Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Hengall stumbled forward. Most in the crowd still did not know what was happening, but they recognized an ill omen and they moaned. Then Hengall fell and they saw the arrow in his back, its black feathers dark, and still they did not understand, and it was not until the priests rushed to the chief's side that the wailing began.

Saban ran forward, then checked, for more arrows were flickering in the sky. They thumped into the turf, struck the priests, and one glanced off a moon stone with a click. Then Saban saw the naked creatures who came from the southern skyline that was all aflame with red.

The creatures themselves were red. They screamed as they capered forward and the sight of them made Ratharryn's people howl, but when they turned to flee towards the settlement there were more of the creatures behind and some of the attackers were mounted on small shaggy horses that galloped across the low chalk banks of the sacred path.

They were Outfolk warriors and they had smeared their bodies with red ochre, the same substance that was sometimes used to colour the skins of the important dead, and now these living dead-men screamed as they closed on the tribe that had no weapons. There were dozens of the enemy and Hengall's orphaned folk could do nothing but crouch in terror. Morthor, Derrewyn's father, was wounded, Gilan lay dead, while Neel, the young priest, crawled on the temple's turf with an arrow in his thigh.

The leader of the red warriors appeared last of all and he alone was clothed and he alone had not used ochre to make his face look dreadful. He strode towards the temple and in his right hand was the long yew bow which he had used to kill Saban's father.

And to kill his own father too, for the man who came to the Sky Temple with a smile on his face was Lengar.

Who had come home.

PART TWO

The Temple of Shadows

The Outfolk quickly stopped their killing for Lengar had not returned to become the chief of a slaughtered tribe. When the screaming ended, he stood above his father's body and held up the bloodstained axe that had sent the child to the skies. He had shrugged off his cloak to reveal a jerkin sewn with bronze strips that glittered in the firelight and, at his waist, a long bronze sword. 'I am Lengar!' he shouted. 'Lengar! And if any of you dispute my right to be chief in Ratharryn, then come and dispute it now!'

None of the tribe looked at Saban for he was reckoned too young to confront Lengar, but a few did stare at Galeth. 'Do you challenge me, uncle?' Lengar asked.

'You have murdered your father,' Galeth said, gazing in horror at his brother's body, which had fallen across the grave of the sacrificed child.

'What better way to become chief?' Lengar asked, then walked a few paces towards his rival. His companions, those men who had fled Ratharryn with him on the day that the emissaries from Sarmennyn had been rebuffed, climbed up from the ditch at the temple's far side, but Lengar stayed their progress with a gesture. 'Do you challenge me?' he asked Galeth again, then waited in silence. When it was plain that neither Galeth nor any other man in the tribe would confront him he tossed the axe on to the grass behind him and walked to the temple's entrance of the sun where he stood, tall and terrible with the bloody axe in his hand, between the two high stones. 'Galeth and Saban!' he called. 'Come here!'

Galeth and Saban walked nervously forward, both half expecting arrows to come from Lengar's companions who waited at the temple's far side, but no bowstring sounded. Lengar drew his sword as they approached. 'There are men here who might expect one of you to challenge me,' Lengar said. 'Even you, little brother.' He bared his teeth at Saban, pretending to smile.

Saban said nothing. He saw that Lengar had tattooed a pair of horns on his face, one outside of each eye, and the horns made him look even more sinister. Lengar held the sword out so that its tip touched Saban's breast. 'It is good to see you, brother,' he said.

'Is it?' Saban asked as coldly as he could.

'You think I have not missed Ratharryn?' Lengar asked. 'Sarmennyn is a bare place. Raw and cold.'

'You came home to be warm?' Saban asked sarcastically.

'No, little one, I came home to make Ratharryn great again. There was a time when Cathallo paid us tribute, when they were proud that their women married a man from Ratharryn, when they came to dance in our temples and begged our priests to keep them from harm, but now they sell us rocks.' He slapped the closest stone. 'Rocks!' He spat the word again. 'Why did you not buy oak leaves from them? Or water? Or air? Or dung?'

Galeth glanced at his brother's body. 'What do you want of us?' he asked Lengar dully.

'You must kneel to me, uncle,' Lengar said, 'in front of all the tribe, to show that you accept me as chief. Otherwise I shall send you to our ancestors. Greet them for me, if I do.'

Galeth frowned. 'And if I kneel, what then?'

'Then you shall be my honoured adviser, my kinsman and my friend,' Lengar said effusively. 'You shall be what you have always been, the builder of our tribe and the counsellor of its chief. I did not come back to let the Outfolk rule here. I came to make Ratharryn great again.' He gestured at the red warriors. 'When their work is done, uncle, they will go home. But till then they are our servants.'

Galeth looked again at his brother's body. 'There will be no more killing in the tribe?' he asked.

'I will kill no one who accepts my authority,' Lengar promised, glancing at Saban.

Galeth nodded. He paused for a heartbeat then sank to his knees. There was a sigh from the watching tribe as he leaned forward and touched his hands to Lengar's feet.

'Thank you, uncle,' Lengar said. He touched Galeth's back with the sword, then turned to Saban. 'Now you, brother.'

Saban did not move.

'Kneel,' Galeth muttered.

