Thessalonica

IV

Axes rang in the woods around Thessalonica. George watched an oak tremble, sway, fall. A crew of Slavs began lopping off branches and cutting the trunk into lengths they found useful. Not far away, a mounted Avar watched his subjects.

“He’s working hard, isn’t he?” John said, pointing out from the wall to the horseman, who, but for occasionally pointing, wasn’t doing anything much.

“Not so you’d notice,” George answered, “but the Slavs are working harder because he’s there.”

“The noble comes round to see how his building is going up, you’d best believe the carpenters work harder,” John said. “Me, I’m funnier when I know the fellow behind the bar at the tavern is listening to me. If he doesn’t like what he’s hearing, I have to try to find someplace else to work the next night.”

“Carpenters build buildings,” George said. “What do Slavs build? They can’t be making a village out there, can they?”

“I know what they’re making,” John said: “they’re making trouble.”

“They’ve already done that.” George looked along the wall instead of out from it. No sooner had he done so than he stood more erect and gripped his bow more firmly. Out of the side of his mouth, he said, “Here comes Rufus. Think of him as the fellow behind the bar.”

John obviously did think of Rufus that way, for, like George, he did his best to project an air of martial ferocity. Like George’s, his best left something to be desired. Rufus surveyed diem with his brown eye, with his blue eye, and with both eyes together. He looked dissatisfied all three ways. “God must be watching over Thessalonica,” he said, “if it hasn’t fallen with the likes of you two holding off the Slavs and Avars.”

George didn’t argue with the veteran; on the whole, he agreed with him. And John surprised Rufus by putting an arm around him and kissing him on the bristly cheek. “Thank you, great captain,” he said in a voice gooey with counterfeit emotion. “You’ve made us what we are today.”

Rufus wiped his cheek with the back of one hand. “The good news about that is that it’s true,” he said. “And the bad news about it… is that it’s true.”

Another tree went over with a crash. The Slavs started trimming it as they had the oak they’d felled a few minutes before. “What are they doing out there?” George asked Rufus.

The veteran clapped to his forehead the hand he’d just used to wipe his cheek. “God help all of us if you’re as I made you,” he said. “Anyone with enough sense to rub his fingers on his tunic after he blows his nose can see that they’re cutting the timber they need for siege engines.”

“Siege engines?” George and John spoke together. John went on, “They’re barbarians. They don’t have any cities. What are they doing with siege engines?”

“They don’t have cities, no,” Rufus said. “That’s not the point. The point is, we have cities. If they want to take them away from us, they have to get inside. The way to get inside a walled town is with siege engines. They know that; they may be barbarians, but they aren’t stupid.”

By the way he said it, his opinion was that the two militiamen were stupid. George’s ears got hot. Righty or wrongly, he prided himself on his wits. Having Rufus scorn them was bitter as wormwood to him. He said, “All right, they know what they need to do to break into our cities. But how do they know? Siege engines can’t be easy to make.”

“Anything is easy--if you know how to do it,” Rufus said. “And they do.” His face darkened with anger. “The Avars were besieging some town up near the Danube, way I heard the story. I forget the name of the place; this was, oh, I don’t know, ten years ago, something like that. They caught a soldier outside the walls, fellow called . . , called . . . Bousas, that was it.”

“They learned to make siege engines from us Romans?” George said, appalled. “Did this Bousas tell them how?”

Rufus nodded. “That’s what he did, all right. They were going to kill him. He told them to take him back to this town, whatever its name was, and the people there would pay ransom to get him back.”

John’s chuckle was cold and cynical. “Didn’t happen, eh?”

“Sure didn’t,” Rufus agreed. “One of the nobles there was either screwing Bousas’ wife or else wanted to screw her, I misremember which, and he persuaded the people not to give the Avars even a follis for Bousas.”

“And Bousas paid them back?” George said.

“That’s what he did, all right,” Rufus repeated, with another nod. “Said he’d give ‘em the town if they let him live, and then went on to teach ‘em how to make stone-throwers.” He scowled. “That’s how they’ve taken so many towns since, and that’s how they know about engines.”

George was a man who liked to get to the bottom of things. “What happened to Bousas, and to his wife, and to the noble who kept the people from ransoming him?

“If Bousas isn’t dead, he’s still with the Avars,” Rufus answered. “I don’t know what happened to the woman or the other fellow. Whatever it was, my bet is that it wasn’t pretty. I’ve seen what happens to towns in a sack.” His lined face went very harsh for a moment. George wondered what pictures he was watching inside his head, and hoped Thessalonica wouldn’t find out.

John said, “If the Slavs do break in, nice to know it’s on account of our sins and not theirs, isn’t it?”

