Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

Kereval held up his hand for silence. 'Did Lengar promise to give us the treasure?' he asked the five warriors.

'He said he would exchange it for our temple,' their leader answered.

'You have chosen a temple?' Kereval asked Camaban.

Camaban looked surprised to be addressed, as though he had been paying no attention to the heated discussion. 'I'm sure we shall find one,' he said casually.

'But if you do find it,' Scathel jeered at Camaban, 'and if you move it, will your brother return our gold?'

Camaban nodded to the priest. 'He has agreed to do that.'

'He agreed,' Scathel said. 'He agreed! But he never told us that part of our gold was already given away! What else is he hiding from us? What else?' And with that question the gaunt priest suddenly crouched and put his head in his hands so that his long hair trailed in the dust. He mewed for a while, writhing in apparent pain, and the crowd held their breath, knowing that he was speaking with Erek. Saban glanced anxiously at Camaban, wondering why his brother did not put on a similar display, but Camaban just yawned again.

Scathel threw his head back and howled at the clear evening sky. The howl shrank into a mewing whimper and the priest's eyes rolled up so that only their whites showed. 'The god speaks,' he gasped in a hoarse voice, 'he speaks!' Saban fought off terror, suspecting only too well what message the god would bring. He looked at Camaban again, but Camaban had picked up a stray kitten and was unconcernedly plucking fleas from its fur. 'We must use blood!' Scathel shrieked, and with those words he flung a hand towards Saban. 'Seize him!'

A dozen warriors competed to hold Saban who had no time to defend himself. Haragg tried to pull some of the men off, but the trader was knocked down by a spear butt. Cagan roared and charged to his father's rescue and it took six men to tackle the mute giant and hold him face down beside the pit. Saban struggled, but the spearmen held him tight against the wall of Kereval's hut. They ignored the chief's protests for the news that part of Erek's gold had been given away had enraged them.

The high priest shrugged off the gull-feather cloak. He was naked now. 'Erek,' he shouted, 'what I do to this man, do to his brother!'

Saban could do nothing except watch Scathel walk towards him. There was triumph on the priest's face, triumph and excitement, and Saban realised that Scathel was enjoying this cruelty. Camaban was ignoring the confrontation, tickling the kitten's throat while Scathel took a flint blade from one of his priests. 'Take Lengar's eye!' Scathel shouted at the god, then reached out with his left hand and grabbed a handful of Saban's hair. The spearmen held him tighter, and all Saban could do was try to turn away as the flint blade came closer.

'No!' Aurenna's voice called.

The knife quivered like a great shadow at the edge of Saban's sight.

'No!' Aurenna said again. 'Not while I live!'

Scathel hissed and turned on her.

'Not while I live,' she repeated calmly. She had walked through the crowd and now faced Scathel boldly. 'Put the knife down.'

'What is he to you?' Scathel demanded.

'He tells me stories,' Aurenna said. She stared Scathel in the eye, and Saban, who thought the priest was tall, saw that the sun bride was very nearly the same height. She faced him in her white and gold splendour and her back was straight and her face as calm as ever. 'And when I go to my husband,' she told the priest, 'he will send a sign about the gold.'

Scathel's face twisted. He was being given orders by a girl, but the girl was a goddess and he could do nothing except obey and so he forced himself to bow his head and back away. 'Put him in the pit,' he ordered the two spearmen.

But again Aurenna intervened. 'No!' she said. 'He still has tales to tell me.'

'He must go into the pit!' Scathel insisted.

'Not till I leave,' Aurenna said and she stared into Scathel's eyes until the priest gave way. He signalled for the spearmen to let go of Saban's arms.

And next evening the pillar in the sun bride's temple had no shadow for there were thick clouds in the west. But the priests decided the time had come anyway.

In the dawn they would leave for the Sea Temple, and in the evening they would send Aurenna to the fire.

That night the wind rose, tugging at the thatch and thrashing at the trees. Saban lay in his pelt, swathed in misery, and he could have sworn he did not sleep at all, yet even so he did not see or hear Camaban stir in the night's heart and slip silently from the hut.

Camaban went to Malkin's shrine and there prayed to the weather god. He prayed for a long time as the wind fretted at the settlement's palisade and the small waves of the river were flecked with white. Camaban bowed to the god, kissing the idol's blackened feet, then he went back to Haragg's hut and wrapped himself in a cloak of bear's fur. He listened to Cagan snore, heard Saban whimper in his sleep and he closed his eyes and thought of the temple up in the hills, the Temple of Shadows: he saw it moved as if by magic to the green hill beside Ratharryn, and he saw the sun god poised above the hill, huge and bright and all-embracing, and Camaban began to weep for he knew he could make the world happy if only the fools did not thwart him. And there were so many fools. But then he, too, slept.

