Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

Saban said nothing. He had been waiting for this moment, and he was remembering the awe he had felt when he had first seen the double ring emerging from Sarmennyn's fog, yet somehow, here at Ratharryn, there was no awe. He had thought he would be overwhelmed by the temple, that he might even fall to his knees in spontaneous worship, yet somehow the two rings looked smaller here and their stones appeared shrunken. In Sarmennyn, cradled by the dark valley and poised above the gulf of air, the stones had snatched an awesome power from the windy sky as they had stared across a whole land to where the sun died in a distant sea. In Sarmennyn the stones had formed a snare to capture a god, but here the dark pillars were dwarfed by the wide grassland. Dwarfed, too, by the seven taller and paler stones from Cathallo.

'Well?' Galeth asked again.

Saban did not want to answer the query. 'We were attacked last night,' he said instead.

Galeth touched his groin. 'By outcasts?'

'We don't know who attacked us,' Saban said, remembering the black-fledged arrows.

'The outcasts have become bold,' Galeth said. He laid a hand on Saban's arm and lowered his voice. 'People have fled.'

'From the outcasts?'

'From Lengar!' Galeth leaned closer. 'There are rumours, Saban, that the spirits of the dead have gathered to kill Lengar. Folk are frightened!'

'We saw no dead last night,' Saban said, then went to stand between the entrance pillars that had come from Cathallo. He had to look steeply up to the tops of those stones, while the tallest stones of the new rings were not much higher than Saban himself and most were much shorter. 'What did Camaban say of the temple?' he asked Galeth.

'He wanted it remade,' Galeth said, then shook his head. 'I do not know what else he wanted, but he did not seem pleased and Lengar shouted at him and they argued and Camaban and his companion walked away.'

'This is how it was in Sarmennyn,' Saban said, still gazing at the stones.

'You're disappointed?' Aurenna asked.

'It's not my disappointment that matters,' Saban said, but what Slaol thinks.' He was looking beyond the temple now, to the southern grave mounds that clustered so thick on the brow of the hill. There were new mounds there, their chalk flanks white in the sun, and he supposed one of those newer graves belonged to his father. 'Where is Camaban now?' he asked Galeth.

'We haven't seen him all summer,' the old man said.

'He wanted me here to finish the temple,' Saban said.

'No!' Galeth insisted hotly. 'You must go away, Saban. Take your woman, go!' He turned to Aurenna. 'Don't let him keep you here. I beg you.'

Aurenna smiled. 'We are supposed to be here. Erek' — she corrected herself — 'Slaol wants us to be here.'

'Camaban insisted we come,' Saban added.

'But Camaban is gone,' Galeth said. 'He has not been here in four moons. You should follow him.'

'Where to?' Saban asked. He led Aurenna around the temple's margin, following the low bank that lay outside the ditch until he came to the place where he had sat on the grass with Derrewyn on that far-off day after his ordeals. She had made a daisy chain, he remembered, and he was suddenly overcome with sadness for it seemed that five years of work had been for nothing. The temple had been moved, but Slaol would never be drawn to these little stones. Most were scarce as tall as a child! The temple was supposed to call the god to earth, but this little pattern of stones would pass under Slaol's gaze like an ant beneath a hawk's eye. No wonder, Saban thought, that Camaban had fled, for all their labour had been for nothing. 'Maybe we should just go home,' he said to Aurenna.

'But Camaban insisted—' she began.

'Camaban has gone!' Saban said harshly. 'He is gone, and we have no need to stay if he is gone. We shall go home to Sarmennyn.' The music of Sarmennyn had become his music, the tales of its tribe his tales, its language his tongue, and he felt no kinship with this frightened place with its shabby temple. He turned and walked to where Kereval was standing beside the sun stone. 'With your permission,' Saban said to the chief, 'I would return home with you.'

'I would be sad if you did not,' Kereval said, smiling. The chief was white-haired now, and stooped, but he had lived long enough to see his bargain fulfilled and so he was happy.

Scathel intervened, 'But we do not go back until the gold and the other treasures are returned.'

'My brother knows that,' Saban said and just then a warning shout made him turn round to see that six horsemen had appeared among the grave mounds to the south. All carried spears and had short Outfolk bows across their shoulders and all six were warriors who, long before, had marched to Ratharryn to help Lengar snatch the chieftainship. Their leader was Vakkal whose face had the grey ashen scars of Sarmennyn, but whose arms now boasted the blue scars of Ratharryn. He was a tall man with a harsh face and a short black beard that had a badger's streak of white. He wore a leather tunic that was armoured with bronze strips, had a bronze sword at his waist and fox tails woven into his long plaited hair. He dismounted when he came to Kereval, then dropped to his knees in submission. 'Lengar sends his greetings,' Vakkal told the chief.

