“Truth--not many,” Ampelus agreed.
That made George proud. He yawned, then nodded toward Father Luke. “Here is a truly good man whose word is truly good.” He introduced Father Luke and the satyrs.
“If I say a thing, I will try to do it,” the priest said. “If I do not think I can do it, or if I do not think I should do it, I will not say it.” He had humility in him, but no false modesty. Being around him had helped educate George to the difference.
“We go, then,” Ampelus said. “Talk with centaurs.” He rolled his eyes. “Centaurs like talk. Centaurs like lots of talk. Maybe, good mortal who does and not says, you make centaurs do more, not say so much.”
“Redeeming a centaur, even if only from loquaciousness, would be a deed worth trying,” Father Luke said with a smile. “Whether I can or not, though, remains to be seen.” He waved ahead. “Lead us, and I’ll find out.”
Together, the satyrs and the men went deeper into the hills above Thessalonica. Ithys and Ampelus walked warily, stealing glances at Father Luke and every now and then, when they got so close it made them nervous, skipping back from him. They knew the power he held, and did not quite trust him not to loose it against them.
George could not tell whether they took a shortcut through the hills that lay beyond those he knew. For one thing, he was so tired, even a shortcut would have seemed dreadfully long. For another, having come so far in the night, he could not be sure where he and Father Luke were when the satyrs found them. Since that point was unfamiliar, everything after it seemed strange, too.
Then, without any warning, almost as if a wolf-demon, Nephele stepped out into the path in front of them. The female centaur nodded to George and asked, “This is the cleric of whom you spoke?”
“Yes,” he answered. Having introduced priest and satyrs, he introduced priest and centaur without a qualm.
Father Luke bowed as if Nephele were a lady high in the court at Constantinople. “I am honored to meet you,” he said. “I am honored you would let me meet you.” In an aside to George, he murmured, “I have, every once in a while, regretted my vows of celibacy. I never expected to do that quite like this, though.”
However quietly he spoke, Nephele heard him. The female centaur threw back its head and laughed. Listening to that laugh with his eyes closed, George might have thought it came from a drinking companion in a tavern. Looking at Nephele, he did not want to close his eyes-- on the contrary. To Father Luke, the centaur said, “I take’t as a compliment, being sure ‘twas meant so.”
“Er--yes,” the priest said. George could not recall having seen him flustered before. He did now.
“Onward, then.” Nephele turned to lead them. Seen from behind, the centaur seemed less human than when viewed straight on.
They came to the encampment bare moments after George realized they were on the path leading to it. Stusippus spotted them first, and made a sound more like a birdcall than any speech George had ever heard. The centaurs in the camp came out of their lean-tos. Demetrius cantered up to Father Luke, who stared at him in delight. “I never thought of there being young centaurs,” he said to George.
“I know what you mean,” the shoemaker answered. “Neither did I.”
Several centaurs whom George had not seen before were among those crowding round him and Father Luke. He caught a couple of names--Pholus, Tachypus (a female)--but missed more.
Crotus still seemed to lead the band. The male inclined its head to Father Luke. “We are told you fear not and despise not the linking of your power and our own against that to which both stand opposed.”
“If it can be done, I think we can do it,” the priest replied. “We have shared this land many years now; we can live at peace.”
“By share you mean your taking and our yielding,” Crotus pointed out, not without bitterness. “That you be preferred to the incomers and their powers, who would slaughter us for sport, meaneth not you are beloved.”
“I understand as much,” Father Luke said. “For the time being, though, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Xanthippe said, “Reasoning thus, we may cooperate, one side with the other. And afterwards, remembering our aid, it may be that you prove more inclined to leave us in peace.”
“For myself, I am willing,” Father Luke said. “I must tell you, though, for I would not he to you, that my superior, Eusebius, will remain set in his ways. To expect him to change is as foredoomed a hope for you as for him to expect you to become a member of my faith.”
“For the honesty, we are grateful,” Crotus said. The other centaurs and satyrs nodded. The male went on, “For the sentiment, we would it were otherwise.” The nods came again. Sighing, Crotus observed, “Necessity driveth all; we can but yield to it.”
George wondered how much that attitude had to do with the failure of the old gods against Christianity. Bishop Eusebius and, no doubt, Father Luke, too, in his gentler way, were convinced their faith would triumph, regardless of the adversities it faced. That was their notion of necessity: not yielding to whatever the passage of time might bring against them.
Nephele set hands on the narrowing of human waist above the outswelling into horses body. “Very well, priest: you say you are fain to make alliance with us. How then, this being so, shall we best combine against the foe tormenting us both?”
“How?” Father Luke looked straight at the female centaur, which impressed George. The priest smiled, but not altogether happily. “My dear, at the moment I have no idea.”
XI
The first thing George did was sleep till the sun, which had been low in the east, was low in the west. He was relieved to find some stew in the pot. “Aye,” Nephele said, “the world waggeth on, seek to stay it as we may.”
