Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

'How many stones are there?' Stakis asked.

'Ten times seven,' Saban answered, 'and two.'

There were gasps from Drewenna's men. They had thought that perhaps Sarmennyn was giving two or three dozen stones, but not twice that many. 'I shall want a spearhead of bronze for every stone,' Stakis insisted.

'Let me talk to Kereval,' Saban said, then leaned over to the chief and changed to the Outfolk tongue. 'He wants too much.'

'I will give him ten spearheads,' Kereval said, 'no more.' He looked across the circle at the gifts. 'He already has a basket of spearheads! Will all his men be armed with metal spears?'

'For every ten stones,' Saban said to Stakis, 'we shall give you one spearhead. No more.'

Jegar was watching this altercation with amusement. Before Stakis could respond to Saban's offer a horn sounded in the wooded hills just to the north of the meeting place. Stakis frowned at the noise, but Jegar smiled soothingly. 'Lengar is hunting,' he explained.

'No aurochs will be this close to Sul,' Stakis said, staring at the trees.

'It has been driven, perhaps?' Jegar suggested. 'As you wish us to drive Kellan onto your bronze spears?'

'Which you will do?' Stakis asked eagerly. Just then the horn sounded a second time and Jegar leaned forward and plucked the hide cover from the fourth hurdle. This one did not have gifts, but weapons. Men always came to a meeting unarmed, but Ratharryn's warriors now ran forward and picked up spears and bows and suddenly a host of spearmen were running from the trees and the first arrows were whipping overhead to fall among Stakis's men.

'Back!' Jegar shouted at Saban. 'Back to your huts. We have no quarrel with Sarmennyn!' He had thrown off his cloak and Saban saw that a bronze sword was in his crippled right hand. It was lashed there with leather strips, explaining why he had sat so uncomfortably swathed in the otter skin cloak that had hidden the weapon. 'Go back!' Jegar shouted.

Lengar had not been hunting at all, but had met the rest of his spearmen in the forests north of Sul, and now he attacked the unarmed men of Drewenna, and with him was Kellan and his renegade warriors. Stakis had been betrayed, tricked and surprised, and now he would die.

Saban ran to the huts with the rest of Sarmennyn's unarmed warriors. He snatched up his bow and a quiver of arrows, but Kereval put a hand on Saban's arm. 'This is not our fight,' the chief said.

It was no fight at all, but a slaughter. Some of Stakis's men had fled to the river where they tried to launch boats, but a group of Lengar's archers assailed them from higher up the bank and those men only stopped loosing arrows when Ratharryn's spearmen reached the river and killed the few survivors. Dogs howled, women screamed and the dying moaned. Stakis himself, with most of his followers, had fled towards to the settlement of Sul with Jegar and Lengar hard on his heels. A few, very few, of Drewenna's men ran towards their assailants, slipping between the attacking parties to reach the trees and when Lengar saw those men escaping he shouted at Jegar to hunt them down. Lengar then jumped, caught the top of the palisade that ringed the settlement and lithely hauled himself over. A flood of his spearmen struggled to follow, then one thought to split the palisade with an axe and yet more men widened the gap and flooded through to the thatched huts surrounding the sacred spring. Kellan and his men joined the slaughter inside the broken wall.

The men from Sarmennyn watched uneasily from their huts where Camaban had joined them. 'It is Lengar's business,' he said, 'not ours. Lengar has no quarrel with Sarmennyn.'

'It's shameful,' Saban said angrily. He could hear dying men calling on their gods, he could see women weeping over the dead and the river swirling with streamers of blood. Some of the attackers were dancing in glee while others stood guard over the gifts that Jegar had so treacherously given to Stakis. 'It's shameful!' Saban said again.

'If your folk break a truce,' Scathel said scornfully, 'then it is not our concern, though it is to our benefit. Kellan will doubtless let us carry stones through his land without any payment at all.'

Jegar had vanished into the trees with a dozen spearmen, pursuing the last of Drewenna's fugitives. Saban remembered the promise Derrewyn had made on his behalf and he remembered his own oaths of vengeance and so he picked up a spear. 'What are you doing?' Lewydd challenged him and, when Saban tried to pull away, Lewydd gripped his arm. 'It is not your fight,' Lewydd insisted.

'It is my fight!' Saban said.

'It isn't wise to pick a fight with wolves,' Camaban said.

'I made a promise,' Saban said and he threw Lewydd's hand off his arm to run towards the woods. Lewydd picked up his own spear and followed.

