Ampelus shrugged. The satyr’s erection jounced up and down. Nephele’s reaction might have been amusement or disgust; George had no practice reading the sounds centaurs made. After a moment, Ampelus said, “He give me wine once. I save him, hoping he maybe give me wine again. But he has no wine this time.” As nothing else had done, that made its phallus droop for a moment.

“As well that he have none!” Nephele exclaimed. “Wine for you satyrs is as it is for men: a little foolishness, a little sleep, a little headache, and then all in readiness to be done over again. Not so for us, whom the slightest taste of the blood of the grape inflameth to madness.”

“Wine is sweet,” Ampelus protested. “Wine is good.”

“Aye--for thee,” Crotus said. “When the scent of the fermenting vintage wafteth from the villages wherein the men trample the grapes …” A look of terrible longing filled the centaurs face. “I needs must hie me off deep into the woods then, lest instead I rush forward to guzzle and . . .” It fell silent again. The day was chilly. Sudden sweat sprang out on its forehead even so.

“Will someone please take me to one of these villages?” George asked. “Maybe I can find a way to get back into Thessalonica. If I can get down to the seaside, if I can find a boat. . .” He didn’t think any of that was likely to happen, but it was the best his imagination had been able to do.

Satyr and centaurs ignored the request. In that disconcerting baritone, Nephele asked, “How is it, George of Thessalonica, you have no fear of our kind, and neither seek you to compel us to flee your presence with signs against which we may not stand?”

“Why would I do that?” George asked in return. If the female centaur thought he wasn’t afraid, that only proved the pagan powers were a long way from omniscient. Hoping Nephele wouldn’t notice he was responding to only half the question, he went on, “Ampelus saved my life. He didn’t have to do that. I owe him a debt.”

“Wine!” the centaur cried. “Jars and jars and jars of wine!”

“We stand in need of a better bargain than that,” Crotus said stiffly.

“Is no such thing,” Ampelus said, but then corrected itself: “Is maybe one, but cannot bring jars and jars and jars of pretty women.”

Nephele set hands on . . . no, not on its hips, but the place where the narrowness of that human waist swelled out to meet the equine body that carried it. “Enough of japes and jests and fribbles,” the female centaur declared, giving the satyr a severe look that altogether failed to dismay it. When Nephele went on, it was to George: “So many of your fellows would raise against us that which we cannot face or deny our existence altogether.”

“Aye.” Bitterness edged Crotus’ voice. “And should the denial become universal, it becometh also sober truth: another reason for our clinging to the peaks and other lands wherein our being is more certain.”

George had never wondered what the growth of Christianity looked like from the viewpoint of creatures pushed to the wall by the new faith. Along with other such abstract questions, though, that one would have to wait. He found a question anything but abstract: “If you have these weaknesses, how do you propose to come down and fight the powers of the Slavs and Avars?”

“We need help.” Nephele spoke unhappily, but without hesitation. “Thus your coming is welcome, even if Ampelus aided it for reasons of his own rather than to promote the general welfare.”

“I do what I do,” Ampelus said. “I like to do what I do.” The satyr rocked his hips forward and back again, aiming that enormous phallus at Nephele. The female centaur ignored it. George wondered whether that sprang from remarkable aplomb or standards of comparison different from those he was used to using.

“What is your craft, mortal?” Crotus asked. “Are you by any chance a priest of. . . ?” Again, the male used a pause to do what it could not.

That almost made George laugh. “No,” he answered. “I’m only a shoemaker.” That sounded as ordinary as any trade possibly could, till he realized none of the beings with whom he was talking had any need for what he did. He shook his head like a man caught between dream and reality; the difference of his new companion’s feet brought home to him that dream was reality here.

“ ‘Tis too much to be hoped for that any priest should find our kind fit for aught but exorcisms,” Nephele said. “So many woods and streams and paths barred to us on account of words from that book.” It glared at George as if that were his fault.

In a way, he supposed it was. He was a Christian man. His belief gave the priests some part of their power, just as lack of belief threatened to doom centaurs and satyrs and other failing creatures of pagan days. But-- He brightened. “I think I know a priest who would come here,” he said.

He wondered what sort of penance Bishop Eusebius would set Father Luke for associating with these beings. He did not wonder whether Father Luke would associate with them if it meant saving Thessalonica. He was sure the priest would come. Which left the next question: how to get him to come?

“Of necessity, ‘twill be you delivering word he is wanted,” Crotus said. “Saints hem Nephele and me and the rest of our land so close, it were the end for any of us to venture forth from these hills, as hath been previously intimated to you. Being of ruder substance, Ampelus and his fellows may fare farther abroad more readily, but cannot think to enter into the city where so many are of your opinion.”

“Mm.” George rubbed his chin. “Since it’s surrounded by the Slavs and Avars, I can’t think about entering it, either. Can you help me come close enough--maybe through the hills my land don’t usually travel anymore-- to give me some chance of getting in?”

“It may be so,” the male centaur answered. “I cannot speak with certainty, not here, not yet. But the thing must be essayed, lest all fail.”

“New things in woods, things in those hills,” Ampelus added fearfully. “Things with wings, to spy and see. Things with teeth and claws, to bite and kill.”

“You can speak of them, can’t you?” George asked. The satyr and the two centaurs nodded. Watching Nephele nod was worth the candle, even if the female’s voice was as deep as his. Refusing to let himself be distracted, he went on, “I’m surprised you don’t want to see those powers win at Thessalonica. They’re more your kind than . . .” Now he used silence to indicate God, Whom he would not name here.

“Not so,” Crotus said, “for their people lack all knowledge of and belief in our kind. Did they win, did they defeat even that which hath reduced us to our present estate, they would on the instant then proceed to hunt us to extinction: not a slow fading but a quick and bitter end.”

“He hath courage, to speak on what reboundeth not to his advantage,” Nephele said, tempering the compliment a moment later by adding, “Courage, or a signal want of good sense.”

“How soon can you try to get me back into the city?” George asked. “My family--” He broke off, thinking of his family for the first time since Menas slammed the postern gate in his face. As far as they knew, he was probably dead. He hoped someone had seen him escape into the woods, but even if someone had, so what? The most reasonable guess was that the Slavs would have hunted him down regardless. Had he been up on the wall watching someone else run, that was what he would have believed.

Crotus and Nephele looked toward Ampelus, who could approach Thessalonica more closely than they. The satyr nervously masturbated itself. “Not be easy,” it said, its rusty voice worried. “People round the city, things in the woods--”

George looked at the sky. The sun would soon be down, hurrying toward the southwestern horizon on this cold near-winter day. “Would it be easier” --by which he meant safer-- “to travel at night?”