Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Some of Ratharryn's women hesitated before entering the temple for women were not allowed inside their tribe's own shrines except when they married, but Cathallo's women urged them onwards. In Cathallo, it seemed, both men and women could enter the circle and so all Hengall's folk danced across the ditch and into the shrine of stones.

There was one wide ring of boulders skimming the ditch's edge, and each of those boulders was the size of the stacks made from the summer's hay in Ratharryn. There were dozens of those massive stones, too many to count, and within their wide circle stood two more rings of stone, each the size of Slaol's temple at Ratharryn, and still more stones stood between those inner rings. One of those stones was a ringstone, a boulder with a great hole in it, and that pierced rock had been lifted up on another, while nearby was a death house made from three massive stone slabs. Saban stared in stupefied awe. He did not understand how any man could raise such stones and he knew he must have come to a place where the gods worked marvels. Only Camaban, wincing every time he stepped on his clubbed foot, seemed unimpressed.

The people of Cathallo were massed on the embankment's inner slope and they let out a great cry of welcome as the visitors danced into the sacred ring. The shout echoed all around the vast enclosure and then they began to sing.

Kital, chief of Cathallo, waited to greet Hengall's folk. Kital wished to impress, and he did, for he was dressed in an ankle-length deerskin cloak that had been whitened with chalk and urine, then thickly sewn with rings of bronze that reflected the sun so that it seemed to glint when he moved forward to greet Hengall. The chief of Cathallo was tall, with a long thin clean-shaven face, and fair hair that was circled with a fillet of bronze into which he had pushed a dozen long swan feathers. Kital was of an age with Hengall, but there was an animation in his face that stole the years and he walked with a lithe, eager step. He spread his arms wide in a gesture of welcome and in so doing lifted the edges of his cloak to reveal a long bronze sword hanging from a leather belt. 'Hengall of Ratharryn,' he announced, 'welcome to Cathallo!'

Hengall looked shabby beside Kital. He was taller and broader than Cathallo's chieftain, but his bearded face was blunt compared to Kital's sharp features and his clothes were dirty and ragged, for Hengall had never been a man to worry about cloaks or jerkins. He kept his spear sharp, combed the lice from his beard, and reckoned that was the extent of a man's duty towards his appearance. The two chiefs embraced and the watching tribes murmured their appreciation for any public embrace between great men betokened peace. The chiefs held each other close for a heartbeat, then Kital pulled away and, leading Hengall by the hand, took him to where Sannas waited beside one of the great stones that formed the death house.

The sorceress wore a swathing cloak made from badger skins, and a woollen shawl hooded her long white hair. Saban stared at her, and for a heart-stopping moment she looked directly back and he flinched because the eyes that peered from her hood's shadows were malevolent, clever and terrifying. She was old, Saban knew, older, it was said, than any man or woman had ever been before.

Kital and Hengall knelt to talk with Sannas. The drummers, who were beating great hollow trunks, kept up their rhythm and a group of girls, all naked to the waist and with dog-roses, meadowsweets and poppies woven into their hair, danced to the sound, shuffling their feet back and forth, stepping sideways, advancing and retreating, offering a welcome to the strangers who had come to their great shrine. Most of the visitors gaped at the girls, but Galeth gazed at the stones and felt an immense sadness. No wonder Cathallo was so strong! No other tribe could match a shrine like this, so no other tribe could hope to win the favour of the gods like these people. Ratharryn, Galeth thought unhappily, was nothing to this, its temples were risible and its ambitions petty.

Saban was watching the sorceress, and it was evident that Sannas was unhappy with the news Hengall brought, for she turned away from him with a dismissive gesture. Hengall looked at Kital, who shrugged, but then Sannas turned back and snarled something before walking to a hut that stood close to the nearest stone circle. Hengall stood and came back to Saban. 'You're to go to Sannas's hut,' he said. 'Remember what I told you.'

Saban, conscious that he was being watched by two tribes, crossed to the hut that stood between the two smaller stone circles and was the only building inside the temple. It was a round hut, a little bigger than most living huts, with a tall pointed roof but a wall so low that Saban had to drop onto all fours to crawl through the entrance. It was dark inside, for scarce any sunlight came through the door or through the smoke-hole in the roof's peak that was supported by a thick pole. That pole was a bark-stripped trunk which had been left studded with the stubs of its many branches from which hung nets that were filled with human skulls. A burst of giggling alarmed Saban and he looked around to see a dozen faces peering from the hut's low edges. 'Never mind them,' Sannas ordered in a hoarse, low voice, 'come here.'

