And then, suddenly, she was gone. The bonfire, suddenly, was but a bonfire. The billy goat, which had been awed into silence while the fire goddess rode him, began to bawl once more, though his bawling would never restore what the Avar had taken from him.
Dactylius and George looked at each other. “Did they fail?” Dactylius asked. “Did they offend her so she fled?”
“Not to look at them, they didn’t,” George answered, pointing out at the Avar and the Slavs, who did indeed look pleased at what they had wrought. Why they were pleased, George did not understand. As far as he could see, they hadn’t changed anything, as they had done with the water-demigod and, more subtly, with the magic aimed against the blessed grappling hooks.
From further north along the wall, one of the Romans called to another: “Say, Bonosus, let me light a torch at your fire, will you? Ours went out some way. Don’t know how, but. ..” The voice traded away. George would have bet the speaker was shrugging a hapless shrug.
After a brief silence, another militiaman, presumably Bonosus, answered, “I would if I could, Julius, but ours is out, too. Funny, ain’t it?”
“They were careless,” George said with more than a hint of smugness. “It’s a good thing we’ve kept our fire-- “ He glanced toward the fire at which he and Dactylius had been in the habit of warming their hands. He did not say going, as he’d intended, for the fire wasn’t going anymore.
“How did that happen?” Dactylius asked, realizing the same thing at the same time.
“Don’t know,” George answered. “It hasn’t rained, and you wouldn’t think a gust of wind could . . .”
His voice trailed off again. Dactylius’ eyes got big and round. “You don’t think--?” he began.
He and George both seemed to be speaking in half-sentences. The shoemaker said, “What I think is, the Avars and the Slavs and their fire goddess didn’t fad at all. I think they did just what they intended to do, and I think” --he took a deep breath-- “I think every fire in Thessalonica may be out right now.”
“That’s--that’s terrible, if you’re right,” Dactylius exclaimed. “How will people get any work done? Smiths, potters, jewelers too . . .” He stopped, looking even more appalled than he had before. “How will people cook their food? Christ and the saints, how will people stay warm?”
“I don’t know the answers to any of those questions,” George said. “I don’t know if any of those questions have answers.” They may all have the same answer: people won’t, he thought.
The growing commotion down in the city suggested he and Dactylius had been right. People came running out onto the streets: looking in rather than out, George watched them pointing and gesticulating. He couldn’t hear what they were saying; only a confused Babel of Greek and Latin came to his ears.
Dactylius tried to make the best of the Avars’ successful magic: “They can’t have put out the fires in the churches.
Those are holy, and--” He cut himself off again, looking foolish.
“Turning into a Persian fire-worshiper, are you?” George asked, spelling out the reason for his friends confusion. He wondered if any Persians were in the city. Merchants from the distant eastern land did come here every so often when their kingdom was at peace with the Roman Empire, as it had been these past five years. But he did not recall any of them being around now. Too bad, he thought. He would have liked to take advantage of their faith, false though he reckoned it.
And then he spied, along with the townsfolk of Thessalonica, some tonsured priests. They looked as bewildered and bereft as anyone else. Dactylius saw that, too, and groaned. “Look at them! They must be without fire, too.”
“I don’t know about must be, but it’s the way to bet,” George agreed.
“How will we bake our bread?” Dactylius demanded.
George didn’t know the answer to that, either. And then, all at once, he did, or he thought he did. “Remember when the water-demigod showed up in all the cisterns in Thessalonica at the same time?” he said.
“I’m not likely to forget it,” Dactylius replied with feeling.
“No, I suppose not,” George said. “But the point is, the water-demigod didn’t really show up in all the cisterns. There was one it kept clear of.”
“I didn’t know that,” Dactylius said. “Which one was it?”
“The one in the Jews’ quarter,” George answered. “As soon as our shift up here ends, that’s where I’m going to go to see if I can’t get fire that’s proof against the Slavs’ magic. I don’t know whether I can, mind you, but I think it’s worth a try.”
“If you do, you’ll be like--” Dactylius’ face furrowed with concentration. “What was the name of the fellow who stole fire from the pagan gods?”
“Prometheus,” George said. A priest might not have approved of how quickly he brought out the name, but knowing the old stories and believing them were two different things. So he told himself, at any rate.
John and Sabbatius came up a little later to replace their fellow militiamen. When George explained what he intended to do, John shook his head. “Paul won’t be happy with you,” he said.
“Why is that?” George asked in honest puzzlement.
“Think for yourself--don’t make me do the work. With the way he cooks, having all the fires in town go out is the best thing that could happen to his place,” the tavern comic said.
“I’ll tell Paul you said so,” George replied, which made Sabbatius laugh nastily. John laughed, too; unlike his comrade, he could tell George was kidding.
Dactylius trading along behind him, George descended from the wall. Before heading to the Jews’ district, the shoemaker stopped in St. Elias’ church. If any Christian man was likely to have a fire going, he thought Father Luke the one. But the church proved as dark and chilly as the rest of Thessalonica. Shaking his head at the strength of the barbarians’ magic, George went on down toward the Jewish quarter.
“What do we do if the Jews have no fire, either?” Dactylius asked.
“Pray that Father Luke or Bishop Eusebius can figure out how to get some,” the shoemaker said. “The priest is pious enough for God to hear him, and the bishop is tricky enough for anything at all.” If Eusebius wanted fire badly enough, he was liable to call on Prometheus and then convince his congregants the Titan had been a Christian saint.
At first, the Jewish quarter seemed no different from the rest of Thessalonica. As many people were on the streets, and they seemed as excited as their Christian fellows. But that was simply how the Jews lived their everyday lives. Listening to them, George realized they were exclaiming and gesticulating over the ordinary things of life, not over the morning’s prodigy. He took that for a hopeful sign.
“Just where are you going?” Dactylius asked. “If you walk into the shop of some Jew you’ve never seen, he’s more likely to set his dog on you than to give you fire.”
“If he has any fire to give, that is,” George said. “But I’m not going to walk into the shop of some Jew I’ve never seen. I’m going to walk into the shop of a Jew I’ve been doing business with for years.”
Sudden understanding lit Dactylius’ face. “That bronzesmith friend of yours, do you mean? The one who was also making arrowheads?”
“Benjamin’s not my friend, not exactly,” George answered; the regret he felt at that surprised him. He went on, “I don’t think he has any friends who aren’t Jews. But he won’t turn me away if he can help. I don’t think he’ll turn me away, anyhow. We’re about to find out.” He led Dactylius into Benjamin’s shop.
The Jew looked up from the arrowhead he was sharpening; by his posture, he might not have moved since George last saw him. “I rejoice to see you, George,” he said in polite Greek. “And who is your friend?” When George had introduced Dactylius, Benjamin nodded to the little jeweler. “Yes, I know of you. Your work has a good name. From the couple of pieces of it I have seen, it deserves such a name.”