Its pointed ears drooped. “No wine,” it said, as if summer had gone to winter in the space of two words. It trudged along with slumped shoulders. Now, for the first time, George could faintly hear its hooves moving through the leaves, as if the very aura of magic surrounding it was fading.
He knew how absurd it was to feel guilt at not having done something he couldn’t possibly have known he would need to do. He felt it anyhow. “I am sorry,” he said. “Here, how’s this? When we find a village, I’ll get some for you there.” He didn’t have more than a few folleis in his beltpouch, but they ought to serve. If they didn’t, he would trade work--shoe repairs, for instance--for wine. The thought made him feel better.
It didn’t seem to make the satyr happier. “Not find villages,” the creature said, stroking itself again. “Not for a while, not find.”
“What do you mean?” George said. “The hills around Thessalonica are full of villages. Why--” He paused, trying to work out the direction in which they’d gone. “There should be one over, over--” He started to point, then stopped. He tried again to get his bearings.
Eyes glowing, the satyr looked back at him. It looked amused. “You see now? Not for a while, not find.”
“Yes,” George said slowly. “Where are we, anyway?” He didn’t know if that was the precise question he wanted to ask, but couldn’t find a better one. As he ran through the woods, the ground on which he set his feet and the trees and bushes all around him seemed familiar enough: he would have seen their like had he gone out from Thessalonica to hunt in quieter, more peaceful times.
Their like, yes. But whether he would have seen precisely these stones, those oaks, that set of brambles … with every step he took, he grew more doubtful of that. For the life of him, he could not tell where he was in relation to the city. He couldn’t hear the Slavs coming after him, either. At first, he’d thought that was because he and the satyr had outdistanced them. Now… he didn’t think that was all.
As if picking the thought from his mind, the satyr nodded. “You not in hills you know,” it said. “You beyond hills you know.” It went on quickly, reassuringly: “Can go back. Go back now, be hunted to death. But can go back. Mortals go back, forth many times.” It hesitated then. “Not go back, forth so much now, on account of--” It could not say the name.
Despite its forced muteness, George understood. He was in the fairyland that had been receding from this country ever since men began following Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christian men would reckon they could not cross into that world, that plane, whatever the proper term was, without imperiling their souls. He supposed he was imperiling his soul.
“Who does go back and forth these days?” he asked.
“Men, women follow old ways. Some yet, yes,” the satyr answered. “Up in hills, deep in hills, where … not come yet.” Again, the silence implied the new dispensation. After a moment, the satyr added, “Those others, the ones with wolves and such” --George presumed he meant the powers of the Slavs-- “they live in this kind of hills, too. They share with us a kind of being.”
God--the God George had worshiped all his life-- presumably either shared a kind of being (essence, the shoemaker thought, the word is essence--but what would a satyr know of theological terms, save perhaps for those dealing with fornication and lewdness?) with the powers of the Slavs and Avars or else altogether transcended those powers. George had always believed the latter; now he was less sure.
The farther he went, the stranger things felt. The strangeness did not lie in what he could see or hear or in the way the ground pressed his feet through the soles of his shoes. With every breath he took, though, he felt himself farther from Thessalonica, and that had nothing to do with getting away from the city stink. It suddenly occurred to him that Mt. Olympus lay only thirty or forty miles south and west of the Christian city in which he’d always dwelt.
Did the gods of whom Homer sang still live there? A few weeks before, he would have said no, and laughed at the idea. Now . . . now he wondered. He’d thought before that the epic poems might give those old gods a sort of half-life even in a Christian world.
But when he asked the satyr, it shook its head. “If up there, not come down. Pretty women no get Zeus--get me instead.” It rubbed itself once more, smiled lasciviously, and rocked its hips forward and back. “How they laugh and squeal, pretty women!”
The great god was gone, conquered by God, Who was greater. The homely, earthy satyr remained, still a part, even if a hunted part, of the world George knew. He wondered how the Slavic powers would look after a couple of centuries of struggle against Christianity. Unfortunately, he did not have the luxury of waiting around to find out.
Another little wingety thing peeped out at him from behind a bush, then let out a high-pitched squeak. The satyr waved; its horselike tail came up in greeting. The fairy waved back, then flew off deeper into the woods. “Ours,” the satyr said.
“Yes, I’d worked that out, thanks,” George answered, as surprised by how much he was taking all this for granted as by anything else on a day he would cheerfully have traded for any other three bad days in his life. “Where are we going, exactly?”
“To a place,” the satyr answered, which made George wish to boot it in its hairy hind end. “Near a village,” it amended, perhaps sensing his discontent. “To friends.”
“When we get to this place near a village, what will we do?” George asked, being of the cast of mind to seek answers as far out ahead of possibly needing them as he could.
“Eat,” the satyr said. “Maybe drink wine. Village has wine.” He stared reproachfully at George.
Angry, the shoemaker almost cursed the satyr in the name of God. That would surely have made the creature flee, and as surely would have dropped George back into the mundane woods and lulls around Thessalonica. He had no chance of getting back into the city on his own, not with the Slavs and Avars stall besieging it. Finding a village would be a matter of luck; finding one the invaders hadn’t wrecked would be a matter of much more luck. With autumn sliding rapidly toward winter, finding food and shelter enough in the woods to make it on his own would be more than a matter of luck. It would be a matter of divine intervention.
He kept on following the satyr, then. Surely coming across it in the woods had been a matter of divine intervention. He would have felt easier about that, though, had he had a better notion of which divinity was intervening.
“What’s the name of this village?” he asked after a while.
The satyr shrugged. “The village. One of the villages.” It took a few more steps, then added, “Pretty women.” As far as it was concerned, that counted for more than such merely human things as names.
They came out into a small clearing. A rabbit bounded across it, flup, flup, flup, little black eyes wide with fear. George wished for his bow. If you could get close enough to kill a rabbit with a sword, you could get close enough to kill it with your bare hands. George knew he wasn’t that kind of woodsman.
A rock hissed through the air, almost as fast as if flung by a catapult. It caught the rabbit in midbound. George heard bones shatter. The rabbit let out a shrill, startled cry. It tried to leap again after it thudded to the ground, but its hind legs didn’t want to work. Bleeding, it dragged itself along with its forepaws.
Clattering hooves in the brush at the edge of the clearing made George tighten his grip on his sword and bring up his shield--had the Avars pursued him even here, as the satyr said they might?
But it was not Avars who burst from the screen of bushes. George was glad he had his hand clenched on the swordhilt; that made it harder for him to cross himself, which would have frightened the centaurs away. He watched, fascinated, awed, as they came out into the clearing. The one that had thrown the rock was a roan male; its human torso had thick red hair on the chest, while a red beard grew from its cheeks and chin. George had never imagined a bald centaur, but this one was.