“Maybe we should sally and break those engines, or else burn them, before the barbarians can bring them up against the walls,” George said.

Rufus studied the ground outside the wall. After what must have been a couple of minutes, he regretfully shook his head. “I wish we could, but I don’t think we can. Too stinking many Slavs out there--Slavs here, there and everywhere. They can afford to waste whole great stacks of men holding us off, and we can’t afford the ones we’d have to spend. Anybody says the militia ought to try it, I’m going to say no as loud as I have to, to make people listen. If we had some regulars, now--”

Regulars would have armor to match the scalemail the Avars and their horses wore, and most of them would be mounted, too. If the militiamen fought the Slavs out in the open, they would lack the advantage in weapons and position and be outnumbered to boot. George decided Rufus was right.

Then the veteran looked thoughtful. “Wouldn’t want to send militiamen out against the Slavs in broad daylight, I sure wouldn’t, not unless things were different from the way they are now. Sliding a postern gate open at night, though, and going out and seeing what we could do then …” His eyes didn’t match, but they both saw clearly.

So George thought, at any rate. John hopped straight up in the air, a motion startling enough to make a couple of Slavs look up from their carpentry and point his way. “At night?” he said with anger that sounded genuine. “You’re going to try to take my audience away? I like that!”

“Don’t worry about it, pup.” Rufus set a hard, much-scarred hand on his shoulder. “Nobody’d be listening to you anyway.” He tramped on down the walkway atop the wall, leaving John, for once speechless, behind him.

More and more Slavs came down from the northeast. More and more Avars came with them, to make sure they stuck to their work. With alarming speed, a variety of siege engines took shape under the Avars’ direction. George, who knew plenty about shoes but had never been besieged before, needed help telling one sort from another. Rufus gave it.

“You see the ones on the broad bases?” he said. “The ones that taper up till they’re thinner on top? Those are the stone-throwers. They’ll try and knock the wall down so the barbarians can swarm through the breach.”

“That’s what all those things are for, isn’t it?” George said.

“Well, of course it is, but there are different ways of going about it,” the veteran answered, tossing his head in annoyance at the shoemaker’s naivete. “Those hide-covered sheds shaped like triangles, they’re going to hang battering rams from those. You see that log with the pointed iron beak? That’s going to be a ram. They’ll bring that little present up to the gate or try and fill in some of the ditch in front of the wall so they can come right up close and pound away.”

“And the shields all piled over there?” George looked out to the very edge of the forest. Even from that distance, the shields were obviously not of the ordinary sort. They were bigger than those either militiamen or regulars carried, and extravagantly faced with iron.

“Tortoises,” Rufus said. “The Slavs’ll stand under ‘em and try to dig out the stones at the bottom of the wall so the ones above ‘em fall down. Of course, life gets interesting under a tortoise. I’ve been under one a time or three, and it’s something I could do without.”

Interesting was not the word George would have used. The Thessalonicans already had piles of stones waiting along the walkway. They also had stacked firewood and collected a goodly number of iron pots in which to boil water. All of the stones and the boiling water would come down on the Slavs. Maybe the shields would hold off the rocks. Could they hold out scalding water?

“What we need,” John said, “is St. Demetrius coming down and working another miracle. I mean, a miracle besides talking through a homely old sinner like our captain here.”

“For a follis, two at the outside,” Rufus growled, “I’d go and tell Bishop Eusebius to lower your worthless carcass down in front of the wall and use it to pad the stonework against the boulders the barbarians are going to fling at us. Any boulder that bounced off your hard head would be gravel the next instant, that’s certain sure.”

“You’ve got your nerve, running down miracles,” George said to John. “What do you think God would do to you for that?”

John flashed his impudent grin. “God is a god of mercy, right? That means He’ll forgive me, I hope.”

“Now there’s a doctrine that would get Bishop Eusebius hopping mad,” George said. John did have his nerve; George, as often with his friend, didn’t know whether to be admiring or horrified.

“Who’s running down miracles?” a deep voice behind them demanded. George turned. There stood Menas, solid and blocky and altogether cured of his paralysis. The noble had a helmet on his head and a stout hammer in his hand. He looked like a man with whom no one sensible would want to trifle. “Where would I be today without God’s kindness?”

John started to answer him. Afraid of what the answer would be, George stepped on his fellow militiaman’s foot. John hissed like a viper. George didn’t care about that. To Menas, he said, “I’m sure you must fit into God’s plan for saving Thessalonica.”

“What?” Menas snapped. That thought plainly hadn’t occurred to him; all he’d worried about was God’s plan for saving Menas. He had a fine glower, one that no doubt struck terror into the souls of everybody who owed him money. “You’re the shoemaker, aren’t you?”

“That’s me,” George answered evenly.

