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Vol.4, Ch.1, P.2

 

“Nay, I should think not,” I answered deliberately. “Society is as a pond: stagnate, and it festers unto ruin. And what is brainwash but the surest stillness? No, the Roun works a subtler way, I think… Plain as an open secret, yet concealed from the common ken.”

Alban gave a rumbling groan and turned his eyes elsewhere, and there steeped himself in thought. Before long, he returned his attention to the scroll and read on. Grave was the look on his face, almost sorrowful. But beneath the greyness, there burnt a quiet wrath.

“…‘The Roun guides with guile, deep’ning further one’s faith and devotion to the doctrine’…” he read aloud, “…‘but fickle be its grip, giving and tight’ning in tune to the character of each it clutches’…”

“Indeed, I’ve crossed paths with persons gracious enough to requite me recognition—compassion, even, though a mere black lamb of Yoná I may be,” I added. “As to why, I have but one guess: they… ‘stray’ because they’re so predisposed. Something… something native in them—their ideals, their preferences… their hearts—has erected some resistance to the Roun’s wiles.”

In the course of my words, there welled up in my mind many memories, many faces. Some amongst them lingered long; namely, the women who’ve helped shape me, or shouldered for me some of my burden.

What were they up to, I wonder?

And would there dawn a day…

…when death would be the wager between us?

The cherry-gold tressed belle of a mareschal… Doubtless her mettle towered over mine. Were we ever to cross swords, would I come out of it alive, even?

And there: a regard of regal-rose—my sister, my blood. Already had we vied, and to a nigh-bitter end, at that. But after the curtains had closed over our contest had she managed to flee from the battlefield. Would we… would we yet be foes than family when next we meet?

Now: eyes as bright as the sky, hair as pale as wheat.

…The features of my former fiancée.

 

‘…My beloved…!
…My husband-to-be…!
..So strong and handsome is he…!
…Hmm, hmm, hm-hmm…!
…Were I any happier for you,
why, I’d burst into bubbles, Rolf…!’

 

…

Once upon a time, a happy ever-after laid in our horizon.

Must it be bloodshed now that awaits between us?

 

“You ponder in pain,” Alban broke the silence.

“Ah… forgive me,” I started. “My mind’s wandered.”

“What mind would not? After so many a battle as you? War opens the deepest scars,” the jarl remarked. “I suffer no less.”

Words uttered with a warm yet wistful smile. A token of past trials and tribulations too many to number, and too few fireside nights in a year to tell in full.

Perhaps… there lives not a man as mighty as he appears. Perhaps he is like the jarl, displaying strength to inspirit his people, whilst his heart only wearies with each passing winter, like a great and proud tree, bowing under the burden of snows unceasing.

“But to the point,” the war-worn jarl spoke again. “This Roun’s… ‘shepherding of thought’, as it were… it wanes aface a faster resolve—be this the way of it?”

“Hmm… ‘ardour’ might be nearer the mark,” I answered with uncertainty. “Well… ‘resolve’ fits enough, thinking on it, yet it paints but half the picture. No… how should I put it…” Before I knew it, I felt my brows bending from troubled effort. “To be sincere; to be self-standing,” I mumbled on. “Such qualities of mien, I think, bear much weight here… though, that’s neither the whole of it, I’m afraid…”

“Now it is your words that wander a wood. But have ease. They mean enough,” Alban assured me. “And you, Rolf Man-friend. You are parted from the Roun’s ‘herd’? Or?”

“I am,” nodded I, before sensing then the years of scorn and isolation rearing their ugly heads. My faculties of communication—fumbling, and right when they were needed most, no less, for this was a matter of grave import, and the jarl deserved as best an explanation as could be given. But alas. This would not do. Not for a commander as I, new or no. Just as I ply my sword, so ought I ply my speech from hereon out… and quick. Looking back to Alban, I continued, “But, all told, of this I can say: if strength be the shield against such ‘shepherding’, then one requires no less than a mountain of it.”

“A mountain, for true…” the jarl murmured, holding his chin in contemplation.

Truly a conundrum, the Roun. A device as deceitful as it was constant, allowing nearly no escape from its wicked web. Yet, “nearly” was the rub here…

“And as to the warp and weft of your suspicions,” said Alban, “it is as you have writ here? Or?”

“It is, yes,” I answered. “Suspicions warranted by what I’ve witnessed over these past winters. But if you seek proof… I fear I have none to give.”

“Hmm…” The jarl’s eyes glanced back at and through the scroll once more. “…A knot in the yarn, this… ‘Maria’.”

Emilie’s young handmaiden. She’d given me the whole of her trust, dear Maria, in dealing with the Albecks, a time when trust for an ungraced seemed all but dried up. For her part, Maria was yet fourteen years of age when we met on the matter—one year short of her receiving the Rounic rites.

“The herding of Mennish hearts by this Roun of Orisons; Man’s ven’ration for his ‘Deiva’—insep’rable as sides of a coin these are. Such I make of this foul affair,” Alban summarised aloud. “Now I see the way of it, as to why you have moulded Arbel so. Out with the spirituality, in with the secularity.”

To this I nodded. The fief-burgh of Arbel—well, a fief-burgh no more, I suppose. That’s to say, the city of Arbel we have compelled to create and convene its own legislative council, one presently overseen by Volker, who yet remained there as governor-general. All told, “overseeing” was the extent of his hand; governance over the Arbelites—and by extension, all of Strömfolk—rested nigh-entirely in the hands of this city council. As for why, it was simply that too soon a time and too high a hurdle it was yet for Men to peaceably accept Nafílim authority.

