Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  Even the gate guards were militiamen these days, though not from his company. He showed them the rabbits. They congratulated him. He said not a word about the two easy kills he’d missed.

  He didn’t say anything to Irene about the kills he’d missed, either. As best he could, he downplayed his confrontation with the two Slavs. He knew perfectly well his best was not good enough, and that he would hear about it later from her. For the moment, in front of the children, she matched his restraint.

  Theodore was excited by the meeting. “You should have fought them, Father.” He made cut-and-thrust motions with an awl, as if it were a sword.

  “Rufus would laugh at you,” George said. “I’d laugh at you myself, if I weren’t worn out. When one man goes out looking for two to take on, it’s most often because he’s drunk his wits away.”

  His son let out a loud sniff. It was, George thought, no wonder they recruited soldiers from among lads of about his son’s age: they were strong, aggressive, and, most of all, stupid. If their superiors ordered them to rush out and get themselves killed, they’d do it, and thank the officers for the privilege.

  Sophia said, “Somebody besides us should know the Slavs have come so close to the city.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” George answered with a sigh. He touched the rabbits he’d set down on the counter. “I wanted to bring these home first of all, so your mother could start dealing with them. But as soon as I’d taken care of that, I figured the best thing I could do was pay a visit to Bishop Eusebius.”

  Getting to see the prelate of Thessalonica would not have been easy for an ordinary shoemaker at any time. Getting in to see him when he was not only prelate but also de facto prefect of the city would have been doubly difficult. But when George went to the basilica of St. Demetrius, he knew the magic words that got him past the lesser priests and scribes. Those lesser worthies hustled him past the silver-domed ciborium topping the saint’s tomb, past the basilica’s brilliant wall and ceiling mosaics, and straight into the little office adjoining the church wherein the bishop labored when not performing the divine liturgy.

  In that office, Eusebius looked more like a bureaucrat than a prelate. The desk behind which he sat was piled high with papyri; ink smudged the fingers of his right hand. He was scribbling a note when George came in, and set down his reed pen with every sign of relief.

  “What’s this I hear?” he asked in a Greek so educated and archaic, George had trouble following it. “Is it accurately reported to me that you met two of the revolting barbarians in the woods earlier today?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency, I did.” George stuck with his Latin, the tongue in which he felt most at home. Eusebius understood him and motioned for him to go on. The bishop probably thought him on the uncultured side. That didn’t bother him. By Eusebius’ standards, he was on the uncultured side. He described the meeting with the Slavs and his attempt to explain Christianity, or at least its potency, to them.

  “Well done,” the bishop said, making the sign of the cross. “En touto nika.” As if making a great concession, he turned that Greek into Latin: “In hoc signo vinces.” Then he returned to his own preferred language. “Very well. You shared your food with the barbarians. What, beyond their mere presence, prompted you to report all this to me? You understand, their presence is of some concern in and of itself with the garrison gone, which is why I had you admitted to my presence, but--”

  “I’ve come to bring this to your notice for two reasons, Your Excellency,” George said. “One is that the Slavs, as best they could without using words, made it plain to me that they were looking not just for supper but for Thessalonica.”

  Bishop Eusebius’ attention had wandered. Now it snapped back to the shoemaker. “That is not good,” he said. “With the war that has gone on between us Romans on the one hand and the Slavs and Avars on the other, I do not want to hear reports that the barbarians are seeking our God-guarded city.” He held up a beringed, elegantly manicured hand. “Do not mistake me. By that I do not mean I am ungrateful for your having brought this word to me, only that I wish you had no need to do so.”

  “I understand,” George assured him. He studied the bishop with an odd mixture of distaste and admiration. The word that came to mind for Eusebius was slick, slick as fine olive oil or an icy pavement. Slickness could be wonderfully useful or unexpectedly dangerous, depending on circumstances. George gave a mental shrug, thinking, As if I have the power to pass judgment on those placed over me. Aloud, he went on, “The other reason I thought I ought to bring them to your notice is because they admitted the wolf-demons that have been howling outside the walls belong to them.”