“I’ll remember you,” Menas rumbled. He strutted off, chest out, thick legs striding along as if they hadn’t been useless sticks for years. Maybe that strut was what made a couple of Slavs shoot arrows his way. The shafts missed, but Menas moved a lot faster and with a lot less self-conscious magniloquence after they zipped past his head.

John whispered. “You don’t want to get important people angry at you, George.” He spoke with unwonted sincerity. “I know about that. Why do you think I’m not living in Constantinople anymore?”

“I don’t know,” George answered. “They’re supposed to have good taste back there; that probably has something to do with it.”

Rufus gave him an admiring look. “The Slavs shoot poisoned arrows every now and then. I wonder what they did for poison before your tongue came along.”

“You people don’t need me,” John said. “I think I’ll go off into the garden and eat worms.”

“Thessalonica’s not that hungry yet,” Rufus told him, “and besides, your stretch on the wall here isn’t up yet, either. We’re stuck with you a while longer.”

But out beyond the walls, the sounds of logging and carpentry went on and on.

People filed into the church of St. Demetrius to pray for the salvation of the city and to listen to what Bishop Eusebius had to say both about divine aid and about what mere men needed to do to save Thessalonica.

“We’ll meet you across the square from the church after the service is over,” Irene said. George nodded. His wife and Sophia took the stairs up to the women’s gallery. He and Theodore walked on down the central aisle of the basilica, to get as close to the altar as they could. Not only did that give them a more concentrated feeling of the saint’s warlike power, it also let them have a better chance of actually hearing Eusebius.

George looked up toward the filigreed screen intended to keep men at prayer from being distracted by looking at and thinking about women. In a way, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. In another way, it faded, for he kept trying to spot Irene and Sophia through the screen’s ornately patterned holes.

Chanting priests swinging thuribles advanced toward the altar from either side. Clouds of incense drifted up from the censers: fragrant frankincense and bitter myrrh. Like any church, St. Demetrius’ was steeped in those fragrances even without their reinforcement. When George smelled them, his thoughts automatically went to holy things.

And here came Bishop Eusebius, gorgeous in silks encrusted with pearls and precious stones. He made his way to the altar and celebrated the divine liturgy with a zeal that matched the meaning of his name in Greek: “pious.” As he usually did, he conducted the services in Greek. George did not mind that, even if Latin was his preferred tongue. Maybe the powers that had lived in this land before Christianity might also hear petitions in Greek.

Had he spoken that thought to Eusebius, the bishop would no doubt have berated him. But then, being a bishop, Eusebius was no doubt on intimate terms with God. George was just a shoemaker, and not inclined to be picky about which powers helped Thessalonica against those of the Slavs and Avars.

When the service was completed, Eusebius addressed the congregation: “Brothers and sisters under God, we must remember always that we are in His hands. And we must remember always that our fate is in our hands as well as His. If we do not prove ourselves worthy of His aid, we shall not receive it. Instead, we shall be chastised for the multitude of our sins. The instruments of His chastisement lurk beyond our walls.

“I have heard it said the pagans number a double handful of myriads, a hundred thousand men. I do not know if this be true, but it would not surprise me. Our own numbers are not so large, but numbers alone I do not fear, for is it not written, and written truly, “How should one chase a thousand, And two put ten thousand to flight, Except their Rock had given them over, and the Lord had delivered them up. For their rock is not as our Rock’?”

The rhetoric was strong and heartening, and lifted George’s spirits. But then he wondered, as he had once or twice before, what the men who talked with the powers and gods of the Slavs and Avars were saying to their followers. They had no Holy Scriptures, of course, but he would have been surprised if they told their fellow barbarians anything much different from Eusebius’ words. All men believed their gods the mightiest, till the test came.

Then George had a truly appalling thought, one that had not crossed his mind till now: what if the men who talked with the powers and gods of the Slavs and Avars were right, and Bishop Eusebius mistaken?

He shivered like a man out at night in a cold rain. The Avars and the Slavs who did so much of their fighting for them had beaten the Romans at least as often as they had tasted defeat. What did that say about the relative strength of the powers involved?

He did not care for what he thought it might say. Brooding thus, he missed some of what Eusebius was saying; his attention returned to the bishop in midsentence: “--is because God demands much of us Romans. If we sin, He punishes us, as we deserve. If we want Him to stay His hand and not bring His flail down upon our backs, we must live our lives in holiness, showing Him we deserve to be saved.”

A hum of approval ran through the basilica. How many people would give up gambling and blaspheming and fornicating because of the bishop’s words, though? Bishops had been inveighing against sin since the beginning of Christianity, yet sin remained loose in the world and loose in Thessalonica.

