Counting Up, Counting Down

by Harry Turtledove

  It was not that they had no questions for him; they had many. But those questions did not spring from the holy scriptures; they did not assume those scriptures were true, and argue from or about their premises. To the Halogai, everything pertaining to Phaos, even his existence, was open to debate. Kveldulf had been warned of that before he sailed for his birthland. Only now, though, was he discovering what it meant.

  No Videssian, for instance, would have asked, as did a herder whose rawhide boots were stained with sheepshit, “Well, just how d’you ken this Phaos o’yours is what you say he is?”

  “Things act for good in this world, and others for evil,” Kveldulf answered. “Phaos is the architect of all that is good, while Skotos works without pause to pull down all he does.” He spat between his feet in rejection of the dark god.

  The shepherd spat, too. “So you say. Who said so to you?”

  “So say the good god’s own holy words, written down in ancient days.” Kveldulf nodded to Tzoumas, who held up a copy of the scriptures. The words within meant nothing to the watching Halogai; they did not write their own language, let alone Videssian. But the cover, of brass polished till it gleamed like gold and decorated with precious stones and an enamelwork portrait of Phaos’ stern, majestic countenance, promised that what lay within was worthy of consideration. As the Videssian proverb put it, a robe is revealed in advance by its border.

  But the stubborn shepherd said, “Did your god speak these words straight to you?” Kveldulf had to shake his head. The shepherd went on, “Then why put faith in ’em? When I hear the thunder, or see the grain spring green from the ground, or futter my woman, these are things whose truth I know for myself; I feel no shame to worship the gods that shaped them. But a god who spoke long ago, if he spoke at all? Pah!” He spat again.

  Behind Kveldulf, one of his Videssian colleagues—he thought it was Nephon—softly said, “Blasphemy!” Kveldulf himself felt brief heat run through his body, heat warmer than that which the watery sunshine of Halogaland could engender. Along with their hair, Videssian priests gave up carnal congress as a mark of their devotion to the good god. Kveldulf had worn his celibacy a long time now; it rarely chafed him. But imperials did not talk about futtering as casually as the shepherd had, either. The naked word made Kveldulf feel for a moment what he had given up.

  He said, “If the good god’s holy words will not inspire you, think on the deeds of those who follow him. They hold sway from the borders of Makuran far in the southwest, round the lands which touch the Videssian Sea and the Sailors’ Sea, and sweep up along the edge of the Northern Sea till their lands march with yours as well. And all this under the rule of one man, the mighty Emperor Stavrakios, Avtokrator of the Videssians, where small Halogaland is split among countless chiefs. Does this not speak for the strength of Phaos?”

  Behind him, Nephon said, “This argument is unscriptural. The barbarians must come to Phaos’ faith because of the glory of the good god, not that of those who follow him.”

  “Don’t call them barbarians,” Antilas said quietly. “He’s one of them, remember?”

  Nephon grunted. Tzoumas said, “How worshipers find Phaos matters little; that they find him matters much. Let Kveldulf go on, if he will.”

  The byplay had been in Videssian. The Halogai to whom Kveldulf preached took no notice of it. And now, for the first time since he’d come to Halogaland, he had hearers who listened seriously. He wondered why, for Nephon was right: an argument from results was weaker than one from doctrine. But the men of the north respected strength; perhaps reminding them of the power of Videssos had not hurt.

  “Cast forth the evil from your own lives!” he called. “Accept Phaos into your hearts, into your spirits. Turn toward the good which rests in each of you. Who will show me now that he is ready to cleave to the lord with the great and good mind, and reject evil forevermore?”

  He’d asked that before at the close of every sermon, and been answered with stony silence or with jeers. The Halogai were happy enough to listen to him; it gave them something unusual and interesting to do with their time. But hearing and hearkening were two different things, and for all his passionate exhortation, he’d not convinced anyone, not until today. Now a woman raised her hand, then another, and then a man.

  Kveldulf sketched the sun-sign over his heart. As he looked up to the heavens to thank Phaos for allowing him to be persuasive, his eyes filled with grateful tears. At last the good god had given a sign he would not forsake the folk of the north.

