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 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
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
“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
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
