Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

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.'

The ox-horn sounded again, much louder and closer, and Leir, startled by the blast, jumped under Saban's hand, though still nothing showed at the hill's crest. Then the ox-horn sounded a fourth time and a single man ran to the top of one of the grave mounds. He carried a long pole from which hung a standard of fox brushes and wolf tails. The standard bearer wore a cloak of an untrimmed wolf pelt and the wolf's mask was perched on his head like a second face. He stood silhouetted against the sky and shook the standard and a heartbeat later the whole crest filled with men.

They had come in a long line, and if they meant to impress, they did. One moment the crest was empty, the next it was thronged with a battle-line of spearmen, so many spearmen that Saban knew that he must be staring at the combined armies of Ratharryn and Drewenna. Their spears made a ragged hedge and their sudden shout frightened Lallic. It was a display of awesome power, only this army was not arrayed before an enemy, but in front of Lengar's own home. Lengar must have known Cathallo would hear of this horde, and he wanted them to fear its power.

Lengar himself, tall and cloaked, spear in hand and with a sword at his belt, appeared at the centre of his army. A dozen men, his war chiefs, surrounded him, while next to him, looking short and plump, was Kellan, chief of Drewenrta and Lengar's lackey. Lengar stood for an instant then beckoned his escorts forward.

'How are they all fed?' Aurenna wondered aloud.

'In summer it's easy enough,' Saban said. 'There are deer and pigs. More pigs than you can imagine. It is a fat country. In winter,' he went on, 'you raid your neighbours.'

Lengar saw Saban and swerved towards him. The chief of Ratharryn was wearing his long leather tunic that was sewn with bronze strips, a woollen cloak hung from his shoulders and he carried a massive spear with a polished bronze blade. Strips of fox fur hung from the spear shaft and more were wound about his legs and arms. Eagle feathers had been woven into his hair that had been oiled so that it lay slicked back close to his skull, reminding Saban of that far-off day when the stranger had died and Lengar had pursued him down to the settlement. The kill scars now stretched to cover the backs of Lengar's hands and fingers, while the tattooed horns at his eyes gave his face a terrifying intensity. Saban felt Leir give an involuntary shudder and he patted the boy's head reassuringly.

Lengar halted a few paces away. For a heartbeat or two he stared at Saban, then spoke derisively. 'My little brother. I thought you would never dare come home.'

'Why should a man fear to come home?' Saban asked.

But Lengar was not listening to Saban. He was staring at Aurenna. She was still as tall and slender and straight-backed as on the day Saban had first met her, still a woman who could have drawn chieftains across the sea, and she met Lengar's gaze calmly, while Lengar looked truly astonished as if he did not really believe his eyes. He kept staring at Aurenna, he stared from her head down to her feet, then back up again. 'Is this Aurenna?' he asked.

'My wife, Aurenna,' Saban said, his arm still about her shoulders.

'Gundur told the truth,' Lengar said quietly.

'About what?' Saban asked.

Lengar still gazed at Aurenna. 'About your woman, of course,' he answered brusquely. His war chiefs stood behind him like leashed hounds, all of them tall men with long spears, long cloaks, long plaited hair and long beards, and they too stared hungrily at the tall, fair-haired woman from Sarmennyn. Lengar at last forced himself to look away from Aurenna. 'Your son?' he asked Saban, nodding towards Leir.

'He is called Leir, son of Saban, son of Hengall.'

'And that child is a daughter?' Lengar nodded at Lallic who was in Aurenna's arms.

'She is called Lallic,' Saban said.

Lengar smiled derisively. 'Only one son, Saban? I have seven!' He looked back at Aurenna. 'I could give you many sons.'

'I am content with your brother's son,' Aurenna said.

'My half-brother's son,' Lengar said scornfully, 'and if the boy dies your life would have been in vain. What use is a woman who whelps only one son? Would you keep a sow that littered only one piglet? And sons do die.' He still gazed at Aurenna, indeed he seemed incapable of looking anywhere else. He looked her up and down again, not bothering to hide his admiration. 'Do you remember, Saban,' he asked, keeping his eyes on Aurenna, 'how our father would always tell us to marry wide-rumped girls? Women are just like cattle, he used to say. The thin ones are not worth keeping. Yet you chose this woman. Perhaps you would have more sons if you followed Hengall's advice?'

'I will take no other wife,' Saban said.

'You will do what you are told, brother,' Lengar said, 'now that you are in Ratharryn.' He turned and pointed his spear to a new mound on the low crest. 'That is Jegar's mound. You think I have forgotten him?'