Lengar's yellow-tinged eyes, oddly bright in the gathering dark, stared into Saban's face. 'I do not mind, little brother,' Lengar said softly, 'whether you live or die. There are those who say I should kill you, but does a wolf fear a cat?' He reached out with the sword and stroked the cold blade down Saban's cheek. 'But if you do not kneel to me, I shall take your head and use your skull as a drinking pot.'

Saban did not want to submit, but he knew Lengar's madness, and he knew he would be killed like a frothing dog if he did not yield. He bit back his pride and made himself kneel, and another sigh sounded from the tribe as he too leaned forward to touch Lengar's feet. Lengar, in turn, touched the nape of Saban's neck with the bronze blade. 'Do you love me, little brother?' Lengar asked.

'No,' Saban said.

Lengar laughed and took the sword away. 'Stand,' he said, then stepped back to look at the silent, watching crowd. 'Go home!' he called to them. 'Go home! You too,' he added to Saban and Galeth.

Most of the crowd obeyed, but Derrewyn and her mother ran to the temple's ditch where Morthor lay wounded. Saban joined them to see that an arrow had struck high on the priest's shoulder and its force had driven the head clean through his body. Saban pulled the flint free, but left the shaft in place. 'The arrow will come out cleanly,' he reassured Derrewyn. The chalk slurry on Morthor's chest was stained pink and he was breathing in short panicked gasps. 'The wound will mend,' Saban told the frightened priest, then twisted back because Derrewyn had suddenly screamed.

Lengar had taken hold of Derrewyn's arm and was hauling her round so that he could see her face in the light of the great fires. Saban stood, but immediately found himself staring at the point of Lengar's sword. 'You want something of me, little brother?' Lengar asked.

Saban looked at Derrewyn. She was in tears, flinching from Lengar's tight grip on her arm. 'We are to marry,' Saban said, 'she and I.'

'And who decided that?' Lengar asked.

'Father,' Saban said, 'and her great-grandmother, Sannas.'

Lengar grimaced. 'Father is dead, Saban, and I rule here now. And what that moonstruck hag of Cathallo wants does not matter in Ratharryn. What matters, little brother, is what I want.' He snapped an order in the harsh Outfolk language and a half-dozen of the red warriors ran to his side. One took the sword from Lengar, while two others faced Saban with their spears.

Lengar put both hands on the neck of Derrewyn's deerskin tunic. He looked into her eyes, smiled when he saw the fear there, then tore the tunic with sudden force. Derrewyn cried out; Saban instinctively leapt forward, but one of the Outfolk spears tangled his ankles, and the other clouted him across the skull then came to rest on his belly as he fell to the ground.

Lengar ripped off the remnants of the tunic, leaving Derrewyn naked. She tried to hide her body, but Lengar pulled her out of the crouch and spread her arms. 'A thing of Cathallo,' he said, looking her up and down, 'but a pretty thing. What does one do with such pretty things?' He asked the question of Saban, but expected no answer. 'Tonight,' he went on, 'we must show Cathallo what the power of Ratharryn means,' and with that he took Derrewyn's wrist and dragged her towards the settlement.

'No!' Saban shouted, still pinned to the ground by the Outfolk spear.

'Quiet, little brother,' Lengar called. Derrewyn tried to pull away from him and he struck her hard across the face, scattering meadowsweets from her hair, and, when he was sure she would be obedient, he tugged her onwards. She pulled away from him again, but he gave her a second blow, much harder than the first; she whimpered and this time followed him in a daze. Her mother, still kneeling beside her husband, shouted a strident protest, but a red-painted warrior kicked her in the mouth and silenced her.

And Saban, bereft at the Sky Temple, could do nothing except weep. Two Outfolk warriors guarded him. Neel and Morthor, the wounded priests, were carried away to leave the bodies of Hengall and Gilan in the moonlight where Saban sobbed like a child. Then the Outlanders prodded him to his feet and drove him like a beast towards the settlement.

The Sky Temple had been consecrated but disaster had come to Ratharryn. Saban's world had turned dark. The gods were screaming again.

—«»—«»—«»—

Most of the Outfolk warriors stationed themselves on the embankment's crest from where, with their short bows and sharp arrows, they could threaten the folk inside Ratharryn's settlement, but a handful of Outfolk spearmen stood guard outside Hengall's hut where Lengar took Derrewyn. Most of the tribe had gathered beside Arryn and Mai's temple; they heard a blow, heard Derrewyn scream, then heard no more.

'Should we fight them?' Galeth's son, Mereth, asked.

There are too many of them,' Galeth said softly, 'too many.' He looked broken, sitting in the temple's centre with his head low. 'Besides,' he went on, 'if we fight them, how many of us will die? How many will be left? Enough to resist Cathallo?' He sighed. 'I knelt to Lengar, and so he is my chief…' He paused. 'For now.' The last two words were said so low that not even Mereth could hear them. The women outside the temple cried for Hengall, because he had been a good chief, while the men inside watched the enemy on the high earth bank. Lahanna stared down, unmoved by the tragedy. After a while the frightened folk slept, though their sleep was broken by people crying aloud in their nightmares.

Lengar appeared just before the dawn. The tribe woke slowly, becoming aware that their new chief was stepping over sleeping bodies to reach the centre of Arryn and Mai's temple. He still wore the bronze-plated jerkin and had the long sword at his waist, but he carried no spear or bow.