Stonehenge

by Bernard Cornwell

  Lengar scrambled off the grave. “Why did you come here?” he asked.

  “To make sure you did the right thing, of course,” Camaban said, then, with a farewell spit to his father, he clambered down the mound and walked toward the Sky Temple. He still had a limp, but it was much less noticeable than before. Although Sannas had straightened his foot by forcing the bones straight, they did not flex properly, so he still had a halting step, though it was nothing like the grotesque and twisting dip with which he used to walk.

  Lengar, following Camaban, spoke. “I don’t need you to tell me what is the right thing to do.”

  “Got your courage back, have you?” Camaban sneered. “You were shaking when I found you! Thought I was Hengall’s spirit, did you?” He laughed.

  “Take care, brother,” Lengar said in warning.

  Camaban turned and spat at him. “Kill me, would you? But I am Slaol’s servant, Lengar, Slaol’s friend. Kill me, you fool, and the sky will burn you and the earth will refuse your bones and even the beasts will shrink from the stench of your death. Even the worms and maggots will refuse your putrid flesh, brother, and you will dry to a yellow husk and the winds will carry you to the poisoned marshes at the world’s end.” He pointed his staff at Lengar as he spoke, and Lengar backed away from the threats. Lengar might be older, he might have an enviable reputation as a warrior, but Camaban commanded powers that Lengar did not understand. “Did you kill Saban?” Camaban asked.

  “I enslaved him to Haragg.”

  “Good,” Camaban said carelessly.

  “And I have taken his bride.”

  “And why shouldn’t you?” Camaban asked. “Someone has to. Is she pretty?” He did not wait for an answer, but walked on to the Sky Temple where he crossed the low outer bank, limped through the ditch and climbed up to the high inner bank. He stopped there, staring at the four moon stones. “They have been busy,” he said sarcastically. “Gilan’s work?”

  Lengar shrugged, for he knew nothing about the new temple. “Gilan is dead.”

  “Good,” Camaban said, “for this has to be his doing. Either him or some priestly scum from Cathallo. They didn’t have the courage to make a temple to Slaol without bowing to Lahanna as well.”

  “Lahanna?”

  “Those are moon stones,” Camaban said, pointing his staff to the paired pillars and slabs inside the ring.

  “You want them removed?” Lengar asked.

  “What Slaol wants,” Camaban said, “I will arrange, and you will do nothing unless I tell you.” He walked on into the temple’s center where the high moon cast a small shadow from the hummock that marked the body of the deaf child. Camaban thrust his staff deep into the soft earth and tried to lever the corpse upward, but though he disturbed the soil he could not shift the body.

  Lengar recoiled from the stench which wafted from the loosening soil. “What are you doing?” he asked in protest.

  “Ridding the place of her,” Camaban said.

  “You can’t do that!” Lengar said, but Camaban ignored him and dropped to his knees so he could scratch and claw the soil and chalk away from the body and, once it was almost free, he stood and used his staff again, this time heaving the decaying corpse into the moonlight.

  “Now she’ll have to be buried again,” Lengar said.

  Camaban turned on him savagely. “This is my temple, Lengar, not yours. It is mine!” He hissed the last word, scaring Lengar. “I kept it clear when I was a child! I loved this place, I worshipped Slaol in this circle when the rest of you were sucking on Lahanna’s tits. This place is mine!” He rammed the butt of his staff into the dead child, smashing through her ribcage. “That thing was a messenger sent before her time, for this temple is not finished.” He spat on the corpse, then tugged his staff free. “The birds and beasts can have her,” he said dismissively, then went to the entrance of the sun. He ignored the two pillars flanking the entrance, making instead for the paired sunstones. He frowned at the two stones. “This one we shall keep,” he said, laying a hand on the larger of the pair, “but that one you can throw down.” He pointed to the smaller stone. “One stone is enough for the sun.” He waved a laconic farewell to his brother and, with as little ceremony as he had arrived, began to walk northward.

  “Where are you going?” Lengar called after him.

  “I still have things to learn,” Camaban said, “and when I know them I shall return.”

  “To do what?”

