“Look to them!” Skatval said, so fiercely Kveldulf had to obey. He went over to Nephon’s tent, pulled back the flaps that closed it, stuck his head inside. A moment later, he drew back, face pale, stomach heaving. Of themselves, his fingers shaped Phaos’ sun-circle. He went to Antilas’ tent, and Tzoumas’, hoping for something better, but in each he found only twisted death, with terror carved irremovably onto all the priests’ features.
He turned back to Skatval. “Why did you spare me? I would sooner have died with my fellows.” He knew the chief did not favor his faith, but had not imagined he held such hatred as to do … what he had done to the Videssians. By his own standards, Skatval seemed a reasonable man. But where was the reason in this?
Skatval supplied it: “The gods know I hoped Grimke’s wizardry would overfall you too, you more than any of the others. They without you were nothing; you without them remain deadly foe to all I hold dear: deadlier now, for having survived. Your god I could perhaps live with, or suffer my folk to do so. But with Phaos you bring Stavrakios, and that I will not have. Flee now, Kveldulf, while life remains in you, if you would save yourself.”
Slowly, Kveldulf shook his head. He knew Skatval spoke some truth; half-overheard whispers from Videssian hierarchs said as much. In one of its aspects, the faith of Phaos was the glove within which moved the hand of imperial statecraft. If the Halogai served Phaos, they might one day come to serve Stavrakios or his successors as well.
But that was not the portion of the faith to which Kveldulf had been drawn. He believed with all his soul in the lord with the great and good mind, believed others needed to believe for the sake of their souls, believed most of all his native people had been blind in spirit far too long, that too many of them suffered forever in Skotos’ ice because they knew not Phaos. That the good god might have singled him out to lead the Halogai to the light filled him with holy joy he had not known since the day when he first set eyes on Phaos stern in judgment in the temple in Skopentzana.
And so he shook his head once more, and said, “I shall not flee, Skatval. I told you as much when first I came here. You may slay me, but while I draw breath I shall go on glorifying Phaos to your folk. The good god demands no less of me. He is my shield, my protector, against all evil; if I die here, he shall receive my soul.”
To his amazement, Skatval bellowed laughter. “You may follow the southrons’ god, but you have a Haloga’s soul. We are stubborn, not slippery or subtle like the Videssians. Those three priests dead in their tents, they would have given me all manner of lies, then tried to squirm around them. That way has served Videssos for centuries.”
“It is not mine,” Kveldulf said simply.
“So I have seen.” Skatval’s eyes narrowed, sharpened, until they pierced Kveldulf like blued blades. “And so, likely, you still live. Oh, I’ll not deny those Videssians served their god—”
“My god,” Kveldulf broke in.
“However you would have it. They served him, in their fashion, but they served Stavrakios as well. You, though, you’re so cursed full of Phaos, you have no room in you for anything else. Thus your faith warded you, where theirs, thinner, went for naught.”
“It may well be so.” Kveldulf remembered how Skjaldvor had jeered, saying the three Videssian priests ignored their vows of celibacy. Remembering Skjaldvor, he remembered also her body pressed against his, remembered his manhood rising in desire. He said, “Yet I am no great holy man, to be revered by the generations yet to come. I am as full of sin as anyone, fight it though I may.”
“To what man is it given to know in his lifetime how the generations yet to come will look on him?” Skatval said. “We do what we will and what we may with the time we have. Among men, that must be enough; the gods alone see how our purposes intertwine.”
“There, for once, but for your choice of words, we agree.” To his surprise, Kveldulf found himself bowing to Skatval, as he might have before an ecclesiastical superior. More clearly than ever before, he saw the Haloga chief was also fighting for a way of life he reckoned right. That saddened Kveldulf, for he had always believed those who failed to follow Phaos were without any sort of honor. Yet he remained convinced his own way was best, was true. He said, “But for our choice of creeds, we might have been friends, you and I.”
“So we might, though your unbending honesty makes you a dangerous man to keep by one’s side: you are a sharp sword without sheath.” Skatval stroked his chin, considering. “It might still come to pass. How’s this? Instead of bidding us throw down our gods, give over your Phaos, grow out your hair, and live the rest of your days as a Haloga—as you were born to live.”
Kveldulf shook his head, though startled at the sadness that surged in him. “Tell my heart to give over beating before you bid me abandon the lord with the great and good mind.”
“If you do not, your heart will give over beating.” Skatval touched his swordhilt.
Kveldulf bowed again. “If it be so, it shall be so. I will not flee, I will not cease. Do what you will with me on that account. My fate lies in Phaos’ hands.”
“I would not slay a man I admire, but if I must, I will.” Skatval sighed. “As I say, by blood you belong to us. Many are the bold warriors sung of in our lays who chose death over yielding.”
“I remember the songs from my boyhood,” Kveldulf said, nodding. “But Phaos’ faith has its martyrs, too, Videssians who gave all for the good god, and gladly would I be reckoned among their number. Will you give me a shovel, Skatval, that I may bury my friends?”
“I will,” Skatval said. “And Kveldulf—”
“Aye?”
“Dig a fourth grave, as well.”
Wearing helm and hauberk, ash-hafted spear at the ready, Skatval stalked toward the meeting in the field. Half a dozen chosen men, likewise armed and armored, tramped behind him. One also carried a length of rope. Kveldulf must have seen them, but preached on. By his demeanor, he might have thought they were coming to join his converts.
Before long, perhaps warned by clanking byrnies, some of the converts turned away from Kveldulf. None of them wore mail, nor were they armed for war. Nonetheless, they moved to ring the priest with their bodies; those who bore belt knives drew them. Skatval’s jaw tightened. Slaughtering the priest was one thing, fighting his own folk quite another.
“Stand aside,” he said. Neither men nor women moved. “Are you so many sparrows, serving to save the cuckoo’s spawn Stavrakios has set among you?”
“He is a holy man, a good man,” said Kalmar Sverre’s son, a fine crofter and not the worst of men himself.
“I do not deny it,” Skatval said, which caused more than one of Kveldulf’s guards to stare at him in surprise. He went on, “That makes him the greater danger to all that is ours. Ask him yourself, if you believe it not of me.” His voice roughened. “Go on, ask him.”
Though none of the converts gave way, they did look back to Kveldulf. The blue-robe stared past them to Skatval. Unafraid, he sketched the sun-sign, then set right fist over heart in formal Videssian military salute. He said, “Skatval speaks the truth. Having taken the lord with the great and good mind into your hearts, you cannot remain what you once were. His truth will melt the falsehoods in your spirit as the summer sun slays the snows of Halogaland.”
“By his own words he brands himself our foe,” Skatval said. “Would you let him make you into milksop southrons?”
“Kveldulf is no milksop,” Kalmar said stoutly. He held his knife low, ready to stab up in the way of those who knew how to fight with short blades. But a few people left the converts’ circle and stood apart from it, watching to see what would happen next.