Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

It took three days to cross the low watershed. They followed a grassy track that climbed gently and then fell, just as gently, to the bank of the river which flowed eastwards. Here the boats were lifted from the sledges and relaunched and the stones were carried back aboard. For five years Lewydd and his men had been doing this. Five years of lifting and levering, heaving and sweating, and now the great task was almost finished. It took three days to carry all the stones off their sledges and on to the boats, but at last the job was done and it would never need to be done again.

Next morning they floated the boats down the river and the men sang as they rode the current. They did not hurry and the only effort that was ever needed was an occasional shove of a pole to drive a boat around an obstruction. The sun shone, filtering through the last green leaves as the river slowly twisted between banks thick with feathery willow-herb. Corncrakes sounded harsh from the fields and woodpeckers stuttered in the trees. The sun shone. When they passed Cheol, Ratharryn's southernmost settlement, the folk lined the river bank to dance and sing a welcome to the stones. 'Tomorrow!' Saban called to them. 'We shall be at Ratharryn tomorrow! Tell them we're coming!'

Once past Cheol the river entered the trees again. The current was faster now, so fast that those men who had elected to walk along the bank had to half run to keep up with the fleet. There was an air of excitement now. The great work was so close to its finish and Saban wanted to shout his triumph at the sun. It had all been done for Slaol, and surely Lengar's enmity would fade in the glory of Slaol's approval. Saban was not sure how that approval would be shown, but his doubts about Camaban's dream were fading. It was the journey itself that had restored his faith for he had seen for himself just how much effort had been needed to move the boats and the stones and he could not believe that five such hard years were for no purpose. Slaol must respond! Just as a short lever of wood could move a great stone, so little men could shift a vast god. Camaban was surely right.

'Don't let the current take them!' Lewydd was shouting and Saban came out of his happy reverie to see that the river had almost reached its confluence with the bigger River Mai and that it was time to drag the boats into the bank and tether them there for the night. Next morning they would have to haul the stones upriver against the Mai's current to Ratharryn, so they would spend this last night of the journey amidst the trees which grew on the narrowing spit of land between the two rivers.

They tied the boats to the bank, then made fires. It was a warm, dry night, so there was no need for shelters, but they did make a cordon of fires from river bank to river bank to deter the malevolent spirits, and Kereval's warriors were set to watch beside the fires and feed the flames through the darkness. The rest of the travellers gathered and sang songs until tiredness overwhelmed them and then they wrapped themselves in cloaks and slept beneath the trees. Saban listened to the river noises until the dreams came. He dreamed of his mother, seeing her try to hammer a peg into their hut's pole, and when he asked her why she did it, she had no answer.

And suddenly the dream was full of new noises, of screaming and terror, and he woke, realising it was no dream at all, and he sat up to hear shouts from beyond the fire cordon and a strange ripping sound overhead. Then something thumped into a tree and he realised it was an arrow and the ripping sound was the noise of other arrows flickering through the leaves. He seized his bow and his quiver of arrows and ran to the fire cordon. Immediately two arrows whipped from the dark close to him and he understood the flames made him into a target, so he hid himself behind some bushes where Mereth and Kereval both sheltered. 'What's happening?' Saban asked.

Neither man knew. Two of Kereval's warriors were wounded, but no one had seen the enemy or even knew what enemy it was, but then Kargan, Kereval's nephew, came running and shouting for his uncle and his voice provoked another flight of arrows from the dark.

'They're stealing one of the stones,' Kargan said.

'They're stealing a stone?' Saban could not believe what he heard.

'They're towing one of the boats upstream!' Kargan said.

Scathel had overheard. 'We have to follow,' he said.

'What about the women and the children?' Kereval demanded. 'We can't leave them alone.'

'Why would they want to steal a stone?' Mereth asked.

'For its power?' Saban suggested.

The noises in the wood were fading and no more arrows flickered from the dark. 'We should follow them,' Scathel demanded again, but when Saban and Kargan crept into the darkness beyond the fire cordon, they found nothing. The enemy had gone, and in the morning, when a mist was drifting over the rivers, they discovered that one of the triple-hulled boats had been dragged away. It had carried one of the smaller stones, but now it was gone. One of the two wounded men died that morning.

And Saban saw that the moon stayed in the sky after the dawn and he recalled that he had dreamed of his mother and she had ever been a worshipper of Lahanna. The goddess, he feared, was striking back, but then he found some of the arrows and saw they were fledged with ravens' feathers. Black feathers, like those the men of Ratharryn used, but he said nothing of his suspicions for the great work was almost done.

—«»—«»—«»—

The last part of their journey was up the Mai. The sun shone warmly, but the mood was sombre and the memory of the arrows in the night chilling. The men watched the wooded banks warily as they towed the boats through the waist-deep water with the spearman's corpse laid on the long mother stone. Scathel had insisted that the corpse be carried to Ratharryn for he wanted to place the treasures against the dead man's skin so that the departed spirit would know that his journey and death had not been wasted.

Saban walked up the river bank holding Leir's hand. Aurenna carried Lallic and listened as Saban talked of the hills they passed. That one was where a great bear had been killed, and that one was where Rannos, the god of lightning, had struck a thief dead, and this one, he said, pointing to a wooded hill on the left, is where our Death Place lies. 'The Death Place?' Leir asked.

'We don't burn our dead in Ratharryn,' Saban explained, 'but lay them in a small temple so the birds and beasts can eat their flesh. Then we bury the bones, or perhaps put them in a mound.'

Leir made a face. 'I'd rather be burned than eaten.'

'So long as you go to the ancestors,' Saban said, 'what does it matter?'

They rounded the corner of the hill and on the river bank ahead was a great crowd of people who began to sing in welcome as the first of the boats came in view. 'Which one is Lengar?' Aurenna asked.

'I don't see him,' Saban said, and as he drew closer he saw that Lengar was not there. Mereth's younger half-brothers were there and so were Saban's sisters, and a host of others he remembered, and when he came near they ran to him and reached out to touch him as though he had a sorcerer's power. When they had last seen Saban he had been little more than a boy, but now he was a man, tall and bearded and straight-backed, with a hardened face and a son of his own. They stared at Aurenna in amazement, awed by her golden hair and gentle face that was so miraculously untouched by the scars of any disease. Lengar, folk told Saban, was still at Drewenna, and then the crowd parted to let Galeth through. He was old now, old and white-haired, and one eye was milky white and his back was bent and his beard thin. He first embraced Mereth, his eldest son, then clasped Saban. 'You have come back for good?' Galeth asked Saban.