Thessalonica

One of the other Avars called a question to their priest or wizard or whatever he was. He shook his head. Yes, he was angry; his whole body seemed to radiate fury. He capered some more, in slack-jointed style that would have won him applause as a mime. He pulled the sword free and stabbed it into the ground again. The wall shook once more, but not very much. The wizard shouted in his unintelligible language. He waved his arms. The fringes and furs and feathers sewn to his fantastic tunic fluttered and flapped. Nothing else happened.

He turned to the Avar in scalemail and shouted again. The warrior made as if to argue with him, whereupon the fellow’s shouts turned into screams. George didn’t know what he was saying, but wouldn’t have wanted it said to him.

Reluctantly, the Avar captain accepted the rebuke and the instructions that had led to it. He shouted something himself. The Slavic archers in range of his voice trotted away from the walls of Thessalonica and back toward their encampments. All around the city, the same shouted orders went out to the Avars’ subject allies. George could not see all around the city. As far as he could see, though, the Slavs were giving up the fight for now.

“That’s done it!” Sabbatius cried gleefully. “We’ve shown them they’ve got no business messing with good Roman men!”

His words were almost lost in the cheers that rose from the wall as the defenders of Thessalonica watched the Slavs withdraw. Despite those cheers, Rufus shook his head. “They don’t think the attack will work now--that’s plain enough,” he said. “But they haven’t done all this work so they could go off and leave it. They’ll be back.”

“But--” Paul, for once, sounded as confused as Sabbatius. “That crazy fellow out there, whatever he was, he saw that the power we prayed into the grappling hook was stronger than anything he could do against it.”

“No.” Like Rufus, George had caught the distinction his other comrades were missing. “He saw that what he tried now didn’t work. That doesn’t mean he can’t try something else. Doesn’t mean he won’t try something else, either. I wish it did.”

Sabbatius scowled like a child learning he would have to go to school not only on the first day he’d just survived but also for months to come. “Why, the dirty, cheating son of a poxed ewe!” he exclaimed.

George looked at Rufus. Rufus looked down at the ground. Looking down at the ground didn’t help. The veteran and the shoemaker both started to laugh, and then started bleating out at the Slavs and Avars. Sabbatius and Paul joined them. The bleating spread along the wall. More than a few feet away from the people who’d started it, the militiamen had no idea why they were making noises like sheep, but any derision aimed at their foes seemed worth sending.

The Slavs stared up at the Romans on the wall. Some of them made peculiar gestures. George stopped bleating and started laughing again. “They think we’re cursing them!” he exclaimed.

“Good,” Rufus said, and bleated louder than ever. So did George, wishing the bleats really would do something to the Slavs and Avars.

Even more suddenly than it had begun, the bleating died down. George looked around to find out why, and saw Bishop Eusebius coming down the walkway in his shining vestments. He waited for the bishop, a somber sort, to make some cutting remark about the racket the militiamen had been creating. But Eusebius surprised him. In a great voice, he cried, “Sing out, you lambs of God!”

George didn’t sing out, not at first. He cheered instead, along with most of his companions. But then he did bleat, and hoped that, with Eusebius’ blessing, the sound would gain potency in the spiritual realm. The words of the psalmist ran through his mind: Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Bleating probably wasn’t the sort of joyful noise the psalmist had had in mind, but George didn’t fret about that.

Eusebius came up to Rufus and said, “I see it is the same here as it is all along the circuit of the wall: they have not dared attack us, feeling the power of the Lord our God.” He pointed to the chain from which the grappling hook hung down over the Litaean gate.

Rufus cleared his throat. “Don’t like to contradict you, Your Excellency, but it looks to me more like they haven’t attacked yet. This Avar… I don’t know… priest, I guess, he tried to overthrow the power in the hook. He didn’t do it, but I wouldn’t swear he can’t do it. You know what I’m saying?”

“I do,” Eusebius answered. “I wish I did not, but I do. We shall be tested in all ways. I pray only that we shall not prove like Belshazzar the king of Babylon, who was weighed in the balances, and found wanting. May our city not be given to the Slavs and Avars, as his kingdom was given to the Medes and Persians.”