Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

And they saw boats.

They saw a fleet of boats: a fleet racing home against rain and wind as it was carried on the last of the tide's surging ebb. Lewydd had split the great hulls apart so that each triple boat was now three, and the beams that had supported the stones were stored inside the hulls driven by cold men eager to be home. The crowd, which the night before had murdered Cagan and had been ready to slaughter everyone in Aurenna's settlement, now cheered. Lewydd, standing in the leading boat, waved his paddle. Saban was counting the boats and saw they were all there, every one. They came from the sullen waves into the lee of the headland in the river's mouth where the exhausted paddlers waited for the tide to turn.

The evening tide brought the fleet upriver and, just as Aurenna had promised, the crews sang as they guided their big boats into her settlement. They sang the song of Dilan, the sea god, and they drove their paddles in time to the song's rhythm and the crowd, which had followed them upstream, sang with them.

Lewydd jumped ashore and was greeted with embraces, but he fought through the crowd to put his arms about Saban. 'We did it,' he exulted, 'we did it!'

Saban had made a great fire in the open space beside the half-finished boats. The women had pounded roots and grain, and Saban had ordered venison roasted on the fire. The boats' crews were given dry pelts and Kargan returned from Kereval's settlement with pots of liquor and still more people so that it seemed to Saban that all of Sarmennyn was crowded around his home to hear Lewydd's tale. He told it well and the listeners groaned or gasped or cheered as he described how the boats had carried the stones to the River Sul at summer's end. There had been no difficulty in the voyage, he said. The boats rode the seas well, the stones stayed secure and the river was safely reached, but then their troubles began.

The supporters of Stakis, who had been defeated by Lengar, still roamed Drewenna and some of those men demanded tribute that Lewydd did not have. So he stayed at the Sul's mouth where he made himself a palisade and waited for men to come from Kellan, the new chief of Drewenna, and drive the vagabonds away.

Kellan's spearmen escorted the boats up the Sul, but when they reached the shallow headwaters where the boats could no longer float there were no sledges waiting. Kellan had promised to make the sledges, but he had broken the promise and so Lewydd walked to Ratharryn and there argued and pleaded with Lengar, who, finally, agreed to persuade Kellan. By then, however, the autumn winds were cold and the rain was falling and it took long days of tiresome work to fell the trees and trim the trunks and make the great sledges onto which the stones, and then the boats, were laid.

Oxen hauled the boats and the sledges over the hills to the east-flowing river where the boats were relaunched and the stones reloaded, and Lewydd then took the fleet east until they came to Mai's river up which he poled the stones to Ratharryn.

And there he had left the stones. He had split his big boats into their three hulls and had retraced his steps, dragging the boats across the watershed and relaunching them in the Sul, but when he reached that river's mouth the winter had struck cold and hard and he had not dared come home across the bitterly turbulent sea and so he had waited at the Sul's mouth until the weather relented.

Now he and all his men were home. The first stones were in Ratharryn. And Saban wept because Cagan was dead and burned, but also because there would be joy on earth. The temple was being moved.

Aurenna's second child was a girl, and Aurenna called her Lallic, which meant 'the Chosen One' in the Outfolk tongue. Saban was not happy with the name at first, for it seemed to impose a destiny on the child before fate had had a chance to decide her life, but Aurenna insisted and Saban became used to it. Aurenna never again conceived, but her son and her daughter grew healthy and strong. They lived by the river and Leir could swim almost before he could walk. He learned to paddle a boat, draw a bow and spear fish in the river shallows. And as the brother and sister grew they watched the stones go past their hut towards the sea.

It took five years to move them all. Lewydd had hoped to do it in less, but he would take his cumbersome fleet to sea in nothing less than perfect weather, and one year no stones were moved at all and the year after it was only possible to make one voyage, but when the boats did set out the gods were kind and no more stones were lost and not one man was drowned.

Lewydd brought news back from Ratharryn, telling how the temple was being remade and how the war between Lengar and Cathallo went on. 'Neither side can win,' Lewydd said, 'and neither side will give in, but your brother believes that the temple will bring him good fortune. He still thinks it's a war temple.'

One year he brought news that Derrewyn had given birth to a child.

'A daughter,' Saban said.

'You heard?' Lewydd asked.

Saban shook his head. 'I guessed. And she's well?'

Lewydd shrugged. 'I don't know. I just heard that your brother's priests put a curse on mother and child.'

That night Saban went to the sun-bride's temple in Kereval's settlement and buried his mother's amber pendant beside one of the stones. He bowed to Slaol and asked the god to lift Ratharryn's curses from Derrewyn and her daughter. His mother, he knew, would forgive him, though whether Aurenna would be as understanding he did not know: when she asked him what had happened to the amulet he pretended its sinew had broken and that the amber had fallen in the river.

It was in springtime of the fifth year that the very last stones of the Temple of Shadows were brought down the river. There were only eleven of the dark pillars left and all were hoisted on to their triple-hulled boats and floated downstream to a mooring off Aurenna's settlement. Lewydd was eager to carry the final cargo eastwards, but both Scathel and Kereval wanted to accompany the stones because, with the safe delivery of the last boulders, Sarmennyn's side of the bargain would be fulfilled and Lengar must yield the rest of Erek's treasure. Scathel and Kereval wanted to be present when the treasures were restored to their tribe and they insisted that a small army of thirty spearmen travel with them and it took time to collect the food that those men would need.

No sooner had the extra boats been provisioned than the wind turned sharply into the east to bring cold squalls and short, steep seas. Lewydd refused to risk the boats and so they waited in the river, bucking on their moorings under the impact of the gusting wind and changing tides. Day after day the wind stayed cold and when at last it turned into the west it blew too hard and still Lewydd would not take the fleet to sea.

So they waited, and one day towards the end of spring, on a day in which the wind howled at the tree tops and broke white in shattering spume against the cliffs, a boat appeared in the west, coming from the land across the sea. The boat was manned by a dozen paddlers who fought the storm. They shrieked at it, bailed their boat, paddled again, cursed the wind god and prayed to the sea god and somehow brought their fragile boat safe past the foam-shredded headland and into the river. They drove their hull upriver against the tide's ebb, too angry to wait for the flood, and they chanted as they paddled, boasting of their victory over the storm.

The boat brought Camaban back to Sarmennyn.

He alone had showed no fear at sea. He alone had not bailed, paddled, cursed, nor chanted, but had sat silent and serene, and now, as the boat grounded at Aurenna's settlement, he stepped ashore with apparent unconcern. He staggered slightly, still expecting the world to pitch and rock, then walked to Aurenna's hut.