an actor in a mime troupe couldn’t have conveyed the emotion more clearly.
Once she was gone and George was sure she wouldn’t make any sudden reappearances, he said, “I admire Claudia--I really do.” That drew from the rest of his family the disbelieving exclamations he’d expected. He held up a hand. “No, wait. Hear me out. How many other people in this whole city can you think of who make me glad to go up on the wall and fight the Slavs and Avars?”
No one answered him, by which he concluded he’d won his point.
George and Theodore jostled for places near the altar in St. Demetrius’ basilica. Up in the women’s gallery, Irene and Sophia were probably doing the same thing. They sometimes came home from church with stories of pushing and shoving. Once or twice, they’d come home with bruises on their arms.
Theodore twisted past a plump man. Turning back to his father, he said, “I’ll bet Dactylius’ wife watches the divine liturgy from wherever she pleases.”
“Claudia? I’ll bet you’re right, son,” George answered. Then he stopped and really listened to what Theodore had said. That meant he all but had to kick the plump man out of the way to keep up with his son, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even snarl back when the plump man used several expressions not often heard in church. Theodore had thought along with him as effortlessly and accurately as Irene sometimes did. The boy--no, the young man now--had had a lifetime of practice doing just that, of course, but his lifetime hadn’t been very long, not to George’s way of thinking. The shoemaker suddenly felt more like a grandfather than a father.
Deacons and acolytes and altar boys scurried up and down the aisle, keeping it clear so Bishop Eusebius could advance to the altar. A rising hum of conversation said he was on his way. George craned his neck, but taller people around him kept him from seeing the bishop. Rumor declared Eusebius would say something important this morning, which was why George and his family had come to St. Demetrius’. Rumor, frustratingly, was mute about what the bishop would say.
Celebrating the divine liturgy in a church as splendid as any outside Constantinople was of itself enough to leave George convinced the longer walk than usual had been worth making. But when Bishop Eusebius finally got around to his sermon, more jostling and pushing and shoving started up, with everyone trying to get closer to hear him better.
“My children,” he began, “the vicious barbarians outside our gates still seek to inter Thessalonica in a sarcophagus of their design.” George smiled to himself; Eusebius remained fond of trotting out tombs and coffins. “Thanks to the power of God and of our own holy saint, we have thus far prevented them from achieving their wicked ends.”
The bishop went on, “But our hold on safety is not secure. Far from it! The Slavs and Avars, being ignorant of the power of the one true God, have at their beck and call a host of vile powers, whom they have summoned again and again to try to overwhelm us. They have come too close to success.”
A murmur of agreement ran through the basilica, much of it, George thought, from militiamen. He added his small part to the murmur, whispering to Theodore, “They certainly have.” His son nodded but waved for him to be quiet so they could hear what Eusebius was saying.
George had, to his annoyance, missed a few words. “--so they think we can use our own power, the power of truth and righteousness, only for defense,” the bishop declared. “But, my fellow Christians, I tell you they are mistaken. God not only heals His flock, He curses the wolves who seek to pray upon it. Let us beseech Him to curse the Slavs and Avars, who so plainly need to become acquainted with His wrath.”
Back in Paul’s tavern, George had casually wished a pestilence on the Slavs. He was sure half the people in Thessalonica, likely more, had expressed similar wishes. That was not the sort of thing Bishop Eusebius was talking about. A shiver ran through George. When a bishop formally asked God to bring a curse down on an evildoer’s head, the Lord was likely to deliver.
Eusebius said, “God has granted such prayers before,” echoing George’s thought. The bishop went on, “When Pharaoh of Egypt would not let the children of Israel depart his lands in peace, God visited upon him the Ten Plagues. Did Pharaoh of Egypt oppress the children of Israel more harshly than the khagan of the Avars oppresses the people of Thessalonica? I think not, my children.”
Was Eusebius right? George wondered. The Slavs and Avars had ravaged the countryside and killed and wounded a number of militiamen on the walls, but they hadn’t enslaved the Thessalonicans or forced them to make bricks without straw. And they’d been here for weeks; they hadn’t held the Thessalonicans in bondage for generations. But if the Avars ever broke into Thessalonica, what they would do was liable to be worse than anything Pharaoh had visited upon the Israelites. George gave Eusebius the benefit of the rhetorical doubt.
The bishop went on, “When the wicked Assyrians, who knew God not, besieged Jerusalem, the Lord sent a plague into their camp, so that they had to give over the siege. What He did for Jerusalem, He shall surely be willing to do as well for this famous city of Thessalonica, which, as He has shown, He enfolds under His protecting arm.”
