Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  George reveled in his own invisible deadliness. Whenever the melee brought Crotus close enough to an Avar, the shoemaker on the centaur’s back struck and struck hard. The nomads did not know why Crotus was a particularly dangerous enemy, but soon figured out the male was such, and did their best to stay away from it. In the press of battle, that best was too often not nearly good enough.

  Quite suddenly, the press loosened. With a small shock, George saw that the centaurs had fought their way through the entire troop of Avars. Some of the nomads rode away from them, urging their horses to the best turn of speed they could. More were down on the ground behind Crotus, dead or wounded. More than a few riderless horses were mixed among the centaurs. Seeing the horses in that company, George thought they looked oddly incomplete, which only proved how used to centaurs he had grown over the past few days.

  Only a few warriors--some stubborn Avars, some Slavs rushing up to try to plug the gap in the line their overlords’ overthrow had created--remained between the centaurs and... what? Though seeing it from an unfamiliar angle, George recognized the tent of the Avar priest or wizard, and the satellite tents of the Slavic sorcerers nearby. The sorcerers were not in their tents, but capered around an immense bonfire not far from them.

  At first, George thought it was waves of heat that were beating against him from the bonfire. Then he realized that, large as it was, it wasn’t large enough for that. It wasn’t heat--or rather wasn’t heat exclusively--coming from the fire. It was sorcerous power.

  “That way!” He leaned forward to shout in Crotus’ ear. He pointed toward the great blaze, forgetting he was as invisible to the centaur as to the Avars and to everyone else. But his words did what his outflung arm could not: “We have to get rid of those wizards before--” He didn’t know just what they would or could do, but, from what Father Luke had said... “I’ve already asked you once-- do you want their great gods fully in this world with you?”

  That did the trick. Drunk as the centaur was, super-naturally wild with wine as it was, Crotus somehow kept some semblance of sense far down at the bottom of its mind. “Thither!” the male roared to the rest of the centaurs, and pointed toward the bonfire. Its arm, unlike George’s, was perfectly visible.

  Had George got an order like “thither,” he would have spent the next half hour trying to figure out whether it meant this way or that way, regardless of any gestures accompanying it. He was sure the same held true for all his comrades in the militia, and for Thessalonica’s regular garrison as well. The centaurs, though, had no trouble with it.

  Now that they had broken free of the Avar cavalry, they were in plain sight from the wall. Distantly, George heard the cries of astonishment that rang out from the militiamen there. He hoped none of those shouts had God’s name, or Christ’s, in them, or that, like arrows, such names had only a limited range. Otherwise, some of Thessalonica’s defenders were liable to rout the rest before the latter had done all they could do.

  What would he have done, had he been up on the wall instead of up on Crotus’ back? What would his friends up there do, seeing a horde of centaurs? Sabbatius, now, Sabbatius would think he was drunk and seeing things that weren’t there. But the rest? What would they do? One answer that crossed George’s mind was, holler for Bishop Eusebius.

  And what would Eusebius do when he saw centaurs? Being who and what he was, he would start praying them away. Since he was a holy man, his prayers would have more power behind them than those of ordinary militiamen. George murmured a small prayer of his own, to keep Eusebius off the wall as long as possible.

  An arrow hummed past George’s head. The Slav who shot it had no idea he was riding Crotus. That mattered only a little. The arrow might have pierced him only accidentally, but would have caused every bit as much anguish as if aimed by a clever archer.

  A thrown stone caught the Slav in the ribs. He dropped his bow and folded double, clutching at himself. Another Slav nearby threw down his spear and fled the field. That struck George as an eminently sensible thing to do. He might have done it himself, had he been in a position where it was practical, or even possible. Atop Crotus, he had no choice.

  As if recalled from other business he had thought more urgent, the Avar priest suddenly seemed to spy the centaurs. Moving with obvious reluctance, he pulled several Slavic sorcerers away from their wild dance. He and they stared at the onrushing supernatural creatures hardly more than a bowshot away.

