Thessalonica

Thessalonica, let alone twenty. Three, four thousand Slavs out there, five at the most.”

“There have to be more than that,” Sabbatius said. Rufus gave a single scornful shake of his head. If George had to choose between a guess by a drunken militiaman and another by a soldier who’d been gauging the size of armies most of his life, he knew which one he preferred.

“Anyway,” Rufus said, “the point isn’t how many of ‘em there are, the point is how to make there be fewer of ‘em. Why don’t you stop jawing and start using that cursed bow--or don’t you remember you have it along?”

Sabbatius did start shooting at the Slavs. George could not tell what effect his arrows had; a lot of missiles were flying out from the wall. Somebody said, “If the jawbone of an ass was good enough for Solomon to fight with, why not for Sabbatius, too?”

“Hullo, John,” George said without turning around. He loosed another arrow himself, then went on, “I thought I’d see you up here.”

“It’s the place to be right now,” John said in affected, upper-class Greek.

George snorted. “Pity the Slavs don’t speak any civilized language--you could slay them with laughter.”

“Me? John said. “Considering the way you shoot, making them laugh themselves to death would be your best chance.” He let fly, then grunted in satisfaction. “There, you see? I got one. I’m funnier than you are, and I’m a better man with the bow, too.”

“To say nothing of more modest,” George murmured.

“That’s ri--” John began, and then stopped, sending a chilly glance toward the shoemaker. George felt a moment’s pride; not everyone could trade words with John and come off the winner. He knew he couldn’t do it himself very often.

But then his small satisfaction was swept away, for out of the woods rode four or five men who sat their horses as if they were the centaurs that might still linger in the remotest valleys of the most rugged upcountry. But centaurs wore no armor, neither the man half nor the beast, and these men and their horses were both clad in scalemail that would ward them against anything but a direct and lucky hit.

They rode up to and through the Slavs, who parted before them as the citizens of Thessalonica might have parted before the Roman Emperor, had he come to worship at the church of St. Demetrius. They halted within bowshot of the walls. Under their iron helmets, their faces, as well as George could make them out in the fading light, were flat, strong, impassive.

“Avars,” Rufus muttered under his breath. As soon as he spoke the name, George knew he had to be right. No wonder the Slavs treated them like lords: they were the Slavs’ lords.

Calm as if they had come to visit rather than to attack, the Avars studied Thessalonica’s works for a minute or two, then turned their horses away from the walls and rode back into the gathering darkness. Once more, the Slavs stood aside to let them pass. Shadows reached out for them, and they were gone.

Neither side started up the fighting again for some little while after that. “Those men had a power in them, and not a small one,” George said quietly. “I wish Bishop Eusebius would have been here on the wall with us, to show them we have a power that can stand against theirs.”

Rufus surprised him by shaking his head. “The less the enemy knows about you, the better off you’re going to be,” the veteran said. “That’s true every which way, not just with plain weapons.”

After a little thought, George nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said. Then he pointed to the Slavs, who were beginning to resume the racket they had abated when the Avars appeared among them. “We’ve found out about them, that’s for certain.”

But Rufus shook his head again. “Not yet. Not hardly. Not so it matters.” He too looked out toward the barbarians. They were starting to light fires out there on the cleared ground between the city and the woods. “Me, I’ve got the feeling we’re going to have plenty of time to find out more.”

The strangest thing about the early days of the siege of Thessalonica was how close to normal everything felt. The only difference in his life George noticed was that going out to hunt had become impossible--which was, he realized, just as well, for it would have been decidedly unwise. He did not think the Slavs would share bread and honey with Romans they chanced upon in the woods, not anymore.

Not even his times up on the wall changed much. He still served his usual four-hour shifts, sometimes during the night. There was always the chance the Slavs would mount an assault against Thessalonica’s formidable curtain of stone, but, after St. Demetrius had warned the townsfolk of their presence and kept them from coming up over the wall by surprise, they contented themselves with shooting occasional arrows at the garrison.

Indeed, as time went by, many of them left the immediate neighborhood of Thessalonica, so that the city hardly seemed under siege at all. Sometimes, looking out from the walkway atop the wall, George could not set eye on a single enemy warrior.

“They’re out there,” Rufus said one afternoon when he remarked on that. “Oh, they’re out there, never fear. If they weren’t out there, we’d have traffic on the Via Egnatia getting into the city from east or west. Seen any?”

“No,” George said. “I wish I had.” He lowered his voice, as if passing on a secret, and, in fact, he wanted no one but Rufus to hear his next words: “If we don’t get some traffic, we’ll be hungry by and by.”

“That’s so,” Rufus answered, also discreetly. “Constantinople, now, Constantinople gets grain from Egypt. An enemy can besiege Constantinople till everything turns blue, and it won’t do him any good at all. We aren’t so lucky. We’ve had a few ships in from southern Greece, but not many, and not much in ‘em.”

“Maybe we should sally, try to drive them away,” George said. “Then traffic could start moving again.”

“Probably nothing to move right now, anyhow,” Rufus said gloomily. “If the Slavs are here, they’re in the farm country and backwoods villages, stealing their wheat and barley and wine. No, best thing to do is wait ‘em out. Maybe God will send them a plague. That happens in a lot of sieges.”

“Happens in towns, too.” George remembered the outbreak of bubonic plague in Thessalonica not so long before. Hundreds, maybe thousands, had died.

