Thessalonica

“Not bad, not bad,” Felix answered. “Always a lot of fairies and such about, there away from town. It’s quiet here, God be praised: everybody inside the walls believes in Him, pretty much. Not like that out in the country, you know. Old ways hang on.”

“That’s so,” George agreed. “I saw a satyr myself yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve seen them, too,” Felix said. “I chase my daughters into the house when they’re about, just on account of you never know--you know? But these I saw a few days ago, they weren’t like anything I seen before. Pretty women, they looked like, with long yellow hair and with wings on their backs. Not angel wings, with feathers and all--more like beetle wings, all clear and shimmery. I made the cross at them, like a good Christian ought to, but they stood there and smiled at me. It was like they never seen it before.”

“Maybe they hadn’t,” George said, and told him about the wolf. “New people on the move, new gods and demons moving with them.”

Felix clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Hard times, sure enough,” he said. “Well, God will protect us, I expect I hope He will, anyhow.” He headed out of the shop, then turned back. “The sandals feel good, George. I thank you for that.” With a wave, he was gone.

George turned back to his son. “There, do you see, Theodore? Do a proper job and your customers come back to you.”

“Yes, I see, Father.” Theodore grinned mischievously. “Make four miliaresia every five or six years from a farmer and you can use it to buy gold plates to eat off of.”

The shoemaker didn’t know whether to smack the youth or start laughing. He let out a strangled snort, which satisfied neither of those impulses. If God did protect Thessalonica, he thought, it would be either because He ignored the younger generation or because He was even more merciful than the Holy Scriptures said. As George pondered those two choices, he realized one didn’t necessarily exclude the other.

He was delicately tapping an awl to produce a tooled pattern on a boot for a prominent jurist when Dactylius stuck his head into the shop. “Archery practice this afternoon!” the little Greek jeweler exclaimed. He carried a bow and had a quiver on his back. “Have you forgotten? I’ll bet you have!”

“You’re right, I did forget,” George admitted. “I start doing this fine work”--he pointed to the boot-- “and I don’t think about anything else.”

“Go on, dear,” Irene told him. “Germanus won’t be expecting those boots for at least another week. You’ll have plenty of time to finish them.”

“You’re right.” He didn’t know why he bothered saying that; Irene was generally right. To Dactylius, he said, “I’ll go get my bow and arrows--be right back.” He hurried upstairs, grabbed the bow off the pegs where he’d hung it, and picked up his own quiver. He slung it over his shoulder as he returned to the ground floor.

Dactylius was hopping from foot to foot, as if he needed to visit the latrine. He seemed all the more excitable when paired with stolid George. “Come on!” he said. “Rufus will yell at us if we’re late.”

One of George’s eyebrows quirked upward. “He’ll yell at us if we’re not late, too. You go to church to pray, You go to militia practice to get yelled at.”

Taking no notice of that, Dactylius grabbed him by the sleeve of his tunic and dragged him out into the street. Behind him, he heard Irene laugh softly. He was never late enough to matter, and most of the time his punctuality had nothing to do with Dactylius. For that matter, he kept the jeweler out of trouble more often than the other way round.

The practice field was just that: a field in the southeastern part of the city, not far from the hippodrome and fairly close to the sea. In the time of George s greatgrandfather, a grandee had had a mansion there, but no one had ever rebuilt the place after it burned down.

A scrawny brown dog sprawled in the grass and watched the rnilitiamen at their exercises. The commander of the regular garrison, up in the citadel on the high ground at the northeastern comer of Thessalonica, would either have laughed or suffered a fit of apoplexy to see it. The amateur soldiers were indifferent archers, poor spearmen, swordsmen longer on ferocious spirit than skill.

George knew he’d never use his bow as well as a professional soldier, even if he did bring back game when he went out hunting. Dactylius shot straighter than he did, though his own bow had a stronger pull. After he missed a shot from a range where he should have hit, he yanked a new arrow out of his quiver and made as if to break it over his knee.

Another of his fellow rnilitiamen, a gangly, curly-haired man named John, not only had the gall to hit the canvas target but then said, “You might as well shoot that arrow, George. After it’s gone wild, someone who knows what he’s doing may find it. If you break it, it’s gone for good.”

“I’ll have you know I bagged two rabbits and two birds yesterday,” George said with dignity.