Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  “I don’t think I understand you,” Father Luke said, laughing. George listened again in his mind to what he’d just said, no longer sure he understood himself. But, after a little thought, he decided he’d--probably--said what he’d meant to say.

  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 you go into a stream in the middle of winter?”

  “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 that what I’m feeling?” he said. “You deal with powers all the time, Your Reverence, so you’d know better than I do. Something’s wrong, I think, but I don’t know what.”

  “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 sai
d. “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 was a bruise, all right, a bruise in the shape of a hoofprint. Ampelus said, “Centaurs here soon. Minds made up. Not know which way, but made up.”

  “How did you manage that?” George exclaimed.

  Ampelus laughed some more, though the laughter looked as if it hurt. “Went up in back of filly Nephele, tried to screw. If I do it, I think I have good time. If I don’t do it, I make Nephele, all the centaurs so mad, they give over talk talk talk.”

  “You get it in?” Ithys demanded.

  By way of reply, Ampelus sadly rubbed at that hoof-shaped bruise. Though the satyr healed with the speed characteristic of immortals, George suspected it would wear that mark for a good long while.

  Sure enough, though, Nephele burst out of the woods a few minutes later. The glance the female centaur aimed at Ampelus should have annihilated the satyr more thoroughly than any kick, no matter how ferocious. Ampelus, however, only leered back, which made Nephele more furious than ever.

  Father Luke spoke quickly: “Have you decided, then, whether you will drink the wine to try to save Thessalonica?”

  Distracted, Nephele turned away from Ampelus. “Oh,” the female centaur said. “That.” Anger cooled somewhat, it spoke now with more than a little hesitation. “Aye,” it said at last. “We are decided. Let it be as you say, priest of the new. We shall do this thing, and run wild upon the earth, and madness shall overtake us, and, if it be fated, we shall overfall the folk and powers that have come down into this land.”

  “In the name of--” Father Luke checked himself before he named the Name the centaur could not bear to hear. “In my name, and in the name of Thessalonica my city, I thank you.”

  “And while we run mad,” Nephele went on as if the priest had not spoken, “if it be fated, mayhap I shall run across a certain wretch with horse’s tail and billygoats nature, and mayhap tear the said wretch limb from limb beyond any hope of healing, even though that wretch belong to a race said to be undying. Mayhap this too shall come to pass.”

  George would not have wanted to be on the receiving end of a threat like that, not when Nephele so obviously looked forward to the prospect. If it bothered Ampelus, the satyr didn’t show it. “Maybe you just get drunk and happy. Maybe we go someplace and--”

  Nephele flung a stone. Ampelus’ dodge was, and needed to be, supernaturally quick. The satyr darted in among the trees. A volley of well-hurled stones followed. George didn’t think any of them hit.

  Lete was overrun with centaurs. The townsfolk, pagan though they were, had stared when Crotus and Nephele accompanied George and the satyrs to Gorgonius’ shop. Now George would not have been surprised if the centaurs here outnumbered the human population of Lete.

  From where had all the creatures come? How had they gathered here so quickly, when the shoemaker had seen but few signs of them up till now? He’d tried asking Nephele, but the female centaur gave him no answer he could understand. His own best guess was that her kin had traveled by way of the hills beyond those he knew, and that paths long in his own mundane world might prove shorter there. He did not know that for a fact. He did not know whether any humanly graspable facts were there to be known.

  Lete might not have seen centaurs for a long time. Lete might never before have seen centaurs in profusion. But, when those centaurs began gathering around the couple of taverns in the town, the people of Lete, pagans as they were, knew what that was liable to mean. A lot of those people expressed their opinion of what was about to happen, or was liable to happen, by fleeing for their lives.

  The proprietor of one of the taverns, a dour little man who looked better suited to be a gravedigger, came out of his establishment to look at the centaurs, who stared hungrily back at him. Seeing Father Luke in the front ranks of the creatures alongside Crotus and Nephele, the taverner called to him: “Do you know what will happen when these centaurs get themselves a bellyful of wine?”

  “No,” the priest answered cheerfully, “not in any great detail. Do you?”

