Thessalonica

“That would be good.” George peered in the direction of Thessalonica. He was no holy man, to feel subtle disturbances in the relationship of powers and the material world in which those powers--and he--dwelt. But what was coming up from out of the south wasn’t subtle. His shiver had nothing to do with the chilly day. “How long do you think we have?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Father Luke said. “It’s like a cloudburst hanging over us. The rain will come, but when? And when it does, will it wash us away? The one thing I will say is, I don’t think we have very long.”

“What do we do, then?” George turned to Ithys. The satyr had been ignoring him and Father Luke. “How do you go about making the centaurs move faster?” the shoemaker asked.

“Is no way,” Ithys answered.

Ampelus, who was sitting close by the fire, shook its shaggy head. “Is maybe a way.” The satyr got to its feet and silently vanished into the woods.

“What’s he going to do?” Father Luke asked.

Ithys shrugged, as if to say it couldn’t possibly make any difference, whatever it was. George answered, “If I knew, I’d try it myself.”

Not much later and not very far away, a loud baritone shout rose from the woods. George needed a little while to remember male centaurs all had bass voices. That wasn’t a shout, then. It was a scream.

Ampelus came back into the encampment laughing and staggering a little and rubbing at what George first took to be a bruise on the hairy flesh of the satyr’s chest. Then the shoemaker saw that it was a bruise, all right, a bruise in the shape of a hoofprint. Ampelus said, “Centaurs here soon. Minds made up. Not know which way, but made up.”

“How did you manage that?” George exclaimed.

Ampelus laughed some more, though the laughter looked as if it hurt. “Went up in back of filly Nephele, tried to screw. If I do it, I think I have good time. If I don’t do it, I make Nephele, all the centaurs so mad, they give over talk talk talk.”

“You get it in?” Ithys demanded.

By way of reply, Ampelus sadly rubbed at that hoof-shaped bruise. Though the satyr healed with the speed characteristic of immortals, George suspected it would wear that mark for a good long while.

Sure enough, though, Nephele burst out of the woods a few minutes later. The glance the female centaur aimed at Ampelus should have annihilated the satyr more thoroughly than any kick, no matter how ferocious. Ampelus, however, only leered back, which made Nephele more furious than ever.

Father Luke spoke quickly: “Have you decided, then, whether you will drink the wine to try to save Thessalonica?”

Distracted, Nephele turned away from Ampelus. “Oh,” the female centaur said. “That.” Anger cooled somewhat, it spoke now with more than a little hesitation. “Aye,” it said at last. “We are decided. Let it be as you say, priest of the new. We shall do this thing, and run wild upon the earth, and madness shall overtake us, and, if it be fated, we shall overfall the folk and powers that have come down into this land.”

“In the name of--” Father Luke checked himself before he named the Name the centaur could not bear to hear. “In my name, and in the name of Thessalonica my city, I thank you.”

“And while we run mad,” Nephele went on as if the priest had not spoken, “if it be fated, mayhap I shall run across a certain wretch with horse’s tail and billygoats nature, and mayhap tear the said wretch limb from limb beyond any hope of healing, even though that wretch belong to a race said to be undying. Mayhap this too shall come to pass.”

George would not have wanted to be on the receiving end of a threat like that, not when Nephele so obviously looked forward to the prospect. If it bothered Ampelus, the satyr didn’t show it. “Maybe you just get drunk and happy. Maybe we go someplace and--”

Nephele flung a stone. Ampelus’ dodge was, and needed to be, supernaturally quick. The satyr darted in among the trees. A volley of well-hurled stones followed. George didn’t think any of them hit.

Lete was overrun with centaurs. The townsfolk, pagan though they were, had stared when Crotus and Nephele accompanied George and the satyrs to Gorgonius’ shop. Now George would not have been surprised if the centaurs here outnumbered the human population of Lete.

From where had all the creatures come? How had they gathered here so quickly, when the shoemaker had seen but few signs of them up till now? He’d tried asking Nephele, but the female centaur gave him no answer he could understand. His own best guess was that her kin had traveled by way of the hills beyond those he knew, and that paths long in his own mundane world might prove shorter there. He did not know that for a fact. He did not know whether any humanly graspable facts were there to be known.