The satyr made a noise like none he’d ever heard before. After a moment, he realized it was half moan, half giggle. “I watch priest go out to wolves,” the satyr said. “He not see me, or he” --once more, it indicated the sign of the cross without actually making it-- “and I have to run away. But he not see. He find wolf. He go up to it. He do that thing, thing make me run.”

“Yes?” George said when the satyr didn’t go on. “What happened then?”

Again, that strange mixture of mirth and terror burst from the satyr’s throat. It was an appalling sound, one that made the little hairs on George’s arms and at the back of his neck stand up as if he were a wolf himself. “Priest do that thing,” the satyr repeated. “He do it not at me, so I see safe. And wolf--eat him up.”

“Really?” George said. It was, he realized, a foolish response. He consoled himself with the thought that it was better than making the sign of the cross, which would have routed the satyr. It had been a long time--a lot longer than he’d been alive--since powers that could stand up against Christianity’s most potent symbol had come into this part of the world. He nodded slowly to himself, fitting puzzle pieces together like mosaic tesserae in the church of St. Demetrius. “They must belong to the Slavs.”

“Slavs.” The satyr spoke the word as if it had never heard of the people so named. “Who--what--are Slavs?”

George’s nose was long and beaky, admirably made for exasperated exhalations. “They and the Avars have only been raiding the Roman provinces south of the Danube for the past generation,” he said, his tone perfectly matching the irritated sniff.

“Ah, only one generation,” the satyr said in some relief. “No wonder I not know.”