Stonehenge

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Bring her to me,” Lengar said.

  Saban hesitated, but Aurenna pulled him forward and walked calmly toward the tall figure of Lengar, whose face showed triumph.

  “I said you would bring her, Saban,” Lengar said. “What a sheep you are.” He jerked his head and four of his men prised Aurenna away from Saban with their spears. They pushed her toward Lengar, while other men, their breath reeking of liquor, seized Lewydd and Saban and forced them away through the cordon of warriors. Saban looked back to see that Aurenna was standing between two guards just behind Lengar.

  Yet for the moment Lengar ignored her. Instead he gazed toward the feasting hall and raised his spear. “Now!” he shouted gleefully, “now!” and some of the warriors with the torches hurled them onto the feasting hall roof while others jammed their flaming straw-wrapped sticks into the hall’s wide eaves. The flames caught the steep thatch with a sickening speed and after only a few heartbeats the first frightened men tried to escape the fire, but as soon as they appeared at the hall door they were met by arrows that threw them back with brutal force. Burning thatch was dropping into the hall, which was thickening with smoke. The weather had been dry and the hall caught the flame like a puffball. More torches were thrown onto the steep roof, now a patchwork of flame and darkness, but the fires spread, joined, blazed bright, and men were screaming beneath the hanging skulls. Some men tried to break through the walls, but arrows spitted them. One man did break free, but he was struck by a half-dozen arrows, then chopped to the ground with a bronze axe.

  Aurenna watched, a hand over her mouth, her eyes aghast and her daughter held tight against her body so that Lallic could not see the carnage. The walls were burning now. The long hair of a dead man who was trapped in a gap of the wall suddenly flared. Part of the roof collapsed, spewing a stream of sparks into the night. Skulls fell as burning straw whirled up toward the stars. Lengar’s warriors watched enthralled. Some among the spectators were Kereval’s own men, the warriors who had followed Vakkal to Ratharryn and who now gave their allegiance to its dark chief, and those Outlanders cheered with the rest. They could see through the burning gaps where flaming men staggered in whirls of fire. A boy, one of the two who had bailed the mother stone’s boat dry, screamed frantically. Saban could smell roasting flesh. The screams slowly died, though here and there a dark figure jerked in the smoke and fire, but soon there was no movement at all except for the collapse of rafters and the gouts of spark and fire and smoke. The whole roof caved in, leaving only the twelve temple posts standing. Flames licked up the thick posts. A smoking skull rolled across the grass. Lewydd had put Leir down and was struggling in the arms of two spearmen, but he suddenly collapsed, sinking to his knees and burying his head in his hands. Saban crouched beside him. “I am sorry,” he said, putting an arm on his friend’s shoulders. He held Leir close to him. “Lengar was never going to give the gold back,” Saban said to Lewydd. “I should have known. I should have known.”

  “Are those two still alive?” Lengar’s voice spoke behind Saban. “Strangle them. No, push them into the flames.”

  The spearmen reached for Saban and Lewydd. The moon had just risen in the west, coming from behind the trees on the high land. It was almost full, vast, flattened and red, a swollen moon, monstrous in the murderous night, but its light was drowned by the leaping flames. Yet in Lahanna’s light, where it sifted across the dark trees, Saban suddenly saw shapes on the embankment’s crest. He saw shadows moving among the white skulls that protected the settlement against the spirits, and the shadows were crossing the earth wall; he twisted to the east, struggling against the spearmen who tried to haul him upright, and he saw more shapes moving there, but no one else in Ratharryn saw the shadows for they were staring into the inferno where over a hundred men of Sarmennyn had choked on smoke and now burned under a layer of scorched skulls and blazing thatch.

  The spearmen at last managed to haul Saban and Lewydd to their feet and just then the first arrows flickered in the flame-light. A man fell close by, a shaft dark in his throat. Saban rammed his elbow hard back, heard his captor’s breath rush out and wrenched himself free. More arrows thumped home as Saban crouched and wrapped Leir in his arms. He could hear little over the roar of the fire, but he saw the arrows whip through the firelight. Lewydd was free now, his captor struck by one of the missiles. Lengar’s spearmen were slowed by the liquor they had drunk and they had still not seen the attackers who had come down from the embankment’s crest into the shadows where they were now loosing arrow after arrow. The flint heads drove into flesh. Some struck the huts and a few wasted themselves in the fire.