Eusebius said, “We are men. We are sinners. We are imperfect. God does not expect all of us can be saints; He knows our hearts too well. But He does expect each of us to do all he can. If all of us, together, do enough, our foes shall not prevail against us.”

George always felt clever when he thought along with someone, especially with someone who was clever himself, as Eusebius undoubtedly was. As alarm had a little while earlier, pride made him miss a few of the bishop’s words: “--pray that we shall be brave enough to withstand the barbarians’ onslaught, which cannot now long be delayed. And we shall also pray that the measures we take against the foe, both on the walls and in the spiritual realm, shall be crowned with success.”

“Amen!” The response came loud and strong. George joined in along with everyone else. Nobody in Thessalonica was crazy enough not to want to be delivered from the Slavs and Avars. Even the Jews were probably praying for that deliverance. The Slavs and the Avars wouldn’t hate them for being Jews, but would hate them for being Romans. The Jews got a poor bargain, any which way.

Eusebius stooped and picked up something that lay behind the altar. He held up a large iron grappling hook. “With defenses such as this, we shall turn aside the engines of the barbarians. Let us pray virtue into them.”

“Amen!” the worshipers cried out again.

“The Lord God shall see that we do all we can in our own behalf, and, being merciful toward us and filled with loving kindness, shall grant us a measure of His strength as well.” Eusebius waved the grappling hook about. If he’d gone fishing with it, he might have snagged a whale. But whales were not its intended prey; it was made for catching rams and their sheds.

Just for a moment, George thought the grappling hook glowed with a light that did not spring from the candles and lamps in the basilica of St. Demetrius. Before he could be sure he hadn’t imagined it, Bishop Eusebius set down the hook with a clank of iron and held up another. Again, he and the Thessalonicans prayed. Again, George thought he saw a glow surround the hook with light apparently not from any natural source. Again, he admitted to himself that he couldn’t be sure.

Another clank of iron heralded Eusebius’ setting down the second hook and picking up a third. All in all, the congregation must have sought to pray virtue into at least a dozen grappling hooks. George wondered how the bishop kept track of which ones had been prayed over and which hadn’t. Did one of them, by some mischance, have a double dose of divine power prayed into it while another went without? Or could Eusebius sense the difference between a grappling hook the Lord had been invited to fortify and one He had not?

“When the enemy attacks, we shall all stand fast,” Eusebius declared. “The liturgy is accomplished. Go in peace, but knowing you shall be tested in the fire of war.”

“We’ll smash them, won’t we, Father?” Theodore said eagerly as they walked out of the church. “God will help us.”

“I hope so.” George’s eyes went to the ruins of the ciborium, and to the smoke stains still blackening the columns and ceiling nearby. God had helped then, dousing the flames and speaking through Rufus to get the people up onto the walls when the Slavs first appeared in large numbers.

But, even as he walked across the square to the meeting place on which he’d agreed with Irene, he heard drums thundering outside Thessalonica: not drums calling men to battle--alarms would have come from the wall had that happened--but more likely summoning the gods and demons of the Slavs and Avars to fortify the onslaught that was to come. Men against men, walls against siege engines, God against gods …

“There’s Mother.” Theodore pointed. George waved to Irene. Theodore, having spotted her, cast his eyes on some of the other women--younger, unmarried women-- coming out of the basilica. Some people might have disapproved of such concupiscent thoughts on the heels of the divine liturgy. In theory, George disapproved of them, too. In practice, he remembered having done the same thing when he was a youth. And, for that matter, he still looked at pretty girls when he got the chance, even if he had no intention of doing anything but looking. He remembered the one he’d seen when the garrison marched away.

That, unfortunately, made him remember the garrison had marched away, something he would sooner have forgotten. The militiamen had kept Thessalonica safe so far, but the Slavs and Avars hadn’t yet seriously assaulted the walls. Soon--maybe as soon as tomorrow--they would. Having a couple of thousand professionals in place alongside people like him would have made him rest easier of nights.

“Well, let’s go home,” Irene said when she’d made her way through the crowd to George’s side. Then she spoke to Sophia, in a low tone George didn’t think he was meant to hear: “Don’t stare at them that way, dear. You’re supposed to be--reserved.”

“Mother!” Sophia’s reply hit the indignant high note every young woman seems to find by instinct. Her ears turned pink.

George knew young women eyed young men, too. He smiled to himself; by the way Irene addressed her daughter, that was supposed to be a secret of sorts. He shrugged. One of these days, if he found the right chance, maybe he’d tease his wife about it.

“I always feel better coming out of church after the liturgy,” Irene said. “It reminds me of how much in God’s hands I am.”

“Yes, Bishop Eusebius said the same thing,” George answered, and let it go at that. His own faith, while real, was harder to kindle.

