Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  The Slavs tried to free the hook from the shed; George could feel the chain twist a little in his hands. But it was taut now, and gave the barbarians nothing to work with. A quarter of a link, half a link, a link at a time, he and his grunting, cursing comrades gained.

  Other militiamen flung stones at the Slavs under the shed, then dropped bigger stones. The defenders of Thessalonica also popped up to shoot arrows at those Slavs, quickly ducking back to escape the shafts Slavic archers aimed at them.

  “Pull!” Rufus bellowed. “Pull and bear to the left. That way, you’ll--”

  He didn’t need to say anything more. With a rending crash, the shed tipped over on its side. Some of the Slavs inside screamed as the log with which they had intended to smash through the Litaean Gate smashed them instead. Those who could picked themselves up and fled for the woods, some of them helping wounded comrades along.

  “Shouldn’t we get out there and burn that shed?” George asked Rufus. “That way, they can’t sneak back at night to try to drag the thing away, repair it, and use it against us again.”

  Before, Rufus had been set against any sally. Now he pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “Out through the postern gate,” he muttered, half to himself. “Wouldn’t take long, wouldn’t be much risk.” He smacked fist into palm in sudden decision. “We’ll try it.” He told off a dozen men, George and Paul among them. “Take torches and take oil. You want to make sure that when you set the fire, it sticks and spreads. You’ll only have the one chance.”

  The militiamen got what they needed and hurried down the stairs. Rufus came with them and outshouted the militiaman in charge of the postern gate, who seemed in no mood to risk opening it for anything. “If you don’t bet, you can’t win,” George told him.

  “That’s right. That’s exactly right,” Rufus said. “We can hurt the sons of whores, but not if we stand around here flapping our jaws instead of going out there and doing something about it.”

  He set a hand on the hilt of his sword, as if to challenge the postern gate commander. That worthy, though hardly half his age, wilted rather than responding. George and his comrades drew their swords. The gate opened. They dashed toward the tumbled shed.

  The Slavs shouted, some in excitement, more in alarm. They had not expected the Romans to rush out at them. Some fled, others stared. Only a few had the presence of mind to start shooting at the newcomers.

  George slashed at a Slav standing between him and the shed. The Slav turned the blow with a large, clumsy shield. He cut at George. They traded swordstrokes. The shoemaker got him on the forearm. He dropped his sword, running for the woods and shouting in his guttural language. George did not pursue him past the shed, though he might easily have caught him. First things first, he reminded himself.

  He smashed ajar of olive oil against the timbers. Paul thrust a torch into the oil. Flames and thick black smoke rose, not only there but elsewhere along the length of the shed. “We’ve done what we came to do,” George called to his comrades. “Now we go back.”

  Back they went, running bent low to the ground to offer the Slavic archers the smallest target. Just before they reached the postern gate, though, one of them cried out in pain and crumpled, an arrow through his calf. The Slavs had helped their wounded--how could Romans do less? George heaved the fellow up and helped him limp into the city.

  The postern gate slamming shut was one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever heard. Militiamen slammed bars into place to keep the gate secured. Some of the bars were gray and weathered, having stood up to sun and rain for years. Some, though, were of fresh, new-cut timber, and rested on shiny, rust-free iron brackets. George was heartily glad they’d made the postern gate stronger.

  He and his comrades, all but the wounded man, hurried back up to the top of the Litaean Gate. “I want to watch that shed burn,” Paul said, stressing the last word. “You were right, George; now they’ll have to build another one if they want to attack us here.”

  “Yes,” George said, but less happily than he would have thought possible before they’d burned the shed and the ram. Lots of Slavs swarmed out there; running up another shed wouldn’t take them that long. And besides-- He looked south, then north, along the wall. “I don’t think they’ve broken into the city anywhere else, but--”

  “They haven’t,” Rufus said. “If they had, you’d hear the screaming in Constantinople. It couldn’t have happened without our knowing about it.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” George said. “That’s good. They--” The wind shifted and picked up a little, coming now from out of the west. That meant it blew the smoke from the shed straight into the faces of the defenders atop the Litaean Gate. George broke off and started to cough. His eyes stung. Tears ran down his face.

