Thessalonica

“They very fierce. They very many,” Ampelus said. “How we stop them?” The satyr had fewer words and a far less elegant way of speaking than the centaurs, but seemed to George to have a better grasp on the way the world outside this backwoods retreat worked.

Crotus said, “Thou, satyr, art less afflicted than we by the powers we do not name, and so hast wider compass of vision”--the very thought that had just gone through George’s mind. “But if one deem a difficulty impossible of solution, unsolved it shall surely be forevermore. Nor dost thou reckon our case hopeless, I warrant, else thou hadst not brought here this mortal, this George.”

Ampelus shrugged. The satyr’s erection jounced up and down. Nephele’s reaction might have been amusement or disgust; George had no practice reading the sounds centaurs made. After a moment, Ampelus said, “He give me wine once. I save him, hoping he maybe give me wine again. But he has no wine this time.” As nothing else had done, that made its phallus droop for a moment.

“As well that he have none!” Nephele exclaimed. “Wine for you satyrs is as it is for men: a little foolishness, a little sleep, a little headache, and then all in readiness to be done over again. Not so for us, whom the slightest taste of the blood of the grape inflameth to madness.”

“Wine is sweet,” Ampelus protested. “Wine is good.”

“Aye--for thee,” Crotus said. “When the scent of the fermenting vintage wafteth from the villages wherein the men trample the grapes …” A look of terrible longing filled the centaurs face. “I needs must hie me off deep into the woods then, lest instead I rush forward to guzzle and . . .” It fell silent again. The day was chilly. Sudden sweat sprang out on its forehead even so.

“Will someone please take me to one of these villages?” George asked. “Maybe I can find a way to get back into Thessalonica. If I can get down to the seaside, if I can find a boat. . .” He didn’t think any of that was likely to happen, but it was the best his imagination had been able to do.

Satyr and centaurs ignored the request. In that disconcerting baritone, Nephele asked, “How is it, George of Thessalonica, you have no fear of our kind, and neither seek you to compel us to flee your presence with signs against which we may not stand?”

“Why would I do that?” George asked in return. If the female centaur thought he wasn’t afraid, that only proved the pagan powers were a long way from omniscient. Hoping Nephele wouldn’t notice he was responding to only half the question, he went on, “Ampelus saved my life. He didn’t have to do that. I owe him a debt.”

“Wine!” the centaur cried. “Jars and jars and jars of wine!”

“We stand in need of a better bargain than that,” Crotus said stiffly.

“Is no such thing,” Ampelus said, but then corrected itself: “Is maybe one, but cannot bring jars and jars and jars of pretty women.”

Nephele set hands on . . . no, not on its hips, but the place where the narrowness of that human waist swelled out to meet the equine body that carried it. “Enough of japes and jests and fribbles,” the female centaur declared, giving the satyr a severe look that altogether failed to dismay it. When Nephele went on, it was to George: “So many of your fellows would raise against us that which we cannot face or deny our existence altogether.”

“Aye.” Bitterness edged Crotus’ voice. “And should the denial become universal, it becometh also sober truth: another reason for our clinging to the peaks and other lands wherein our being is more certain.”

George had never wondered what the growth of Christianity looked like from the viewpoint of creatures pushed to the wall by the new faith. Along with other such abstract questions, though, that one would have to wait. He found a question anything but abstract: “If you have these weaknesses, how do you propose to come down and fight the powers of the Slavs and Avars?”

“We need help.” Nephele spoke unhappily, but without hesitation. “Thus your coming is welcome, even if Ampelus aided it for reasons of his own rather than to promote the general welfare.”

“I do what I do,” Ampelus said. “I like to do what I do.” The satyr rocked his hips forward and back again, aiming that enormous phallus at Nephele. The female centaur ignored it. George wondered whether that sprang from remarkable aplomb or standards of comparison different from those he was used to using.

“What is your craft, mortal?” Crotus asked. “Are you by any chance a priest of. . . ?” Again, the male used a pause to do what it could not.

That almost made George laugh. “No,” he answered. “I’m only a shoemaker.” That sounded as ordinary as any trade possibly could, till he realized none of the beings with whom he was talking had any need for what he did. He shook his head like a man caught between dream and reality; the difference of his new companion’s feet brought home to him that dream was reality here.