Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  “I’m not likely to forget it,” Dactylius replied with feeling.

  “No, I suppose not,” George said. “But the point is, the water-demigod didn’t really show up in all the cisterns. There was one it kept clear of.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Dactylius said. “Which one was it?”

  “The one in the Jews’ quarter,” George answered. “As soon as our shift up here ends, that’s where I’m going to go to see if I can’t get fire that’s proof against the Slavs’ magic. I don’t know whether I can, mind you, but I think it’s worth a try.”

  “If you do, you’ll be like--” Dactylius’ face furrowed with concentration. “What was the name of the fellow who stole fire from the pagan gods?”

  “Prometheus,” George said. A priest might not have approved of how quickly he brought out the name, but knowing the old stories and believing them were two different things. So he told himself, at any rate.

  John and Sabbatius came up a little later to replace their fellow militiamen. When George explained what he intended to do, John shook his head. “Paul won’t be happy with you,” he said.

  “Why is that?” George asked in honest puzzlement.

  “Think for yourself--don’t make me do the work. With the way he cooks, having all the fires in town go out is the best thing that could happen to his place,” the tavern comic said.

  “I’ll tell Paul you said so,” George replied, which made Sabbatius laugh nastily. John laughed, too; unlike his comrade, he could tell George was kidding.

  Dactylius trading along behind him, George descended from the wall. Before heading to the Jews’ district, the shoemaker stopped in St. Elias’ church. If any Christian man was likely to have a fire going, he thought Father Luke the one. But the church proved as dark and chilly as the rest of Thessalonica. Shaking his head at the strength of the barbarians’ magic, George went on down toward the Jewish quarter.

  “What do we do if the Jews have no fire, either?” Dactylius asked.

  “Pray that Father Luke or Bishop Eusebius can figure out how to get some,” the shoemaker said. “The priest is pious enough for God to hear him, and the bishop is tricky enough for anything at all.” If Eusebius wanted fire badly enough, he was liable to call on Prometheus and then convince his congregants the Titan had been a Christian saint.

  At first, the Jewish quarter seemed no different from the rest of Thessalonica. As many people were on the streets, and they seemed as excited as their Christian fellows. But that was simply how the Jews lived their everyday lives. Listening to them, George realized they were exclaiming and gesticulating over the ordinary things of life, not over the morning’s prodigy. He took that for a hopeful sign.

  “Just where are you going?” Dactylius asked. “If you walk into the shop of some Jew you’ve never seen, he’s more likely to set his dog on you than to give you fire.”

  “If he has any fire to give, that is,” George said. “But I’m not going to walk into the shop of some Jew I’ve never seen. I’m going to walk into the shop of a Jew I’ve been doing business with for years.”

  Sudden understanding lit Dactylius’ face. “That bronzesmith friend of yours, do you mean? The one who was also making arrowheads?”

  “Benjamin’s not my friend, not exactly,” George answered; the regret he felt at that surprised him. He went on, “I don’t think he has any friends who aren’t Jews. But he won’t turn me away if he can help. I don’t think he’ll turn me away, anyhow. We’re about to find out.” He led Dactylius into Benjamin’s shop.

  The Jew looked up from the arrowhead he was sharpening; by his posture, he might not have moved since George last saw him. “I rejoice to see you, George,” he said in polite Greek. “And who is your friend?” When George had introduced Dactylius, Benjamin nodded to the little jeweler. “Yes, I know of you. Your work has a good name. From the couple of pieces of it I have seen, it deserves such a name.”

  “For this I thank you.” Dactylius sounded more constrained than he usually did. He was probably hoping-- and likely to be hoping in vain--Claudia’s loud opinions about Jews had never reached the bronzeworker’s ears.

  If they had, Benjamin made no mention of them. He said, “How can my poor shop help the two of you?”

  George looked around. He saw no lamps burning. He saw no lamps that looked as if they’d recently gone out, either. “Have you fire?” he asked.