  Crotus’ hooves came down in thick ooze. The male centaur had to yank each foot from the ground to go forward. Angry cries said other centaurs were similarly mired. The shouts from the walls of Thessalonica, loud before, suddenly seemed weak, distant. George glanced toward the city--and stared. All at once, it looked very faraway.

  “We’re not in the hills we know.” he called to Crotus. They weren’t in hills at all, but rather in a muddy marsh. The Slavic wizards acted perfectly at home in the new environment. The Slavs were people of forests and marshlands. The Avar who led them had got them to make their foes try to fight on terrain unsuited for any kind of quick movement.

  “Natheless, we go on,” Crotus answered. The centaur no longer sounded so fierce nor so sure of what it was about as had been true a little while before--the wine, George guessed, was beginning to wear off. But, step by slow, frustrating step, the advance did go on.

  The Slavic wizards’ magic went on, too. Seeming satisfied the centaurs would not be able to interrupt till too late, the Avar released the sorcerers he had called on to help him slow them. The wizards went back to their dance. He held the smaller magic by himself, while they built the greater. The hair stood straight up on George’s arms, as if lightning was about to strike.

  And so perhaps it was. Clouds boded into being out of nothingness, though somehow they avoided covering both the sun and the nearby crescent moon. A harsh chant rose from the wizards. George ground his teeth. This was the moment. He and the centaurs had come so far, dared so much . . and fallen just short.

  As clouds will, these formed vast shapes in the sky-- or rather, one vast shape, the shape of a middle-aged man of bull-like power, his arms and the cloak draped over them flung out wide. “Perun!” the Slavic wizards cried, and thunder and lightning roared. The Avar priest had called up thunder gods, too, but they were playful little things next to this brooding majesty.

  After a moment, as if they had paused to make sure their first summons was a success, the sorcerers called out another name: “Svarozhits!” More motion in the sky drew George’s glance. Suddenly the moon was not only the moon, but also the blade of an axe borne by a heavenly warrior taller than the treetops. If the moon god brought down that shiny-bladed axe, surely it would cleave the whole world.

  Along with their Avar overlord, the Slavic wizards capered in delight. They cried out yet again: “Svarog!” Where the moon had become Svarozhits’ axe, now the sun was also the blazing eye of a god enough like the other to be brother or father. George bowed his head against Crotus’ back. If that burning gaze fell on him, he would be nothing but ash blowing in the breeze.

  And the Slavic wizards summoned yet another god to their aid bellowing out his name: “Triglav! Triglav! Triglav!” Unlike his comrades, Triglav was rooted to the earth, and seemed strong with a boulder’s great strength. He had three conjoined heads on a single neck, which perhaps accounted for the wizards’ summoning him three times. He looked in all directions at the same time, and carried a great sword.

  Had the great gods of the Slavs fallen on the centaurs, the fight, such as it was, would have been over in moments. But the wizards had not summoned them into the world to deal with a minor annoyance, but rather to crush the great city that had resisted the Slavs and Avars for so long. And so Perun and Triglav, Svarog and Svarozhits swung their ponderous attention toward Thessalonica.

  Not only did the walls of the city seem distant to George, but also tiny. The advancing gods would crush those walls underfoot, as a careless man might crush a child’s toy. �
��God, help Thy city!” George groaned.

  He forgot all about the centaurs. Since the holy name was not aimed against them, it did them no harm. As a man will, George had sent up a great many prayers in his life, some to get this or that, some to avoid that or the other thing. As is God’s will, some were answered, some not. He had never had a prayer answered so spectacularly as this one.

  From the walls of Thessalonica--and also, at the same time, from Father Luke on Elatus’ back, among the band of centaurs--shone a dear, white light, dispelling the gloom the clouds that were Perun had cast over the landscape. Having seen the Slavic gods manifest themselves on earth, the shoemaker expected he would also see God the Father, probably in the guise of an angry old man, appear to stand against them. Bishop Eusebius, Father Luke, and every other priest to whom he’d ever listened insisted God was uncircumscribable in that fashion, but, to George, uncircumscribable had been nothing but a big word. Now he began to understand.