  “Did they?” Eusebius said softly. Yes, George had his attention now. “What did they say of them? Tell me everything you remember.” George got the distinct impression that, if Eusebius was dissatisfied with his report, he would go after more detail with lash and rack and heated pincers.

  “They didn’t say anything, Your Excellency, since we couldn’t talk with each other,” the shoemaker replied. He detailed the exchange, then added, “I’ve heard, Your Excellency, that these demons can attack a priest even after he’s made the sign of the cross. Is that so?”

  Eusebius’ eyes went hooded, unfathomable. George knew what that meant: the bishop was figuring out whether to He to him and, if so, what sort of he to tell. But, at last,

  Eusebius answered, “Yes it is, as a matter of fact, though I’ll thank you for not spreading it broadcast through the city. I also remind you that evil is no less evil for being powerful, only more deadly.”

  “I understand that,” George said--did Eusebius take him for a lackwit? Well, maybe Eusebius did.

  “You did not hear of the vicious power of these demons from the Slavs you encountered today?” Eusebius asked He answered his own question: “No, of course you did not, for by your own statement you and they had no words in common.” His gaze sharpened. “Where, then, did you hear this about them?”

  George abruptly wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He didn’t know whether lying to the bishop or telling him the truth was the worse choice. Eusebius had told him the truth, or at least he thought the bishop had. He decided to return the favor: “A satyr told me, the last time I was out hunting in the woods.”

  Eusebius hadn’t been looking for that. His eyebrows climbed up toward his hairline, and he let out a hiss that made George wonder if he were part viper on his mother’s side. Then he crossed himself, as if the shoemaker were himself a relic of a creed outworn. When George failed either to vanish or to turn into some loathsome demon, the bishop regained control of himself. “That is a--bold admission to make,” he said, picking his words with obvious care.

  “Why?” George asked stolidly. “Without the satyr, you wouldn’t have had this news, and I think it’s important, don’t you?”

  “On that we do not disagree,” Eusebius said. “On a good many other matters, I suspect such a statement would be as false as any from Ananias’ lips.”

  “Maybe,” George said, stolid still. “But I didn’t come here to tell you about anything else.”

  Underneath that impassive shell, he was troubled. Once a bishop started worrying about--and worrying at--your theology, he generally didn’t let go till he’d made you sorry you ever crossed his path. And Eusebius, being more aggressively pious than a lot of his fellows, had a worse name for that than most.

  The inspiration--if not divine, certainly convenient-- struck George. “Because you’re prefect now, Your Excellency, or pretty much prefect, anyway, I was sure you wouldn’t want any danger to come to Thessalonica.”

  “Of course not,” Eusebius said at once. “Protecting the city is the most important thing I can do, the garrison being gone and the secular leaders away petitioning the Emperor Maurice.” Sure enough, George had managed to distract him, to make him think of Thessalonica rather than satyrs.

  “How can we fight demons that defeat even holy priests?” the shoemaker
asked, wanting to keep Eusebius’ mind away from him and on the bigger picture. That’s only proper, George thought, remembering the mosaics that made the basilica of St. Demetrius so splendid. If you look at one tessera, you don’t see anything in particular. But if you look at what all the tiles do when they’re working together. . .

  He’d also chosen the right question to ask Eusebius. The bishop said, “We can--we shall--we must--do two things. First, we must reconsecrate ourselves and bring our lives into closer accord with God’s will, so that other powers will be less able to get a grip on us. And, second, we must make certain the walls of Thessalonica remain strong and the militia alert. For have you not seen how such sorceries seek to weaken not just the spiritual but also the material defenses set against them and those who make them?”

  “Yes, I have seen that, Your Excellency,” George answered, surprised now in his turn: he hadn’t figured Eusebius would reckon material defenses as important is he obviously did.