But it was during the forming of this council that we’d carefully selected not clergymen, but strictly those from the secular sectors—mercantile magnates, moneyers, engineers, and others with professions placed far from earshot of the Church’s sermons. Least like to scorn a Nafílim neighbour, their minds were moved more by interest and advantage, and so would—for the time being, at least—cooperate willfully with the conquerors of their city.

“Not seldomly does Man sooner rule with the Crosier than the Sceptre,” I spoke with increasing criticism. “But, this? Nay, I daresay this flirts with madness, Jarl.”

“Then our minds are one,” Alban nodded. “In our sheath now sleeps the sword of knowledge newfound. What mean you, then, for its use?”

“You spoke of the secularity, Sire. Such Men of material may rally to our ranks were we to raise such a ‘sword’,” I answered. “But as for the many others—from the fervent family-man to the fanatic knight—I fear the swing of our ‘sword’ would never reach their hearts, much less their ears.”

Alban scoffed in wry agreement. “A cold truth. Such be the pitfall of faith.”

No man, let alone an entire people, would be so convinced were he told, without warrant, the falsity of his faith. This was our exact predicament. Still, I foresaw little success even were we to proffer proof along with our proclamation, for faith is ever a stolid ship, never easily capsized by the storm of reason.

“At the very least, such ‘swords’ as we have will scarce scratch the bedstone of Yonaism,” I continued. “No… Rather, let us leave it in the sheath, Jarl. For as long as possible, our foe must not discover our discernment of their devices.”

Unfathomable was our foe. Far and wide its roots were grown, slithering through all the reaches and realms of Man. And buttressing its trunk was but a secret, one so precious that were any unwanted eye to find it… nay, I dared not fancy what horrible hands might spring asudden from the shadows.

Our play was decided: nascent as we are, we may yet keep our heads to our necks if we can but keep jealously in our sleeve this card of discovery till the time is ripe—or when all other ways are shut to us.

“Let slumb’ring lions lie, of course,” agreed Alban as he looked again through the scroll. For someone espying for the first time the strings contriving the very world in which he lived, the jarl seemed yet composed as stone.

“Indeed, we’ve spoken of much, yet in truth we know too little,” I said. “Why, we know not even whom it is that schemes in the shadow of it all. Though if I must guess… I should think this a collusion between Church and Crown…”

“A dark matter, demanding much light. I, too, mean to join the pursuit, though fraught the chase may be,” said the jarl. “But now, another skein. All rivers run from their springs; which is it that so gives Man his gift of óðilr?”

Another skein, indeed. The odyl conferred upon receiving the Rounic rites…

…from where does it come?

All that magicked might, immense beyond imagination—that all of Man’s sons and daughters of age could be supplied with it… The jarl had hit the nail: it must have some source. But what? And where?

Certainly there be spells that bequeath blessings in some form, whether the bolstering of the body or the ensorcelling of a weapon. But a magick that gives odyl itself? No such thing exists, if even miraculously. Yet it was the case that the Roun of Orisons grants not only a supply of odyl, but a replenishing one—constantly, till the very dusk of death.

It might very well be that the Roun is such a magick: the first, if not the most special of its kind. After all, much remains unknown as to the true nature of covenantal magicks. Still, I was unconvinced. Such an explanation seemed too simple, too convenient.

I shook my head at Alban’s question. “The spring of divine sleight, I assume.”

“Not a ‘sacrament’, but some ‘sleight’, you say,” remarked the jarl. “Spoken like a sceptic, for true. Though you have writ here of your godlessness. Such a way you walk? Or?”

“Yes. I suppose it is,” I answered.

Godless, ungraced—were I not so, I would not be sitting where I was, nor standing upon the battlefield of my making. In walking without a god, I had to forge my own way.

A silence spanned then, quiet with distant critter-calls and the sigh of night. After a while, sensing that our heavy conversation had reached its end, I next made a request to the jarl.

“Sire. The Nafílim folk practise their own faith, yes? The veneration of the vættir, if I’m not mistaken,” I broached. “Godless though I may be, I am yet curious of Nafílim lore. From whom might I learn more, pray tell?”

If I were to live and fight for the Nafílim, then I ought understand them to the fullest. From culture to customs, from lifestyles to religion—though I need not adopt their doctrine, to know of it was an absolute necessity.

“From he afore you,” Alban beamed. “Much can I teach. A lecture best endured with mead; wait, and I bring.”

It had been a day of dire discovery, but unexpectedly, a night of merriment, as well. Very seldomly did I savour drinks of the soddening sort, but the brews the jarl soon brought were such a delight upon the palate that my cup went to and fro as a stubborn salmon flinging itself against a waterfall. Like as not, Alban had shared with me some of his very best vintages.

For long went on the lore-speak of spirits and their springing, of the vættir and the ways and why’s of their veneration. But as soon as that ended, we toasted to the memory of Berta, and thence Alban regaled me of all his dearly deceased. And when that topic, too, was spent, he then related to me stories of Lise in her littler years, all of which were as silly as they were endearing to hear. I made sure to apprise him of how his daughter and I had met at the Erbelde three years past. It was apparently the very first time he’d heard of the coincidence, and was nearly jittering with joy upon discovering that it was the fires of battle that had birthed the unusual bond between myself and Lise.

On and on, we drank and made merry, forgetting time and worry. A night most pleasant that, beyond our knowing, began to lighten as the skies bloomed with the blue of dawn.

 

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