The sorceress had seated herself on a pile of furs beside the pole and Saban dutifully knelt to her. A small fire smouldered close to the pole, sifting the dark hut with a pungent smoke that made Saban's eyes water as he bowed his head in respect.

'Look at me!' Sannas snapped.

He looked at her. He knew she was old, so old that no one knew how old she was, older than she even knew herself, so old that she had been old when the next oldest person in Cathallo had been born. There were those who said she could never die, that the gods had given Sannas life without death, and to the awed Saban that seemed true, for he had never seen a face so wizened, so wrinkled and so savage. She had taken off her hood and her unbound hair was ashen and lank, hanging over a face that was like a skull, only a skull with warts. The eyes in the skull were black as jet, she had only one tooth left, a yellow fang in the centre of her upper jaw. Her hands protruded from the edge of her badger fur cape like hooked claws. Amber showed at her scrawny throat; to Saban it looked like a gem pinned to a dried-out corpse.

As she stared at him, Saban, his eyes becoming accustomed to the hut's smoky gloom, glanced nervously about to see that a dozen girls were watching him from the hut's margins. There were bat wings pinned to the hut post, between round-bottomed pots that hung with the skulls in their string nets. There was a pair of antlers high on the central pole, while clusters of feathers and bunches of herbs hung from the roof, all swathed in cobwebs. The jumbled bones of small birds lay in a wicker basket beside the fire. This was not, Saban thought, a hut where people lived, but rather a storage place for Cathallo's ritual treasures, the sort of place where the tribe's Kill-Child would be kept.

'So tell me,' Sannas said in a voice that was as harsh as bone, 'tell me, Saban, son of Hengall, son of Lock, who was whelped of an Outfolk bitch taken in a raid, tell me why the gods frown on Ratharryn?'

Saban did not answer. He was too frightened.

'I hate dumb boys,' Sannas growled. 'Speak, fool, or I shall turn your tongue into a worm and you will suck on its slime all the days of your miserable life.'

Saban forced himself to answer. 'The gods…' he began, then realized he was whispering, so spoke up, determined to defend his tribe, 'the gods sent us gold, lady, so how could they frown on us?'

'They sent you the gold of Slaol,' Sannas said bitterly, 'and what has happened since? Lahanna refused a sacrifice, and your elder brother has slunk off to the Outfolk. If the gods sent Ratharryn a pot of gold, all you'd do is piss in it.' The girls giggled. Saban said nothing and Sannas glowered at him. 'Are you a man?' she demanded.

'No, lady.'

'Yet you wear a man's tunic. Is it winter?'

'No, lady.'

'Then take it off.' She demanded. 'Take it off!'

Saban hastily undid his belt and pulled the tunic over his head, prompting another chorus of giggles from the hut's edges. Sannas looked him up and down, then sneered. 'That's the best Ratharryn can send us? Look at him, girls! It looks like something that oozed from a snail's shell.'

Saban blushed, glad that it was so dark in the hut. Sannas watched him sourly, then reached into a pouch and took out a leaf-wrapped package. She peeled the leaves away to reveal a honeycomb from which she broke a portion that she pushed into her mouth. 'That fool Hirac,' she said to Saban, 'tried to sacrifice your brother Camaban?'

'Yes, lady.'

'But your brother lives. Why?'

Saban frowned. 'He was marked by Lahanna, lady.'

'So why did Hirac try to kill him?'

'I don't know, lady.'

'You don't know much, do you? Miserable little boy that you are. And now Lengar has fled, and you are to take his place.' She glowered at him, then spat a scrap of wax onto the fire. 'But Lengar never liked us, did he?' she went on. 'Lengar wanted to make war on us! Why did Lengar not like us?'

'He disliked everyone,' Saban said.

She rewarded that comment with a crooked smile. 'He feared we'd take away his chiefdom, didn't he? He feared we'd swallow little Ratharryn.' She pointed a finger into the shadows of the hut's edge. 'Lengar was to marry her. Derrewyn, daughter of Morthor who is the high priest of Cathallo.'

Saban looked where Sannas pointed and his breath checked in his throat, for he was staring at a slender girl with long black hair and an anxious, pretty face. She looked no older than Saban himself and had large eyes and seemed tremulously nervous, as though she was as uncomfortable in this smoke-reeking hut as Saban was himself. Sannas watched Saban and laughed. 'You like her, eh? But why should you marry her in your brother's place?'

'So we can have peace, lady,' Saban said.

'Peace!' the skull face spat at him. 'Peace! Why should we buy your miserable peace with my great-granddaughter's body?'