  “To build the temple, of course,” Camaban said, turning. “You want Ratharryn to be great, don’t you? But do you think you can achieve anything without the gods? I am going to give you a temple, Lengar, which will raise this miserable tribe to the sky.” He walked on.

  “Camaban!” Lengar shouted.

  “What is it?” Camaban asked irritably, turning again.

  “You are on my side, aren’t you?” Lengar asked anxiously.

  Camaban smiled. “I love you, Lengar,” he said, “like a brother.” And he walked on into the dark.

  Saban learned that it had been Haragg who had guided Lengar and his men from Sarmennyn to Ratharryn, for only an experienced trader would know the roads, would know where the dangers lay and how to avoid them, and Haragg was one of the land’s most experienced traders. For ten years he had been crossing the world with his train of three shaggy horses that were loaded with bronze, axes and anything else that he could exchange for the flint, jet, amber and herbs that Sarmennyn lacked. Sometimes, Haragg told Saban, he carried the teeth and bones of sea monsters cast onto Sarmennyn’s shores that he could exchange for rich metals and precious stones.

  Most of this he grunted to Saban as they walked north. Part of the time he spoke in Saban’s own tongue, but most of the time he insisted on speaking the Outfolk tongue and he would lash Saban with a stick if he did not understand or if he failed to reply in the same language. “You will learn my language,” he insisted, and Saban did because he feared the stick.

  Saban’s tasks were simple. At night he made the fire which cooked the food and deterred the forest beasts from attacking, while by day he led the three horses, fetched water, cut forage and blew Haragg’s ox horn as they approached a settlement to warn that strangers were coming. The deaf-mute, who was called Cagan, could do these things, but Saban realized the huge boy, who was a few years older than himself, had also been born simple. Cagan was enormously willing and watched his father constantly for a sign that would allow him to be useful, but then he would stumble over the task. If he lit a fire he burned himself, if he tried to lead the horses he used too much strength, yet Haragg, Saban noted, treated Cagan with an extraordinary gentleness as though the deaf-mute, who was half as tall again as Saban, was a much-loved hound, and Cagan responded to his father’s kindness with a touching pleasure. If his father smiled he would shudder with joy, or else bob up and down and smile back and make small whimpering noises deep in his throat. Each morning Haragg dressed his son’s hair, combing it, plaiting it and tying it with a thong, and then he would comb Cagan’s beard and Cagan would wriggle with happiness, and Haragg, Saban noted, would sometimes have a tear in his eye.

  The trader shed no tears for Saban. The bronze manacles rubbed weals into Saban’s skin, and the weals erupted with blood and pus. Haragg treated them with herbs then tucked leaves under the manacles to stop them chafing, though the leaves always fell away. After a few days he grudgingly allowed Saban a mangy wolfskin to tie around his waist, but became annoyed when Saban scratched at the lice that crawled from the pelt. “Stop itching,” he would growl, lashing out with his stick. “I can’t bear itching! You’re not a dog.”

  They traveled eastward and then northward, usually in the protective company of other traders but sometimes alone for, though the woods were full of outcasts and hunters, Haragg reckoned there was small risk of ambush. “If one trader is attacked,” he told Saban, “then all traders will be attacked, so the chiefs protect us. But there are still dangerous places and there I always travel in co
mpany.” Many traders, Haragg explained, went by sea, paddling their wooden boats around the coast and exchanging goods only with the tribes that lived on the shore, but those seafarers missed the far larger inland settlements where Haragg made his living.

  When they reached a settlement it was Saban’s task to unpack Haragg’s goods from the horses and lay them on otter skins in front of the chief’s hut. Cagan would lift the heavy bags from the horses, then he would sit and watch, while the folk stared at him for he truly was a giant. The women would giggle, and sometimes the men, realizing that Cagan had the mind of a small child, would try to provoke him, but then Haragg would shout at them and the men would back off, terrified of his height and fierceness.

