Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Saban was the first to stir in the dawn. He crawled to the hut entrance and saw that the good weather had ended. The wind was whipping the tree tops and grey-black clouds were hurrying low above the hills. 'Is it raining?' Camaban asked.

'No.'

'Did you sleep well?'

'No.'

'I did!' Camaban claimed. 'All night!'

Saban could not stand his brother's cheerfulness and so he went out into the settlement where the newly woken tribe readied themselves for the day and night that lay ahead. They would take bags of food and skins of water to the Sea Temple for the ceremony would last most of the day, and once the bride had gone to the flames they would dance about the temple until the fire had cooled enough for Aurenna's charred bones to be retrieved and pounded into dust.

Kereval, swathed in a cloak of beaver fur and carrying a massive spear with a polished bronze head, ordered his spearmen to open the settlement gate. The warriors had smeared their faces with red ochre and bound their long hair in strips of hide. Today no one would fish. Today nearly all the tribe would go to the Sea Temple. From all across Sarmennyn the folk would gather to send the sun bride on her journey. Haragg watched the preparations and then, unable to endure the sight, abruptly turned away. 'Come hunting with me,' he told Saban.

'Your brother won't let me.' Saban said, nodding to the spearmen who watched him on Scathel's orders. Today Saban would become the high priest's hostage. He wondered why he had not fled eastwards in the night, and he knew it was because of Aurenna. He loved her and he could not leave her, even if by staying he could do nothing to help her.

Haragg and Cagan crossed the river in a log boat and vanished among the trees. A moment later Scathel emerged from Kereval's large hut. The high priest wore his feather cloak that ruffled and shivered in the wind. His hair had been stiffened with red mud, while around his neck hung a chain of sea-monster teeth. At his waist was a belt at which two knives were scabbarded. Leckan, the next most senior priest, was wearing a cape made from tanned human skin and the faces of the two men whose hides had been flayed hung down his back with their long hair trailing. Another priest had antlers on his head. They danced from the hut, and the waiting tribe began to shuffle from side to side. A drummer began to beat a skin and the shuffle took rhythm as someone began to sing. Camaban joined the dance. He was wearing a cloak of deerskin and had smeared his face with strips of soot.

Scathel pointed at Saban. 'Take him!' he ordered, and a dozen of the red-painted warriors closed on Saban with their spears. They herded him to the pit's edge, but before they could throw him into its depths Aurenna appeared.

Her white face was drawn and shadowed, but her tall body was swathed in the fresh woollen robe and the replacement gold glinted at her breast and neck. Her hair had been combed straight, though the wind immediately lifted it as she walked slowly towards the dancing priests. She did not look at Saban, but kept her eyes on the ground, and then, when Scathel summoned her, she turned obediently towards the gate. The crowd sighed and the dancers moved to join the procession that would take her to the Sea Temple.

Scathel nodded to the spearmen guarding Saban and two of them pulled the cloak from his shoulders while a third drew a knife and slashed Saban's tunic from neck to hem, then tugged the garment away so that he was naked. 'Jump,' the spearman ordered.

Saban looked round a last time. Camaban was not looking at him and Aurenna had gone beyond the gate, then one of the impatient spearmen threatened him and so, resigned, he jumped into the prison pit. It was deep and the impact of the fall was painful, and when he stood he saw that he could not reach to the pit's top. The great trellis of branches was placed over his prison and was fixed in place with wooden pegs that were banged into the earth.

Then there was just the sigh of the wind and the sound of the drumming that faded as the tribe left the settlement. One of the two spearmen who had been left to guard Saban dropped a skin of water through the trellis, then went away, and Saban huddled in a corner with his arms about his knees and his head dropped on to a forearm.

Aurenna would die. And he would be tortured, blinded and maimed. Because the gold had gone to Ratharryn.

—«»—«»—«»—

In Ratharryn the priests had also determined that this day was midsummer and so, as dusk approached, the tribe lit the fires and prepared themselves for the bull-dancing and the flame-jumping. Derrewyn ignored the excitement. She was hunched in a corner of Lengar's hut, hidden from the men by a leather curtain. She was naked. Lengar insisted on it, for he enjoyed humiliating her, calling her the whore of Cathallo. She was Lengar's wife, forced to marry him in Slaol's temple, but in the last moons any of Lengar's friends could summon Derrewyn and she must go to them or else risk a beating, and there were scars on her face, shoulders and arms where they had all drunkenly thrashed her. Jegar had beat her the worst because she mocked him most. She mocked them all, for that had been her best defence. Now she crouched by the curtain, listened to the three men talk and felt the baby stir in her belly. She knew it was Lengar's baby, and she was certain it would be a son. It would be born in two or maybe three moons. The men took less interest in her now that she was pregnant, but still they insulted her. None, however, detected the seething anger that burned within her. They believed they had defeated her.

The three men in the hut, Lengar, Jegar and Vakkal, were talking of Cathallo. Vakkal was the war leader from Sarmennyn who had helped Lengar gain the chieftainship; he now boasted blue scars like the warriors of Ratharryn and spoke in Ratharryn's tongue. He was another of the men who had been given permission to summon Derrewyn whenever he wished, the privilege of Lengar's friends. Now he listened as Lengar declared Cathallo was ripe for defeat. The tribe had never recovered from Sannas's death and with her had gone the sorcery that Lengar believed had kept Cathallo safe. So in the late summer, Lengar said, Ratharryn should attack Cathallo again, only this time they would leave their enemy's settlement burned. They would pull down its great temple, level the Sacred Mound and piss on the grave mounds of Cathallo's ancestors.

'Are you listening, whore?' Jegar called. Derrewyn did not answer. 'Sullen bitch,' Jegar said, and Derrewyn heard the slurring in his voice and knew he was drinking the Outfolk liquor.

Tonight, Vakkal was saying, they would be burning the sun bride in Sarmennyn.

'Maybe we should burn Derrewyn,' Jegar suggested.

'Slaol wouldn't want her,' Lengar said. 'Give Slaol a whore and he'll turn his back on us.'

'He will not thank us,' Vakkal said, 'if we do not watch his setting tonight.' The fires were already burning in Ratharryn's fields and the bull men were waiting to dance among the wooden poles of Slaol's temple.

'We must go,' Lengar said. 'Stay here, whore!' he called to Derrewyn beyond the curtain and he left one of his young warriors in the hut to guard the treasures that were hidden beneath the floor and under the great piles of precious hides. 'If the whore gives you trouble,' Lengar told the young spearman, 'hit her.'

The spearman settled beside the fire. He was very young, though he already possessed two blue scars to represent the two warriors of Cathallo whom he had slaughtered at a battle on the heights above Maden. Like many of the young men in the tribe he revered Lengar because the new chief had made Ratharryn's spearmen feared and his followers wealthy. The youth dreamed of owning many cattle and wives. He dreamed of a great hut all of his own and of heroic songs sung about his exploits.