'You are not buying peace, lady,' Saban dared to say, 'for my tribe is not for sale.'

'Your tribe!' Sannas leaned back, cackling, then suddenly jerked forward and darted out a crooked hand that gripped Saban's groin. She squeezed, making him gasp. 'Your tribe, boy,' she spat at him, 'is worth nothing. Nothing!' She squeezed harder, watching his eyes for tears. 'Do you want to be chief after your father?'

'If the gods wish it, lady.'

'They've wished for stranger things,' Sannas said, at last letting him go. She rocked back and forth, spittle dribbling from her toothless mouth. She watched Saban, judging him, and decided he was probably a decent boy. He had courage, and she liked that, and he was undeniably good-looking, which meant he was favoured by the gods, but he was still a boy and it was an insult to her people to present a boy for marriage. Yet there would be advantages in a marriage between Cathallo and Ratharryn, so Sannas decided she would swallow the insult. 'So you'll marry Derrewyn to keep the peace?' she asked him.

'Yes, lady.'

'Then you are a fool,' Sannas said, 'for peace and war are not in your gift, boy, and they certainly don't lie between Derrewyn's legs. They lie with the gods, and what the gods want will happen, and if they choose to let Cathallo rule in Ratharryn then you could take every girl in this settlement to your stinking bed and it would make no difference.' She closed her eyes and rocked back and forth again, and a dribble of honey and saliva ran down her chin where white hairs grew from dark moles. It was time, she decided, to scare this boy of Ratharryn, to make him so scared of her that he would never dare think of crossing her wishes. 'I am Lahanna,' she said in a deep voice scarce above a whisper, 'and if you thwart my desire I shall swallow your petty tribe, I shall swill it in my belly's bile and piss it into a ditch filled with scum.' She laughed then, and the laughter turned to a fit of coughing that made her gasp for breath. She groaned as the coughing bout passed, then opened her black eyes. 'Go,' she said dismissively. 'Send your brother Camaban to me, but you go. Go, while I decide your future.'

Saban crawled back into the sunlight where he hurriedly pulled on his tunic. The dancers shuffled back and forth, the drummers beat on, and Saban shuddered. Behind him, from inside the hut, he heard laughter and he was ashamed. His tribe was so little, his people so weak, and Cathallo was so strong. The gods, it seemed to Saban, had turned against Ratharryn. Why else had Lengar fled? Why had Lahanna refused the sacrifice? Why was he forced to crawl to a hag in Cathallo? Saban believed her threats, he believed his tribe was in danger of being swallowed and he did not know how he could save it. His father had warned him against heroes, but Saban thought Ratharryn needed a hero. Hengall had been a hero in his youth, but he was cautious now, Galeth had no ambition and Saban was not yet a man — he did not even know if he would pass the ordeals. Yet he would be a hero if he could, for without a hero he foresaw nothing but grief for his people. They would just be swallowed.

That night the people of Cathallo lit the midsummer fires that sparked and billowed smoke across the landscape. The fires burned to drive malignant spirits from the fields, and more fires burned inside Cathallo's great temple where twelve men dressed in cattle hides romped among the stones. The skins formed grotesque costumes, for the beasts' heads and hooves were still attached. The monstrous horned shapes capered between the flames while the men beneath the skins bellowed their challenges to the evil spirits that could bring disease to the tribe and to its herds. The beast-men guarded Cathallo's prosperity, and there was much competition between the young warriors to be given the honour of dancing in the bulls' hides for, when the night's dark was full and the furious flames were rushing towards the stars, a dozen girls were pushed naked into the fire circle where they were pursued by the roaring men. The crowd, which had been dancing about the ring of flames, stopped to watch as the girls dodged and twisted in feigned panic away from their horned pursuers who were half blinded and made clumsy by their cumbersome skins. Yet one by one the girls were caught, thrust to the ground and there covered by the horned monsters as the onlookers cheered.

Both tribes leapt the fires when the bull dance was over. The warriors competed to see who could jump through the highest, widest fires, and more than one fell into the flames and had to be dragged screaming from the blaze. The old folk and the children skipped across the smallest fires, and then the tribe's new-born livestock were goaded through the glowing beds of embers. Some folk showed their bravery by walking barefoot across the embers, but only after the priests had pronounced a charm to stop their feet from burning. Sannas, watching from her hut doorway, jeered at the ritual. 'It has nothing to do with any charm,' she said sourly. 'So long as their feet are dry it doesn't hurt, but have damp feet and you'd see them dancing like lambkins.' She hunched by her thatch and Camaban squatted beside her. 'You can jump the flames, child,' Sannas said.