Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Saban crawled back into the sunlight where he hurriedly pulled on his tunic. The dancers shuffled back and forth, the drummers beat on, and Saban shuddered. Behind him, from inside the hut, he heard laughter and he was ashamed. His tribe was so little, his people so weak, and Cathallo was so strong. The gods, it seemed to Saban, had turned against Ratharryn. Why else had Lengar fled? Why had Lahanna refused the sacrifice? Why was he forced to crawl to a hag in Cathallo? Saban believed her threats, he believed his tribe was in danger of being swallowed and he did not know how he could save it. His father had warned him against heroes, but Saban thought Ratharryn needed a hero. Hengall had been a hero in his youth, but he was cautious now, Galeth had no ambition and Saban was not yet a man — he did not even know if he would pass the ordeals. Yet he would be a hero if he could, for without a hero he foresaw nothing but grief for his people. They would just be swallowed.

That night the people of Cathallo lit the midsummer fires that sparked and billowed smoke across the landscape. The fires burned to drive malignant spirits from the fields, and more fires burned inside Cathallo's great temple where twelve men dressed in cattle hides romped among the stones. The skins formed grotesque costumes, for the beasts' heads and hooves were still attached. The monstrous horned shapes capered between the flames while the men beneath the skins bellowed their challenges to the evil spirits that could bring disease to the tribe and to its herds. The beast-men guarded Cathallo's prosperity, and there was much competition between the young warriors to be given the honour of dancing in the bulls' hides for, when the night's dark was full and the furious flames were rushing towards the stars, a dozen girls were pushed naked into the fire circle where they were pursued by the roaring men. The crowd, which had been dancing about the ring of flames, stopped to watch as the girls dodged and twisted in feigned panic away from their horned pursuers who were half blinded and made clumsy by their cumbersome skins. Yet one by one the girls were caught, thrust to the ground and there covered by the horned monsters as the onlookers cheered.

Both tribes leapt the fires when the bull dance was over. The warriors competed to see who could jump through the highest, widest fires, and more than one fell into the flames and had to be dragged screaming from the blaze. The old folk and the children skipped across the smallest fires, and then the tribe's new-born livestock were goaded through the glowing beds of embers. Some folk showed their bravery by walking barefoot across the embers, but only after the priests had pronounced a charm to stop their feet from burning. Sannas, watching from her hut doorway, jeered at the ritual. 'It has nothing to do with any charm,' she said sourly. 'So long as their feet are dry it doesn't hurt, but have damp feet and you'd see them dancing like lambkins.' She hunched by her thatch and Camaban squatted beside her. 'You can jump the flames, child,' Sannas said.

'I c-c-cannot jump,' Camaban answered, wrenching his face in an effort not to stutter. He stretched out his left leg so that the firelight flickered on the twisted lump of his foot. 'And if I tried,' he went on, looking at the foot, 'they would l-l-laugh at me.'

Sannas was holding a human thigh bone. It had belonged to her second husband, a man who had thought to tame her. She reached out with the bone and lightly tapped the grotesque foot. 'I can mend that,' she said, then waited for Camaban's reaction, and was disappointed when he said nothing. 'But only if I want to,' she added savagely, 'and I may not want to.' She drew her cloak about her. 'I once had a crippled daughter,' she said. 'Such a strange little thing, she was. A hunchback dwarf. She was all twisted.' She sighed, remembering. 'My husband expected me to mend her.'

'And did you?'

'I sacrificed her to Lahanna. She's buried in the ditch there.' She pointed the bone towards the shrine's southern entrance.

'Why would Lahanna want a c-c-cripple?' Camaban asked.

'To laugh at, of course,' Sannas snapped.

Camaban smiled at that answer. He had gone to Sannas's hut in the daylight and the girls had gasped at the horror of his left foot, shuddered at the stink of his filthy pelt, then mocked his stammer and his wildly tangled hair, but Sannas had not joined their mockery. She had examined the moon mark on his belly, then had abruptly ordered all the girls out of her hut. And after they were gone she had stared at Camaban for a long while. 'Why did they not kill you?' she asked at last.

'B-B-Because the g-g-gods look after me.'

She had struck his head with the thigh bone. 'If you stutter to me, child,' she threatened, 'I shall turn you into a toad.'

Camaban had looked into the black eyes of her skull-face, and then, very calmly, he had leaned forward and taken the sorceress's leaf-wrapped honeycomb.

'Give it back!' Sannas had demanded.

'If I am to be a t-t-toad,' Camaban had said, 'I shall be a honeyed toad.' And Sannas had laughed at that, opening her mouth wide to show her single rotting tooth. She had ordered him to throw his filthy sheepskin tunic out of the hut, then found him an otterskin jerkin, and afterwards she had insisted he comb the tangles and dirt from his hair. 'You're a good-looking boy,' she said grudgingly, and it was true, for his face was lean and handsome, his nose long and straight and his dark green eyes were full of power. She had questioned him. How did he live? How did he find food? Where did he learn about the gods? And Camaban had answered her calmly, showing no fear of her, and Sannas had decided that she liked this child. He was wild, stubborn, unafraid and, above all, clever. Sannas lived in a world of fools, and here, though only a youth, was a mind, and so the old woman and the crippled boy had talked as the sun sank and the fires were lit and the bull-dancers drove the wild-haired girls down to the shadowed turf between the boulders.

