But what can I do about it? he wondered. Himerios, not unnaturally, had hounded him over Ingegerd. Now no one was left—no one outside of Halogaland, anyhow—to dog him about her. But plenty of people would worry about an imperial officer. Maleinos himself might do that. And those two wizards . . . Rhavas hadn't even learned their names. He'd just overpowered them and slain them.
And that was not something the ordinary priest of Phos, or even the ordinary prelate, either would or could do. People would worry about the wizards, too. Rhavas wished he hadn't killed them. Like a lot of wishes, that one came too late to do him any good.
What will I say when I get to the capital? he thought. Would I do better simply trying to disappear?
Stubbornly, he shook his head. He remained convinced he had found the truth. Like any Videssian convinced of the truth, he was also convinced the rest of the world needed to know it and to adopt it. The only way he could make that happen was through the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
I will persuade them, he told himself. I will persuade them, or they will die in my trying.
Here close to Videssos the city, refugees crowded every town, every inn. Some were those who, like Rhavas, had been lucky enough to escape from the far northeast. He even came across a couple of Skopentzanans, though none who had worshiped regularly at the chief temple in the fallen town.
Most of the fugitives, however, had started their flight south of the Paristrian Mountains. The fighting between Maleinos and Stylianos seemed to have dislodged even more peasants and townsfolk than the barbarian invasions had. Rhavas gradually realized that what he saw didn't have to be the same as what was so. Many of those who'd fled from the northlands hadn't lived to fill the inns near the capital.
Survivors were not shy about saying what they thought. "You ask me, Skotos is running the show these days," declared a man missing most of his left ear. He didn't bother spitting after the dark god's name, either.
One of his friends hissed a warning. "Shut up, you fool! Don't you see there's a priest in the taproom?" he added.
The man with the mutilated ear only shrugged. "So what? What can he do to me that hasn't already happened?"
"You don't want to find out," his friend said. Had Rhavas kept his own orthodoxy, the fellow would have been right. As things were, he exclaimed, "Now you've done it, you silly bugger! Here he comes!"
"Let him." By the way the one-eared man spoke, he'd already taken a lot of wine onboard. "I'm not afraid."
"So you think Skotos is stronger than the lord with the great and good mind, do you?" Rhavas rumbled in his most forbidding tones.
"What if I do?" The man stuck out his chin in defiance.
"Do you not know that the holy scriptures say otherwise?" Rhavas demanded.
"What if they do?" The man in the tavern plainly wasn't long on rhetoric. But he continued, "Maybe Phos had the lead when they wrote the scriptures, but it sure looks to me like Skotos is ahead now."
Several people spat in rejection of the dark god. For his part, Rhavas stood irresolute. Here was a man who agreed with him. If he said as much, everyone in here would remember him to the end of time. When Maleinos' men came looking for the priest who might have had something to do with the deaths of Himerios and two wizards and they heard about a priest spouting blackest heresy, they wouldn't need to be geniuses to see there might be a connection.
But if he kept silent, wasn't he yielding to Phos' stifling orthodoxy by default? He and this chance-met stranger shared the same belief. How could he hide it? Slowly, he said, "I have come a long way—all the way from the far northeast. I have seen a great many atrocities, some from the Khamorth, others worked by Videssian against Videssian. These are sorry times indeed."
"And you're going to tell me I'm a heretic anyway," the man said bitterly. "Well, futter you, blue-robe!"
Rhavas shook his head. "No. I was going to tell you I agree with you. Skotos is the stronger of the two gods. No one looking at affairs of the world, affairs of the Empire, today could possibly disagree without being either blind or a fool."
The man who'd also proposed that Skotos was stronger stared at Rhavas as if he couldn't believe his ears. So did everyone else in the tavern. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped. Several men sketched Phos' sun-circle. "Heresy!" somebody exclaimed. "Heresy from a priest! We're in more trouble than I thought."
"I don't know," somebody else said. "When you look at everything that's gone wrong lately, it makes more sense than you wish it did."
"Liar! You're a heretic yourself!"
Heretic or not, the man accused of misbelief punched his accuser in the nose. That set off everybody in the tavern, like a torch flung into oil-soaked wood. People screamed at one another. They punched and kicked and bit. They hit each other with cups and then with jars of wine. The tapman let out a theatrical howl of dismay. No one paid any attention to him.
Someone stomped on Rhavas' foot. He yelled in pain. Someone yelled, "Infamous, shameless heretic!" and hit him in the stomach. He doubled over—which might have been lucky for him, because a hurled winecup just grazed the top of his scalp. If he'd been fully upright, it would have caught him in the face.
He lashed out with a foot against the man who'd hit him. He didn't quite make the fellow into a eunuch, but he didn't miss by much. The follower of orthodoxy let out a horrible shriek and fell to the floor, clutching at himself.
A knife flashed not far away. Rhavas pointed at the man holding it, who was howling out a hymn. The man's eyes glazed. The knife dropped from his hand. He slid to the floor. In the chaos, no one noticed—or cared—he was dead.
Rhavas looked around for the fellow who'd had the courage to proclaim his allegiance to Skotos. He didn't see him. Either the man had already escaped or the orthodox had brought him down. Whichever was true, Rhavas had to get away himself if he could.
It wasn't easy. With his blue robe and his shaved head, he was a target for all of Phos' followers in the tavern. He picked up a stool and swung it like a scythe, clearing a path to the doorway.
"What sort of madness is going on in there?" A crowd had already gathered outside the tavern, too, drawn by the fearful, fearsome racket inside.
"It is a riot of sinners and misbelievers," Rhavas answered. And if the crowd out there judged who misbelieved differently from the way he judged, he did not intend to make any detailed commentary.
A man in a torn tunic staggered out of the tavern door after Rhavas and aimed an index finger at him as if it were an arrow. "There's the heretic!" the man cried.
"Liar!" Rhavas shouted, and threw the stool in the man's face. With a groan, the fellow crumpled. Rhavas nodded to the men and women on the street. "You see how it is?"
"The nerve of that rogue, to call a priest a heretic!" a woman exclaimed. Heads bobbed up and down, there in the crowd.
Another man, this one with blood running down his face from a cut over his left eye, lurched out of the taproom. He could still see out of his right eye, and glared at Rhavas. "Skotos-lover!" he screamed.
"To the ice with you!" That wasn't Rhavas—it was one of the men in the crowd. He ran forward and punched the bleeding man in the face. The fellow with the cut on his forehead was made of stern stuff. He grappled with his new opponent, threw him down, and kicked him in the ribs.
Two other men from the street tackled the bleeding man, stretched him out in the dirt, and started kicking him. Someone else came out of the tavern and tried to rescue his friend. That really started the brawl in the street.