“What’s he doing?” Dactylius said fretfully. “Is he trying to drown us all?”
“No, I don’t think so,” George said. “The rain’s no worse than it was.” Before saying anything more, he paused and looked out from the wall. Something had changed. He was sure of that, but had trouble identifying what it was. And then, all at once, he laughed with glad surprise and bowed to Father Luke. “You did it, Your Reverence!”
“Did what?” Dactylius squawked. And then, a beat behind the other two, he understood. He too bowed before the priest.
“God gets the credit, not I,” Father Luke said. It was too wet for George to be sure his eyes twinkled, but he thought so. It was too wet all around Thessalonica, not just in the narrow circle to which the rain and lightning and thunder and rumbling had been confined. Now, like any proper storm, this one spread over the whole land.
“Give them what they want,” George said musingly.
“They must have been angry, penned up in such a narrow space.” Father Luke’s voice was amiable. Rainwater splashed off the tonsured crown of his head. “Now they can do as they like, where they like.”
“And if the Slavs and Avars don’t care for it--what a pity.” George laughed out loud. Even standing here soaking wet in the chilly rain, being alive felt monstrous good. He vastly admired cleverness, and what could be more clever than turning the Avars’ powers against the priest who had loosed them in the first place?
That, Father Luke had done. The storm of arrows that had joined the rainstorm to assail the militiamen on the walls of Thessalonica now died away: archery with wet bowstrings was as impossible for the Slavs as for the Romans. If the barbarians had planned anything more than sweeping the walls bare of defenders who could not shoot back, the sudden extension of the rain made them think again.
George peered out toward the Avar wizard who had summoned the thirteen thunder spirits and their lesser nimbler cousins to torment Thessalonica. He could see even less now than before, what with the rain extending all the way from him to the wizard. Was that angrily dancing figure the Avar, or just a Slav irked at having his sport spoiled? The shoemaker could not be certain.
Lightning crashed out of the heavens, striking near the dancer, whoever he was. The thunder that followed almost at once made George clap his hands to his ears. He felt as if he were standing inside God’s biggest bass drum. “Lord, have mercy!” he gasped.
“He has had mercy on us,” Father Luke said. “Without His help, our city would have fallen. But that wasn’t what you meant, was it?”
“Not exactly,” George said, his head still ringing.
“I hope the Lord had no mercy at all on that cursed Avar,” Dactylius exclaimed. “I hope that lightning bolt burned him to ashes, and I hope the ashes wash into the sea and are gone forever. That’s what I hope.” He stuck out his chin, daring the other two to disagree with him.
“I hope the Avars leave off attacking us and accept our faith,” Father Luke said. George snorted--that was a pretty sentiment, but how likely was it? Father Luke’s eyes twinkled again. After a moment, he went on, “That failing, Dactylius’ hope sounds good enough for me.”
“Do you think the lightning did cook the Avar priest?” George asked.
“What I hope and what I think are, I fear, two different things,” the priest replied. “Those are the powers with which he is intimately familiar; I think he will be able to bring them back under his control.”
George sighed. That made more sense than he wished it did. And Father Luke proved a good prophet, as George himself had, not long before. The rain soon eased off; the thunder stopped. A brisk breeze sprang up and blew away the storm clouds. “Here comes the sun,” George said happily. The sunshine was watery, but it was sunshine.
And there in the sunshine stood the Avar priest. Now that George got a good look at him, he saw his bizarre costume was soaked and, with any luck at all, ruined. The wizard stared toward the wall and shook a fist at-- no, not at George; it had to be at Father Luke. And the priest nodded back toward the Avar, recognizing the other’s skill and potence.
“You ought to blast him with an anathema,” Dactylius said.
“I do not think he fears my anathemas,” Father Luke said. “I do not think he fears any Christian power. Only greater acquaintance with us will teach him the true strength of the Lord.”
That was as temperate an answer as George could have looked for from any priest. But the Avars and the Romans had struggled against each other now for most of a decade. The war remained unwon on either side, which, he presumed, also meant neither God nor the gods and spirits of the Slavs and Avars had prevailed.
He might have been able to say something to that effect to Father Luke, as he could not have to Bishop Eusebius. But when he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth chattered so loudly, he could not. He and the rest of the militiamen on the wall had stood in the driving rain longer than the Avar wizard had done, and were more drenched than he. The breeze was chilly, too.
Father Luke took off his cloak, which was thick even if soaked, and wrapped it around Georges shoulders. “That’s all right, Your Reverence,” the shoemaker said, trying to shrug it off. “Here, you keep it.”
“I may not be the Son of God, to give up my life for mankind, but I should be a poor sort of priest indeed if I did not give up my cloak for a friend,” Father Luke said.
Just then, Dactylius sneezed. That gave George the excuse he needed to shed the cloak: he passed it to Dactylius. The jeweler tried to protest, too, but kept on sneezing. That let George and Father Luke ignore him, and left them both warm in spirit if less so in body.
John and Sabbatius came up onto the wall to replace George and Dactylius. So far as George knew, nobody had told Sabbatius that John was in the habit of making jokes about him. One of these days, Sabbatius would find out, and there would be trouble. Not wishing either to borrow or to cause the latter, George kept his mouth shut and headed for home.
When the shoemaker got to his shop, Irene said, “Wasn’t that a dreadful storm a couple of hours ago? I see you’re still all wet, poor thing, and the roof has a new leak in it, too. I put a bowl down under it to catch the drips.”
“It was quite a storm,” George agreed. If it had seemed nothing more than that to his wife, he was as well pleased.
“Storm like that, I’m glad the Slavs didn’t attack,” Theodore said. “They could have caused all sorts of trouble, and you might not have noticed them in the rain till too late.”
“That’s true, too,” George said, and sneezed as vigorously as Dactylius had up on the wall.
“Come upstairs. Get out of that wet tunic.” Irene took charge of him with brisk efficiency. “Drink some warm wine with honey in it. That will make you feel better.”
“If I don’t feel better, I won’t notice after I drink enough of it,” George said.
Ignoring that, Irene maneuvered him much as Rufus might have done up on the wall. And, sure enough, in dry clothes and with hot wine in him, he did think the world a kindlier place than he had when he was all wet and shivery. He stretched the upper for a boot he was working on over the last and smoothed the leather with a round file.
“That’s good work, Father,” Theodore said, looking over his shoulder.
He paid more attention to it himself than he had been doing. “It is, isn’t it?” he said, surprised at how surprised he sounded. Looking down at his hands, he added, “They know what they’re up to, anyhow. Now if I could only leave them behind to work while the rest of me goes upstairs to supper or off to the tavern, that would be pretty fine.”