Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'And who decided that?' Lengar asked.

'Father,' Saban said, 'and her great-grandmother, Sannas.'

Lengar grimaced. 'Father is dead, Saban, and I rule here now. And what that moonstruck hag of Cathallo wants does not matter in Ratharryn. What matters, little brother, is what I want.' He snapped an order in the harsh Outfolk language and a half-dozen of the red warriors ran to his side. One took the sword from Lengar, while two others faced Saban with their spears.

Lengar put both hands on the neck of Derrewyn's deerskin tunic. He looked into her eyes, smiled when he saw the fear there, then tore the tunic with sudden force. Derrewyn cried out; Saban instinctively leapt forward, but one of the Outfolk spears tangled his ankles, and the other clouted him across the skull then came to rest on his belly as he fell to the ground.

Lengar ripped off the remnants of the tunic, leaving Derrewyn naked. She tried to hide her body, but Lengar pulled her out of the crouch and spread her arms. 'A thing of Cathallo,' he said, looking her up and down, 'but a pretty thing. What does one do with such pretty things?' He asked the question of Saban, but expected no answer. 'Tonight,' he went on, 'we must show Cathallo what the power of Ratharryn means,' and with that he took Derrewyn's wrist and dragged her towards the settlement.

'No!' Saban shouted, still pinned to the ground by the Outfolk spear.

'Quiet, little brother,' Lengar called. Derrewyn tried to pull away from him and he struck her hard across the face, scattering meadowsweets from her hair, and, when he was sure she would be obedient, he tugged her onwards. She pulled away from him again, but he gave her a second blow, much harder than the first; she whimpered and this time followed him in a daze. Her mother, still kneeling beside her husband, shouted a strident protest, but a red-painted warrior kicked her in the mouth and silenced her.

And Saban, bereft at the Sky Temple, could do nothing except weep. Two Outfolk warriors guarded him. Neel and Morthor, the wounded priests, were carried away to leave the bodies of Hengall and Gilan in the moonlight where Saban sobbed like a child. Then the Outlanders prodded him to his feet and drove him like a beast towards the settlement.

The Sky Temple had been consecrated but disaster had come to Ratharryn. Saban's world had turned dark. The gods were screaming again.

—«»—«»—«»—

Most of the Outfolk warriors stationed themselves on the embankment's crest from where, with their short bows and sharp arrows, they could threaten the folk inside Ratharryn's settlement, but a handful of Outfolk spearmen stood guard outside Hengall's hut where Lengar took Derrewyn. Most of the tribe had gathered beside Arryn and Mai's temple; they heard a blow, heard Derrewyn scream, then heard no more.

'Should we fight them?' Galeth's son, Mereth, asked.

There are too many of them,' Galeth said softly, 'too many.' He looked broken, sitting in the temple's centre with his head low. 'Besides,' he went on, 'if we fight them, how many of us will die? How many will be left? Enough to resist Cathallo?' He sighed. 'I knelt to Lengar, and so he is my chief…' He paused. 'For now.' The last two words were said so low that not even Mereth could hear them. The women outside the temple cried for Hengall, because he had been a good chief, while the men inside watched the enemy on the high earth bank. Lahanna stared down, unmoved by the tragedy. After a while the frightened folk slept, though their sleep was broken by people crying aloud in their nightmares.

Lengar appeared just before the dawn. The tribe woke slowly, becoming aware that their new chief was stepping over sleeping bodies to reach the centre of Arryn and Mai's temple. He still wore the bronze-plated jerkin and had the long sword at his waist, but he carried no spear or bow.

I did not mean that Gilan should die,' he said without any greeting. Folk were sitting up and shuffling off the cloaks in which they had slept, while the women outside the temple's rings leant forward to catch Lengar's quiet words. 'My companions showed more zeal than I wanted,' he continued ruefully. 'One arrow would have been enough, but they were frightened and thought more were necessary.'

All the people were awake now. Men, women and children — the whole tribe — gathered in a protective cluster in and around the small temple and all listened to Lengar.

'My father,' Lengar went on, raising his voice just a little, 'was a good man. He kept us alive in hard winters and he cut down many trees to give us land. Hunger was rare and his justice was fair. For all that he should be honoured, so we will make him a mound.' People responded for the first time, muttering their agreement, and Lengar let the murmuring continue for a while before raising a hand. 'But my father was wrong about Cathallo!' He spoke louder now, his voice touched with hardness. 'He feared it, so he let Kital and Sannas rule you. It was to be a marriage of two tribes, but in marriage it is the man who should be master and in time Cathallo would have mastered you! Your harvest would have been carried to their storehouses, your daughters would have danced the bull dance in their temple and your spears would have fought their battles. But this is our land!' Lengar cried, and some folk shouted that he was right.

'Our land,' Mereth shouted angrily, 'and filled with Outfolk!'

Lengar paused, smiling. 'My cousin is right,' he said after a while. 'I have brought Outfolk here. But there are not many. They have fewer spears than you do! What is to stop you killing them now? Or killing me?' He waited for an answer, but none of the men moved. 'Do you remember,' Lengar asked, 'when the Outfolk came and begged for the return of their treasures? They offered us a high price. And what did we do? We turned them down and used some of the gold to buy stone from Cathallo. Stone! We used Slaol's gold to buy rocks!' He laughed, and many of his listeners looked ashamed for what the tribe had done.

'We shall buy nothing more from Cathallo,' Lengar said. 'They claim to want peace, but war is hidden in their hearts. They cannot bear to think that Ratharryn will be great again, and so they will try to crush us. In our ancestors' time this tribe was stronger than Cathallo! They paid us tribute and begged our approval. But now they despise us. They want us helpless, and we shall have to fight them. How do we defeat them?' He pointed at the embankment where the Outfolk warriors squatted. 'We will defeat Cathallo by buying the help of the Outfolk, for they will pay almost any price to have their gold returned. But to receive their gold they must do our bidding. We are masters here, not them! And we shall use the Outfolk warriors to become the mightiest tribe in all the land.' He watched his listeners, judging the effect of his words. 'And that is why I came back,' he finished softly, 'and why my father had to join his ancestors, so that Ratharryn will be known through all the land, feared through all the land, and honoured through land and sky.'

The tribe began to thump their hands on the earth, and then the men were standing and cheering. Lengar had persuaded them.

Lengar had won.

—«»—«»—«»—

Saban spent the night in his hut, guarded there by two of Lengar's red-painted spearmen. He wept for Derrewyn, and the knowledge of what she endured in the dark gave him such pain that he was tempted to take the knife that had been a gift from his father and slit his own throat, but the lure of revenge stayed his hand. He had knelt to Lengar in the Sky Temple's gate, but he knew the gesture had been hollow. He would kill his brother. He swore as much in the awful dark, then cursed himself for not showing more fight at the temple. But what could he have done? He had possessed no weapon, so how could he have fought warriors armed with swords, spears and bows? Fate had crushed him, and he was close to despair. Only as dawn neared did he fall into a dream-racked, shallow sleep.