Thessalonica

He did not expect God to give him a pillar of fire. Thinking of the children of Israel made him think of Benjamin the Jew, and thinking of Benjamin made him think of Dactylius and Rufus and John and drunken Sabbatius and Claudia and Paul and the rest of his friends back in Thessalonica. He also thought again of Menas back in Thessalonica. As they had before, his hands formed fists. Without Menas, he wouldn’t have been in this predicament. Rich though Menas was, noble though Menas was, George resolved he would have his revenge. One more reason to go back, he thought.

Daylight hours were short at this season of the year. Time seemed to crawl by anyhow. The satyrs went out hunting, and came back with rabbits and roots and herbs. They presented these to the centaurs as what George took to be a peace-offering. Nephele looked as if she wanted to fling the food in Stusippus’ face. But if the female did that, everyone would go hungry. Into the pot everything went.

George had seen the day before that centaurs had appetites in keeping with their size. He got only a few mouthfuls of stew, and a bit more dried fruit to go with it. After two days straight of fighting for his life, that didn’t feel like enough. His stomach made noises that might have come from the throat of a Slavic wolf-demon.

When darkness finally came, the shoemaker shivered. Part of that, he was not ashamed to admit to himself, was fear. Part, too, was cold. His teeth had chattered up on the wall when he’d drawn night duty. Being out in the woods was worse. He would have welcomed the company of a couple of rampantly erect satyrs in a bed of leaves--they would have helped keep him warm.

Instead, having bolted his meager meal, he slipped out of the encampment with Ampelus. None of the centaurs accompanied them. “For,” Crotus said as they were leaving, “strength having faded, stealth needs must serve. There the lustful ones surpass us, they being every inclined to sneak up on mortal women and so debauch themselves.” The male’s lip curled in scorn. “Mayhap their skulking habits shall this once prove of advantage to us.”

“Huh,” Ampelus said. “He not so smart as he think he is. One of these days, I climb up on rock back of Nephele, show that mare what loving can be.” The satyr’s hips twitched in lewd anticipation. George noted, however, that for all of Ampelus’ bravado, it made sure it was well out of earshot of the encampment before making a boast like that.

They walked quietly through the woods, down toward Thessalonica. All George heard were their footfalls, scuffing through fallen leaves. Or rather, all he heard were his own footfalls scuffing through fallen leaves.

Ampelus paced along beside him, silent as a shadow. No insects chirped: too late in the year. No nightjars called, no owls hooted.

Bare-branched trees raised their boughs to the sky, as if surrendering to robbers. Those boughs passed black in front of the nearly full moon that poured pale radiance over the hillside. Normally, George would have been delighted to have all the light he could if he was crazy enough to go through the forest at night. Now--. Now he said, “Won’t the moon make it easier for the wolves and whatever else is out there to find us?”

“Easier, yes.” The satyr played with itself for a little while, as it did whenever it was worried. “But they not need much light to see. Maybe they not need to see at all. Maybe they. . . know.”

“What will you do if they know?” George pronounced the word as portentously as Ampelus had done. “Run away again?”

“This” --the satyr gripped its swollen phallus with both hands-- “this is no sword. Can’t kick like donkey, like stupid centaurs do. Can maybe throw rocks. Maybe. What good in fight, I? Made to be lover” --that hip-rocking motion again-- “not fighter.”

“Well, even so--” George began, admitting to himself if not to the satyr that it had a point.

Ampelus cut him off. “Shut up, mortal George, or see how mortal you be. Not get through by fighting anyhow. Get through by sneaking. Sneaking, you be quiet.”

The satyr had another point there, even if it had been doing more talking than George. The shoemaker trudged along. Most of the time, he and Ampelus headed downhill toward their goal, pushing through the spell of resistance the Slavs and Avars had established against such ventures. Every so often, they climbed rises lying athwart their path, Ampelus judging that quicker than walking around. From one of those bits of higher ground, George caught a glimpse of Thessalonica, lamps and torches bravely burning inside the wall. The city hadn’t fallen, then. Relief made him feel as if he’d walked fewer miles on more food than was really so.

