Thessalonica

“Only one . . .” George fell silent. He studied the satyr. He’d shot that only one generation as if from a catapult, propelled by sarcasm rather than twisted cords. The satyr, though, had taken him literally. And why not? he realized. What was a generation to a being essentially immortal? The satyr was speaking with him now. It might have spoken with St. Peter when he traveled through Greece not long after the Incarnation, had it so chosen and had the saint not driven it from his presence by overwhelming holiness. It might have spoken with Alexander the Great. George shivered. It might have spoken with Achilles before he sailed for Troy. No wonder it took mere generations lightly.

“This wolf thing eat up priest,” the satyr repeated. It ran a tongue as long and red as its phallus around its mouth, imitating a wolf licking its chops. “Then it look over to where I am. It not blind and stupid like priest--it see me. It think about eat me up, too. I see it think. Then it decide, I full. I see that, too. Wolf get up, go away.”

George wanted to say Kyrie eleison or Christe eleison, but didn’t, for fear the holy words would make the satyr flee. He looked at it with an emotion he’d never expected to feel toward its kind: sympathy. “You’re in a hard spot, aren’t you? If you come down to places like this, the priests and holy men will get you. If you stay where you have been staying, though, the wolves will do the same.”

“Not wolves only,” the satyr said. “Other things, new things, never-seen things. Frightening things.”

Frightening because they’re new or frightening because they’re frightening? George wondered. To an immortal that had grown used to the ways of its part of the world, change of any sort had to seem like the end of that world. What must the Olympians have thought when Christ overcame them? The satyr hadn’t been so strong as all that--but the other side of the coin was, lesser threats were dangerous to it.

“What I do?” it mourned now. “What I do?” Its eyes bored into George’s as if it was sure he had the answer.

He wished he did. But he was a Christian himself. Some--many--would have said he’d already shown too much tolerance for this creature of the old dispensation. As far as he was concerned, though, the Good Samaritan made a better model than the Pharisee who went out of his way not to help lest he be defiled. And, in purely pragmatic terms, what he’d learned was worth knowing, not only for his sake but for Thessalonica’s.

None of that did the satyr any good. It made another strange noise, this one full of despair, and started for the trees. “Wine sweet,” it said, as if suddenly remembering, and then it was gone.

George strode into Thessalonica through the northwestern gate close to St. Catherine’s church. He carried a couple of hares and a couple of partridges: not a great day’s hunting, but not bad, either. He and his family would eat well tonight, and tomorrow, too.

Calm washed out of Catherine’s as he walked past it. Unlike Demetrius, she was not a warrior saint: very much the reverse. She had been martyred in Alexandria after besting several pagans in debate; when her head was struck off for her temerity, milk flowed from the wound instead of blood.

Feeling her holy influence eased George s worries … for a little while. With such spiritual strength behind it-- to say nothing of the imperial soldiers and the popular militia to which he belonged--Thessalonica could surely stand up against anything the Slavs and Avars might do, whether with their soldiers or with their gods and demons.

Most men would have let the rationalization satisfy them. In spite of Catherine’s calm, George could not make himself forget the satyr had said a Slavic wolf had devoured a priest who tried to banish it. You should pray more, he told himself, and think less. He’d been telling himself the same thing for a good many years. He did pray, frequently and sincerely. He never had been able to make himself stop thinking, though.

He brought the game he had killed into the shoemaker’s shop where he hadn’t worked that day, having gone hunting instead. That did not mean the shop had stood idle. With his wife Irene, his daughter Sophia, and his son Theodore to help with the work, things got done whether he was there or not. He sometimes suspected things got done better when he wasn’t there. He’d never voiced that suspicion aloud, for fear Irene would confirm it.