Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

I did not mean that Gilan should die,' he said without any greeting. Folk were sitting up and shuffling off the cloaks in which they had slept, while the women outside the temple's rings leant forward to catch Lengar's quiet words. 'My companions showed more zeal than I wanted,' he continued ruefully. 'One arrow would have been enough, but they were frightened and thought more were necessary.'

All the people were awake now. Men, women and children — the whole tribe — gathered in a protective cluster in and around the small temple and all listened to Lengar.

'My father,' Lengar went on, raising his voice just a little, 'was a good man. He kept us alive in hard winters and he cut down many trees to give us land. Hunger was rare and his justice was fair. For all that he should be honoured, so we will make him a mound.' People responded for the first time, muttering their agreement, and Lengar let the murmuring continue for a while before raising a hand. 'But my father was wrong about Cathallo!' He spoke louder now, his voice touched with hardness. 'He feared it, so he let Kital and Sannas rule you. It was to be a marriage of two tribes, but in marriage it is the man who should be master and in time Cathallo would have mastered you! Your harvest would have been carried to their storehouses, your daughters would have danced the bull dance in their temple and your spears would have fought their battles. But this is our land!' Lengar cried, and some folk shouted that he was right.

'Our land,' Mereth shouted angrily, 'and filled with Outfolk!'

Lengar paused, smiling. 'My cousin is right,' he said after a while. 'I have brought Outfolk here. But there are not many. They have fewer spears than you do! What is to stop you killing them now? Or killing me?' He waited for an answer, but none of the men moved. 'Do you remember,' Lengar asked, 'when the Outfolk came and begged for the return of their treasures? They offered us a high price. And what did we do? We turned them down and used some of the gold to buy stone from Cathallo. Stone! We used Slaol's gold to buy rocks!' He laughed, and many of his listeners looked ashamed for what the tribe had done.

'We shall buy nothing more from Cathallo,' Lengar said. 'They claim to want peace, but war is hidden in their hearts. They cannot bear to think that Ratharryn will be great again, and so they will try to crush us. In our ancestors' time this tribe was stronger than Cathallo! They paid us tribute and begged our approval. But now they despise us. They want us helpless, and we shall have to fight them. How do we defeat them?' He pointed at the embankment where the Outfolk warriors squatted. 'We will defeat Cathallo by buying the help of the Outfolk, for they will pay almost any price to have their gold returned. But to receive their gold they must do our bidding. We are masters here, not them! And we shall use the Outfolk warriors to become the mightiest tribe in all the land.' He watched his listeners, judging the effect of his words. 'And that is why I came back,' he finished softly, 'and why my father had to join his ancestors, so that Ratharryn will be known through all the land, feared through all the land, and honoured through land and sky.'

The tribe began to thump their hands on the earth, and then the men were standing and cheering. Lengar had persuaded them.

Lengar had won.

—«»—«»—«»—

Saban spent the night in his hut, guarded there by two of Lengar's red-painted spearmen. He wept for Derrewyn, and the knowledge of what she endured in the dark gave him such pain that he was tempted to take the knife that had been a gift from his father and slit his own throat, but the lure of revenge stayed his hand. He had knelt to Lengar in the Sky Temple's gate, but he knew the gesture had been hollow. He would kill his brother. He swore as much in the awful dark, then cursed himself for not showing more fight at the temple. But what could he have done? He had possessed no weapon, so how could he have fought warriors armed with swords, spears and bows? Fate had crushed him, and he was close to despair. Only as dawn neared did he fall into a dream-racked, shallow sleep.

Gundur, one of the men who had fled Ratharryn with Lengar, woke him. 'Your brother wants you,' Gundur said.

'What for?' Saban asked resentfully.

'Just get up,' Gundur said scornfully. Saban put the bronze knife into his belt and picked up one of his hunting spears before following Gundur from the hut. He would kill his brother now, he had decided. He would spear Lengar without warning, and if he died under the blades of Lengar's companions then at least he would have avenged his father. The ancestors would approve of that and welcome him to the afterlife. He gripped the spear shaft tight and stiffened his resolve to strike as soon as he entered the chief's big hut.

But an Outfolk warrior waiting just inside the hut seized Saban's spear before he had even stooped beneath the lintel. Saban tried to keep hold of the ash shaft, but the man was too strong and the brief struggle left Saban sprawling ignominiously on the floor. Galeth, he saw, waited for him, and three more Outfolk warriors sat behind Lengar who had watched the scuffle with amusement. 'Did you think to avenge our father?' Lengar asked Saban.

Saban rubbed his wrist that was sore from the Outlander's grip. 'The ancestors will avenge him,' he said.

'How will the ancestors even know who he is?' Lengar asked. 'I chopped off his jawbone this morning.' He grinned, and pointed to Hengall's bloody and bearded chin that had been spiked to one of the hut poles. If a dead man's jawbone was taken then he could not tell tales to the ancestors. 'I took Gilan's too,' Lengar said, 'so the pair of them can mumble away in the afterlife. Sit beside Galeth, and stop scowling.'

Lengar was draped in his father's bearskin cloak and was surrounded by treasures, all of them unearthed from the floor or dug out of the piles of hides where Hengall had concealed his fortune. 'We are rich, little brother!' Lengar said happily. 'Rich! You look tired. Did you not sleep well?' Gundur, who had sat beside Lengar, grinned, while the three Outfolk warriors, who did not understand what was being said, just stared fixedly at Saban.