  Benjamin’s eyebrows rose. “Have I fire?” he said, as if ensuring he’d heard correctly. “Not on my person.”

  He ran his hands up and down his wool tunic in what was as near an approach to a joke as George had ever heard from him. When his visitors neither laughed nor even smiled, he grew serious himself. “You ask as if this is a matter of no small importance. I shall see for myself.” Without another word, he ducked into the back room.

  When he returned a moment later, he was carrying a lamp whose smoky wick showed he had just lighted it. “Thank God!” Dactylius exclaimed, and then, turning to George, “You were right all along.”

  “It is a lamp,” Benjamin said, setting it down on his worktable. “Having a lamp is good, yes, but so good?”

  “Right now, yes,” George told him, and explained the magic the Slavs and Avars had worked against fire in Thessalonica.

  Benjamin listened till he was through, then said, “If you need this fire, take it. I give it to you. God protects our fires. Hundreds of years ago, He made a flask of pure oil, enough for only one day, burn for eight until more could be brought. This was after we Jews had driven the Macedonians out of Jerusalem, you understand.”

  George had never heard of the event that seemed near as yesterday to the Jew. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the fire. He’d always taken fire for granted, except when he worried about its getting out of control. Now he realized--he had been forcibly made to realize--how precious it was.

  Bowing a little, Benjamin handed him the lamp. “Carry it back to your own home. Use it as you need it.” When he saw George’s hand going to his beltpouch, the Jew shook his head. “No need for that. If I give a starving man food, do I ask him for payment? Take it, I say.”

  “God bless you,” George answered, to which the Jew bowed again.

  Carrying the lamp as carefully as he had held Theodore when his firstborn was laid in his arms, George left the bronzeworker’s shop. The little flame burning at the end of the wick flickered in the breeze outside, but did not go out. Dactylius said, “I think that will keep burning till you get back to your home.”

  “I think you’re right,” George said. “God wouldn’t have given it to us only to snatch it away again.” Dactylius nodded. George listened to himself in some surprise. Who was he, to expound on what God would or wouldn’t do? He pursed his lips thoughtfully. Whoever he was, he had fire when the rest of Thessalonica--save its Jews-- did without.

  People saw he had fire, too, and came running up with candles and lamps and sometimes just twigs, to get some of their own from him. Remembering what Benjamin had said, he gave it to them and took nothing in return, even when they tried to pay him.

  “You could be rich by the time you get back,” Dactylius said.

  “Wouldn’t be worth it,” George answered. “And do you know what? If I took money, what do you bet the next little breeze would blow out the flame here? Maybe it would blow out all the flames.”

  “Maybe it would.” Dactylius’ voice went soft with wonder.

  From around a comer, someone with a big, deep voice shouted, “Fire! I need fire. I’ll pay five solidi to anybody with fire!”

  “I have fire,” George called. “I’ll give it to you for nothing.”

  “What?” The owner of the voice came trotting into sight. George stared with no small dismay at Menas. The noble looked ready to take fire by force if he could get it no other way: he had a candle in his left hand and a long-handled war hammer, its iron head chased with shining silver, a weapon intended more for show than for use, in his right. Seeing
George, Menas looked as unhappy as the shoemaker. “You? You have fire? What are you doing with fire?” By the way he spoke, he didn’t think the shoemaker deserved to have fire even on an ordinary day.

  “I have it, that’s all.” George thrust the lamp at the noble. “Take what you need. I don’t want your money.”

  Menas’ gaze looked burning enough to start a fire by itself. “Think yourself above me, do you? Think you’re too good for me, eh?” People were staring at him and George. He went on, “Don’t want your hands to touch my filthy money, is that it?” The diatribe, George noticed, did not keep him from lighting the candle he clutched from the lamp’s flame.

  George said, “I haven’t taken money from anyone else, either.”

  “Likely tell,” Menas said. “Well, you can vaunt and preen and strut now, but the day will come when you’ll wish you hadn’t.” Off he went, the hammer stuffed into his belt so he could shield from the wind with his hand the fire he’d got.

