In purely physical terms, going down was easier than coming up had been. But purely physical terms were far from the only ones that mattered. For one thing, George was not entirely certain he remained in the hills he knew. For another, after a while he began to feel as if every step he took required a distinct effort of will. When he remarked on that, Nephele tossed its head and replied in that disconcerting baritone:” “ ‘Tis but a cantrip of the barbarians circling round the city, and hardly one of potency overwhelming.” Its sniff declared the Slavs and Avars should have done better.
The spell’s potency might not have been overwhelming to the female centaur, but it was of different substance from George, who found the going ever harder. And then, suddenly, he had no trouble at all setting one foot in front of the other, and went along as ready as he might have done on the street outside his shop in the city. “That’s better,” he said.
Only when the words were out of his mouth did he notice that his companions had stopped, as if they’d walked into Thessalonica’s wall. After a moment, Ampelus and Stusippus gathered themselves and came toward him. The centaurs needed longer than the satyrs, and advanced as if pushing their way through glue, not air.
“What’s wrong?” George asked. “Did that cursed Avar priest make the spell stronger? He’s not to be taken lightly, that one.”
“The barbarian?” Crotus had to fight to get the words out one by one. “Nay, that was naught of his doing. Meseems you are prayed for inside the city toward which we fare.”
George thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand Of course he was prayed for back in Thessalonica. His wife and children would be in St. Elias’ now--if they weren’t in St. Demetrius’. His friends would be in one church or another, too, if they weren’t up on the wall.
And their prayers had succeeded in weakening the spells the Slavs and Avars had been using to keep him from approaching Thessalonica. The only trouble with that was, the prayers also seemed to have weakened the supernatural beings aiding him. That wasn’t good. He had doubts about being able to get down from the lulls with the centaurs and satyrs helping him. Without them, he had no doubts: he wouldn’t make it.
He saw how vulnerable they were to the power of God. As a Christian, that made him proud. As someone trying to save his own neck, it worried him. If he was going to keep on being proud, he hoped he’d soon be able to start worrying less.
“The weakness passeth,” Xanthippe said after a bit, tossing its head in an impatient gesture a horse without human excrescences might have made. “The petition, methinks, was not aimed straight against us, else the hurt had been greater.”
Gaining strength with her, the other centaurs also came on. Down the game tracks they went with the satyrs and George. He was thoughtful and quiet. The prayer had surely been aimed at the Slavs and Avars. It had weakened their spell, to be sure, but he doubted it had done them the harm it had his companions. That meant those companions were weaker than the powers of the Slavs and Avars. He’d known as much, but didn’t care to be reminded of it.
Little by little, the shock of God’s power wore away. The satyrs took to playing with themselves again. That amused Demetrius, the immature centaur, who, having seen such things for only a few centuries, still found them funny. George didn’t laugh. He took the masturbation as a sign the satyrs remained alarmed, even if at the Slavs and Avars, not at the Lord.
Smiling like a good dog, the first wolf stepped out from between two trees half a bowshot in front of George. It was, obviously, no ordinary wolf. It was bigger than a wolf had any business being, its teeth were longer and sharper, its very stance fiercer and more alert than an ordinary wolfs could have been.
Ampelus, who had been walking alongside of George, sprang nimbly back with a gasp of fright. The shoemaker gasped, too, and made the sign of the cross. He’d already done it before he remembered the company he was keeping. But the satyr had said he’d watched a Christian priest make the holy sign when confronted by a Slavic wolf-demon. It hadn’t been aimed at Ampelus, and so had had no effect on him.
Nor did the satyrs and centaurs flee George now. But the sign of the cross, though it made the wolf draw back a pace and turned that doglike smile into a snarl, did not rout it. George remembered that the wolf the priest had met had killed him in short order. He yanked out his sword. This wolf would not have such an easy time. He had more defenses than the spiritual alone.
The wolf snarled again, as if angry at itself for yielding even slightly to the strength of the Christian sign. Then it sprang for him. He raised his shield. If the wolf knocks me down, he thought, I have to keep the shield between those teeth and my throat. Maybe I’ll be able to stab it before it bites too many chunks out of me.
From behind him, a rock flew through the air and caught the wolf-demon on the tip of its nose. Its agonized yelp was sweet music in George s ears. It skidded to a stop and stared past him to the centaurs, as if it had never imagined they would do such a thing to it.
Another stone hit it, this one in the chest. It staggered, threw back its head, and loosed one of those horrifying howls George had heard corning out of the forest from the walls of Thessalonica.
The shoemaker crossed himself again. Growling deep in its throat, the wolf retreated a few paces. Perhaps because it was hurt, the sign of the cross had more power over it than had been true a moment before. It howled again, this time more in pain than to cause fear among its foes. George took a step toward it, and it drew back once more.
“Move aside, that we may pelt the creature according to its deserts,” Crotus called.
“I don’t care about its pelt,” George heard himself answer: his mouth ran wild and free, disconnected from such wits as he had. “Besides, this is my fight, too.” He advanced on the wolf, which backed away from him.
But now other howls rose in answer to those the creature had loosed. Other wolves came out of the woods to stand with the first, and still others made leaves rustle in the forest to either side of the path. Such creatures could surely have traveled silent as a thought, had they so chosen. But they must have wanted George and his companions to know they were there, so as to put them in fear. George stared now this way, now that. He and the satyrs and centaurs were outflanked.
“We have to go back!” George shouted.
Ampelus and Stusippus scampered away toward the encampment from which they’d set out that morning. All the centaurs, though, stared at George with blank incomprehension. That look told him more clearly than anything else could have why even the pagans of ancient Greece, without the power of God behind them, had been able to drive the powerful creatures deep into the hill country: the very notion of retreat seemed alien to them, however necessary it might be.
Only when wolves burst out at them from left and right at the same time did the centaurs suddenly seem to catch on to what George had meant. He hoped that wasn’t so late, it would get them all lolled--and him with them.
A wolf sprang at Xanthippe’s flank. The female centaur whirled, startlingly quick, and kicked out with its hind legs. The hooves slammed into the wolf s snout. It rolled away, yowling in pain. Blood spurting from its wounds. Any natural creature, any creature of flesh and blood, would have had its head caved in.
Demetrius let out a sound half-scream, half-whinny, as a wolf raked the young--but not so young--centaur’s side with its teeth. The wolf rammed the centaur, overbore it, and came darting back to tear out its throat.
Shouting, George ran to the--colt’s?--aid. The first swipe of his sword lopped off a couple of digits’ worth of the wolf s tail. That got its attention. It whirled away from Demetrius and toward George. The end with the teeth looked much more dangerous than the end with the tail.