Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Jegar's men backed away and Saban stooped to untie the leather thongs that strapped the sword to Jegar's dead hand. 'How long will you stay at Sul?' he asked Lewydd, who had stayed close to Saban throughout the brief fight.

'Not long,' Lewydd said. 'We must be home by midsummer. Why?'

'I shall be back here in four days,' Saban said, 'and I would travel to Sarmennyn with you. Wait for me.'

'Four days,' Lewydd said, then flinched when he saw what Saban was doing. 'Where are you going?' he asked.

'I shall be back in four days,' Saban repeated, and would say no more. Then he picked up his burden and walked uphill.

The killing at Sul was over.

Saban was tired, hungry and sore. He had walked for the best part of a night and a day, first travelling eastwards from Sul, then following a well-worn traders' path that led northwards through unending woods. Now, on the second evening after leaving Sul, he was climbing a long gentle hill that had been cleared of trees, though any crops that had ever grown on the slope had long vanished to be replaced by bracken. There were no pigs, the only beast that ate the bracken, and no other living thing in sight. Even the air, on this warm and oppressive evening, was empty of birds, and when he stopped to listen he could hear nothing, not even a wind in the bracken, and he knew that this was how the world must have been before the gods made animals and man. The clouds about the low sun were bruised and swollen, shadowing all the land behind him.

Saban had left his bow, his quiver and his spear with Lewydd and he carried only Jegar's bloodstained tunic with its weighty burden. He was dirty, and his hair hung lank. Ever since he had left Sul he had been wondering why he was making this journey and he had found no good answers except for the dictates of instinct and duty. He had a debt, and life was full of debts that must be honoured if fate was to be kind. Everyone knew that. A fisherman was given a good catch so he must offer something back to the gods. A harvest was plump so part must be sacrificed. A favour engendered another favour and a curse was as dangerous to the person who pronounced it as to the person it was aimed against. Every good thing and bad thing in the world was balanced, which was why folk were so attentive to omens — though some men, like Lengar, ignored the imbalance. They simply piled evil on evil and so defied the gods, but Saban could not be so carefree. It worried him that a part of his life was out of balance and so he had walked this long path to the bracken-covered hill where nothing stirred and nothing sounded. More woods crested the hill and he feared to walk in their darkening shadows as night fell, and his fear increased when he reached the trees for there, at the edge of the forest and standing on either side of the path like guardians, were two thin poles that carried human heads.

They were mere skulls now for the birds had pecked the eyes and flesh away, though one of the skulls was still hung with remnants of hair attached to a yellowing scalp. The eyeholes stared a bleak warning down the hill. Turn now, the eyeholes said, just turn and go.

Saban walked on.

He sang as he walked. He had little breath for singing, but he did not want an arrow to hiss out of the leaves so it was better to announce his presence to the spearmen who guarded this territory. He sang the story of Dickel, the squirrel god. It was a child's song with a jaunty tune and told how Dickel had wanted to trick the fox into giving him his big jaw and sharp teeth, but the fox had turned around when Dickel made his spell and the squirrel got the fox's bushy red tail instead. 'Twitch-tail, twitch-tail,' Saban sang, remembering his mother singing the same words to him, and then there was a sound behind him, a footfall in the leaves, and he stopped.

'Who are you, twitch-tail?' a mocking voice asked.

'My name is Saban, son of Hengall,' Saban answered. He heard a sharp intake of breath and knew that the man behind him was considering his death. He had announced that he was Lengar's brother and in this land that was enough to condemn him and so he spoke again. 'I bring a gift,' he said, lifting the blood-crusted bundle in his hand.

'A gift for whom?' the man asked.

'Your sorceress.'

'If she does not like the gift,' the man said, 'she will kill you.'

'If she does not like this gift,' Saban said, 'then I deserve to die.' He turned to see there was not one man, but three, all with kill scars on their chests, all with bows and spears, and all with the bitter and suspicious faces of men who fight an unending battle, but fight it with passion. They guarded a frontier that was protected by the skulls and Saban wondered if the whole of Cathallo's territory was ringed by the heads of its enemies.

The men hesitated and Saban knew they were still tempted to kill him, but he was unarmed and he showed no fear, so they grudgingly let him live. Two escorted him eastwards while the third man ran ahead to tell the settlement that an intruder was coming. The two men hurried Saban for night was looming, but the summer twilight was long and there was still a thin light lingering in the sky when they reached Cathallo.

Rallin, the new chief, waited for Saban on the edge of the settlement. A dozen warriors stood with him while the tribe had gathered behind to see this brother of Lengar who had dared come to their home. Rallin was no older than Saban, but he looked formidable for he was a tall man with broad shoulders and an unsmiling face on which a wound scar streaked from his beard to skirt his left eye. 'Saban of Ratharryn,' he greeted Saban dourly.

'Saban of Sarmennyn now,' Saban said, bowing respectfully.

Rallin ignored Saban's words. 'We kill men of Ratharryn in this place,' he said. 'We kill them wherever we find them and we strike off their heads and put them on poles.' The crowd murmured, some calling that Saban's head should be added to the cull.

'Is it really Saban?' Another voice spoke, and Saban turned to see Morthor, the high priest with his empty eye-sockets, standing among the crowd. His beard was white now.

'It is good to see you, Morthor,' Saban said, then wished he had not used those words.

But Morthor smiled. 'It is good to hear you,' he answered, then he turned his sightless eyes towards Rallin. 'Saban is a good man.'

