Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  Whatever the truth there, the Avar remained uninjured on ground that had enough shafts sticking out of it to resemble a porcupine’s prickly back. He drew his sword and waved it at the gate. Through the chain attached to the grappling hook, George sensed the power in that sword at war with the one the prayers of Bishop Eusebius and the people of Thessalonica had imbued into the hook.

  “He’s strong,” Paul whispered, feeling that same clash of forces, and then, “What’s he doing now?”

  The Avar in the outlandish costume raised the sword high and then stabbed it deep into the dirt. The wall shivered, as if from a small earthquake. The Avar capered--angrily, if George was any judge. He must have expected more.

  One of the other Avars called a question to their priest or wizard or whatever he was. He shook his head. Yes, he was angry; his whole body seemed to radiate fury. He capered some more, in slack-jointed style that would have won him applause as a mime. He pulled the sword free and stabbed it into the ground again. The wall shook once more, but not very much. The wizard shouted in his unintelligible language. He waved his arms. The fringes and furs and feathers sewn to his fantastic tunic fluttered and flapped. Nothing else happened.

  He turned to the Avar in scalemail and shouted again. The warrior made as if to argue with him, whereupon the fellow’s shouts turned into screams. George didn’t know what he was saying, but wouldn’t have wanted it said to him.

  Reluctantly, the Avar captain accepted the rebuke and the instructions that had led to it. He shouted something himself. The Slavic archers in range of his voice trotted away from the walls of Thessalonica and back toward their encampments. All around the city, the same shouted orders went out to the Avars’ subject allies. George could not see all around the city. As far as he could see, though, the Slavs were giving up the fight for now.

  “That’s done it!” Sabbatius cried gleefully. “We’ve shown them they’ve got no business messing with good Roman men!”

  His words were almost lost in the cheers that rose from the wall as the defenders of Thessalonica watched the Slavs withdraw. Despite those cheers, Rufus shook his head. “They don’t think the attack will work now--that’s plain enough,” he said. “But they haven’t done all this work so they could go off and leave it. They’ll be back.”

  “But--” Paul, for once, sounded as confused as Sabbatius. “That crazy fellow out there, whatever he was, he saw that the power we prayed into the grappling hook was stronger than anything he could do against it.”

  “No.” Like Rufus, George had caught the distinction his other comrades were missing. “He saw that what he tried now didn’t work. That doesn’t mean he can’t try something else. Doesn’t mean he won’t try something else, either. I wish it did.”

  Sabbatius scowled like a child learning he would have to go to school not only on the first day he’d just survived but also for months to come. “Why, the dirty, cheating son of a poxed ewe!” he exclaimed.

  George looked at Rufus. Rufus looked down at the ground. Looking down at the ground didn’t help. The veteran and the shoemaker both started to laugh, and then started bleating out at the Slavs and Avars. Sabbatius and Paul joined them. The bleating spread along the wall. More than a few feet away from the people who’d started it, the militiamen had no idea why they were making noises like sheep, but any derision aimed at their foes seemed worth sending.

  The Slavs stared up at the Romans on the wall. Some of them made peculiar gestures. George stopped bleating and started laughing again. “They think we’re cursing them!” he exclaimed.

  “Good,” Rufus said, and bleated louder than ever. So did George, wishing the bleats really would do something to the Slavs and Avars.

  Even more suddenly than it had begun, the bleating died down. George looked around to find out why, and saw Bishop Eusebius coming down the walkway in his shining vestments. He waited for the bishop, a somber sort, to make some cutting remark about the racket the militiamen had been creating. But Eusebius surprised him. In a great voice, he cried, “Sing out, you lambs of God!”

  George didn’t sing out, not at first. He cheered instead, along with most of his companions. But then he did bleat, and hoped that, with Eusebius’ blessing, the sound would gain potency in the spiritual realm. The words of the psalmist ran through his mind: Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Bleating probably wasn’t the sort of joyful noise the psalmist had had in mind, but George didn’t fret about that.

