Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

The walking corpse was stark naked and skeletally thin. His eyes were black holes in a pale mask, his skin was ghostly white, his ribs were edged with black and his lank hair was grey. Scraps of his skin and hair dropped and floated away in the air as if he were decomposing even as he walked. The moon was higher now, higher and smaller and paler and brighter, and a spearman near Lengar suddenly screamed in terror, 'He has no shadow! He has no shadow!' Warriors who had been drunkenly fighting now fled or else dropped to the ground and hid their faces. Lengar alone dared advance towards the dead thing that cast no shadow, and even Lengar shook.

Then Saban, who had been rooted to the ground with fear, saw that the wraith did have a mooncast shadow. He saw, too, that every time the corpse put his weight onto his left foot he gave a small lurch. And the dropping grey-white scraps were not flesh flaking, but ash drifting in the small wind. The man had soaked himself in the river, drenched himself in ashes and blackened his eyes and ribs with soot, and as the ashes dried they sifted and fell away from his hair and skin.

'Camaban!' Lengar snarled. He too had recognised the limp and he spoke the name angrily, ashamed of having been afraid of the ghostly figure.

'Brother!' Camaban said. He opened his arms to Lengar who answered the gesture by raising his sword. 'Brother!' Camaban said again, chidingly. 'Would you kill me? How are we to defeat Cathallo if you kill me? How will we defeat Cathallo without sorcery?' He capered some clumsy dance steps as he shrieked at the moon: 'Sorcery! Trickery! Spells in the dark and charms in the moonlight!' He howled and shuddered as though the gods were commanding his body, then, when the fit passed, he frowned quizzically at Lengar. 'You do not need my help to thwart Derrewyn's curses?'

Lengar kept his sword blade extended. 'Your help?' he asked.

'I have come,' Camaban said loudly enough so that the warriors who had fled to the huts could hear him, 'to defeat Cathallo. I have come to grind Cathallo into powder. I have come to unleash the gods against Cathallo, but first, brother, you and I must make peace. We must embrace.' And again he stepped towards Lengar who backed away and glanced towards Saban. 'There will be time for his death,' Camaban said, 'but first make peace with me. I regret our quarrel. It is not right that we should be enemies.'

Lengar checked Camaban with his sword. 'You have come to defeat Cathallo?'

'Ratharryn will never be great so long as Cathallo thrives,' Camaban cried, 'and how I do wish for Ratharryn to be great again.' He gently pushed Lengar's sword aside. 'There is no need for us to quarrel, brother. So long as you and I fight, so long will Cathallo be unconquered. So embrace me, brother, in the cause of victory. And then I shall fall at your feet to show your folk that I was wrong and you were right.'

The thought of defeating Cathallo was more than enough to persuade Lengar to end his quarrel with Camaban and so he opened his arms to allow Camaban to step into his embrace.

Saban, who was standing close to his two brothers, remembered the day Hengall had made peace with Cathallo by embracing Kital, but then he realized that Camaban had not come to make peace. As he placed his right arm about Lengar's neck there was a dull glint of black in his hand and Saban saw there was a knife there, a flint knife with a black blade short enough to have been concealed in Camaban's palm, and the knife came from behind Lengar's head and sliced into his neck so that the blood spurted sudden and warm and dark. Lengar tried to pull away, but Camaban held him with surprising strength. He smiled through his black and white mask and forced the flint blade deeper, sawing it back and forth so that the stone's feathered edge cut through taut muscle and pulsing arteries. Lengar's blood poured down to wash the ashes from Camaban's thin body. Lengar was choking now and blood was welling and spilling from his gullet, and still Camaban would not let him go. The knife sawed again, and then at last Camaban released his grip so that Lengar fell to his knees. Camaban kicked him in the mouth, forcing Lengar's head back, and then he slashed the short knife one more time to cut his brother's throat wide open.

Lengar collapsed. For a few heartbeats he twitched and the blood pulsed from his slit throat, but the pulses grew weaker and finally stopped. Saban stared. He hardly dared believe that Lengar was dead and Aurenna was safe. Lahanna's moon shone, glossing the puddle of black blood beside Lengar's oiled hair.

Camaban stooped and picked up Lengar's bronze sword. Lengar's warriors had watched their chief's death in disbelief, but now some growled angrily and advanced on Camaban who raised the sword to check them. 'I am a sorcerer!' he screamed. 'I can put worms in your bellies, turn your bowels to slime and make your children die in agony.' The warriors stopped. They would carry their spears against human enemies, but sorcery shrank their courage to nothing.

Camaban turned back to Lengar's corpse and hacked at it again and again with the sword, finally slashing off its head with a series of clumsy strokes. Only then did he turn and look at Saban.

'He would not rebuild the temple,' Camaban explained in a calm voice. 'I told him to, but he would not. It's all wrong, you see. The stones from Sarmennyn aren't tall enough. It's my fault, entirely my fault. I chose that temple, but it's wrong. Haragg has always told me we learn as we grow and I have learned, but Lengar simply wouldn't listen. So I decided to come back and start again.' He threw down the sword. 'Who is to be chief here, Saban, you or I?'

'Chief?' Saban asked, surprised by the question.

'I think I should be chief,' Camaban said. 'I am, after all, older than you and a great deal cleverer. Don't you agree?'

'You want to be chief?' Saban asked, still dazed by the night's events.

