Thessalonica

laughing--especially when his sister and mother were laughing already.

But Irene quickly turned serious again. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I know what I’m going to do,” George said: “I’m going to finish this sandal I was working on. As for the rest, I won’t worry about it till it happens--if it happens.” He hoped he convinced Irene with that if. He wished he could convince himself.

VI

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.