Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

The settlement, unwalled, lay to the west, and that was not where the path went. Rather it led towards a great chalk embankment that reared up from the low ground. Word passed down the column of travellers that the white embankment surrounded Cathallo's shrine and Hengall's folk fell silent as they marvelled at the vast wall which looked to be as high and as extensive as the embankment which surrounded Ratharryn. The wall's long summit was crowned with animal and human skulls, while from within the great enclosure came the heavy beat of wooden drums.

The path did not lead direct to the vast temple, but instead, just outside the shrine's entrance, made a double turn so that the wonders within the high chalk circle would not be revealed until the very last moment of the approach. Saban shuffled his dance steps about the double bend and there, suddenly visible beyond the shoulders of the great encircling bank, was Cathallo's shrine. Saban's first impression was of stones. Stones and more stones, for the great space within the soaring chalk wall seemed filled with heavy, high, grey boulders, and some had been newly wetted so that glints of light shone from their rough surfaces. The giant stones lay ringed by a ditch that had been dug inside the chalk wall, and the ditch was as deep as the rampart was high, and the area enclosed by the ditch and wall was almost as large as Ratharryn itself and Ratharryn was a tribe's settlement with winter room for cattle, while this was just one temple.

Some of Ratharryn's women hesitated before entering the temple for women were not allowed inside their tribe's own shrines except when they married, but Cathallo's women urged them onwards. In Cathallo, it seemed, both men and women could enter the circle and so all Hengall's folk danced across the ditch and into the shrine of stones.

There was one wide ring of boulders skimming the ditch's edge, and each of those boulders was the size of the stacks made from the summer's hay in Ratharryn. There were dozens of those massive stones, too many to count, and within their wide circle stood two more rings of stone, each the size of Slaol's temple at Ratharryn, and still more stones stood between those inner rings. One of those stones was a ringstone, a boulder with a great hole in it, and that pierced rock had been lifted up on another, while nearby was a death house made from three massive stone slabs. Saban stared in stupefied awe. He did not understand how any man could raise such stones and he knew he must have come to a place where the gods worked marvels. Only Camaban, wincing every time he stepped on his clubbed foot, seemed unimpressed.

The people of Cathallo were massed on the embankment's inner slope and they let out a great cry of welcome as the visitors danced into the sacred ring. The shout echoed all around the vast enclosure and then they began to sing.

Kital, chief of Cathallo, waited to greet Hengall's folk. Kital wished to impress, and he did, for he was dressed in an ankle-length deerskin cloak that had been whitened with chalk and urine, then thickly sewn with rings of bronze that reflected the sun so that it seemed to glint when he moved forward to greet Hengall. The chief of Cathallo was tall, with a long thin clean-shaven face, and fair hair that was circled with a fillet of bronze into which he had pushed a dozen long swan feathers. Kital was of an age with Hengall, but there was an animation in his face that stole the years and he walked with a lithe, eager step. He spread his arms wide in a gesture of welcome and in so doing lifted the edges of his cloak to reveal a long bronze sword hanging from a leather belt. 'Hengall of Ratharryn,' he announced, 'welcome to Cathallo!'

Hengall looked shabby beside Kital. He was taller and broader than Cathallo's chieftain, but his bearded face was blunt compared to Kital's sharp features and his clothes were dirty and ragged, for Hengall had never been a man to worry about cloaks or jerkins. He kept his spear sharp, combed the lice from his beard, and reckoned that was the extent of a man's duty towards his appearance. The two chiefs embraced and the watching tribes murmured their appreciation for any public embrace between great men betokened peace. The chiefs held each other close for a heartbeat, then Kital pulled away and, leading Hengall by the hand, took him to where Sannas waited beside one of the great stones that formed the death house.

The sorceress wore a swathing cloak made from badger skins, and a woollen shawl hooded her long white hair. Saban stared at her, and for a heart-stopping moment she looked directly back and he flinched because the eyes that peered from her hood's shadows were malevolent, clever and terrifying. She was old, Saban knew, older, it was said, than any man or woman had ever been before.

Kital and Hengall knelt to talk with Sannas. The drummers, who were beating great hollow trunks, kept up their rhythm and a group of girls, all naked to the waist and with dog-roses, meadowsweets and poppies woven into their hair, danced to the sound, shuffling their feet back and forth, stepping sideways, advancing and retreating, offering a welcome to the strangers who had come to their great shrine. Most of the visitors gaped at the girls, but Galeth gazed at the stones and felt an immense sadness. No wonder Cathallo was so strong! No other tribe could match a shrine like this, so no other tribe could hope to win the favour of the gods like these people. Ratharryn, Galeth thought unhappily, was nothing to this, its temples were risible and its ambitions petty.

Saban was watching the sorceress, and it was evident that Sannas was unhappy with the news Hengall brought, for she turned away from him with a dismissive gesture. Hengall looked at Kital, who shrugged, but then Sannas turned back and snarled something before walking to a hut that stood close to the nearest stone circle. Hengall stood and came back to Saban. 'You're to go to Sannas's hut,' he said. 'Remember what I told you.'

Saban, conscious that he was being watched by two tribes, crossed to the hut that stood between the two smaller stone circles and was the only building inside the temple. It was a round hut, a little bigger than most living huts, with a tall pointed roof but a wall so low that Saban had to drop onto all fours to crawl through the entrance. It was dark inside, for scarce any sunlight came through the door or through the smoke-hole in the roof's peak that was supported by a thick pole. That pole was a bark-stripped trunk which had been left studded with the stubs of its many branches from which hung nets that were filled with human skulls. A burst of giggling alarmed Saban and he looked around to see a dozen faces peering from the hut's low edges. 'Never mind them,' Sannas ordered in a hoarse, low voice, 'come here.'

The sorceress had seated herself on a pile of furs beside the pole and Saban dutifully knelt to her. A small fire smouldered close to the pole, sifting the dark hut with a pungent smoke that made Saban's eyes water as he bowed his head in respect.

'Look at me!' Sannas snapped.

He looked at her. He knew she was old, so old that no one knew how old she was, older than she even knew herself, so old that she had been old when the next oldest person in Cathallo had been born. There were those who said she could never die, that the gods had given Sannas life without death, and to the awed Saban that seemed true, for he had never seen a face so wizened, so wrinkled and so savage. She had taken off her hood and her unbound hair was ashen and lank, hanging over a face that was like a skull, only a skull with warts. The eyes in the skull were black as jet, she had only one tooth left, a yellow fang in the centre of her upper jaw. Her hands protruded from the edge of her badger fur cape like hooked claws. Amber showed at her scrawny throat; to Saban it looked like a gem pinned to a dried-out corpse.