Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

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Bernard Cornwell's new novel, following the enormous success of his Arthurian trilogy (The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur) is the tale of three brothers and of their rivalry that creates the great temple. One summer's day, a stranger carrying great wealth in gold comes to the settlement of Ratharryn. He dies in the old temple. The people assume that the gold is a gift from the gods. But the mysterious treasure causes great dissension, both without from tribal rivalry, and within. The three sons of Ratharryn's chief each perceive the great gift in a different way. The eldest, Lengar, the warrior, harnesses his murderous ambition to be a ruler and take great power for his tribe. Camaban, the second and an outcast from the tribe, becomes a great visionary and feared wise man, and it is his vision that will force the youngest brother, Saban, to create the great temple on the green hill where the gods will appear on earth. It is Saban who is the builder, the leader and the man of peace. It is his love for a sorceress whose powers rival those of Camaban and for Aurenna, the sun bride whose destiny is to die for the gods, that finally brings the rivalries of the brothers to a head. But it is also his skills that will build the vast temple, a place for the gods certainly but also a place that will confirm for ever the supreme power of the tribe that built it. And in the end, when the temple is complete, Saban must choose between the gods and his family. Stonehenge is Britain's greatest prehistoric monument, a symbol of history; a building, created 4 millenia ago, which still provokes awe and mystery. Stonehenge A novel of 2000 BC is first and foremost a great historical novel. Bernard Cornwell is well known and admired for the realism and imagination with which he brings an earlier world to life. And here he uses all these skills to create the world of primitive Britain and to solve the mysteries of who built Stonehenge and why. 'A circle of chalk, a ring of stone, and a house of arches to call the far gods home'

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As she stared at him, Saban, his eyes becoming accustomed to the hut's smoky gloom, glanced nervously about to see that a dozen girls were watching him from the hut's margins. There were bat wings pinned to the hut post, between round-bottomed pots that hung with the skulls in their string nets. There was a pair of antlers high on the central pole, while clusters of feathers and bunches of herbs hung from the roof, all swathed in cobwebs. The jumbled bones of small birds lay in a wicker basket beside the fire. This was not, Saban thought, a hut where people lived, but rather a storage place for Cathallo's ritual treasures, the sort of place where the tribe's Kill-Child would be kept.

'So tell me,' Sannas said in a voice that was as harsh as bone, 'tell me, Saban, son of Hengall, son of Lock, who was whelped of an Outfolk bitch taken in a raid, tell me why the gods frown on Ratharryn?'

Saban did not answer. He was too frightened.

'I hate dumb boys,' Sannas growled. 'Speak, fool, or I shall turn your tongue into a worm and you will suck on its slime all the days of your miserable life.'

Saban forced himself to answer. 'The gods…' he began, then realized he was whispering, so spoke up, determined to defend his tribe, 'the gods sent us gold, lady, so how could they frown on us?'

'They sent you the gold of Slaol,' Sannas said bitterly, 'and what has happened since? Lahanna refused a sacrifice, and your elder brother has slunk off to the Outfolk. If the gods sent Ratharryn a pot of gold, all you'd do is piss in it.' The girls giggled. Saban said nothing and Sannas glowered at him. 'Are you a man?' she demanded.

'No, lady.'

'Yet you wear a man's tunic. Is it winter?'

'No, lady.'

'Then take it off.' She demanded. 'Take it off!'

Saban hastily undid his belt and pulled the tunic over his head, prompting another chorus of giggles from the hut's edges. Sannas looked him up and down, then sneered. 'That's the best Ratharryn can send us? Look at him, girls! It looks like something that oozed from a snail's shell.'

Saban blushed, glad that it was so dark in the hut. Sannas watched him sourly, then reached into a pouch and took out a leaf-wrapped package. She peeled the leaves away to reveal a honeycomb from which she broke a portion that she pushed into her mouth. 'That fool Hirac,' she said to Saban, 'tried to sacrifice your brother Camaban?'

'Yes, lady.'

'But your brother lives. Why?'

Saban frowned. 'He was marked by Lahanna, lady.'

'So why did Hirac try to kill him?'

'I don't know, lady.'

'You don't know much, do you? Miserable little boy that you are. And now Lengar has fled, and you are to take his place.' She glowered at him, then spat a scrap of wax onto the fire. 'But Lengar never liked us, did he?' she went on. 'Lengar wanted to make war on us! Why did Lengar not like us?'

'He disliked everyone,' Saban said.