But after a few more paces, Irene said, “While Bishop Eusebius was praying over those hooks, though, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Slavs and Avars were doing at the same time.”

“Yes,” George said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice. He set a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I’m glad our parents thought we were a good match for each other. They were right in more ways than they knew. I was thinking the same thing myself.”

“Were you?” Irene walked on a little farther. “Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was surprised, not after all those years you wouldn’t. And since I’m not surprised, anyhow--”

They both laughed, easy and happy with each other. Theodore and Sophia looked at them not quite as if they’d suddenly sprouted second heads, but certainly as if they were peculiar. Maybe they were. George thought about Dactylius and Claudia. He would have been astonished if they knew this camaraderie. But then, a lot of things about that marriage astonished him.

“Do you know,” Irene observed, “I think Dactylius and Claudia would have been happier together if one of her babies had lived.”

“You’re right--he’s said as much.” George let it go at that. Had his wife been watching Theodore and Sophia watching them, too? If she had, her thoughts had gone from there in exactly the same direction as had his. Coincidence? George didn’t believe it. It had happened too many times. Whatever it was, he liked it.

George and Sabbatius had the dawn-to-midmorning shift the next day. As was his habit, George reached the stretch of wall near the Litaean Gate a quarter-hour or so early. That gave him the chance to shoot the breeze with Rufus and Paul, who’d been up there to watch the Slavs and Avars through the late hours of the night, and to see for himself what the besiegers might be up to.

He also saw something new: one of the grappling hooks Bishop Eusebius and the congregation had blessed in the basilica of St. Demetrius. Attached to a good length of chain, it lay on the walkway above the gate. Rufus said, “They’ll try and break in where it’s easiest, same as we would. They won’t try knocking down stones if knocking down timbers will do the job for them.”

“That makes sense,” George agreed. He peered out toward the encampments of the Slavs and Avars. A light mist kept him from telling what they were doing. He turned his head back toward the east. Here came the sun, rising red through the ground fog. Before long, it would bum the fog away. George wondered whether he really wanted to see the full range of the barbarians’ armaments after all.

Paul yawned. “I’m for bed,” he said. Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading up to the wall. “And here comes Sabbatius. Since I’m not leaving us shorthanded--” The taverner started for the stairway.

“Wait,” Rufus said. He spoke rough army-Latin, which Paul, who used Greek by choice, didn’t follow at once. Rufus ran after him and grabbed him. “Wait, curse you!” he said, shouting now. He still spoke Latin. “Don’t you hear? They’re moving out there.”

They were, too, in a way they hadn’t done since the earliest days of the siege. Shouts and clankings and the sounds of heavy things being dragged along the ground came out of the thinning mist. All at once, George understood why Rufus seemed to have forgotten his Greek: Latin was the language he’d used when he was a soldier, and he thought he was about to be a soldier again.

The mist thinned a little more, and the people and things moving through it came closer to the city. As they did so, cries of alarm and horn calls rang out up and down the wall. This would not be another quiet day. Too bad, George thought; he’d grown fond of quiet days.

“Do you think they’re going to attack?” Sabbatius asked, staring out at the battering ram moving slowly toward the gate, and at the swarms of Slavic archers who ran along beside and in front of it. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than an arrow hummed past his head and shattered off the stone behind him.

Rufus clapped a hand to his forehead. “No, fool, I think they’ve come to get drunk with us and dance the kordax.” He kicked his legs high in a couple of steps from the obscene dance. Then, apparently deciding sarcasm was wasted on Sabbatius, he pointed to the grappling hook. “Let’s throw that over the side and show the sons of a thousand fathers they aren’t going to have everything their own way.”

“What if they try to run up ladders, too?” George asked.

“You sound like Dactylius,” Rufus said. “With the horns screaming like that, we’ll have more men on the walls soon enough. First things first.”

Since that was good advice-^-advice he’d given a good many times himself--George took it. He trotted with his fellow militiamen to the grappling hook. As soon as he grabbed the chain, he knew the prayers in the church of St. Demetrius had been effective. He felt strong and brave and able to overcome anything, as a man touched by the power of the military saint should have felt.

Rufus himself handled the hook. He said, “We’ll show it to ‘em, let ‘em know we have it ready and waiting.” He looked tough and confident, too. “If they come on anyhow, I’ll hook the shed like I was fishing for bream, and then we all pull hard as we can, and shout for help, too. God willing, we lift the shed up and twist it so the ugly lugs under it get what they deserve. Everybody ready?”

When no one said no, he tossed the grappling hook over onto the outer surface of the wall. The iron rang off the gray stone.

