Thessalonica

“I can’t imagine why,” the shoemaker answered, his voice dry but a sparkle in his eye. Theodore scowled at both of them. He didn’t think he sounded like his father. He didn’t think he thought like his father, either. All that proved, as far as George was concerned, was that he remained very young.

“Another blow with weapons,” Dactylius said musingly. “I suppose that means they’ll try something magical next.”

“They don’t seem willing or able to do both at once, do they?” George said. “I wouldn’t mind rattling them again with our own power. That sickness Eusebius called down on them left them this far” --he held thumb and forefinger close together-- “from having to up and go.”

“I thought the nature of the plague was that they had to up and go, Father,” Theodore said, so innocently that George had no more than a momentary temptation to pitch him off the wall onto his head.

“Anyone would think …” Dactylius repeated.

“My jokes aren’t that bad,” George said, his voice full of affronted dignity. “He couldn’t possibly be John’s son. John wasn’t anywhere near Thessalonica nine months before he was born.”

Theodore turned red. Soldiers chaffed one another harder than his friends did. And George, ever so slightly, was chaffing his mother, too. “Father!” he said, and his voice betrayed him, sliding up into a boyish treble for the second syllable of the word.

“Don’t worry about it, boy; I’m joking. Your mother would hit me if she heard me, but not very hard,” George said, adding, “If you’re worried about what she’s thinking, go home and show her you’re all right. She was convinced the only reason I’d taken you up here was to get you killed.” That was another joke, but less so than Theodore probably thought.

“Will it be all right?” the youth asked doubtfully.

“Go ahead,” George told him. “I let Rufus know I was going to bring you up here today, to see how you’d do. But you’re not on any official list. I expect you can be by this time tomorrow, though, if that’s what you’d like-- all I’ve got to do is ask him to put you there. You fought well enough; no one can say you don’t deserve it.”

“All right, Father. If that’s what you think, that’s what we should do,” Theodore answered, a more subdued response than the whoop of ecstatic glee George had expected. Maybe a firsthand look at war had sobered his son after all. With a nod, Theodore descended from the wall.

“He’s a good boy, George. You should be proud of him,” Dactylius said. Just outside the wall fluttered one of those batlike spirits that had startled George and Dactylius on their first night patrol together. Its ugly little face twisted into a nasty leer as it echoed Dactylius’ words in a high, squeaky voice: “He’s a good boy, George. You should be very proud of him.” Whether it was meant for mockery or not, it sounded scornful.

“Begone, foul flying sprite!” George exclaimed, and made the sign of the cross at it.

It bared its teeth and flapped a few feet farther away, but seemed unharmed by the gesture that would have sent one of the powers of the pagan days of Greece fleeing in abject terror. “You should be very proud,” it squeaked at the shoemaker. Was that an echo? A mocking warning? He couldn’t tell.

He drew his bow and let fly at the spirit. Maybe his arrow missed. Maybe it passed right through the thing without causing it undue harm. It did upset the spirit, which shrilled “Very proud!” and flew away, darting and dodging like a beast made of flesh and blood.

“That bat’s gone,” George said in some satisfaction.

“It was spying on us!” Dactylius said.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” George answered; that darting, dodging flight had taken the batlike spirit back toward the tents of the Slavic wizards who associated with the Avar priest. In spite of where it had gone, the shoemaker laughed. “If the Slavs think they’re going to learn how to take Thessalonica from the likes of you and me, they’ll be disappointed.”

“Oh!” Dactylius blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right, aren’t you?”

“Unless you know more about the secrets of the city than I do, I am,” George said. He looked out toward the wizards’ tents once more. “They are strong: the Slavs, I mean. They aren’t very bright, though, or they’re not very good at using the power they do have. Otherwise, one of those little bat things would have been listening to Rufus and Eusebius, not to us.”

“How do you know one wasn’t?” Dactylius asked.

He stood there small and smug and proud of his own cleverness. And George demolished it, not taking malicious glee in the doing as John would have but doing it anyhow, hardly noticing he was doing it, not thinking of anything but going after the truth wherever it happened to be hiding this particular day: “If the Slavs and Avars were listening to what our leaders said to one another, they’ve have a better idea of where we’re weak than they really do, and they’d do a better job of hurting us in those places.”