“I am Vucji Pastir,” the old man said, his voice sounding in George’s mind rather than his ears: “the shepherd of the wolves.” His eyes, which shone almost as brightly as his beard and eyebrows, seemed ready to pop from his head. Though he stood in the moonlight, he cast no shadow.

“I am a good Christian man,” George said. “Begone, evil spirit!” He made the sign of the cross.

That had pained the wolf-demon at the start of the daylight fight, even if it hadn’t routed the creature. Vucji Pastir smiled. When he did, he showed his teeth, which were as sharp and pointed as any wolf s. The holy sign did him no harm. He raised his right hand. Off in the distance, howling rose. “My sheep, they come for you,” he said.

George was not inclined to wait for them. He rushed at the shepherd of the wolves, slashing as he came. His blade shortened the Slavic demigod’s beard by several inches. The severed hairs glowed as brightly as they had while still attached to their master.

Vucji Pastir bellowed in surprise and anger and--fear? He vanished, leaving behind the results of George’s impromptu barbering. “Bravely did!” Ampelus cried. “Now we can get away.”

“No,” George said. “Now we can go on.” He snatched up the tuft of shining green hairs. “And now we have a holy relic--no, an unholy relic, I suppose--of our own. If that ugly thing is the shepherd of the wolves, they should pay attention to his beard.”

“Yes--when they eat you, they not eat the beard,” the satyr said gloomily. But it went on with George instead of turning back as it plainly would rather have done.

They had not gone far before a wolf-demon snarled at them. Instead of slashing at it with his sword, George thrust the fragment of Vucji Pastir s beard in its face. It let out a startled yip, then a doglike yelp of greeting. Having the bit of beard in his possession made George a shepherd of wolves in his own right.

“See, I told you so,” he said to Ampelus--a privilege he would not have taken with Irene. But--God be praised!--he wasn’t married to the satyr. The wolf-demon rolled onto its belly, then placed itself at George’s left heel, exactly as a well-trained dog would have done if it was going for a walk. In the moonlight, the shoemaker grinned at Ampelus. “Come on--we’ve got our own escort.”

Warily, the satyr moved closer to the wolf. The wolf accepted Ampelus as a friend of George’s. “Strange business,” the satyr said, and stroked itself for reassurance.

They had not gone far before another fierce wolf-demon tried to bar their way. Before George could thrust his fluffy talisman at it, the first wolf, the one he’d tamed with Vucji Pastir’s whiskers, snarled--but at the newcomer, not at him. The second wolf-demon whined appeasingly and fell into place beside the one that had warned it.

“Maybe I’ll have the whole pack of them by the time we get to Thessalonica,” George said gaily. Ampelus didn’t answer, but he didn’t run away or masturbate, either, which meant he was happy enough.

And then, without warning, Vucji Pastir reappeared right beside George. The wolves stared at the Slavic demigod and the shoemaker, as if realizing they might have made a mistake. Vucji Pastir snatched back the bit of beard George had trimmed from him. He set it against the rest of his green whiskers; it grew fast to them almost at once. “Mine,” he said, and disappeared again.

George thought he was a dead man. By the way Ampelus moaned, the satyr expected the wolves to tear them to pieces in the next instant, too. But they didn’t. Some small part of Vucji Pastir’s glamour still clung to George. The wolves, however, did whine and growl when he tried to go forward. When he turned around and started uphill, the way he had come, they were silent.

“I think,” he said carefully, “we’d better head back.”

“See?” Ampelus said. “I told you so.”

“You’ll make someone a fine wife one day,” George snapped. The satyr laughed at him. He looked over his shoulder. The wolves were not tagging along at his heels, as they had before. That made him more glad than otherwise: sooner or later, they were going to figure out that he’d duped them. He didn’t want them anywhere near his heels then.

As things happened, he’d put most of a mile between himself and the wolves before a furious howling broke out at his back. They didn’t catch up with him and Ampelus before the two of them had returned to the encampment from which they’d set out. Nor did they prove willing to attack the centaurs there. After more hideous howls, they went away.

“I can’t go to Thessalonica in the daytime,” George muttered, “and I can’t go at night, either. What does that leave?” He didn’t think it left anything, but there had to be a way into the city. No--he wanted a way into the city. There was, unfortunately, all too often a difference between what he wanted and what there was.

X

A satyr named Ithys, whom George hadn’t met before, came into the camp the next morning. Where the satyrs and centaurs there moped, Ithys bounced and sparkled. “Tell me why,” Ampelus said, scowling, “or I throw something at you.”

“I tell you why.” Ithys leaped in the air from sheer high spirits. “Find woman in village--Lete. Give her all my loving. All my loving, I give to her.” He leaped again, like a happy billy goat.

That instantly raised the satyrs’ spirits, and their phalluses, though the centaurs stayed glum. “Tell me, tell me,” Stusippus exclaimed.

“I want to tell you,” Ithys said. “Yesterday, I see--”

“Tell me what you see,” Stusippus broke in.

“I try. I try. I tell the word” --logos, in Greek, could mean almost anything connected with speech and thought-- “if you not interrupting. You wait. Otherwise, I looking through you.” Ithys stood on its dignity, which was even more absurd than a dog standing on its hind legs. “First, I just see a face--”

“Then what?” This time Stusippus and Ampelus interrupted together.

“I get you, I think. I wave to her.” What Ithys waved was not a hand. “She want me.” The satyr preened. “I see her standing there. She set down her washering. She leaving home, her home. She not want to do it in road, but come out into trees. ‘Love me,’ I say. ‘Do. Please please me.’ She no ask me why. She hold me tight. We do and do and do.” Ithys panted at the memory. Ampelus and Stusippus panted, too. “Not a second time, not a third, not a fourth, not a fifth,” Ithys boasted. “She never say, ‘You can’t do that,’ like women sometimes do. When she finally have to go, ‘Any time at all,’ she say. She say, ‘I need you.’ I’ll be back, yes, yes, yes.”

Ampelus and Stusippus both sighed, jealousy and admiration perfectly mixed. “Nice someone happy,” Ampelus said. Stusippus nodded.

“Why all so gloomish here?” Ithys asked. “All you need is love.” The word the satyr used was related to love, anyhow.

“Need something different,” Ampelus answered, and went on to explain what George was doing in the camp and how the shoemaker and the satyrs and centaurs had tried and failed to reach Thessalonica.

Ithys stayed cheerful. “You not know lovely Lete well, no. You come in, I show you this, too. Maybe even show you maid.” The second part of the offer raised the satyrs’. . . interest. The first part made the centaurs pay attention at last.

“What meanest thou?” Nephele demanded.

The satyr talked for some time. If not explicit, it was interesting. Finally, it said, “You come with me. I show.” It started off, presumably toward the village. George, Crotus and Nephele, and the two other satyrs followed.

Lete, as far as George was concerned, might as well have been called Lethe, or Forgetfulness. Till he walked down its narrow, muddy, twisting main street, he would not have believed any such hamlet still existed in the Roman Empire in these modern, enlightened times.

He had known paganism still survived in the hills above Thessalonica. He had always taken that to mean, though, that in some of those isolated villages pagans still lived side by side with their Christian neighbors.