“For this we thank you,” Crotus said, coming up behind him. Where George had been warming his hands in front of the fire, the male centaur bent forward so it could beat the bare crown of its head. Brushmaker. . . Hatmaker. George added to his mental list of artisans who might be useful here among these creatures of an outworn creed.

What did creatures of an outworn creed do about breakfast? At home, George was ready to face the day after bread with olive oil and a cup of wine. His chances of getting any of those things here in this sylvan encampment didn’t look good.

What he got were sun-dried apples and apricots, washed down with more water from that stream. It was cold enough to make his teeth ache, but almost as sweet as the fruit the centaurs gave him.

Once he’d eaten and drunk, he asked, “Shall we go on to one of those villages now?”

“If you be so eager to return to your own kind, we can do’t for you,” Crotus said, “however wary of villages we may be on account of the temptations of the vintage brewed therein. But if you would liefer bring us this holy man of whom you spoke not long ago, were it not wiser to seek to return to the town whence you came?”

“If you think you can get me back inside Thessalonica in spite of the Slavs and Avars all around, I’m game, but I don’t see how you’ll do it, especially since you can’t come close to the city yourselves.”

Crotus frowned. In a way, George knew a certain amount of intellectual pride at having perplexed the supernatural being. In another way, he wished the centaur had had an easy answer waiting. Crotus said, “We shall do all in our power to aid you, the more so as the holy man seemeth to be of the sort the situation requireth. That there may be risk in this course, both from the new-come powers and from the one against which we cannot stand--this we understand. We weigh here dangers one against another. In no direction standeth none.”

“I think you’re right about that,” George said slowly. He thought for a little while himself, then said, “All right, if you think you can get me down to Thessalonica and into the city, we’d better try it. And the sooner, the better.”

“There I deem you have bitten through the meat straight to the bone,” the male centaur said. “My land is but rarely inclined to take quick action, the passage of time being of small import to us. Thus it was that. . what you follow established itself in our land, we feeling no urgency toward expelling … it till too late. And now we are all but banished ourselves. May we prove wise enough to learn from one error and not commit a second of like sort.”

“People don’t often learn from their mistakes,” George said. If these immortal creatures did, they deserved to be reckoned demigods.

“Nor satyrs, either, they being prisoners to their lusts,” Crotus answered. “We dare hope ourselves the wiser. We are no longer wine-bibbers, having learnt from sore experience how such enrageth us.”

They could have stood around for the next several days, talking about the ramifications of moving and not moving. George realized Crotus would talk about ramifications for the next several days, and not notice the flowing time. Harshly, the shoemaker said, “Let’s get moving, then, if we’re ever going to.”

“I cry huzzah for mortal celerity,” Crotus said. “On to Thessalonica!” It went back to the lean-to it shared with Nephele and talked with its mate for a while, then with the rest of the centaurs, and at last with the satyrs, who seemed to require less in the way of instruction and debate than its own kind. However much it tried to hurry, more than an hour went by before George, all the centaurs (even little Demetrius), and the satyrs started down from the hills toward the city.

In purely physical terms, going down was easier than coming up had been. But purely physical terms were far from the only ones that mattered. For one thing, George was not entirely certain he remained in the hills he knew. For another, after a while he began to feel as if every step he took required a distinct effort of will. When he remarked on that, Nephele tossed its head and replied in that disconcerting baritone:” “ ‘Tis but a cantrip of the barbarians circling round the city, and hardly one of potency overwhelming.” Its sniff declared the Slavs and Avars should have done better.

The spell’s potency might not have been overwhelming to the female centaur, but it was of different substance from George, who found the going ever harder. And then, suddenly, he had no trouble at all setting one foot in front of the other, and went along as ready as he might have done on the street outside his shop in the city. “That’s better,” he said.

Only when the words were out of his mouth did he notice that his companions had stopped, as if they’d walked into Thessalonica’s wall. After a moment, Ampelus and Stusippus gathered themselves and came toward him. The centaurs needed longer than the satyrs, and advanced as if pushing their way through glue, not air.

“What’s wrong?” George asked. “Did that cursed Avar priest make the spell stronger? He’s not to be taken lightly, that one.”

“The barbarian?” Crotus had to fight to get the words out one by one. “Nay, that was naught of his doing. Meseems you are prayed for inside the city toward which we fare.”

George thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand Of course he was prayed for back in Thessalonica. His wife and children would be in St. Elias’ now--if they weren’t in St. Demetrius’. His friends would be in one church or another, too, if they weren’t up on the wall.

And their prayers had succeeded in weakening the spells the Slavs and Avars had been using to keep him from approaching Thessalonica. The only trouble with that was, the prayers also seemed to have weakened the supernatural beings aiding him. That wasn’t good. He had doubts about being able to get down from the lulls with the centaurs and satyrs helping him. Without them, he had no doubts: he wouldn’t make it.

He saw how vulnerable they were to the power of God. As a Christian, that made him proud. As someone trying to save his own neck, it worried him. If he was going to keep on being proud, he hoped he’d soon be able to start worrying less.

“The weakness passeth,” Xanthippe said after a bit, tossing its head in an impatient gesture a horse without human excrescences might have made. “The petition, methinks, was not aimed straight against us, else the hurt had been greater.”

Gaining strength with her, the other centaurs also came on. Down the game tracks they went with the satyrs and George. He was thoughtful and quiet. The prayer had surely been aimed at the Slavs and Avars. It had weakened their spell, to be sure, but he doubted it had done them the harm it had his companions. That meant those companions were weaker than the powers of the Slavs and Avars. He’d known as much, but didn’t care to be reminded of it.

Little by little, the shock of God’s power wore away. The satyrs took to playing with themselves again. That amused Demetrius, the immature centaur, who, having seen such things for only a few centuries, still found them funny. George didn’t laugh. He took the masturbation as a sign the satyrs remained alarmed, even if at the Slavs and Avars, not at the Lord.

Smiling like a good dog, the first wolf stepped out from between two trees half a bowshot in front of George. It was, obviously, no ordinary wolf. It was bigger than a wolf had any business being, its teeth were longer and sharper, its very stance fiercer and more alert than an ordinary wolfs could have been.

Ampelus, who had been walking alongside of George, sprang nimbly back with a gasp of fright. The shoemaker gasped, too, and made the sign of the cross. He’d already done it before he remembered the company he was keeping. But the satyr had said he’d watched a Christian priest make the holy sign when confronted by a Slavic wolf-demon. It hadn’t been aimed at Ampelus, and so had had no effect on him.