  “Detail?” The fellow stared at him. “I don’t care anything about the details. You crazy--” He might have said, You crazy Christian, which would have routed the centaurs and ruined Father Luke’s plan on the spot. Instead, he backed up and tried again: “You crazy bugger, they get wine in ‘em, they’ll tear up everything they can get their hands on.”

  “That’s the idea,” Father Luke said, cheerful still. “How would you like to be a Slav or an Avar and have a pack of drunken centaurs come thundering down on you when you didn’t expect it?”

  “Oh.” The taverner started to say something else, but again checked himself. He very visibly did try to imagine himself a barbarian caught by surprise under such circumstances. The expression he donned after making that mental effort was merely dyspeptic, a considerable improvement on the way he’d looked before. They won’t be happy, will they?”

  “We hope not,” George said. “That’s the idea: to make them unhappy, I mean. Why don’t you bring some wine jars and dippers out here? Your place looks crowded for centaurs, you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Dour glowering returned to the taverner’s face. They’ll drink me dry. Who’s going to pay me for all this?”

  “If you don’t bring out the jars and dippers, they’ll go into your tavern, drink you dry, and probably wreck the place, too,” George noted. “Wouldn’t you say keeping the building and furniture in one piece counts for something?”

  The taverner’s lips moved. George could not make out what he was saying. That was liable to be just as well. The fellow went back into his shop. George worried. If no wine was forthcoming, the centaurs were liable to storm and sack the place.

  But then the taverner reemerged, carrying a large jar. He stabbed the pointed end into the ground so it stood upright. By the look he gave George, he would sooner have stabbed him. George felt a certain amount of sympathy; he wouldn’t have wanted to give away all the shoes he’d made over several months, either. Nor was the taverner saving his own town; the Slavs and Avars had shown no interest in Lete. If, however, the other choices were worse . .

  Out came the taverner again, with another jar of wine. Seeing him give up, his colleague also began bringing out jars of wine. Behind George, the centaurs leaned forward, like a forest with the wind blowing through it. They might not have tasted wine since the long-ago days, but they remembered--and they hungered.

  George turned to Father Luke. “Once they start drinking, how will we turn them toward Thessalonica? If they go mad or do whatever they do here, that doesn’t help us much.”

  “I don’t quite know.” The priest’s face was drawn and worried. “One way or another, we’ll manage. We’ll have to manage. Can’t you feel how close the Slavs and Avars are to doing whatever they’re about to do?”

  “I can’t feel anything but how close we are to getting trampled when the creature
s decide they’re not going to wait anymore,” George said. Father Luke smiled at him, but wanly.

  Crotus started shouting in a dialect even more archaic than the one the male and the other centaurs used when talking with mortals. George could catch a word here and there, but, while he was getting that one, three or four more would go by that had no meaning for him. They meant something to the centaurs, though. Several large, burly males pushed their way through the crowd and took up stations by the growing rows of wine jars.

  To Father Luke and George, Crotus said, “They are pledged to resist the lure of the wine as best they can, to aid others in drinking whilst abstaining themselves. So far as it may be prevented, the madness shall not lay hold of all of us at once.”

  George and the priest beamed at each other. The sober centaurs could send the rest of their kind in the required direction--if they stayed sober, and if the others, once drunk, paid any attention to them. George was glad they were there. Of one thing he was certain: drunk, the mob of centaurs would have paid no attention to him.

  At last, everything was to Crotus’ satisfaction. “Let us taste the wine!” the male cried, a sentence that had not changed much over time. The rest of the centaurs did not cheer, as George had expected them to do at that welcome exhortation. Instead, a deep sigh ran through them, as when a lover spied his beloved after the two of them had spent a long time apart.

  Crotus was the first to fill a dipper. Instead of also being the first to drink, the male centaur, oddly ceremonious, passed the dipper to Nephele. The female savored the bouquet of the wine for a moment, then poured the dipper down. A shudder ran through both the human and the equine halves of the centaur’s body. Its eyes slid almost shut. A low, soft sigh escaped its lips. If that wasn’t ecstasy, George had never seen ecstasy.

  And, when Nephele’s eyes opened again, they had fire in them. The transformation was abrupt, and a little terrifying. All the planes and angles of the centaur’s face were different. Every one of them screamed danger! Something wild and terrible, something not seen in these hills for many long ages, had slipped its bonds and was running free.