Thessalonica

Calm as if they had come to visit rather than to attack, the Avars studied Thessalonica’s works for a minute or two, then turned their horses away from the walls and rode back into the gathering darkness. Once more, the Slavs stood aside to let them pass. Shadows reached out for them, and they were gone.

Neither side started up the fighting again for some little while after that. “Those men had a power in them, and not a small one,” George said quietly. “I wish Bishop Eusebius would have been here on the wall with us, to show them we have a power that can stand against theirs.”

Rufus surprised him by shaking his head. “The less the enemy knows about you, the better off you’re going to be,” the veteran said. “That’s true every which way, not just with plain weapons.”

After a little thought, George nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said. Then he pointed to the Slavs, who were beginning to resume the racket they had abated when the Avars appeared among them. “We’ve found out about them, that’s for certain.”

But Rufus shook his head again. “Not yet. Not hardly. Not so it matters.” He too looked out toward the barbarians. They were starting to light fires out there on the cleared ground between the city and the woods. “Me, I’ve got the feeling we’re going to have plenty of time to find out more.”

The strangest thing about the early days of the siege of Thessalonica was how close to normal everything felt. The only difference in his life George noticed was that going out to hunt had become impossible--which was, he realized, just as well, for it would have been decidedly unwise. He did not think the Slavs would share bread and honey with Romans they chanced upon in the woods, not anymore.

Not even his times up on the wall changed much. He still served his usual four-hour shifts, sometimes during the night. There was always the chance the Slavs would mount an assault against Thessalonica’s formidable curtain of stone, but, after St. Demetrius had warned the townsfolk of their presence and kept them from coming up over the wall by surprise, they contented themselves with shooting occasional arrows at the garrison.

Indeed, as time went by, many of them left the immediate neighborhood of Thessalonica, so that the city hardly seemed under siege at all. Sometimes, looking out from the walkway atop the wall, George could not set eye on a single enemy warrior.

“They’re out there,” Rufus said one afternoon when he remarked on that. “Oh, they’re out there, never fear. If they weren’t out there, we’d have traffic on the Via Egnatia getting into the city from east or west. Seen any?”

“No,” George said. “I wish I had.” He lowered his voice, as if passing on a secret, and, in fact, he wanted no one but Rufus to hear his next words: “If we don’t get some traffic, we’ll be hungry by and by.”

“That’s so,” Rufus answered, also discreetly. “Constantinople, now, Constantinople gets grain from Egypt. An enemy can besiege Constantinople till everything turns blue, and it won’t do him any good at all. We aren’t so lucky. We’ve had a few ships in from southern Greece, but not many, and not much in ‘em.”

“Maybe we should sally, try to drive them away,” George said. “Then traffic could start moving again.”

“Probably nothing to move right now, anyhow,” Rufus said gloomily. “If the Slavs are here, they’re in the farm country and backwoods villages, stealing their wheat and barley and wine. No, best thing to do is wait ‘em out. Maybe God will send them a plague. That happens in a lot of sieges.”

“Happens in towns, too.” George remembered the outbreak of bubonic plague in Thessalonica not so long before. Hundreds, maybe thousands, had died.

After a while, Dactylius and John came up onto the wall. George hurried back to his shop; he was convinced his being away from it so regularly would make it founder. Irene was convinced he was out of his mind; Theodore, on the other hand, was convinced a soldier’s life was far more exciting than that of a shoemaker. One day, George intended to sit him down with Rufus, to see if anything resembling sense would penetrate his head.

George had just finished nailing a new heel onto a boot (not a boot he’d made, he was pleased to note) when Claudia came into the shop carrying a pair of sandals. “Hello,” George said, setting aside the newly repaired boot. “What can I do for you today?”

“Have you seen my husband?” Claudia’s voice throbbed with melodrama. She was one of those people who found day-to-day life too dull to be readily tolerable, and spiced it up with imaginary worries when no real ones were handy. And when real ones were handy-- “I live in dread of the day when the messenger will tell me my beloved Dactylius has died a hero’s death for his city.”