  The bishop said, “What else have you learned of the powers the Slavs, in their ignorance, prefer to the holy truth of God?”

  He did not ask where George had learned whatever else he’d learned. The shoemaker took that as a tacit promise not to raise the issue of satyrs anymore. He didn’t mention his source again, either, replying, “I hear they have other powers nearly as strong as the wolves. I cannot really speak about that because of what I’ve seen with my own eyes, though when I was on sentry-go one night, I did see a bat, or maybe two bats, that weren’t like any natural bats I’ve spied before.”

  “Are you certain of this?” Eusebius asked.

  “No, Your Excellency,” George said at once. “Plenty of people must know more about bats than I do, but I can’t think of anyone who knows less. Who pays attention to bats?”

  “Who, indeed?” the bishop said. “Well, God willing, perhaps we shall yet be able to keep Thessalonica from being interred in a blood-filled, barbarous sarcophagus. If this be so, you, George, shall have played no small part in the preservation of the city, thanks to this information you have brought me. I am grateful, and no doubt God is grateful as well.” He started fiddling with his pen, a sure sign he’d given George all the time he’d intended.

  George rose and, after bowing to Eusebius, made his way out of the prelate’s office. As he strode up its central aisle, he paid more attention to the basilica of St. Demetrius than he was in the habit of doing. Just being inside the church dedicated to the martial saint made him feel stronger and braver than he did anywhere else in the city: more like a real soldier than a militiaman.

  After walking past the ciborium and then out of the basilica, he turned back toward it and sketched a salute of the same sort as he might have given to Rufus. If St. Demetrius could extend his influence over all of Thessalonica, if he could make everyone feel stronger than without his intercession . . . that might help, if the two Slavs George had encountered outside the city were, as he feared, the harbingers of more.

  But, as George walked north and mostly west back toward his shop, his home, his family, and away from the shrine, the feeling faded, until he was only himself again, and oddly diminished on account of that. He forced his shoulders to straighten and his stride to lengthen. Even without the saint s beneficent influence close by, he remained himself.

  “Blood-filled, barbarous sarcophagus,” he muttered under his breath, which made a woman walking in the other direction give him a strange look and move a little farther away from him. He didn’t blame her; he would have moved away from anyone mumbling about a blood-filled sarcophagus, too.

  It s Eusebius’ fault, he thought. The bishop pulled out funereal images at any excuse or none. George glanced toward the walls of Thessalonica. Surely, they would not be the walls of a stone coffin to enclose the corpse of the city.

  He shook his head. “He’s got me doing it,” he said, which made someone else give him a sidelong glance.

  Irene rounded on him when he walked in the door. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said indignantly. “I thought Eusebius wouldn’t let you come back. You told him about the satyr, didn’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I knew you were going to tell him about the satyr. Why did you go and tell him about the satyr?”

  “It was either that or tell him lies,” George answered. “Would you rather I told a holy man lies?”

  “Of course I would,” Irene answered with the same certainty and lack of hesitation George used when imparting what was, with luck, wisdom to Theodore or, more rarely, Sophia. How could you be so foolish as to think otherwise? Her tone demanded.

  George usually accepted such rebukes from her, because he knew he usually deserved them when he got them. Today, though, he balked. “I went to tell the bishop about the Slavs and about their demons,” he said. “It was only natural for him to ask how I knew what I knew. When he did ask me that, I didn’t see what choice I had but to tell him the truth, so he could know how seriously to take the news I was giving him.”

  Irene muttered something under her breath. George thought it was “Men!” but felt disinclined to inquire more closely. As with theology, some of the more subtle points of marriage were better taken on faith than examined under the piercing lamp of reason. In any case, Irene had a good deal to say that wasn’t under her breath: “If he had taken you seriously, George, he might have felt he had to do something like ask questions about how you came to be talking with a satyr, not chasing it off with the sign of the cross.” The look in her eye said she still wondered the same thing; she was more pious than he. She went on, “Would you really have liked, say, a couple of years’ penance for doing that?”