  Eusebius came up to Rufus and said, “I see it is the same here as it is all along the circuit of the wall: they have not dared attack us, feeling the power of the Lord our God.” He pointed to the chain from which the grappling hook hung down over the Litaean gate.

  Rufus cleared his throat. “Don’t like to contradict you, Your Excellency, but it looks to me more like they haven’t attacked yet. This Avar... I don’t know... priest, I guess, he tried to overthrow the power in the hook. He didn’t do it, but I wouldn’t swear he can’t do it. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I do,” Eusebius answered. “I wish I did not, but I do. We shall be tested in all ways. I pray only that we shall not prove like Belshazzar the king of Babylon, who was weighed in the balances, and found wanting. May our city not be given to the Slavs and Avars, as his kingdom was given to the Medes and Persians.”

  “The Persians,” George muttered. Off in the distant east, the Persians still contended with the Roman Empire. When God gave a gift, He gave a long-lasting one--though who heard anything of the Medes these days?

  As the Avar wizard’s preposterous costume had drawn Roman eyes to it, so Eusebius’ bright silks stood out among the drab wool and linen tunics the defenders of Thessalonica wore. The Slavs, who had been standing around dejectedly after their overlord’s spells failed to beat down the power in the grappling hooks, now took fresh spirit and began shooting arrows at the bishop.

  None of them touched him; his holiness shielded him from them, as the Avar’s power had kept Roman shafts from piercing him. However holy Eusebius was, though, George and his comrades could not match him. They ducked down behind the outer wall of the walkway. “Be careful with those arrows,” Rufus said to Sabbatius when one rebounded back near them. “Remember, the Slavs sometimes poison the points.”

  “I wasn’t going to touch it,” Sabbatius said, and gave himself the lie by jerking his hand away. Again he reminded George of a schoolboy, though schoolboys commonly drank their wine well enough watered to keep from getting drunk.

  Bishop Eusebius said, “By my presence, I am bringing you brave men into danger. I shall withdraw.” He went over to the stairway and back down into Thessalonica. The storm of arrows died away.

  Indeed, but for the short advance of the battering rams, it was as if the efforts of the Slavs and Avars had never been. Paul laughed nervously. “Does it usually get so quiet so fast?” he asked.

  “A lot of things about this siege strike me as peculiar,” Rufus answered. “When I was fighting the Goths, now, and then the Lombards, it was Christian against Christian. Oh, they were heretics, but that’s a small thing. Their saints had the same powers as ours, near enough. With the Slavs and Avars, it’s like they aren’t sure what their powers can do to us, or about what God and the saints can do against them. They’re feeling us out as they go.”

  “I don’t want any Avar feeling me,” Sabbatius said emphatically. Everyone else tried explaining that it was a figure of speech. Regretfully, George saw again that he didn’t need to be drunk to be stupid.

  As the sun crossed the sky, Romans went down from the wall and resumed their normal occupations. George’s shift on duty was long past, but he didn’t feel like descending while Rufus stuck to his post. And the sudden slackening of the assault in which the Avars had apparently put so much effort and so much faith--in several senses of the word--struck him as being as odd and suspicious as it did the veteran. If something was about to happen, he wanted it to happen while he was here to see it and to try to do
something about it, not to hear about it after it was done.

  Now the light shone in his face, not at his back. He wondered if the Slavs and Avars would renew the attack because of that. He didn’t think so; the sun still blazed high in the southwest, casting only fairly short shadows. It wouldn’t interfere with the Roman archers’ aim.

  “Hello!” Rufus said suddenly. “Here comes that cursed wizard or priest again. What sort of deviltries does he have in mind now?” He made the sign of the cross, to rout whatever demons or powers might be lurking to aid the Avar.

  If the gesture bothered the fellow, he did not show it. He was not alone this time: a couple of fair-haired, shaggy-bearded Slavs accompanied him. Reading the attitudes of the three of them as best he could across a furlong or so, George guessed the Avar was doubtful and the Slavs to either side of him more confident.

