“Close now,” Father Luke called through the din the centaurs made. “When will the Slavs and Avars notice what’s bearing down on them?”
“If we’re lucky, they’ll take one look at the centaurs and run screaming,” George answered, punctuating that with a sharp “oof!” as he came down awkwardly on Crotus’ back after the male took a particularly long bound. “Of course, if we were lucky, God wouldn’t have inflicted the Slavs and Avars on us in the first place, would He? I expect we’ll have a fight on our hands.”
Bishop Eusebius would sure have droned out some pious platitudes on the topic of all mankind’s being able to live together in peace and understanding and everyone’s worshiping God--in, of course, the orthodox fashion. That would have been wonderful, except that the Slavs and Avars had no interest in peace, understanding, or, for that matter, God.
And Father Luke, unlike most clergymen of George’s acquaintance, had little use for pious platitudes: not that he wasn’t pious--far from it--but he expressed his piety more through his life than through his talk. Now he nodded, and said, “That’s what I think, too.” He looked worried again. “I hope we aren’t too late.”
Off to one side of the main band of centaurs, a scream rose in the woods. It was not the sort of scream that might have come from the throat of one of the Slavic demons or demigods: it was a simple scream of human terror. The Slavs had had men hunting in the woods since before their assault on Thessalonica, as George knew full well. No doubt Slavs still roamed the woods, trying to keep their larders full. One of the small groups of centaurs that had peeled off from the main band in pursuit of a wolf-demon must have come upon a hunter instead. By the sounds the fellow had made, he wouldn’t be making any more sounds in the near future--or in the distant future, either.
A few minutes later, a centaur let out a screech filled with both fury and pain. An arrow sprouted from the creature’s right hindmost leg. Another centaur tore the shaft out, which caused the wounded male to screech again. Its bleeding slowed as quickly as George had seen to be commonplace among immortal beings. He hoped the Slav hadn’t poisoned the arrow, as his kind were known to do. If the Slav had poisoned it, he hoped the venom was not of a sort to harm supernatural creatures.
The male centaur ran on as if not badly hurt, so George supposed the arrow was either unpoisoned or harmless to the centaur regardless of poison. He did not have long to contemplate such things, for several centaurs, both males and females, galloped in the direction from which the arrow had come. Shouts rang out, some theirs, others from a man. When they rejoined the main band, blood dappled their human arms and torsos.
Before long, as they drew nearer to the encampments of the Slavs and Avars, more and more arrows began coming their way. “Keep on!” George shouted to Crotus. “If you waste your time chasing down a few archers, you won’t get to the main body of the foe till too late.”
More and more, as power built in the air around him, he got the feeling they had very little time. Whatever the Slavs and Avars were going to do, it was on the point of being done. “So that we slay them, what boots it an we slay them individually or collectively?” Crorus shouted back.
That was, George realized, the wine raging in the centaur. Sober, Crotus liked nothing better than to deliberate, to choose with great care the best possible course. Drunk, none of that mattered. All the male wanted to do was kick and stamp and tear and kill. Hows and whys and wherefores concerned it not at all.
“We have to get down to the city and break up the magic they’re working,” George said desperately. “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you sense it? If their gods fully come through into the hills we know--” He broke off. If that happened, God would have to intervene, perhaps through St. Demetrius, to save Thessalonica--if He chose to save it if He was strong enough to save it. But Crotus cared nothing about God and little about Thessalonica. George tried a different explanation: “If they manifest themselves in these hills, they’ll be too strong for you.”
Crotus bounded along, seemingly tireless. But after a few more strides, the male let out a great rambling bellow: “Thessalonica! To Thessalonica! Straight on to Thessalonica!”
The centaur sprang out ahead of the rest of the band, leading not just by shouts but by example. Straight on they went. They did not turn aside for holy ground of any sort. Maybe, in their drunken madness, the power in patches of holy ground had less effect on them than had been so while they were sober. Maybe, too, they simply happened not to run across any. George was too busy trying to stay on Crotus’ back to be sure.
The woods thinned. Followed close by the other centaurs, Crotus burst into the open ground around Thessalonica. The male shouted once more when he came out into that open country, for the Slavs and a large troop of Avar cavalry were drawn up in battle array against the city. So intent on Thessalonica were they, they did not turn against the centaurs till the drumroll of hoofbeats bearing down on them drew them away from the attack they had been about to begin on the wall.
Indeed, it might not even have been the hoofbeats from behind, but rather the shouts from the defenders of Thessalonica, that made the Slavs and Avars realize the centaurs were there. The shouts were joy, not amazement: at that distance, the defenders must have taken the centaurs for regular cavalry coming to their rescue. The surprise--even the horror--on the faces of the barbarians, who knew better, was marvelous to behold. Till then, their powers not only held their own against the Christian God, but had routed the supernatural beings native to these hills and valleys.
Perhaps the centaurs were, in true terms of strength, still overmatched. If they were, they neither knew nor cared. Maddened with wine, all they wanted was to close with the folk whose demons and demigods had done so much to them up till then. Being afraid never crossed their minds.
It crossed George’s mind. It also crossed the minds of whole troops of Slavs, who turned and fled from the raging band. But not all the barbarians fled. Some of them began shooting arrows at the centaurs. They cried out in dismay when, even after they scored hits, their foes would not fall. Seeing that sent more of them running.
The Avars were made of sterner stuff. They shot arrows at the centaurs, too, arrows from their heavier bows. They also wheeled their armored horses around and rode into battle, some with swords, some with spears. They might never have seen these supernatural creatures before, but they showed hardly more alarm than the beings galloping at Crotus’ heels.
Here and there, one of those centaurs, shot through the chest or perhaps the eye, crashed to the ground and thrashed toward death. Not even their marvelous flesh was proof against an arrow lodged in the heart or in the brain.
George knew too well that his own flesh, marvelous only to him, was proof against very little. Not wanting the Avars to take any special notice of him, he clapped Perseus’ cap onto his head. He held it with his left hand. With a great many misgivings, he drew his sword with his right. That left no hands with which to hold on to Crotus’ human torso. Clenching the centaur’s equine barrel with legs inexperienced at horsemanship, he hoped he would not fall off and be trampled like a wolf-demon.
While a few centaurs went down, most of them, even those who were wounded, stormed on toward the Avars. As the Slavs had before them, the mounted men lost spirit when their most telling shots evaded them little. And the stones the centaurs flung smote as if they came from the hurling arms of the siege engines on the walls of Thessalonica. When one of those stones struck home, an Avar pitched from his saddle or, despite armor of iron, a horse staggered, limbs half unstrung.