Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

'Why should I care for Lahanna's curse?' Lengar demanded loudly. 'I live in her temple, and she does nothing. We are Slaol's people! Kenn's people!' He shouted this, making folk stare at him nervously as he brushed his hands together. 'So much for Derrewyn's curse,' he said to Saban. 'Or am I dead?'

Neel laughed at this jest. 'You are not dead!' the high priest cried.

Lengar patted his body. 'I seem to be alive!'

'You are alive!' the priest cackled.

'But Derrewyn is hurting, yes?' Lengar asked the priest.

'Oh. yes,' Neel said, 'yes! She is hurting!' He writhed to show the pain that would be racking Derrewyn. 'She hurts!'

'And Saban is disappointed,' Lengar said pityingly, then gave his brother a stare so chilling that Saban expected the sword to be drawn and buried in his belly. Instead, surprisingly, Lengar smiled. 'I shall make you an offer, little brother. I have cause to kill you, but what merit is there in slaughtering a coward? So you can crawl back to Sarmennyn, but if I ever see your face again I shall cut it off.'

'I want nothing more than to go to Sarmennyn,' Saban said.

'But you shall go without your wife,' Lengar said. 'Lest you be disappointed, brother, I shall buy her from you. Her price is the cost of Jegar's life.'

'Aurenna is not for sale,' Saban said, 'and her people are Sarmennyn's people. You think they will let her go to slake your appetite?'

Lengar sneered at that question. 'I think, little brother, that by tonight your wife will be mine, and that you will bring her to me.' He prodded Saban with a finger. 'You hear that? You will bring her to me. You forget, Saban, that this is Ratharryn where I rule and where the gods love me.' He half turned away, then twisted back, smiling. 'Or you could rule? All you have to do is kill me.' He waited a heartbeat, as if expecting Saban to attack him, then reached out and patted Saban's cheek before leading his grinning spearmen away.

And Saban ran to find Aurenna and was relieved to find her safe. 'We must go,' he told her, but Aurenna scoffed at his terror.

'I am supposed to be here,' she said. 'Erek wants me here. We are here to do a great thing.'

The nutshell had failed, Aurenna was lost in her dream of the sun god and Saban was trapped.

—«»—«»—«»—

That night Lengar gave a great feast for the men of Sarmennyn. It was a lavish feast of oysters, swan, trout, pork and venison. His slaves served it in the feasting hall and Lengar supplied generous pots of intoxicating liquor.

Lengar's own men, like the warriors from Drewenna, feasted outside, for there was not room inside the feasting hall for so many and, besides, the men outside prepared themselves for battle and so had gathered first at Slaol's old temple where they sacrificed a heifer and dedicated themselves to slaughter, then they took their liquor pots and drank deep for they believed the fiery drink gave a man courage. The women gathered at Arryn and Mai's temple where they prayed for the men.

Aurenna and Saban ate with Kereval and his men. Scathel complained that a woman should be in a feasting hall, but Kereval soothed the querulous priest. 'She is one of ours,' he said, 'one of ours, and it is only for this night. Besides,' he added, 'is not Aurenna's fate bound up with the treasures' return?'

Lengar came to the hall after dark. The cavernous building was lit by two great fires that sent their smoke up to the skulls that shimmered red in the flame-light. Smoke looped and curled about the skulls before gusting out of the hole in the roof's peak. The food had been plentiful, the liquor potent and Kereval's men were in a fine mood when Lengar arrived escorted by six spearmen. Ratharryn's chief was dressed for battle, with bronze glinting on his tunic and eagle feathers hanging from his spear blade. He beat the spear shaft against the hut's door post for silence.

'Men of Sarmennyn!' he shouted, using the Outfolk tongue. 'You have come here for your gold! For your treasures! And I have them!'

There were murmurs of appreciation. Lengar let the murmurs go on, then smiled. 'But I only agreed to return the treasures when you had brought me a temple.'

'We have brought it!' Scathel shouted.

'You have brought most of it,' Lengar said, 'but one stone is missing. One stone was stolen from you.'

The murmurs turned angry now, so angry that the spearmen behind Lengar moved to protect their chief, but Lengar waved them back. 'Will the temple have power if one stone is missing?' Lengar asked. 'When we bury an enemy's corpse we chop off a hand, or remove the foot, so it is incomplete. Why? So the dead man's spirit will not have power. And now my temple is incomplete. Perhaps Erek will not recognise it?'

'He will know it!' Scathel insisted. The gaunt priest was standing, taut with anger. 'He has watched us move it! He has seen our work!'

'But suppose he is angry because a stone is missing?' Lengar suggested, then shook his head sadly. 'I have thought deeply on this and I have talked with my priests and together we have found an answer that will allow you take the gold back to your country. Is that not why you came? To take the gold home and to be happy there?'

