When the crews manning those catapults stopped shooting--perhaps because they ran out of stones, perhaps merely because they saw they were doing no good-- George and Paul the tavern-keeper solemnly clasped hands. “First mug of wine is free if you come to my place tonight,” Paul said, which struck George as a fitting enough tribute to what they’d been through together.

The aftermath put him in mind of nothing so much as what happened after a bad storm: he and his comrades on the wall looked around exclaiming at the damage that had been done and sharing one common refrain: “It could have been worse.” The disappointed bearing of the Slavs out beyond the wall gave mute testimony to how bad it could have been. They kept right on shooting arrows after the catapults left off trying to smash down the fortifications.

Paul shot back at the Slavs. “As long as they’re just sending arrows our way, I’m not going to worry,” he said.

“Neither will I,” George agreed. “They won’t get anywhere that way.”

They looked at each other. “We never would have talked like this before the siege started,” Paul said.

“I sure wouldn’t,” George replied, “never in my life. I remember what it felt like the first time a Slav shot at me. No one had ever done that before. But now--you’re right, arrows aren’t worth getting excited about.”

Rufus, for once, had not been up on the wall when trouble started. He got there a little while after the catapults had stopped flinging stones at the city. “Busy time you had, looks like,” he said, with which George could hardly disagree. The veteran peered down at the stones at the base of the wall. He let out a loud whistle. “Looks like they cut the tips off some mountains and tossed ‘em this way,” he remarked.

“That’s what it felt like,” George said, and Paul nodded.

“I believe it,” Rufus said. “I’ve been bombarded. It’s not what I’d care to do for fun, thank you very much.” He raised his voice so the militiamen along a big stretch of Thessalonica’s wall could hear him: “Let’s get this matting pulled up and stacked again. We may need it again, you know.”

As George hauled the lengths of thick cloth back over the wall, he said, “I didn’t see it helped very much.”

“It doesn’t help very much,” Rufus agreed. “But it does help some. You can’t know beforehand whether putting it down or not putting it down will make the difference between a wall that stays up and one that doesn’t, for no one hit makes a wall fall down. Since you can’t say beforehand, you don’t take the chance. You didn’t take the chance, and you were right.”

George knew Rufus wasn’t praising him personally, but praise from the veteran, even if aimed at all the defenders, felt good. Raising an eyebrow, the shoemaker asked, “Where were you, anyway? Hardly seemed like a proper fight without you running around up here screaming at us.”

“You’ll pay for that,” Rufus said, though he didn’t sound angry. “Where was I?” He peered this way and that. “I’ll tell you and Paul, but I don’t want it all over the city. I was closeted with Bishop Eusebius, is where I was. We’re trying to figure out how we’re doing.”

“All right, that makes sense,” George said, and then, as Rufus didn’t say anything more, “Well, how are we doing?”

“Fair,” the veteran answered. “I’d say fair would be a . . . fair way to put it.” Ignoring George’s groan and Paul’s sour look, he went on, “We’re low on a lot of things. We don’t have as much food or firewood as we ought to, and we aren’t as good with what we do have as we might be. Food and firewood and other things, I mean.” He pointed to the heaps of stones on the walkway. “We haven’t replenished those the way we should, for instance. The Slavs and Avars might try tortoises again, but nobody’s worrying about it. We have so many things to worry about; we can’t keep track of all of them at once, even if that’s what we need to do most. And it is.”

“We need a real general,” Paul observed. “You’ve worked wonders, Rufus, don’t take me wrong, but you never tried keeping track of a whole city before. Eusebius is used to doing that, but he doesn’t know what all soldiers need to keep track of.”

“You’re not as foolish as you look,” Rufus said, to which Paul, one of the least foolish looking men in Thessalonica, responded with a dry chuckle. Rufus continued, “A lot of what we talked about was just that: what all needed doing and who would take charge of doing it.”

“What was the rest?” George asked. Again, Rufus did not appear forthcoming. George said, “Come on, you just told us not to gossip. Now out with it.”

Rufus let out a long sigh. Then he said, “Well, it’s not anything you haven’t seen for yourselves, and it’s not anything you couldn’t figure out for yourselves, either. The bishop’s not happy about how strong the powers of the Slavs and Avars have turned out to be.”

“He’s not happy?” Paul exclaimed. “I’m not happy, either. If they were mild little powers, the way everybody hoped, the Slavs and Avars would have given up on the siege a long time ago.”

“I tried to tell him,” George said. “Before we saw even a single Slav around the city, I tried to tell him. He was polite to me, and made as if he believed what I was saying, but it must not have sunk in till he saw it for himself.”

“Life is like that,” Rufus said. “If we really learned things from what other people told us, we’d all be smarter and richer than we are right now, and fathers wouldn’t want to clout their sons over the head with rocks about the time the brats started shaving.”

“Amen to that,” George said with a laugh. “And speaking of brats who haven’t been shaving long, I think I’m going to bring Theodore up onto the wall with me next time it’s my shift. He knows how to shoot a bow, so he won’t be altogether useless up here, and it’s about time he has a look at the way this particular part of the world works.”

“Aye, go ahead and do that,” Rufus told him. “First battle, first brothel--those are the memories that’ll stick with you, even when you get old. I ought to know about that, eh?”

“If I’m as hale as you are when I have your years, I won’t be doing too bad,” George said. He hoped he managed to pile on as many years as Rufus had, in whatever shape he might be at that time. The veteran had to be getting close to his threescore and ten, but George had seen again and again how much vitality he still had in him. George caught himself in a yawn. He didn’t have all that much vitality himself these days.

Theodore flew up the stairs to the top of the wall. George plodded after him. The shoemaker was still feeling anything but vital. Maybe Rufus should have taken Theodore up on the wall, not the youth’s tired old father.

When George got to the top and looked out toward the encampment of the Slavs and Avars, Theodore was already taking aim at the first Slav he saw who wasn’t impossibly far out of arrow range. George made him rum the bow aside before any of the other militiamen had to come rushing over and do it for him.

“But, Father!” Theodore exclaimed, aghast. “That’s the enemy!” By the way he spoke, the skinny, draggled-looking Slav at whom he wanted to shoot might have been the general commanding the barbarians, not a tired soldier who looked to want nothing so much as a mug of wine and a place close by the fire to sleep.

“When the Slavs shoot at us, we shoot at them,” George said patiently. “When they don’t shoot, we don’t do much shooting, either. For one thing, it wastes arrows. For another, if we start shooting at them, they’ll start shooting at us, and more of us are liable to get hurt. If they’re quiet, we’re happy enough to let ‘em stay that way.”

Everyone within earshot nodded. Theodore proved the point Rufus had made a couple of days before, saying, “But if they’re the enemy, we need to kill them. How can we kill them if we don’t shoot at them?”