Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'This one will be different,' Saban agreed.

'I hope so,' the old man said, 'but I cannot help thinking that the folk of Cathallo said the same thing when they made their big shrine.' Galeth chuckled and Saban reflected that his uncle was not nearly as slow-thinking as folk thought. 'Or do you think,' Galeth asked, 'that they moved the stones because they had nothing better to do?' He thought about that, then reached out and touched a deerskin bag in which he kept Lidda's flensed bones. He wanted his own bones added to hers before they were buried. He shivered again, then waved a hand to avert Saban's expression of concern. 'This longest stone,' he said after a while, 'is it slender?'

Saban found a piece of kindling in a pile at the hut's edge and put it into Galeth's hand. 'Just like that,' he said.

Galeth felt the long, thin sliver of wood. 'You know what you should do?'

'Tell me.'

'Put it in the hole sideways,' the old man said, and showed what he meant by bending the long thin piece of wood. 'A long flat rock could snap in two when you try to hoist it,' he explained. He turned the scrap of wood sideways and no amount of pressure could bend or snap it, but when he bent it again flatwise it snapped easily. 'Put it in the hole sideways,' he said again, tossing the scraps aside.

'I will,' Saban promised.

'And carry my corpse to the Death Place. Promise me that.'

'I will carry you, uncle,' Saban promised a second time.

'I shall sleep now,' Galeth said, and Saban backed from the hut and went to Camaban to tell him Galeth was sick. Camaban promised to take him an infusion of herbs, but when Saban went back to his uncle's hut he could not wake the old man. Galeth lay on his back, his mouth open and the hairs of his moustache not moving with any breath. Saban gently tapped Galeth's cheek and the old man's blind eyes opened, but there was no life there. He had died as gently as a feather falls.

The women of the tribe washed Galeth's body, then Mereth, his son, and Saban laid the corpse on a hurdle woven from willow. Next morning the women sang the body to the settlement's entrance before Mereth and Saban carried it on to the Death Place. Haragg walked in front of the corpse while a young priest came behind and played a lament on a bone flute. The body was covered with an ox hide on which Saban had strewn some ivy. Camaban did not come, and the only other mourners were Galeth's two younger sons who were Mereth's half-brothers.

The Death Place lay to the south of Ratharryn, not so very far from the Sky Temple, though it was separated from it by a wide valley and hidden by a wood of beech and hazel trees. The Death Place was itself a temple, dedicated to the ancestors, though it was never used for worship, or for bull dances, or for weddings. It was for the dead and so it was left derelict and overgrown. It stank, especially in the high summer, and as soon as the rank smell soured the funeral party's nostrils the young priest hurried ahead to dispel the spirits which were known to cluster about the temple. He reached the sun gate and shrieked at the unseen souls. Ravens called harshly back, then reluctantly spread their black wings and flew to the nearby trees, though the bolder of the birds settled on the remains of a ring of short timber poles which stood inside the temple's low bank. A fox snarled at the approaching men from among the nettles in the ditch, then ran to the trees. 'Safe now,' the young priest called.

Mereth and Saban carried Galeth through the entrance that faced the rising midsummer sun, then threaded the small spirit stakes, which were scattered throughout the temple. Haragg found an empty space and there the two men laid the hurdle down. Mereth pulled the heavy ox hide from the naked corpse, then he and Saban tipped Galeth onto the rank grass, which grew so thick among the dead. The old man was on his side, mouth agape, and Saban pulled on a stiff shoulder so that his uncle lay staring towards the clouded sky. A slave of Camaban's who had died only two days before lay close by; already her pregnant belly had been torn apart by beasts and her face ravaged by ravens' beaks. A dozen other bodies lay in the Death Place, two of them almost reduced to skeletons. One had weeds growing through its ribcage and the young priest bent over the bones to judge whether the time had come to remove them. The spirits of the dead lingered in this grim place until the last of their flesh was gone, and only then did they rise into the sky to join the ancestors.

Galeth's younger sons had brought a sharpened stake and a stone maul which they gave to Mereth. He squatted beside his father's corpse and banged the spirit stake into the turf until it struck the bedrock chalk, and then he gave it three more sharp taps to tell Garlanna that another soul had passed from her domain. Saban closed his eyes and cuffed away a tear.

'What's this?' Haragg asked and Saban turned to see that the high priest was frowning at the turf beside a half-rotted body. Saban stepped over the corpse to see that a lozenge shape had been scratched into the yellow grass. 'It's Lahanna's symbol,' Haragg said, frowning.

'Does it matter?' Saban asked.

'It is not her temple,' Haragg said, then scratched at the symbol with his foot, obliterating the lozenge shape from the turf. 'Maybe it's just child's play,' he said. 'Do children come here?'

'They're not supposed to,' Saban said, 'but they do. I did.'

'Child's play.' Haragg dismissed the lozenge. 'Have we finished?'

'We're finished,' Saban said.

Mereth looked a last time at his father, then walked from the temple and tossed the ivy that had covered the corpse down the deep hole that led to Garlanna's mansion. He and his half-brothers walked on through the hazels and the beech trees, then Mereth realised that Saban was still lingering by the corpse. 'Aren't you coming?' he shouted back.

'I want to say a prayer here,' Saban said, 'alone.'

So Mereth and the others went and Saban waited amidst the foul stench. He knew who had carved the lozenge shape in the Death Place's rank soil, so he stood beside his uncle's pale corpse until he heard a rustle in the trees. 'Derrewyn,' he then said, turning towards the noise and surprising himself by the eagerness in his voice.

And Derrewyn surprised him by smiling as she stepped from the trees, then surprised him further for, when he had crossed the low bank and ditch, she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. 'You look older,' she said.

'I am older,' Saban said.

'White hairs.' She touched his temples. She was painfully thin and her hair was tangled and dirty. She had been living as an outlaw, harried from woodland to woodland, and her pelts were filthy with mud and dead leaves. Her skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones, reminding Saban of Sannas's skull-face. 'Do I look older?' she asked him.

'As beautiful as ever,' Saban said.

She smiled. 'You lie,' she said gently.

'You shouldn't be here,' Saban told her. 'Camaban's spearmen search for you.' The rumours of Derrewyn's survival had never subsided and Camaban had sent scores of warriors and dogs to scour the forests.

'I see them,' Derrewyn said scornfully. 'Clumsy spearmen blundering through the trees, following their hounds, but no hound can see my spirit. Do you know that Camaban sent me a messenger?'

'He did?' Saban was surprised.

'He released a slave into the forests, carrying in his head Camaban's words. "Come to Ratharryn," he said, "and kneel to me and I shall let you live and worship Lahanna."' Derrewyn laughed at the memory. 'I sent the slave back to Camaban. Or, rather, I left his head on Ratharryn's embankment with its tongue cut out. The rest of him I gave to the dogs. Do you still have the lozenge?'

'Of course.' Saban touched the pouch where he kept the sliver of Sarmennyn's gold.