Saban was the first to stir in the dawn. He crawled to the hut entrance and saw that the good weather had ended. The wind was whipping the tree tops and grey-black clouds were hurrying low above the hills. 'Is it raining?' Camaban asked.

'No.'

'Did you sleep well?'

'No.'

'I did!' Camaban claimed. 'All night!'

Saban could not stand his brother's cheerfulness and so he went out into the settlement where the newly woken tribe readied themselves for the day and night that lay ahead. They would take bags of food and skins of water to the Sea Temple for the ceremony would last most of the day, and once the bride had gone to the flames they would dance about the temple until the fire had cooled enough for Aurenna's charred bones to be retrieved and pounded into dust.

Kereval, swathed in a cloak of beaver fur and carrying a massive spear with a polished bronze head, ordered his spearmen to open the settlement gate. The warriors had smeared their faces with red ochre and bound their long hair in strips of hide. Today no one would fish. Today nearly all the tribe would go to the Sea Temple. From all across Sarmennyn the folk would gather to send the sun bride on her journey. Haragg watched the preparations and then, unable to endure the sight, abruptly turned away. 'Come hunting with me,' he told Saban.

'Your brother won't let me.' Saban said, nodding to the spearmen who watched him on Scathel's orders. Today Saban would become the high priest's hostage. He wondered why he had not fled eastwards in the night, and he knew it was because of Aurenna. He loved her and he could not leave her, even if by staying he could do nothing to help her.

Haragg and Cagan crossed the river in a log boat and vanished among the trees. A moment later Scathel emerged from Kereval's large hut. The high priest wore his feather cloak that ruffled and shivered in the wind. His hair had been stiffened with red mud, while around his neck hung a chain of sea-monster teeth. At his waist was a belt at which two knives were scabbarded. Leckan, the next most senior priest, was wearing a cape made from tanned human skin and the faces of the two men whose hides had been flayed hung down his back with their long hair trailing. Another priest had antlers on his head. They danced from the hut, and the waiting tribe began to shuffle from side to side. A drummer began to beat a skin and the shuffle took rhythm as someone began to sing. Camaban joined the dance. He was wearing a cloak of deerskin and had smeared his face with strips of soot.

Scathel pointed at Saban. 'Take him!' he ordered, and a dozen of the red-painted warriors closed on Saban with their spears. They herded him to the pit's edge, but before they could throw him into its depths Aurenna appeared.

Her white face was drawn and shadowed, but her tall body was swathed in the fresh woollen robe and the replacement gold glinted at her breast and neck. Her hair had been combed straight, though the wind immediately lifted it as she walked slowly towards the dancing priests. She did not look at Saban, but kept her eyes on the ground, and then, when Scathel summoned her, she turned obediently towards the gate. The crowd sighed and the dancers moved to join the procession that would take her to the Sea Temple.

Scathel nodded to the spearmen guarding Saban and two of them pulled the cloak from his shoulders while a third drew a knife and slashed Saban's tunic from neck to hem, then tugged the garment away so that he was naked. 'Jump,' the spearman ordered.

Saban looked round a last time. Camaban was not looking at him and Aurenna had gone beyond the gate, then one of the impatient spearmen threatened him and so, resigned, he jumped into the prison pit. It was deep and the impact of the fall was painful, and when he stood he saw that he could not reach to the pit's top. The great trellis of branches was placed over his prison and was fixed in place with wooden pegs that were banged into the earth.

Then there was just the sigh of the wind and the sound of the drumming that faded as the tribe left the settlement. One of the two spearmen who had been left to guard Saban dropped a skin of water through the trellis, then went away, and Saban huddled in a corner with his arms about his knees and his head dropped on to a forearm.

Aurenna would die. And he would be tortured, blinded and maimed. Because the gold had gone to Ratharryn.

—«»—«»—«»—

In Ratharryn the priests had also determined that this day was midsummer and so, as dusk approached, the tribe lit the fires and prepared themselves for the bull-dancing and the flame-jumping. Derrewyn ignored the excitement. She was hunched in a corner of Lengar's hut, hidden from the men by a leather curtain. She was naked. Lengar insisted on it, for he enjoyed humiliating her, calling her the whore of Cathallo. She was Lengar's wife, forced to marry him in Slaol's temple, but in the last moons any of Lengar's friends could summon Derrewyn and she must go to them or else risk a beating, and there were scars on her face, shoulders and arms where they had all drunkenly thrashed her. Jegar had beat her the worst because she mocked him most. She mocked them all, for that had been her best defence. Now she crouched by the curtain, listened to the three men talk and felt the baby stir in her belly. She knew it was Lengar's baby, and she was certain it would be a son. It would be born in two or maybe three moons. The men took less interest in her now that she was pregnant, but still they insulted her. None, however, detected the seething anger that burned within her. They believed they had defeated her.

