After that, assuming a properly reverential attitude, one that might persuade God to pay some small attention to his prayer, wasn’t easy for George. He did his best, and had to hope it was good enough. He suspected the only prayer Theodore had offered up to the Lord was one for timely flatulence, and George had managed to keep that one from being granted.
Fortunately, Theodore hadn’t howled when George stepped on him. That meant the reverence of the rest of the congregation remained undisturbed all the way up to Eusebius’ final “Amen.” People filed out of the basilica of St. Demetrius chattering approvingly about what a moving prayer service it had been.
“And when they say ‘moving,’ “ George told his son, “they aren’t talking about their bowels.”
“Bishop Eusebius was,” Theodore retorted, whereupon George trod upon his toes again. This time, it didn’t help. Theodore dissolved into giggles, from which occasional mumbles of “bowels” and “earthfarts” emerged.
He and his father met Irene and Sophia across the street from the church. “I see you didn’t have to kill him-- quite,” Irene said to George, again proving she knew their son as well as he did.
“I didn’t do anything,” Theodore protested, a cry that would have resounded with greater sincerity had he not still been snickering from time to time.
“Yes, and it wasn’t for lack of effort that you didn’t, either,” George said, which singularly faded to abash his son.
Sophia gasped. George whirled, expecting some Slavic or Avar demigod to be menacing his daughter or someone else close by. Pointing, Sophia said, “Look--there’s Constantine. Isn’t he splendid?”
As far as George could see, the splendid one was still hulking, rather surly-looking, and pimple-besplotched. He knew Sophia was looking at the youth as much with her heart as with her eyes. Instead of examining Constantine (to his way of thinking, an unprofitable exercise), George nodded politely to Leo the potter. The father of Sophia’s object of affection nodded back. He studied Sophia and then, warily, Irene. The smile she gave Leo showed good teeth; George was sure he’d imagined fangs in her mouth. Almost sure.
“God will provide,” Irene said. Her husband wondered whether she was talking about Constantine or freedom from earthquakes. Probably both, he decided.
Several Avars on horseback stared in at Thessalonica. “They don’t look very happy, do they?” Dactylius said, sounding happy himself at the Avars’ appearance of unhappiness.
“No,” George said, and then, more sharply, “Uh-oh. Here comes that priest or wizard of theirs. I’d almost sooner pray never to see him again than for no more earthquakes for a while.”
“Amen to that,” Rufus said. “He’s caused us as much trouble as all their soldiers rolled together--throw in the Slavic wizards with him, I mean.”
“That’s so,” George agreed. “But it looks like the other Avars aren’t any happier to see him than they are to look at us, doesn’t it?”
“Good,” Rufus said with considerable relish.
One of the mounted men pointed toward Thessalonica. The priest shook his head and spread his hands in regret. Whatever the horseman wanted him to do, he couldn’t do it.
“No earthquake today?” Rufus’ voice oozed false regret. “Can’t make the walls fall down? Oh, poor ducks. What a shame they had to go up against the power of God. When you do that, you come off second best.” Realism replaced sarcasm for a moment. “Well, most of the time you do. The powers out there, they’re pretty tough.”
The Avar cuffed at the priest. George stared. Knowing how much power the man who wore furs and fringes controlled, he waited for the wizard to turn the horseman into a grub, or possibly even into a Roman scribe. But nothing happened, save that the Avar priest brought up a hand to keep the captain from hitting him more than once.
“Dissension in their ranks!” someone with a big, deep voice shouted from not far away: Menas. There he stood, atop the Litaean Gate. He’d been quiet till that moment, something so unusual it had kept George from noticing him. Now he went on, loudly obvious, “If they quarrel among themselves, our victory is assured.”
“Why doesn’t he keep still?” Dactylius asked.
“I don’t think he knows how,” George answered. “If he stops talking for long, he forgets he exists.”
“That’s no way to talk about a noble,” Rufus said in stern tones, then added, “But I won’t tell you you’re wrong, either.”
Menas waved his big, expensive, ostentatious war hammer. “We shall slaughter them, hip and thigh, root and branch.”
“Is he a wrestler, a gardener, or a soldier?” George asked.
“He’s a blowhard, that’s what he is,” Rufus said. “Haven’t seen him up on the wall for a bit. He must have heard that the truth gets told here, and the truth about him is that--”
“Hush,” Dactylius said. “He’s liable to hear you, and then you’ll have the same troubles with him that George does.”
“Not me.” Rufus’ hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “He tries getting wise with me, he’ll regret it to the end of his days--and that’ll be soon.”
Out beyond the wall, the Avar captain was finally getting it through his head that the wizard couldn’t give him what he wanted. He shouted to his companions. One of them produced a horn of polished brass that shone like gold even on a cloudy day. The fellow raised it to his lips and blew a long, unmelodious blast.
“Uh-oh,” George said, as he had a little while before on spying the wizard.
“Oh, dear,” Dactylius added. Rufus said something that expressed the same opinion a good deal more pungently. Slavs started tumbling out of the tents and little wooden shacks in which they sheltered from the elements. And, all along the wall, more horn blasts were presumably calling more Slavs out of more encampments.
“Something’s going on,” Rufus said, as good a statement of the obvious as George had heard in a long time. A moment later, the veteran added, “Here come the Slavs, all right.”
Almost indignantly, George said, “I thought we decided the Slavs and Avars would try magic against us next.”
“Maybe they did try it and it didn’t work, thanks to the prayers we sent up to God the other day,” Rufus answered. “Or maybe we were just flat-out wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to me, and I expect not to you, either, eh?”
George didn’t answer. He was watching the Slavs, who were indeed issuing from their encampments in large numbers. Most of the barbarians were clutching bows. They trotted toward the wall of Thessalonica and started loosing great flights of arrows.
Crouching behind a battlement, Dactylius said, “This must be what they mean when they talk about shooting so many arrows, they darken the sun as they come.”
“If one of ‘em hits you square, it’ll darken the sun for you, all right, and you can take that to church,” Rufus said.
As if to underscore his words, men up and down the length of the wall shouted and screamed as they were wounded. George heard Menas say, “Here, my good fellow, lean on me. I’ll get you down to safety and the help of a physician.” The shoemaker’s lip curled. Menas had found a way to get out of the dangerous part of the fighting, and to look good while he did it.
George popped up long enough to shoot at the Slavs, then ducked back down again. Up, shoot, duck . . . up, shoot, duck .. . “They haven’t tried anything like this for a while,” he said, nocking another arrow.
“Sure haven’t,” agreed Rufus, who was also grabbing for a new shaft. “Whatever they’re doing, they’re bloody serious about it.”
“Of course they’re serious,” a newcomer said. “Have you ever seen anybody tell jokes while he was shooting a bow?”
“Hullo, John,” George said without looking up. Till you did it just now, no, I hadn’t seen anybody do that.”
“He did, didn’t he?” Dactylius said. “Is it time to change shifts already? I mean, would it be time? If I’m not there when I’m supposed to be, it will make Claudia very unhappy.”