Thessalonica did indeed have a name for being a God-guarded city. And it was more than a name, or Rufus would not have been inspired to warn of the Slavs’ onset. That thought passed through George’s mind in a moment. The one that followed and stayed longer was curiosity about how Benjamin the Jew would have felt, listening to Eusebius going on about miracles worked on behalf of his people, not on behalf of Christians.
If that inconsistency bothered Eusebius, he gave no sign of it, continuing, “What God has done in days gone by, He can surely do again, for, as we have seen with our own eyes, my children, the age of miracles is not yet past. And so let us with full hearts and reverent spirits offer up a prayer to God our Lord that He have mercy upon us now as He did upon the Israelites in days gone by and smite the Slavs and Avars with plagues and pestilences such that they are compelled to withdraw from the environs of this God-protected city, and such that they suffer from the aforesaid sickness as they deserve for the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Let us pray that they are requited as justice demands.”
That was a prayer to conjure with, literally and figuratively. George shivered again. He could think of no one who could hope to come through safe based only on justice, with no mercy thrown onto the scales to temper the verdict. How much more would that be true of the
Slavs and Avars than of people at least acquainted with the Christian faith?
Someone stepped on his foot. He looked around. There stood Menas, who, by the smug expression on his fleshy face, hadn’t done it by accident. George sent up a prayer of his own, for some undoubted divine justice to come to the nobleman who had taken a dislike to him.
Bishop Eusebius looked up through the beams of the roof to the heavens beyond. “We pray, O Lord our God, that Thou savest Thy city of Thessalonica and Thy Christian people in it” --not a word about the Jews in it, George noted, despite Eusebius’ citations of the Lord’s aid to the Israelites in days gone by-- “by smiting the Slavs and Avars with loathsome plagues and diseases, showing forth Thy power in that way and making the barbarians whom Thou hast accursed withdraw in terror and disorder. Amen.”
“Amen,” the worshipers in the basilica said solemnly, Menas and George for once agreeing. George hadn’t been willing to pray for Menas’ getting an arrow in the face when Theodore suggested it. He wondered if he really ought to be praying for dysentery or the bubonic plague to visit the Slavs and Avars in their camps. How was one different from the other?
The only answer he could come up with was that, when he prayed for something dreadful to happen to Menas, he would be praying for his own personal advantage. When he prayed for the Slavs and Avars to take ill, he was praying for the well-being of all the Christians (and even the unmentioned Jews) in Thessalonica. He hoped that was enough of a difference.
A moment later, he remembered that Menas was himself not only a Christian, but one whom God had directly aided through a miracle. A prayer for some misfortune to land on him was much less likely to be acceptable than one for the discomfiture of the pagans beyond the wall.
That made George feel better, but only for a Little while. Out beyond the wall, the gods of the Slavic wizards and Avar priests would find their prayers the more acceptable. How did that leave George on the moral high ground?
He wasn’t sure it did. The powers and gods the Slavs and Avars reverenced were both true for them and powerful as he had seen. His chief hope was that God would prove more powerful. That took things out of the realm of morals altogether, and into the realm of brute force.
Brute force mattered. Anyone who had ever walloped a child for doing wrong knew as much. But… George cast a speculative eye Menas’ way. Maybe he should have asked God to let the nasty noble stop an arrow with his face. God only knew what Menas had asked Him to do to George.
The Slavs, George reminded himself. The Avars. Once they abandoned the siege, life would return to normal. Then he could worry about Menas and his ilk. Till then, the survival of the city had to rank ahead of his own.
Another reason to pray for the plague to visit the barbarians, he thought, and did so.
“The divine liturgy is over. Go in peace,” Eusebius said. As George and Theodore filed out of the church, the shoemaker reflected that that farewell offered a strange contrast to the catastrophe the bishop and the congregation had called down on the heads of the warriors besieging Thessalonica.
As soon as they were outside, Menas said, “Do you know what I was praying for, shoemaker?”
“Something unpleasant for me, I don’t doubt,” George answered, and the noble smiled unpleasantly to show he was right. Shrugging, George said, “If I were you, sir, I’d spend more time praying camels fit through the eye of needles. If they don’t, you’ll have trouble fitting through the doors to the kingdom of heaven. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet my wife and daughter.”
He felt Menas’ eyes boring into his back as he walked away. Theodore set a hand on his arm. “That’s telling him, Father! That’s telling the big-bellied toad he can’t mess around with you.”
