Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'I dreamed it,' Aurenna said firmly. 'Lahanna comes to me in my dreams. She is reluctant, of course, but I am patient with her. I see her as a woman dressed in a long robe that shines! She is so beautiful, Saban! So beautiful and hurt. I see her in the sky and I call to her and sometimes she hears me. And when we bring Slaol to the temple she will come to us. I am sure of it.' She smiled, expecting Saban to share her happiness. 'But until that day,' she went on, 'we must be calm, obedient and good.' She turned and asked the question of her children: 'What are we to be?'

'Calm, obedient and good,' they chorused.

She looked back at Saban. 'I cannot stop you coming to the hut,' she said softly, 'but you will drive Lahanna away if you do and the temple will be meaningless, meaningless.'

Saban went to Haragg when he returned to Ratharryn and told the high priest what Aurenna had said. Haragg listened, thought for a while, then shrugged. 'It is the price you pay,' he said, 'and we shall all pay a price for the temple. Your brother is tortured with visions, I am made a priest again and you will lose Aurenna for a while. Nothing good comes easily.'

'So I should not insist on sleeping with her?'

'Get yourself a slave girl,' Haragg said in his grim voice. 'Forget Aurenna. She must share Lahanna's loneliness for now, but you have a temple to build. So get yourself a slave girl and forget your wife. And build, Saban, just build.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Before Saban could build he had to move the stones from Cathallo. He knew he could not shift them along the direct path to Ratharryn for that crossed the marshes by Maden and climbed the steep hill just south of that settlement, and the big boulders would never pass those obstacles, so he spent that summer searching for a better route. He insisted that Leir should accompany him for it was time, he told Aurenna, that the boy learned how to survive far from any settlement. He and Leir roamed the western country in search of a path that avoided the wet lands and the steepest hills. Their exploration took the best part of the late summer, but eventually Saban discovered a path that would take the stones out of Cathallo towards the setting sun, then round in a great arc so that they would approach the Sky Temple from the west.

Saban enjoyed Leir's company. They kept a sharp eye for outlaws, but saw none, for this western countryside was much hunted by Ratharryn's warriors. Saban taught Leir to use a bow and, on their last day, after Saban had brought down a pricket with a single arrow, he let Leir kill the beast with a spear. The boy was eager enough, but seemed surprised at how much strength was needed to puncture the deer's skin. He managed to avoid the flailing hooves and thrust the bronze blade home and, because it was his son's first kill, Saban smeared the boy's face with the pricket's blood.

'Will the deer come back to life?' Leir asked his father.

'I don't think so,' Saban said with a smile. He tore the hide away from the animal's belly then drew a knife to slit the muscles covering the entrails. 'We'll have eaten most of him!'

'Mother says we'll all come back to life,' Leir said earnestly.

Saban swayed back on his heels. His hands and wrists were covered with blood. 'She says what?'

'She says the graves will empty when the temple is built,' Leir said earnestly. 'Everyone we've ever loved will come back to life. That's what she says.'

Saban wondered if his son had misunderstood Aurenna's words. 'How will we feed them all?' he asked lightly. 'It's hard enough to feed the living, let alone the dead.'

'And no one will ever be ill,' Leir went on, 'and no one will be unhappy again.'

'That's certainly why we're making the temple,' Saban said, going back to the warm carcass and slashing the knife through the flesh to release the deer's coiled guts. He decided Leir must be confused for neither Camaban nor Haragg had ever claimed that the temple would conquer death, but that night, after he and Leir had carried the best of the deer's meat to Ratharryn, Saban asked Camaban about Aurenna's words.

'No more death, eh?' Camaban said. He and Saban were in their father's old hut where Camaban now had a half-dozen female slaves to look after him. The brothers had shared a meal of pork and Camaban now stripped one of the rib bones with his teeth. 'Is that what Aurenna says?'

'So Leir tells me.'

'And he's a clever boy,' Camaban said, glancing at his bloody-faced nephew who slept to one side of the hut. 'I think it's possible,' he said guardedly.

'The dead will come to life?' Saban asked in astonishment.

'Who can tell what will happen when the gods reunite?' Camaban asked, poking in the bowl for another rib. 'Winter will go, of that I'm sure, and death too? Why not?' He frowned, thinking about it. 'Why do we worship?'

'Good harvests, healthy children,' Saban said.

'We worship,' Camaban corrected him, 'because life is not the end. Death is not the end. After death we live, but where? With Lahanna in the night. But Lahanna does not give life, Slaol does, and our temple will take the dead from Lahanna to Slaol. So perhaps Aurenna is right. Have some blackberries, they're the first of the year and very good.' One of his slave girls had brought the berries and now settled beside Camaban. She was a thin young girl from Cathallo with big anxious eyes and a mass of curly black hair. She leaned her head on Camaban's shoulder and he absent-mindedly slipped an arm under her tunic to caress a breast. 'Aurenna's been thinking about these things a long time,' Camaban went on, 'while I've been distracted by the temple. She must think that the gods will reward us for bringing them back together, and that does seem likely, doesn't it? And what greater reward could there be than an end to death?' He put a blackberry into the girl's mouth. 'When will you be ready to move some stones?'

