Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'That is a good question,' Kereval said quietly.

'This isn't being done for Erek, but for my brother's lust!' Saban shouted, but his protest was howled down by the warriors. It was the treasures that mattered to them, nothing else.

Aurenna stood with Lallic cradled in one arm. She touched Saban's hand. 'It doesn't matter,' she said softly, 'look.' She gazed up, past the fire-tinged skulls to where the smoke vanished through the roof hole.

'What of it?' Saban asked.

Aurenna gave him one of her gentle smiles. 'It is night,' she said softly, 'and a curse of Lahanna's will not work in the sun, will it?' She knew Lengar had destroyed Derrewyn's charm and she had grimaced when she heard the tale. 'It will go badly for him,' she had said quietly then, and now she tried to reassure Saban. 'He has risked the gods, and the gods do not like being defied.'

'Drag her out!' Scathel shouted, impatient with the delay, and Kargan, the leader of Kereval's spearmen, beckoned to his closest companions.

'Leave her!' Kereval ordered.

Aurenna still looked into Saban's face. 'All will be well,' she said, and she walked towards the hall's doorway with Lallic in her arms. Lewydd picked up Leir as Saban caught up with Aurenna and took her arm and tried to haul her back. She frowned at him. 'You cannot stop me now,' she said, pulling away from him.

'I would rather kill you than give you to him,' Saban said. He had never forgiven himself for Derrewyn's fate and now he was to let Aurenna just walk to his brother's bed?

'Erek wants me here,' Aurenna said.

'Erek wants you raped?' Saban shouted.

'I trust Erek,' Aurenna said placidly. 'Is not my whole life his gift? So how can anything be bad? I won't be raped. Erek will not permit it.'

Kereval moved to intercept them, but the chief had nothing to say. He was fond of both Saban and Aurenna, but his tribe had made sacrifices to regain the gold and now they must sacrifice further. He wanted to say he was sorry, but the words would not come and so he just turned away. Scathel was right, the chief thought. Aurenna had always been supposed to die for Erek and she had gained years of life from her escape at the Sea Temple, so perhaps nothing was as tragic as it seemed. The god's purpose had been hidden, even mysterious, but now it was made plain. Fate was inexorable.

There was silence in the feasting hall as Aurenna lifted the curtain. She stooped under the leather and Lewydd and Saban followed her into the night to see Lengar waiting a few yards away. He was flanked by his bronze-hung warriors who ringed the feasting hut, spears and bows in hand. Some had flaming torches to light the moonless dark. They jeered drunkenly at Saban, who looked into the sky. 'There's no moon!' he said.

'All will be well,' Aurenna said quietly. 'I know it. Erek has not deserted me.'

'Bring her to me,' Lengar said.

Saban hesitated, but Aurenna pulled him forward and walked calmly towards the tall figure of Lengar, whose face showed triumph.

'I said you would bring her, Saban,' Lengar said. 'What a sheep you are.' He jerked his head and four of his men prised Aurenna away from Saban with their spears. They pushed her towards Lengar, while other men, their breath reeking of liquor, seized Lewydd and Saban and forced them away through the cordon of warriors. Saban looked back to see that Aurenna was standing between two guards just behind Lengar.

Yet for the moment Lengar ignored her. Instead he gazed towards the feasting hall and raised his spear. 'Now!' he shouted gleefully, 'now!' and some of the warriors with the torches hurled them onto the feasting hall roof while others jammed their flaming straw-wrapped sticks into the hall's wide eaves. The flames caught the steep thatch with a sickening speed and after only a few heartbeats the first frightened men tried to escape the fire, but as soon as they appeared at the hall door they were met by arrows that threw them back with brutal force. Burning thatch was dropping into the hall, which was thickening with smoke. The weather had been dry and the hall caught the flame like a puffball. More torches were thrown onto the steep roof, now a patchwork of flame and darkness, but the fires spread, joined, blazed bright, and men were screaming beneath the hanging skulls. Some men tried to break through the walls, but arrows spitted them. One man did break free, but he was struck by a half-dozen arrows, then chopped to the ground with a bronze axe.

Aurenna watched, a hand over her mouth, her eyes aghast and her daughter held tight against her body so that Lallic could not see the carnage. The walls were burning now. The long hair of a dead man who was trapped in a gap of the wall suddenly flared. Part of the roof collapsed, spewing a stream of sparks into the night. Skulls fell as burning straw whirled up towards the stars. Lengar's warriors watched enthralled. Some among the spectators were Kereval's own men, the warriors who had followed Vakkal to Ratharryn and who now gave their allegiance to its dark chief, and those Outlanders cheered with the rest. They could see through the burning gaps where flaming men staggered in whirls of fire. A boy, one of the two who had bailed the mother stone's boat dry, screamed frantically. Saban could smell roasting flesh. The screams slowly died, though here and there a dark figure jerked in the smoke and fire, but soon there was no movement at all except for the collapse of rafters and the gouts of spark and fire and smoke. The whole roof caved in, leaving only the twelve temple posts standing. Flames licked up the thick posts. A smoking skull rolled across the grass. Lewydd had put Leir down and was struggling in the arms of two spearmen, but he suddenly collapsed, sinking to his knees and burying his head in his hands. Saban crouched beside him. 'I am sorry,' he said, putting an arm on his friend's shoulders. He held Leir close to him. 'Lengar was never going to give the gold back,' Saban said to Lewydd. 'I should have known. I should have known.'

