Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

The dreadful sound came closer. Saban had put an arrow on his bow's string, though he doubted any flint head could damage some sorcery from Cathallo, and then a monster appeared with a massive head crowned by spreading horns that twisted forward. Saban pulled the bowstring back, but did not release the arrow. It was no sorcery, nor a monster, but a bull aurochs twice the size of the largest ox Saban had ever seen: a creature of huge muscle, black hide, sharp horns and beady eyes. It stopped when it saw the men, swished its dung-encrusted tail, then pawed at the ground with a huge hoof before bellowing its challenge again. It raised its head and spittle streamed from a cavernous mouth. Its small eyes looked red in the misty light. For a heartbeat Saban thought the animal was going to charge the war band, then it swung away and pounded northwards. 'An omen!' Camaban said. 'Follow it!'

Saban had never seen Camaban so excited. His brother's usual sardonic confidence had been replaced by a childish verve, born of a nervousness that made him boisterous and loud. In these same circumstances, Saban suspected, Lengar would have been silent, but the warriors still followed Camaban willingly enough. He might be dressed as a warrior, but the spearmen believed he was a sorcerer who could defeat Cathallo with spells rather than spears and the absence of any enemy in the woods had convinced them that his spells were working.

The sun rose just after they reached the edge of the trees. The mist was white and damp, muffling the world. The men, who had been so confident in the night, were now assailed by nervousness. They had never pierced so deep into Cathallo's territory and that achievement should have encouraged them, but the mist was frightening them for, once they passed beyond the trees, it seemed as though they walked through a white nothingness. At times the sun would show as a pale disc in the vapour, but then it would vanish again as the wet fog drifted thick again. Some men loosed arrows at shadows just beyond the eye's reach, but no arrows came back and no wounded enemy cried aloud.

'We should go back,' Gundur said.

'Back?' Camaban asked. The blood on his face had dried to a cracking crust.

Gundur gestured into the fog, suggesting that it was hopeless to continue, but just then a man at the left of the ragged war band came to an ancient grave mound, one that had been built as a long ridge instead of a round heap, and Camaban headed for it and gathered his spearmen in the tomb's forecourt, which was cradled by a crescent of vast stones. 'I know where we are,' Camaban told them. 'Cathallo lies that way' — he pointed into the mist — 'and it is not far.'

'Too far in this fog,' Gundur said, and the spearmen growled their agreement.

'Then we shall let the fog thin a little,' Camaban said, 'and harm the enemy while we wait.'

He ordered a dozen men to heave aside two of the smaller stones from the crescent of great boulders and, when the slabs were gone, a dark tunnel lined with yet more stones was revealed. Camaban crawled into the tunnel, muttered a charm to protect his soul from the dead, and then began to hurl out bones and skulls. These were Cathallo's ancestors, the spirits who would guard their descendants in any battle, and Camaban ordered the bones to be made into a pile at the foot of the tomb's stone facade and then, one by one, the warriors climbed to the top of the ridge and pissed onto their enemies. The gesture restored their spirits so that they laughed and began to boast as they had the previous night.

Saban was the last man to climb the mound. His bladder was empty and he feared the scorn of the war band, but then he looked north and saw another person climb out of the fog. The figure was a long way off and for a moment he felt terror, thinking it was a spirit who walked on the fog's surface, then he understood it was someone who had just climbed the chalk-white Sacred Mound and was staring southwards. The figure stared at Saban, who stared back. Was it Derrewyn? He thought it was her and he felt a sudden pang that she should be his enemy now. To his right, much farther off, the hills where the great stones lay emerged from the mist, but here there was just Derrewyn and Saban staring at each other across the silent white valley.

'What is it?' Camaban called up to him.

'Come here,' Saban said, and Camaban went round to the ridge's flank and scrambled up its steep turf slope.

The far figure dropped her cloak and began raising and lowering her arms. 'Curses,' Camaban said, and he spat towards her.

'Is it Derrewyn?' Saban asked.

'Who else?' Camaban asked. Derrewyn was standing on Lahanna's hill, summoning the goddess to hurt Cathallo's enemies.

Saban touched his groin. 'So they know we're coming?'

'They brought the fog,' Camaban said, 'hoping we would get lost in it. But we are not lost. I know the way from here.' He raised a fist to the distant figure, then dragged Saban down from the mound. 'We follow a path north,' he said, 'and the path goes through a wood, then crosses the stream before joining the sacred way.' And the sacred way would lead them into Cathallo's shrine.

The drenching of the bones had restored the war band's spirits so they were now eager to follow Camaban north. He went fast, following a path that had been beaten into the grassland by countless feet. The path led gently downhill through a thick stand of oaks and, as the spearmen threaded the trees, a wind rustled the leaves and the same wind swirled the mist and thinned it so that Ratharryn's leading warriors could see the sacred path across the small valley and there, waiting in a strong line by the grey boulders, was Cathallo's army.

Rallin, Cathallo's chief, was waiting for them. He was ready. All Cathallo's warriors were there, and not just Cathallo's men, but also their allies, the spearmen from the tribes that hated Ratharryn because of Lengar's raids. The enemy host filled the avenue and they gave a great shout as they saw Camaban's men come from the oaks and then the mists thickened again and the two armies were hidden from each other.