  If he looked anything like the rest of the men up there, the soot was turning his face black, too. And not only his face, either . . . John came up to Rufus and said, “If you wanted your hair dark again, why didn’t you just dye it instead of going through all this?”

  “Ahh, to the crows with you,” Rufus said, and then he had a coughing fit, too. He spat. His saliva was black. He stared at it in disgust. “By the saints, maybe burning the shed wasn’t such a good idea after all. If the Slavs put ladders against the wall now, they’ll be up here with us before we know they’ve even started climbing.”

  Like a lot of what the veteran said, that had truth mingled with the jest. Through streaming eyes, George tried to peer through surging smoke to see what the Slavs were doing. He couldn’t see much. He hoped that meant they weren’t doing much. If it didn’t, he’d get more practice using his sword.

  Cheers rang out, off to the north. He didn’t know what that meant, but he had hopes. When the cheers weren’t followed by cries of alarm, he decided the hopes were justified. “I think we just threw them back up there, too,” he said, and then coughed some more.

  Eventually, the shed burned itself out. By the time it did, George felt like a smoked sausage in a butcher’s shop. The westering sun shone red as blood through the last few puffs of smoke from the fire. Wearily, Rums said, “I don’t think they’re going to come back for any more tonight. And if they do, it’s going to be somebody else’s worry, not mine.” With that, he went down into Thessalonica.

  George stayed on the wall till he saw enough men were coming up to replace those going down. Once he was sure of that, he went home, too. A lot of grimy, smoke-darkened men walked through the streets of the city. Some men, George had heard, had skins naturally that color. He’d never seen any, but it might have been true.

  Irene gasped when he walked in through the front door of the shop. “What’s the matter?” he asked in genuine

  She pointed to him. “You’re black, and you’ve got blood all over you.”

  He looked down at himself. Sure enough, blood had sprayed onto his tunic. His right hand--his sword hand-- was bloody, too, along with being filthy. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not mine.”

  His wife dipped a rag in a pitcher of water and handed it to him. “I don’t know whether that tunic will ever come clean,” she said, “but you can wash yourself.” Obediently, he scrubbed the blood and soot from his skin. The rag turned a color halfway between rust and gray. “You missed a couple of places,” Irene told him, pointing to his cheek and to his left shin.

  When he scrubbed at those, he discovered they hurt. He also discovered he hadn’t been altogether right: he had cuts in both places, cuts that started bleeding again when he got them wet. “Wonder how I picked those up,” he said, bemused.

  Irene looked more horrified than ever. Theodore, on the other hand, seemed struck with awe. “You mean you got wounded, Father, and you didn’t even know it?” he exclaimed.

  “I guess I did,” George answered. Irene started to cry. George put his arm around her. “They’re not really wounds, darling.” He’d seen wounds; he knew that was true. “They’re just scratches, like.” What you called something could be as important as wh
at it really was. What you called something, for that matter, could determine what it really was. Names were powerful.

  Irene said, “The Slavs were trying to kill you.” He recognized the astonished indignation in her voice; he’d felt the same thing when he first realized the difference between exercises and war.

  “Well, they didn’t,” he said, and squeezed her tighter. “And I helped bum one of their battering rams and the shed it came in.”

  That made Theodore look not just proud but jealous. It did little to reassure Irene, though. “You mean you went outside the wall?” she said, and shivered when he nodded. “When you didn’t come home after your regular shift on the wall was done, I knew something was wrong. No, I knew it before then, when men started running through the streets shouting about an attack. Waiting and praying and praying and waiting come very hard, let me tell you.”

  “We threw them back,” George said. “They couldn’t sneak into the city--St. Demetrius stopped that. And they couldn’t batter their way into it--we stopped that ourselves.” His chest puffed out with what he hoped was pardonable pride.

