But he pointed to show the shoemaker and Rufus what he was seeing. “Look!” he exclaimed. “They’ve got the galloping trots.”
Sure enough, a couple of Slavs were squatting just beyond archery range from the wall. A couple of more were running for the trees. One of them, realizing he wasn’t going to make it, also suddenly assumed an undignified posture. More and more of the besiegers seemed afflicted.
“Isn’t that nice?” Rufus said happily. “One of their cooks must have tossed something bad into the stewpot last night, and now they’re paying for it. I’ve been in armies where things like that happened.”
“Look at them,” Sabbatius said again, in high glee. “The whole bunch of ‘em’ll be sick by this afternoon, looks like.”
George stared out at the Slavs. “Do they just have bad stomachs,” he asked, “or is that the plague Bishop Eusebius asked for?”
“What?” Rufus snorted and started to laugh. “You think God’s answering Eusebius’ prayer through the Slavs’ arseholes? Because …” He couldn’t go on, but doubled over, grabbing his knees as he guffawed.
“Do miracles have to be fancy?” George said. “You know dysentery. Have you ever seen a whole army come down with the runs as fast as this?”
“A whole army down with the runs? Plenty of times,” Rufus answered. “It would happen to the Goths and the Franks all the time. They were too stupid to keep from pissing and shitting in rivers upstream from their camp, and I’ll bet the Slavs and Avars are, too. But as fast as this?” He rubbed his chin. “Mm, maybe not. They were fine an hour ago, sure as sure they were.”
“They aren’t fine now,” Sabbatius said. “Look at ‘em go!” George wondered if he’d intended the double meaning, or, for that matter, even noticed it. Sabbatius went on, “Shame it’s so far into fall, most of the flies are gone. Otherwise, they’d be biting ‘em on their bare bums, just like they deserve.” His pronouns were tangled, but his meaning seemed clear.
“If we attack now, could they fight back?” George asked Rufus.
“Probably,” the veteran answered. “You don’t die from the runs, most of the time--you just wish you did. If somebody’s really trying to kill you, you’ll yank up your trousers fast enough, and that’s the truth. I remember back in Italy, there was this Lombard, and he--”
What the incontinent Lombard did or did not do, George never found out. Sabbatius pointed out over the wall again, saying, “Look. Here’s that ugly Avar bugger with the funny clothes again, and he’s got some Slavs with him who’re cursed near as ugly and funny-looking as he is.”
Sure enough, the Avar wizard or priest or whatever he was and the Slavic sorcerers who had defeated Bishop Eusebius’ charm on the grappling hooks had their heads together now. The way they were seriously discussing things, now and then pointing toward the stricken Slavs, left George sure of what they were talking about. Their manner almost made him laugh; in different vestments, they might have been Eusebius and some priests hashing over a fine theological point.
Rufus said, “You don’t see any of the likes of them running for the slit trenches, mind you.”
George kicked himself for not having noticed that. What it meant wasn’t hard to figure out. “They have some way of turning aside the curse, then.”
“I’d say you’re likely right,” Rufus answered, nodding. “Wish you weren’t, but I think you are. Next question we get to have answered is whether they can protect the odds and sods in their army, not just themselves.”
“How can they do that?” Sabbatius said indignantly. “This isn’t Eusebius cursing them--its God cursing them. You can’t keep God from doing what He’s going to do to you.”
“You can if you’ve got gods of your own--or maybe you can, anyhow,” George said. “Some of those gods are pretty strong, too, not like the pagan ones we’re used to. Those gods, they’ve been fighting God for hundreds of years, and they’re worn out and beaten. The gods of the Slavs and Avars are running up against God for the first time now. They have all their strength and power still, and that means they can put up a good fight, same as the Avars and Slavs do against Roman armies.”
He might as well have been talking to one of the paving stones of the walkway. “You can’t keep God from doing what He’s going to do to you,” Sabbatius repeated, as if George hadn’t spoken at all.
Out beyond the wall, one of the Slavic wizards might have accused another of heresy. The reaction was about the same as if one Christian priest had accused another of heresy, anyhow: the offended party first struck a dramatic pose, almost as if he were turned into a statue illustrating denial, and then, that failing, punched his accuser in the nose. The two of them rolled around on the ground, hitting and kicking each other till their companions pulled them apart.
After that, their deliberations went more smoothly. The Avar walloped one Slav, but the lesser wizard accepted the rebuke in the same way a junior priest might have accepted chastisement from Bishop Eusebius. The Avar priest stared in toward Thessalonica. From where he stood, he would have been peering more or less in the direction of the basilica of St. Demetrius, though the walls hid it from his gaze.
A small chill ran through George. “He knows where their sickness is coming from,” the shoemaker said. “It is a curse.”
Rufus grunted. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? If it’s not a natural sickness, they’ve got to figure we gave ‘em a present. Question is, what can they do about it?”
The Slavic wizards were shouting, not at one another for a change, but at one of their sick comrades. The fellow came over to them with dragging stride. The complaint with which Eusebius’ curse had afflicted him had not slain, but, as Rufus had said, he looked unhappy about being alive.
As if they were physicians, the Slavs examined him from head to foot, staring intently at him and running their hands over his body. One of them had him bend over so he could look at the bodily part that was the most immediate source of his difficulty. “Thorough,” George remarked. Sabbatius held his nose and cackled like a hen.
One of the Slavs--not the thorough one--made the sick warrior straighten up. Then he slapped him, first on the right cheek, then on the left, then on the right, and then on the left again. He and his colleagues made passes over the sick Slav’s head and in front of his belly. Then they had the fellow open his mouth.
“Did you see that?” Rufus said.
George wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but answered anyhow: “The little gray cloud that came out of his mouth? It didn’t look like the steam you breathe out on a cold day, did it?” He scratched his chin. “I wonder what it was. I wonder what it meant.”
“I know!” Sabbatius exclaimed. “I know!” He bounced up and down in his excitement, like a usually slow schoolboy who saw something his smarter classmates had missed. “They’re getting rid of the evil eye. My granny used to use a ritual like that. She’s from Illyria, where the Slavs have been trouble for years. Maybe they got it there; I don’t know.”
“The evil eye!” Rufus said. “This isn’t the evil eye. It’s a curse of God. I was in the basilica when Bishop Eusebius asked us to pray for it. You can’t get rid of the curse of God the way you get rid of the evil eye.”
“You can’t, huh?” Sabbatius pointed. “Tell that to him.” And, sure enough, the Slav on whom the wizards had tested their technique seemed much livelier than he had been the moment before. He hugged his belly. George hoped that was torment, but it turned out to be delight.
“It isn’t right,” Rufus insisted, as if his eyes were lying.
“Maybe it is,” George said slowly. “What’s the evil eye but a kind of curse? If you can lift one kind of curse with that ritual, why can’t you lift another one if you’re strong enough? And we’ve already seen how the Slavs and Avars worry more about their gods than they do about ours. We have priests protecting our people against their curses. Their wizards are protecting them against us.”