The three men in the hut, Lengar, Jegar and Vakkal, were talking of Cathallo. Vakkal was the war leader from Sarmennyn who had helped Lengar gain the chieftainship; he now boasted blue scars like the warriors of Ratharryn and spoke in Ratharryn's tongue. He was another of the men who had been given permission to summon Derrewyn whenever he wished, the privilege of Lengar's friends. Now he listened as Lengar declared Cathallo was ripe for defeat. The tribe had never recovered from Sannas's death and with her had gone the sorcery that Lengar believed had kept Cathallo safe. So in the late summer, Lengar said, Ratharryn should attack Cathallo again, only this time they would leave their enemy's settlement burned. They would pull down its great temple, level the Sacred Mound and piss on the grave mounds of Cathallo's ancestors.

'Are you listening, whore?' Jegar called. Derrewyn did not answer. 'Sullen bitch,' Jegar said, and Derrewyn heard the slurring in his voice and knew he was drinking the Outfolk liquor.

Tonight, Vakkal was saying, they would be burning the sun bride in Sarmennyn.

'Maybe we should burn Derrewyn,' Jegar suggested.

'Slaol wouldn't want her,' Lengar said. 'Give Slaol a whore and he'll turn his back on us.'

'He will not thank us,' Vakkal said, 'if we do not watch his setting tonight.' The fires were already burning in Ratharryn's fields and the bull men were waiting to dance among the wooden poles of Slaol's temple.

'We must go,' Lengar said. 'Stay here, whore!' he called to Derrewyn beyond the curtain and he left one of his young warriors in the hut to guard the treasures that were hidden beneath the floor and under the great piles of precious hides. 'If the whore gives you trouble,' Lengar told the young spearman, 'hit her.'

The spearman settled beside the fire. He was very young, though he already possessed two blue scars to represent the two warriors of Cathallo whom he had slaughtered at a battle on the heights above Maden. Like many of the young men in the tribe he revered Lengar because the new chief had made Ratharryn's spearmen feared and his followers wealthy. The youth dreamed of owning many cattle and wives. He dreamed of a great hut all of his own and of heroic songs sung about his exploits.

A sound made him turn his head and he saw that Derrewyn had appeared at the edge of the curtain. She was kneeling and when the warrior looked at her she dropped her head submissively. She had combed her long hair and hung an amber pendant round her neck, but otherwise she was naked. She kept her eyes lowered and made a whimpering sound as she shuffled forward on her knees. The spearman instinctively looked at the door to see if anyone was watching, but no one was there. Only the very old and the sick were left in Ratharryn; the rest of the folk were at Slaol's temple where the bull men were covering the girls in Slaol's honour.

The spearman watched Derrewyn approach. The fire made the shadows of her small breasts livid and lit her swollen belly. Then she looked up at him and there was an immense sadness in her big eyes. She mewed pitifully, then crept forward into the heat of the fire. The warrior frowned. 'You must go back,' he said nervously.

'Hold me,' she begged him. 'I'm lonely. Hold me.'

'You must go back!' he insisted. He was frightened that her glistening pregnant belly might burst if he used force to push her back behind the curtain.

'Hold me,' she said again, and she edged his spear aside and put her left arm round his neck. 'Please hold me.'

'No,' he said, 'no,' but he was too scared of her to push her away and so he let her pull his head towards hers. He smelt her hair. 'You must go back,' he said, and Derrewyn put her right hand between her thighs where the short bronze-bladed knife was clamped and she ripped the weapon upwards, straight into his belly, and the spearman's eyes widened, then he gasped as she twisted the blade in his guts and jerked it on upwards, through the band of muscle under his lungs and into the tangle of blood tubes about his heart so that she felt the warm gush of his life surge over her wrist and thighs. He tried to push her away, but his strength was gone; she heard the rattle in his throat and saw his eyes turn cloudy and Derrewyn felt the first real joy she had known since Lengar's return. It was as though Sannas's restless spirit had come to fill her and that thought made her go very still, but then the dead man's weight fell onto her and she wrenched the bloody knife free and tilted him sideways so that his head fell in the fire. His hair, greasy because he had wiped his fingers in its strands after eating, crackled and flared bright in the gloom.