'He follows you?' Kereval asked.

'He will come tomorrow,' Vakkal said, then stood aside as his five Outfolk warriors came to greet their chief. Saban saw how the folk of Ratharryn made way for the men, how they scuttled apart as if it was suddenly bad luck to be close to a spearman. Vakkal was gazing at Aurenna who, made uncomfortable by his stare, went to stand beside Saban. 'I don't know you,' Vakkal challenged Saban.

'We met once,' Saban said, 'when you first came to Ratharryn.'

Vakkal smiled, though no pleasure showed in his eyes. 'You are Saban,' he said, 'Jegar's killer.'

'And my friend!' Kereval said loudly.

'We are all friends,' Vakkal said, still looking at Saban.

'Does Lengar bring us the gold?' Scathel demanded.

'He does,' Vakkal said, at last looking away from Saban. 'He brings the gold, and until he comes he asks only that you and your men be his honoured guests.' He turned and gestured towards Ratharryn. 'He says you are welcome to his home and that a feast will be made for you.'

'And we are to receive the gold?' Kereval asked eagerly.

'All of it,' Vakkal promised with a sincere smile, 'all of it.'

Kereval fell to his knees in gratitude. He had sent a temple and kept faith with his god and the treasures would now be returned to his tribe. 'Tomorrow,' he said happily, 'tomorrow we shall take our gold and we can go home.'

Home, Saban thought, home. Tomorrow. It would all be over and he could go home.

Ratharryn had grown. There were more than twice as many huts as when Saban had left, indeed there were so many that they now filled more than half the space inside the encircling wall, while a whole new settlement had been built beyond the embankment on the higher ground close to the wooden temple of Slaol. Yet the most startling change was that Lahanna's temple had been replaced by a great round thatched building. 'It used to be the temple,' Galeth told Saban, 'only now it is Lengar's hall.'

'His hall?' Saban was shocked. It seemed a terrible thing to transform a temple into a hall.

'Derrewyn worships Lahanna in Cathallo,' Galeth explained, 'so Lengar decided to insult the goddess. He pulled down most of the poles, roofed it, and he now feasts here.' Galeth had led Saban through the soaring hut's doorway into a cavernous interior much higher and larger than Kereval's great building at Sarmennyn. A dozen of the Old Temple posts were left, only they now supported a high thatched roof that soared towards a hole at the peak where smoke could escape, though that vent was barely visible because the roof beams were hung with a multitude of spears and smoke-darkened skulls. 'The spears and heads of his enemies,' Galeth told Saban in a hushed voice. 'I do not like this place.'

Saban hated it and Lahanna, he thought, would surely want revenge for the desecration of her shrine. The hall was so large that all Kereval's men, well over a hundred of them, could sleep on its rush- and bracken-strewn floor, and all ate there that night, feasting on pork, trout, pike, bread, sorrel, mushrooms, pears and blackberries. Saban and Aurenna ate in Galeth's hut where they listened to tales of Lengar's chieftainship. They heard stories of endless raids, of the slaughter of strangers, the enrichment of the warriors and the enslavement of countless folk from neighbouring tribes, yet through it all, Galeth said, Cathallo had resisted. 'All who hate Ratharryn,' he said, 'befriend Cathallo.' So Cathallo and Ratharryn still fought, though it was Ratharryn who raided the deepest. No boy could now become a man in Ratharryn until he had brought back a head to add to the skulls in Lengar's great hut. 'It is not enough to survive the forest these days,' Galeth said, 'a boy must also show his bravery in battle, and if he is thought a coward then he must spend a whole year dressed as a woman. He must squat to piss and fetch water with the slaves. Even their own mothers despise them!' He shook his head and made a keening noise.

'Yet Lengar is building the temple?' Aurenna asked, puzzled that a man who so loved war should make a temple that was supposed to bring a time of peace and happiness.

'It is a war temple!' Galeth said. 'He claims Kenn and Slaol are one!'

'Kenn?' Aurenna asked.

'The god of war,' Saban explained.

'Slaol is Kenn, and Kenn is Slaol,' Galeth said, shaking his head. 'But Lengar also says a great leader must have a great temple and he likes to boast that he has stolen a temple clean across the world.'

'Stolen?' Aurenna asked with a frown. 'He is exchanging it for gold!'

'He is building it for his own glory,' Galeth said, 'though there are rumours that the temple will never be finished.'

'What rumours?' Saban asked.

