Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

'Kill them…' He was speaking in his own voice now, and he drew his gory sword and advanced on the crowd as he chanted the words. 'Kill them, kill them, kill them.' The crowd backed away.

'Take them as slaves!' He had changed to Sannas's voice again. 'They will be good slaves! Whip them if they are not good! Whip them!' He began writhing again, and howling again, and then, very suddenly, went still.

'Slaol talks in me,' he said in his own voice. 'He talks to me and through me. The great god comes to me and he asks why you are not all dead. Why should we not take your babies and dash their heads against the temple stones?' The women cried aloud. 'Why not give your children to Slaol's fire?' Camaban asked. 'Why not give your women to be raped, and bury your men alive in the dung pits? Why not? These last two words were a screech.

'Because I will not let it.' It was Sannas once more. 'My people will obey Ratharryn, they will obey. On your knees, slaves, on your knees!' And the people of Cathallo went on their knees to Camaban. Some held out their hands to him. Women clung to their children and appealed for their lives, but Camaban just turned away, went to the nearest stone and rested his head against it.

Saban let out a great breath that he had not even been aware he had been holding. The folk of Cathallo stayed kneeling, terror on their faces, and that was how Gundur's spearmen found them when they filed through the western entrance.

Gundur went to Camaban. 'Do we kill them?'

'They're slaves,' Camaban said calmly. 'Dead slaves can't work.'

'Kill the old, then?'

'Kill the old,' Camaban agreed, 'but let the others live.' He turned and stared at the kneeling crowd. 'For I am Slaol and these are the slaves who will build me a temple.' He raised his arms to the sun. 'For I am Slaol,' he cried again in triumph, 'and they are going to build my shrine!'

—«»—«»—«»—

Camaban left Gundur to govern Cathallo. Keep the people alive, he told him, for in the spring their labour would be needed. Gundur also had orders to search the woods for Derrewyn, whose body had never been found, and for her daughter who had also disappeared. Rallin's wives and children had been discovered and their bodies now rotted in a shallow grave. Morthor was buried under a mound and a new high priest had been appointed, but only after the man had kissed Camaban's misshapen foot and sworn to obey him.

So Camaban went home in triumph to Ratharryn where, all winter long, he toyed with wooden blocks. He had asked Saban to make the blocks, insisting that the timber was squared into pillar shapes, and he demanded more and more of them and then disappeared into his hut where he arranged and rearranged the blocks obsessively. At first he made the blocks into twin circles, one nested within the other like the unfinished temple that Saban was now removing, but after a while Camaban rejected the twin circles and instead modelled a temple like the existing shrine to Slaol just beyond Ratharryn's entrance. He devised a forest of pillars, but after staring at the model for days he swept it aside. He tried to remake Slaol and Lahanna's pattern in stone: twelve circles imposed on one greater circle; but when he stooped so that he could see the blocks with an eye close to the ground he saw only muddle and confusion and so he also rejected that arrangement.

It was a cold winter and a hungry one. Lewydd carried Erek's gold home, taking with him a half-dozen of Vakkal's men who wanted to live out their days in Sarmennyn, but that still left a horde of mouths to be fed in Ratharryn and Lengar had never been as careful as his father in storing food which meant the grain pits were low. Camaban did not care for he thought of little except his temple. He was chief of two tribes, yet he performed none of the tasks that his father had done. He allowed other men to lead his war bands, he insisted that Haragg dispense justice and was content to let Saban worry about amassing enough food to see Ratharryn through the winter. Camaban took no wives, bred no children and did not amass treasures, though he did begin to dress in some of the finery that he discovered in Lengar's hut. He wore the thick buckle of gold that the stranger had worn when he came to the Old Temple so many years before, he hung a cloak of wolf pelts edged with fox fur from his shoulders, and he carried a small mace that Lengar had taken from a priest of a defeated tribe. Hengall had carried a mace as a symbol of power, and it amused Camaban to ape his father and mock his memory for, where Hengall's mace had been a bone-crushing lump of rough stone, Camaban's mace was a delicate and precious object. Its wooden handle was circled by bone rings sculpted into the shape of lightning bolts, while its head was a perfectly carved and beautifully polished egg of black-veined brown stone, which must have taken a craftsman days of meticulous work. He had shaped the head smooth, then drilled a circular hole for its handle, and when the work was done the man had made a weapon that was good only for ceremony, for the small mace-head was much too light to inflict damage on anything but the most delicate of skulls. Camaban liked to flourish the mace as proof that stone could be worked as easily as wood. 'We won't use rough boulders like those at Cathallo,' he told Haragg. 'We'll shape them. Sculpt them.' He caressed his mace head. 'Smooth them,' he said.

