Harry Turtledove - Thessalonica

Along with Dactylius, Sabbatius, and John, George slid stools over behind the tables. John kept his at one end of the new formation. “I’ll be going on in a while,” he said. “This way, none of you can trip me as I head up to the stage.”

“That’s true,” Rufus said. “We’ll just beat on you when you come back.” He spoke as if he might have been joking--but he might not have been, too.

Paul stepped out from behind the bar and walked over to his fellow militiamen. “First cup’s free tonight, boys,” he said, as he’d been doing since the Slavs and Avars abandoned the siege. George wondered how long such generosity would last. Not much longer, if he knew Paul.

John sipped the wine and made a sour face. “If it weren’t free, it’d be cheap, I can tell you that,” he said.

That’s good, John.” George made as if to applaud. “Go ahead--bite the hand that feeds you.”

“Good to see you back, George,” Paul said. You always pay your scot, you drink enough so you don’t just fill up a stool, and you don’t get rowdy and tear the place apart. And you don’t soak your tongue in vinegar before you come in, either.” He gave John a hard look.

The tavern comic, who had seen a lifetime of them, did not seem unduly damaged. “Behold perfection,” he said with a mocking bow to George.

“Well, I like the wine,” Sabbatius said. That, however, was a recommendation not even Paul could view with pride. Sabbatius liked the wine because it was wine, not because it was good wine. As if to prove as much, he held out his cup. “Fill me up again. I don’t care with what.”

“Sawdust might be good,” John said musingly. “Or maybe rocks.”

Sabbatius folded his right hand into a fist. “Here’s one rock.” He closed his left hand, too. “And here’s another one. How would you like to meet up with the two of them?”

“Any time,” John jeered. “Any time you’re awake, anyhow.”

Sabbatius started to surge up off his stool. Rufus grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him down. Too early to start brawling--didn’t you hear Paul?” Sabbatius was bigger and stronger than the veteran, and less than half as old. He obeyed him without question anyhow. That was what made Rufus a man to lead men.

“Don’t start on your friends,” George advised John, “or after a while you’ll go around wondering why you haven’t got any.”

“I don’t wonder,” John said. “I know.” He held out his cup to Paul for a refill, too. When the taverner gave it to him, he gulped it down.

Dactylius said, “If you know your jokes annoy people, why do you keep making them?” The little jeweler plainly did not aim to be annoying; as usual, he sounded serious and sincere.

John’s eye glinted. With one more cup of wine in him, he would have wondered aloud why Dactylius stayed with Claudia if he knew she was a harridan. George could see that. He shifted so he could kick John in the ankle if he began to ask the question. Rather to his surprise, John kept quiet. Maybe he’d listened to George. George wasn’t used to having people listen to him, but understood why: he spent most of his time talking to his children.

The tavern filled up fast. Since the Slavs and Avars broke off the siege, the people of Thessalonica had been in a mood to have a good time. Sooner than he might otherwise have done, Paul called, “And now, to make you laugh, to take your troubles away, and maybe to give you new ones, here’s John.”

“Ha!” John said as he got to his feet and hurried to the platform with a sort of boneless lope. “He knows me too well.” He paused and looked out over the crowd, then shook his head. “You’re a bloody poor lot if you’ve come here for a good time. You should all be home with your wives.” He paused again, as if contemplating what he’d just said. “Well, that explains that.”

“What does he mean?” asked Sabbatius, who was not only unwed but already drunk. Without waiting for an answer, he laughed anyhow, a loud, empty bray.

“Here we are, all safe and sound” John said thoughtfully. “There were times when I wouldn’t have believed it, not during the siege I wouldn’t.” He pointed to the table from which he’d come. “There are the valiant militiamen who defended the wall near here. Would you think they could keep out a pack of howling barbarians?”

“Thank you, John,” George and Dactylius called out together, one in Latin, the other in Greek. They grinned at each other.

“Hey, I’m a militiaman, too,” John said. “Would you think I could keep out a pack of howling barbarians?”

“If they understood what you were calling ‘em, yes,” somebody said loudly.

John didn’t annihilate him, as he did most critics. The remark fit too well with the way his routine was heading. “Maybe,” he said. “It all worked out, thanks be to God. You even see rich people over on this side of town, and you didn’t hardly do that during the siege, did you? No. Most of them stayed over on the east side, where they could duck into the citadel in a hurry if they needed to.”

George listened with wary attention. After the putatively angelic visit, Menas had left him alone. If John started poking fun at him--for he was one of the rich men who had been on the western wall of Thessalonica--George knew he was liable to get blamed for whatever the comic said. That might mean the immunity he’d won would unravel.

But John chose a different tack, saying, “During the siege, those rich people hardly even knew they were living in the same city with us. Somebody told one of them that there was an assault going on, and he said, “Well, no need to panic. It’s only the Litaean Gate the Slavs and Avars are attacking.”

“Why is that funny?” Sabbatius demanded. He hadn’t fallen asleep yet, as he usually did sooner than this.

Patiently, George explained: “Because the rich fool thinks that what happens over at the Litaean Gate couldn’t matter to his part of the city.”

“Oh.” After a bit, Sabbatius let out that braying laugh again.

By explaining, George had missed some of John’s routine. The comic was saying, “--and the fellow’s son promised to come back from the sally with a Slav’s head. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ the fellow answered. ‘I don’t care if you come back without a head.’”

Somebody threw a roll at him. He caught it and ate it. “That’s one way to get something to eat around this place,” he said pointedly, and stared over toward Paul.

After a moment, the taverner had a barmaid bring over a plate of olives. John made as if to grab the girl instead of the plate, and stared out at his audience in mock indignation after she escaped. “How did she know what I wanted to eat?” he said. The barmaid threw a roll at him. He caught that one, too.

“We all had a hard time,” he said. “No two ways around that. What I want to know is, why didn’t the barbarians have the decency to besiege us in the summertime, when we wouldn’t have had to stay up on the wall in such miserable weather? I know one fellow” --he pointed to Sabbatius, who had started to snore by then-- “who stood out in the rain so long, he jumped in the river to get dry.”

“Christ!” Rufus said. “They were telling that joke in Italy when I was a lad.”

“They were telling that joke in Italy when Caesar was a lad,” George said, and couldn’t resist adding, “and he’s only a little younger than you.”

“God will punish you for that,” Rufus growled, convincingly angry, “and if He doesn’t, I will.” They laughed together, as old friends will. Why not? The siege was over.

George laughed at John’s jokes, too: at some more than others, as is the way of such things. What pleased him best about the comic’s routine was that John did not mention Menas even once. Maybe, however late in life, he’d learned the beginnings of discretion. Or maybe, and perhaps more likely, events of the past few weeks had given him so much new material that, for the time being, he didn’t need to bait the rich noble.