That remained true despite his also having seen the campfires of the Slavs and Avars around the besieged city. He hadn’t expected the barbarians to have cleared out since he was locked away from Thessalonica. As long as they were outside the wall, not within it, something might yet be done.

Ampelus suddenly grabbed George’s arm and pulled him to one side, ever so carefully skirting what looked to the shoemaker like a stretch of ground no different from any other. “What’s wrong?” George whispered. “Did you see a wolf?”

“Worse,” the satyr answered with a fearful shudder. “Saint do something holy there, who knows when? Ground hurt to go on.”

“St. Demetrius?” George asked.

Ampelus turned to stare at him. The satyr’s eyes flashed. The light, George thought, was their own, not reflected moonlight. “Who cares St. Who?” the creature burst out. “Is saint. Is holyfied ground. Is hurt. We go different way.”

“If we did go through the hallowed ground,” George said thoughtfully, “we would be doing something the Slavs and Avars and their powers don’t expect. It might gain us an edge.”

“I do not go through holyfied ground,” Ampelus insisted. “Hurt me too much. And like I tell you, I watch wolf eat one of your priests. Wolf not care about ground like I do.”

That was true. It was also depressing. And standing around in the woods arguing did not strike George as a good idea. Standing around in the woods for any reason did not strike George as a good idea. Being in the woods did not strike him as a good idea. But when all the other ideas looked worse … All the other ideas’ looking worse did not make this a good one. Of that the shoemaker was convinced.

He and the satyr pressed on toward Thessalonica. How they were going to get through the encirclement the Slavs and Avars had round the city bulked larger and larger in his mind. He had, at the moment, no idea. He decided to worry about it when the time came. He had plenty of other things to worry about till the time came.

An old man stepped out into the path ahead of George and Ampelus. His long beard and bushy eyebrows were green, and glowed brighter than Ampelus’ eyes had flashed. “Well,” George said, “it’s a good bet he’s not a wandering peasant, isn’t it?” He drew his sword.

“I am Vucji Pastir,” the old man said, his voice sounding in George’s mind rather than his ears: “the shepherd of the wolves.” His eyes, which shone almost as brightly as his beard and eyebrows, seemed ready to pop from his head. Though he stood in the moonlight, he cast no shadow.

“I am a good Christian man,” George said. “Begone, evil spirit!” He made the sign of the cross.

That had pained the wolf-demon at the start of the daylight fight, even if it hadn’t routed the creature. Vucji Pastir smiled. When he did, he showed his teeth, which were as sharp and pointed as any wolf s. The holy sign did him no harm. He raised his right hand. Off in the distance, howling rose. “My sheep, they come for you,” he said.

George was not inclined to wait for them. He rushed at the shepherd of the wolves, slashing as he came. His blade shortened the Slavic demigod’s beard by several inches. The severed hairs glowed as brightly as they had while still attached to their master.

Vucji Pastir bellowed in surprise and anger and--fear? He vanished, leaving behind the results of George’s impromptu barbering. “Bravely did!” Ampelus cried. “Now we can get away.”

“No,” George said. “Now we can go on.” He snatched up the tuft of shining green hairs. “And now we have a holy relic--no, an unholy relic, I suppose--of our own. If that ugly thing is the shepherd of the wolves, they should pay attention to his beard.”

“Yes--when they eat you, they not eat the beard,” the satyr said gloomily. But it went on with George instead of turning back as it plainly would rather have done.

They had not gone far before a wolf-demon snarled at them. Instead of slashing at it with his sword, George thrust the fragment of Vucji Pastir s beard in its face. It let out a startled yip, then a doglike yelp of greeting. Having the bit of beard in his possession made George a shepherd of wolves in his own right.

“See, I told you so,” he said to Ampelus--a privilege he would not have taken with Irene. But--God be praised!--he wasn’t married to the satyr. The wolf-demon rolled onto its belly, then placed itself at George’s left heel, exactly as a well-trained dog would have done if it was going for a walk. In the moonlight, the shoemaker grinned at Ampelus. “Come on--we’ve got our own escort.”

Warily, the satyr moved closer to the wolf. The wolf accepted Ampelus as a friend of George’s. “Strange business,” the satyr said, and stroked itself for reassurance.

