Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'Send her to me,' Lengar said to Kereval, 'and I will bring you the treasures,' and with that he went back outside, unhooking a leather curtain that dropped over the doorway.

'No!' Saban shouted a third time.

'Yes!' Scathel shouted even louder. 'Yes! Why else did Erek spare her at the Sea Temple? No bride has ever been rejected, not once in all our tribe's time! There was a purpose in that rejection and now we know the purpose.'

'He doesn't want her for Erek,' Saban shouted, 'but for himself!' Lewydd was standing beside Saban now, adding his voice to the protest, and some of Lewydd's paddlers, the men who had worked for five years to bring the stones across the sea and land, thumped the floor rushes in Saban's support, but the warriors, the men who had come to escort the treasures home, were not looking at Saban, nor at Aurenna. They just stared at the floor.

Scathel spat. 'For five years,' he shouted, 'we have enslaved ourselves to regain our treasures. We have spent blood and toil. We have done what most men said could not be done, and now we are to be denied our reward?' He pointed a bony finger at Saban. 'Why did Erek spare her life? What was his purpose, if not for this moment?'

'That is a good question,' Kereval said quietly.

'This isn't being done for Erek, but for my brother's lust!' Saban shouted, but his protest was howled down by the warriors. It was the treasures that mattered to them, nothing else.

Aurenna stood with Lallic cradled in one arm. She touched Saban's hand. 'It doesn't matter,' she said softly, 'look.' She gazed up, past the fire-tinged skulls to where the smoke vanished through the roof hole.

'What of it?' Saban asked.

Aurenna gave him one of her gentle smiles. 'It is night,' she said softly, 'and a curse of Lahanna's will not work in the sun, will it?' She knew Lengar had destroyed Derrewyn's charm and she had grimaced when she heard the tale. 'It will go badly for him,' she had said quietly then, and now she tried to reassure Saban. 'He has risked the gods, and the gods do not like being defied.'

'Drag her out!' Scathel shouted, impatient with the delay, and Kargan, the leader of Kereval's spearmen, beckoned to his closest companions.

'Leave her!' Kereval ordered.

Aurenna still looked into Saban's face. 'All will be well,' she said, and she walked towards the hall's doorway with Lallic in her arms. Lewydd picked up Leir as Saban caught up with Aurenna and took her arm and tried to haul her back. She frowned at him. 'You cannot stop me now,' she said, pulling away from him.

'I would rather kill you than give you to him,' Saban said. He had never forgiven himself for Derrewyn's fate and now he was to let Aurenna just walk to his brother's bed?

'Erek wants me here,' Aurenna said.

'Erek wants you raped?' Saban shouted.

'I trust Erek,' Aurenna said placidly. 'Is not my whole life his gift? So how can anything be bad? I won't be raped. Erek will not permit it.'

Kereval moved to intercept them, but the chief had nothing to say. He was fond of both Saban and Aurenna, but his tribe had made sacrifices to regain the gold and now they must sacrifice further. He wanted to say he was sorry, but the words would not come and so he just turned away. Scathel was right, the chief thought. Aurenna had always been supposed to die for Erek and she had gained years of life from her escape at the Sea Temple, so perhaps nothing was as tragic as it seemed. The god's purpose had been hidden, even mysterious, but now it was made plain. Fate was inexorable.

There was silence in the feasting hall as Aurenna lifted the curtain. She stooped under the leather and Lewydd and Saban followed her into the night to see Lengar waiting a few yards away. He was flanked by his bronze-hung warriors who ringed the feasting hut, spears and bows in hand. Some had flaming torches to light the moonless dark. They jeered drunkenly at Saban, who looked into the sky. 'There's no moon!' he said.

'All will be well,' Aurenna said quietly. 'I know it. Erek has not deserted me.'

'Bring her to me,' Lengar said.

Saban hesitated, but Aurenna pulled him forward and walked calmly towards the tall figure of Lengar, whose face showed triumph.

'I said you would bring her, Saban,' Lengar said. 'What a sheep you are.' He jerked his head and four of his men prised Aurenna away from Saban with their spears. They pushed her towards Lengar, while other men, their breath reeking of liquor, seized Lewydd and Saban and forced them away through the cordon of warriors. Saban looked back to see that Aurenna was standing between two guards just behind Lengar.

Yet for the moment Lengar ignored her. Instead he gazed towards the feasting hall and raised his spear. 'Now!' he shouted gleefully, 'now!' and some of the warriors with the torches hurled them onto the feasting hall roof while others jammed their flaming straw-wrapped sticks into the hall's wide eaves. The flames caught the steep thatch with a sickening speed and after only a few heartbeats the first frightened men tried to escape the fire, but as soon as they appeared at the hall door they were met by arrows that threw them back with brutal force. Burning thatch was dropping into the hall, which was thickening with smoke. The weather had been dry and the hall caught the flame like a puffball. More torches were thrown onto the steep roof, now a patchwork of flame and darkness, but the fires spread, joined, blazed bright, and men were screaming beneath the hanging skulls. Some men tried to break through the walls, but arrows spitted them. One man did break free, but he was struck by a half-dozen arrows, then chopped to the ground with a bronze axe.

Aurenna watched, a hand over her mouth, her eyes aghast and her daughter held tight against her body so that Lallic could not see the carnage. The walls were burning now. The long hair of a dead man who was trapped in a gap of the wall suddenly flared. Part of the roof collapsed, spewing a stream of sparks into the night. Skulls fell as burning straw whirled up towards the stars. Lengar's warriors watched enthralled. Some among the spectators were Kereval's own men, the warriors who had followed Vakkal to Ratharryn and who now gave their allegiance to its dark chief, and those Outlanders cheered with the rest. They could see through the burning gaps where flaming men staggered in whirls of fire. A boy, one of the two who had bailed the mother stone's boat dry, screamed frantically. Saban could smell roasting flesh. The screams slowly died, though here and there a dark figure jerked in the smoke and fire, but soon there was no movement at all except for the collapse of rafters and the gouts of spark and fire and smoke. The whole roof caved in, leaving only the twelve temple posts standing. Flames licked up the thick posts. A smoking skull rolled across the grass. Lewydd had put Leir down and was struggling in the arms of two spearmen, but he suddenly collapsed, sinking to his knees and burying his head in his hands. Saban crouched beside him. 'I am sorry,' he said, putting an arm on his friend's shoulders. He held Leir close to him. 'Lengar was never going to give the gold back,' Saban said to Lewydd. 'I should have known. I should have known.'

'Are those two still alive?' Lengar's voice spoke behind Saban. 'Strangle them. No, push them into the flames.'

The spearmen reached for Saban and Lewydd. The moon had just risen in the west, coming from behind the trees on the high land. It was almost full, vast, flattened and red, a swollen moon, monstrous in the murderous night, but its light was drowned by the leaping flames. Yet in Lahanna's light, where it sifted across the dark trees, Saban suddenly saw shapes on the embankment's crest. He saw shadows moving among the white skulls that protected the settlement against the spirits, and the shadows were crossing the earth wall; he twisted to the east, struggling against the spearmen who tried to haul him upright, and he saw more shapes moving there, but no one else in Ratharryn saw the shadows for they were staring into the inferno where over a hundred men of Sarmennyn had choked on smoke and now burned under a layer of scorched skulls and blazing thatch.