  “What are they doing?” the shoemaker asked, leaning out over the wall to get the best view he could. The Slavs were still shooting arrows, but only every now and then; he ignored them.

  Although the Slavs’ overlord, the Avar wasn’t doing anything to speak of. He stood there while his minions labored; if they succeeded, he would reap the benefit. One corner of George’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile. Barbarian in funny clothes though he was, the Avar had a lot in common--more than he knew, no doubt--with a good many Roman nobles.

  The Slavs’ magic, like their costumes, was less showy than what the Avars practiced They simply went to work, as if... As if they’re making shoes, George thought, pleased with the comparison.

  “What are they doing?” This time, Paul said it, not George. Had George heard it back in the taverner’s place of business, it would have meant something like, Are they making so much trouble, I’ll have to throw them out?

  Snap! George didn’t hear that. He felt it through the soles of his shoes. “What the--?” he said, and peered all around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. His comrades must have felt the same strange sensation, for they were looking around, too.

  Seeing nothing amiss on top of the wall, he looked out over it. The Slavic wizards seemed delighted with themselves. One of them was holding what looked like a two-foot length of darkness. George tried to convince himself he was seeing a snake or a length of lead pipe or something of the sort, but he couldn’t. It looked like a length of darkness.

  Where had it come from? Somewhere close to him, he judged, or he wouldn’t have felt that curious snap. He looked down. Had the Slavs sorcerously severed the chain that held the grappling hook? He thought he should have noticed the clank as the hook fell to the ground, to say nothing of the lessened weight he and the others were holding.

  But no--there was the hook, with chain intact. Most men, having seen that, would have looked no further. But George’s nature and his trade both impelled him to examine things carefully. The chain was intact, but about two feet of its shadow were missing. The sun shone on that piece of the wall of Thessalonica as if no stout iron links impeded its passage.

  “See what they’ve done!” he exclaimed, and pointed out the stolen shadow to his fellow militiamen.

  “I see what,” Rufus said, scratching his head. “I don’t see why.”

  “I don’t, either,” George said. “But they wouldn’t have done it for no reason.” He was as certain of that as he was of sunrise tomorrow morning.

  One of the Slavic wizards kept hold of the piece of shadow they had seized. The other heated a sword in a fire. Before long, the blade glowed red. The Slav had no trouble keeping a hand on the hilt, though. More magic, George thought. His suspicions, already wild, grew wilder.

  The Slav with the sword drew the blade from the blaze. The other one, the one with the shadow, held it out in front of him, a hand at either end. The Slav with the sword brought it up, then, slashing down with one swift stroke, sliced the shadow in two.

  Once cut, it vanished. George looked to see whether it reappeared on the wall at the same time. It didn’t. That gap remained. He pursed his lips. Something had changed. After a moment, he realized what it was. He still had a hand on a length of the grappling-hook chain. All he felt beneath his fingers now was sun-warmed iron. The protective power St. Demetrius had given the grappling hook when so beseeched in the basilica dedicated to him was gone, cut off as abruptly as the shadow had been.

  Before George could do anything more than note that, Sabbatius said, “Something’s wrong here,” and then, “The hook! It’s just--a hook.”

  That was inelegant, but it had more accuracy than Sabbatius usually managed. Nor were the Romans the only ones to note the change. The Slavic wizards leaped in the air in delight at what they’d accomplished. The Avar who had used their service patted them on the shoulder, as if they were a couple of horses that had hauled his cart faster than he’d expected.

  He shouted back toward a couple of mounted Avars, his voice as harsh as a raven’s caw. The men in scalemail shouted, too. George could not understand what they said, but their tone spoke for them. Now we can get on with it was what they meant.

  Moments later, their signal drums started booming.

  That meant, Now we can get on with it, too. Up on the walls of Thessalonica, horns called the militiamen to alertness. Did their brassy music sound faintly alarmed? George hoped that was his imagination, but he didn’t think so. He said, “I’d bet the Slavs took our protective magic off all the grappling hooks on the whole circuit.”