  Looking after him, George let out a long sigh. “I could save his life, and he’d curse me for doing it.”

  “A man like that, he means trouble,” Dactylius said, as a good many others had before him.

  “Really? I never would have noticed,” George said. The hurt look in Dactylius’ large brown eyes made him feel as if he’d kicked a puppy. Sighing again, he said, “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I’ve fallen foul of him. As far as I can see, it’s not my fault, either, but it takes only one to start a quarrel.”

  When they got to the jeweler’s house and shop, Dactylius ran inside. He came back with a lamp, pursued by Claudia’s raucous questions. Ignoring those, he started the lamp at the one George was carrying. Once the flame caught, he carried it inside. Claudia, for a wonder, fell silent.

  George carried Benjamin’s lamp into his own workshop. His wife and children were all wearing two or three tunics, with woolen mantles or blankets draped over their shoulders. Instead of falling silent as Claudia had done, they all started talking at once. George had to try several times before he could tell them the whole story.

  “That Jew came in handy,” Theodore said, speaking of Benjamin as he might have of an awl or a punch.

  “Twice now, magic from outside the city hasn’t bitten on the Jews when it hit everyone else,” George observed. “I wonder if God is trying to tell us something.”

  “Are you going to stop eating pork and have them do” --Theodore glanced at his mother and sister and chose his words carefully-- “what they do to a man?”

  The mere thought of being circumcised made George wince and want to cover himself with his hands. “Not likely,” he said, to his son’s evident relief. He went on, “But I don’t think I’m going to sneer at them the way I sometimes have, either.”

  “Never mind the Jews now, for heaven’s sake,” Irene said with brisk feminine pragmatism. “Let’s get the braziers lighted and put a little heat back into this place. And while we’re at it, let’s thank God for not letting the Slavs and Avars freeze us out of our homes, no matter how He chose to do that.”

  “Amen,” George said with no hesitation at all.

  “If you were the khagan of the Avars,” Paul said in musing tones, “and your wizards kept promising that you’d be able to get into Thessalonica and then not delivering, what would you do?”

  “I wouldn’t be very happy,” George admitted, looking out from the wall toward the camp of the Slavs and Avars. “But then, I don’t even know whether the khagan is here right now. There’s a lot of fighting south of the Danube these days.”

  “That’s not the point,” the taverner said. “You don’t have anybody who works for you, do you? Besides your family, I mean?--that’s different. If you have somebody who’s not doing the job you pay him to do, you fling him out the door and you get somebody else.”

  “I don’t think the khagan would fling his wizards out the door,” George said. “He might see how well they do without their heads, though--barbarian princes are supposed to do things like that.” He paused to think for a moment. “Been a few Roman Emperors like that, too, haven’t there?”

  “So they say.” Paul’s shrug expressed the limits of both his interest and his knowledge of the subject. “But he’ll do something new, because what he’s been trying hasn’t worked.”

  Such conversations went on every hour of every day up on the wall, and in the taverns, and throughout Thessalonica--being besieged, the people of the city, and most of all the militiamen defending it, spent a lot of ingenuity wondering and arguing about what the besiegers would try next. Among so many speculations, some, by the nature of things, had to be correct.

  George understood that--by his own nature, he understood it better than most (and he’d been right himself, once or twice). Understanding didn’t keep him from boasting afterwards when, less than an hour after he said, “Well, they’ve tried magic, and that hasn’t worked, and they’ve tried rams, and those haven’t worked, and they’ve tried tortoises, and those haven’t worked, either, so they’ll likely get around to using the catapults they made when they started the siege,” the Slavs and Avars did exactly as he’d foretold.

  Someone out there beyond the wall blew a raucous horn. The noise, which bore no closer resemblance to music than a vulture to a peacock, spurred the barbarian soldiers into action. Avars rode around on horseback, screaming at the much more numerous Slavs. Some of the Slavs picked up their bows and started shooting at the militiamen on the wall. Others picked up chunks of stone and loaded them into the catapults, which, kicking like mules, flung them not only at the militiamen but also at the walls themselves.

