Harry Turtledove - Thessalonica

Irene muttered something under her breath. George thought it was “Men!” but felt disinclined to inquire more closely. As with theology, some of the more subtle points of marriage were better taken on faith than examined under the piercing lamp of reason. In any case, Irene had a good deal to say that wasn’t under her breath: “If he had taken you seriously, George, he might have felt he had to do something like ask questions about how you came to be talking with a satyr, not chasing it off with the sign of the cross.” The look in her eye said she still wondered the same thing; she was more pious than he. She went on, “Would you really have liked, say, a couple of years’ penance for doing that?”

“No, I wouldn’t have liked that,” he admitted. “But I didn’t think he would do anything to me, because the news was more important than how I got it.” Before she could interrupt, he held up a hand. “And I was right. Remember that--I was right.” He felt no small sense of pride; in an argument with Irene, he seldom got to say that.

As things turned out, it did him no good even when he did get to say it. “It was a foolish chance to take,” Irene retorted. “What you gained by doing it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“I thought it was,” George said, but that took the argument out of the realm of fact and back into opinion. He tried a slightly different tack: “It’s done now, and it worked out all right.” Irene thought that over, then grudgingly nodded. That meant the argument was over, too, which suited George fine.

III

More people began encountering Slavs in the woods. A couple of men who went out hunting didn’t come back. George was on a search party that went out after one of them. He found no trace of the missing hunter. He found no trace that the man had fallen foul of the Slavs, but nothing to prove the fellow hadn’t, either. Whatever had happened to him, he never showed his face in Thessalonica again. George, along with most other people, suspected the worst.

The roads from the north grew crowded with farmers fleeing the ever-growing presence of the Slavs--and, presumably, their Avar overlords, though the Slavs were the folk on everyone’s lips. Some of the peasants took refuge in the city. Others kept going, hoping to find lands he barbarians would not penetrate.

With the peasants came priests and monks, driven from churches and monasteries by the inroads of the barbarians. The monks, many of them, took refuge in the monasteries surrounding Thessalonica; the priests came into the city itself, to help serve its churches while theirs lay under the control of the Slavs and Avars. Suddenly the divine services had far more officiants than were needed, so that the holy men had to take turns performing them. When the refugee priests were not celebrating the liturgy, they gathered in the market square and told their harrowing tales to whoever would listen and perhaps toss a follis or two into the begging bowls they put out in front of them.

George wondered whether the copper coins they collected would go to the ravaged churches from which they had fled, to the churches of Thessalonica in which they sheltered, or into their own pouches. He did not know whether others had that same doubt. People who were clever enough to have the question occur to them were also clever enough not to voice it.

The priests drew considerable crowds. George listened along with everyone else, but kept his money to himself as long as the priests talked about the merely human destruction they had experienced or seen. The world was a harsh place, and war unceasing: unfortunate, certainly, but also unsurprising.

But then one of the refugees, a man who, by his theatrical gestures and carefully balanced sentences, had had more than the usual share of rhetorical training, said, “Nor is the energy from this vicious and brutal plunder and rapine derived from this world alone. For the Slavs and Avars bring with them a new host of barbarous powers against whom the true God and His Son Jesus Christ shall have to contend and whom They shall have to overcome by virtue of their superior prowess.”

Someone--not George--called out, “Doesn’t the Lord cast out all demons?” After a moment, the shoemaker recognized John’s voice. Not content with scoring points off people in the taverns he frequented and off his fellow militiamen, now he was trying to get a priest angry at him. If John lived to be old, George would be astonished.

The priest, however, took the question seriously, answering, “In the end, the triumph of the Lord is inevitable: so it has been written; so it shall be. But the path to that end is not known, and much misery surely lies along it until it be traveled to the fullest.” George waited to hear what John would make of that. The tavern comic made nothing whatever of it, falling silent instead. As silently, George wished his friend would show such good sense more often.

“For now, the spirits attending the Slavs and Avars, being puffed up with arrogance on account of the victories those folk have won over us Christians, vaunt themselves and exult in their strength, and are difficult even for pious folk to withstand successfully,” the priest said, which was not only true but explained to his audience why he and his fellows had had to retreat from the Slavic powers instead of easily beating them, as the old pagan Greek spirits were beaten these days. “We must do not what we want to do, but what God wants us to do.”

His audience murmured in approval. But then, unfortunately, John started up again, asking the priest, “What does that mean, what God wants us to do? Should we be more fierce, so we can beat the barbarians and make their powers weaken, or should we be more pious, so God will take better care of us?”

The priest gaped at him. If he’d just answered both, he would have done well and probably made John shut up, an act of virtue in itself. But John had asked whether it meant one or the other, and the priest (whose wits were, excusably, perhaps not at their swiftest then) took it that way and that way only. Any reply he gave, then, was but half a truth and, worse, contradicted the other half.

After tossing the priest a couple of coppers, George elbowed his way through the crowd and caught John by the arm. The tavern comic whirled. He started to grab for the knife on his belt before he saw who had hold of him. Just in case he didn’t feel like stopping--his temper could turn nasty--George squeezed a little harder. He had large, strong hands. “Come along with me,” he said in a pleasant tone of voice. “Suppose I don’t feel like it?” John said. He wasn’t going for his knife, but he wasn’t coming along, either.

George started walking. He did not let go of John. Since he was bigger and stronger than his fellow militiaman and sometimes friend, John got moving, too. He yelped. Then he cursed. If he did try to take out that knife, George figured he’d kick him where it would do the most good. If that didn’t distract John, he didn’t know what would.

“Turn me loose,” John said.

It was not an angry shout, and did not seem like a threat. George considered. “Will you come along if I do?” he asked. John did not say yes. But John did not say no, either. George chose to take that as assent, and let go of his arm. John did keep walking. Once they reached one of the little side streets that opened onto the market square, George stopped, turned to him, and said, “Do you want to know a secret? Getting a priest going in circles is cheap sport.”

“I liked it well enough,” John answered. “Priests always pretend they know everything. That makes them more fun to bait--same with drunks in taverns.”

“Baiting a drunk is one thing,” George said. “Nobody but him made him drunk. But it’s not that priest’s fault he’s here. All he did was keep from getting murdered by barbarians or eaten by wolf-demons. You can’t blame him for not knowing which end of the awl to hold right now.”