  Saban pulled at Lewydd. “Come!” He picked up Leir and ran toward Aurenna, who had still not realized the danger. Lengar’s drunken men were only just awakening to the attack, and did not yet know where it came from. Saban reached Aurenna, but one of her guards saw him and moved to intercept him, opening his mouth to shout a warning to Lengar, and an arrow slapped straight into his gullet. The man staggered back, choking and with blood pouring down his beard, then fell to the ground. Lengar turned anyway and Saban hit him with his free hand. It was a desperate, wild blow, but it struck Lengar’s cheek, knocking him down and Saban grabbed Aurenna with his bruised hand and tugged her into the shadows between the huts where women screamed and dogs howled. “Run!” Saban shouted at her. “Run!”

  But there was nowhere to run. Enemies had crossed the embankment’s northern side and were already at the tanning pits, and their arrows plunged into the thatch close to Saban who, frantic, twisted aside to Galeth’s hut. He pushed Aurenna and Lallic inside, then Leir, and afterward ducked in himself. “A weapon!” he said to Galeth, who had refused to witness the murderous blaze.

  He took Galeth’s old spear, the great heavy spear, and gave another to Lewydd.

  There was screaming outside. Spearman ran past as Saban pushed into the moonlight. No one noticed him now. He and Lewydd were simply two more spearmen in the chaotic night where a handful of folk tried to extinguish the many small fires that had been started on the thatch of the huts where burning straw had blown from the flaming hall, but most of the panicked and inebriated throng were seeking an enemy and when Ratharryn’s warriors did discover the archers and ran toward them, those attackers retreated back across the embankment into the dark beyond.

  “Who are they?” Lewydd shouted at Saban.

  “Cathallo?” Saban guessed. He could think of no other enemy, but surmised that Rallin, knowing he was to be attacked next day, had sent his bowmen through the night to sting and humiliate Lengar’s men.

  The archers had all vanished now. They had come, they had wounded and killed, and now they had gone, but the panic did not subside. Some of Ratharryn’s warriors attacked Drewenna’s men, mistaking them for the enemy, and Drewenna’s spearmen fought back as Lengar strode among them, shouting at them to stop. Saban stalked him.

  The fighting slowly died. Men and women beat out burning thatch with cloaks and pelts, or else dragged the burning straw clean off their hut roofs. Wounded men crawled or just lay bleeding. The twelve temple poles stood charred and smoking above the red hot fire that still consumed the feasting hall. Lengar parted two fighting warriors, then turned when one of the temple poles fell to scatter bright fire across the settlement and, in the sudden livid light, he saw Saban and saw the spear in his brother’s hand. He smiled. “You want to be chief, little brother? You want to kill me?”

  “Let me kill him,” Lewydd said vengefully. “Let me!”

  “No.” Saban pushed Lewydd aside and walked forward.

  Lengar tossed aside his own spear and drew his sword. He looked bored, as though the chore of killing Saban would be a small thing. Saban should have been cautioned by his brother’s confidence, but he was too furious to be wary. He simply wanted to kill his brother, and Lengar knew it, just as he knew that Saban’s fury would make him clumsy and easy to kill. “Come on, little brother,” he taunted Saban.

  Saban hefted t
he spear, took a breath and readied himself to make a wild charge fueled by rage, but then a man screamed and pointed to the settlement’s southern entrance and both Lengar and Saban turned that way: Both stared open-mouthed. And both, for an instant, forgot their quarrel.

  For a dead man walked the night.

  PART THREE

  The Temple of the Dead

  Chapter 15

  A dead man walked in the moonlight and the folk of Ratharryn gave a great moan because of the horrors that were being brought on their tribe.

  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 gray. 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 toward 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 gray-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 recognized 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 toward Lengar who backed away and glanced toward 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 forever,” 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 toward 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 rumor 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.