Dead and dying men lay among the trees. Like all those who had attended the meeting of the tribes, Stakis's warriors had worn their finery and Jegar's men were now stripping them of necklaces, amulets and clothes. They looked up in alarm as Saban and Lewydd appeared, but most recognised Saban and none feared Lewydd for the grey-tattooed Outfolk were not their enemy this day.

Saban climbed the hill, looking for Jegar, then heard a scream to his right and ran through the trees to see his enemy hacking with a sword at a dying man. The sword was strapped to Jegar's maimed hand, but he still wielded it with sickening force. 'Jegar!' Saban shouted, hefting his spear. It would have been easier to have loosed an arrow from the golden string of his bow, but that would have been the coward's way. 'Jegar!' he called again.

Jegar turned, his eyes bright with excitement, then he saw the hunting spear in Saban's hand and it dawned on him that Saban was not an ally here, but a foe. At first he looked astonished, then he laughed. He stooped, picked up his own heavy war spear and straightened to face Saban with both weapons. 'Sixty-three men have I slaughtered,' he said, 'and some had more killing scars than I did.'

'I have killed two that I know of,' Saban said, 'but now it will be three, and sixty-three spirits in the afterlife will be in my debt and Derrewyn will thank me.'

'Derrewyn!' Jegar said scornfully. 'A whore. You'd die for a whore?' He suddenly ran at Saban, lunging with the spear, and laughed as Saban stepped clumsily aside. 'Go home, Saban,' Jegar said, lowering his spear's blade. 'What pride could I take in killing a bullock like you?'

Saban thrust with his spear, but the blade was contemptuously knocked away. Then Jegar lunged again, almost casually; Saban hit the spear aside and saw the sword coming fast from his other side and had to leap back to escape the fast swing. Then the spear came again, then the sword, and he was scrambling desperately back through the leaf mould, mesmerised by the flashing blades that Jegar used with such confident skill. Fighting was Jegar's life and he practised with weapons every day so he had long learned to compensate for his crippled hand. Jegar stabbed the spear again, then abruptly checked his attack to shake his head. 'You're not worth killing,' he said scornfully. Some of his men had come up the hill to watch the fight, and Jegar waved them back. 'It's our argument,' he said, 'but it's over.'

'It isn't over,' Saban said, and he lunged with the spear, dragging it back as soon as Jegar began to parry and then ramming it forward again, aiming at Jegar's throat, but Jegar swayed to one side and struck the spear down with his sword.

'Do you really want to die, Saban?' Jegar asked. 'Because you won't. If you fight me, I won't kill you. Instead I shall make you kneel to me and I'll piss on your head as I did before.'

'I shall piss on your corpse,' Saban said.

'Fool,' Jegar said. He thrust the spear blade forward with a serpent's speed, driving Saban backwards, then he thrust again, and Saban leapt up onto a rock so he was higher than Jegar, but Jegar swung the sword at his legs, forcing Saban to retreat higher still. Jegar laughed when he saw the fear on Saban's face, stepped forward to stab with the spear, and Slaol struck him.

The beam of sunlight came down through a myriad shifting green leaves. It was a spear of light that slid through the branches to strike and dazzle Jegar's eyes. The brilliance lasted only for a heartbeat, but Jegar flinched and jerked his head away and in that heartbeat Saban jumped down from the rock and rammed his spear straight into Jegar's throat. He screamed as he did it, and the scream was for Derrewyn's torment and for his own victory and for the joy he felt as he saw his enemy's blood misting bright.

Jegar fell. He had dropped his spear and was clawing at his throat where his breath bubbled with dark blood. He twitched, and his knees came up to his belly and his eyes rolled as Saban twisted the bronze blade, then twisted it again, so that yet more blood ran into the leaves. He dragged the spear free and Jegar looked up at him with disbelief and Saban drove the blade down into his enemy's belly.

Jegar shivered, then was still. Saban, eyes wide and breath heaving, stared at his enemy, scarce daring to believe Jegar was dead. He had thought himself outmatched, and so he had been, but Slaol had intervened. He pulled the spear from Jegar's corpse, then turned to look at Ratharryn's shocked warriors. 'Go and tell Lengar that Derrewyn is avenged,' he told them. He spat on Jegar's corpse.

Jegar's men backed away and Saban stooped to untie the leather thongs that strapped the sword to Jegar's dead hand. 'How long will you stay at Sul?' he asked Lewydd, who had stayed close to Saban throughout the brief fight.

'Not long,' Lewydd said. 'We must be home by midsummer. Why?'

'I shall be back here in four days,' Saban said, 'and I would travel to Sarmennyn with you. Wait for me.'

'Four days,' Lewydd said, then flinched when he saw what Saban was doing. 'Where are you going?' he asked.

