Thessalonica

The centaurs and satyrs had drifted fallen leaves in their shelters to serve as beds. Ampelus and Stusippus invited George in with them. The three of them crowded their lean-to, and the satyrs’ phalluses kept prodding at him as he burrowed into the leaves. The pagan Greeks, he remembered uneasily, had found unnatural vice neither unnatural nor a vice, and so their powers would not, either. But the satyrs did not seek to molest him. He was glad he’d had no wine for them.

Shortly thereafter, he was glad to be in bed with the satyrs, a gladness that had nothing to do with carnality. Without them, he would have shivered the whole night through. With them, despite their phalluses and other minor annoyances such as their hooves kicking him in the shins, he was warm enough. He burrowed into the leaves and slept.

“What a strange dream,” George said the next morning. He rolled over to tell it to Irene. Leaves rustling under him made him open his eyes. He was looking into Ampelus’ face.

“Morning,” the satyr said: more an announcement than a greeting.

“Good day,” George said, wondering if it would be. He got to his feet and started brushing leaves off his tunic and out of his hair. If the satyrs and centaurs slept like this, he wondered why they weren’t perpetually covered with bits of their mattresses.

He discovered the answer to that moments later. Ampelus and Stusippus had a bone comb. The first thing they did after getting out of their bed was to take turns combing each other free of dried leaves. George knew a couple of brushmakers down in Thessalonica. If they brought their wares up into the hills, they might do a good business.

Since he had less hair to fret over than any of his companions, and since he also had no one to groom him, he decided to make himself useful by stirring up the fire. His breath smoked as he built the blaze up again; the heat from the new flames was welcome.

“For this we thank you,” Crotus said, coming up behind him. Where George had been warming his hands in front of the fire, the male centaur bent forward so it could beat the bare crown of its head. Brushmaker. . . Hatmaker. George added to his mental list of artisans who might be useful here among these creatures of an outworn creed.

What did creatures of an outworn creed do about breakfast? At home, George was ready to face the day after bread with olive oil and a cup of wine. His chances of getting any of those things here in this sylvan encampment didn’t look good.

What he got were sun-dried apples and apricots, washed down with more water from that stream. It was cold enough to make his teeth ache, but almost as sweet as the fruit the centaurs gave him.

Once he’d eaten and drunk, he asked, “Shall we go on to one of those villages now?”

“If you be so eager to return to your own kind, we can do’t for you,” Crotus said, “however wary of villages we may be on account of the temptations of the vintage brewed therein. But if you would liefer bring us this holy man of whom you spoke not long ago, were it not wiser to seek to return to the town whence you came?”

“If you think you can get me back inside Thessalonica in spite of the Slavs and Avars all around, I’m game, but I don’t see how you’ll do it, especially since you can’t come close to the city yourselves.”

Crotus frowned. In a way, George knew a certain amount of intellectual pride at having perplexed the supernatural being. In another way, he wished the centaur had had an easy answer waiting. Crotus said, “We shall do all in our power to aid you, the more so as the holy man seemeth to be of the sort the situation requireth. That there may be risk in this course, both from the new-come powers and from the one against which we cannot stand--this we understand. We weigh here dangers one against another. In no direction standeth none.”

“I think you’re right about that,” George said slowly. He thought for a little while himself, then said, “All right, if you think you can get me down to Thessalonica and into the city, we’d better try it. And the sooner, the better.”

“There I deem you have bitten through the meat straight to the bone,” the male centaur said. “My land is but rarely inclined to take quick action, the passage of time being of small import to us. Thus it was that. . what you follow established itself in our land, we feeling no urgency toward expelling … it till too late. And now we are all but banished ourselves. May we prove wise enough to learn from one error and not commit a second of like sort.”

“People don’t often learn from their mistakes,” George said. If these immortal creatures did, they deserved to be reckoned demigods.

“Nor satyrs, either, they being prisoners to their lusts,” Crotus answered. “We dare hope ourselves the wiser. We are no longer wine-bibbers, having learnt from sore experience how such enrageth us.”