  In that glorious light, Svarozhits and Svarog all at once seemed pale, attenuated, like men stricken with consumption. Perun drew back his cloak of clouds, as if to protect himself from the divine radiance. Triglav paused, seeming frozen in his tracks.

  But neither the gods nor the wizards of the Slavs were to be despised, nor, for that matter, was the Avar priest who led them as Bishop Eusebius led the Christian hierarchs of Thessalonica. The Avar shouted angrily to the wizards. The wizards screamed at their gods. And the gods regained a measure of the strength and purpose they had lost in the first fierce glow of God’s power.

  Triglav stumped forward once more, sword held high. Perun unveiled his features, to show his furious face. Lightnings rippled round the edges of his cloud-cloak. Svarog’s solar eye cast a fierce light of its own. Svarozhits swung his axe, and the heavens seemed to tremble as the moon moved.

  The Litaean Gate opened. Out rode a horseman, gorgeous in the parade armor of a bygone era. The Roman cavalrymen carved on the arch of pagan Galerius had gear rather like his. But he was no pagan: he glowed with the same light as had given the Slavic gods pause. “St. Demetrius!” George shouted joyfully.

  As if naming the saint had given him fresh force, he lowered his lance and rode straight for Triglav. The Slavic god did not give back a step, but swung his savage sword and bellowed harsh defiance from three throats at once. Demetrius’ lance was aimed straight at his broad chest. The hooves of the saint’s horse thundered like--like those of a centaur, George thought. Though he rode one, he had almost forgotten the centaurs, transfixed as he was by the clash of greater powers.

  But the centaurs were still very much in the fray. Crotus hurled a fist-sized stone at the Avar wizard’s head. It hit the sorcerer just above his left ear. He crumpled, limp as a sack of barley. The centaurs roared with delight. The Slavic wizards also cried out, in horror. Stones started fading among them--and striking home, too.

  All at once, the marshy ground to which the fight had been transferred faded, returning it--and George, and the centaurs, and the wizards--to the lands the shoemaker knew. It was, he thought, at last a good day. Sunshine streamed down from a sky free of Slavic gods. No divine radiance shone forth from Thessalonica’s wall (where George could see Bishop Eusebius’ bright robes) or from Father Luke, but that was a fair trade. George looked around. No sign of St. Demetrius, but no sign of three-headed Triglav, either. That was a fair trade, too.

  Now the centaurs were on solid ground once more. Where they had wallowed forward through mud to get close enough to the Avar priest and Slavic wizards to do them any harm, now they could gallop once more. They might have been an avalanche rolling down on the sorcerers. The Slavs fled from the fire, screaming. It did them no good. The centaurs thundered after them (trampling the unconscious Avar underfoot), flinging stones, seizing with hands, kicking out with hooves. From Crotus’ back, George slashed till his arm was sore.

  The massacre took bare moments to finish. George looked around to see what the centaurs might do next. With some astonishment, he realized they didn’t have to do anything more. The wizards must have promised the Slavs and Avars that this last push, with their great gods brought forth to back them, would surely let them break into Thessalonica.

  And now, with success promised, they and their warriors had faded. Having failed, and having faded so unexpectedly, the barbarians must have decided nothing could make their siege succeed. Avars in scalemail and Slavs in hides and linen began streaming away from Thessalonica. Here and there, a chieftain from one people or the other tried to persuade his men to hold fast. It did no good. Nothing did any good now, not in holding the siege together. George watched a band of Slavs mob a chief who tried once too often to hold them to the fighting.

  “We did it!” the shoemaker shouted, and pounded on Crotus’ back with a hand he detached for a moment from Perseus’ cap. “We did it!” He let out a great ringing shout of joy.

  Great ringing shouts of joy rose from the walls of Thessalonica, too, as the defenders of the city watched the siege break up before their eyes. Gates opened. militiamen came forth to harry the Slavs and Avars as they withdrew. A few of the militiamen stared in wonder at the still-rampaging centaurs and tried to approach them. More, though, paid them no attention whatever, as if doing their best to pretend, perhaps even to themselves, that the creatures from a bygone era did not, could not, exist in modern, Christian times.