Saban glanced towards the leather curtain that hid the women's portion of the hut, but he saw no sign of Derrewyn. He squatted in front of the tribe's heaped treasures. There were bars of bronze, beautifully polished knives of stone and flint, bags of amber, pieces of jet, great axes, loops of copper, carved bone, sea-shells and, most curious of all, a wooden box filled with strangely carved pebbles. The stones were small and smoothly rounded, none of them bigger than the ball of a man's thumb, but all had been deeply cut with patterns of whorls or lines. 'Do you know what they are?' Lengar asked Galeth.

'No,' Galeth said curtly.

'Magic, I suspect,' Lengar said, tossing one of the stones from hand to hand. 'Camaban would know. He seems to know everything these days. It's a pity he's not here.'

'Have you seen him?' Galeth asked.

'He came to Sarmennyn in the spring,' Lengar said carelessly, 'and so far as I know he's still there. He was walking properly, or almost properly. I wanted him to come with me, but he refused. I'd always thought him a fool, but he isn't at all. He's become very strange, but he isn't foolish. He's very clever. Perhaps it runs in our family. What is the matter, Saban? You're not going to cry, are you? Father's death, is it?'

Saban thought of seizing one of the precious bronze axes and hurling himself across the hut, but the Outfolk spearmen were watching him and their weapons were ready. He would stand no chance.

'You will notice, uncle,' Lengar said, 'that the gold pieces of Sarmennyn are not here?'

'I noticed,' Galeth said.

'I have them safe,' Lengar said, 'but I won't display them because I don't want to tempt our Outfolk friends. They've only come here to get the gold.' Lengar jerked his head at the Outfolk warriors who sat silent behind him, their tattooed faces like masks in the shadowed gloom. 'They don't speak our tongue, uncle,' Lengar went on, 'so insult them as much as you like, but smile while you do it. I need them to think we truly are their friends.'

'Aren't we?' Galeth asked.

'For the moment,' Lengar said. He smiled, pleased with himself. 'I had originally decided to give them back their gold if they defeated Cathallo for me, but Camaban had a much better idea. He really is clever. He went into a trance and cured one of their chief's wives of some loathsome disease. Have you ever seen him in a trance? His eyes go white, his tongue sticks out and he shakes like a wet dog, and when the whole thing is over he comes out with messages from Slaol!' Lengar waited for Galeth to share his amusement, but Galeth said nothing. Lengar sighed. 'Well, clever Camaban cured the chief's wife and now the chief thinks that Camaban can do no wrong. Imagine that! Crippled Camaban, a hero! So our hero told the Outfolk that not only would they have to defeat Cathallo to get their gold back, but also give us one of their temples. Which means they have to move a temple across the country, which they can't do, of course, because their temples are all made of stone.' He laughed. 'So we'll defeat Cathallo and keep the gold.'

'Maybe they will bring you a temple,' Galeth said drily.

'And maybe Saban will smile,' Lengar said. 'Saban! Smile when you look at me. Have you lost your tongue?'

Saban was gouging his fingernails into his ankles, hoping that the pain would keep him from crying or betraying his hatred. 'You wanted to see me, brother,' he said harshly.

'To say goodbye,' Lengar said ominously, hoping to see fear on his brother's face, but Saban's expression showed nothing. Death, Saban thought, would be better than this humiliation and the thought made him touch his groin, a gesture that made Lengar laugh. 'I'm not going to kill you, little brother,' Lengar said. 'I should, but I am merciful. Instead I shall take your place. Derrewyn will marry me as a symbol that Ratharryn is now superior to Cathallo and she will breed me many sons. And you, my brother, will be a slave.' He clapped his hands. 'Haragg!' he shouted.

The Outfolk trader, the grim giant who had come to interpret when the folk of Sarmennyn had pleaded with Hengall for the return of the treasures, stooped to enter the hut. He had to bend double to get through the low doorway and when he stood he seemed to fill the hut for he was so tall and broad-shouldered. He was balding, had a thick black beard, and a face that was an implacable mask. 'Your new slave, Haragg,' Lengar said courteously, indicating Saban.

'Lengar!' Galeth appealed.

'You would prefer me to kill the runt?' Lengar enquired silkily.

'You can't put your own brother into slavery!' Galeth protested.

'Half-brother,' Lengar said, 'and of course I can. Do you think Saban was honest when he knelt to me last night? I trust you, uncle, but him? He'd kill me in an eyeblink! He's been thinking of nothing else ever since he came into this hut, haven't you, Saban?' He smiled, but Saban just stared into his brother's horned eyes. Lengar spat. 'Take him, Haragg.'

Haragg leaned over and put a vast hand round Saban's arm and hauled him upright. Saban, humiliated and miserable, plucked the small knife from his belt and swung it wildly towards the giant, but Haragg, without any fuss, merely caught his wrist and pinched hard so that Saban's hand was suddenly nerveless and feeble. The knife dropped. Haragg picked up the blade then dragged Saban from the hut.

Haragg's son, the deaf-mute who was even larger than his gigantic father, waited outside. He took hold of Saban and threw him to the ground while his father went back into Lengar's hut, and Saban listened as Lengar sought assurances from the huge trader that the new slave would not be allowed to escape. Saban thought of trying to run now, but the deaf-mute loomed over him and then a wailing made him turn to see Morthor's wife leading her husband from Gilan's old hut. Outfolk warriors were prodding the couple towards Ratharryn's northern entrance.