  There were some goods that were never unpacked: mainly scraps of gold and a handful of elegant bronze brooches that were saved for the chieftains Haragg reckoned would pay best. The haggling would last all day, sometimes two, and when it ended Saban would place the goods for Sarmennyn into one great leather bag, and the remaining trade goods into another, and Cagan would hang them on the horses’ backs. One smaller bag contained nothing but fine large seashells which were wrapped in a strange weed that Haragg said grew in the ocean, but as Saban had never seen the sea it meant little to him. The shells were exchanged for food.

  Haragg was not unkind. It took Saban a long time to learn this, for he feared the trader’s expressionless face and quick stick, but he discovered that Haragg did not smile at anyone except his own son, but nor did he frown; instead he faced each man, woman and circumstance with the same grim determination, and if he spoke little, he listened much. He would speak to Saban, if only to while away the long journeys, but he spoke tonelessly, as though the information he provided was of small interest.

  They were far to the north when the first hints of winter came with cold winds and spitting rains. The folk here spoke a strange language which even Haragg found difficult to understand. By now he was exchanging his bronze bars and black stone axes for small bags of herbs which, he said, flavored the liquor that the folk of Sarmennyn brewed, but he grudgingly exchanged one small bronze spearhead for a fleece tunic and a pair of properly sewn ox-hide boots that he gave to Saban.

  The boots would not fit over the manacles so Haragg sat him down and took a stone axe-head from one of his bags, then levered and beat the manacles far enough apart to force them off Saban’s ankles. “If you run away now,” he said tonelessly, “you will be killed, for this is dangerous country.” He stowed the manacles among his cargo and at the next settlement sold them for twenty bags of the precious herbs. That was one of the settlements where, when the horn sounded the trader’s approach, all the women were hidden away in their huts so that the strangers would not see any of their faces. “They behave oddly up here,” Haragg said.

  By now Haragg and Saban conversed only in the Outfolk tongue. Ratharryn was a memory – a sharp one, to be sure, but fading. Even Derrewyn’s face had blurred in Saban’s head. He could still feel a terrible pang of remorse when he thought of her, but now, instead of self-pity, he was filled with a burning desire for revenge. Night after night he consoled himself with images of Lengar’s death and of Jegar’s humiliation, but those consolations were being diluted by the new wonders he saw and the strange things he learned.

  He saw temples. Many were great temples: some of wood, more of stone. The stones made vast circles, while the wooden temples soared to the sky and were hung with holly and ivy. He saw priests who cut themselves with flint so that their chests were smothered in blood as they prayed. He saw a place where the tribe worshipped a stream and Haragg told him how the folk drowned a child in its pool every new moon. In another place the men worshipped an ox, a different ox each year, and killed the beast at midsummer and ate its flesh before selecting a new god. One tribe had a mad high priest who twitched and dribbled and spoke nonsense, while another would only allow cripples to be priests. They worshipped vipers in that place, and nearby was a settlement ruled by a woman. That seemed strangest of all to Saban, for she was not merely an influential sorceress like Sannas, but the chief of all the tribe. “They’ve always had women chiefs,” Haragg said, “ever since I’ve known them. It seems their goddess ordered it.” The woman chief insisted that Haragg sleep a night in her bed. “She won’t buy anything if I say no,” the big man explained. It was in that settlement that Haragg ordered Saban to cut a branch of yew and make himself a bow. Haragg bought arrows for him, content that Saban would not now use the weapon against his master. “But don’t let Cagan have the arrows,” Haragg warned him, “for he will only injure himself.”

  The scar from Saban’s missing finger had become a hard callus, but Saban found he could use a bow as well as ever. The missing finger was a mark of his servitude, but it was no handicap. His hair had grown back thickly and there were days when he even found himself laughing and smiling; one morning he woke with the strange realization that he was enjoying this life with the dour Haragg. That thought gave him a pang of guilt about Derrewyn, but Saban was still young and his misery was fast being diluted by novelty.

  They waited in the woman-ruled settlement as more traders assembled. The next journey, Haragg said, was dangerous and sensible men did not travel the track alone. The woman chief was paid a piece of bronze to provide twenty warriors as an escort and on a cold morning the traders walked north, climbing onto wide bleak moors that were dark under the clouded sky. No trees grew here and Saban did not understand how any folk could live in such a place, but Haragg said there were deep rocky clefts in the moors, and caves hidden in the clefts, and outcasts made their homes in such dank places. “They are desperate,” Haragg said.