Now they sat watching the dancers whirl past the fires. Somewhere in the dark a girl whimpered. 'Tell me about Saban,' Sannas commanded.

Camaban shrugged. 'Honest, hard-working,' he said, making neither attribute sound like a virtue, 'not unlike his father.'

'Will he become chief?'

'Given time, maybe,' Camaban said carelessly.

'And will he keep the peace?'

'How would I know?' Camaban answered.

'Then what do you think?'

'What does it matter what I think?' Camaban asked. 'Everyone knows I am a fool.'

'And are you, fool?'

'It is what I w-w-want them to think,' Camaban said. 'That way they leave me alone.'

Sannas nodded her approval at that. The two sat in silence for a while, watching the sheen of the flames colour the slab-sided stones. Sparks whirled in the sky, rushing between the hard white stars. A cry sounded from the shadows where two young men, one from Ratharryn and the other from Cathallo, had started fighting. Their friends dragged them apart, but even as that fight ended, others began. The folk of Cathallo had been generous with their honey-liquor that had been specially brewed for the midsummer feast. 'When my grandmother was a girl,' Sannas said, 'there was no liquor. The Outfolk showed us how to make it and they still make the best.' She brooded on that for a while, then shrugged. 'But they cannot make my potions. I can give you a drink to make you fly, and food to give you bright dreams.' Her eyes glittered under the hood of her shawl.

'I want to learn from you,' Camaban said.

'I teach girls, not boys,' the old woman said harshly.

'But I have no soul,' Camaban said. 'It was broken by the K-K-Kill-Child. I am neither boy nor man, I am nothing.'

'If you are nothing, what can you learn?'

'All you c-c-can teach me.' Camaban turned to look at the sorceress. 'I will p-p-pay you,' he said.

Sannas laughed, the breath wheezing in her throat as she rocked back and forth. 'And what,' she asked when she had recovered, 'can a crippled outcast from little Ratharryn pay me?'

'This.' Camaban uncurled his right hand to reveal a single gold lozenge. 'Part of the Outfolk gold,' he said, 'the b-b-bride of Slaol's treasure.' Sannas reached for the lozenge, but Camaban closed his fist.

'Give it to me, child!' the old woman hissed.

'If you say you'll teach me,' Camaban said, 'I shall give it to you.'

Sannas closed her eyes. 'If you do not give it to me, you crippled lump of horror,' she intoned in a voice that had terrified three generations of her tribe, 'I shall give your body to the worms and send your soul to the endless forest. I shall curdle your blood and beat your bones to a paste. I shall have the birds peck out your eyes, the vipers suck at your bowels and the dogs eat your guts. You will plead for my mercy and I shall just laugh at you and use your skull as my pissing pot.' She stopped suddenly, for Camaban had climbed to his feet and was limping away. 'Where are you going?' she hissed.

'I have heard,' Camaban said, 'that there is a sorcerer at Drewenna. He c-c-can teach me.'

She glared at him her eyes bright in her corpse's face, but he stayed quite calm, and Sannas shuddered with anger. 'Take one more step, cripple,' she said, 'and I will have your twisted bones put beside that dwarf in the ditch.'

Camaban held up the gold lozenge. 'This p-p-pays you to t-t-teach me,' he said, and then he produced a second lozenge. 'And this p-p-piece of gold,' he went on, 'will p-p-pay you to mend my foot.'

'Come here!' Sannas ordered. Camaban did not move, but just held the scraps of gold that glittered in the firelight. Sannas stared at them, knowing what mischief she could make with such powerful talismans. She hoped to gain more of this gold in the morning, but every scrap was precious to her and so she governed her anger. 'I will teach you,' she said calmly.

'Thank you,' Camaban said calmly, then knelt in front of her and reverently placed the two lozenges in her outstretched hand.

Sannas spat on the gold, then shuffled back into the deep darkness of the hut where her fire was little more than a heap of charred embers. 'You can sleep inside the door,' she said from the darkness, 'or outside. I do not care.'

Camaban did not answer, but just stared at the great temple stones. The shadows of the lovers were motionless now, but the dying firelight flickered and it seemed to him that the ring of stones was shimmering in the smoky night. It was as though the stones were alive and the people were dead, and that made him think of the Old Temple, so far away, that was his home, and he leaned forward and put his forehead on the ground and swore to whatever gods were listening that he would make the Old Temple live. He would make it dance, he would make it sing, he would make it live.

—«»—«»—«»—

Hengall was pleased with the results of his negotiations with Kital. Peace was assured, and that peace would be sealed by the marriage of Saban and Derrewyn. 'Not that she's the girl I'd have chosen for you,' Hengall grumbled to his son as they walked south towards Ratharryn. 'She's much too thin.'

'Too thin?' Saban asked. He had thought Derrewyn beautiful.

'Women are no different from cattle,' Hengall said. 'The best have wide rumps. It's no use marrying a thin thing, they just die in childbirth. But Sannas decided you're to marry Derrewyn and the marriage will seal our peace, so that's the end of it.'

Hengall had not only agreed to the marriage, he had also bought eight great boulders with which Gilan could remake the Old Temple. The price for the stones had been one of the large gold lozenges and nine of the small, which Hengall reckoned cheap. It was right, he thought, to exchange a small part of Sarmennyn's gold for the stones for he was sure now that the arrival of the treasures had been a message from Slaol to remake the Old Temple and Gilan had convinced him that Ratharryn must possess a temple made of stone.