  Sophia came into the shop through the back door in time to hear him. In tones of reproof, she said, “The blessings of the saint on the grappling hooks couldn’t have hurt, Father.”

  “Couldn’t have hurt,” George admitted, “but they didn’t help, either.” Sophia and Irene and Theodore all stared at him; he had to remind himself that they hadn’t been up on the wall. He explained: “The Slavs and Avars found a magic to cut through the power in that blessing.”

  His family exclaimed in dismay. “How can we beat them if they defeat our power?” Sophia said.

  “We managed, just now,” George said. His daughter looked puzzled. He went on, “Powers or no powers, we’re still men, and so are they. It was a straight-up fight on the wall today, and we won it.”

  “And outside the wall, too,” Theodore said. “I wish I could have been out there instead of you.”

  “Instead of, no,” George said. “Alongside me--that may happen, son. You haven’t got much practice with weapons, but you don’t need much practice to fight from the wall.”

  Theodore looked about ready to explode with joy and excitement. Irene looked about ready to puncture George with an awl. She hadn’t been delighted to hear her husband had gone down and fought outside the wail. To hear her son sounding so eager to imitate his exploits left her shaking her head about the male half of the human race.

  Sophia sniffed, not scornfully but in a practical sort of way. “I think supper is about ready,” she said, and went upstairs to check. Her voice floated down to the shop: “Come eat, everyone.”

  Supper was a porridge of peas and beans and onions, with bread and salted olives alongside. “Good,” George said. “Good as anything we could have had before the Slavs and Avars came.” It would have been a plain supper then and was rather a fine one now, but that didn’t mean he was wrong--not quite. It tasted all right and filled his belly. In the end, what else mattered?

  Daylight’s twelve hours were short as autumn drew on toward winter, while those of night stretched like clay in a potter’s hands. George hoped the Slavs and Avars wouldn’t use the long night hours for deviltry. He intended to use every last moment of them for sleeping.

  With a yawn, he said, “I’m turning in. Fighting a war is harder work than making shoes.” A lot of warfare, he’d discovered up on the wall, consisted of doing nothing. The moments when he wasn’t doing nothing, though, he knew he’d have those moments printed on his memory till a priest chanted the burial service above his corpse.

  No one argued with him, but what he’d said didn’t mean making shoes was easy. His wife and daughter washed the supper dishes in the last fading glow of twilight. When full darkness fell, everyone went to bed.

  Lying there beside George, Irene asked, “Have we beaten them back for good, then?”

  For the first time in all the years since they’d wed, he got the feeling she wanted him to lie to her. Try as he would, he couldn’t do it. “I don’t know,” he answered, but I don’t think so. They’ll try something else, or maybe he same thing over again, to see if it works better the second time.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “All right.” It wasn’t, lot by the way she said it. But he didn’t hear her. He’d heady fallen asleep.

  V

  Some nights, George did not want to go straight to bed. After the noble Germanus gave him a good price for a second pair of embossed boots like the ones he’d bought before the siege of Thessalonica started, the shoemaker, coins jingling in the pouch he wore on his belt, went over to Paul’s tavern to spend some of his profit as enjoyably as he could.

  He was glad to duck inside. “Close the door!” someone yelled, even as he was doing so. It was chilly outside, but fire kept the tavern cozy.

  He looked around for people he knew. Sabbatius sat at a table by the wall, not far from the fire. He didn’t see George. He was already slumped against the wall, half asleep. In the couple of years they’d been in the same militia company, George had never found out what he did for a living. Drink, mostly, as far as the shoemaker could see.

  Paul was frying in olive oil some squid a customer had brought in. Fishing boats still sailed out onto the Gulf of Thessalonica to help keep the city fed. They didn’t go far from shore, though, not when autumn storms could blow up almost without warning. The hot, meaty aroma of the sizzling squid sent spit squirting into Georges mouth.

