Thessalonica

George didn’t despise the wolf-demons, or any of the other powers the Slavs and Avars controlled--if the control didn’t run in the other direction. They frightened him out of his wits. “I don’t see that I have much choice,” he said. “This cap is my best chance--probably my only chance--to get back to Thessalonica. I’m going to use it. I’ll be back here with Father Luke two or three days after I set out--I hope.”

“May Fortune favor you,” Nephele said. She spoke of Fortune as a power in its own right. As a Christian, George knew he wasn’t supposed to think of it that way. As a man who sat down with some friends to roll dice every now and then, he couldn’t help thinking of it so.

He slept in the straw in Gorgonius’ bam that night; it made a better bed than the one of dry leaves he’d shared with Ampelus and Stusippus, and not only because he didn’t have a couple of satyrs in it with him. When he woke up, he didn’t look like a young forest anymore: he wasn’t covered with leaves. Being covered with straw instead, he looked like a young unmowed field instead.

Gorgonius gave him a slab of bread and a stoppered jug that almost surely contained wine. Nephele and Crotus both made an elaborate pretense of not looking at it. Though they turned their heads away, their eyes had minds of their own, and kept sliding back toward the jug. The satyrs, more than humanly fond of wine, made no bones about watching the jar.

As soon as George could see his feet and the path they would take, he left Lete. His breath smoked in the chilly air. He told himself firmly that he would presume no one but he could see it. Had the truth been otherwise, Gorgonius would have mentioned it. . . wouldn’t he?

George knew the direction in which he’d have to go. He’d traveled part of that road already. He wished he’d been able to travel all of it. Then he wouldn’t have had to involve himself with such potent pagan powers as Perseus’ cap. Even if he was less devout than many in Thessalonica, he did believe.

“Well,” he murmured, “if Eusebius wants to impose a penance on me after all this is over, I’ll observe it. I just want this to be all over.”

He hadn’t been walking for more than half an hour before he spotted Xanthippe and Demetrius out on a meadow. The female centaur and the young one (young enough, perhaps, not to have been in a position to know St. Paul when he’d traveled through this land more than five centuries before) both moved easily, showing no signs of the wounds they’d taken from the Slavic wolf-demons, wounds that would have laid George up for weeks or lolled him.

They also showed no sign of having any idea he was around. He did not call out to them. No telling who-- or what---might be listening. Good thing Ampelus didn’t rescue John, the shoemaker thought. He wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut long enough to get full good from this cap.

Even that uncharitable judgment of his friend reminded George how much he missed Thessalonica and all its people. He shook his head, revising that thought as soon as he had it. He didn’t miss Menas even a tittle.

He drank some wine. Between that and the steady exercise of tramping through the hill country, he felt warm enough, though the early-morning air still had a chilly edge to it. The right side of his mouth twisted up into an ironic smile. He’d had more exercise lately than he’d ever wanted.

The morning was still young when he saw his first wolf. It wasn’t far from the place where he and the centaurs and satyrs had fought the Slavic demons, and stood by the side of the path, as if waiting for him to come past so it could finish him for good instead of just driving him back into the hills.

He stopped in his tracks. Knowing he was invisible was one thing. Believing it when his life depended on its being so proved something else again. The wolf-demon’s tongue lolled out, impossibly red against its dark gray fur. Its eyes glittered with alertness. Its head turned this way and that. For a moment, it looked straight at him. Dared he believe it could not see him, could not sense him?

If he didn’t dare believe that, what point to going any farther? He walked past the wolf, close enough so that he could have kicked it in the ribs. As he moved past, the wolf-demon let out a puzzled whine, as if it had the feeling it should have been noticing something it was missing. George reached up and touched the leather cap. Now he believed.

He went almost jauntily after that. He caught himself just before he started whistling a happy little tune. That would have been stupid--odds were, fatally stupid.

More wolves than the first one guarded the trails down to Thessalonica. He passed them all. Some seemed to have no notion he was anywhere nearby. Others, like the first, looked and sounded discontented, but could not understand why they dimly suspected something was wrong.