'I shall be back in four days,' Saban repeated, and would say no more. Then he picked up his burden and walked uphill.

The killing at Sul was over.

Saban was tired, hungry and sore. He had walked for the best part of a night and a day, first travelling eastwards from Sul, then following a well-worn traders' path that led northwards through unending woods. Now, on the second evening after leaving Sul, he was climbing a long gentle hill that had been cleared of trees, though any crops that had ever grown on the slope had long vanished to be replaced by bracken. There were no pigs, the only beast that ate the bracken, and no other living thing in sight. Even the air, on this warm and oppressive evening, was empty of birds, and when he stopped to listen he could hear nothing, not even a wind in the bracken, and he knew that this was how the world must have been before the gods made animals and man. The clouds about the low sun were bruised and swollen, shadowing all the land behind him.

Saban had left his bow, his quiver and his spear with Lewydd and he carried only Jegar's bloodstained tunic with its weighty burden. He was dirty, and his hair hung lank. Ever since he had left Sul he had been wondering why he was making this journey and he had found no good answers except for the dictates of instinct and duty. He had a debt, and life was full of debts that must be honoured if fate was to be kind. Everyone knew that. A fisherman was given a good catch so he must offer something back to the gods. A harvest was plump so part must be sacrificed. A favour engendered another favour and a curse was as dangerous to the person who pronounced it as to the person it was aimed against. Every good thing and bad thing in the world was balanced, which was why folk were so attentive to omens — though some men, like Lengar, ignored the imbalance. They simply piled evil on evil and so defied the gods, but Saban could not be so carefree. It worried him that a part of his life was out of balance and so he had walked this long path to the bracken-covered hill where nothing stirred and nothing sounded. More woods crested the hill and he feared to walk in their darkening shadows as night fell, and his fear increased when he reached the trees for there, at the edge of the forest and standing on either side of the path like guardians, were two thin poles that carried human heads.

They were mere skulls now for the birds had pecked the eyes and flesh away, though one of the skulls was still hung with remnants of hair attached to a yellowing scalp. The eyeholes stared a bleak warning down the hill. Turn now, the eyeholes said, just turn and go.

Saban walked on.

He sang as he walked. He had little breath for singing, but he did not want an arrow to hiss out of the leaves so it was better to announce his presence to the spearmen who guarded this territory. He sang the story of Dickel, the squirrel god. It was a child's song with a jaunty tune and told how Dickel had wanted to trick the fox into giving him his big jaw and sharp teeth, but the fox had turned around when Dickel made his spell and the squirrel got the fox's bushy red tail instead. 'Twitch-tail, twitch-tail,' Saban sang, remembering his mother singing the same words to him, and then there was a sound behind him, a footfall in the leaves, and he stopped.

'Who are you, twitch-tail?' a mocking voice asked.

'My name is Saban, son of Hengall,' Saban answered. He heard a sharp intake of breath and knew that the man behind him was considering his death. He had announced that he was Lengar's brother and in this land that was enough to condemn him and so he spoke again. 'I bring a gift,' he said, lifting the blood-crusted bundle in his hand.

'A gift for whom?' the man asked.

'Your sorceress.'

'If she does not like the gift,' the man said, 'she will kill you.'

'If she does not like this gift,' Saban said, 'then I deserve to die.' He turned to see there was not one man, but three, all with kill scars on their chests, all with bows and spears, and all with the bitter and suspicious faces of men who fight an unending battle, but fight it with passion. They guarded a frontier that was protected by the skulls and Saban wondered if the whole of Cathallo's territory was ringed by the heads of its enemies.

The men hesitated and Saban knew they were still tempted to kill him, but he was unarmed and he showed no fear, so they grudgingly let him live. Two escorted him eastwards while the third man ran ahead to tell the settlement that an intruder was coming. The two men hurried Saban for night was looming, but the summer twilight was long and there was still a thin light lingering in the sky when they reached Cathallo.

Rallin, the new chief, waited for Saban on the edge of the settlement. A dozen warriors stood with him while the tribe had gathered behind to see this brother of Lengar who had dared come to their home. Rallin was no older than Saban, but he looked formidable for he was a tall man with broad shoulders and an unsmiling face on which a wound scar streaked from his beard to skirt his left eye. 'Saban of Ratharryn,' he greeted Saban dourly.

'Saban of Sarmennyn now,' Saban said, bowing respectfully.

Rallin ignored Saban's words. 'We kill men of Ratharryn in this place,' he said. 'We kill them wherever we find them and we strike off their heads and put them on poles.' The crowd murmured, some calling that Saban's head should be added to the cull.