Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'Me?' Saban laughed. 'Threaten you, the sorcerer? But how will you build this temple, brother, if you fight me? You can build a tripod? You can line a hole with timber? You can harness oxen? You know how the stone breaks naturally? You, who boast that you have never held an axe in your life, can build this temple?'

Camaban laughed at the question. 'I can find a hundred men to raise stones!' he said scornfully.

Saban smiled. 'Then let those hundred men tell you how they will raise one stone upon another.' He pointed to the long stone. 'When that pillar is raised, brother, it will stand four times the height of a man. Four times! And how will you lift another stone to rest on its summit? Do you know?' He looked past Camaban and shouted the question even louder. 'Do any of you know?' He called to the spearmen. 'Vakkal? Gundur? Can you tell me? How will you raise a capstone to the summit of that pillar? And not just one capstone, but a whole ring of stones! How will you do it? Answer me!'

No one spoke. They just stared at him. Camaban shrugged. 'A ramp of earth, of course,' he said.

'A ramp of earth?' Saban sneered. 'You have thirty-five capstones to raise, brother, and you'll make thirty-five ramps? How long will that take? And how will you scrape those ramps from this shallow soil? Raise the stones with earth and our great-grandchildren won't see this temple finished.'

'Than how would you do it?' Camaban asked angrily.

'Properly,' Saban answered.

'Tell me!' Camaban shouted.

'No,' Saban said, 'and without me, brother, you will never have a temple. You will have a pile of rocks.' He pointed at Hanna. 'And if you kill that child I will walk away from this temple and I will never look back, never! She is a slave's whelp, but I am fond of her. You think she is Derrewyn's daughter?' Saban spat his scorn onto the long stone. 'Do you think Derrewyn would send her child to a tribe where you ruled? Search the land, brother, haul down every hut, but don't search here for Derrewyn's child.'

Camaban watched him for a time. 'Do you swear this child is not Derrewyn's daughter?'

'I do,' Saban said, and felt a chill run through him for a false oath was not to be taken lightly, yet if he had hesitated, or if he had told the truth, Hanna would have died instantly.

Camaban watched him, then gestured that the priest should step forward and lower the skull to Saban. Camaban still held his sword at Hanna's small throat. 'Put a hand on the skull,' he ordered Saban, 'and swear before the ancestors that this child is not Derrewyn's whelp.'

Saban reached his hand out slowly. This was the most solemn oath he could make, and to lie to the ancestors was to betray his whole tribe, but he placed his fingers on the bone and nodded. 'I swear it,' he said.

'On your daughter's life?' Camaban demanded.

Saban was sweating now. The world seemed to tremble about him, but Hanna was staring at him and he felt himself nod again. 'On Lallic's life,' he said and he knew he had told a terrible lie. He would have to make amends if Lallic were to live and he did not know how he could do that.

Camaban pushed Hanna away and she ran to Saban and clung to him, weeping. He picked her up and held her close.

'Make me a temple, brother,' Camaban said, pushing the sword into his leather belt, 'make me a temple, but hurry!' His voice was rising now. 'You are forever making excuses! The stone is hard, the ground is too wet for sledges, the oxens' hooves are breaking. And nothing gets done!' He screeched the last four words. He was shaking and Saban wondered if his brother was about to roll his eyes and go into a howling trance that could fill the temple with blood and fear, but Camaban just yelped as if he were in pain and then abruptly turned and walked away. 'Make me a temple!' he shouted, and Saban held Hanna tight for she was weeping with fear.

As Camaban crossed the temple causeway, followed by his warriors, Saban leaned on the long stone and let out a great breath. It was a cold day, but he was still sweating. Kilda ran to him and took Hanna into her arms. 'I thought he would kill you both!' she said.

'I have sworn my daughter's life on Hanna's life,' Saban said dully. 'He knew who Hanna was and I swore she was not.' He closed his eyes, shaking. 'I have sworn a false oath.'

Kilda was silent. The slaves watched Saban.

'I have risked Lallic,' Saban said, and the tears ran down his cheeks to make furrows in the white stone dust.

'What will you do?' Kilda asked quietly.

'The gods must forgive me,' Saban said, 'no one else can.'

'If you build the gods a temple,' Kilda said, 'then they will forgive you. So build it, Saban, build it.' She reached out and wiped a tear from his face. 'And how will you raise the capstones?' she asked.

'I don't know,' Saban said, 'I truly don't know.' But if he found out, he thought, then perhaps the gods would forgive him and Lallic would live. Only the temple could save her now, and so he turned on the slaves. 'Work!' he told them. 'Work! The sooner it's done, the sooner we're all free.'

They worked. They hammered, they ground patches of stone to dust, they dug rock and earth, and they polished stone until their arms ached and their nostrils were filled with dust and their eyes stung. The strongest of them worked on the long stone and, as Saban had promised, it was ready before midwinter. The day came when it could not be shaped any more, it had been turned from a rock into a slender, elegant and tapering monolith, and Saban knew he must raise it. He remembered Galeth's advice and proposed raising the stone on edge, for he feared the narrow stone's weight might shear it in two. But first the stone had to be manoeuvred to the edge of its hole and that took six days of levering and sweating and cursing, and then it had to be turned onto one of its long narrow edges and that took a whole day, but at last it stood on its log rollers and Saban could loop ropes about the whole length of the stone and attach the ropes to the sixty oxen that would haul the monstrous rock into its hole.

The hole was the deepest Saban had ever dug. Its depth was almost twice the height of a man and he had protected its ramp and the face opposing the ramp with split tree trunks greased with pig fat. The ropes led from the stone clear across the hole, then across the ditch and banks to where the breath of sixty oxen formed a mist. Saban gave the signal and the ox drivers goaded their beasts and the twisted hide ropes lifted from the ground, went taut, quivered, stretched and then at last the stone lurched forward. 'Slowly now! Slowly!' Saban called. He feared that the slab might topple, but it edged forward safely enough, grinding splinters from the log rollers. Slaves pulled the logs from the back of the pillar as its leading edge began to jut out over the ramp. Then one of the ropes broke and there was a flurry of shouts and a long wait while a new rope was fetched and tied to the harness.

The oxen were goaded again and, finger's breadth by finger's breadth, the huge stone eased forward until half of it was poised above the ramp and the other half was still resting on the rollers, and then the oxen tugged once more and Saban was shouting at the beasts' drivers to halt the animals because the stone was tipping at last. For a heartbeat it seemed to balance on the ramp's edge, then its leading half crashed down onto the timbers. The ground shook with the impact, then the great boulder slid down the ramp to lodge against the hole's face.

Saban left the stone there that night. One end of the pillar jutted into the sky at an angle and the carved knob on its end, which would anchor the capstone of the highest arch, was stark against the winter stars.

Next day he ordered fifty slaves to bring baskets filled with chalk rubble and river stones to the edge of the hole, then he looped ten ropes about the canted stone. He led the ropes up over a tripod, which stood four times the height of a man, and then on to the oxen waiting beyond the ditch. The notch at the tripod's peak, over which the ropes would slide, was smoothed and greased. The ropes themselves were greased. Camaban and Haragg had both come to watch and the high priest could not contain his excitement. 'I don't suppose a greater stone has ever been raised!' Haragg exclaimed.