  “No, I wouldn’t have liked that,” he admitted. “But I didn’t think he would do anything to me, because the news was more important than how I got it.” Before she could interrupt, he held up a hand. “And I was right. Remember that--I was right.” He felt no small sense of pride; in an argument with Irene, he seldom got to say that.

  As things turned out, it did him no good even when he did get to say it. “It was a foolish chance to take,” Irene retorted. “What you gained by doing it wasn’t worth the risk.”

  “I thought it was,” George said, but that took the argument out of the realm of fact and back into opinion. He tried a slightly different tack: “It’s done now, and it worked out all right.” Irene thought that over, then grudgingly nodded. That meant the argument was over, too, which suited George fine.

  III

  More people began encountering Slavs in the woods. A couple of men who went out hunting didn’t come back. George was on a search party that went out after one of them. He found no trace of the missing hunter. He found no trace that the man had fallen foul of the Slavs, but nothing to prove the fellow hadn’t, either. Whatever had happened to him, he never showed his face in Thessalonica again. George, along with most other people, suspected the worst.

  The roads from the north grew crowded with farmers fleeing the ever-growing presence of the Slavs--and, presumably, their Avar overlords, though the Slavs were the folk on everyone’s lips. Some of the peasants took refuge in the city. Others kept going, hoping to find lands he barbarians would not penetrate.

  With the peasants came priests and monks, driven from churches and monasteries by the inroads of the barbarians. The monks, many of them, took refuge in the monasteries surrounding Thessalonica; the priests came into the city itself, to help serve its churches while theirs lay under the control of the Slavs and Avars. Suddenly the divine services had far more officiants than were needed, so that the holy men had to take turns performing them. When the refugee priests were not celebrating the liturgy, they gathered in the market square and told their harrowing tales to whoever would listen and perhaps toss a follis or two into the begging bowls they put out in front of them.

  George wondered whether the copper coins they collected would go to the ravaged churches from which they had fled, to the churches of Thessalonica in which they sheltered, o
r into their own pouches. He did not know whether others had that same doubt. People who were clever enough to have the question occur to them were also clever enough not to voice it.

  The priests drew considerable crowds. George listened along with everyone else, but kept his money to himself as long as the priests talked about the merely human destruction they had experienced or seen. The world was a harsh place, and war unceasing: unfortunate, certainly, but also unsurprising.

  But then one of the refugees, a man who, by his theatrical gestures and carefully balanced sentences, had had more than the usual share of rhetorical training, said, “Nor is the energy from this vicious and brutal plunder and rapine derived from this world alone. For the Slavs and Avars bring with them a new host of barbarous powers against whom the true God and His Son Jesus Christ shall have to contend and whom They shall have to overcome by virtue of their superior prowess.”

  Someone--not George--called out, “Doesn’t the Lord cast out all demons?” After a moment, the shoemaker recognized John’s voice. Not content with scoring points off people in the taverns he frequented and off his fellow militiamen, now he was trying to get a priest angry at him. If John lived to be old, George would be astonished.

  The priest, however, took the question seriously, answering, “In the end, the triumph of the Lord is inevitable: so it has been written; so it shall be. But the path to that end is not known, and much misery surely lies along it until it be traveled to the fullest.” George waited to hear what John would make of that. The tavern comic made nothing whatever of it, falling silent instead. As silently, George wished his friend would show such good sense more often.

  “For now, the spirits attending the Slavs and Avars, being puffed up with arrogance on account of the victories those folk have won over us Christians, vaunt themselves and exult in their strength, and are difficult even for pious folk to withstand successfully,” the priest said, which was not only true but explained to his audience why he and his fellows had had to retreat from the Slavic powers instead of easily beating them, as the old pagan Greek spirits were beaten these days. “We must do not what we want to do, but what God wants us to do.”