'A man should remember his friends,' Saban said.

The spear was now pointing at Saban. 'You owe Jegar's family a death price. It will be many oxen, many pigs. I have promised them.'

'And you keep your promises?' Saban asked.

'You will keep this promise,' Lengar said, 'or I will take something from you, brother, of great value.' He looked at Aurenna and forced a smile. 'But we must not quarrel. This is a happy day! You have returned, you have brought the last stones and the temple will be completed!'

'And you will return the treasures to our tribe,' Aurenna said.

Lengar's face twitched. He did not like being told what to do by a woman, but he nodded his assent. 'I shall return the treasures,' he said curtly. 'Is Kereval here?'

'He is in the settlement,' Saban said.

'Then we should not keep him waiting. Come!' Lengar held out his arm for Aurenna, but she refused to leave Saban's side and Lengar pretended not to notice.

The spearmen streamed past Saban and Aurenna. 'I think that we should go now,' Saban said. 'Just walk away.'

Aurenna shook her head. 'We are supposed to be here,' she said.

'Only because Camaban told us to come!' Saban protested. 'And he's gone! He's fled! We should follow him.'

'Erek, Slaol, told us to be here. With or without Camaban, this is where I am supposed to be.' She turned to gaze at the stunted stones of the unfinished temple. 'Slaol has been speaking to me ever more clearly in my dreams,' she said softly, 'and he wants me here. That is why he spared my life, to bring me here.' Saban wanted to argue, but it was hopeless fighting against a god. He did not speak to any god in his dreams. Aurenna turned and frowned at the mass of spearmen walking towards the settlement. Why does your brother need so many men?' she asked.

'Because he will attack Cathallo,' Saban said. 'We have arrived in time to see a war.'

They walked back to the settlement. Small boys were driving pigs out of the woods to a patch of land near Slaol's old temple where the beasts were being butchered. Women and children slashed the flesh from the bones while dogs crouched and prowled, hoping for offal, but it was being pounded in mortars, mixed with barley and stuffed into the pigs' intestines, which would be baked in hot ashes. The squeals of the dying animals were constant and the pungent blood sufficient to trickle down the slope in small bright rivulets that were lapped by the hungry dogs. Inside the settlement the stench was worse for there women were mixing pots of the glutinous poison that would coat the warriors' spears for their attack on Cathallo. Other women were readying for the night's feast. Swans were being plucked, pork roasted and grain pulverized on quern stones. The tannin pits, filled with dung and urine, added their smell. Men tied flint arrow-heads to shafts and beat the edge of spear blades to make them sharp.

Aurenna went to Galeth's hut to feed the children while Saban wandered about the settlement in search of old friends. At Arryn and Mai's temple, where he marvelled at the lightning-riven post that was split and blackened, he met Geil, his father's oldest widow, who was laying a little bunch of feathery willow-herbs at the temple's entrance, and she embraced Saban, and then began to cry. 'You should not have returned,' she sobbed, 'for he kills everything he does not like.'

'It was worth coming back,' Saban said, 'just to see you.'

'I won't last this next winter,' the old woman said, dabbing her tears with the ends of her white hair. 'Your father was a good man.' She stared at the flowers she had laid by the entrance markers. 'And all our sons die,' she added sadly, then sniffed and hobbled away towards her hut.

Saban walked into the temple and laid his forehead against a post that he and Galeth had raised many years before. He had not even been a man then. He closed his eyes and had a sudden vision of Derrewyn coming from the stream naked and with water dripping from her hair. Had Mai the river goddess sent that vision? And what did it mean? He prayed to Mai that she would keep his family safe, then rapped on the post to draw the goddess's attention to that prayer when a shout made him turn round. 'Saban!' It was Lengar's voice. 'Saban!'

Lengar was striding through the huts with two spearmen who were evidently his guards. 'Saban!' Lengar shouted again, then saw his brother in the temple and hurried towards him. The folk close to the shrine edged aside.

Lengar was in a rage, his right hand resting on the wooden hilt of the bronze-bladed sword that hung at his waist. 'Why did you not tell me that one of the stones was stolen in the night?' he demanded.

Saban shrugged. 'By men with black-fledged arrows,' he said. 'Why should I tell you what you already know?'

Lengar seemed taken aback. 'Are you saying—'

'You know what I'm saying,' Saban interrupted.

Lengar shouted him down. 'I have an agreement with Sarmennyn!' he bellowed. 'And the agreement was that they should bring me a temple. Not part of one!'