“Oh, I can tell him that,” George answered. “I can tell him any number of things. Whether they’re true or not. . .” He shook his head. “That’s different.”
In a strange way, George enjoyed mounting to the stretch of wall near the Litaean Gate that had become almost as familiar to him as his workshop. Up here, at least, he knew who his enemies were and from which direction they were likely to strike.
Rufus and John stood on the wall now. “God bless you, George,” John said. “You’re as reliable as my bladder after three mugs of wine.”
“Thank you so very much.” The shoemaker made as if to examine John’s neck, then whistled as if astonished. “I see Rufus still hasn’t tried strangling you. I wonder why not.”
“I’m an old man.” Rufus got into the spirit of raillery in a hurry. “This sprout here, he’s too quick for me to catch him.”
“I love you both.” John planted a big, wet kiss on George’s cheek, which led both of them to make disgusted noises. “You’re as bristly as a boar’s back,” John exclaimed. “But, like I said, you’re here, which means I don’t have to be. See you soon, I expect.” He strode toward the head of the stairs, whistling one of Lucius and Maria’s better tunes--not that that was saying much.
“Who’s up with you, George?” Rufus asked.
“Sabbatius,” the shoemaker answered.
Rufus made a face. “I’m liable to be up here a while, then. By St. Demetrius, I’m liable to be up here his whole time on the wall, if he’s gone and got outside a whole great lot of wine the way he sometimes does.”
“I can only think of once when he didn’t come up at all,” George said, “and if you didn’t put the fear of God into him then, he’ll never have it.”
“If he were in the regular army, I wouldn’t have just screamed at him,” the veteran answered. “He’d have got himself a beating, or else someone would have taken a sword to his thick neck. You can’t do that kind of thing. I should have given him worse than he got as things are. With us under siege here, the militia are the regular army. I must be getting soft.”
George found that unlikely. He reckoned it unwise to say how unlikely he found it. In lieu of saying any such thing, he pointed out from the wall and asked, “Any sign of the Slavs’ coming down with the plague?”
Rufus shook his head. “Not so I’ve noticed, anyhow. That kind of curse, if God grants it, usually comes later than you wish it would.” Motion at the top of the stairs made his eyes flick in that direction. “Speaking of curses coming later than you wish they would--”
Actually, Sabbatius wasn’t late, or wasn’t very late, anyhow; George had been early. “Hah!” Sabbatius said. He smelled like wine past its best days, but he usually smelled like that.
“A good day to you,” George told him. There were people with whom he would sooner have spent his time up on the wall--the faces of almost all the members of his militia company flashed before his eyes--but telling Sabbatius what he thought of him wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t even mean they could avoid stints together. It would just make them snarl at each other. George saw no point to that.
Rufus didn’t leave right away. George sometimes wondered if the militia captain had set up housekeeping on top of the wall. Aside from that, Rufus also had a habit of staying around longer than usual when Sabbatius was coming up for his turn, no doubt to make sure Sabbatius could get through that turn without falling asleep or starting to see things that weren’t there.
Except for squinting against sunlight that didn’t need to be squinted against, Sabbatius seemed in good enough shape this morning. He walked out to the edge of the wall to see what the Slavs and Avars were up to, which was more than he often did. When he started to laugh, George wondered if he was seeing snakes and aurochs instead.
But he pointed to show the shoemaker and Rufus what he was seeing. “Look!” he exclaimed. “They’ve got the galloping trots.”
Sure enough, a couple of Slavs were squatting just beyond archery range from the wall. A couple of more were running for the trees. One of them, realizing he wasn’t going to make it, also suddenly assumed an undignified posture. More and more of the besiegers seemed afflicted.
“Isn’t that nice?” Rufus said happily. “One of their cooks must have tossed something bad into the stewpot last night, and now they’re paying for it. I’ve been in armies where things like that happened.”
“Look at them,” Sabbatius said again, in high glee. “The whole bunch of ‘em’ll be sick by this afternoon, looks like.”
George stared out at the Slavs. “Do they just have bad stomachs,” he asked, “or is that the plague Bishop Eusebius asked for?”
“What?” Rufus snorted and started to laugh. “You think God’s answering Eusebius’ prayer through the Slavs’ arseholes? Because …” He couldn’t go on, but doubled over, grabbing his knees as he guffawed.
“Do miracles have to be fancy?” George said. “You know dysentery. Have you ever seen a whole army come down with the runs as fast as this?”