After a while, Dactylius and John came up onto the wall. George hurried back to his shop; he was convinced his being away from it so regularly would make it founder. Irene was convinced he was out of his mind; Theodore, on the other hand, was convinced a soldier’s life was far more exciting than that of a shoemaker. One day, George intended to sit him down with Rufus, to see if anything resembling sense would penetrate his head.

George had just finished nailing a new heel onto a boot (not a boot he’d made, he was pleased to note) when Claudia came into the shop carrying a pair of sandals. “Hello,” George said, setting aside the newly repaired boot. “What can I do for you today?”

“Have you seen my husband?” Claudia’s voice throbbed with melodrama. She was one of those people who found day-to-day life too dull to be readily tolerable, and spiced it up with imaginary worries when no real ones were handy. And when real ones were handy-- “I live in dread of the day when the messenger will tell me my beloved Dactylius has died a hero’s death for his city.”

She clasped both hands to her bosom. It was a fine, well-rounded bosom; the gesture might have belonged in a pantomime show but for the inconvenient sandals. Sophia excused herself and hurried upstairs. Theodore coughed and coughed. Irene kept her face utterly expressionless. She worried about George, and made no secret of it, but made no production of it, either.

And George did not tell Claudia that the likeliest way for Dactylius’ untimely demise to occur at the moment was death by boredom. Instead, showing restraint he felt sure St. Demetrius would have praised, he said, “I think he’ll be all right. The wall is very strong.”

“So they say,” Claudia answered, as if they were notorious liars. “For myself, I wish Dactylius would just stay in the shop with me.”

Given a choice between closing himself up in a shop with Claudia all day and going out to fight the fierce barbarians, George would have taken on the Slavs even without a sword to hold them at bay. That was something else he couldn’t tell her; he was wider through the shoulders, but she overtopped him by two or three digits.

“What’s wrong with the sandals?” George asked, hoping to turn her away from morbid worries about her husband and toward something simple.

“I broke a strap on this one--see?” She showed him the problem.

“Yes, I can take care of that,” he told her, and then, to make conversation, added, “How did it happen?”

He realized that was a mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth. Claudia drew herself up to her full, formidable height. Her gray eyes flashed. It wasn’t quite so impressive a manifestation as when St. Demetrius had spoken through Rufus, but it wasn’t supernatural, either: it was only her temper coming out.

“That stupid slut next door kept throwing her garbage in front of my place, and so I hit her with the shoe,” she explained. “I don’t think you sewed the strap on very well.”

George examined it again. It hadn’t broken at a sewn seam. She’d hit so hard, she’d torn the leather. From under his eyebrows, he glanced up at her. No, getting on her bad side was not a good idea. She might well have been more dangerous to the Slavs than a good many militiamen on the wall, her husband included.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said again. With almost anyone else, he would have pointed out in no-uncertain terms that the problem was not of his making. But Claudia was his good friend’s wife … and, even if she hadn’t been, he suspected he’d have kept his mouth shut.

Instead of sewing the broken strap back together, he took it off the sandal and replaced it with a new one. That took a little longer, but meant the sandal wouldn’t rub Claudia’s ankle when she wore it again.

She tried it on after he gave it back to her. After a judicious pause, she nodded. “Yes, that will do. I hope it holds together, though.”

“It should,” George answered. “Of course, the next time you hit your neighbor, you might want to think about using something like a brick instead.”

Claudia considered the joke with such drilling seriousness that George once more wished he had the words back; he’d wanted to make her smile, not to make her murder the woman next door. But at last she said, “No, a brick would have hurt her more than I intended then. I would have to be truly angry to use a brick.” She took a couple more steps in the repaired sandal and nodded. “It does feel good, George. I’ll tell Dactylius I’ve been here. You know you can drop by the shop.” She wrapped her mantle around her and swept away.

“What will you get me at Dactylius’, Father?” Sophia asked, as eagerly as if she were a little girl rather than a young woman. The shoemaker and jeweler did not charge each other money for their services, but traded them back and forth.

“I don’t know,” George answered. “Some bit of polished brass--a ring, maybe, or a thin bracelet. Fixing a sandal strap isn’t enough for me to bring home gold inset with rubies and pearls, you know.” Nothing he was likely to do was enough for him to bring home gold inset with precious gems. He’d long since resigned himself to that.

“That woman.” Irene shook her head. “She reminds me of a jar with the stopper in too tight left in the fire too long. One day it will burst and hurt half a dozen people with flying potsherds. And yet Dactylius dotes on her.”

“Of course he does,” George said. “Do you think he’d dare not to?”

Theodore chuckled, Sophia giggled, and Irene wagged a severe finger at her husband. “You are a wicked man. All the time you’ve been spending in the company of the militia is making you sound like John.”

“I got the better of him the other day, up on the wall,” George boasted, and recounted the exchange he’d won.

“That’s funny, Papa,” Theodore said, clapping his hands together. “Now will you tell us all the ones where he bested you?”

“If you want to hear those, you can go ask John,” the shoemaker replied with dignity. Then he gave his son a cuff on the side of the head, not hard enough to hurt, not soft enough to be ignored, to remind the youth to preserve at least some vestige of respect for his parents.

“It’s all right, George,” Irene said.

“I know it is,” he answered. “I want to make sure it stays that way.”

As long as only Slavs were besieging Thessalonica, George didn’t worry much about the ultimate safety of the city: they hadn’t impressed him as being particularly dangerous fighters. That was as well; he and his fellow militiamen weren’t particularly dangerous fighters, either.