Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Saban hefted his spear. The guard shook his head, as though to indicate that he had no intention of stabbing Saban, but merely wanted him to go voluntarily to Scathel's pit. Instead Saban began walking to the gate and the guard lunged to head him off and Saban knocked the spear aside. Suddenly he was overcome by all the frustrations of the last few weeks, by the helplessness of watching Aurenna go so placidly to her death, and he drove his own spear back at the guard like a swinging axe so that the blade sliced across the guard's face. Blood started into the wind and was whipped away in a red spray, and Saban, screaming hate, plunged the spear into the man's belly and went on thrusting so that the guard fell back into the mud and Saban had to put his booted foot onto the dying man's belly to tug the blade free.

Then he ran, and Haragg and Cagan followed him.

Saban was not running for fear of the dying man's spirit, but because the long day was already close to dark, though he guessed that darkness was brought by the storm clouds rather than by Slaol's setting. And this, he reckoned, was a storm like that which had brought the gold to Ratharryn, a storm caused by a war among the gods. Saban staggered in the wind's hard blast. The cloak was almost torn from him, flapping at his shoulders like a monstrous bat's wing and he untied the lace at his throat and watched the leather whip away across a land running with water. He struggled on into the rain, near blinded and deafened by the wind.

He came to the hills above the sea and he watched in awe as the ocean tried to break the land to pieces. The waves were ragged, white-crested and large as hills, and their spray burst on rocks then leapt to the black clouds before flying inland on the gale. On Saban went with his head down, stung by salt, buffeting into the wind, and the sky seemed darker than ever. Haragg and Cagan walked with him. There would surely be no last sight of Slaol this day, and perhaps, Saban thought, there would be no sight of Slaol ever again. Perhaps this was the world's ending, and he cried aloud for that thought.

A stab of lightning hissed to the far sea, making all the world white and black, and then a crash of thunder sounded overhead and Saban whimpered in fear of the gods. He was climbing a low hill and another jagged bolt tore from the sky as he reached the crest and in its wicked light he saw the Sea Temple beneath him. At first he thought it was deserted, but then he saw that the crowd of folk had scattered into the fields where they huddled for shelter in tumbled rocks. Only a few men were still in the temple circle and their presence drove Saban on. Haragg and Cagan stayed on the hill crest, sheltering among its boulders.

A great sea tore itself into oblivion at the foot of the cliff and the spray whipped over the cliff's summit to drench the temple stones. On the ledge just below the cliff top, where there should have been a raging fire, there was nothing but wisps of steam or smoke. Priests and spearmen crouched in the stone ring and, as Saban ran closer, he saw Aurenna's white robe among them.

She still lived.

Spearmen carried wood to the cliff's edge and dropped the damp timber on to the failing fire. Scathel was standing and shouting, his robe stripped of its feathers by the wind's rage, and if he saw Saban's arrival he took no notice. Kereval looked aghast, fearing what this omen meant.

Camaban saw Saban, and it was then that Camaban performed the rites. He dragged Aurenna to the beginning of the avenue that led to the fire and he drew a knife from his belt and cut off the pieces of gold that Kereval had bought to replace the lost treasures of Erek. Aurenna seemed in a trance. Scathel pushed against the wind to bellow a protest at Camaban, but Camaban shouted back and it was Scathel who stepped away, and then Saban was beside his brother. 'She must go to the fire!' Camaban shouted.

'There is no fire!'

'She must go to the fire, fool!' Camaban shouted, and he seized the neck of Aurenna's drenched white robe and slashed at it with his knife.

Saban grabbed his brother's hand to stop him, but Camaban shook him off. 'This is how it is done!' Camaban called above the seething fury of the gale. 'And it must be done properly! Don't you understand? It must be done properly!'

And suddenly Saban did understand. Aurenna must do her duty and walk to the fire, and if there was no fire then that was not of her doing. So Saban stepped away and watched as his brother slit down Aurenna's long robe. The heavy wool flapped wildly as it was cut away and then Camaban tugged at the soaking cloth and tugged again so that it fell to Aurenna's feet and she was naked.

She was naked because that was how a bride went to her husband and now was the time for Aurenna to go to Slaol. Camaban shrieked at her, 'Walk! Walk!' And Aurenna did walk, though it was hard because the elements were fighting against her slender body, but still, and still as if in a trance, she forced herself forward, and Camaban followed a pace behind, urging her on as the horrified priests watched from the temple's stone ring.

Some smoke or steam still came over the cliff top to be snatched into instant nothingness. Saban walked alongside Aurenna, but keeping outside the stones marking the sacred avenue, and the wind seemed fiercer still as she neared the edge. Her feet slipped on the wet turf, her soaked hair streamed behind her, but she obediently bent forward and thrust into the storm. 'Go on!' Camaban screamed at her. 'Go on!'

At the cliff's edge Saban saw that there was still a remnant of fire lurking in the timber. The pile of wood had been huge, and it would have been lit at midday and fed with fuel so that the heat grew ever more intense, but the wind and spray and rain had cowed the fire, had beaten it down and reduced it to wet, black and charred logs, but at its heart, deep down, some embers still fought against the tempest.

'There!' Camaban shouted exultantly. 'There!' And Saban and Aurenna both lifted their heads to see that the south-western horizon was not all black, but was slit with one small wound of red. The sun god was there. He was watching and his blood was showing against the clouds. 'Now jump!' Camaban screamed at Aurenna.

A hammer of thunder deafened the world. Lightning flickered along the cliffs. 'Jump!' Camaban shouted again, and Aurenna screamed with fear or perhaps with triumph as she stepped off the cliff's edge to fall among the rain-and sea-soaked remnants of the fire. She staggered as she landed, her balance upset by the gale and the black timbers that shattered under her feet, and then she fell against the cliff face and Saban saw a last eddy of smoke and suddenly there was no fire. Aurenna had done as she was supposed to do, and the god had rejected her.

Saban jumped down to the ledge. He pulled off his tunic and forced it over Aurenna's head. She seemed incapable of raising her arms and so he dragged the tunic down her body to cover her from the rain. It was then she looked up into his face and he put his bare arms around her and held her tight, and she, exhausted, sobbed on his shoulder above the storm-flayed sea.

But she lived. She had done what she was supposed to do, and disaster had come to Sarmennyn.

—«»—«»—«»—

The tempest began to lose its force. The sea still pounded on the cliffs and shattered white into the darkening air, but the storm settled into mere gusts, and the rain fell instead of flew.

Saban helped Aurenna to the cliff top. She had pushed her arms into the tunic's sleeves and now clung to him as if in a dream. 'She walked!' Camaban was shouting at the priests.

Haragg had come down from the hill and he added his voice to Camaban's. 'She walked!'

Kereval looked heartbroken. The fate of the sun bride was reckoned to foretell the tribe's fortune in the coming year and no one had ever seen a bride walk to the fire, then walk away.