  Skatval slashed the horse’s throat. As the sacrificial beast staggered, he held the laut-bowl under its neck to gather the gushing blood. The horse fell. From the laut-bowl he filled laut-sprinklers and stained the wooden walls of the temple with shining red. He also daubed his own cheeks and hands, and those of the clansfolk who had gathered with him for the offering.

  As he moistened men and women with the holy blood, his priest, Grimke Grankel’s son, declared, “May goodness flow down from the god as the gore goes out of the offering.”

  “So may it be,” Skatval echoed. So did his warriors and their women—those that were here. He did his best to hide his unease as he began to butcher the horse, but it was not easy. Sacrifice should have brought together the whole of the clan, to receive the gods’ blessing and to feast on horseflesh and ale afterwards. Most of his people had come, but far too many were missing.

  Among the missing was Skjaldvor. Skatval’s eyebrows came together above his long, thin nose. Of all the people who might listen to this southron twaddle about Phaos, he’d expected his daughter to be one of the last.

  He glanced over at Ulvhild, his wife. After they’d lived together in that longhouse the whole of their grown lives, she picked thoughts from his head as if he’d shouted them aloud. Now she shrugged, slowly and deliberately, telling him there was nothing she could do about Skjaldvor: his daughter was a woman now. He snorted. No one could do anything with a girl once she turned into a woman. Ulvhild heard the snort and glared at him—she’d stolen that thought, too.

  Hastily, he turned back to roasting horseflesh. The first pieces were done enough to eat. Someone held out a birchwood platter. He stabbed a gobbet, plopped it onto the plate. Beside him, Grimkel plied a dipper, filled a mug with ale. “The gods bless us with their bounty,” he intoned.

  Some time later, his belly full of meat and his head spinning slightly from many mugs of ale, Skatval strode out of the temple. He was one of the last folk to leave: not least of his chiefly requirements was being able to outeat and outdrink those he outranked. The rich taste of hot marrow still filled his mouth.

  He thumped his middle with the flat of his hand. Life was not so bad. The fields bore as well as they ever did; no murrain had smote the flocks, nor sickness his people. No raiders threatened. Winter would be long, but winter was always long. The gods willing, almost all the clan would see the next spring. He had been through too many years where dearth and death displayed themselves long months in advance.

  Then satisfaction leaked from him as if he were a cracked pot. There at the edge of a hayfield walked Skjaldvor and Kveldulf, not arm in arm but side by side, their heads close together. Kveldulf explained something with extravagant gestures he must have learned from the Videssians; no man of Halogaland would have been so unconstrained. Skjaldvor laughed, clapped her hands, nodded eagerly. Whatever point he’d made, she approved of it.

  Or more likely, she just approves of Kveldulf, Skatval thought with bleak mirth. The chief wondered if she drew a distinction between the blue-robe’s doctrines and himself. He had his doubts. But what could he do? What could anyone do with a girl, once she turned into a woman?

  He’d answered that question for himself back inside the temple. He did not like the conclusion he’d reached there, but found none better now.

  “Tell me, Kveldulf,” Skjaldvor said, “how came you to reverence the Videssian god?” She stopped walking, cocked her head, and waited for his reply.

  T
he light that filtered through the forest canopy overhead was clear, pale, almost colorless, like the gray-white trunks of the birch trees all around. The air tasted of moss and dew. When he paused, too, Kveldulf felt quiet fold round him like a cloak. Somewhere far in the distance, he heard the low, purring trill of a crested tit. Otherwise, all was still. He could hear his own breath move in and out, and after a moment Skjaldvor’s as well.

  As she looked at him, so he studied her. She was tall for a woman, the crown of her head reaching higher than his chin. Flowing gilt hair framed her face, a strong-chinned, proud-cheekboned visage which, along with the unshrinking gaze of her wide-set blue eyes, spoke volumes about the legendary stubbornness of the Halogai. She had, in fact, a close copy of her father’s features, though in her his harshness somehow grew fresh and lovely. But Kveldulf, unpracticed with either families or women, could not quite catch that.