'As soon as the frost hardens the ground.'

'You'll need slaves,' Camaban said, feeding the girl another blackberry. She playfully nipped at his fingers and he pinched her, making her squeal with laughter. 'I'm sending some war parties out this winter to capture more slaves.'

'It isn't slaves I need,' Saban said distractedly. He was jealous of his brother's girl. He had not taken Haragg's advice, though at times he was tempted. 'I need oxen.'

'We'll fetch you oxen,' Camaban promised, 'but you'll need slaves too. You're going to shape the stones, remember? Oxen can't do that!'

'Shape them?' Saban asked so loudly that he woke Leir.

'Of course!' Camaban said. He pointed with his free hand at the wooden blocks of his model temple, which had been Leir's playthings earlier in the evening. 'The stones must be smooth like those blocks. Any tribe can raise rough stones like Cathallo's, but ours will be shaped. They will be beautiful. They will be perfect.'

Saban grimaced at his brother's careless demand. 'Do you know how hard that stone is?' he asked.

'I know the stones must be shaped, and that you are to do it,' Camaban said obstinately, 'and I know that the more time you spend talking about it, the longer it will take.'

Saban and Leir walked back to Cathallo next day. The deer's blood, dry and flaky, was still on the boy's face when he ran to his mother and Aurenna was horrified. She spat on her fingers to wash the blood away, then scolded Saban. 'He doesn't need to know how to kill!' she protested.

'It's the first skill every man needs,' Saban said. 'If you can't kill, you can't eat.'

'Priests don't hunt for their food,' Aurenna said angrily, 'and Leir is to be a priest.'

'He may not want to be.'

'I have dreamed it!' Aurenna insisted defiantly, once again claiming an authority that Saban could not challenge. 'The gods have decided,' she said, then pulled Leir away.

It was after the harvest that Saban moved the first stone off the hillside. It was one of the small stones yet it still needed twenty-four oxen to draw its sledge down the hill. The oxen were in three rows, eight to a row, and behind each line of beasts, like a great bar behind their tails, was a tree trunk to which their harnesses were attached. Each trunk was tied to the sledge by two long lines of twisted ox hide to pull the sledges along. In the first few paces Saban discovered that the oxen at the back were prone to step over the hauling lines whenever the oxen in front faltered and so the stone rested while a dozen small boys were collected from the settlement and taught how to walk between the animals and hold the hauling lines high whenever they slackened. The boys were given sharpened sticks to goad the oxen while a dozen more boys and men ranged ahead of the stone to remove fallen branches or kick down tussocks that might impede the sledge runners. Ten more oxen plodded behind the stone. Some were there to replace any beast that fell ill in its harness, while the others carried fodder and spare hide ropes.

It took a whole day to drag the stone from the hill and through Cathallo's shrine where, as the oxen lumbered by, Aurenna had a choir of women sing a song in praise of Lahanna. Haragg had come from Ratharryn and he beamed as the first stone passed through the boulders. He draped the oxen's horns with chains of violet flowers while Cathallo's priests scattered meadowsweets on the stone. Those priests had been the first to reconcile themselves to Ratharryn's conquest, perhaps because Camaban had taken care to pay them well with bronze, amber and jet.

The oxen's harnesses were great collars of leather, but even on the first day the collars chafed the animals' necks raw and bloody, so Saban had the boys smear pig's fat on the leather. The next day they hauled the stone out of sight of Cathallo. Most of the men and boys went back to the settlement to eat and sleep, but a handful stayed with Saban to guard the stone. They made a fire and shared a meal of dried meat with some pears and blackberries that they had found growing in a nearby wood. Besides Saban there were three men and four boys around the fire; all were from Cathallo and at first they were awkward with Saban, but afterwards, when the meal was eaten and the fire was streaming sparks towards the stars, one of the men turned to Saban. 'You were Derrewyn's friend?' he asked.

'I was.'

'She still lives,' the man said defiantly. He had a scar on his face from where an arrow had struck his cheek during the battle that had destroyed Cathallo's power.

'I hope she still lives,' Saban answered.

'You hope so?' The man was puzzled.

'As you said, I was her friend. And if she does still live,' Saban said firmly, 'then you would do well to keep silent unless you want more of Ratharryn's spearmen searching the forests for her.'

Another of the men played a short tune on a flute made from the bone of a crane's leg. 'They can search all they like,' he said when he had finished, 'but they will never find her. Nor her child.'

The first man, whose name was Vennar, poked the fire to prompt a thick flurry of sparks, then gave Saban a sidelong glance. 'Are you not afraid to be here with us?'

'If I was afraid,' Saban said, 'I would not be here.'

'You need not be afraid,' Vennar said very quietly. 'Derrewyn says you are not to be killed.'

Saban smiled. All summer he had suspected that Derrewyn was close and that, unknown to Cathallo's conquerors, she kept in touch with her tribe. He was touched, too, that she had ordered his life spared. 'But if you try to stop the stones from reaching Ratharryn,' he said, 'then I shall fight you, and you will have to kill me.'

Vennar shook his head. 'If we do not move the stones,' he said, 'someone else will.'

'Besides,' the flute player added, 'our women would fear Lahanna's anger if you were to die.'