'He is from Ratharryn,' Rallin said flatly.

'Ratharryn did this to me,' Saban answered, holding up his left hand with its missing finger. 'Ratharryn enslaved me and cast me out. I do not come from Ratharryn.'

'But you were whelped in Ratharryn,' Rallin insisted obstinately.

'If a calf is born in your hut, Rallin,' Saban asked, 'does that make it your son?'

Rallin considered that for a heartbeat. 'Then why do you come here?' he demanded.

'To bring Morthor's daughter a gift,' Saban answered.

'What gift?' Rallin demanded.

'This,' Saban said. He lifted the bundle but refused to unwrap it, and then a scream like a vixen's shriek sounded and Rallin turned to stare towards the great embankment of the shrine.

A pale slim figure stood alone in the temple's dark. She beckoned, and Rallin, obedient to the summons, stood aside and Saban walked towards the woman who waited for him where the paired stones of the western avenue met the temple's embankment. It was Derrewyn and Lahanna was shining on her to make her beautiful. She wore a simple deerskin tunic that fell to her ankles and which appeared almost white in the moonlight, while round her neck was a chain of bones. But as Saban drew nearer he saw that her beauty was the moon's reflection, little more, for she was thinner now and her face was angrier and lined and bitter. Her black hair was scraped back into a tight knot, while her mouth, which had once been so quick to smile, was a thin-lipped slit. In her right hand was the thigh bone that Sannas had once carried and Derrewyn raised it as Saban reached the avenue's last pair of stones. 'You dared to come here?' she asked.

'To bring you a gift,' Saban answered.

She looked at the bundle, then gave an abrupt nod and Saban untied the tunic and shook its contents onto the bare moonlit ground between them.

'Jegar,' Derrewyn said, recognising the head despite the blood which matted its beard and smeared its skin.

'It is Jegar,' Saban said. 'I cut off his head with his own sword.'

Derrewyn stared at it, then grimaced. 'For me?'

'Why else would I bring you the head?'

She looked at him, and it seemed that a mask dropped away for she gave him a tired smile. 'Is it Saban of Sarmennyn now?'

'It is.'

'And you have a wife? A lover of Slaol?'

Saban ignored the sourness of the question. 'All the Out-folk love Slaol,' he said.

'Yet now you come to me,' Derrewyn said, the mask of anger back in its place, 'you crawl to me with a gift! Why? Because you need protection from Lengar?'

'No,' Saban protested.

'But you do,' Derrewyn said. 'You killed his friend, and you think he won't return that favour? Touch one of those maggots of Ratharryn, and the rest pursue you.' She frowned at him. 'You think Lengar won't kill you? You think he won't take your wife as he took me? You've hurt him!'

'I came to bring you this,' Saban said, gesturing at Jegar's head, 'and nothing more.' In truth he had thought little of Lengar's reaction to Jegar's death. His brother would be filled with rage, of that Saban was sure, and he would probably want revenge, but Saban believed he would be safe in Sarmennyn.

'So you brought me your gift, nothing more,' Derrewyn said. 'What were you hoping for, Saban? My gratitude?' She hoisted her deerskin skirts, lifting them almost to her waist. 'Is that what you want?'

Saban turned away to look across the dark fields. 'I wanted you to know that I had not forgotten.'

Derrewyn dropped the skirts. 'Forgotten what?' she asked sourly.

'That we were lovers,' Saban said, 'and that I knew happiness with you. And since that time to this there has not been one day in which I have not thought of you.'

Derrewyn gazed at him for a long time, then sighed. 'I knew you had not forgotten,' she said, 'and I always hoped you would come back.' She shrugged. 'And now you are here. So? Will you stay? Will you help us fight your brother?'

'I shall go back to Sarmennyn,' Saban said.

Derrewyn sneered. 'To move your famous temple? The temple that will draw great Slaol to Ratharryn! Scorching the sky as he comes to do your bidding? Do you really believe he will come?'

'Yes,' Saban said, 'I do.'

'But to do what?' This time Derrewyn spoke without scorn.

'What Camaban promises,' Saban said. 'There will be no more winter, no more disease, no more sadness.'

Derrewyn stared at him, then put her head back and laughed, and her mockery echoed from the farther side of the great chalk embankment, which shone white in the twilight. 'No more winter! No more sadness! You hear that, Sannas? You hear it? Ratharryn will banish winter!' She had been dancing as she mocked, but now she stopped and pointed the thigh bone at Saban. 'But I don't need to tell Sannas that, do I? She knows what Camaban wants because he stole her life.' She did not wait for an answer, but spat and strode forward to pick up Jegar's head by its bloody crown. 'Come with me, Saban of Sarmennyn,' she said, 'and we shall find out whether you will conquer winter with your rattling stones from the west. If only you could! We could all be happy again! We could be young and happy, with no pains in our bones.'

She led him into the shrine. There was no one else there, just the rising moon shining on the huge boulders in which tiny flecks of starlight seemed to be embedded. Derrewyn took Saban to Sannas's old hut, which was still the only building inside the embankment, and there she tossed Jegar's head beside the entrance before pulling up her tunic and tugging it over her head. She dropped the bone necklace on the tunic. 'You too,' she said, indicating that he should take off his own tunic. 'I'm not going to rape you, Saban, I merely want to talk with the goddess. She likes us naked, just as your priests go naked so that nothing lies between them and their gods.' She ducked under the door.