George ate and yawned, realizing he would have no trouble going back to sleep not long after nightfall. He set a hand on Perseus’ cap, which lay beside him on the boulder on which he was sitting. “I want to go into Lete,” he said, “and give this back to Gorgonius. I don’t want him to think I’m a thief.”
“We cannot do’t today,” Nephele answered, “the sun’s chariot, as you see, having drawn too near the western horizon to permit the journey.”
“Tomorrow, then,” George said.
“It could be,” Nephele said, “but then again, perhaps not. Surely we shall be undertaking many matters most urgent on that day, conferring with your priest, and--”
“Someone mention me?” Father Luke came up.
“They want to talk with you instead of taking me to Lete to give Gorgonius back his cap,” George said, his voice a little sour. “If I understand right, all the centaurs want to talk with you, and none wants to go to Lete.”
“That is good sooth,” Nephele said.
“But why?” Father Luke asked.
“Why? Because we but seldom venture among the habitations of mankind for any reason, and have held to this rule for a time that seemeth long even to ourselves,” Nephele replied. “If George be fain to return the cap, doubtless a satyr will guide him, they being eager to have as much to do with mankind, or rather womankind, as we are needful of holding to our sylvan fastness.”
“You went with me before.” George would not have argued so with the immortal had he not failed so completely of understanding. “Why not now?”
“We went, aye, but with greatest reluctance, as you must have seen. Gaining the cap of Perseus held an urgency returning it lacketh,” Nephele said, an answer that was not an answer. The female centaur saw George and Father Luke recognize that it was not an answer. A very human-sounding sigh came forth. “Are the two of you blind and deaf? What, as is proved by experience bitter, must my kind avoid at all costs?”
Father Luke, with only a day’s acquaintance with the centaurs, looked blank. George thought the answer was on the tip of his tongue and, thinking that, found it: “Wine!” he exclaimed.
Gravely, Nephele nodded. “Even so,” the female centaur said. “Even so. Being of the mortal land that prepareth and drinketh the blood of the grape with no further ado than that it should be a vintage you favor, you have no notion of the longing for it we know, a longing we also know we dare not sate.”
“All right,” George said. He had seen the hunger on Crotus’ face when they went into Lete: seen it but evidently underestimated its power. “If it’s as bad as that, I’ll let Ampelus or Ithys or Stusippus take me to the village.”
“For which you have my thanks.” Nephele looked at him from under heavy-lidded, long-lashed eyes. No, even that disconcerting baritone wasn’t always disconcerting enough to keep the female’s almost human and more than human beauty from stirring him and making him think how he might want to have those thanks shown.
“Wait.” Father Luke spoke only the one word, but with such authority that both George and Nephele turned their heads toward him. He paid no attention to George, for which the shoemaker could hardly blame him: had he had to choose between Nephele and himself, he would have chosen the centaur, too. The priest said, “Perhaps it would be for the best, Nephele, if, this once, you and all your kind drink yourselves full of wine to the very point of bursting.”
Those splendid eyes were heavy-lidded no more, but wide and staring. “Priest of the new, you know not what you say. Wine looseth in us a blazing madness oft satisfied only by blood. It is the curse of my folk, against which we have no power of resistance.”
“I don’t want you to resist,” Father Luke said. “I want you to yield to it, to revel in it.”
With each shake of the female centaur’s head, black, curly hair flew around its face. “You know not what you say. Even to suggest such a thing is madness, nothing less. Aye, madness: akin to that madness we knew in the far-off days when the world was young and nothing had stolen from us the greatest part of the land that is ours. Not since the disaster of the supper with the Lapiths have we taken wine, for fear of what it will do to us. Nay. I say again, nay.” The last word was almost a horse’s ringing neigh.
“But don’t you understand?” Father Luke, by contrast, sounded calm and rational: so calm and rational that George, who aspired to those conditions, wondered if the priest had lost his wits, or perhaps did not fully appreciate even yet the depth of the centaurs’ revulsion. Unperturbed, Father Luke went on, “You should be mad with wine--you need to be mad with wine--if you are to stand against the Slavs and Avars and their powers. When you remain your sober selves, they have more strength than you, not so?”
“That is so,” Nephele admitted. “It is so, but it hath no significance, not set against our dire need to fight shy of the lovely, deadly stuff.”
“If you will not set the arrow in your bow, you’ll never know how well you might shoot,” Father Luke said. “And if you refuse to use the arrow, will you go down to defeat wondering till you perish whether it might have done you some good?”
Nephele studied him. “The satyrs are fain to seduce us,” the female centaur said slowly, “but they seek no more than the use of our bodies, which, while no small thing, also is not a matter of greatest consequence. Some have even yielded to them, for a romp. Not I, but some. You, now, you would seduce our minds to do as you will, not as custom ancient and long-established teacheth: in my view, a stronger seduction.”