curse of my folk, against which we have no power of resistance.”
“I don’t want you to resist,” Father Luke said. “I want you to yield to it, to revel in it.”
With each shake of the female centaur’s head, black, curly hair flew around its face. “You know not what you say. Even to suggest such a thing is madness, nothing less. Aye, madness: akin to that madness we knew in the far-off days when the world was young and nothing had stolen from us the greatest part of the land that is ours. Not since the disaster of the supper with the Lapiths have we taken wine, for fear of what it will do to us. Nay. I say again, nay.” The last word was almost a horse’s ringing neigh.
“But don’t you understand?” Father Luke, by contrast, sounded calm and rational: so calm and rational that George, who aspired to those conditions, wondered if the priest had lost his wits, or perhaps did not fully appreciate even yet the depth of the centaurs’ revulsion. Unperturbed, Father Luke went on, “You should be mad with wine--you need to be mad with wine--if you are to stand against the Slavs and Avars and their powers. When you remain your sober selves, they have more strength than you, not so?”
“That is so,” Nephele admitted. “It is so, but it hath no significance, not set against our dire need to fight shy of the lovely, deadly stuff.”
“If you will not set the arrow in your bow, you’ll never know how well you might shoot,” Father Luke said. “And if you refuse to use the arrow, will you go down to defeat wondering till you perish whether it might have done you some good?”
Nephele studied him. “The satyrs are fain to seduce us,” the female centaur said slowly, “but they seek no more than the use of our bodies, which, while no small thing, also is not a matter of greatest consequence. Some have even yielded to them, for a romp. Not I, but some. You, now, you would seduce our minds to do as you will, not as custom ancient and long-established teacheth: in my view, a stronger seduction.”
Father Luke shrugged. “After George brought me here, I was asked how I could help rally the strength of your land and mine together. I didn’t know then. I still don’t know, but this is far and away the best idea I’ve had.”
Hearing George’s name reminded Nephele he was there. The centaur rounded on him, demanding, “What think you of this crackbrained scheme?”
“Me?” George said. “I think that, if you haven’t got any better ideas yourself, you’d be foolish not to pay attention when somebody else does.”
Nephele’s shoulders sagged, as if the answer he’d given was exactly the opposite of the one the female wanted to hear. “Even you, too?” The centaur sighed, a wintry sound. “Very well, then: I shall broach the matter to my fellows. What may come of it, I do not presume to say. This prohibition your friend is eager for us to break hath almost the status among us of a law of nature. But we shall see.” The centaur turned and trotted away.
“Isn’t this interesting?” Father Luke said with a broad smile.
“Very interesting,” George replied. “If it’s all the same to you, Your Reverence, I’d sooner be bored.”
After Nephele left, George expected the female or Crotus or one of the other centaurs would be back with an answer, yea or nay, in short order. That didn’t happen. George remembered what the satyrs had said about centaurs and discussion, and also his own experience with Crotus. He wondered if he and Father Luke would have a response before spring.
While he waited and the centaurs debated, he asked Ithys to take him to Lete. Father Luke stayed behind, operating under what George was convinced to be the delusion that the centaurs would decide anything soon. “I shall have to be ready to cooperate when the critical moment comes,” the priest insisted.
“I understand that,” George said. “You understand that. The centaurs don’t understand that, though. And they don’t understand that they don’t understand--they think they’re in a hurry. And you, Your Reverence, I don’t think you understand that they don’t understand they don’t understand.”
“I don’t think I understand
A little thought was all he got, because Ithys kept plucking at the sleeve of his tunic. “We go,” the satyr said. “Come. We go.” Having found a willing woman in the village, he was comically eager to get back there: not only to see if she was willing again, but also to learn whether he could find another one.
George carried Perseus’ cap. Now that he was out of Thessalonica, he wished he’d used it to pay a visit to Menas. He hadn’t thought of it while he was in the city, having been more worried about his family’s knowing he was alive and about getting Father Luke. He wondered if that single-minded concern for duty made him an exceptionally virtuous man or an exceptionally stupid one.
He and Ithys drew near Lete without seeing any women of any sort, lecherously inclined or otherwise. The satyr grumbled: “This bad time of year. Spring, summer-- women bathe in streams. Wintertime, no.”
“It’s cold in the winter,” George pointed out. “Do
“Bad time of year,” Ithys repeated. Where centaurs seemed given to endless arguments, satyrs hardly argued at all. They knew what they knew (regardless of whether what they knew had anything to do with the truth), and had no interest in anyone else’s opinions.
Lete occupied only a small hole in the woods, even with fields all around the village. One moment, Ithys was leading George down a game track; the next, they were staring at the village across those fields. Crossing the open ground, Ithys nodded familiarly to the now bare grape vines. He had nothing against wine--on the contrary.
To his annoyance, he got nothing more than giggles from the few women walking through Lete’s narrow, twisting streets. “Not right.” He gave George a dirty look. “Must be your fault.”
George wondered how many times, over the centuries, Ithys had failed to find female companionship coming into Lete alone. Thousands, no doubt. Of course, he’d had only himself to blame then, which was sure to mean he’d blamed nobody.
Gorgonius was pounding a wooden peg into the end of a table leg when George came into his shop. “Good day,” the carpenter said, setting down his mallet. “I’m glad to see you back, and that’s the truth. You seemed a good fellow, but nobody can tell for certain till the deeds are done, if you know what I mean.” He suddenly looked anxious. “I don’t aim to offend, of course.”