'Yes,' Camaban said, 'I do. I want other things as well. No more winter, no more sickness, no more children crying in the night. That is what I want.' He had come close to Saban as he spoke. 'I want union with the gods,' he went on softly, 'and endless summer.' He embraced Saban and Saban could smell Lengar's blood on his brother's skin. He felt Camaban's arms wind round his neck, then stiffened as the black knife touched his neck. 'Is Aurenna here?' Camaban asked quietly.

'Yes.'

'Good,' Camaban said, then he held the knife against Saban's skin as he whispered. 'What I want, brother, is to build a temple like no other in the land. A temple to bring the gods together. To bring the dead back to Slaol. A temple to make the world anew. That is what I want.' Camaban teased Saban by suddenly pressing the flint's sharp edge against his skin, then just as suddenly took it away and stepped back. 'It will be a temple that will stand for ever,' he said, 'and you, my brother' — he pointed the knife at Saban — 'will build it.' Camaban turned to stare at the remaining timber posts and vivid flames of Lengar's burning hall. He sniffed the stench of roasted flesh. 'Who was in the hall?'

'Your friends from Sarmennyn.'

'Kereval? Scathel?'

'Both of them, and near a hundred others. Only Lewydd still lives.'

'Lengar was always thorough in his slaughter,' Camaban said with evident admiration, then turned to look at the spearmen. 'I am Camaban!' he shouted. 'Son of Hengall, son of Lock, who was whelped of an Outfolk bitch taken in a raid! Slaol has sent me here. He sent me to be your chief! Me! The cripple! The crooked child! And if any man disputes that, let him fight me now, and I shall stroke that man's eyeballs with nettles, turn his belly into a cauldron of burning piss and bury his skull in the shit pits! Does any man challenge me?' No one moved, no one even spoke, they just stared at the naked, ash-covered figure who ranted at them. 'Slaol speaks to me!' Camaban declared. 'He has always spoken to me! And Slaol now wants this tribe to do his bidding, and his will is mine! Mine!'

A warrior pointed beyond Camaban towards the settlement's northern entrance and Saban turned to see a crowd of men coming through the embankment. They carried bows, and Saban understood that these were the men who had attacked Ratharryn earlier to panic the warriors gloating over the fiery massacre of Kereval and his men. The attackers had not come from Cathallo after all, but were the forest outlaws whom rumour said were led by a dead man — by Camaban. The newcomers were wild-bearded and wild-haired, fugitives from Lengar's rule who had taken refuge in the trees where, during the summer, Camaban had spoken with them, inspired them and recruited them. Now they were coming home, led by Haragg whose bald pate shone in the moonlight. The big man carried a spear and had smeared his face with black strips of soot.

'Those men are mine too!' Camaban shouted, pointing at the outlaws. 'They are my friends and they are now reinstated to the tribe.' He raised his arms and glared defiantly at Ratharryn's appalled warriors. 'Does any man challenge me?' he demanded again.

None did, for they feared him and his sorcery. They went silent to their huts as the funeral pyre of Sarmennyn burned itself out during the night.

'Would you have turned their bellies into burning piss?' Saban asked his brother that night.

'I learned one true thing from Sannas,' Camaban replied wearily, 'which is that sorcery is in our fears, that our fears are in our minds and only the gods are real. But I am now chief in my father's place and you, Saban, will build me a temple.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The men of Drewenna went home in the morning. Their chief declared that Camaban was mad and that he wanted no part of Camaban's madness, so his warriors took up their spears and trailed away across the grasslands.

The spearmen of Ratharryn complained that their best chance of defeating Cathallo was gone with Drewenna's defection and Rallin, they said, would soon attack Ratharryn. Camaban might be a sorcerer, they grumbled, but he was no war leader. Cathallo had sorcerers of its own whose magic would surely counter Camaban's spells, so Ratharryn's men foresaw nothing but shame and defeat.

'Of course they do,' Camaban said when Saban warned him of the tribe's sour mood. It was the morning after Camaban's return and the new chief had summoned the tribe's priests and prominent men to advise him. They sat cross-legged in Mai and Arryn's temple, close to the smoking remains of the feast hall from which eleven charred posts protruded. 'Spearmen are superstitious,' Camaban explained. 'They also carry their brains between their legs, which is why they must be kept busy. How many sons does Lengar have?'

'Seven,' Neel the high priest answered.

'Then let the spearmen start by killing them,' Camaban decreed.

Lewydd protested. 'They are children,' he said, 'and we didn't come here to soak the land in blood!'

Camaban frowned. 'We came here to do Slaol's will, and it is not Slaol's will that Lengar's children should live. If you find a nest of vipers do you kill the adults and let the snakelings live?' He shrugged. 'I like it no more than you, my friend, but Slaol spoke to me in a dream.'

Lewydd looked to Haragg, expecting the big man's support, but Haragg said that the boys' deaths were probably necessary if the new chief were to be safe. 'It has nothing to do with the gods,' he said.

'It has everything to do with the gods,' Neel snapped. Neel had been an avid supporter of Lengar, but overnight he had transferred his loyalty to Camaban. 'Slaol spoke to me also in a dream last night,' he claimed, 'and Camaban's decision is the wise one.'

'I am relieved,' Camaban said drily, then looked at Gundur, whom men said was the best of Ratharryn's warriors. 'See to the boys' deaths,' Camaban ordered and moments later the mothers screamed as Lengar's sons were dragged away. They were taken to the ditch inside the embankment and there killed and their bodies given to pigs. 'It was Slaol's will,' Neel said enthusiastically to Camaban.