'They outnumber us,' Gundur said nervously.

'They are as nervous as we are,' Camaban said, 'but we have Slaol.'

'They let us come this far because they would crush us here,' Gundur explained, 'then follow our survivors back across the hills and slaughter us one by one.'

'What they want,' Camaban agreed, 'is a battle to end the war.'

'They do,' Gundur said, 'and they will win it. We should retreat!' He spoke fiercely and Vakkal nodded his agreement.

'Slaol does not want us to retreat,' Camaban said. His eyes were bright with excitement. 'All our enemies are gathered,' he said, 'and Slaol wants us destroy them.'

'They are too many,' Gundur insisted.

'There are never too many enemies to kill,' Camaban said. The spirit of Slaol was inside him and he was certain of victory, and so he shook his head at Gundur's advice and drew his sword. 'We shall fight,' he shouted, then his whole body shuddered as the god filled him with power. 'We shall fight for Slaol,' he screamed, 'and we shall win!'

The mist shredded slowly, swirled by a fitful wind and reluctantly yielding to Slaol's rising power. Two swans flew above the stream, their wing beats suddenly the loudest noise in a valley edged by two armies. The aurochs had long disappeared, gone, Saban assumed, into the deeper forests to the west, yet he clung to the belief that the beast's appearance had been a good omen. Now every spearman in the opposing armies watched the swans, hoping they would turn towards their side, but the birds flew steadily on between the two forces to vanish in the eastern mists. 'They have gone to the rising sun!' Camaban shouted. 'It means Slaol is with us.'

He could have been speaking to himself, for no one on Ratharryn's side reacted to his shout. They were staring across the shallow valley to where the forces of Cathallo made a formidable line armed with spears, axes, bows, maces, clubs, adzes and swords. That battle-line began near the small temple on the hill, followed the path of paired stones westwards and then went on towards the Sacred Mound. On the low hills behind the battle-line were groups of women and children who had come to watch their menfolk crush Ratharryn.

'Four hundred men?' Mereth had been counting and now spoke softly to Saban.

'Not all men,' Saban said, 'some are scarce boys.'

'A boy can kill you with an arrow,' Mereth muttered. He was armed with one of his father's precious bronze axes and looked formidable, for he had inherited Galeth's height and broad chest, but Mereth was nervous, as was Saban. The men of both armies were nervous, all except the hardened warriors who dreamed of these moments. Those were the men about whom songs were sung, of whom tales were told in the long winter nights; they were the heroes of slaughter, fighters like Vakkal the Outlander who now strutted ahead of Camaban's force to shout insults across the valley. He called the enemy worm dung, claimed their mothers were goitred goats, reviled them as children who wet their pelts at night and invited any two of them to come and fight him on the stream bank. Similar taunts and invitations were being shouted by Cathallo's leading warriors. Hung with feathers and fox tails, their skins thick with kill marks, they strutted in bronze. Saban had once dreamed of being such a warrior, but he had become a maker instead of a destroyer and a man who felt caution, if not outright fear, at the sight of an enemy.

'Spread out,' Gundur shouted at Ratharryn's men. Gundur had not wanted to fight this morning, fearing that Cathallo and its allies were too numerous, but Camaban had taken him aside and Gundur's confidence had been miraculously restored by whatever Camaban had told him, and he now tugged men into line. 'Spread out!' he shouted. 'Make a line! Don't bunch like children! Spread out!'

The war band reluctantly scattered along the edge of the oaks to make a line which, like the enemy's line, was not continuous. Men stayed close to their kin or friends and there were wide gaps between the groups. The priests of both sides were out in front now, shaking bones and shrieking curses at the enemy. Haragg carried Ratharryn's skull pole so that the ancestors could see what was being done in the thinning mist and Morthor, Cathallo's blind high priest, carried a similar pole. He shook it so threateningly that Cathallo's skull toppled clean off its staff, raising a cheer from Ratharryn's men who reckoned the fall of the skull was an ominous sign for the enemy. Derrewyn was still on the Sacred Mound where, attended by a half-dozen spearmen, she was spitting more curses at Camaban. 'I want the sorceress killed!' Camaban shouted at his army. 'A gift of gold to the man who brings me the bitch's head! I shall fill her skull with gold and give it all to the man who kills her!'

'He thinks we'll win?' Mereth asked sourly.

'Slaol is with us,' Saban said, and the sun had indeed broken through the remnants of mist to green the valley and spark shimmering light from the stream between the armies.

'Slaol had better be with us,' Mereth muttered. The enemy outnumbered Ratharryn's men by two to one.

'I want their chief dead!' Camaban was calling to his men. 'Him and his children! Find his children and kill them! If his wives are pregnant, kill them too! And kill the sorceress's whelp, kill it! Kill her, kill her child, kill them all!'

Rallin was walking along his own line, doubtless encouraging his own spearmen to a similar slaughter. The priests of both sides had advanced to the stream's banks, almost within spitting distance of each other, and there they hissed insults and spat curses at each other, leapt in the air, shook as though they were in the grip of the gods and shrieked as they summoned the invisible spirits to come and eviscerate the enemy. Haragg alone had not gone to the stream. Instead he was standing a few paces in front of the line and holding the skull pole towards the sun.