They had not gone far before another fierce wolf-demon tried to bar their way. Before George could thrust his fluffy talisman at it, the first wolf, the one he’d tamed with Vucji Pastir’s whiskers, snarled--but at the newcomer, not at him. The second wolf-demon whined appeasingly and fell into place beside the one that had warned it.

“Maybe I’ll have the whole pack of them by the time we get to Thessalonica,” George said gaily. Ampelus didn’t answer, but he didn’t run away or masturbate, either, which meant he was happy enough.

And then, without warning, Vucji Pastir reappeared right beside George. The wolves stared at the Slavic demigod and the shoemaker, as if realizing they might have made a mistake. Vucji Pastir snatched back the bit of beard George had trimmed from him. He set it against the rest of his green whiskers; it grew fast to them almost at once. “Mine,” he said, and disappeared again.

George thought he was a dead man. By the way Ampelus moaned, the satyr expected the wolves to tear them to pieces in the next instant, too. But they didn’t. Some small part of Vucji Pastir’s glamour still clung to George. The wolves, however, did whine and growl when he tried to go forward. When he turned around and started uphill, the way he had come, they were silent.

“I think,” he said carefully, “we’d better head back.”

“See?” Ampelus said. “I told you so.”

“You’ll make someone a fine wife one day,” George snapped. The satyr laughed at him. He looked over his shoulder. The wolves were not tagging along at his heels, as they had before. That made him more glad than otherwise: sooner or later, they were going to figure out that he’d duped them. He didn’t want them anywhere near his heels then.

As things happened, he’d put most of a mile between himself and the wolves before a furious howling broke out at his back. They didn’t catch up with him and Ampelus before the two of them had returned to the encampment from which they’d set out. Nor did they prove willing to attack the centaurs there. After more hideous howls, they went away.

“I can’t go to Thessalonica in the daytime,” George muttered, “and I can’t go at night, either. What does that leave?” He didn’t think it left anything, but there had to be a way into the city. No--he wanted a way into the city. There was, unfortunately, all too often a difference between what he wanted and what there was.

X

A satyr named Ithys, whom George hadn’t met before, came into the camp the next morning. Where the satyrs and centaurs there moped, Ithys bounced and sparkled. “Tell me why,” Ampelus said, scowling, “or I throw something at you.”

“I tell you why.” Ithys leaped in the air from sheer high spirits. “Find woman in village--Lete. Give her all my loving. All my loving, I give to her.” He leaped again, like a happy billy goat.

That instantly raised the satyrs’ spirits, and their phalluses, though the centaurs stayed glum. “Tell me, tell me,” Stusippus exclaimed.

“I want to tell you,” Ithys said. “Yesterday, I see--”

“Tell me what you see,” Stusippus broke in.

“I try. I try. I tell the word” --logos, in Greek, could mean almost anything connected with speech and thought-- “if you not interrupting. You wait. Otherwise, I looking through you.” Ithys stood on its dignity, which was even more absurd than a dog standing on its hind legs. “First, I just see a face--”

“Then what?” This time Stusippus and Ampelus interrupted together.

“I get you, I think. I wave to her.” What Ithys waved was not a hand. “She want me.” The satyr preened. “I see her standing there. She set down her washering. She leaving home, her home. She not want to do it in road, but come out into trees. ‘Love me,’ I say. ‘Do. Please please me.’ She no ask me why. She hold me tight. We do and do and do.” Ithys panted at the memory. Ampelus and Stusippus panted, too. “Not a second time, not a third, not a fourth, not a fifth,” Ithys boasted. “She never say, ‘You can’t do that,’ like women sometimes do. When she finally have to go, ‘Any time at all,’ she say. She say, ‘I need you.’ I’ll be back, yes, yes, yes.”

Ampelus and Stusippus both sighed, jealousy and admiration perfectly mixed. “Nice someone happy,” Ampelus said. Stusippus nodded.

“Why all so gloomish here?” Ithys asked. “All you need is love.” The word the satyr used was related to love, anyhow.

“Need something different,” Ampelus answered, and went on to explain what George was doing in the camp and how the shoemaker and the satyrs and centaurs had tried and failed to reach