Then the Slav with the dark hair took out a flask of his own. It proved to hold not olive oil but honey. With honey, the bread definitely became more palatable. George shared out his cheese. The Slavs approved of that. They gave him some sun-dried pears and plums in return.
He untied the rawhide cord around the neck of the wineskin and handed the skin to the blue-eyed Slav. The fellow swigged, his larynx working. He passed the skin to his darker friend, who also drank. Courteously, though, he made sure he did not empty the skin before returning it to George.
After everyone had finished eating, the Slavs tried talking with him some more. The effort was vigorous but useless. They spoke their own guttural language and fragments of another that sounded even stranger--maybe it was the Avars’ tongue. Whatever it was, it made no sense to George. He gave them Latin and Greek, the only two languages he knew. As he’d already concluded, they didn’t understand those.
By signs, he showed them what he’d been doing out in the woods. They laughed at his impression of a hopping rabbit. He laughed, too, as he bounded about, but he was careful not to let them get between him and his bow. When he was done bounding, he did his best with gestures and questioning looks to ask why they were here.
They looked at each other and talked for a couple of minutes in their own incomprehensible language before trying to reply. When they did, their gestures were anything but clear. Maybe that was because they weren’t very good at sign language. On the other hand, maybe it was because they didn’t want him to understand why they had suddenly appeared only a few miles outside of Thessalonica.
Maybe they were hunting for animals; from the way they leapt and crept and shaded their eyes with their hands, that was possible. And maybe they were hunting for Thessalonica itself; that was as plausible an interpretation. They didn’t ask George where it was. Had they done so, he might have told them; it wasn’t as if a city that size was hard to find.
Face to face with two veritable Slavs, he decided to learn what he could from them, even if they had not a word in common. Pointing to them to get their attention, he threw back his head and imitated as best he could the howls he had heard from the woods, the howls he believed to have come from the throats of the Slavic wolf-demons the satyr had described.
He hadn’t known he owned such a gift for mimicry. The wailing cry that burst from his throat was almost as frightening as those he had heard on the walls of Thessalonica. He did not judge that merely by his own reaction to the noise he made. The woods around him grew suddenly still, as they might have at a real wolf s-- or a real wolf-demon’s--howl.
And the two Slavs, after starting when he first began that cry, nodded and grinned to show they recognized it and to show they understood he meant a spirit of their folk rather than a mere fleshly beast of prey. They spoke several incomprehensible sentences. Once more, though he followed not a single word, he assigned meaning to the whole: something like, Yes, those are ours. Pretty impressive, aren’t they?
He wished he really could have talked with the barbarians, so he might have learned more and brought it back to Thessalonica. That he was thinking of getting back to his home city again was a sign he didn’t believe the Slavs intended to try murdering him. But he still stayed wary enough to remember exactly where his bow was.
Then one of the Slavs clumsily made the sign of the cross. George didn’t think for a moment that meant the fellow was a Christian. And, indeed, the barbarian followed the gesture by pointing and saying something that was plainly a question. That’s the god you follow, isn’t it?
“Yes, I’m a Christian,” George said, first in Latin and then in Greek, the two sentences sounding very much alike. He crossed himself, slowly and reverently, showing the Slav how it should be done. Having done so, he looked up into the heavens but not at the sun, not wanting to give the barbarians the mistaken notion that it was his god.
They asked him something else. He couldn’t figure out what it was. The one with brown eyes pointed roughly in the direction of Thessalonica and made the sign of the cross once more. He crossed himself over and over again, then raised an interrogative eyebrow at George.
“Oh, I see what you mean,” the shoemaker said. “Yes, everyone in Thessalonica is a Christian.” He nodded vigorously. About then, he realized he wasn’t being fair to the Jews in the city, but people were hardly ever fair to the Jews, so he felt no great urgency about redressing the balance now.
The blue-eyed Slav crossed himself, then strutted around looking fierce and dangerous, then looked another question at George. What the question was supposed to be puzzled him. He scratched his head.
A moment later, he had the answer. “Yes, God is a strong god. God is the strongest god. God is the only true god.” The words meant nothing to the two Slavs. George crossed himself, then flexed his biceps, then nodded back at the barbarians.
He wished the Lord would give him a miracle like the one He had granted to Menas. No miracle came, though. Or perhaps one did: the Slavs understood him, not the least of concerns when he and the barbarians had no words in common. George glanced heavenward again. Art Thou so subtle, Lord? he asked silently, and got no answer.
He did get what was, if not miraculous, at the least a display of God’s loving kindness: having shared with him food and drink and such conversation as could be carried on with hands and bodies and faces, the two Slavs picked up their weapons and, instead of trying to use those weapons against him, waved, nodded, and went back into the woods.
“Hail and farewell,” George called after them in Latin. When they had disappeared among the oaks and beeches, he allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. Meeting them had been far more dangerous than encountering the satyr. As beasts, long hunted, grew leery of men, so the satyr rightly feared the superior power of the Christian God. But the wild Slavs were unfamiliar with His might, and so it held no terror for them.
George shook his head. “No time for philosophy now,” he said out loud. “Whatever else it’s good for, it doesn’t fill your belly.” He got to his feet, set an arrow in his bowstring, and went on looking for rabbits. He made sure he walked in a direction different from the one the Slavs had chosen, lest they think he was following them and decided they’d made a mistake by not picking a fight with him in the clearing.
Maybe God, having worked a small, subtle miracle (if He had worked a small, subtle miracle and it hadn’t been skill at pantomime or blind luck) for George, was keeping a closer eye on him than He had before. Or maybe George was keeping a closer eye on the terrain around him than he had before. Or maybe the shoemaker had simply wandered into a country more richly stocked with rabbits than that through which he’d been going during the morning.
Whatever the reason, in the space of a couple of hours he’d killed five, and would have had a couple more if he’d been a better archer. He recovered one of the shafts with which he’d missed; the other hit a rock and splintered, and he couldn’t find the iron point no matter how hard he looked.
He wondered if he ought to hunt more while his luck was so good, but decided against it: he was not the sort of man much given to pushing anything to extremes. Moderation was not the only thing that made him decide to head back to Thessalonica. Also in his mind--in quite a prominent place there--was that, having encountered two Slavs in these woods, he might come on more, and one happy outcome was no guarantee of a second.
Even the gate guards were militiamen these days, though not from his company. He showed them the rabbits. They congratulated him. He said not a word about the two easy kills he’d missed.