He paused. Scathel was puzzled and said nothing, so Kereval stood. 'What is your answer?' the chief asked courteously.

Lengar smiled. 'I must attract Erek to his temple. To a temple that is not complete. And how better to draw him to us than with his bride?' He pointed at Aurenna. 'Give me that woman,' he said, 'and I will give you your gold. I will give you more besides! I will send you back richer than you were before the gold was stolen from you — this night! I will give you the gold, but only if my brother brings me his bride.' He pointed his spear at Saban, smiling. 'You must bring me Aurenna.'

'No!' Saban shouted. He knew now why Lengar had sent men to steal the stone and he knew also that no one would believe his tale. 'No!' he shouted again.

'Send her to me,' Lengar said to Kereval, 'and I will bring you the treasures,' and with that he went back outside, unhooking a leather curtain that dropped over the doorway.

'No!' Saban shouted a third time.

'Yes!' Scathel shouted even louder. 'Yes! Why else did Erek spare her at the Sea Temple? No bride has ever been rejected, not once in all our tribe's time! There was a purpose in that rejection and now we know the purpose.'

'He doesn't want her for Erek,' Saban shouted, 'but for himself!' Lewydd was standing beside Saban now, adding his voice to the protest, and some of Lewydd's paddlers, the men who had worked for five years to bring the stones across the sea and land, thumped the floor rushes in Saban's support, but the warriors, the men who had come to escort the treasures home, were not looking at Saban, nor at Aurenna. They just stared at the floor.

Scathel spat. 'For five years,' he shouted, 'we have enslaved ourselves to regain our treasures. We have spent blood and toil. We have done what most men said could not be done, and now we are to be denied our reward?' He pointed a bony finger at Saban. 'Why did Erek spare her life? What was his purpose, if not for this moment?'

'That is a good question,' Kereval said quietly.

'This isn't being done for Erek, but for my brother's lust!' Saban shouted, but his protest was howled down by the warriors. It was the treasures that mattered to them, nothing else.

Aurenna stood with Lallic cradled in one arm. She touched Saban's hand. 'It doesn't matter,' she said softly, 'look.' She gazed up, past the fire-tinged skulls to where the smoke vanished through the roof hole.

'What of it?' Saban asked.

Aurenna gave him one of her gentle smiles. 'It is night,' she said softly, 'and a curse of Lahanna's will not work in the sun, will it?' She knew Lengar had destroyed Derrewyn's charm and she had grimaced when she heard the tale. 'It will go badly for him,' she had said quietly then, and now she tried to reassure Saban. 'He has risked the gods, and the gods do not like being defied.'

'Drag her out!' Scathel shouted, impatient with the delay, and Kargan, the leader of Kereval's spearmen, beckoned to his closest companions.

'Leave her!' Kereval ordered.

Aurenna still looked into Saban's face. 'All will be well,' she said, and she walked towards the hall's doorway with Lallic in her arms. Lewydd picked up Leir as Saban caught up with Aurenna and took her arm and tried to haul her back. She frowned at him. 'You cannot stop me now,' she said, pulling away from him.

'I would rather kill you than give you to him,' Saban said. He had never forgiven himself for Derrewyn's fate and now he was to let Aurenna just walk to his brother's bed?

'Erek wants me here,' Aurenna said.

'Erek wants you raped?' Saban shouted.

'I trust Erek,' Aurenna said placidly. 'Is not my whole life his gift? So how can anything be bad? I won't be raped. Erek will not permit it.'

Kereval moved to intercept them, but the chief had nothing to say. He was fond of both Saban and Aurenna, but his tribe had made sacrifices to regain the gold and now they must sacrifice further. He wanted to say he was sorry, but the words would not come and so he just turned away. Scathel was right, the chief thought. Aurenna had always been supposed to die for Erek and she had gained years of life from her escape at the Sea Temple, so perhaps nothing was as tragic as it seemed. The god's purpose had been hidden, even mysterious, but now it was made plain. Fate was inexorable.

There was silence in the feasting hall as Aurenna lifted the curtain. She stooped under the leather and Lewydd and Saban followed her into the night to see Lengar waiting a few yards away. He was flanked by his bronze-hung warriors who ringed the feasting hut, spears and bows in hand. Some had flaming torches to light the moonless dark. They jeered drunkenly at Saban, who looked into the sky. 'There's no moon!' he said.

'All will be well,' Aurenna said quietly. 'I know it. Erek has not deserted me.'

'Bring her to me,' Lengar said.

Saban hesitated, but Aurenna pulled him forward and walked calmly towards the tall figure of Lengar, whose face showed triumph.

