Thessalonica

“Aye, and if the bunnies carried bows, they’d have bagged you first,” John retorted. You didn’t want to get into an argument with him; he made his living, such as it was, by going from tavern to tavern telling jokes. People said he’d come from Constantinople, that he’d been run out of town when some of his jokes there got too pointed to suit the men in power.

In the militia, though, your mouth would take you only so far. Rufus, the squadron commander, was a gray-haired veteran who’d fought the Ostrogoths in Italy under Narses the eunuch. He had one blue eye, one brown eye, and one nasty disposition. “Let’s see you hit it again, John, before you make like you’re the Second Coming.”

“You couldn’t have your second coming till a month after the first one,” John muttered. But he made sure Rufus didn’t hear him. George blamed him not at all for that. Rufus had to be nearing his threescore and ten, but George wouldn’t have wanted to fight him with any weapons or none.

John nocked his next arrow, drew the bow back to his ear, let fly--and missed, almost as badly as George had done. Rufus laughed raucously. John muttered again. This time, not even George could make out what he said. The shoemaker decided that was probably just as well.

Somebody shot an arrow at the dog. The shaft thumped into the ground six or eight feet away from the beast. The dog never moved. “He’s in the safest place he could be,” Rufus said, and laughed again.

“I would hate him, if only he weren’t right,” Dactylius said. “We have to get better.” His face was probably more intent than when he was setting a ruby into a golden necklace. He aimed, shot--and missed.

“You lugs are all hopeless.” Rufus rolled his eyes. “Come on--all together now.” A ragged volley followed. “By Jesus, the Virgin, and all of the saints, what will you do if the Slavs and Avars ever do come down on Thessalonica”

“Probably something like this,” John said, shivering as if he were about to freeze to death. “Or maybe this.” He gave an alarmingly realistic impression of a man suddenly seized by diarrhea. “Or this.” Now he mimed jumping onto a horse and galloping away as fast as he could go.

George was a sober, serious fellow most of the time. He found himself laughing helplessly at John’s antics. He would have felt worse about it, but everyone else was laughing, too. Rufus had a soul as flinty as any this side of a tax collector’s, but he guffawed with the militiamen he commanded. “You’re a funny fellow, all right,” he said to John. “I’d like you better, though, if your work with the bow weren’t so funny.”

John’s next arrow not only hit the target, it pierced the center of the bull’s-eye. “How about that?” he said triumphantly.

“That’s even funnier than when you were doing the fellow shitting himself,” Rufus said, leaving the comic, for once, altogether at a loss for words.

On their way back to their places in the workaday world, several of the rnilitiamen, George among them, stopped in a tavern for a mug of wine. “Maybe even for two mugs of wine,” George said, liking to spell things out as precisely as he could beforehand.

“Maybe.” Dactylius sounded nervous. He might have been a trooper in the militia, but his wife Claudia, whose gray eyes and fair skin spoke of Gothic blood, was larger and brawnier and of a sharper temper than he.

The taverner, a long-faced, swarthy man named Paul, seemed gladder to see the rnilitiamen than was his wont. He filled their mugs up to the top and didn’t scrutinize the coppers they passed across the bar as if certain every other one was a counterfeit. “Are you feeling well, host of ours?” asked a plump fellow named Sabbatius.

“As well as a forest when the birds fly south for the winter,” Paul answered in a gloomy croak. “Aye, the birds are flying, sure enough.”

“Are you making riddles?” Sabbatius asked, swigging at his wine. He was liable to stay for more than a mug or two--or three or four.

“I don’t think he is,” George said. He studied Paul. “I think he’s heard something. You have heard something, haven’t you?”

“Good thing you make shoes instead of asking the questions when the torturer’s doing his job,” the taverner said. “Aye, I’ve heard something, and if it’s so, you militiamen are going to be all that’s in the way between us and trouble for a while.”

“What do you mean? Four or five of the amateur soldiers asked the question at the same time.

Paul shrugged. “My line of work, you do hear things. Some of the things you hear, you wish you hadn’t, if you know what I mean. This is one of them. If I did hear right, most of the regular garrison is heading out of town.”

“Christ have mercy!” Sabbatius said, beating George and several others to the punch. “Why do they want to go and do a fool thing like that?”