A voice rang out from the high platform. ‘Where is the holy man? Where is this priest from the south?’ It was Osvald’s. Evidently he was finished with his thrall and looking for new distraction. ‘Up here! You bring a message. Well, now’s your time to speak. Damn him – where is the fellow?’

Vassili’s eyes darted to the platform and back to Erlan. ‘Seek him in the south. Do you understand me?’ But Erlan was as perplexed as ever. ‘Seek him there. And you will find him.’

‘Aha – there you are!’ Osvald at last caught sight of Vassili in their gloomy corner. ‘Come up here! It’s ill manners to keep your host waiting!’

‘My time has come.’ The twinkle returned to Vassili’s eyes. ‘God be with you.’

‘God?’ Erlan muttered after him. ‘What god?’

Vassili had been speaking a long while before Erlan truly heard him. But gradually the man’s words filtered into his troubled mind.

The little man carried a message from another – from his lord, he said, with a name far stranger even than his own. But this lord of his sounded like none that Erlan had ever known. He had no host of hirthmen, no hall, no wealth, no famous deeds of valour, nothing to mark him worthy of a man’s oath. ‘Only his words,’ declared Vassili. ‘His life. And his victory over death.’ Vassili declared he carried a message of peace from this lord – although what state of war existed between him and the Livi and why, he did not explain. Instead he turned to other things, to ancient things, his bright eyes burning, his small hands beating the air in his passion.

The whole world, he said, belongs to one great good god, who made all, who rules over all. But there was a rebellion in his kingdom, in the heavens far above – Vassili’s arms stretched high above him – and after a terrible war, the rebels were defeated and thrown down from the heavens, cast into this world of men – he flung his arms with great violence to the floor. Here, they multiplied in their wickedness, and since the old times they have spread lies and deceit, binding up the souls of men, darkening their minds, demanding their allegiance, masquerading as gods when they were nothing but devils, corrupting folk with violence and greed and envy, blinding them to the truth and spreading lies about the great god above. ‘The wooden idols I see you worship – those of Odin and Frey and Thor – these have no power. Nor is your destiny after this life as you imagine it will be. It may be far better. Or else, far worse.’