  He did know she made him nervous, and also knew he spent more time with her than he should. All of Skatval’s clansfolk had souls that wanted saving. Still, Kveldulf told himself, winning the chief’s daughter to the worship of the good god would greatly strengthen Phaos here. And she could have chosen nothing apter to ask him.

  The years blew away as he looked back inside himself. “I was a lad yet, my beard not sprouted, sold as a house slave: Videssian spoil of war. I learned the Empire’s tongue fast enough to suit my master. He was far from the worst of men; he worked me hard, but he fed me well, and beat me no worse than I deserved.” The hairs of his mustache tickled his lips as they quirked into a wry smile. Remembering some of his pranks, he reckoned ZoÏlos merciful now, though he hadn’t thought so at the time.

  “How could you live—a slave?” Skjaldvor shuddered. “You come of free folk. Would you not liefer have lost your life than live in chains?”

  “I wore no chains,” Kveldulf said.

  “That may be worse,” she told him, scorn in her voice. “You stayed in slavery when you could have—should have—fled?” She turned her back on him. Her long wool skirt swirled around her, showing him for a moment her slim white ankles.

  “How was I to flee?” he asked, doing his best to inform his voice with reason rather than wrath. “Skopentzana is far from Halogaland, and I was but a boy. And before long, I came to see my capture as a blessing, not the sorrow I had held it to be.”

  Skjaldvor looked at him again, but with hands on her hips. “A blessing? Are you witstruck? To have to walk at the whim of another man’s will—I would die before I endured it.”

  “As may be,” Kveldulf said soberly. A slave as lovely as Skjaldvor was all too likely to have to lie down at the whim of another man’s will. ZoÏlos, fortunately, had not bought Kveldulf for that. He shook his head to dislodge the distracting carnal thought, went on, “But you asked of me how I found Phaos. Had I not been ZoÏlos’ slave, I doubt I should have. He often went out of a morning, and one day I asked where. He told me he prayed at the chief temple in Skopentzana, and asked in turn if I cared to go there with him.”

  “And you said aye?”

  “I said aye.” Kveldulf laughed at his younger self. “It seemed easier than my usual morning drudgery. So he let me bathe, and gave me a shirt less shabby than most, and I walked behind him to the temple. We went inside. I had never smelt incense before. Then I looked up into the dome . . .”

  His voice trailed away. Across a quarter of a century, he could still call up the awe he’d known, looking up into the golden dome and seeing Phaos stern in judgment, staring down at him—seemingly at him alone, though the temple was crowded—and weighing his worth. Then the priestly choir behind the altar lifted up its many-voiced voice in exaltation and praise of the lord with the great and good mind, and then—

  Kveldulf remembered to speak: “I knew not whether I was still on earth or up in the heavens. I saw the holy men in the blue robes who lived with the good god every moment of every day of every year of their lives, and I knew I had to be of their number. Next morning, I asked ZoÏlos if I might go with him, not he me, and the morning after that, and the one after that. At first, when I was but shirking, he’d hoped me pious. Now, when I truly touched piety, he reckoned me a shirker. But I kept on; I was drunk with the good god. Once I found Phaos, I wished for nothing else. Well, not nothing; I wished for but one thing more.”

  “What is that?” Skjaldvor leaned toward him. The silver chains that linked the two larger brooches she wore on her breast clinked softly (the shape of those brooches reminded Kveldulf of nothing so much as twin tortoise shells). All at once he was conscious of how close she stood.

  Nonetheless, he answered as he had intended: “I wished the good god might grant me the boon of leading my birthfolk out of Skotos’ darkness and into the light of Phaos. For those who die without knowing the lord with the great and good mind shall surely spend all eternity in the icepits of Skotos, a fate I wish on no man or woman, Videssian or Haloga, slave or free.”

  “Oh.” Skjaldvor straightened. Where before her voice had been low and breathy, now it went oddly flat. She studied him again, as if wondering whether to go on. At last she did: “I thought perhaps you meant you wished you might enjoy all the pleasures of other men.”