'Are those two still alive?' Lengar's voice spoke behind Saban. 'Strangle them. No, push them into the flames.'

The spearmen reached for Saban and Lewydd. The moon had just risen in the west, coming from behind the trees on the high land. It was almost full, vast, flattened and red, a swollen moon, monstrous in the murderous night, but its light was drowned by the leaping flames. Yet in Lahanna's light, where it sifted across the dark trees, Saban suddenly saw shapes on the embankment's crest. He saw shadows moving among the white skulls that protected the settlement against the spirits, and the shadows were crossing the earth wall; he twisted to the east, struggling against the spearmen who tried to haul him upright, and he saw more shapes moving there, but no one else in Ratharryn saw the shadows for they were staring into the inferno where over a hundred men of Sarmennyn had choked on smoke and now burned under a layer of scorched skulls and blazing thatch.

The spearmen at last managed to haul Saban and Lewydd to their feet and just then the first arrows flickered in the flame-light. A man fell close by, a shaft dark in his throat. Saban rammed his elbow hard back, heard his captor's breath rush out and wrenched himself free. More arrows thumped home as Saban crouched and wrapped Leir in his arms. He could hear little over the roar of the fire, but he saw the arrows whip through the firelight. Lewydd was free now, his captor struck by one of the missiles. Lengar's spearmen were slowed by the liquor they had drunk and they had still not seen the attackers who had come down from the embankment's crest into the shadows where they were now loosing arrow after arrow. The flint heads drove into flesh. Some struck the huts and a few wasted themselves in the fire.

Saban pulled at Lewydd. 'Come!' He picked up Leir and ran towards Aurenna who had still not realised the danger. Lengar's drunken men were only just awakening to the attack, and did not yet know where it came from. Saban reached Aurenna, but one of her guards saw him and moved to intercept him, opening his mouth to shout a warning to Lengar, and an arrow slapped straight into his gullet. The man staggered back, choking and with blood pouring down his beard, then fell to the ground. Lengar turned anyway and Saban hit him with his free hand. It was a desperate, wild blow, but it struck Lengar's cheek, knocking him down and Saban grabbed Aurenna with his bruised hand and tugged her into the shadows between the huts where women screamed and dogs howled. 'Run!' Saban shouted at her. 'Run!'

But there was nowhere to run. Enemies had crossed the embankment's northern side and were already at the tanning pits, and their arrows plunged into the thatch close to Saban who, frantic, twisted aside to Galeth's hut. He pushed Aurenna and Lallic inside, then Leir, and afterwards ducked in himself. 'A weapon!' he said to Galeth, who had refused to witness the murderous blaze.

He took Galeth's old spear, the great heavy spear, and gave another to Lewydd.

There was screaming outside. Spearman ran past as Saban pushed into the moonlight. No one noticed him now. He and Lewydd were simply two more spearmen in the chaotic night where a handful of folk tried to extinguish the many small fires that had been started on the thatch of the huts where burning straw had blown from the flaming hall, but most of the panicked and inebriated throng were seeking an enemy and when Ratharryn's warriors did discover the archers and ran towards them, those attackers retreated back across the embankment into the dark beyond.

'Who are they?' Lewydd shouted at Saban.

'Cathallo?' Saban guessed. He could think of no other enemy, but surmised that Rallin, knowing he was to be attacked next day, had sent his bowmen through the night to sting and humiliate Lengar's men.

The archers had all vanished now. They had come, they had wounded and killed, and now they had gone, but the panic did not subside. Some of Ratharryn's warriors attacked Drewenna's men, mistaking them for the enemy, and Drewenna's spearmen fought back as Lengar strode among them, shouting at them to stop. Saban stalked him.

The fighting slowly died. Men and women beat out burning thatch with cloaks and pelts, or else dragged the burning straw clean off their hut roofs. Wounded men crawled or just lay bleeding. The twelve temple poles stood charred and smoking above the red hot fire that still consumed the feasting hall. Lengar parted two fighting warriors, then turned when one of the temple poles fell to scatter bright fire across the settlement and, in the sudden livid light, he saw Saban and saw the spear in his brother's hand. He smiled. 'You want to be chief, little brother? You want to kill me?'

'Let me kill him,' Lewydd said vengefully. 'Let me!'

'No.' Saban pushed Lewydd aside and walked forward.

Lengar tossed aside his own spear and drew his sword. He looked bored, as though the chore of killing Saban would be a small thing. Saban should have been cautioned by his brother's confidence, but he was too furious to be wary. He simply wanted to kill his brother, and Lengar knew it, just as he knew that Saban's fury would make him clumsy and easy to kill. 'Come on, little brother,' he taunted Saban.

Saban hefted the spear, took a breath and readied himself to make a wild charge fuelled by rage, but then a man screamed and pointed to the settlement's southern entrance and both Lengar and Saban turned that way: Both stared open-mouthed. And both, for an instant, forgot their quarrel.

For a dead man walked the night.

PART THREE

The Temple of the Dead

A dead man walked in the moonlight and the folk of Ratharryn gave a great moan because of the horrors that were being brought on their tribe.