Thessalonica

But however appalling the racket he made, the Slavs didn’t seem able to use it to track him. He heard them shouting back behind him. Some of them peeled off to the left of his true track, others to the right. Both groups, by the excitement in their voices, thought they’d seize him at any moment. Meanwhile, he got farther and farther away from them.

Realization blossomed. “You’re doing this!” he said to the satyr.

“Yes. Hush. Not safe yet.” On it went, silent itself and using the noise George made as a ventriloquist uses his voice: throwing it in every direction but that from which it truly came.

Something small and winged peered out at them from the branch of a sapling. It made a piping sound that had words buried in it. They were not Greek words. All at once, both groups of Slavs behind George started moving in the right direction.

Snorting with fear, the satyr grabbed for the fairy. It flitted into the air, those dragonfly wings buzzing. The satyr grabbed again and missed again. “Kill this thing!” it called to George.

“Who, me?” the shoemaker said in surprise. Without much conscious thought, he swung his sword at the fairy. He started to pray to God to help him, but swallowed the words at the last instant: the holy name would surely make the satyr flee. And maybe God was helping him through the satyr, or would be if George let Him.

He felt no resistance when his blade, as much by luck as by design, passed through the fairy’s translucent body. But a tingle ran up his arm, as if lightning had struck close by. Light flared from the swordblade. Where the fairy had been was--nothing.

“Good!” The satyr groped for words. “That thing look, tell …” It ran a hand up and down its erection, as if it kept its brains there. George wouldn’t have been surprised; he knew some men who did.

He gave the satyr the word it wanted: “It was a spy.”

“A spy, yes!” The satyr’s smile stretched across its snub-nosed face. “Not speak much, not need many names for longish time. Now need again. You give.” Before George could answer that, the mercurial creature changed the subject: “You have wine? You give wine, like before?” It was the same satyr, then.

“No, I’m sorry. I have none.” George hadn’t bothered bringing a skin of wine up onto the wall with him. What point, when he’d be going back down again before long and could step into whatever tavern he liked? He hadn’t expected to go beyond the wall, to be trapped outside of Thessalonica, or to need wine to make a thirsty satyr happy.

Its pointed ears drooped. “No wine,” it said, as if summer had gone to winter in the space of two words. It trudged along with slumped shoulders. Now, for the first time, George could faintly hear its hooves moving through the leaves, as if the very aura of magic surrounding it was fading.

He knew how absurd it was to feel guilt at not having done something he couldn’t possibly have known he would need to do. He felt it anyhow. “I am sorry,” he said. “Here, how’s this? When we find a village, I’ll get some for you there.” He didn’t have more than a few folleis in his beltpouch, but they ought to serve. If they didn’t, he would trade work--shoe repairs, for instance--for wine. The thought made him feel better.

It didn’t seem to make the satyr happier. “Not find villages,” the creature said, stroking itself again. “Not for a while, not find.”

“What do you mean?” George said. “The hills around Thessalonica are full of villages. Why--” He paused, trying to work out the direction in which they’d gone. “There should be one over, over--” He started to point, then stopped. He tried again to get his bearings.

Eyes glowing, the satyr looked back at him. It looked amused. “You see now? Not for a while, not find.”

“Yes,” George said slowly. “Where are we, anyway?” He didn’t know if that was the precise question he wanted to ask, but couldn’t find a better one. As he ran through the woods, the ground on which he set his feet and the trees and bushes all around him seemed familiar enough: he would have seen their like had he gone out from Thessalonica to hunt in quieter, more peaceful times.

Their like, yes. But whether he would have seen precisely these stones, those oaks, that set of brambles … with every step he took, he grew more doubtful of that. For the life of him, he could not tell where he was in relation to the city. He couldn’t hear the Slavs coming after him, either. At first, he’d thought that was because he and the satyr had outdistanced them. Now… he didn’t think that was all.

As if picking the thought from his mind, the satyr nodded. “You not in hills you know,” it said. “You beyond hills you know.” It went on quickly, reassuringly: “Can go back. Go back now, be hunted to death. But can go back. Mortals go back, forth many times.” It hesitated then. “Not go back, forth so much now, on account of--” It could not say the name.