“Amen!” The response came loud and strong. George joined in along with everyone else. Nobody in Thessalonica was crazy enough not to want to be delivered from the Slavs and Avars. Even the Jews were probably praying for that deliverance. The Slavs and the Avars wouldn’t hate them for being Jews, but would hate them for being Romans. The Jews got a poor bargain, any which way.

Eusebius stooped and picked up something that lay behind the altar. He held up a large iron grappling hook. “With defenses such as this, we shall turn aside the engines of the barbarians. Let us pray virtue into them.”

“Amen!” the worshipers cried out again.

“The Lord God shall see that we do all we can in our own behalf, and, being merciful toward us and filled with loving kindness, shall grant us a measure of His strength as well.” Eusebius waved the grappling hook about. If he’d gone fishing with it, he might have snagged a whale. But whales were not its intended prey; it was made for catching rams and their sheds.

Just for a moment, George thought the grappling hook glowed with a light that did not spring from the candles and lamps in the basilica of St. Demetrius. Before he could be sure he hadn’t imagined it, Bishop Eusebius set down the hook with a clank of iron and held up another. Again, he and the Thessalonicans prayed. Again, George thought he saw a glow surround the hook with light apparently not from any natural source. Again, he admitted to himself that he couldn’t be sure.

Another clank of iron heralded Eusebius’ setting down the second hook and picking up a third. All in all, the congregation must have sought to pray virtue into at least a dozen grappling hooks. George wondered how the bishop kept track of which ones had been prayed over and which hadn’t. Did one of them, by some mischance, have a double dose of divine power prayed into it while another went without? Or could Eusebius sense the difference between a grappling hook the Lord had been invited to fortify and one He had not?

“When the enemy attacks, we shall all stand fast,” Eusebius declared. “The liturgy is accomplished. Go in peace, but knowing you shall be tested in the fire of war.”

“We’ll smash them, won’t we, Father?” Theodore said eagerly as they walked out of the church. “God will help us.”

“I hope so.” George’s eyes went to the ruins of the ciborium, and to the smoke stains still blackening the columns and ceiling nearby. God had helped then, dousing the flames and speaking through Rufus to get the people up onto the walls when the Slavs first appeared in large numbers.

But, even as he walked across the square to the meeting place on which he’d agreed with Irene, he heard drums thundering outside Thessalonica: not drums calling men to battle--alarms would have come from the wall had that happened--but more likely summoning the gods and demons of the Slavs and Avars to fortify the onslaught that was to come. Men against men, walls against siege engines, God against gods …

“There’s Mother.” Theodore pointed. George waved to Irene. Theodore, having spotted her, cast his eyes on some of the other women--younger, unmarried women-- coming out of the basilica. Some people might have disapproved of such concupiscent thoughts on the heels of the divine liturgy. In theory, George disapproved of them, too. In practice, he remembered having done the same thing when he was a youth. And, for that matter, he still looked at pretty girls when he got the chance, even if he had no intention of doing anything but looking. He remembered the one he’d seen when the garrison marched away.

That, unfortunately, made him remember the garrison had marched away, something he would sooner have forgotten. The militiamen had kept Thessalonica safe so far, but the Slavs and Avars hadn’t yet seriously assaulted the walls. Soon--maybe as soon as tomorrow--they would. Having a couple of thousand professionals in place alongside people like him would have made him rest easier of nights.

“Well, let’s go home,” Irene said when she’d made her way through the crowd to George’s side. Then she spoke to Sophia, in a low tone George didn’t think he was meant to hear: “Don’t stare at them that way, dear. You’re supposed to be--reserved.”

“Mother!” Sophia’s reply hit the indignant high note every young woman seems to find by instinct. Her ears turned pink.

George knew young women eyed young men, too. He smiled to himself; by the way Irene addressed her daughter, that was supposed to be a secret of sorts. He shrugged. One of these days, if he found the right chance, maybe he’d tease his wife about it.

“I always feel better coming out of church after the liturgy,” Irene said. “It reminds me of how much in God’s hands I am.”

“Yes, Bishop Eusebius said the same thing,” George answered, and let it go at that. His own faith, while real, was harder to kindle.

But after a few more paces, Irene said, “While Bishop Eusebius was praying over those hooks, though, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Slavs and Avars were doing at the same time.”

“Yes,” George said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice. He set a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I’m glad our parents thought we were a good match for each other. They were right in more ways than they knew. I was thinking the same thing myself.”

“Were you?” Irene walked on a little farther. “Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was surprised, not after all those years you wouldn’t. And since I’m not surprised, anyhow--”

They both laughed, easy and happy with each other. Theodore and Sophia looked at them not quite as if they’d suddenly sprouted second heads, but certainly as if they were peculiar. Maybe they were. George thought about Dactylius and Claudia. He would have been astonished if they knew this camaraderie. But then, a lot of things about that marriage astonished him.

“Do you know,” Irene observed, “I think Dactylius and Claudia would have been happier together if one of her babies had lived.”

“You’re right--he’s said as much.” George let it go at that. Had his wife been watching Theodore and Sophia watching them, too? If she had, her thoughts had gone from there in exactly the same direction as had his. Coincidence? George didn’t believe it. It had happened too many times. Whatever it was, he liked it.

George and Sabbatius had the dawn-to-midmorning shift the next day. As was his habit, George reached the stretch of wall near the Litaean Gate a quarter-hour or so early. That gave him the chance to shoot the breeze with Rufus and Paul, who’d been up there to watch the Slavs and Avars through the late hours of the night, and to see for himself what the besiegers might be up to.

He also saw something new: one of the grappling hooks Bishop Eusebius and the congregation had blessed in the basilica of St. Demetrius. Attached to a good length of chain, it lay on the walkway above the gate. Rufus said, “They’ll try and break in where it’s easiest, same as we would. They won’t try knocking down stones if knocking down timbers will do the job for them.”

“That makes sense,” George agreed. He peered out toward the encampments of the Slavs and Avars. A light mist kept him from telling what they were doing. He turned his head back toward the east. Here came the sun, rising red through the ground fog. Before long, it would bum the fog away. George wondered whether he really wanted to see the full range of the barbarians’ armaments after all.

Paul yawned. “I’m for bed,” he said. Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading up to the wall. “And here comes Sabbatius. Since I’m not leaving us shorthanded--” The taverner started for the stairway.

“Wait,” Rufus said. He spoke rough army-Latin, which Paul, who used Greek by choice, didn’t follow at once. Rufus ran after him and grabbed him. “Wait, curse you!” he said, shouting now. He still spoke Latin. “Don’t you hear? They’re moving out there.”