Thessalonica

“Hello,” the shoemaker muttered under his breath. He might not have understood the shout, but he understood what sprang from it: out of one of the Avars’ tents near the woods came the priest or wizard who had tried to ruin the holy power in the grappling hooks on the walls of Thessalonica but had succeeded only in causing a minor earthquake.

“What’s he carrying with him?” Dactylius asked.

“Looks like a mirror,” George answered. “He’s in an even uglier getup than he was the last time we saw him, isn’t her” Instead of looking like some weird animal, half furry, half feathered, the Avar now resembled nothing so much as a tree all shaggy with moss. He even wore a great, untidy wreath of leaves on his head.

He came trotting up to the horseman who had called for him. They talked together for some little while. The mounted Avar kept pointing back toward the wall, and toward that portion of it where George and Dactylius stood. Dactylius let out what could only be described as a giggle. “I don’t think he’s happy I almost let the air out of him,” the jeweler said.

“I’d say you’re right,” George answered. “The next interesting question is, what can he do about it?” To turn any harm aside, George made the sign of the cross. The Avar wizard had shaken Thessalonica’s wall, even if he hadn’t toppled it. George didn’t want that kind of power aimed at him alone--or, come to that, at him and Dactylius together.

The mounted Avar, having said his piece, rode on to rejoin his comrades. The priest stood staring at the wall. Even across a couple of furlongs, he seemed to be staring straight into George’s face. George stared back, unable to take his eyes away. He felt the weight of the Avar’s persona pressing on him, and pressed back as strongly as he could.

That seemed to take the Avar by surprise. Abruptly, he turned away and went back into the tent from which the horseman had summoned him. Dactylius tapped George on the forearm. “Did you feel that?” The jeweler spoke in a whisper, though the wizard was far away.

“Yes, I did,” George said. “I didn’t know you did, too.” Some of his pride in resistance faded. If the Avar had set that mental grip on more than one Roman at once, he was stronger than any single foe of his.

“What do you suppose he’s doing in there?” Dactylius pointed to the tent into which the Avar had returned.

“I don’t know,” George answered, “but I think we’ll find out.”

He hardly thought himself worthy of being compared to Elijah or Jeremiah as a prophet, but that prediction was soon borne out. The Avar emerged from the tent carrying not only the mirror but what looked like a wooden pad of water. He set the mirror on the ground; as he did so, the sun angled off it for a moment, the flash proving to George what it was. He began to dance around it. Every so often, water splashed out of the pail onto the ground and onto the mirror.

Clouds crowded the sky, which moments before had been sunny though pale. What had been as good a day as any Thessalonica might expect in November quickly changed to one warning of storm. “Magic!” George exclaimed; nothing natural could make the weather turn so fast.

Cold rain began pelting down onto the wall almost as soon as the word passed his lips. Dactylius pointed. “Look!” he exclaimed. “It’s not falling on the Slavs out there.”

He was right. The rain seemed confined to Thessalonica alone. Past twenty or thirty cubits beyond the wall, the weather remained as it had been. George started to say something, but thunder crashed, deafeningly loud, right above his head. He staggered and almost dropped to one knee.

Another crash came, even louder than the first. George stared up into the sky. He’d never heard thunder like that. Were those just cloud shapes, or did they look like Avars thumping great drums? When the thunder rang out again, he was convinced of what he saw. Those shifting shapes, all thirteen of them, were real.

After yet another peal of thunder, rumblings continued for some time, like aftershocks from an earthquake. The rumblers were cloud shapes, too: little men or gnomes with enormous feet, all made of mist.

“Avar rain and thunder spirits!” George shouted, pointing up into the heavens. He hoped Dactylius would perceive them, too.

Before he could find out whether his friend did, an utterly mundane arrow hissed past his face. He reached for his bow to shoot back at the Slavs, then cursed the Avar wizard as foully as he knew how. No rain fell on the Slavs; their bowstrings were dry. Those of the men on the walls of Thessalonica, though, were soaked and useless.

The thunder spirits thundered. The smaller, less fearsome rumblers rumbled. The Slavs out beyond the walls kept on shooting. George and the other defenders were powerless to reply.

“Where’s Bishop Eusebius?” Dactylius shouted. “He could put a stop to this.”