“Because a man who betrays his friends has no friends left after a while--and doesn’t deserve any, either,” George said. “And because, if Menas weren’t angry at me for this, he’d be angry at me for something else. He’s decided he’s going to be angry at me, and he’s the kind of man who doesn’t change his mind about things like that.”
“It’s one thing if a tanner or a butcher is angry at you,” Sophia said. “All they can do is insult you in the street, or something like that. But if Menas is angry at you, he could . . .” She paused, trying to think of the worst thing she could. After a moment, she went on, “He could set lawyers on you.”
“Heaven forbid!” Irene exclaimed. George would have said the same thing if his wife hadn’t beaten him to it. He didn’t have a lot of money; the next rich shoemaker of whom he heard would be the first. Not only would he find it hard to fend off the attacks of lawyers trained in Berytus or Constantinople (and find it all the harder because judges would surely be prejudiced in favor of the lawyers’ wealthy, prominent client), he would also be tied up in court for so long, he wouldn’t be able to tend to what business he had. Serving on the militia gave him that kind of trouble, but half the men--better than half the men--in Thessalonica had it now. If Menas decided to persecute him by prosecuting him, that wouldn’t be so.
“We’ll just have to see what happens, that’s all,” he said. “Maybe--” He stopped.
“Maybe some Slav will shoot him in the face with an arrow,” Theodore said. “Shooting him in the heart wouldn’t do--I’m sure it’s too hard for an arrow to hurt.”
“Theodore …” George’s voice carried a warning for a couple of reasons. Theodore hadn’t bothered keeping his voice down. If word of what he’d said got to Menas, the noble would have another reason for hating George. And the shoemaker did not feel comfortable about wishing anyone dead. He’d had the thought his son had spoken aloud, but he’d stopped before he said it. Words, he told himself, were what gave thought power.
Theodore said, “Sometimes I think you’re too kind-hearted for your own good.”
George walked over and swatted him in the backside. He leaped into the air with a yelp. “There,” George said. “Think again.” Theodore did his best to look indignant, but couldn’t help laughing--especially when his sister and mother were laughing already.
But Irene quickly turned serious again. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
“I know what I’m going to do,” George said: “I’m going to finish this sandal I was working on. As for the rest, I won’t worry about it till it happens--if it happens.” He hoped he convinced Irene with that if. He wished he could convince himself.
VI
Standing up on top of the wall, George shivered. The day was bright, but cold enough to make him wish for trousers. “We ought to be warmer here than down below,” John said. “We’re closer to the sun, aren’t we?”
“Close enough to bake your wits, anyhow,” Rufus said. John grinned at him, unperturbed. George wished John would stop making jokes. He didn’t think he’d get either of his wishes, but made them anyhow.
He hadn’t told John of the trouble from his joke about Menas--what point? It wouldn’t have abashed the tavern comic, and might have given him ideas for new vile jokes . . . although John, being John, never seemed to have any trouble coming up with those ideas.
Rufus pointed out toward the Slavs. “They look like trying anything?”
“Not today,” John said. “Quiet as the basilica halfway through one of Eusebius’ sermons, except the Slavs are too far away for you to hear them snoring.”
“Oh, John,” George murmured, as he sometimes did when John went too far in the middle of his routine. John took no notice; John seldom took notice of anything. George spoke to Rufus: “I’m not sure he’s right. They were stirring about when we first came up onto the wall, though they haven’t done much the past couple of hours.”
“Maybe they were stirring so quick because they’ve got dysentery going through their camp.” John mimed a man dashing for the latrine. He didn’t need to say anything to be funny; sometimes, as now, he was funnier when he let his body do the talking for him.
Rufus laughed; you couldn’t watch John trying to hurry and at the same time trying to clench every part of himself without laughing. But the veteran said, “Dysentery’s no joke. I’ve been in camps where it came calling. Sometimes more soldiers die of a flux of the bowels than from swords and spears and arrows and what have you.”
George waited for John to crack wise about soldiering’s being a shitty job, but his friend disdained the easy laugh. If he was casting about for one more worthy of his talents, he never got the chance to use it. Instead, he spoke in a voice so flat and unemphatic, it commanded immediate attention and belief: “You were right, George. The Slavs are up to something.”
“They sure are,” Rufus said, both brown eye and blue going wide. His voice rose to a formidable shout: “Sound the alarm! The Slavs are attacking the city!”
The first horns on the wall might have rung out before he shouted, but they might not have, too. Afterwards, George never was sure. He was sure a whole ungodly lot of Slavs were rushing at the wall. Some of them carried picks, others sledgehammers, and still others the big shields he’d noted at the edges of their encampments.
He was slow adding up what all that meant, not least because another host of Slavs, these keeping their distance from Thessalonica, filled the air with arrows. George ducked behind the battlement to snatch an arrow out of his own quiver, stood up quickly to shoot it, and then ducked down once more.
Rufus wasted no more time in taking cover, but Rufus had seen everything once and most things half a dozen times. He knew what the Slavs intended, and announced what he knew to everyone else: “They’re going to try making tortoises and undermining the wall!”
“Have we got enough things to drop on them?” George asked.
“We’re going to find out, aren’t we?” Rufus said, not the most reassuring answer the shoemaker could imagine. The veteran’s bowstring twanged as he shot at a Slav. His curses said he’d missed. While setting another arrow to the string, he went on, “They’re not doing a very good job of it. They should set up the tortoises before they move on the walls--they’d take fewer casualties that way.” His critique of the Slavs’ performance was milder than some he’d given the militiamen on the practice field.
George shot at a Slav carrying one of the oversized iron-faced shields. The fellow clutched at his leg and fell. The shield bounced away. Before he could recover it, three more arrows pierced him. None of them finished him off, though. He managed to get the shield back and slowly crawl away from the fighting. In the abstract, George pitied him; if he lived, he would be a long, painful time healing. At the same time, though, he wished his first arrow had killed the Slav instead of merely wounding him.
He lacked the leisure to contemplate the inconsistency of those two notions. He lacked leisure for anything. His life reduced itself to groping for arrows, nocking them, finding a target, drawing the bow, and letting fly. That Slav was an exception; with most of the shafts he loosed, he had no idea whether he’d hit or missed.
A good many Slavs sprawled in death or writhed in torment on the ground in front of the walls of Thessalonica. Quite a lot of shieldmen reached the walls, though, and raised their shields up over their heads to protect themselves and their comrades with picks and crowbars from whatever the Thessalonicans rained down on them.
“That’s not how Bousas would have taught them to do it,” Rufus said reprovingly. “They should know better, if they learned from a proper Roman.”
“I don’t think this is one of those times when the pedagogue will come across their backsides with a stick if they’re sloppy,” John said. “Sieges aren’t marked on neatness.”