  “I never thought of that,” Sabbatius exclaimed. The only thing past the end of his nose he was in the habit of thinking of was his next cup of wine.

  Rufus nodded soberly. “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said to George, and then coughed a couple of times. “Well, we’ll just have to beat them” --he pointed down over the wall-- “on our own hook.”

  George stared at him. “You’ve been spending too much time listening to John,” he said, as if passing sentence after a crime.

  “Maybe I have,” the veteran said. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though. Look!” He pointed out beyond the wall. “The Slavs have decided it’s time to go back to work.”

  “The Slavs have decided the Avars will slaughter them if they don’t get back to work,” George said. It amounted to the same thing.

  “Arrows! Get back!” Shouts rang out up and down the wall, warning any of the defenders who weren’t so alert as they might have been. Cries of pain rose, too, as some of the arrows found their mark.

  The militiamen shot back. Here and there, a Slav crumpled. But more warriors took the place of those who fell. The besiegers seemed to have an unlimited store of missiles. They made the defenders keep their heads down most of the time.

  Rufus did not enjoy the luxury of being able to take cover. “Here comes the cursed ram,” he announced, and shouted for more men on the chain. “Come on, friends, this is how we earn our pay.”

  “What pay?” someone said. “Nobody’s paying us a half-follis, and we’re all losing money because we can’t work at our proper trades.”

  “You’re getting paid,” Rufus answered. “You do a good job here, and the bastards down there won’t cut your throat like a sheep’s, rape your wife, bugger your little boy, and burn down your house with your old toothless father in it. You don’t think that’s pay enough?” The fellow who had complained kept very quiet after that.

  Here came the shed sheltering the battering ram. It was heavy, and could not move very fast. George would have been glad had it moved even slower. Every foot the Slavs inside made it lurch forward brought it so much closer to the gate above whose housing he stood. If the Slavs and Avars got into Thessalonica, that complainer and his family wouldn’t be the only ones who suffered.

  Rufus jerked the chain back and forth. The grappling hook clanked against the stonework over the gate. “When they get close enough, I’m going to try and snag ‘em,” he said. “Then everybody on the chain pulls like a madman, we throw rocks down on the Slavs’ heads, and our bowmen fill them full of arrows.” He grinned,
showing off the few worn teeth left in his mouth. “Sounds easy, doesn’t it?”

  “Everything sounds easy,” George said. “It’s only when you try doing it that it gets harder.”

  “You’re learning,” Rufus said.

  George risked another glance out over the wall. As the shed with the ram advanced, it left behind the corpse of a Slav who’d taken a shaft in the neck. Most Roman arrows, though, either glanced off the hides of the roof or were turned by the big shields the barbarians at the front of the shed carried.

  “Won’t be long now,” Rufus muttered. “Come on there, logfish, let me get my hook in you.”

  Nearer and nearer to the gate crawled the shed. George could hear the panting of the men who hauled it forward. Peeking out between the Slavs with the big shields was the iron-faced head of the log that would try to break down the Litaean Gate.

  “All right,” Rufus said. “Let me have some more chain, boys, enough to do what I need to do.”

  The big rough iron links, some of them blushing red from a light coat of rust, paid out through George’s hands, Rufus leaned over the edge of the wall as if he were all alone. The Slavs sent a blizzard of arrows at him. None of them stuck. It was either incredible luck or the lingering protection of St. Demetrius. The veteran maneuvered with the hook, trying to snag the front end of the roof pole.

  The Slavs were maneuvering, too. The ram thudded against the gate, which groaned like a wounded man. Thud! Another groan of timbers and bars and hinges.

  “Now!” Rufus shouted before the ram could strike again.

  George pulled with everything he had in him. The chain swiftly moved up a couple of links’ worth, then stuck as it lost its slack and took on the full weight of the shed. Down below, the Slavs shouted in anger and alarm. George pulled again, along with everyone else on the chain. They gained a quarter of a link. He set his sandals against the rough stone of the walkway and kept on pulling.