“I don’t think this is one of those times when the pedagogue will come across their backsides with a stick if they’re sloppy,” John said. “Sieges aren’t marked on neatness.”
“They’re wasting men,” Rufus insisted.
“They don’t care,” John replied, accurately enough. “You think the Avars are going to break down and bawl because some stupid Slav gets an arrow in the ribs he might have turned if he was careful?” His mobile features suggested an aggressively indifferent barbarian.
Rufus seemed inclined to carry the argument further. George, for once, found himself on John’s side. The Avars had already shown they didn’t care what happened to their Slavic subjects, so long as they got into Thessalonica. And then the Slavs started pounding away at the city walls, a distraction that made both John and Rufus forget what they’d been talking about.
George felt the pounding through the soles of his feet. He seemed to hear it the same way, as if it had traversed his entire body before reaching his ears. The noise or feeling was alarming. If the Slavs could get enough stones out from the bottom of the wall, the masonry above the place where those stones had been would fall down, too. And, since George was standing on top of that masonry…
He grabbed a large stone from a pile on the walkway, picked it up, and, grunting with effort, carried it to the edge of the wall and dropped it on the attackers below. A loud and satisfying crash said it had landed on one of the upheld shields of a tortoise down there. He hurried back to the pile for another stone. He was just about to fling it down onto the Slavs, too, when an arrow hit it and tumbled, spinning, up over his head.
“Thank you, Lord,” he said sincerely, and let the stone fall. Had he not been holding it, or had he already dropped it, the arrow would have pierced him. That was another of those chances of war that did not repay close contemplation.
“Here, pick something they’ll feel,” Rufus said. His stringy, corded muscles bunched as he stooped and seized a rock George reckoned Hercules would have had trouble lifting. Up it came, though. Maybe fighting frenzy impelled the old man. Or maybe, George thought with no small awe, St. Demetrius was once more lending a subtle hand in the fighting. How else could Rufus carry that weight?
George was not the only militiaman to stare as the veteran brought the stone to the edge of the wall and cast it down. Not only did he hear a crash when it hit, but also hoarse screams.
“There’s a tortoise with a broken shell!” John shouted.
Not far down the wall, a couple of Romans lifted a cauldron from a hastily lighted fire, wrapping rags around their hands so the hot iron handles would not bum them. They tipped the boding water in the cauldron over the edge of the wall. George capered in glee at the shrieks that rose immediately afterwards.
The Romans did not get off scot-free there. One of them dropped his half of the cauldron, howling in pain and clutching at the shoulder from which an arrow had suddenly sprouted. “Get down into the city and have that seen to,” his comrade said. The militiaman made his way toward the stairs, hand still clapped over the wound and bright blood running out between his fingers.
Rufus pawed through the pile of stones, casting aside with such fervor those he didn’t care for, everyone nearby had to step lively to keep toes from getting smashed. When he finally found the one he wanted, George stared in astonishment. He had no idea why, or for that matter how, people had carried it up to the top of the wall in the first place. It looked too big and heavy for any two men to lift, let alone one.
Rufus took hold of it. His lips moved silently. Prayer? Curse? George couldn’t tell. The veteran strained-- whatever power was in him, he was pushing it as far as it would go, maybe farther. No. Up came the stone, not so smoothly as the one before but up nonetheless. Staggering a little, Rufus got it to the edge of the wall, set it down so he could pant for a moment like a winded dog, and then, with what looked to be all the strength he had in him, shoved it off.
George heard a crash, but no screams. The feel of the pounding under his feet changed subtly. “I don’t think anyone in that tortoise is left alive,” he said in tones of wonder. “You just wrecked it.”
“Good,” Rufus told him. If this was a miracle, it didn’t leave him confused and dazed, as he had been when St. Demetrius spoke through him. Instead, he sounded ready to pick up another stone and heave it down onto the Slavs. That was exactly what he did, though the one he chose this time was small enough not to leave George wondering whether he’d had divine help handling it.
After casting another stone at the Slavs (and not worrying in the least whether he was without sin), George traded arrows with some of the archers down on the ground. When he was shooting--or flinching from shafts flying far too close to his face--he thought about the impossibly large stone Rufus had lifted. Impossibly? He shrugged. Maybe not. Men in battle could do strange things. He’d already seen that for himself, limited as his experience was. If he believed half the tales he’d heard--
There stood Rufus, solid and bandy-legged, about the least likely man (or so anyone with sense would think) through whom God would choose to work a miracle-- but God had already worked one through him, no matter what any man with sense would think. So maybe He had worked two.
“You, George! You fallen asleep there?” the subject of the shoemaker’s musings demanded in his rough soldier’s Latin. “You’ve got no business doing that. John hasn’t been telling his jokes up here, after all.”
“Stick out your tongue,” John told him. Rufus did, a gesture more contemptuous than obedient. A physician would have been proud of John’s wise, thoughtful nod. The words that followed, though, were less than Hippocratic: “I remember George said he was missing one of his files. Now I see where it’s turned up.”
“You go on like that, see where you turn up in a little while,” Rufus retorted. “Somebody else doesn’t do it for me, I’ll put you there.”
John picked up a heavy stone and made as if to throw it at the veteran. “Here--catch,” he said, but then hurled it down on the Slavs.
