Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'They are working as hard as they can,' Saban said.

'Then why do they have breath to sing?'

'The song gives the work rhythm,' Saban explained.

'A whip would give them a faster rhythm,' Camaban grumbled.

'There will be no whips,' Saban said. 'If you want them to work faster then send them more food. Send pelts for clothes. They are not our enemies, brother, but the folk who will build our dream.'

Camaban might be dissatisfied with the temple's progress, but that did not stop him from creating yet more work for the builders. He wanted the pillars jointed to their capstones so that the sky ring would never fall. Saban had thought it would be enough to rest the stones on top of their pillars, but Camaban insisted they must be fixed and so each pillar had to have two knobs sculpted into its top. In time the lintels would need holes ground into their undersides to slot over the knobs, but Saban would not do that work until the pillars were raised and he could measure exactly where the holes had to be bored.

And still Camaban refined his temple. He visited Cathallo and talked for hours with Aurenna, so many hours that folk whispered about their being together, but Haragg dismissed the rumours, saying that the two only spoke of the temple. Saban feared those conversations for they invariably hatched some new and impossible demand. In the fourth year of the work Camaban demanded to know if Saban had ever noticed how some of the temple poles in Ratharryn seemed to look the same width all the way up from the ground to the sky.

Saban had been helping lay a trail of firewood down a boulder's flank. He straightened, frowning. 'They look straight and regular because that's the way they grow.'

'No,' Camaban said. 'Aurenna watched a hut being built in Cathallo and she said the centre-post was tapered, but once it was raised it looked straight. I talked to Galeth about it, and he tells me it's an illusion.'

'An illusion? You mean it's magic?' Saban asked.

'Slaol spare me from idiots!' Camaban seized a piece of chalk and swept aside the line of firewood that Saban had so carefully placed. 'Tree trunks are wider at one end than the other,' he said, scratching an exaggeratedly tapered outline on the stone's rough surface. 'But sometimes Galeth would find a trunk that was just about the same width all the way up, and those, he says, all look wider at the top. It's the ones with narrower tops that look straight, while the straight ones look deformed. So I want you to taper the stones. Make them slightly narrower at the top.' Camaban threw away the chalk and brushed his hands together. 'You don't have to taper them much. Say a hand's width on every side? That way they'll all look regular.'

A moon later Camaban said that Aurenna had dreamed that the faces of the stones had been polished to a shine, and by then Saban was so numb to the immensity of the task that he just nodded. He did not try to tell Camaban how huge was the effort needed to turn each finished stone so its four sides could be ground into a shining surface, instead he just told six of the younger slaves to start polishing one of the finished pillars. They rubbed stone hammers back and forth, back and forth, and sometimes poured scraps of flint, sand and stone dust onto the surface and ground the abrasive mix into the stubborn rock. All summer they pushed the hammers backwards and forwards, tearing their hands to raw shreds as they scraped the flinty dust, and at the summer's end there was a patch of stone the size of a lamb's pelt that was smooth and, when wet, shiny. 'More!' Camaban demanded, 'more! Make it shine!'

'You must give me more workers,' Saban said.

'Why not whip the ones you have?' Camaban asked.

'They must not be whipped,' Haragg said. The high priest limped now, his back was bent and his muscles slack, but there was still a great power in his deep voice. 'They must not be whipped,' he repeated harshly.

'Why not?' Camaban wanted to know.

'It is a temple to end the world's woes,' Haragg said. 'You want it to be born in blood and pain?'

'I want it made!' Camaban screamed. For a few heartbeats it seemed as though he would bring his precious mace crashing down onto one of the boulders and Saban flinched in expectation of the smooth head breaking into a thousand shards, but Camaban controlled his anger. 'Slaol wants it built,' he said instead, 'he tells me it can be done, yet nothing happens here! Nothing! You might as well piss on the stones for all the progress you're making.'

'Give Saban more workers,' Haragg suggested, and so Camaban led raiding parties deep into the northern lands and brought back captives who spoke unknown languages, slaves who tattooed their faces red, slaves who worshipped gods Saban had never heard of, but still more slaves were needed for the work was cruelly hard and painfully slow, and Saban had yet to move any of the long boulders that would form the pillars of the sun's house at the temple's centre. He had cut and shaped the big sledge runners, and those timbers had seasoned in Cathallo, but he had not dared try to move the gigantic stones.

He went to Galeth for advice. His uncle was old and feeble now, his scanty hair was white and his beard a mere wisp. Lidda, his woman, was dead and Galeth was blind, but in his blindness he could still envisage stones and levers and sledges. 'Moving a large stone is no different from moving a small one,' he told Saban. 'It's just that everything is larger: the sledge, the levers and the ox team.' Galeth shivered. It was a warm night, but he had a large fire in his hut and had pulled a bearskin about his shoulders.

'Are you sick?' Saban asked.

'A summer fever,' Galeth said dismissively.

Saban frowned. 'I can build the sledge,' he said, 'and make levers, but I do not see how to shift the stones onto their sledges. They're too big.'

'Then you must build the sledge under the stone,' Galeth suggested. He paused, his body racked with the shakes. 'It's nothing,' he said, 'nothing, just a summer fever.' He waited until the shivering fit had passed, then described how he would first dig a trench down each of the stone's long sides. Once the trenches had reached the bedrock chalk, he said, the huge runners could be laid down each flank. Then the stone must be levered up, using the sledge runners as fulcrums. 'Do it one end at a time,' Galeth advised, 'and put beams under the stone. That way you won't have to shift the stone onto the sledge, but instead build the sledge under the stone.'

Saban thought about it. It would work, he decided, it would work very well. A ramp would have to be made in front of the sledge, and that ramp would need to be long and shallow so that oxen could haul the boulder up from the bedrock to the turf. How many oxen? Galeth did not know, but guessed Saban would need more beasts than had ever been harnessed to a sledge before. More ropes, more beams to spread the load of the ropes, and more men to guide the oxen. 'But you can do it,' the old man said. He shivered again, then moaned.

'You're sick, uncle.'

'Only fever, boy.' Galeth drew the bear's pelt tighter about his old shoulders. 'But I shall be glad to go to the Death Place,' he said, 'and join my dear Lidda. You will carry me, Saban?'

'Of course I will,' Saban said, 'but it will be years yet!'

'And Camaban tells me I shall live on earth again,' Galeth said, ignoring Saban's optimism, 'but I do not see how that can be.'

'He says what?'

'That I shall come back. That my soul will use the gates of his new temple to return to earth.' The old man sat silent for a while. The flames of his fire made the lines on his face deep shadowed like knife cuts. 'I must have raised twenty temples in my life,' he said, breaking the silence, 'and I saw nothing get better with any one of them. But this one will be different.'