  One of those stones, lucidly or cleverly aimed, hit a man less than fifty feet from George. Red sprayed out of the fellow. He dropped to the walkway, dead, without a word, without a sound, without a twitch. Having seen how hard human beings were to kill, let alone to kill cleanly, George viewed that with no small astonishment.

  More stones, of course, slammed into the wall than into the people on top of it. To George’s frightened eyes, a lot of them looked big as islands. Every time one struck, the wall shivered under his feet, as if in pain. The shiverings ran together into what felt like an earthquake that would not stop. “What can we do?” Paul shouted in between the smashing of stone missiles on stone fortifications.

  “I don’t know,” George answered helplessly. “Those catapults are out past arrow range.”

  Thessalonica’s walls bore catapults of their own. After a bit of hesitation, the militiamen began shooting back at the ones the Slavs and Avars had built. They did not fling rocks at the foe, but jars of pitch and naphtha the men lighted as they launched them. When one of those jars hit the ground, it smashed and spilled fire over ten or fifteen feet.

  But few of the enemy’s catapults burned. They were covered in hides to keep flame from sticking to them. Not even the inflammable mix the Romans hurled was enough to make the hides catch fire. Only when the hellbrew splashed onto a wooden casting-arm would the engine of which it formed a part begin to blaze.

  A big stone stuck about ten feet below where George was standing. The wall shuddered. He shuddered, too. How many impacts like that would it take till the wall no longer shuddered but collapsed?

  Heaped here and there along the wall, along with stones for hurling down on the foe (not enough stones, not after the assault with the tortoises) and cauldrons for heating water, lay mats and horse blankets roughly basted together: padding to protect the gray stone fortifications from the worst the stones might do. George and Paul, along with many other militiamen on the works, began lowering the mats and blankets, draping them over the outside of the wall, and weighting them in place with some of the stones they would otherwise have dropped on the Slavs’ heads.

  They quickly discovered there was more wall than matting with which to cover it. They also discovered that covering it did only so much good, as the cloth they were using could not absorb all the force from the rocks the enemy’s catapults threw. But, as
George said, “Now we’ve done what we can do. The rest is up to God.”

  “And to the Slavs and Avars,” Paul added, to which the shoemaker had to nod, feeling more helpless than he had before the taverner spoke.

  The bombardment went on for what seemed like forever but could not have been more than a couple of hours. Men on the wall were hurt. Some of them were killed. The wall itself took a fearful pounding: certainly a pounding that made George fearful. Here and there, stones shattered.

  But, in the end, the Roman engineers and masons who’d designed and built the wall were vindicated. It did not collapse, as had in his alarmed imagination seemed likely. That must have seemed likely to the Slavs, too, for their archers kept drawing ever nearer, to rush into the city if the catapults forced a breach.

  When the crews manning those catapults stopped shooting--perhaps because they ran out of stones, perhaps merely because they saw they were doing no good-- George and Paul the tavern-keeper solemnly clasped hands. “First mug of wine is free if you come to my place tonight,” Paul said, which struck George as a fitting enough tribute to what they’d been through together.

  The aftermath put him in mind of nothing so much as what happened after a bad storm: he and his comrades on the wall looked around exclaiming at the damage that had been done and sharing one common refrain: “It could have been worse.” The disappointed bearing of the Slavs out beyond the wall gave mute testimony to how bad it could have been. They kept right on shooting arrows after the catapults left off trying to smash down the fortifications.

  Paul shot back at the Slavs. “As long as they’re just sending arrows our way, I’m not going to worry,” he said.

  “Neither will I,” George agreed. “They won’t get anywhere that way.”

  They looked at each other. “We never would have talked like this before the siege started,” Paul said.

  “I sure wouldn’t,” George replied, “never in my life. I remember what it felt like the first time a Slav shot at me. No one had ever done that before. But now--you’re right, arrows aren’t worth getting excited about.”