  From the wall, faint but unmistakable, came Bishop Eusebius’ voice: “In the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of the holy martyr St. Demetrius, let all pagan powers depart this land. May it henceforth be free of them forevermore!”

  Beneath George, Crotus shuddered as if an arrow had pierced its vitals. Behind him, all the centaurs cried out. They began to move away from Thessalonica. Even mad with wine, they could not bear the power of holy names directed specifically against them. The last thing George wanted was to be taken away from Thessalonica when he’d gone through so much to get back there. As carefully as he could, he slid from Crotus’ back to the ground.

  That turned out not to be carefully enough. He couldn’t keep his feet, but went down onto his backside. Perseus’ cap fell off his head. He grabbed it and started to put it back on, but then, when a centaur dodged around him, realized that might not be a good idea right away. If the centaurs saw him, they could avoid him. If they didn’t see him, they’d trample him without knowing he was there.

  Impelled by the name of God, the band of centaurs fled back up into the hills with amazing speed. Not a bowshot away from George, Father Luke stood staring back at their retreating hindquarters. He waved to the shoemaker. George waved, too, and walked toward him.

  Father Luke clapped him on the back when he came up. “Thank you,” the priest said. “I want to tell you, this has been, I think, the most astonishing day of my life, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to take part in these great events if not for you.”

  “If that’s how you look at things, Your Reverence, you’re welcome,” said George, who would have been as happy-- happier--to have had no part whatever in these great events. “And will you thank me tomorrow? When you go back into the city, you’ll have to explain to Bishop Eusebius what you’ve been doing.”

  “He will set me a penance, I will accept and perform it, and we’ll go on as we did before,” the priest answered. “With the siege broken and Thessalonica delivered from the Slavs and Avars, he may not be too harsh.”

  “I hope you’re right,” George said.

  Father Luke looked concerned. “But what of you, George? You still have troubles with Menas. I will do all I can for you, but I do not know how much that will be. Menas is a powerful man. He had a will of his own even before God gave him back the use of his legs, and now--”

  By way of answer, George did put Perseus’ cap on again. He patted Father Luke on the back. Then, when the priest turned one way, he went around and tapped him on the other shoulder. Father Luke turned again. George patted him on the head. A moment late
r, he poked him in the ribs. A grin stretched across the shoemaker’s face. Father Luke could not see that grin, which was exactly the point.

  “I think I can manage,” George said out of thin air.

  “I think you may be right,” Father Luke admitted, fortunately not angry at the cavalier way the shoemaker had treated him. “Try not to be so ferocious in your rejoinder that you make a new martyr.”

  “I’ll--try,” George said grudgingly. Menas hadn’t shown any such restraint toward him. Menas had done his level best to get him killed, and the rich noble’s best had almost been good enough.

  “Good.” Father Luke started walking toward Thessalonica George followed invisibly. The gates remained open. Some militiamen were still corning out to pursue the Slavs and Avars. Others, many with light wounds, came back into the city. No one paid much attention to Father Luke as he walked toward the Litaean Gate. No one paid any attention to George at all. Invisibility had its advantages.

  On the other hand, he might have painted himself orange with green stripes and got into Thessalonica unchallenged right then. So long as the men coming in didn’t look like Slavs or Avars, the guards who stayed at the gates weren’t bothering them. The guards were not in a bothering mood. They were passing a jar of wine back and forth. He wondered what Rufus would say about that. Give me some, most likely. George walked past the guards into the city.

  XII

  People packed the narrow, winding streets. They pounded one another on the back. They shouted out bits of song, generally off-key. Men and women kissed in doorways or sometimes out in the middle of the street, blocking other traffic. Nobody showered them with abuse, not now. George would have bet anything anyone cared to name that not all, or even most, of the couples embracing were married to each other. Nobody cared, not now.