Thessalonica

“A whole army down with the runs? Plenty of times,” Rufus answered. “It would happen to the Goths and the Franks all the time. They were too stupid to keep from pissing and shitting in rivers upstream from their camp, and I’ll bet the Slavs and Avars are, too. But as fast as this?” He rubbed his chin. “Mm, maybe not. They were fine an hour ago, sure as sure they were.”

“They aren’t fine now,” Sabbatius said. “Look at ‘em go!” George wondered if he’d intended the double meaning, or, for that matter, even noticed it. Sabbatius went on, “Shame it’s so far into fall, most of the flies are gone. Otherwise, they’d be biting ‘em on their bare bums, just like they deserve.” His pronouns were tangled, but his meaning seemed clear.

“If we attack now, could they fight back?” George asked Rufus.

“Probably,” the veteran answered. “You don’t die from the runs, most of the time--you just wish you did. If somebody’s really trying to kill you, you’ll yank up your trousers fast enough, and that’s the truth. I remember back in Italy, there was this Lombard, and he--”

What the incontinent Lombard did or did not do, George never found out. Sabbatius pointed out over the wall again, saying, “Look. Here’s that ugly Avar bugger with the funny clothes again, and he’s got some Slavs with him who’re cursed near as ugly and funny-looking as he is.”

Sure enough, the Avar wizard or priest or whatever he was and the Slavic sorcerers who had defeated Bishop Eusebius’ charm on the grappling hooks had their heads together now. The way they were seriously discussing things, now and then pointing toward the stricken Slavs, left George sure of what they were talking about. Their manner almost made him laugh; in different vestments, they might have been Eusebius and some priests hashing over a fine theological point.

Rufus said, “You don’t see any of the likes of them running for the slit trenches, mind you.”

George kicked himself for not having noticed that. What it meant wasn’t hard to figure out. “They have some way of turning aside the curse, then.”

“I’d say you’re likely right,” Rufus answered, nodding. “Wish you weren’t, but I think you are. Next question we get to have answered is whether they can protect the odds and sods in their army, not just themselves.”

“How can they do that?” Sabbatius said indignantly. “This isn’t Eusebius cursing them--its God cursing them. You can’t keep God from doing what He’s going to do to you.”

“You can if you’ve got gods of your own--or maybe you can, anyhow,” George said. “Some of those gods are pretty strong, too, not like the pagan ones we’re used to. Those gods, they’ve been fighting God for hundreds of years, and they’re worn out and beaten. The gods of the Slavs and Avars are running up against God for the first time now. They have all their strength and power still, and that means they can put up a good fight, same as the Avars and Slavs do against Roman armies.”

He might as well have been talking to one of the paving stones of the walkway. “You can’t keep God from doing what He’s going to do to you,” Sabbatius repeated, as if George hadn’t spoken at all.

Out beyond the wall, one of the Slavic wizards might have accused another of heresy. The reaction was about the same as if one Christian priest had accused another of heresy, anyhow: the offended party first struck a dramatic pose, almost as if he were turned into a statue illustrating denial, and then, that failing, punched his accuser in the nose. The two of them rolled around on the ground, hitting and kicking each other till their companions pulled them apart.

After that, their deliberations went more smoothly. The Avar walloped one Slav, but the lesser wizard accepted the rebuke in the same way a junior priest might have accepted chastisement from Bishop Eusebius. The Avar priest stared in toward Thessalonica. From where he stood, he would have been peering more or less in the direction of the basilica of St. Demetrius, though the walls hid it from his gaze.

A small chill ran through George. “He knows where their sickness is coming from,” the shoemaker said. “It is a curse.”

Rufus grunted. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? If it’s not a natural sickness, they’ve got to figure we gave ‘em a present. Question is, what can they do about it?”

The Slavic wizards were shouting, not at one another for a change, but at one of their sick comrades. The fellow came over to them with dragging stride. The complaint with which Eusebius’ curse had afflicted him had not slain, but, as Rufus had said, he looked unhappy about being alive.

As if they were physicians, the Slavs examined him from head to foot, staring intently at him and running their hands over his body. One of them had him bend over so he could look at the bodily part that was the most immediate source of his difficulty. “Thorough,” George remarked. Sabbatius held his nose and cackled like a hen.