I

George was hunting rabbits in the hills not far from Thessalonica when he spied the satyr. His first thought, when its brown eyes peered out of the ugly, snub-nosed face and met his, was to make the sign of the cross and frighten it away.

He didn’t act on his first thought. He was the kind of man who commonly thought three times before he did anything. His build matched his character: he was stocky and strong, thick through the shoulders, by no means someone who moved quickly, but hard to stop once he did get moving.

Instead of crossing himself, he raised his right hand and rubbed his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers. He should have shaved yesterday, or maybe the day before. He thought about growing a beard. They were coming back into fashion, though many Romans, perhaps most, still plied their razors as they had since the days of Constantine the Great.

When he didn’t drive it off, the satyr cautiously came toward him, picking its way along the rocky ground with surprisingly delicate, graceful strides. He supposed getting a rock in its hoof would cause it as much trouble as that would for a horse, which the satyr resembled from the waist down.

It was certainly hung like a horse, its phallus juttingly erect. The old stories said satyrs were hard all the time. Till now, George had never had a chance to put the old stories to the test. Satyrs were rare these days, almost six hundred years after the Son of God came down and was made flesh.

What a trophy to bring hack to town, George thought. Bishop Eusebius would probably bless him from the ambo of the basilica of St. Demetrius. He could all but hear the bishop going on about another turn being given to the winding sheet Christianity was wrapping around the corpse of paganism: Eusebius was a good man, but one who sometimes had a distinctly mortuary cast of mind.