“A whole army down with the runs? Plenty of times,” Rufus answered. “It would happen to the Goths and the Franks all the time. They were too stupid to keep from pissing and shitting in rivers upstream from their camp, and I’ll bet the Slavs and Avars are, too. But as fast as this?” He rubbed his chin. “Mm, maybe not. They were fine an hour ago, sure as sure they were.”
“They aren’t fine now,” Sabbatius said. “Look at ‘em go!” George wondered if he’d intended the double meaning, or, for that matter, even noticed it. Sabbatius went on, “Shame it’s so far into fall, most of the flies are gone. Otherwise, they’d be biting ‘em on their bare bums, just like they deserve.” His pronouns were tangled, but his meaning seemed clear.
“If we attack now, could they fight back?” George asked Rufus.
“Probably,” the veteran answered. “You don’t die from the runs, most of the time--you just wish you did. If somebody’s really trying to kill you, you’ll yank up your trousers fast enough, and that’s the truth. I remember back in Italy, there was this Lombard, and he--”
What the incontinent Lombard did or did not do, George never found out. Sabbatius pointed out over the wall again, saying, “Look. Here’s that ugly Avar bugger with the funny clothes again, and he’s got some Slavs with him who’re cursed near as ugly and funny-looking as he is.”
Sure enough, the Avar wizard or priest or whatever he was and the Slavic sorcerers who had defeated Bishop Eusebius’ charm on the grappling hooks had their heads together now. The way they were seriously discussing things, now and then pointing toward the stricken Slavs, left George sure of what they were talking about. Their manner almost made him laugh; in different vestments, they might have been Eusebius and some priests hashing over a fine theological point.
Rufus said, “You don’t see any of the likes of them running for the slit trenches, mind you.”
George kicked himself for not having noticed that. What it meant wasn’t hard to figure out. “They have some way of turning aside the curse, then.”
“I’d say you’re likely right,” Rufus answered, nodding. “Wish you weren’t, but I think you are. Next question we get to have answered is whether they can protect the odds and sods in their army, not just themselves.”
“How can they do that?” Sabbatius said indignantly. “This isn’t Eusebius cursing them--its God cursing them. You can’t keep God from doing what He’s going to do to you.”
“You can if you’ve got gods of your own--or maybe you can, anyhow,” George said. “Some of those gods are pretty strong, too, not like the pagan ones we’re used to. Those gods, they’ve been fighting God for hundreds of years, and they’re worn out and beaten. The gods of the Slavs and Avars are running up against God for the first time now. They have all their strength and power still, and that means they can put up a good fight, same as the Avars and Slavs do against Roman armies.”
He might as well have been talking to one of the paving stones of the walkway. “You can’t keep God from doing what He’s going to do to you,” Sabbatius repeated, as if George hadn’t spoken at all.
Out beyond the wall, one of the Slavic wizards might have accused another of heresy. The reaction was about the same as if one Christian priest had accused another of heresy, anyhow: the offended party first struck a dramatic pose, almost as if he were turned into a statue illustrating denial, and then, that failing, punched his accuser in the nose. The two of them rolled around on the ground, hitting and kicking each other till their companions pulled them apart.
After that, their deliberations went more smoothly. The Avar walloped one Slav, but the lesser wizard accepted the rebuke in the same way a junior priest might have accepted chastisement from Bishop Eusebius. The Avar priest stared in toward Thessalonica. From where he stood, he would have been peering more or less in the direction of the basilica of St. Demetrius, though the walls hid it from his gaze.
A small chill ran through George. “He knows where their sickness is coming from,” the shoemaker said. “It is a curse.”
Rufus grunted. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? If it’s not a natural sickness, they’ve got to figure we gave ‘em a present. Question is, what can they do about it?”
The Slavic wizards were shouting, not at one another for a change, but at one of their sick comrades. The fellow came over to them with dragging stride. The complaint with which Eusebius’ curse had afflicted him had not slain, but, as Rufus had said, he looked unhappy about being alive.
As if they were physicians, the Slavs examined him from head to foot, staring intently at him and running their hands over his body. One of them had him bend over so he could look at the bodily part that was the most immediate source of his difficulty. “Thorough,” George remarked. Sabbatius held his nose and cackled like a hen.
One of the Slavs--not the thorough one--made the sick warrior straighten up. Then he slapped him, first on the right cheek, then on the left, then on the right, and then on the left again. He and his colleagues made passes over the sick Slav’s head and in front of his belly. Then they had the fellow open his mouth.