“I’m not offended,” George said. “I understand what you mean. You did me a large favor that you didn’t have to do, and I’m grateful for it.”
“You looked to be a chap who needed a large favor,” Gorgonius answered. “Not even the oldest old wife in town remembers hearing from her granny about the last time centaurs came into Lete. Centaurs! If they think you’re important, do you suppose I’m going to argue very hard?”
“I do thank you,” George said, “and here’s your cap back.” He set it down on Gorgonius’ workbench.
“You’re sure you’ve done everything with it you wanted?” the carpenter asked.
“Everything I needed,” George answered. Again, a vision of the visit he hadn’t paid on Menas flashed through his mind.
Gorgonius was no fool. He caught the difference between his question and George’s answer. Walking over to the bench, he picked up the cap and thrust it at the shoemaker. “If you’re not done with it, friend, take it back. You’ve come up here once to return it to me. I expect you’ll come again.”
“Are you sure?” George said. “That thing is a temptation, and no mistake.”
“If you came once, you’ll come again,” Gorgonius repeated. “As long as you have come all this way, would you like some wine and olives before you go back? And you, too, Ithys, of course,” he added politely for the satyr’s benefit.
George nodded. Ithys said, “Yes, I take some ‘some wine and olives’. Just you leave out the olives.” Laughter set the satyr’s phallus bobbing up and down. The two men laughed, too. Gorgonius went off to get the food and drink. Ithys pointed to the cap. “He let you keep that longer, eh?”
“It seems so, yes,” George answered.
“Then we come all this way for nothing? No need to give back hat. No pretty women for me to take.” But Ithys could not quite manage a full-blown scowl, especially not after Gorgonius came back with a bowl of olives and three cups. “Wine,” the satyr said, as if reminding itself. “Wine. No, this walk not for nothing after all.”
On the way back to the encampment where the centaurs and satyrs dwelt, George stumbled several times. His feet did not want to go where he meant to put them. Ithys, normally as graceful as any of the supernatural kind, also had trouble. “Wine,” the satyr said, and giggled, a surprisingly high-pitched, squeaky sound to come from such a large, shaggy creature.
“Maybe.” But George, though he didn’t argue, wasn’t so sure. He’d had only a couple of cups in Lete, not nearly enough to make him too tiddly to walk straight. On the other hand, if the problem wasn’t wine, what was it?
When he reached the encampment, he found Father Luke looking worried. “I wish the centaurs would make up their minds,” the priest said. He pointed down toward Thessalonica. “Can’t you feel the trouble in the air-- and the power?”
Maybe there was a reason George had been so clumsy. “Is
“Something enormous is building, down by the city,” Father Luke said. “I can’t tell what it is, only that it is-- and that I don’t like it.”
“I don’t think the Slavs and Avars ever really turned their strongest gods loose against Thessalonica,” George said. “They’ve tried to get into the city without doing that, unless I’m wrong. I don’t quite understand why, but that’s the way it’s looked to me.”
“You may have made a very good guess there,” Father Luke said. “I think the Slavs and Avars have been using their demigods and lesser deities for the same reason we often ask saints or the Virgin to intercede for us with God. Facing too much raw power, trying to turn that power to your own ends, can bum out a mere man.”
“That makes sense,” George agreed thoughtfully. “But if the Slavs and Avars are changing what they’re doing now…”
“I can think of only one reason why they would change,”
Father Luke said. “And that is that everything they’ve tried up till now has failed. If they’re going to take Thessalonica, they’ll need everything they can possibly bring to bear against it.” The priest nodded. “That fits well with what I’m feeling. Do you know what their great gods are like?”
George shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest notion, Your Reverence. We’re going to find out, though, aren’t we?”
“I wish I were back at St. Elias’,” Father Luke said, but then, immediately, he shook his head. “No, I’m wrong. Inside Thessalonica, with faith so strong all around me, I might not have noticed this till too late.”
“What can you do here that you wouldn’t be able to do there?” George asked.
“Pray, of course.” Father Luke looked surprised that he should need to put the question. Then the priest looked surprised again, in a different way. “And I can also pray that the centaurs will decide to do whatever they decide to do soon enough for them and us to draw some benefit from it, whatever it turns out to be.”
“That would be good.” George peered in the direction of Thessalonica. He was no holy man, to feel subtle disturbances in the relationship of powers and the material world in which those powers--and he--dwelt. But what was coming up from out of the south wasn’t subtle. His shiver had nothing to do with the chilly day. “How long do you think we have?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Father Luke said. “It’s like a cloudburst hanging over us. The rain will come, but when? And when it does, will it wash us away? The one thing I will say is, I don’t think we have very long.”
“What do we do, then?” George turned to Ithys. The satyr had been ignoring him and Father Luke. “How do you go about making the centaurs move faster?” the shoemaker asked.
“Is no way,” Ithys answered.
Ampelus, who was sitting close by the fire, shook its shaggy head. “Is maybe a way.” The satyr got to its feet and silently vanished into the woods.
“What’s he going to do?” Father Luke asked.
Ithys shrugged, as if to say it couldn’t possibly make any difference, whatever it was. George answered, “If I knew, I’d try it myself.”
Not much later and not very far away, a loud baritone shout rose from the woods. George needed a little while to remember male centaurs all had bass voices. That wasn’t a shout, then. It was a scream.
Ampelus came back into the encampment laughing and staggering a little and rubbing at what George first took to be a bruise on the hairy flesh of the satyr’s chest. Then the shoemaker saw that it