  Late that day a band of men did attack. They rose from the heather to loose arrows, but they were few and cautious, and they showed themselves too soon. The hired spearmen tried to frighten the outcasts away by shouting and waving their spears, but the enemy was stubborn and still blocked the path. “You must attack them;” Haragg shouted at the warriors, but they were unwilling to die for a few traders. Cagan wanted to charge the ragged men, howling like a beast, but Haragg held him back and let Saban advance instead. Saban loosed an arrow and saw it fall short so he ran a few more paces and let another fly. It fluttered just wide of his target and he guessed that was because the arrow had been slightly out of true rather than because of the wind, and he released a third and watched it thump home into a man’s belly. The enemy’s arrows were being aimed at Saban now, but they had poor bows, and Saban ran another few steps and hauled the sinew back and let it go to drive another man back. He screamed at them, mocking their courage and their marksmanship, then slashed a third flint arrowhead into a wild-haired man in a dirty fleece tunic. He danced as they ran away. “Your mothers were swine!” Saban called. “Your sisters lie with goats!” None of the enemy would have understood the insults, even if they had been close enough to hear them.

  Haragg actually grinned at Saban. He even clapped his shoulder and laughed. “You should have been a warrior, not a slave,” he said, and Cagan, following his father’s example, bobbed his head and grinned at Saban.

  “I always wanted to be a warrior,” Saban confessed.

  “All boys do. What good is a boy who wants to be anything else?” Haragg asked. “But all men are warriors, except the priests.” He said the last three words with an intense bitterness, but refused to explain why.

  Next day the traders spread out their goods at a settlement north of the moors. Tribes from other settlements had come, and hundreds of folk wandered in the pasture where the haggling went on from dawn until dusk. Haragg exchanged most of his goods that day, taking in return more herbs and the promise of a pile of white pelts to be delivered to him at winter’s end. “Till then,” he told Saban, “we shall stay here.”

  It seemed a bleak place to Saban for it was nothing but a deep valley between soaring hills. Pine trees clothed the lower slopes and a cold stream tumbled over gray rocks between the dark trees. There was a stone templ
e lower down the valley and a huddle of huts higher; Haragg and Saban took a dilapidated hut for themselves and Saban repaired its rafters, then cut turfs and laid them as a roof. “Because I like it here,” Haragg said when Saban asked why he did not return to Sarmennyn for the winter. “And it will be a long winter,” Haragg warned him, “long and cold, but when it is over I shall take you back to your brother.”

  “To Lengar?” Saban asked bitterly. “You’d do better to kill me here.”

  “Not to Lengar,” Haragg said, “Camaban. It was not Lengar who wanted you to be my slave, but Camaban.”

  “Camaban!” Saban exclaimed in astonishment.

  “Camaban,” Haragg confirmed calmly. “Lengar wanted to kill you when he returned to Ratharryn, but Camaban was determined you should live. It seems that you protested once when your father was going to kill him?”

  “I did?” Saban asked, then remembered the failed sacrifice and his involuntary cry of horror. “So I did,” he said.

  “So Camaban persuaded Lengar that it would bring him bad luck if he killed you. He suggested slavery instead, and to a man of Lengar’s mind slavery is worse than death. But you had to become my slave, not any man’s slave, so Camaban claimed to have been told as much in a dream. Your brother and I planned all this. We sat for whole nights discussing how it could be done.” Haragg looked at Saban’s hand where the scar of the missing finger was now a wrinkle of dried skin. “And it had to be done properly,” he explained, “or Lengar would never have agreed and you would be dead.” He opened his pouch and took from it the precious knife that had been Hengall’s gift to Saban and with which Saban’s finger had been cut off. He held the knife to Saban. “Take it,” he said, then gave him back the amber amulet.

  Saban hung his mother’s amber about his neck and pushed the blade into his belt. “I am free?” he asked, bemused.