Harry Turtledove - Thessalonica

George wondered how much that attitude had to do with the failure of the old gods against Christianity. Bishop Eusebius and, no doubt, Father Luke, too, in his gentler way, were convinced their faith would triumph, regardless of the adversities it faced. That was their notion of necessity: not yielding to whatever the passage of time might bring against them.

Nephele set hands on the narrowing of human waist above the outswelling into horses body. “Very well, priest: you say you are fain to make alliance with us. How then, this being so, shall we best combine against the foe tormenting us both?”

“How?” Father Luke looked straight at the female centaur, which impressed George. The priest smiled, but not altogether happily. “My dear, at the moment I have no idea.”

XI

The first thing George did was sleep till the sun, which had been low in the east, was low in the west. He was relieved to find some stew in the pot. “Aye,” Nephele said, “the world waggeth on, seek to stay it as we may.”

George ate and yawned, realizing he would have no trouble going back to sleep not long after nightfall. He set a hand on Perseus’ cap, which lay beside him on the boulder on which he was sitting. “I want to go into Lete,” he said, “and give this back to Gorgonius. I don’t want him to think I’m a thief.”

“We cannot do’t today,” Nephele answered, “the sun’s chariot, as you see, having drawn too near the western horizon to permit the journey.”

“Tomorrow, then,” George said.

“It could be,” Nephele said, “but then again, perhaps not. Surely we shall be undertaking many matters most urgent on that day, conferring with your priest, and--”

“Someone mention me?” Father Luke came up.

“They want to talk with you instead of taking me to Lete to give Gorgonius back his cap,” George said, his voice a little sour. “If I understand right, all the centaurs want to talk with you, and none wants to go to Lete.”

“That is good sooth,” Nephele said.

“But why?” Father Luke asked.

“Why? Because we but seldom venture among the habitations of mankind for any reason, and have held to this rule for a time that seemeth long even to ourselves,” Nephele replied. “If George be fain to return the cap, doubtless a satyr will guide him, they being eager to have as much to do with mankind, or rather womankind, as we are needful of holding to our sylvan fastness.”

“You went with me before.” George would not have argued so with the immortal had he not failed so completely of understanding. “Why not now?”

“We went, aye, but with greatest reluctance, as you must have seen. Gaining the cap of Perseus held an urgency returning it lacketh,” Nephele said, an answer that was not an answer. The female centaur saw George and Father Luke recognize that it was not an answer. A very human-sounding sigh came forth. “Are the two of you blind and deaf? What, as is proved by experience bitter, must my kind avoid at all costs?”

Father Luke, with only a day’s acquaintance with the centaurs, looked blank. George thought the answer was on the tip of his tongue and, thinking that, found it: “Wine!” he exclaimed.

Gravely, Nephele nodded. “Even so,” the female centaur said. “Even so. Being of the mortal land that prepareth and drinketh the blood of the grape with no further ado than that it should be a vintage you favor, you have no notion of the longing for it we know, a longing we also know we dare not sate.”

“All right,” George said. He had seen the hunger on Crotus’ face when they went into Lete: seen it but evidently underestimated its power. “If it’s as bad as that, I’ll let Ampelus or Ithys or Stusippus take me to the village.”

“For which you have my thanks.” Nephele looked at him from under heavy-lidded, long-lashed eyes. No, even that disconcerting baritone wasn’t always disconcerting enough to keep the female’s almost human and more than human beauty from stirring him and making him think how he might want to have those thanks shown.

“Wait.” Father Luke spoke only the one word, but with such authority that both George and Nephele turned their heads toward him. He paid no attention to George, for which the shoemaker could hardly blame him: had he had to choose between Nephele and himself, he would have chosen the centaur, too. The priest said, “Perhaps it would be for the best, Nephele, if, this once, you and all your kind drink yourselves full of wine to the very point of bursting.”

Those splendid eyes were heavy-lidded no more, but wide and staring. “Priest of the new, you know not what you say. Wine looseth in us a blazing madness oft satisfied only by blood. It is the curse of my folk, against which we have no power of resistance.”

“I don’t want you to resist,” Father Luke said. “I want you to yield to it, to revel in it.”

With each shake of the female centaur’s head, black, curly hair flew around its face. “You know not what you say. Even to suggest such a thing is madness, nothing less. Aye, madness: akin to that madness we knew in the far-off days when the world was young and nothing had stolen from us the greatest part of the land that is ours. Not since the disaster of the supper with the Lapiths have we taken wine, for fear of what it will do to us. Nay. I say again, nay.” The last word was almost a horse’s ringing neigh.

“But don’t you understand?” Father Luke, by contrast, sounded calm and rational: so calm and rational that George, who aspired to those conditions, wondered if the priest had lost his wits, or perhaps did not fully appreciate even yet the depth of the centaurs’ revulsion. Unperturbed, Father Luke went on, “You should be mad with wine--you need to be mad with wine--if you are to stand against the Slavs and Avars and their powers. When you remain your sober selves, they have more strength than you, not so?”

“That is so,” Nephele admitted. “It is so, but it hath no significance, not set against our dire need to fight shy of the lovely, deadly stuff.”

“If you will not set the arrow in your bow, you’ll never know how well you might shoot,” Father Luke said. “And if you refuse to use the arrow, will you go down to defeat wondering till you perish whether it might have done you some good?”

Nephele studied him. “The satyrs are fain to seduce us,” the female centaur said slowly, “but they seek no more than the use of our bodies, which, while no small thing, also is not a matter of greatest consequence. Some have even yielded to them, for a romp. Not I, but some. You, now, you would seduce our minds to do as you will, not as custom ancient and long-established teacheth: in my view, a stronger seduction.”

Father Luke shrugged. “After George brought me here, I was asked how I could help rally the strength of your land and mine together. I didn’t know then. I still don’t know, but this is far and away the best idea I’ve had.”

Hearing George’s name reminded Nephele he was there. The centaur rounded on him, demanding, “What think you of this crackbrained scheme?”

“Me?” George said. “I think that, if you haven’t got any better ideas yourself, you’d be foolish not to pay attention when somebody else does.”

Nephele’s shoulders sagged, as if the answer he’d given was exactly the opposite of the one the female wanted to hear. “Even you, too?” The centaur sighed, a wintry sound. “Very well, then: I shall broach the matter to my fellows. What may come of it, I do not presume to say. This prohibition your friend is eager for us to break hath almost the status among us of a law of nature. But we shall see.” The centaur turned and trotted away.

“Isn’t this interesting?” Father Luke said with a broad smile.