Such arcana proved every bit as risible as dignified silence. George gave up and started repairing a sandal. Sophia, having swung from sad to furious to eager and hopeful in the course of a couple of minutes, came over and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Papa,” she said.
“For what?” George asked, confused now.
“For a bald charioteer,” his daughter answered, which confused him worse than ever. But he’d just started talking about marrying her off, and she didn’t hate him for it. Confused or not, he didn’t suppose he was doing too badly there.
“Magic,” Rufus said decisively, peering out toward the encampment of the Slavs and Avars.
“I think you’re right.” George nodded. “That’s what they’ll hit us with next.” He sniffed. The wind was out of the west, and swept the savory odors of roasting mutton and beef from the enemy’s camp into the city. Sighing, he said, “They’re still eating well. I wish we were.”
“We’ve got enough to get us through,” Rufus answered, which lifted George’s spirits: if anyone knew how Thessalonica stood for food, the veteran was the man.
He went on, “What surprises me is that the barbarians are keeping their army so well fed. They must have dragged in all the livestock for miles around, the bastards. Even after they go, the countryside’ll be bare as a sheared sheep for years.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” George said, an admission that bothered him: he was the sort of man who tried to think as far ahead as he could. “Meat will be expensive for a long time to come.”
“We can always eat old Avars,” Rufus said, “except I think they’d be tougher than your shoeleather.”
“Shoeleather!” George exclaimed. “If they’re slaughtering all the cattle and sheep, what will I use for shoeleather?”
“Don’t know that one, either,” Rufus said, if not cheerfully than with a good deal less concern than George had for the question. “What we’ve got to do is, we’ve got to get the siege over with so we can worry about things like shoeleather again.”
Things like deciding whether I want to see Sophia marry Constantine, George thought. But the veteran was right. “What sort of magic do you think they’ll throw at us?” he asked.
“The bishop and I have been talking about that,” Rufus answered. George had a hard time gauging his tone: was he proud of having become part of the city’s inner circle or scornful of the man with whom he was conferring? A bit of both, the shoemaker judged. Rufus continued, “Eusebius thinks we’re going to come up against it before too long, that they’re going to throw all the magic they have at us to try and break in. If they don’t make it, they’ll likely give up and go away.”
“That sounds sensible,” George said.
“It may be true anyway.” Rufus’ smile was crooked. “The bishop kept giving me all sorts of reasons out of the Holy Scriptures why he thought it was so. After a while, I started to doze off.”
“You don’t think he’s right?” the shoemaker asked.
“Oh, I think he’s right, but not for any of the reasons he was going on about,” Rufus said. “You look at what’s left for the Slavs and Avars to eat out there, you look at the really bad weather that’s bound to come, and you can’t see them besieging us forever. The only thing about the cold I don’t like is that it makes pestilences spread slower--but their magic for that sort of thing is pretty good anyhow. We’ve found out about that.”
“We’ve found out their magic for a lot of different things is pretty good,” George said. “I tried telling that to Eusebius, but--”
Rufus held up his hand. “I’ve heard that story, you know, George. And do you know what Bishop Eusebius said to me? He said, “Rufus, if I’d only listened to that shoemaker, what’s-his-name, we’d all be better off now, because he sure knew how strong the Slavs’ magic was.’ “
“Really?” George’s eyes widened. He didn’t even mind being called what’s-his-name. “Did he really say that?”
Rufus leered evilly. “No.”
The gesture George used invited Rufus to perform an act so vile, and so anatomically unlikely, that God, when He was writing the Holy Scriptures, hadn’t thought to condemn it. The veteran laughed till he held his sides. “If you could have seen the look on your face . . .” He dissolved again.
“Funny,” George said. “I laugh.”
“Sorry,” Rufus said, sounded about a quarter sincere. “I couldn’t resist.”
“You didn’t try,” George said. Rufus did not deny it. By the nature of things, Rufus hardly could have denied it. George thought for a bit. He could either stay angry at the veteran or he could forget about it. He forgot about it, suffusing himself in a warmly Christian glow of virtue. Besides, forgetting about it let him keep on questioning Rufus instead of cursing him. His relentless curiosity insisted that was the better choice. He asked, “What kind of magic does Bishop Eusebius think will be in the next big push from the Slavs and Avars? You never quite answered.”
“Earth, most likely,” Rufus said. “They’ve tried air and fire and water more. I don’t know whether they can make the wall come down that way, but that’s what the bishop thinks they’ll try.”
“It does make sense, I suppose.” George kicked at the walkway. “I don’t want the wall to crumble under my feet.”
“Neither do I,” Rufus said. “They’ve come too cursed close to managing that without using any magic at all. If they have some gods whose special province is earthquakes, say. . .”
“That could be very bad,” George agreed. “Are there any special prayers we can use to keep earthquakes from happening?”
“Eusebius is looking for some,” Rufus answered. “Me, I have my doubts. If there really were prayers like that, everybody would know them and use them, and we wouldn’t have earthquakes anymore.”
“Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder.” It was, in fact, the sort of logical look at a problem George might have used himself. He said, “If we can’t pray to stop a quake, what can we do?”
“Pray that the gods of the Slavs and Avars can’t start one that wouldn’t have happened without them, I suppose,” Rufus said. “That’s better than nothing, and it lets us fight them on our own ground.” George grimaced. Rufus grinned. “Relax, pal. I’m not smart enough to do that on purpose.”
“If you say so,” George answered, which won him a dirty look from the veteran. He held up a placating hand. “If you were stupid, Rufus, you would have done something that got you killed years ago.”
Rufus laughed. “Ah, there’s a deal of truth in that, I tell you. A soldier starting out, he’s all balls and no brains.” He laughed again, on a different note this time. “Maybe it’s a good thing I came to the trade with Narses for my first general. He didn’t have any balls at all--first eunuch I ever heard of who wanted to be a fighting man, and oh! wasn’t he a fine one--but brains? That man had more brains than any five I’ve met since.” After looking around, he lowered his voice. “And that includes Eusebius, too.”
Also quietly, George said, “I’ve always thought the bishop’s pretty smart.”
“Oh, he is, he is,” Rufus said. “That’s what he is, sure enough: pretty smart. Lf we had Narses here in Thessalonica, now, if we had Narses, the Slavs and Avars would have gone away weeks ago, and they would have thought it was their idea, and they would have been proud of it.”
“He sounds like quite a leader,” George said, thinking he sounded like Rufus’ beloved first commander, seen across most of a lifetime through a warm haze of memory.
“He was,” Rufus said. “Remember, he’s the fellow who finished the job of conquering Italy from the Goths after Belisarius marched up and down and up and down till his feet got flat but couldn’t make those shaggy bastards he down and quit. And Narses only had dribs and drabs of money and men to work with, too, on account of most everything got sent to the frontier with the Persians when the war started up there.”