That was just what the Slavic wizards were doing. As soon as they’d cured their first patient, they began shouting again. Two Slavs came over to them this time. The Avar priest danced in front of them. The Slavic wizards performed the same rite as before, although they slapped the face of only one. Both men, however, rocked back on their heels as if slapped. A small cloud of smoke came from the mouth of each. And both warriors walked away far happier than they had approached.
“Sabbatius,” Rufus said with sudden decision, “go run to the church of St. Demetrius and bring the bishop here.”
“Me?” Sabbatius’ eyes widened. “He won’t listen to me.
“Tell him what the Slavs and Avars are doing out there,” Rufus answered. “He’ll listen, I promise you.” His voice roughened. “Now get moving, curse you. I’ll hold your place here--don’t worry about that.”
Sabbatius left. By his expression, he would sooner have stayed and stood around than moved quickly. You argued with Rufus at your peril, though. George said, “I hope he doesn’t stop into a wineshop as soon as he’s out of sight.”
“If he does, I’ll kill him.” Rufus spoke as matter-of-factly as if he were talking about slicing bread. That made him both more believable and more frightening than if he’d ranted and raved.
Out beyond the wall, the Slavic wizards summoned four of their fellow tribesmen. The Avar priest briefly danced in front of them, capering, George thought, like a fool. Then the Slavs singled out one warrior to be slapped. All four of them might as well have been, though, by the way they staggered. All four of them opened their mouths. Four little clouds of vapor escaped. Four Slavic soldiers suddenly seemed free of their diarrhea.
One of them ran and got his bow and started shooting arrows at the Romans atop the walls of Thessalonica. The Romans shot back. When half a dozen arrows fell close by him, the Slav lost the nerve or anger that had sustained him. He turned and ran away. The Romans kept shooting. One shaft caught him in the left nether cheek. He let out a howl George could hear from the wall.
“Let’s see your cursed wizards fix that pain in the arse!” Rufus shouted out to him. George laughed out loud.
But the Avar priest and Slavic wizards paid no attention to the wounded warrior. This time, eight hangdog Slavs stumbled up before them. Again, the Avar performed as if he were a dancing bear. One Slavic sorcerer slapped one Slavic soldier. All eight Slavs might have been slapped. They all opened their mouths. They all expelled vapor-- and, apparently, their illness with it. They all walked away as healthy men would walk.
“What would be next?” George counted on his fingers. “Two eights make--sixteen.”
And sure enough, the Slavs and the Avar cured sixteen soldiers next. Rufus’ lips moved: he was probably performing the same mental arithmetic as George. “It’d be--thirty-two--this time, wouldn’t it?” he said, and the shoemaker nodded, having just reached the same answer. Rufus went on, “If they keep doubling up like that every time, they’ll curse their whole stinking army in a jiffy.”
George turned his head. “Here come Sabbatius and Bishop Eusebius,” he said.
“Good,” Rufus said. “Now I don’t have to kill Sabbatius.” Again, he sounded as if he would have done it without a second thought.
Robes swirling around him, Bishop Eusebius came out onto the walkway. Sabbatius followed. The bishop did not look out from the wall. Instead, rounding on Rufus, he said, “This man you sent tells me the barbarians have the power to defeat the curse of the Lord. Can such a thing be true?” He did not sound as if he believed it.
Rufus was a man who said what he thought. In his rough Latin, he answered, “No, of course not, Your Excellency. I lied just to get you up here and to get you angry at me. I like having important people angry at me.”
Eusebius’ eyes flashed. George, who already had an important person angry at him, feared the militia captain s pungent sarcasm had achieved its announced purpose. Before Eusebius vented the anger he plainly felt, George said, “See for yourself, Your Excellency.”
Turned from the personal toward the real, Eusebius watched as the Slavic wizards cured thirty-two warriors of the disease with which the bishop’s curse had tormented them. When the small, dark clouds of vapor had sprung from the mouths of the sick Slavs, and when the warriors walked away no longer sick, Eusebius made the sign of the cross, as if to say no spiritual power but his own had any business being effective.
“Can you stop them, Your Excellency?” George asked. “Can you bring the curse back to its full strength?”
“I can try. I will try.” Eusebius drew himself up to his full height--which would have been more impressive had he been taller. He began to pray: “Lord God, I beseech Thee: do not abandon the folk of Thessalonica to the Slavs and Avars. Punish the barbarians, smite them as they deserve for taking no thought of Thee or of Thy truths, and--”
He went on in that vein. He seemed prepared to go on in that vein for some time. He had, however, attracted the notice of the Slavs and Avars. George thought they would try to disrupt his petition to the Lord with a storm of arrows, such as they had sent his way the last time he’d come up onto the city wall and into their presence.
Instead, the Slavs went on curing their fellow tribesmen while the Avar priest or wizard began what was plainly a petition to his own powers. And, as plainly, those powers were heeding him, as God had heeded Bishop Eusebius. “I am hindered,” the bishop said indignantly. “I can sense I am hindered. In the name of Christ, Who cast forth demons, I command this hindrance to cease!”
The Avar priest staggered. He glared toward the wall. Evidently he was no more used to having his power thwarted than was Eusebius. As the bishop had done, he redoubled his efforts, dancing harder than he had before and shouting to his gods so loudly that George had no trouble hearing him across more than a bowshot of ground. Were noise the only criterion for piety, he would have defeated Eusebius.
He did not. The bishop’s quiet prayer discomfited him, and also discomfited the Slavic wizards with whom he’d been working. Rather than curing their warriors thirty-two at a time, they had to drop down to batches of eight, sometimes four. But they did keep curing them.
Eusebius groaned. “Who would have expected the pagans to be so strong?” he said, and shook his fist out toward the Avar who was keeping him from keeping the Slavic wizards from curing the Slavic warriors. “Almighty God, invincible God, a plague is but a small thing next to what Thou canst do. I pray Thee, smite them now with thunder and lightning!”
George hoped for a levinbolt from the clear blue sky to crisp the Slavs and Avar. He hoped for one, but did not expect it. Nor was his hope granted. The Avar priest, after all, was the one who controlled the thirteen thunder spirits and the rumblers. Going straight against the Avars’ powers, from all he’d seen, did not work.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “sometimes it’s better to work with what the powers out there can do than to ignore them.” He explained how Father Luke had turned the sorcerous storm against the Avar who had created it.
“I have heard this sordid tale already,” Eusebius replied in a voice chillier than the weather. “Father Luke is serving a penance for undue familiarity with these demonic powers.”
“He saved us all,” Rufus exclaimed. “Doesn’t that count for more than how he did it?”
“ ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ “ Eusebius answered, smug as any theologian with a quotation from Scripture handy.