Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'I will take no other wife,' Saban said.

'You will do what you are told, brother,' Lengar said, 'now that you are in Ratharryn.' He turned and pointed his spear to a new mound on the low crest. 'That is Jegar's mound. You think I have forgotten him?'

'A man should remember his friends,' Saban said.

The spear was now pointing at Saban. 'You owe Jegar's family a death price. It will be many oxen, many pigs. I have promised them.'

'And you keep your promises?' Saban asked.

'You will keep this promise,' Lengar said, 'or I will take something from you, brother, of great value.' He looked at Aurenna and forced a smile. 'But we must not quarrel. This is a happy day! You have returned, you have brought the last stones and the temple will be completed!'

'And you will return the treasures to our tribe,' Aurenna said.

Lengar's face twitched. He did not like being told what to do by a woman, but he nodded his assent. 'I shall return the treasures,' he said curtly. 'Is Kereval here?'

'He is in the settlement,' Saban said.

'Then we should not keep him waiting. Come!' Lengar held out his arm for Aurenna, but she refused to leave Saban's side and Lengar pretended not to notice.

The spearmen streamed past Saban and Aurenna. 'I think that we should go now,' Saban said. 'Just walk away.'

Aurenna shook her head. 'We are supposed to be here,' she said.

'Only because Camaban told us to come!' Saban protested. 'And he's gone! He's fled! We should follow him.'

'Erek, Slaol, told us to be here. With or without Camaban, this is where I am supposed to be.' She turned to gaze at the stunted stones of the unfinished temple. 'Slaol has been speaking to me ever more clearly in my dreams,' she said softly, 'and he wants me here. That is why he spared my life, to bring me here.' Saban wanted to argue, but it was hopeless fighting against a god. He did not speak to any god in his dreams. Aurenna turned and frowned at the mass of spearmen walking towards the settlement. Why does your brother need so many men?' she asked.

'Because he will attack Cathallo,' Saban said. 'We have arrived in time to see a war.'

They walked back to the settlement. Small boys were driving pigs out of the woods to a patch of land near Slaol's old temple where the beasts were being butchered. Women and children slashed the flesh from the bones while dogs crouched and prowled, hoping for offal, but it was being pounded in mortars, mixed with barley and stuffed into the pigs' intestines, which would be baked in hot ashes. The squeals of the dying animals were constant and the pungent blood sufficient to trickle down the slope in small bright rivulets that were lapped by the hungry dogs. Inside the settlement the stench was worse for there women were mixing pots of the glutinous poison that would coat the warriors' spears for their attack on Cathallo. Other women were readying for the night's feast. Swans were being plucked, pork roasted and grain pulverized on quern stones. The tannin pits, filled with dung and urine, added their smell. Men tied flint arrow-heads to shafts and beat the edge of spear blades to make them sharp.

Aurenna went to Galeth's hut to feed the children while Saban wandered about the settlement in search of old friends. At Arryn and Mai's temple, where he marvelled at the lightning-riven post that was split and blackened, he met Geil, his father's oldest widow, who was laying a little bunch of feathery willow-herbs at the temple's entrance, and she embraced Saban, and then began to cry. 'You should not have returned,' she sobbed, 'for he kills everything he does not like.'

'It was worth coming back,' Saban said, 'just to see you.'

'I won't last this next winter,' the old woman said, dabbing her tears with the ends of her white hair. 'Your father was a good man.' She stared at the flowers she had laid by the entrance markers. 'And all our sons die,' she added sadly, then sniffed and hobbled away towards her hut.

Saban walked into the temple and laid his forehead against a post that he and Galeth had raised many years before. He had not even been a man then. He closed his eyes and had a sudden vision of Derrewyn coming from the stream naked and with water dripping from her hair. Had Mai the river goddess sent that vision? And what did it mean? He prayed to Mai that she would keep his family safe, then rapped on the post to draw the goddess's attention to that prayer when a shout made him turn round. 'Saban!' It was Lengar's voice. 'Saban!'

Lengar was striding through the huts with two spearmen who were evidently his guards. 'Saban!' Lengar shouted again, then saw his brother in the temple and hurried towards him. The folk close to the shrine edged aside.

Lengar was in a rage, his right hand resting on the wooden hilt of the bronze-bladed sword that hung at his waist. 'Why did you not tell me that one of the stones was stolen in the night?' he demanded.

Saban shrugged. 'By men with black-fledged arrows,' he said. 'Why should I tell you what you already know?'

Lengar seemed taken aback. 'Are you saying—'

'You know what I'm saying,' Saban interrupted.

Lengar shouted him down. 'I have an agreement with Sarmennyn!' he bellowed. 'And the agreement was that they should bring me a temple. Not part of one!'

'It was your men who took the stone,' Saban said accusingly.

'My men!' Lengar sneered. 'My men did nothing! You lost the stone!' He punched Saban's chest. 'You lost it, Saban!'

The two spearmen watched Saban warily in case he responded to his brother's anger with a rage of his own, but Saban just shook his head wearily. 'You think you've been cheated because one stone is missing?' he asked. 'One stone from so many?'

'If I chop off your prick, brother, will you miss it? Yet it is such a little scrap of flesh,' Lengar spat. 'Tell me, when these men attacked you with black-fledged arrows, did you kill one? Did you take a prisoner?'

'No.'

'So how do you know who they were?'

'I don't,' Saban confessed, but only Ratharryn used black-fledged arrows. Cathallo mixed the blue feathers of jays with their raven black while Drewenna tipped their arrows with a mix of black and white.

'You don't know,' Lengar jeered, 'because you didn't fight them, did you?' He plucked aside the upper hem of Saban's tunic. 'Just two scars, Saban? Still a coward?'

'One scar is for Jegar,' Saban said defiantly, 'and he did not find me a coward.'

But Lengar did not rise to that bait. Instead he had found the nutshell on its leather thong and, before Saban could stop him, he had pulled it out from under the tunic. 'Cathallo puts its spells inside hazel shells,' he said in a dangerously soft voice. He lifted his gaze to look into Saban's eyes. 'What charm is this?'

'A life.'

'Whose?'

'It is the bone of someone's bone,' Saban said, 'and flesh of their flesh.'

Lengar paused, considering that answer, then gave the leather thong a sharp tug, jerking Saban forward, but succeeding in breaking the nut free. 'I asked whose life it is,' he said.

'Yours, brother,' Saban said.

Lengar smiled. 'Did you think, little brother, that this nutshell would keep your woman safe?'

'Slaol will keep Aurenna safe.'

'But this charm, little brother,' Lengar said, holding the shell in front of Saban's eyes, 'is not of Slaol. It is of Lahanna. Did you crawl back to Derrewyn?'

'I did not crawl to her,' Saban said. 'I went to her with a gift.'

'A gift to my enemy?'

'I gave her Jegar's head,' Saban said. He knew it was dangerous to provoke Lengar, especially as he had no weapon, but he could not help himself.

Lengar stepped back and shouted for Neel, the high priest. 'Neel! Come here! Neel!'

The priest ducked from his hut. He limped because of the arrow that had pierced his thigh on the night that Lengar had killed Hengall. His hair was spiked with dried mud, a ringlet of bones circled his neck and his belt was hung with pouches in which he kept his herbs and charms. He bobbed in front of Lengar, who gave him the nutshell. 'This is a charm on my life,' Lengar said, 'a thing of Derrewyn's. Tell me how it is done.'