'I said you would bring her, Saban,' Lengar said. 'What a sheep you are.' He jerked his head and four of his men prised Aurenna away from Saban with their spears. They pushed her towards Lengar, while other men, their breath reeking of liquor, seized Lewydd and Saban and forced them away through the cordon of warriors. Saban looked back to see that Aurenna was standing between two guards just behind Lengar.

Yet for the moment Lengar ignored her. Instead he gazed towards the feasting hall and raised his spear. 'Now!' he shouted gleefully, 'now!' and some of the warriors with the torches hurled them onto the feasting hall roof while others jammed their flaming straw-wrapped sticks into the hall's wide eaves. The flames caught the steep thatch with a sickening speed and after only a few heartbeats the first frightened men tried to escape the fire, but as soon as they appeared at the hall door they were met by arrows that threw them back with brutal force. Burning thatch was dropping into the hall, which was thickening with smoke. The weather had been dry and the hall caught the flame like a puffball. More torches were thrown onto the steep roof, now a patchwork of flame and darkness, but the fires spread, joined, blazed bright, and men were screaming beneath the hanging skulls. Some men tried to break through the walls, but arrows spitted them. One man did break free, but he was struck by a half-dozen arrows, then chopped to the ground with a bronze axe.

Aurenna watched, a hand over her mouth, her eyes aghast and her daughter held tight against her body so that Lallic could not see the carnage. The walls were burning now. The long hair of a dead man who was trapped in a gap of the wall suddenly flared. Part of the roof collapsed, spewing a stream of sparks into the night. Skulls fell as burning straw whirled up towards the stars. Lengar's warriors watched enthralled. Some among the spectators were Kereval's own men, the warriors who had followed Vakkal to Ratharryn and who now gave their allegiance to its dark chief, and those Outlanders cheered with the rest. They could see through the burning gaps where flaming men staggered in whirls of fire. A boy, one of the two who had bailed the mother stone's boat dry, screamed frantically. Saban could smell roasting flesh. The screams slowly died, though here and there a dark figure jerked in the smoke and fire, but soon there was no movement at all except for the collapse of rafters and the gouts of spark and fire and smoke. The whole roof caved in, leaving only the twelve temple posts standing. Flames licked up the thick posts. A smoking skull rolled across the grass. Lewydd had put Leir down and was struggling in the arms of two spearmen, but he suddenly collapsed, sinking to his knees and burying his head in his hands. Saban crouched beside him. 'I am sorry,' he said, putting an arm on his friend's shoulders. He held Leir close to him. 'Lengar was never going to give the gold back,' Saban said to Lewydd. 'I should have known. I should have known.'

'Are those two still alive?' Lengar's voice spoke behind Saban. 'Strangle them. No, push them into the flames.'

The spearmen reached for Saban and Lewydd. The moon had just risen in the west, coming from behind the trees on the high land. It was almost full, vast, flattened and red, a swollen moon, monstrous in the murderous night, but its light was drowned by the leaping flames. Yet in Lahanna's light, where it sifted across the dark trees, Saban suddenly saw shapes on the embankment's crest. He saw shadows moving among the white skulls that protected the settlement against the spirits, and the shadows were crossing the earth wall; he twisted to the east, struggling against the spearmen who tried to haul him upright, and he saw more shapes moving there, but no one else in Ratharryn saw the shadows for they were staring into the inferno where over a hundred men of Sarmennyn had choked on smoke and now burned under a layer of scorched skulls and blazing thatch.

The spearmen at last managed to haul Saban and Lewydd to their feet and just then the first arrows flickered in the flame-light. A man fell close by, a shaft dark in his throat. Saban rammed his elbow hard back, heard his captor's breath rush out and wrenched himself free. More arrows thumped home as Saban crouched and wrapped Leir in his arms. He could hear little over the roar of the fire, but he saw the arrows whip through the firelight. Lewydd was free now, his captor struck by one of the missiles. Lengar's spearmen were slowed by the liquor they had drunk and they had still not seen the attackers who had come down from the embankment's crest into the shadows where they were now loosing arrow after arrow. The flint heads drove into flesh. Some struck the huts and a few wasted themselves in the fire.

Saban pulled at Lewydd. 'Come!' He picked up Leir and ran towards Aurenna who had still not realised the danger. Lengar's drunken men were only just awakening to the attack, and did not yet know where it came from. Saban reached Aurenna, but one of her guards saw him and moved to intercept him, opening his mouth to shout a warning to Lengar, and an arrow slapped straight into his gullet. The man staggered back, choking and with blood pouring down his beard, then fell to the ground. Lengar turned anyway and Saban hit him with his free hand. It was a desperate, wild blow, but it struck Lengar's cheek, knocking him down and Saban grabbed Aurenna with his bruised hand and tugged her into the shadows between the huts where women screamed and dogs howled. 'Run!' Saban shouted at her. 'Run!'