George stood right behind the militia officer, ready to do whatever he ordered. The shoemaker stared out toward the shed advancing on the Litaean Gate. Against the massive construction of timber and hides, against the iron-headed log inside, the grappling hook seemed small and unreliable.

But, although the Slavic archers kept swarms of arrows in the air, the shed halted outside archery range from the wall. A couple of Slavs came out of it and pointed toward the gate. No, George realized joyously, they weren’t pointing to the gate, but to the hook hanging over it. If it worried them, it stopped worrying George.

An Avar rode up to the shed on his armored horse and shouted to the Slavs, gesticulating angrily. George didn’t need to know any of the barbarians’ languages to understand what he was saying: something like, Why don’t you pick that thing up and get it moving again?

The Slavs’ answering gestures were every bit as emphatic as those of their overlord. The Avar looked toward the gate himself. He made a sign with his left hand. When nothing happened, he jerked his horse’s head around hard and rode off at a gallop.

“We’ve beaten them!” Sabbatius exclaimed.

“Not yet,” George said.

Paul agreed: “That fellow on the horse is heading back for friends. The business I’m in, I’ve seen that kind of thing more times than I can count. One chap loses a fight, he goes off, he comes back with some friends, and they have another go at it.”

“Aye, that’s how it’ll be here, I think,” Rufus said. “They haven’t gone to all this trouble to quit before they use their toys.”

They weren’t going to use them right away, though. Rumor raced round the circuit of the wall, confirming what George had hoped: all the rams the Slavs and Avars had built were now halted. “What are they waiting for?” Paul asked, as if his comrades could see into the mind of the khagan of the Avars.

“I think we’re going to find out,” George said, pointing to the Avar who now walked up toward the ram stalled in front of the Litaean Gate. Instead of wearing scalemail like all the other Avars George had seen, this one was fantastically decked out in furs and feathers and fringes.

“He’s an ugly customer, isn’t he?” Sabbatius said with a scornful curl of the hp. “If that’s what the Avars wear when they aren’t in armor, no wonder they’re in armor so much.”

“He’s one of the people who treat with their gods,”

George said, wondering what kind of gods or powers the Avars had. Unpleasant ones, probably. The shoemaker went on, “You can see it in how he carries himself. You can feel it, too, the way you can with the bishop.”

“I still say he’s ugly,” Sabbatius said. Since George was a long way from finding the Avar attractive, he let that go. Sabbatius had a gift for fixing on the least important aspect of almost any matter and clinging to it as if it were at the core of the question.

The Avar studied the grappling hook. George watched him rub his chin in consideration, as a physician might have done while evaluating a patient with a fever whose nature he did not immediately recognize. Whatever the fellow saw did not satisfy him. He walked past the shed holding the ram and up toward the wall.

“Shoot the son of a whore!” Rufus shouted as soon as he came within arrow range. The command, while eminently sensible, was also to some degree wasted, for the archers on the wall--more of them now than had been there a little while before--were already sending arrows at the Avar.

None bit. George could not see any of them swerving aside or disappearing or bursting into flames. They all simply missed. The odds of that happening by itself struck him as somewhere between astonishingly poor and astonishing. Sure enough, the Avar had powers of his own.

“Christ with me!” John shouted, drawing an arrow back to the ear. When he thought he needed divine help, he called for it. George wondered what God thought about that.

Maybe God decided He wasn’t going to answer John’s prayer, considering some of the other things John said and did. Maybe the Avar’s own gods protected him. And maybe his arrow would have missed with or without invocations of God and gods--John’s archery, like that of most of the militiamen, was not all it might have been.

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.

The Slavs tried to free the hook from the shed; George could feel the chain twist a little in his hands. But it was taut now, and gave the barbarians nothing to work with. A quarter of a link, half a link, a link at a time, he and his grunting, cursing comrades gained.

Other militiamen flung stones at the Slavs under the shed, then dropped bigger stones. The defenders of Thessalonica also popped up to shoot arrows at those Slavs, quickly ducking back to escape the shafts Slavic archers aimed at them.

“Pull!” Rufus bellowed. “Pull and bear to the left. That way, you’ll--”

He didn’t need to say anything more. With a rending crash, the shed tipped over on its side. Some of the Slavs inside screamed as the log with which they had intended to smash through the Litaean Gate smashed them instead. Those who could picked themselves up and fled for the woods, some of them helping wounded comrades along.

“Shouldn’t we get out there and burn that shed?” George asked Rufus. “That way, they can’t sneak back at night to try to drag the thing away, repair it, and use it against us again.”

Before, Rufus had been set against any sally. Now he pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “Out through the postern gate,” he muttered, half to himself. “Wouldn’t take long, wouldn’t be much risk.” He smacked fist into palm in sudden decision. “We’ll try it.” He told off a dozen men, George and Paul among them. “Take torches and take oil. You want to make sure that when you set the fire, it sticks and spreads. You’ll only have the one chance.”