The old man rocked back and forth. The fire lit his gaunt face and threw his shadow on the underside of the roof's thatch. 'There have been omens,' he said quietly. 'There are more outcasts than ever among the trees and they grow bold. Lengar led all his spearmen against them, but all they found were corpses hanging in trees. They say the outcasts are led by a dead chieftain and none of our spearmen dare confront them now, not unless a priest goes with them to make charms and spells.' Galeth's wife Lidda, who was toothless and bent now, cried aloud and groped under her pelt to touch her groin. 'Healthy children have died,' Galeth continued, 'and lightning struck Arryn and Mai's temple. One of its posts is all blackened and split!'

Lidda sighed. 'Corpses were seen walking beyond the Sky Temple,' she moaned, 'and they cast no shadows.'

'It isn't a Sky Temple now,' Saban said bitterly. The airy lightness of the first stones had been stolen by Sarmennyn's squat ring. It was not even a Temple of Shadows, but something belittled and inadequate.

'An ash was cut in the forests and it cried like a dying child!' Galeth said. 'Though I did not hear it myself,' he added. 'Axes are blunt before they are used.'

'The moon rose the colour of blood,' Lidda carried on the lament, 'and a badger killed a dog. A child was born with six fingers.'

'Some say' — Galeth lowered his voice and glanced warily at Aurenna — 'that the Outfolk temple has brought ill fortune. And when Camaban came here in the spring he said the temple should be remade, that it was all wrong.'

'And Lengar disagreed?' Saban asked.

'Lengar says Camaban has gone mad,' Galeth said, 'and that Slaol's enemies are trying to prevent the temple's completion. He called Camaban an enemy of Slaol! So Camaban went away.'

'And the priests?' Saban asked. 'What do they say?'

'They say nothing. They fear Lengar. He killed one!'

'He killed a priest?' Saban asked, shocked.

'The priest tried to stop him turning Lahanna's temple into a hut, so Lengar killed him.'

'And Neel?' Saban asked. 'What did he do?'

'Neel!' Galeth spat at the mention of the high priest's name. 'He's nothing but a dog at Lengar's heels.' Galeth turned to Aurenna. 'You must go, lady, before Lengar returns.'

'Lengar will not touch me,' Aurenna said, using the language of Ratharryn that she had learned from Saban.

'We are here with warriors of Sarmennyn,' Saban explained, 'and they will protect her.' He touched the nutshell beneath his tunic.

Galeth looked dubious at that assertion. 'When my brother was chief,' he told Aurenna, 'we were happy.'

'We were happy,' Lidda echoed.

'We lived in peace,' Galeth said, 'or tried to. There was hunger, of course, there is always hunger, but my brother knew how to share food. But it has all changed, all changed.'

Next morning, under a cloudless sky and a warm sun, a hundred men slid the mother stone ashore and levered it onto a sledge that was harnessed to sixteen oxen. The beasts dragged the stone away from the river while Galeth took Saban and Aurenna to the Sky Temple and asked where the stone should be placed. It was Aurenna who decreed that it should stand on its own within the double ring and opposite the lintelled gateway of the sun. That way, she said, the rising sun at midsummer would touch the mother stone as a symbol of the earth and sun united. There was no one else to make the decision so Galeth ordered a dozen men to make a hole where Aurenna had indicated.

Galeth watched as the turf was peeled back and the antler picks prised at the chalk beneath. 'I can't dig any more,' he told Saban. 'My joints ache. I can't even swing an axe now.'

'You've worked hard enough,' Saban said.

'If a man can't work, a man shouldn't eat, eh?' Galeth said, then turned to watch the oxen hauling the mother stone, which was so long that it overhung its sledge at both ends. Three of the smaller stones were following, their sledges being dragged by men. 'All slaves,' Galeth told Saban. 'Our spearmen raid constantly for slaves and food. We trade in slaves now and it makes Lengar rich.'

A horn sounded to the south. The noise was booming, but made tremulous by the warm autumn air. Saban looked enquiringly at Galeth, who nodded. 'Your brother,' he said wearily.

Saban crossed the banks and ditch, going to Aurenna. He put an arm about her and placed his other hand on his son's shoulder. The horn sounded again, and then there was a long silence. Saban watched the near crest that was broken by the humps of the graves. Farther off, blurred by the warm air, the distant horizon was dark with trees.

They waited, but still nothing showed on the crest. A wind lifted Aurenna's long hair and rippled the grass, turning it pale and then dark again. Lallic was wriggling in her mother's arms and Aurenna soothed the child. The men digging the hole for the mother stone had dropped their antler picks and were staring south. Even the oxen dragging the boulder were standing still, their heads low and their flanks bleeding from the goads. A hawk slid across the sacred path, its black shadow flicking sharp against the chalk banks.

'Is a bad man coming?' Leir asked his father.

Saban smiled. 'It is your uncle,' he said, ruffling his son's hair, 'and you must treat him with respect.'