'It was your men who took the stone,' Saban said accusingly.

'My men!' Lengar sneered. 'My men did nothing! You lost the stone!' He punched Saban's chest. 'You lost it, Saban!'

The two spearmen watched Saban warily in case he responded to his brother's anger with a rage of his own, but Saban just shook his head wearily. 'You think you've been cheated because one stone is missing?' he asked. 'One stone from so many?'

'If I chop off your prick, brother, will you miss it? Yet it is such a little scrap of flesh,' Lengar spat. 'Tell me, when these men attacked you with black-fledged arrows, did you kill one? Did you take a prisoner?'

'No.'

'So how do you know who they were?'

'I don't,' Saban confessed, but only Ratharryn used black-fledged arrows. Cathallo mixed the blue feathers of jays with their raven black while Drewenna tipped their arrows with a mix of black and white.

'You don't know,' Lengar jeered, 'because you didn't fight them, did you?' He plucked aside the upper hem of Saban's tunic. 'Just two scars, Saban? Still a coward?'

'One scar is for Jegar,' Saban said defiantly, 'and he did not find me a coward.'

But Lengar did not rise to that bait. Instead he had found the nutshell on its leather thong and, before Saban could stop him, he had pulled it out from under the tunic. 'Cathallo puts its spells inside hazel shells,' he said in a dangerously soft voice. He lifted his gaze to look into Saban's eyes. 'What charm is this?'

'A life.'

'Whose?'

'It is the bone of someone's bone,' Saban said, 'and flesh of their flesh.'

Lengar paused, considering that answer, then gave the leather thong a sharp tug, jerking Saban forward, but succeeding in breaking the nut free. 'I asked whose life it is,' he said.

'Yours, brother,' Saban said.

Lengar smiled. 'Did you think, little brother, that this nutshell would keep your woman safe?'

'Slaol will keep Aurenna safe.'

'But this charm, little brother,' Lengar said, holding the shell in front of Saban's eyes, 'is not of Slaol. It is of Lahanna. Did you crawl back to Derrewyn?'

'I did not crawl to her,' Saban said. 'I went to her with a gift.'

'A gift to my enemy?'

'I gave her Jegar's head,' Saban said. He knew it was dangerous to provoke Lengar, especially as he had no weapon, but he could not help himself.

Lengar stepped back and shouted for Neel, the high priest. 'Neel! Come here! Neel!'

The priest ducked from his hut. He limped because of the arrow that had pierced his thigh on the night that Lengar had killed Hengall. His hair was spiked with dried mud, a ringlet of bones circled his neck and his belt was hung with pouches in which he kept his herbs and charms. He bobbed in front of Lengar, who gave him the nutshell. 'This is a charm on my life,' Lengar said, 'a thing of Derrewyn's. Tell me how it is done.'

Neel glanced nervously at Saban, then took a small flint blade from a pouch and cut the sinews which bound the nut. He split the two halves, then sniffed the contents. He made a face at the stench, then poked at the tiny bone with a finger. 'It must be from Derrewyn's child,' he decided.

'My child, too,' Lengar said.

'She killed it,' Neel said, 'and used its bones and flesh to curse you.'

'A curse of Lahanna's?'

'She would use no other god,' Neel confirmed.

Lengar took the shell back and carefully placed its two halves together. 'Will it work?' he asked the priest.

Neel hesitated. 'Lahanna has no power here,' he said nervously.

'So you constantly assure me,' Lengar said. 'Now we can test your belief.' He looked at Saban. 'To kill me, little brother, what did you have to do? Crush it?'

Saban said nothing. Lengar laughed. 'One day I shall feed your flesh to the pigs and use your skull as a pisspot.' His words were defiant, but there was nervousness on his face as he placed the nut between the heels of his hands and slowly applied pressure. He paused, evidently wondering whether his defiance of the goddess was sensible, but Lengar had not made Ratharryn feared by being cautious. A man must take risks if he was to achieve greatness and Lengar was willing to wager his life if the reward were large enough, and so he squeezed again. It took more strength than he expected, but at last the shell gave way and the charm was crushed. He held the sticky scraps between his hands and held his breath, waiting. Nothing happened.

He laughed softly, then carefully scooped the remnants of the charm onto one palm. He gave the scraps to Neel. 'Put them in the closest fire,' he ordered, then watched as the priest went obediently to the nearest cooking fire and tossed the charm into the flames. There was a small burst of brighter fire and a hiss of fat, and still Lengar lived.