The militiamen got what they needed and hurried down the stairs. Rufus came with them and outshouted the militiaman in charge of the postern gate, who seemed in no mood to risk opening it for anything. “If you don’t bet, you can’t win,” George told him.

“That’s right. That’s exactly right,” Rufus said. “We can hurt the sons of whores, but not if we stand around here flapping our jaws instead of going out there and doing something about it.”

He set a hand on the hilt of his sword, as if to challenge the postern gate commander. That worthy, though hardly half his age, wilted rather than responding. George and his comrades drew their swords. The gate opened. They dashed toward the tumbled shed.

The Slavs shouted, some in excitement, more in alarm. They had not expected the Romans to rush out at them. Some fled, others stared. Only a few had the presence of mind to start shooting at the newcomers.

George slashed at a Slav standing between him and the shed. The Slav turned the blow with a large, clumsy shield. He cut at George. They traded swordstrokes. The shoemaker got him on the forearm. He dropped his sword, running for the woods and shouting in his guttural language. George did not pursue him past the shed, though he might easily have caught him. First things first, he reminded himself.

He smashed ajar of olive oil against the timbers. Paul thrust a torch into the oil. Flames and thick black smoke rose, not only there but elsewhere along the length of the shed. “We’ve done what we came to do,” George called to his comrades. “Now we go back.”

Back they went, running bent low to the ground to offer the Slavic archers the smallest target. Just before they reached the postern gate, though, one of them cried out in pain and crumpled, an arrow through his calf. The Slavs had helped their wounded--how could Romans do less? George heaved the fellow up and helped him limp into the city.

The postern gate slamming shut was one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever heard. Militiamen slammed bars into place to keep the gate secured. Some of the bars were gray and weathered, having stood up to sun and rain for years. Some, though, were of fresh, new-cut timber, and rested on shiny, rust-free iron brackets. George was heartily glad they’d made the postern gate stronger.

He and his comrades, all but the wounded man, hurried back up to the top of the Litaean Gate. “I want to watch that shed burn,” Paul said, stressing the last word. “You were right, George; now they’ll have to build another one if they want to attack us here.”

“Yes,” George said, but less happily than he would have thought possible before they’d burned the shed and the ram. Lots of Slavs swarmed out there; running up another shed wouldn’t take them that long. And besides-- He looked south, then north, along the wall. “I don’t think they’ve broken into the city anywhere else, but--”

“They haven’t,” Rufus said. “If they had, you’d hear the screaming in Constantinople. It couldn’t have happened without our knowing about it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” George said. “That’s good. They--” The wind shifted and picked up a little, coming now from out of the west. That meant it blew the smoke from the shed straight into the faces of the defenders atop the Litaean Gate. George broke off and started to cough. His eyes stung. Tears ran down his face.

If he looked anything like the rest of the men up there, the soot was turning his face black, too. And not only his face, either . . . John came up to Rufus and said, “If you wanted your hair dark again, why didn’t you just dye it instead of going through all this?”

“Ahh, to the crows with you,” Rufus said, and then he had a coughing fit, too. He spat. His saliva was black. He stared at it in disgust. “By the saints, maybe burning the shed wasn’t such a good idea after all. If the Slavs put ladders against the wall now, they’ll be up here with us before we know they’ve even started climbing.”

Like a lot of what the veteran said, that had truth mingled with the jest. Through streaming eyes, George tried to peer through surging smoke to see what the Slavs were doing. He couldn’t see much. He hoped that meant they weren’t doing much. If it didn’t, he’d get more practice using his sword.

Cheers rang out, off to the north. He didn’t know what that meant, but he had hopes. When the cheers weren’t followed by cries of alarm, he decided the hopes were justified. “I think we just threw them back up there, too,” he said, and then coughed some more.

Eventually, the shed burned itself out. By the time it did, George felt like a smoked sausage in a butcher’s shop. The westering sun shone red as blood through the last few puffs of smoke from the fire. Wearily, Rums said, “I don’t think they’re going to come back for any more tonight. And if they do, it’s going to be somebody else’s worry, not mine.” With that, he went down into Thessalonica.

George stayed on the wall till he saw enough men were coming up to replace those going down. Once he was sure of that, he went home, too. A lot of grimy, smoke-darkened men walked through the streets of the city. Some men, George had heard, had skins naturally that color. He’d never seen any, but it might have been true.

Irene gasped when he walked in through the front door of the shop. “What’s the matter?” he asked in genuine

She pointed to him. “You’re black, and you’ve got blood all over you.”

