Sure enough, George saw him and he did not see George several more times, there in the hill country. Toward the end of the day--and also a good deal of the way toward Thessalonica--the shepherd of the wolves looked so upset at having faded to spot George that the shoemaker was tempted to go up to him, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “Excuse me there, friend, but can I help you find somebody?”
He convinced himself, after some silent argument, that that was not a good idea, no matter how he would have enjoyed watching a demigod jump.
Despite Vucji Pastir, despite the wolf-demons, George made better time down toward Thessalonica than he’d expected, approaching the city before the sun had sunk in the west. That was not what he wanted. If he went up to a postern gate in the dead of night, he could slip off Perseus’ cap and claim no one had noticed him till he got there. If he tried that in the afternoon, the guards would see him materialize out of thin air. So would the Slavs, with results liable to be unpleasant.
Waiting for nightfall proved harder than he’d expected. The woods near Thessalonica were full of Slavs, some hunting, others taking axes to trees and bushes to fuel their fires. They had no notion he was there but, like the fellow back in Lete, kept doing their best to blunder into his invisible but not incorporeal form. If one of them did chance to trip over his foot, he did not think a simple, friendly “Excuse me” would set matters right.
Carefully, he worked his way around the wall till he neared the Litaean Gate. The men on the wall there would be likeliest to know him and to recognize his voice when he came up to the gate. So would the men at the postern gate by the main gateway. If he presented himself and they wouldn’t let him into the city… he didn’t want to think about that.
By the time he’d found a position from which he could keep an eye on the gate, twilight was falling. The Slavs built up the fires in their encampments and started cooking their supper. The odors of roasted meat and bubbling porridge made George’s stomach growl. He’d long since finished the bread and wine Gorgonius had given him.
Night quickly swallowed twilight. George waited for the campfires to the back to embers, and for most of the Slavs to shelter under blankets and furs and whatever else they used to ward off the cold of night. George wasn’t using anything to ward off the cold of night. His teeth chattered. If he froze to death out here in the woods, would his corpse stay invisible till a storm knocked the cap off his head?
“One more thing I don’t want to find out,” he muttered.
By what he judged to be the fourth hour of the night, the encampments were about as quiet as they ever got. He started picking his way between a couple of disorderly clumps of huts and tents. One hand held the cap tight on his head, the other was on his swordhilt. If by some mischance he did run into a Slav, he thought his best bet was to kill the fellow quickly, giving him no chance to cry out.
Instead of a Slav, he almost ran into the Avar wizard.
The fellow loomed up before him, outline distorted by the fringes and furs of his costume. George froze: metaphorically, to go with the literal cold that had afflicted him. From everything Gorgonius had said, from everything George himself had seen, the Avar should have had no idea he was there.
But the wizard was as wary as the wolves and as Vucji Pastir. He murmured something in his incomprehensible language and stared right at--right through--George. He took a step forward, one hand outstretched, as if to seize the shoemaker.
Heart pounding, George jumped to one side. If the Avar priest had pursued him, he would have run for the gate with every bit of strength he had left. But the Avar kept on walking toward his own tent, which, George saw, lay not far away. Maybe he hadn’t sensed George at all. The shoemaker could not make himself believe it.
He looked up to the wall, wondering which of his friends were on it now. When Menas locked him out of Thessalonica and the Slavs bore down on him, he hadn’t thought such things would matter again. How glad he was to discover they did.
He was within bowshot of the wall now, in the empty area the Slavs and Avars entered only when they were attacking. There was the iron-plated bulk of the Litaean Gate ahead, and there, inset into the wall, the postern gate beside it. That postern gate drew him like a lodestone.
Once there, he found a new question: how hard to rap on it. Too softly, and the guards wouldn’t notice. Too hard, and the Slavs would. His first tap was too tentative. His second was so loud, it frightened him. He looked anxiously back toward the barbarians’ encampment. No shouts rose there. He knocked again.
A tiny grill in the center of the gate opened. “Who’s there?” a guard demanded. “Stand and be recognized.”
“It’s me--George,” George said. “For the love of--” He cut that off, not knowing what God’s name would do to the cap. “I managed to get away from the Slavs and Avars and make it back here. Let me in.”
Through the iron grill, he saw one of the guard’s eyes and part of his cheek. “Stand and be recognized,” the fellow repeated. “If you’re really a Slav who speaks Latin, you’re going to be a dead Slav who used to speak Latin.”
“But I’m in front of-- Oh.” Again, George broke off. He was glad the guard couldn’t see him blush. The guard couldn’t see him at all, because he was still wearing the cap he hadn’t wanted to test with God’s name. He’d remembered it in that context, but not in the context of making him invisible. Feeling a fool once more, he took it from his head.
The guard recoded. “
“Let me in,” George said. If the cap couldn’t bear holy names, it wouldn’t be much good in Thessalonica, or maybe ever after. George hoped that wasn’t so; otherwise, he’d have a much harder time getting Father Luke out to Lete. “Open the gate, curse it, before the Slavs figure out I’m here.”
Wood scraped on wood as the guard unbarred the postern gate. It swung open. George darted back into the city. The guard closed the gate after him and set the bars back in place. George allowed himself the luxury of a long, heartfelt sigh of relief.
“Don’t know how you managed to stay in one piece out there, but I’m glad you did,” the guard said. He turned away, continuing over his shoulder. “Come along with me. Tell the rest of the crew how you did it.”
George didn’t want to tell anybody how he’d done it. He also didn’t want to return to his normal routine, which would make slipping out of Thessalonica again all the harder. And so, wondering what would happen, he set the leather cap back on his head.
