Thessalonica

Before Theodore could, an arrow hissed between him and his father. He jumped, coming to the same horrible realization George had at the start of the siege: people out there were trying to kill him. Then he shouted several words George had never heard him use at home, yanked an arrow from his quiver, and let fly at the Avars.

George thought that a healthy reaction. But after Theodore had sent a couple of more arrows after the first, the shoemaker said, “Take it easy, son. They have better bows than we do, so they can reach the wall and we probably can’t hit them.”

Theodore stared at him as if he’d started speaking Slavic. George realized the youth hadn’t had the slightest idea where his arrows were going, except that he was shooting at the foe. He said, “You’re right, Father. I see that. But what keeps them from--?”

Before he could finish the question, an Avar arrow pierced another militiaman not far away. The fellow howled like a wolf, then started cursing in such a manner as to leave Theodore’s earlier bad language in the shade. “Christ’s stinking foreskin, I’m bleeding like a stuck hog!” he shouted. “Hold a bowl under me, and you can make blood sausage tomorrow.” He plainly wasn’t on the point of death, but as plainly wasn’t happy with what life had just given him, either.

Theodore tried again: “What keeps the Avars from doing what they’re doing: shooting at us from so far away we can’t shoot back?”

“Our bows can’t reach them,” George answered. “Our catapults can.”

Now the engines on top of the walls of Thessalonica were not engaging the stone-throwers the Avars had built. They were taking on the Avars themselves, and throwing stones themselves, not fire. Theodore cheered when a frying rock knocked a horse and rider flat. But he watched thoughtfully as the animal and the man writhed about, with neither one of them showing any sign of being able to get up.

The Avars’ scalemail turned ordinary arrows at long range (Dactylius told Theodore the story of the Avar he’d hit but hadn’t hurt, and then for good measure told it over again). No matter how far away the nomad horsemen were, though, when a dart hit them, it struck home. An Avar let out a shriek clearly audible from the wall when one of those darts pinned his leg to the horse he was riding. The horse shrieked, too, and galloped madly away, but soon went crashing down. Again, George didn’t think it or its rider would be of much use after that.

With the Romans’ catapults in the fight, the Avars moved even farther from the wall than they had been. Their arrows began falling short. Seeing that, they abandoned their effort as abruptly as they had started it, trotting back toward their encampment with hardly a backward glance.

“We did it, Father!” Theodore burst out. “We drove them away!”

“That’s true,” George said. “We did.” He didn’t say anything about the militiaman who had caught the arrow in the neck and who now lay dead only a few feet away. Nor did he look in the direction of the dead man. Somehow he contrived, by not saying and not looking, to allude to the man as loudly as if he’d shouted.

Loudly himself, at least at the outset, Theodore said, “That wouldn’t happen to me. There’s no way in the world that could . . .” His voice, which had been fading, traded away altogether as he obviously remembered the arrow that hadn’t missed him by much.

“He did well,” Dactylius said. “He did very well.” Without children of his own, Dactylius didn’t have to worry about raising them. He would, in fact, have made a splendid indulgent grandfather.

But he wasn’t altogether wrong, either, not here. George nodded. “Aye, he’ll do,” he said. “He kept shooting at the Avars--even if he wanted to start too bloody soon-- and he didn’t start puking when people got hurt around him.”

“You sound like Rufus.” Theodore laughed.

George didn’t. “Rufus may be old and crude, but I’ll tell you this, son: if there’s one thing in the world he knows, it’s what makes a soldier and what doesn’t. When I’m talking about soldiers, I don’t mind at dl if I sound like him.”

He waited for Theodore or Dactylius to argue with him. Neither of them did. Dactylius nodded. Theodore changed the subject: “Why do you suppose the Avars started shooting at us like that? You said the Slavs and we were happy enough to live and let live.”

“I don’t think the Avars are happy letting anything live that they don’t rule,” George answered. “Maybe they thought the Slavs have been getting too soft and they needed to make the fight livelier. Maybe some general of theirs came by and they were showing off for him. Maybe they just felt mean and wanted to kill themselves some Romans.”

“Does it matter?” Dactylius added.

“It might,” Theodore said. “If we knew why they did what they do, we might be able to keep them from doing it.”

Dactylius looked over toward George. “Anyone would think he was your son,” he said.