She rewarded that comment with a crooked smile. 'He feared we'd take away his chiefdom, didn't he? He feared we'd swallow little Ratharryn.' She pointed a finger into the shadows of the hut's edge. 'Lengar was to marry her. Derrewyn, daughter of Morthor who is the high priest of Cathallo.'

Saban looked where Sannas pointed and his breath checked in his throat, for he was staring at a slender girl with long black hair and an anxious, pretty face. She looked no older than Saban himself and had large eyes and seemed tremulously nervous, as though she was as uncomfortable in this smoke-reeking hut as Saban was himself. Sannas watched Saban and laughed. 'You like her, eh? But why should you marry her in your brother's place?'

'So we can have peace, lady,' Saban said.

'Peace!' the skull face spat at him. 'Peace! Why should we buy your miserable peace with my great-granddaughter's body?'

'You are not buying peace, lady,' Saban dared to say, 'for my tribe is not for sale.'

'Your tribe!' Sannas leaned back, cackling, then suddenly jerked forward and darted out a crooked hand that gripped Saban's groin. She squeezed, making him gasp. 'Your tribe, boy,' she spat at him, 'is worth nothing. Nothing!' She squeezed harder, watching his eyes for tears. 'Do you want to be chief after your father?'

'If the gods wish it, lady.'

'They've wished for stranger things,' Sannas said, at last letting him go. She rocked back and forth, spittle dribbling from her toothless mouth. She watched Saban, judging him, and decided he was probably a decent boy. He had courage, and she liked that, and he was undeniably good-looking, which meant he was favoured by the gods, but he was still a boy and it was an insult to her people to present a boy for marriage. Yet there would be advantages in a marriage between Cathallo and Ratharryn, so Sannas decided she would swallow the insult. 'So you'll marry Derrewyn to keep the peace?' she asked him.

'Yes, lady.'

'Then you are a fool,' Sannas said, 'for peace and war are not in your gift, boy, and they certainly don't lie between Derrewyn's legs. They lie with the gods, and what the gods want will happen, and if they choose to let Cathallo rule in Ratharryn then you could take every girl in this settlement to your stinking bed and it would make no difference.' She closed her eyes and rocked back and forth again, and a dribble of honey and saliva ran down her chin where white hairs grew from dark moles. It was time, she decided, to scare this boy of Ratharryn, to make him so scared of her that he would never dare think of crossing her wishes. 'I am Lahanna,' she said in a deep voice scarce above a whisper, 'and if you thwart my desire I shall swallow your petty tribe, I shall swill it in my belly's bile and piss it into a ditch filled with scum.' She laughed then, and the laughter turned to a fit of coughing that made her gasp for breath. She groaned as the coughing bout passed, then opened her black eyes. 'Go,' she said dismissively. 'Send your brother Camaban to me, but you go. Go, while I decide your future.'

Saban crawled back into the sunlight where he hurriedly pulled on his tunic. The dancers shuffled back and forth, the drummers beat on, and Saban shuddered. Behind him, from inside the hut, he heard laughter and he was ashamed. His tribe was so little, his people so weak, and Cathallo was so strong. The gods, it seemed to Saban, had turned against Ratharryn. Why else had Lengar fled? Why had Lahanna refused the sacrifice? Why was he forced to crawl to a hag in Cathallo? Saban believed her threats, he believed his tribe was in danger of being swallowed and he did not know how he could save it. His father had warned him against heroes, but Saban thought Ratharryn needed a hero. Hengall had been a hero in his youth, but he was cautious now, Galeth had no ambition and Saban was not yet a man — he did not even know if he would pass the ordeals. Yet he would be a hero if he could, for without a hero he foresaw nothing but grief for his people. They would just be swallowed.

That night the people of Cathallo lit the midsummer fires that sparked and billowed smoke across the landscape. The fires burned to drive malignant spirits from the fields, and more fires burned inside Cathallo's great temple where twelve men dressed in cattle hides romped among the stones. The skins formed grotesque costumes, for the beasts' heads and hooves were still attached. The monstrous horned shapes capered between the flames while the men beneath the skins bellowed their challenges to the evil spirits that could bring disease to the tribe and to its herds. The beast-men guarded Cathallo's prosperity, and there was much competition between the young warriors to be given the honour of dancing in the bulls' hides for, when the night's dark was full and the furious flames were rushing towards the stars, a dozen girls were pushed naked into the fire circle where they were pursued by the roaring men. The crowd, which had been dancing about the ring of flames, stopped to watch as the girls dodged and twisted in feigned panic away from their horned pursuers who were half blinded and made clumsy by their cumbersome skins. Yet one by one the girls were caught, thrust to the ground and there covered by the horned monsters as the onlookers cheered.

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