He looked down at himself. Sure enough, blood had sprayed onto his tunic. His right hand--his sword hand-- was bloody, too, along with being filthy. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not mine.”

His wife dipped a rag in a pitcher of water and handed it to him. “I don’t know whether that tunic will ever come clean,” she said, “but you can wash yourself.” Obediently, he scrubbed the blood and soot from his skin. The rag turned a color halfway between rust and gray. “You missed a couple of places,” Irene told him, pointing to his cheek and to his left shin.

When he scrubbed at those, he discovered they hurt. He also discovered he hadn’t been altogether right: he had cuts in both places, cuts that started bleeding again when he got them wet. “Wonder how I picked those up,” he said, bemused.

Irene looked more horrified than ever. Theodore, on the other hand, seemed struck with awe. “You mean you got wounded, Father, and you didn’t even know it?” he exclaimed.

“I guess I did,” George answered. Irene started to cry. George put his arm around her. “They’re not really wounds, darling.” He’d seen wounds; he knew that was true. “They’re just scratches, like.” What you called something could be as important as what it really was. What you called something, for that matter, could determine what it really was. Names were powerful.

Irene said, “The Slavs were trying to kill you.” He recognized the astonished indignation in her voice; he’d felt the same thing when he first realized the difference between exercises and war.

“Well, they didn’t,” he said, and squeezed her tighter. “And I helped bum one of their battering rams and the shed it came in.”

That made Theodore look not just proud but jealous. It did little to reassure Irene, though. “You mean you went outside the wall?” she said, and shivered when he nodded. “When you didn’t come home after your regular shift on the wall was done, I knew something was wrong. No, I knew it before then, when men started running through the streets shouting about an attack. Waiting and praying and praying and waiting come very hard, let me tell you.”

“We threw them back,” George said. “They couldn’t sneak into the city--St. Demetrius stopped that. And they couldn’t batter their way into it--we stopped that ourselves.” His chest puffed out with what he hoped was pardonable pride.

Sophia came into the shop through the back door in time to hear him. In tones of reproof, she said, “The blessings of the saint on the grappling hooks couldn’t have hurt, Father.”

“Couldn’t have hurt,” George admitted, “but they didn’t help, either.” Sophia and Irene and Theodore all stared at him; he had to remind himself that they hadn’t been up on the wall. He explained: “The Slavs and Avars found a magic to cut through the power in that blessing.”

His family exclaimed in dismay. “How can we beat them if they defeat our power?” Sophia said.

“We managed, just now,” George said. His daughter looked puzzled. He went on, “Powers or no powers, we’re still men, and so are they. It was a straight-up fight on the wall today, and we won it.”

“And outside the wall, too,” Theodore said. “I wish I could have been out there instead of you.”

“Instead of, no,” George said. “Alongside me--that may happen, son. You haven’t got much practice with weapons, but you don’t need much practice to fight from the wall.”

Theodore looked about ready to explode with joy and excitement. Irene looked about ready to puncture George with an awl. She hadn’t been delighted to hear her husband had gone down and fought outside the wail. To hear her son sounding so eager to imitate his exploits left her shaking her head about the male half of the human race.

Sophia sniffed, not scornfully but in a practical sort of way. “I think supper is about ready,” she said, and went upstairs to check. Her voice floated down to the shop: “Come eat, everyone.”

Supper was a porridge of peas and beans and onions, with bread and salted olives alongside. “Good,” George said. “Good as anything we could have had before the Slavs and Avars came.” It would have been a plain supper then and was rather a fine one now, but that didn’t mean he was wrong--not quite. It tasted all right and filled his belly. In the end, what else mattered?

Daylight’s twelve hours were short as autumn drew on toward winter, while those of night stretched like clay in a potter’s hands. George hoped the Slavs and Avars wouldn’t use the long night hours for deviltry. He intended to use every last moment of them for sleeping.

With a yawn, he said, “I’m turning in. Fighting a war is harder work than making shoes.” A lot of warfare, he’d discovered up on the wall, consisted of doing nothing. The moments when he wasn’t doing nothing, though, he knew he’d have those moments printed on his memory till a priest chanted the burial service above his corpse.

No one argued with him, but what he’d said didn’t mean making shoes was easy. His wife and daughter washed the supper dishes in the last fading glow of twilight. When full darkness fell, everyone went to bed.

Lying there beside George, Irene asked, “Have we beaten them back for good, then?”

For the first time in all the years since they’d wed, he got the feeling she wanted him to lie to her. Try as he would, he couldn’t do it. “I don’t know,” he answered, but I don’t think so. They’ll try something else, or maybe he same thing over again, to see if it works better the second time.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “All right.” It wasn’t, lot by the way she said it. But he didn’t hear her. He’d heady fallen asleep.