“Did you see that?” Rufus said.
George wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but answered anyhow: “The little gray cloud that came out of his mouth? It didn’t look like the steam you breathe out on a cold day, did it?” He scratched his chin. “I wonder what it was. I wonder what it meant.”
“I know!” Sabbatius exclaimed. “I know!” He bounced up and down in his excitement, like a usually slow schoolboy who saw something his smarter classmates had missed. “They’re getting rid of the evil eye. My granny used to use a ritual like that. She’s from Illyria, where the Slavs have been trouble for years. Maybe they got it there; I don’t know.”
“The evil eye!” Rufus said. “This isn’t the evil eye. It’s a curse of God. I was in the basilica when Bishop Eusebius asked us to pray for it. You can’t get rid of the curse of God the way you get rid of the evil eye.”
“You can’t, huh?” Sabbatius pointed. “Tell that to him.” And, sure enough, the Slav on whom the wizards had tested their technique seemed much livelier than he had been the moment before. He hugged his belly. George hoped that was torment, but it turned out to be delight.
“It isn’t right,” Rufus insisted, as if his eyes were lying.
“Maybe it is,” George said slowly. “What’s the evil eye but a kind of curse? If you can lift one kind of curse with that ritual, why can’t you lift another one if you’re strong enough? And we’ve already seen how the Slavs and Avars worry more about their gods than they do about ours. We have priests protecting our people against their curses. Their wizards are protecting them against us.”
That was just what the Slavic wizards were doing. As soon as they’d cured their first patient, they began shouting again. Two Slavs came over to them this time. The Avar priest danced in front of them. The Slavic wizards performed the same rite as before, although they slapped the face of only one. Both men, however, rocked back on their heels as if slapped. A small cloud of smoke came from the mouth of each. And both warriors walked away far happier than they had approached.
“Sabbatius,” Rufus said with sudden decision, “go run to the church of St. Demetrius and bring the bishop here.”
“Me?” Sabbatius’ eyes widened. “He won’t listen to me.
“Tell him what the Slavs and Avars are doing out there,” Rufus answered. “He’ll listen, I promise you.” His voice roughened. “Now get moving, curse you. I’ll hold your place here--don’t worry about that.”
Sabbatius left. By his expression, he would sooner have stayed and stood around than moved quickly. You argued with Rufus at your peril, though. George said, “I hope he doesn’t stop into a wineshop as soon as he’s out of sight.”
“If he does, I’ll kill him.” Rufus spoke as matter-of-factly as if he were talking about slicing bread. That made him both more believable and more frightening than if he’d ranted and raved.
Out beyond the wall, the Slavic wizards summoned four of their fellow tribesmen. The Avar priest briefly danced in front of them, capering, George thought, like a fool. Then the Slavs singled out one warrior to be slapped. All four of them might as well have been, though, by the way they staggered. All four of them opened their mouths. Four little clouds of vapor escaped. Four Slavic soldiers suddenly seemed free of their diarrhea.
One of them ran and got his bow and started shooting arrows at the Romans atop the walls of Thessalonica. The Romans shot back. When half a dozen arrows fell close by him, the Slav lost the nerve or anger that had sustained him. He turned and ran away. The Romans kept shooting. One shaft caught him in the left nether cheek. He let out a howl George could hear from the wall.
“Let’s see your cursed wizards fix that pain in the arse!” Rufus shouted out to him. George laughed out loud.
But the Avar priest and Slavic wizards paid no attention to the wounded warrior. This time, eight hangdog Slavs stumbled up before them. Again, the Avar performed as if he were a dancing bear. One Slavic sorcerer slapped one Slavic soldier. All eight Slavs might have been slapped. They all opened their mouths. They all expelled vapor-- and, apparently, their illness with it. They all walked away as healthy men would walk.
“What would be next?” George counted on his fingers. “Two eights make--sixteen.”
And sure enough, the Slavs and the Avar cured sixteen soldiers next. Rufus’ lips moved: he was probably performing the same mental arithmetic as George. “It’d be--thirty-two--this time, wouldn’t it?” he said, and the shoemaker nodded, having just reached the same answer. Rufus went on, “If they keep doubling up like that every time, they’ll curse their whole stinking army in a jiffy.”
George turned his head. “Here come Sabbatius and Bishop Eusebius,” he said.
“Good,” Rufus said. “Now I don’t have to kill Sabbatius.” Again, he sounded as if he would have done it without a second thought.
