He also had other troubles. “We should have practiced shooting from the top of the wall,” he said to Rufus. “It’s a different business from shooting on the level.”
“Aye, you’re right--it is,” the veteran answered. “Have to talk to the city prefect about that, or maybe to the bishop.”
“You should talk to the bishop,” George said. “If he won’t listen to the man the saint spoke through, whom will he hear?”
“Nobody, maybe,” Rufus said. Having dealt with Eusebius not long before, George thought that had a chance of being true. Eusebius, he suspected, listened to himself first and everyone else afterwards. But with Thessalonica being in his hands more than anyone else’s this side of St. Demetrius, he might well pay attention to anything that would help him defend the city.
Sabbatius and Paul came up onto the wall then. Paul was somber and self-contained; Sabbatius reeked of wine. The contrast did not particularly surprise George. A taverner who got too fond of the goods he sold would not stay a taverner long: his business would fail, and he’d end up drinking at someone else’s.
Sabbatius stared down at the Slavs. “Mother of God!” he muttered. “How many of ‘em are out there? Must be ten or twenty myriads, easy.”
“Even if you’re seeing double, there aren’t that many-- not anywhere close,” Rufus said. He scratched his chin. “I don’t know if there’re ten myriads of people inside
Thessalonica, let alone twenty. Three, four thousand Slavs out there, five at the most.”
“There have to be more than that,” Sabbatius said. Rufus gave a single scornful shake of his head. If George had to choose between a guess by a drunken militiaman and another by a soldier who’d been gauging the size of armies most of his life, he knew which one he preferred.
“Anyway,” Rufus said, “the point isn’t how many of ‘em there are, the point is how to make there be fewer of ‘em. Why don’t you stop jawing and start using that cursed bow--or don’t you remember you have it along?”
Sabbatius did start shooting at the Slavs. George could not tell what effect his arrows had; a lot of missiles were flying out from the wall. Somebody said, “If the jawbone of an ass was good enough for Solomon to fight with, why not for Sabbatius, too?”
“Hullo, John,” George said without turning around. He loosed another arrow himself, then went on, “I thought I’d see you up here.”
“It’s the place to be right now,” John said in affected, upper-class Greek.
George snorted. “Pity the Slavs don’t speak any civilized language--you could slay them with laughter.”
“Me? John said. “Considering the way you shoot, making them laugh themselves to death would be your best chance.” He let fly, then grunted in satisfaction. “There, you see? I got one. I’m funnier than you are, and I’m a better man with the bow, too.”
“To say nothing of more modest,” George murmured.
“That’s ri--” John began, and then stopped, sending a chilly glance toward the shoemaker. George felt a moment’s pride; not everyone could trade words with John and come off the winner. He knew he couldn’t do it himself very often.
But then his small satisfaction was swept away, for out of the woods rode four or five men who sat their horses as if they were the centaurs that might still linger in the remotest valleys of the most rugged upcountry. But centaurs wore no armor, neither the man half nor the beast, and these men and their horses were both clad in scalemail that would ward them against anything but a direct and lucky hit.
They rode up to and through the Slavs, who parted before them as the citizens of Thessalonica might have parted before the Roman Emperor, had he come to worship at the church of St. Demetrius. They halted within bowshot of the walls. Under their iron helmets, their faces, as well as George could make them out in the fading light, were flat, strong, impassive.
“Avars,” Rufus muttered under his breath. As soon as he spoke the name, George knew he had to be right. No wonder the Slavs treated them like lords: they were the Slavs’ lords.
Calm as if they had come to visit rather than to attack, the Avars studied Thessalonica’s works for a minute or two, then turned their horses away from the walls and rode back into the gathering darkness. Once more, the Slavs stood aside to let them pass. Shadows reached out for them, and they were gone.
Neither side started up the fighting again for some little while after that. “Those men had a power in them, and not a small one,” George said quietly. “I wish Bishop Eusebius would have been here on the wall with us, to show them we have a power that can stand against theirs.”
Rufus surprised him by shaking his head. “The less the enemy knows about you, the better off you’re going to be,” the veteran said. “That’s true every which way, not just with plain weapons.”
After a little thought, George nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said. Then he pointed to the Slavs, who were beginning to resume the racket they had abated when the Avars appeared among them. “We’ve found out about them, that’s for certain.”
But Rufus shook his head again. “Not yet. Not hardly. Not so it matters.” He too looked out toward the barbarians. They were starting to light fires out there on the cleared ground between the city and the woods. “Me, I’ve got the feeling we’re going to have plenty of time to find out more.”
The strangest thing about the early days of the siege of Thessalonica was how close to normal everything felt. The only difference in his life George noticed was that going out to hunt had become impossible--which was, he realized, just as well, for it would have been decidedly unwise. He did not think the Slavs would share bread and honey with Romans they chanced upon in the woods, not anymore.
Not even his times up on the wall changed much. He still served his usual four-hour shifts, sometimes during the night. There was always the chance the Slavs would mount an assault against Thessalonica’s formidable curtain of stone, but, after St. Demetrius had warned the townsfolk of their presence and kept them from coming up over the wall by surprise, they contented themselves with shooting occasional arrows at the garrison.
Indeed, as time went by, many of them left the immediate neighborhood of Thessalonica, so that the city hardly seemed under siege at all. Sometimes, looking out from the walkway atop the wall, George could not set eye on a single enemy warrior.
“They’re out there,” Rufus said one afternoon when he remarked on that. “Oh, they’re out there, never fear. If they weren’t out there, we’d have traffic on the Via Egnatia getting into the city from east or west. Seen any?”
“No,” George said. “I wish I had.” He lowered his voice, as if passing on a secret, and, in fact, he wanted no one but Rufus to hear his next words: “If we don’t get some traffic, we’ll be hungry by and by.”
“That’s so,” Rufus answered, also discreetly. “Constantinople, now, Constantinople gets grain from Egypt. An enemy can besiege Constantinople till everything turns blue, and it won’t do him any good at all. We aren’t so lucky. We’ve had a few ships in from southern Greece, but not many, and not much in ‘em.”
“Maybe we should sally, try to drive them away,” George said. “Then traffic could start moving again.”
“Probably nothing to move right now, anyhow,” Rufus said gloomily. “If the Slavs are here, they’re in the farm country and backwoods villages, stealing their wheat and barley and wine. No, best thing to do is wait ‘em out. Maybe God will send them a plague. That happens in a lot of sieges.”