  He made his way toward the taverner, who used wooden tongs to take one of the squid out of their bath of bubbling oil and pass it to the fellow who’d given them to him to cook. “Hot!” the man yelped, sticking burned fingers in his mouth. Paul gave him the other fried squid. He burned his fingers on that one, too, but then began to eat.

  “Red wine,” George said. Paul filled his mug. He lifted it in salute. “A pestilence on the Slavs!”

  Everyone who heard that toast drank to it. George poured down the wine, tossed another follis on the counter, and held out his mug for a refill. This time, he sipped instead of guzzling. He was a moderate man, sometimes even in his moderation.

  Somebody waved. George pointed to himself. “No, I don’t want you,” John said. “I’m trying to talk that dipper on Paul’s wall over there to sit by me.”

  Shaking his head, George plunked himself down on a stool by John. “Are you going up there tonight?” he asked, pointing to the little raised podium where entertainers performed.

  “Easiest way I know to earn my wine,” John said.

  “It wouldn’t be for me,” George said. “I’d sooner have the Slavs shooting arrows at me than stand up there and tell jokes in front of a big crowd of people.”

  “Yes, well, when they don’t laugh, they’re meaner than the Slavs, too,” John said, a faraway expression on his lean face--he was, George thought, probably remembering times when they hadn’t laughed. After a moment, one of John’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “They’re generally drunker than the Slavs, too,” he added.

  “You can joke about making jokes,” George said. “What do you do when they don’t laugh?”

  “Die,” John said succinctly. “It happens. If it happens too often, you have to go out and work for a living. I’ve done that, too. Telling jokes is more fun--and besides, I’m no good at anything else.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” George said. “You could work in a stable, because--”

  He didn’t get away with it, not this time. “--Because I already know everything about horseshit,” John finished for him. “Ha. Ha. Stage fright isn’t the only reason you don’t go up there, pal.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” George said. “I tell jokes the way you make shoes. I admit it.” He looked sidelong at John. “Of course, when I make shoes, I don’t run the risk of having to get out of town in a hurry because I’ve made somebody with more money than me angry.”

  “What? You mean you didn’t tool germanus likes pret
ty boys into those fancy boots you made for him?” John said. “I’m disappointed in you. Maybe you did it in tiny letters, or in fancy ones that look like part of the design till you see them just right?”

  George coughed, which wasn’t a good idea, because he’d taken a swig of wine a moment before. “I don’t know that Germanus does like pretty boys,” he said once he wasn’t trying to choke to death.

  “Neither do I,” John said cheerfully. “That wouldn’t stop me from telling jokes about him, though.” He took a sip of his own wine, making a point of doing it neatly. A moment later, though, he looked glum, which added close to ten years to his apparent age. “Of course, that’s why I don’t live in Constantinople anymore, which I suppose proves your point.”

  A barmaid came around with a bowl of salted olives. Before the Slavs came, a big handful had cost only a quarter of a follis. They were up to three quarters of a follis now, but that was still cheap. George bought some and ate them one by one, spitting the pits onto the rammed-earth floor. By the time he’d finished them and licked his fingers clean, he was thirsty again. He called for another cup of wine. The wine was where Paul really made his money.

  John ordered more wine, too. When the girl brought it to him, he slipped an arm around her waist and said, “After I get done tonight, why don’t we go someplace quiet and--”

  She twisted away, shaking her head. “I’ve heard about you. If you don’t like me in bed, you’ll call me names so nasty, they’ll make me cry, and then you’ll tell jokes about me tomorrow night. And if you do like me, you’ll sweet-talk me till I don’t know up from down--and then you’ll tell jokes about me tomorrow night. No thank you, either way.” She went off, her nose in the air.

  George had heard John tell a lot of jokes about a lot of different women, which made him think the barmaid was likely to be right. John peered down into the cup of wine the girl had given him. Harsh, black shadows from the hearthfire and the torches on the wall kept George from reading his expression.