Robes swirling around him, Bishop Eusebius came out onto the walkway. Sabbatius followed. The bishop did not look out from the wall. Instead, rounding on Rufus, he said, “This man you sent tells me the barbarians have the power to defeat the curse of the Lord. Can such a thing be true?” He did not sound as if he believed it.
Rufus was a man who said what he thought. In his rough Latin, he answered, “No, of course not, Your Excellency. I lied just to get you up here and to get you angry at me. I like having important people angry at me.”
Eusebius’ eyes flashed. George, who already had an important person angry at him, feared the militia captain s pungent sarcasm had achieved its announced purpose. Before Eusebius vented the anger he plainly felt, George said, “See for yourself, Your Excellency.”
Turned from the personal toward the real, Eusebius watched as the Slavic wizards cured thirty-two warriors of the disease with which the bishop’s curse had tormented them. When the small, dark clouds of vapor had sprung from the mouths of the sick Slavs, and when the warriors walked away no longer sick, Eusebius made the sign of the cross, as if to say no spiritual power but his own had any business being effective.
“Can you stop them, Your Excellency?” George asked. “Can you bring the curse back to its full strength?”
“I can try. I will try.” Eusebius drew himself up to his full height--which would have been more impressive had he been taller. He began to pray: “Lord God, I beseech Thee: do not abandon the folk of Thessalonica to the Slavs and Avars. Punish the barbarians, smite them as they deserve for taking no thought of Thee or of Thy truths, and--”
He went on in that vein. He seemed prepared to go on in that vein for some time. He had, however, attracted the notice of the Slavs and Avars. George thought they would try to disrupt his petition to the Lord with a storm of arrows, such as they had sent his way the last time he’d come up onto the city wall and into their presence.
Instead, the Slavs went on curing their fellow tribesmen while the Avar priest or wizard began what was plainly a petition to his own powers. And, as plainly, those powers were heeding him, as God had heeded Bishop Eusebius. “I am hindered,” the bishop said indignantly. “I can sense I am hindered. In the name of Christ, Who cast forth demons, I command this hindrance to cease!”
The Avar priest staggered. He glared toward the wall. Evidently he was no more used to having his power thwarted than was Eusebius. As the bishop had done, he redoubled his efforts, dancing harder than he had before and shouting to his gods so loudly that George had no trouble hearing him across more than a bowshot of ground. Were noise the only criterion for piety, he would have defeated Eusebius.
He did not. The bishop’s quiet prayer discomfited him, and also discomfited the Slavic wizards with whom he’d been working. Rather than curing their warriors thirty-two at a time, they had to drop down to batches of eight, sometimes four. But they did keep curing them.
Eusebius groaned. “Who would have expected the pagans to be so strong?” he said, and shook his fist out toward the Avar who was keeping him from keeping the Slavic wizards from curing the Slavic warriors. “Almighty God, invincible God, a plague is but a small thing next to what Thou canst do. I pray Thee, smite them now with thunder and lightning!”
George hoped for a levinbolt from the clear blue sky to crisp the Slavs and Avar. He hoped for one, but did not expect it. Nor was his hope granted. The Avar priest, after all, was the one who controlled the thirteen thunder spirits and the rumblers. Going straight against the Avars’ powers, from all he’d seen, did not work.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “sometimes it’s better to work with what the powers out there can do than to ignore them.” He explained how Father Luke had turned the sorcerous storm against the Avar who had created it.
“I have heard this sordid tale already,” Eusebius replied in a voice chillier than the weather. “Father Luke is serving a penance for undue familiarity with these demonic powers.”
“He saved us all,” Rufus exclaimed. “Doesn’t that count for more than how he did it?”
“ ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ “ Eusebius answered, smug as any theologian with a quotation from Scripture handy.
“He didn’t do it for gain,” George said stubbornly. “He did it to save the city and save the people.”
It was useless. He knew it was useless. A layman arguing theology with a theologian was like a militiaman taking on a fully armored regular soldier: a gifted amateur might prevail, but that wasn’t the way to bet. Eusebius, fortunately, kept his temper. Indeed, the look he gave George was pitying. That made the shoemaker angry, which was also useless: as well have a gnat angry at a horse.
Out beyond the wall, hampered but not stopped, the Slavic wizards went on curing their countrymen. Bishop Eusebius tried again to break their power to do so, tried again and faded again. That did anger him, as if someone had changed the rules to a game without telling him first. He stomped off in high dudgeon.
“We’re not going to win all of them, looks like,” Rufus said.
“No,” George agreed. “And now it’s their turn.”