Saban gathered the tribe's grain into one hut, purchased more from Drewenna and doled it out through the cold days. Warriors hunted, bringing back venison and boar and wolf. No one starved, though many of the old and the sick died. And through that cold winter Saban also took away all the dark pillars that had been brought from Sarmennyn. It was not a hard task. The stones were dug out of their holes, tipped onto the grass and dragged down into the small valley that lay east of the temple. Men dug chalk rubble from the ditch and filled the stone holes so that the centre of the temple was once again smooth and empty. Only the moon stones remained within the ditch, and the three pillars beyond it, but then Saban raised the mother stone close to the temple's centre. It took sixty men, a tripod of oak and seven days to raise the stone that was placed opposite the temple's entrance so that on midsummer's day the sun would shine down the avenue onto the pillar. The mother stone stood tall, much taller than the other pillars from Sarmennyn had stood, and in the low winter sun its shadow lay long and black on the pale turf.

Camaban spent whole days at the temple, brooding mostly and rarely taking any notice of the men who laboured to dismantle the Temple of Shadows. As the days grew shorter and the air colder he went there more often, and after a time he carried spears to the temple and rammed their blades into the hard ground, then peered across the tops of their staffs. He was using the spears to judge how high he wanted his stone pillars, but the spears did not satisfy him and so he ordered Mereth to cut him a dozen longer poles and he asked Saban to dig those into the turf. The poles were long, but light, and the work was done in a day. Camaban spent day after day staring at the poles, seeing patterns in his mind.

In the end there were just two poles left. One was twice the height of a man and the other twice as long again, and they stood in line with the midsummer sun's rising, the taller post behind the mother stone and the shorter pole closer to the shrine's entrance, and as the winter came to its heart, Camaban went each evening to the temple and stared at the thin poles, which seemed to shiver in the icy wind.

Midwinter came. It had ever been a time when cattle bellowed as they were sacrificed to appease the sun's weakness, but Haragg would have no such killings in his temples and so the tribe danced and sang without the smell of fresh blood in their nostrils. Some folk grumbled that the gods would be angered by Haragg's squeamishness, claiming sacrifice was necessary if the new year was not to bring plague, but Camaban supported Haragg and that evening, after the tribe had sung a lament to the dying sun, Camaban preached that the old ways were doomed and that if Ratharryn kept their faith then the new temple would ensure that the sun never died again. They feasted that night on venison and pork, then lit the great fires that would draw Slaol back in the dawn after midwinter's day.

There was snow in that dawn: not much, but enough to coat the higher ground with white in which Camaban left footprints as he walked to the temple. He had insisted that Saban accompany him and the brothers were swathed in furs for it was bitter cold and a sharp wind cut from a pale sky banded with wispy pink clouds. The heavier snow clouds had cleared at midday and the afternoon sun was low enough to cast shadows on the snow from the hummocks made by the filled-in stone holes. Camaban gazed at his twin poles, but shook his head in irritation when Saban asked their purpose. Then he turned to stare at Gilan's four moon stones, the paired pillars and slabs that showed the way to Lahanna's most distant wanderings. 'It is time,' Camaban said, 'to forgive Lahanna.'

'To forgive her?'

'We fought against Cathallo so we could have peace,' Camaban said, 'and Slaol will want peace among the gods. Lahanna rebelled against him, but she has lost the battle. We have won. It is time to forgive her.' He gazed at the distant woods. 'Do you think Derrewyn still lives?'

'Do you want to forgive her?' Saban asked.

'Never,' Camaban said bitterly.

'The winter will kill her,' Saban said.

'It will take more than winter to kill that bitch,' Camaban said grimly. 'And while we work for peace she'll be praying to Lahanna in some dark place, and I do not want Lahanna to oppose us. I want her to join us. It is time that she was drawn back to Slaol, and that is why we shall leave her four stones because they show her that she belongs to Slaol.'

'They do?' Saban asked.

Camaban smiled. 'If you were to stand by either pillar,' he said, pointing to the nearest moon stone pillar, 'and looked at the slab across the circle, you will see where Lahanna wanders?'

Yes,' Saban said, remembering how Gilan had placed the four stones.

'But what if you were to look at the other slab?' Camaban asked.

Saban frowned, not understanding, and so Camaban seized his arm and walked him to the pillar and pointed towards the great slab standing on the circle's far side. 'That's where Lahanna goes, yes?'

'Yes,' Saban agreed.

Camaban turned Saban so that now he looked towards the second slab. 'And what would you see if you looked in that direction?'

