The snows of Novgorod had begun to melt when the first sparks caught flame.

At dawn, the bells of Saint Sophia tolled as they always had, calling the faithful to kneel before the Greek Christ.

By dusk, the bells lay shattered in the mud, and the church that had stood for a generation was burning, its timber roof collapsing in smoke and ash.

The rising had begun.

It was not one city alone, but many.

In Ladoga, in Polotsk, in Smolensk, even in villages along the wide Dnieper, men who still called on Perun and Veles rose from their hearths.

They came with axes once meant for wood, spears sharpened from plowshares, and swords bought in secret from traders who had slipped out of Ullrsfjörðr.

For years they had muttered their prayers in silence, ashamed or cowed by the lash of priests.

Now they shouted them in the streets, voices rough with freedom.

The boyars loyal to the princes tried to rally their retinues, but the tide was too great.

Crowds surged through the narrow lanes, and the first to fall were the priests.

Greek tongues cried for mercy as mobs dragged them from their cells.

Some were hacked to pieces in the snow; others were strung up on beams where the ravens came early to feast.

In Novgorod a priest was nailed to the door of his own church, a parody of the crucifixion he had preached.

The crowd roared when the timbers were set alight beneath him.

The crosses fell next.

Where once gilded wood and hammered bronze had crowned the churches, now ropes bit into them and oxen heaved until the symbols toppled.

The people spat upon them, hacked them into splinters, and fed them to the fires.

In Kiev itself, the great bronze cross from atop the Desyatinnaya was dragged through the streets.

Men struck it with hammers until it cracked, then bore it to the forges.

Before long its gleaming arms lay molten, poured into molds that shaped spearheads and blades.

Wealth for war had been wrung from Rome's holy metal.

Everywhere the pattern repeated.

Monasteries looted, libraries of Greek script flung into rivers, chalices melted into coin.

The smoke of burning sanctuaries curled into the sky until it seemed the whole horizon glowed red.

Women keened for sons slain by princely guards, and then took up torches themselves, hurling them into cloisters.

Even children daubed their faces with soot and danced around the fires, chanting the names of old gods.

At the center of the storm, men of higher station stood to give it shape.

Rodislav of Ladoga, who had once walked in Vetrulfr's hall, raised his sword before a mob in the marketplace.

"The wolf-king has called us to prove our blood! No more kneeling to Greeks, no more tithes to Constantinople. Today we are free men, brothers of the north!"

His words carried like thunder, and the people answered with spears lifted high.

In Smolensk, Draguta the smith, a commoner made bold, smashed the altar stone of a chapel with his hammer.

"For every church they build, we will raise a forge," he shouted, sweat and ash on his brow.

The people cheered and brought him iron from the wreckage.

Within days, blades shone in his workshop where icons had once been polished.

The princes fled where they could, taking retinues south toward Byzantine aid.

Those who stood their ground were struck down.

In Polotsk, Prince Bryachislav tried to face the mob from horseback, but stones shattered his helm and he was dragged screaming through the mire until his body was unrecognizable.

His palace was looted, his treasures divided among the men who had once bent knee.

The rebellion spread not in days but in hours, carried by messengers on horseback and rumors that traveled faster still.

The rivers became highways of fire and smoke.

Long-suppressed pagan clans from the forests poured into the towns, shouting oaths to Perun and Svarog.

Even some of the baptized joined them, casting off their crosses in fear or fury, eager to stand with their neighbors rather than die with their priests.

By midsummer, the skyline of every Rus city was changed.

Where once towers and domes had glinted, now they lay blackened shells.

The survivors raised new totems on the ashes, carved poles daubed with blood, crowned with antlers, ringed with offerings of mead and bread.

The old gods had returned in the open, and their worship was louder than it had been in a century.

Messengers rode north, their saddlebags heavy with proof.

Sacks of melted coin stamped with crosses.

Spears tipped with bronze were once consecrated in churches.

Even the charred head of a Greek bishop, preserved in tar, to show the wolf-king the depth of their hatred.

They sailed to Ullrsfjörðr not as envoys begging favor, but as warriors demanding recognition.

And when their ships pulled into the northern fjord, the men of Iceland saw them disembark not with honey and silk, but with smoke still clinging to their cloaks.

They came with blood on their swords and fire in their eyes.

Before the hall of Vetrulfr, they laid down their trophies: the broken chalices, the melted crosses, the bishop's head crowned in soot.

They knelt, not in fear but in fierce pride, and cried out together:

"We have cast down the cross! We have slain the priests! We have torn the churches from our soil! Accept us, wolf-king, as brothers!"

The hall echoed with their words, and the jarls of Ullrsfjörðr looked on in silence.

At last, the Rus had proven themselves.

Vetrulfr gazed upon the trophies brought before him and gave only a silent nod.

The Rus had proven themselves. Their fires were now his fires, their blood spilled in his name.

"Crosses fall," he thought. And with them, the East itself had shifted. Perun, Svarog, Devana, their names rang once more from river to steppe.

He remembered the halls of Constantinople, where he had once walked beside Basil the Bulgar-Slayer as kin rather than mercenary.

But Basil was long in his grave, and his heir was no slayer, no wolf.

The empire had neither the will nor the wits to avenge its fallen priests. Especially in lands it deemed Barbarum.

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