“Brothers, the lot of us,” George said. He shot at a Slav--and missed. After some halfhearted blasphemy, he went on, “How are we doing? The wall doesn’t feel so much as if termites are nibbling at it.” Were his feet feeling what he wished them to feel, or had the Slavs’ efforts to undermine the wall really slowed down?
Rufus said, “I think you’re right. Lord knows I hope you’re right. But I tell you this--right now I’m not going to stick my head out and look down to the bottom of the wall to find out if you’re right.”
“That’s sensible,” George said. “I’m not, either.”
“It is sensible,” John said, apparently to no one in particular. “How did he ever manage to come up with it?”
“When this fighting is done--” Rufus began in a voice thick with menace. But he broke off, shaking his head. “Ahh, what’s the use? I should have known better than to try making a soldier out of you. But near as I can guess, we may drive the Slavs off this time, but there’s never going to be a time when all the fighting’s done.”
“I pray you’re wrong,” George said, “but I think you’re right.”
“It’s as sure as burying your money back of your house,” Rufus said. He looked around. A couple of militiamen were lugging a great jar of water up the stairs to pour it into the cauldron to heat. More men were carrying stones in upside-down shields.
“Are we going to have enough things to throw down to make them give over before they bring down a stretch of wall?” John asked--the question on everyone’s mind.
“If God is kind, we will,” George answered. So far as he could tell--with the possible exception of Rufus’ lifting those two enormous stones--the fight here was of men against men, not of God against the powers of the Slavs and Avars. He’d meant what he said as a general wish, then, not as a prayer for divine intervention.
Rufus picked up another stone, braved looking out over the wall in that storm of arrows to see where it would do the most good, and threw it down. The crash that came back was particularly loud and satisfying. “That one went where it was supposed to,” John said.
“You’d best believe it did,” Rufus said, flexing his elderly biceps and twisting into a pose that put George in mind of the statue of an athlete from pagan times: or rather, of something the pagan sculptors had never made, the statue of a former athlete as a grandfather.
It put John in mind of something else, “You go prancing around like that anywhere near the baths, they’ll drag you off to gaol for unnatural vice,” he said.
“The most unnatural vice I’ve ever tried is putting up with you,” Rufus said. That prompted John to pull out an arrow and shoot it at the Slavs. Rufus smiled, probably because he’d hoped to accomplish something on that order.
George threw another rock down on the Slavs himself. The pile of stones on the walkway was much smaller than it had been. Men were still bringing more up to the top of the wall, but not nearly so fast as they were being used. That pile and the others like it had been accumulated over days; they couldn’t be maintained when they were used up in hours. If the defenders ran out before the Slavs had had all they could stand .. .
“If we can’t drive them off like this, will we have to sortie?” he asked Rufus.
“Maybe so,” the veteran said unhappily. “I don’t want to do it, you understand, but I don’t want the wall crumbling under me, either.”
Methodically, almost mechanically, the defenders kept dropping stones and boding water onto the Slavs. They knew they were hurting the foe; the screams and shrieks from the ground said as much. But war, as George had discovered, was not merely a business of hurting the enemy. It meant hurting him more than he could endure. Were the Romans doing that? The Slavs had already shown they could endure a good deal.
Grunting, George lifted and flung another stone. The pile was small indeed now, hardly higher than his knees. Once it was gone, what then? Rushing out and fighting the Slavs seemed a better choice than helplessly staying up here and waiting for the wall to fall down, but neither alternative struck the shoemaker as highly desirable.
“Shall we sortie?” he asked, as he’d done before.
“If we have to, we have to.” Rufus’ face twisted. “Damn me to hell if I like the idea, but damn me to hell if I like the idea of letting the cursed Slavs do whatever they please, either.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” George said. “When the other choice is worse, a bad choice can turn good.”
The militia captain made no reply for a moment. His lips moved as he worked that through. “You’re right,” he said at last. He cocked his head to one side. “You managed to put enough twist on that to make a priest happy.” Not sure whether he was being complimented or mocked, George maintained a discreet silence.
And then John, who left no doubt when he was insulting someone--as he often was--let out a howl of pure joy. “They’re running away!” he shouted a moment later.
George and Rufus shouted, too. George slapped the veteran on the back. Rufus not only endured the familiarity, he grinned wide enough to show off the worn and snaggled teeth still in his mouth. The world soon interfered with that little stretch of unexpected delight, as the world has a way of doing. Rufus, remembering he was a captain, shouted, “Let’s give the bastards a going-away present. Grab your bows, lads!”
Along with the rest of the men on the walls, George shot at the Slavs till they fled out of range. As the warriors from the tortoises withdrew, the archers who had supported them also moved away from the wall. That let the Romans peer down at the ground without the risk of taking an arrow in the face.
“We dented them,” George said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one appeared. It was, in some instances, only literal truth; many of the big, reinforced shields the Slavs had brought up against the walls of Thessalonica were broken, while others had their iron facings badly battered.
A good many dented men lay under the wall, too, men whose shields had proved unable to protect them from the stones and arrows the Romans had showered down on them. A couple of them were almost as badly smashed as poor Father Gregory had been after the Slavic water-demigod hurled him to the cobblestones by the cistern. This too was war. George wished Theodore had come up on the wall beside him, to see the reality of what he thought so great and glorious.