  Kveldulf felt himself grow hot, and knew his fair skin only made embarrassment more obvious. He looked to see if Skjaldvor also blushed. Though fairer even than he, she did not. She knew herself free to say what she would, act as she would. He stammered a little as he answered, “I may not, not without turning oathbreaker, and that I shall never do.”

  “The more fool you, and the worse waste, for you are no mean man,” she said. “The other blue-robes are less stupid.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded.

  “Do you not know? Can you not know, without being deaf and blind? Your fellows are far from passing all their nights alone and lonely in their tents.”

  “Is it so?” Kveldulf said, but by her malicious satisfaction he knew it surely was. Sorrow pressed upon him but left him unsurprised. He bent his head, sketched the sun-circle over his heart. “All men may sin. I shall pray for them.”

  She stared at him. “Is that all?”

  “What else would you have me do?” he asked, honestly curious.

  “Were it not for your beard, I should guess the southrons made you a eunuch when they set the blue robe upon you.” Skjaldvor took a deep breath, let it hiss out through flaring nostrils. “What else would I have you do? This, to start.” As she stepped into his arms, her expression might have been that of a warrior measuring a foe over sword and shield.

  The gold of her brooches pressed against him through his robe, then the softer, yielding firmness that was herself. His arms still hung by his sides, but that mattered little, for she held him to her. From the sweat that prickled on his forehead and shaven pate, the cool wood might suddenly have become a tropic swamp. Then she kissed him. Not even a man of stone, a statue like one of those in Skopentzana’s central square, could have remained unroused.

  She stepped back and eyed not his red face but his groin to gauge her effect on him. That effect was all too visible, which only made his face grow redder. But when she reached out to open his robe, he slapped her hand aside. “No, by the good god,” he said harshly.

  Now she reddened, too, with anger. “Why ever not? The Videssians do not stint themselves; why should you, when you are not of their kindred nor born to their faith?”

  “That they do wrong is no reason for me to follow them. Were they murdering instead of fornicating, would you bid me do likewise?”

  “How can anything so full of joy be wrong?” Skjaldvor tossed her shining hair in scorn at the very idea.

  “It is forbidden to Phaos’ priests, thus wrong for them,” Kveldulf declared. “And though I was not born to faith in Phaos, in it I am a son fostered to a fine father. Whatever I was by birth, Phaos’ is the house wherein I would dwell evermore.”

  All he said was true, yet he knew it was incomplete. As a foster son in Phaos’
household, he was held to closer scrutiny than the Videssians who entered it by right of birth: they might be forgiven sins that would condemn him, the outsider who presumed to ape their ways. Another man might have grown resentful, struggling against that double standard. But it spurred Kveldulf. If extra devotion was required of him, extra devotion he would give.

  “You will not?” Skjaldvor said.

  “I will not,” Kveldulf answered firmly. Never since donning the blue robe had he known such temptation; the memory of her body printed against him, he knew, would remain with him till his last breath. He still throbbed from wanting her. But priests were taught to rule their flesh. Over and over he repeated Phaos’ creed to himself, focusing on the good god rather than his fleshly lust, and at length that lust began to lessen.

  Skjaldvor drew near him again. This time, he thought, he would be proof against her embraces. But she did not embrace him. Serpent-swift, she slapped his left cheek, then, on the backhand, his right. He cherished the sudden pain, which seared the last of his desire from him.

  “May the lord with the great and good mind keep you in his heart until you place him in yours,” he said. “I shall pray that that time be soon, as you have seemed better disposed than most of your fellows to learning of his faith.”

  She tossed her head again and laughed, an ugly sound despite the sweetness of her voice. Then she spat full in his face. “This for your Phaos and his faith.” She spat again. “And this for you!” She spun on her heel and stormed away.

  Kveldulf stood and watched her go while her warm spittle slid down into his beard. Very deliberately, he bent his head and spat himself, down between his feet in the age-old Videssian gesture that rejected Skotos. He recited Phaos’ creed once more. When he was through, he walked slowly back toward the tents by the shore.