“I want to tell you, George, you frightened me out of--” The guard noticed George hadn’t answered. He turned around to look for the man he’d admitted. “George?” His eyes got big. He crossed himself. “George? Where in the devil’s name did you go?” He scratched his head. “Were you ever here at all, or am I daydreaming--nightdreaming? I’ve got to get more sleep, that’s all there is to it.” He yawned.
“What’s going on there?” one of the other guards called from the main gate. Since the fellow who had admitted George didn’t know what was going on, his explanation was fumbling at best. While he stuttered and mumbled, George slipped past him, heading home.
He was glad he could do so still cloaked in invisibility. When the guard signed himself, he’d again feared the magic in Perseus’ cap would dissolve. He wondered why it hadn’t: perhaps because the guard had made the sign of the cross to protect himself, not to lash out at that which had startled him.
Thessalonica’s streets were dark and quiet and cold. George wished for a torch to light his way--and then, after a moment, he didn’t. No one could see him, but everyone would be able to see the torch. That just might cause talk in the city.
Here came a fellow swaggering along as if he owned the street. The stout bludgeon he carried in his right hand was doubtless intended to persuade anyone who might doubt his view of the situation. George reached up to make sure the cap was firmly on his head. This was a fellow Thessalonican he had no interest in knowing better.
Away from the main avenues, which formed a grid, Thessalonica’s streets wandered crazily. Without a torch, George got lost a couple of times and had to backtrack. If the Slavs and Avars broke into the city, he suspected some houses would go unplundered simply because the barbarians couldn’t find them.
Shouts told him he was getting close to home. They weren’t shouts from anyone who’d seen him. They were Claudia’s shouts, aimed at Dactylius. In the nocturnal stillness, they carried a long way. Anybody who cared to listen could get an earful of Claudia’s views of her husband’s shortcomings. Anyone who didn’t care to listen was liable to be awakened.
You could throw a rock or an old shoe at a cat. George had no idea how to make Claudia shut up.
Partly guided by her abuse, he found his own front door. He tried the latch. The door was barred. He knocked on it. The same problem applied here as it had at the postern gate: he wanted to wake his family, but not the neighbors. He knocked again, louder, and hoped he wasn’t being too loud.
After a while, he heard someone moving inside. Theodore’s sleepy voice came through the door: “Who’s there?”
“I am,” George said.
“Father?” Theodore undid the bar. Before his son opened the door, George remembered to snatch the cap off his head. He didn’t want Theodore thinking he was a ghost.
He took off the cap just in time. The little lamp Theodore held in his left hand seemed dazzlingly bright. In Theodore’s right hand was the longest, sharpest awl in the shop, in case George had turned out to be somebody else. Theodore dropped the awl with a clatter, set down the lamp, and embraced his father, bursting into tears as he did.
Somehow, George got into the shop and closed the door before Irene and Sophia dashed downstairs and added their embraces and tears to Theodore’s. “Thank God you’re safe,” Irene said, over and over. “Thank God you’re here to stay.”
“I’m not here to stay,” George said. His wife stiffened against him. He had to drag his words out one at a time: “I have to leave the city again, or else, I think, it will fall.”
“How can you leave the city?” Sophia demanded. “Stay here with us. You’ll. . . you’ll. . . Something bad will happen if you don’t.” She’d probably been trying to say something like,
“I don’t think so.” As George spoke, he set Perseus’ cap on his head. His wife and children cried out in astonishment as he disappeared. He took off the cap and became visible once more. “You see? The Slavs won’t even know I’m anywhere around.” He knew he was making it sound easier than it would be, but he didn’t want his family worried.
Irene pointed to the cap. “Where did you get that? Who gave it to you? Who--or what?”
Quick as he could, he explained what it was and where he’d got it. Irene’s disapproval grew with every word he said. He tried to forestall her: “Could you get me something to eat, please? I’ve been tramping all over everywhere on not very much, believe me.” Bread and honey and olives and wine put new heart in him.
But no sooner had he taken the last swallow than Irene said, “Now--why did these pagans and these, these creatures send you into Thessalonica and expect you to come back out again?”
“They want me to bring Father Luke to them,” George said.
He’d thought that would startle his wife, and it did. “But they’re satyrs and centaurs and fairies and pagans,” Irene protested. “What do they think a man of God will do for them?”
“Help drive back the Slavs and Avars and their powers,” George said. “They aren’t strong enough to do it by themselves. We may not be strong enough to do it by ourselves. Together, God willing …”
“Would Father Luke go?” Sophia asked. “I can’t believe a priest of God would hobnob with these, these
“I think he will,” George answered. He explained the penance Eusebius had set on Father Luke for manipulating the Avars’ thunder gods. “I’m going to ask him, anyhow. He’s not so set in his ways as most of the other priests I know.”
“What if he won’t go, Father?” Theodore said. “Will you stay here then?”
“Yes, then I will stay,” George said. “If we come through the siege, I’ll have to go up into the hills afterwards and give the cap back to Gorgonius. But for now, I’ll stay.” He held up a hand. “But if I do go with Father Luke, don’t let anyone know I’ve come back into the city now. just say you hope I’m all right and you think you’ll see me again.”
“What I hope,” Irene said fiercely, “is that Father Luke tells you he wants nothing to do with this scheme, and hat it’s mad, pagan wickedness. And I hope you listen o him, too.”
“If he says that, I will listen to him,” George promised. If he says that, I’ll be back here in an hour or so, and we’ll go on about our business and hope for the best. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“We’ll wait up for you,” Irene said. Sophia and Theodore nodded.
