Thessalonica

“What are they going to do?” Dactylius said, staring at the beautiful and terrible being who rode the goat without consuming it.

“I don’t know,” George answered with a small shudder. Talking about the Slavs’ and Avars’ using fire against Thessalonica was one thing. Having them actually go and do it was something else, something daunting. “I wish Father Luke were up here with us.”

“I was thinking of Bishop Eusebius, but you’re right,” Dactylius said.

When the fire goddess appeared atop the castrated goat, the Slavic wizards drew back from her in what looked to George like awe and wonder. That made the shoemaker think they’d never seen her before, and that, even though they’d helped evoke her, she was likelier to be an Avar power than one of their own. The way the Avar priest shouted at them, as if drawing them back to a task they’d forgotten, but still needed to finish, strengthened that impression.

They began a new chant, this one low and rambling, altogether different from that which had summoned Odkan Galakan Eke. On her bleeding mount, the fire goddess stirred restlessly. Dactylius whispered, “I don’t think she likes what they’re doing.”

“I don’t think so, either.” George whispered, too, not wanting to draw the notice of that beautiful, flaming, unearthly creature in any way. He added, “Question is, will we like it any better?”

Chanting still, the Slavic wizards picked up swords and spears and thrust them into the fire that had summoned Odkan Galakan Eke. Despite the fierce blaze, the wooden spearshafts did not catch. The fire goddess writhed again. “She doesn’t like that,” Dactylius insisted.

Had George been a fire goddess, he wouldn’t have liked it, either. The Slavic wizards seemed to be trying to wound the bonfire, not to sustain it. One of them took a spear out of the flames, another a sword. Each pointed his weapon at Thessalonica. All the wizards, and the Avar who led them, cried out together.

The outcry looked to have mollified Odkan Galakan Eke. She stretched out a long, shining arm toward Thessalonica, as if she too were holding a weapon in it. But the fire goddess did not hold a weapon; she was a weapon. For a moment, her voice joined with those of the Avar and the Slavs. All the hair on the back of George’s neck rose in alarm. The Avar had power, wielded power: George had been forced to acknowledge as much. But Odkan Galakan Eke was power, power raw and terrifying.

And then, suddenly, she was gone. The bonfire, suddenly, was but a bonfire. The billy goat, which had been awed into silence while the fire goddess rode him, began to bawl once more, though his bawling would never restore what the Avar had taken from him.

Dactylius and George looked at each other. “Did they fail?” Dactylius asked. “Did they offend her so she fled?”

“Not to look at them, they didn’t,” George answered, pointing out at the Avar and the Slavs, who did indeed look pleased at what they had wrought. Why they were pleased, George did not understand. As far as he could see, they hadn’t changed anything, as they had done with the water-demigod and, more subtly, with the magic aimed against the blessed grappling hooks.

From further north along the wall, one of the Romans called to another: “Say, Bonosus, let me light a torch at your fire, will you? Ours went out some way. Don’t know how, but. ..” The voice traded away. George would have bet the speaker was shrugging a hapless shrug.

After a brief silence, another militiaman, presumably Bonosus, answered, “I would if I could, Julius, but ours is out, too. Funny, ain’t it?”

“They were careless,” George said with more than a hint of smugness. “It’s a good thing we’ve kept our fire-- “ He glanced toward the fire at which he and Dactylius had been in the habit of warming their hands. He did not say going, as he’d intended, for the fire wasn’t going anymore.

“How did that happen?” Dactylius asked, realizing the same thing at the same time.

“Don’t know,” George answered. “It hasn’t rained, and you wouldn’t think a gust of wind could . . .”

His voice trailed off again. Dactylius’ eyes got big and round. “You don’t think--?” he began.

He and George both seemed to be speaking in half-sentences. The shoemaker said, “What I think is, the Avars and the Slavs and their fire goddess didn’t fad at all. I think they did just what they intended to do, and I think” --he took a deep breath-- “I think every fire in Thessalonica may be out right now.”

“That’s--that’s terrible, if you’re right,” Dactylius exclaimed. “How will people get any work done? Smiths, potters, jewelers too . . .” He stopped, looking even more appalled than he had before. “How will people cook their food? Christ and the saints, how will people stay warm?”

“I don’t know the answers to any of those questions,” George said. “I don’t know if any of those questions have answers.” They may all have the same answer: people won’t, he thought.