Saban was so cold that he found it hard to think, but it was late in the day and the sun was low among the pink clouds and he saw that Slaol would touch the horizon in line with the moon stones. 'You would see Slaol's midwinter death,' he said.

'Exactly! And if you looked the other way? If you were to stand by that pillar,' Camaban pointed diagonally across the circle, 'and looked across the other slab?'

'Slaol's summer rising.'

'Yes!' Camaban shouted. 'So what does that tell you? It tells you that Slaol and Lahanna are linked. They are joined, Saban, like a feather is in the wing or a horn in the skull. Lahanna might rebel, but she must come back. All the world's sadness is because Slaol and Lahanna parted, but our temple will bring them together. The stones tell us that. Her stones are his stones, don't you understand that?'

'Yes,' Saban said, and wondered why he had never realised that the moon stones could as easily point to the limits of Slaol's wanderings as to Lahanna's.

'What you'll do, Saban,' Camaban said enthusiastically, 'is dig me a ditch and bank round the two pillars. They're the watching stones. You'll make me two earth rings, and the priests can stand in the rings and watch Slaol across the slabs. Good!' He began to walk briskly back towards the settlement, but stopped by the sun stone which lay farthest from the shrine. 'And another ditch and bank round this stone.' He slapped the stone. 'Three circles round three stones. Three places where only priests can go. Two places to watch the sun's death and Lahanna's wanderings and one place to watch Slaol rise in glory. Now all we have to decide is what goes in the centre.'

'We have more than that to decide,' Saban said.

'What?'

'Cathallo is short of food.'

Camaban shrugged as if that were a small thing.

'Dead slaves' — Saban grimly echoed Camaban's own words — 'can't work.'

'Gundur will look after them,' Camaban said, irritated by the discussion. He wanted to think of nothing except his temple. 'That's why I sent Gundur to Cathallo. Let him feed them.'

'Gundur is only interested in Cathallo's women,' Saban said. 'He keeps a score of the youngest in his hut, and the rest of the settlement starves. You want the remnants of the tribe to rebel against you? You want them to become outlaws instead of slaves?'

'Then you go and rule Cathallo,' Camaban said carelessly, walking away through the thin snow.

'How can I build your temple if I'm in Cathallo?' Saban shouted after him.

Camaban howled at the sky in frustration, then stopped and stared at the darkening sky. 'Aurenna,' he said.

'Aurenna?' Saban asked, puzzled.

Camaban turned. 'Cathallo has ever been ruled by women,' he said. 'Sannas first, then Derrewyn, so why not Aurenna?'

'They'll kill her!' Saban protested.

'They will love her, brother. Is she not be beloved of Slaol? Didn't he spare her life? You think the people of Cathallo could kill what Slaol spared?' Camaban danced some clumsy steps, shuffling in the snow. 'Haragg will tell the folk of Cathallo that Aurenna was the sun's bride and in their minds they will think she is Lahanna.'

'She's my wife,' Saban said harshly.

Camaban walked slowly towards Saban. 'We have no wives, brother, we have no husbands, we have no sons, we have no daughters, we have nothing till the temple is built.'

Saban shook his head at such nonsense. 'They will kill her!' he insisted.

'They will love her,' Camaban said again. He limped close to Saban and then, grotesquely, he fell on his knees in the snow and held up his hands. 'Let your wife go to Cathallo, Saban. I beg you! Let her go! Slaol wants it!' He gazed up at Saban. 'Please!'

'Aurenna might not want to go,' Saban said.

'Slaol wants it,' Camaban said again, then frowned. 'We are trying to turn the world back to its beginnings. To end winter. To drive sadness and weariness from the land. Do you know how hard that is? One wrong step and we could be in darkness for ever, but sometimes, suddenly, Slaol tells me what to do. And he has told me to send Aurenna to Cathallo. I beg you, Saban! I beg you! Let her go.'

'You want her to rule Cathallo?'

'I want her to draw Lahanna back! Aurenna is the sun's bride. If we are to have joy in the world, Saban, we must have Slaol and Lahanna united again. Aurenna alone can do it. Slaol has told me so and you, my brother, must let her go.' He held out a hand so that Saban could pull him to his feet. 'Please,' Camaban said.

'If Aurenna wishes to go,' Saban said, reckoning his wife would have no wish to be isolated so far from the new temple, but to his surprise Aurenna did not reject the idea. Instead she talked a long time with Camaban and Haragg, and afterwards she went to Slaol's old temple where she submitted herself to the widow's rite by having her long golden hair hacked short with a bronze knife. Haragg burned the hair, the ashes were placed in a pot and the pot was broken against one of the timber poles.