Читать книгу Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 12

There was fear in Ratharryn after the failed sacrifice for there were few omens worse than a god rejecting a gift. Hirac would not say why he had refused to kill the child, only that he had been given a sign, then he took himself to his hut where his wives claimed he was suffering from a fever, and two nights later those same wives wailed in the darkness because the high priest was dead. They blamed Camaban, saying the cripple had cursed Hirac, but Gilan, who was now Ratharryn’s oldest priest, claimed that it had been a nonsense trying to kill a child marked with Lahanna’s sign. Hirac had only himself to blame, Gilan said, for Hirac had woefully mistranslated the message of the gods. The gold had gone to the Old Temple and that was surely a sign that Slaol wanted the temple remade. Hengall listened to Gilan, who was a cheerful, efficient man, but distrusted because of his admiration for Cathallo. ‘In Cathallo,’ Gilan urged Hengall, ‘they have one great temple for all the gods and it has served them well. We should do the same.’

‘Temples cost treasure,’ Hengall said gloomily.

‘Ignore the gods,’ Gilan retorted, ‘and what will all the gold, bronze and amber in the world do for you?’

Gilan wanted to be high priest, but age alone would not give him that honour. A sign was needed from the gods and all the priests were seeking signs before, together, they would choose one of their number to succeed Hirac. Yet all the signs seemed bad for in the days following the failed sacrifice the warriors of Cathallo became ever bolder in their forays into Ratharryn’s territory. Day after day Hengall heard of stolen cattle and pigs, and Lengar argued that the war drum should be sounded and a band of spearmen sent north to intercept the raiders, but Hengall still shied away from war. Instead of sending spears he sent Gilan to talk with Cathallo’s rulers, though everyone knew that really meant talking to Sannas, the terrifying sorceress. Cathallo might have a chief, it might have great war-leaders, but Sannas ruled there, and many in Hengall’s tribe feared that she had put some curse on Ratharryn. Why else had the sacrifice failed?

The omens became worse. A child drowned in the river, an otter tore apart a dozen fish-traps, a viper was seen in Arryn and Mai’s temple, and Hengall’s new wife miscarried. Grey bands of rain swept from the west. Gilan returned from Cathallo, spoke with Hengall, then walked north again; the tribe wondered what news the priest had brought and what answer Hengall had returned to Cathallo, but the chief said nothing and the folk of Ratharryn went on with their work. There were pots to be made, flints to be dug, hides to tan, pigs to herd, cattle to milk, water to fetch, buildings to repair, willow fish-traps to be woven and boats to be hacked out of the vast forest trees. A trading party arrived from the southern coast, their oxen laden with shellfish, salt and fine stone axes, and Hengall took his levy from the men before letting them travel north towards Cathallo. Hengall buried one of the axes in Slaol’s temple and another in Lahanna’s, but the gifts made no difference for the next day wolves came to the high pasture and took a heifer, three sheep and a dozen pigs.

Lengar alone seemed unaffected by the terrible omens. He had suffered the humiliation of yielding the gold to his father, but he retrieved his reputation by his prowess as a hunter. Day after day he and his companions brought back carcasses, tusks and hides. Lengar hung the tusks either side of his doorway as proofs that the gods smiled on him. Hengall, summoning the last shreds of his authority, had sternly ordered Lengar to stay out of the northern woods and thus avoid any confrontation with the spearmen of Cathallo, but one day Lengar came across some Outfolk in the south country and he brought back six enemy heads that he mounted on poles on the embankment’s crest. Crows feasted on the grey-tattooed heads and, seeing the trophies on their skyline, more and more of the tribe was convinced that Lengar was favoured by the gods and that Hengall was doomed.

But then the Outfolk messengers came.

They arrived just as Hengall was dispensing justice, a thing that was done with each new moon when the chief, the high priest and the tribe’s elders gathered in Arryn and Mai’s temple and listened to wrangles about theft, threats, murder, infidelity and broken promises. They could condemn a man to death, though that was rare for they preferred to make a guilty man work for the wronged party. On that morning Hengall was frowning as he listened to a complaint that a field’s boundary marker had been moved. The argument was passionate, but was broken off when Jegar, Lengar’s friend, announced that Outfolk horsemen were coming from the west.

The Outlanders were blowing a ram’s horn to proclaim that they travelled in peace and Hengall ordered Lengar to take a group of warriors to greet the strangers, but to allow them no nearer to Ratharryn than Slaol’s temple. Hengall wanted time to consult with the priests and elders, and the priests wanted to don their finery. Food needed to be prepared, for though the Outfolk were regarded as enemies, these visitors came in peace and so would have to be fed.

The younger priests prepared a meeting place on the river bank just outside the settlement. They planted the skull pole in the turf, then splashed water to mark out a circle within which the visitors could sit, and outside that circle they placed ox-skulls, chalk axes and sprigs of holly to constrain whatever malevolence the Outfolk might have brought. The people of Ratharryn gathered excitedly outside the circle, for no one could remember any such thing ever happening before. Outfolk traders were common enough visitors, and there were plenty of Outfolk slaves in the settlement, but never before had Outfolk emissaries arrived and their coming promised to make a story to tell and retell in the long nights.

Hengall was at last ready. The tribe’s best warriors were dispatched to escort the strangers to the meeting place while Gilan, who had just returned from his last mission to Cathallo, wove charms to prevent the strangers’ magic doing harm. The Outfolk had their own sorcerer, a lame man whose hair was stiffened with red clay; he howled at Gilan and Gilan howled back, and then the lame man put a deer’s rib between his naked legs, clamped it there for a heartbeat, then tossed it away to show that he was discarding his powers.

The lame sorcerer lay flat on the ground in the meeting place and thereafter did nothing except stare into the sky, while the other eight strangers squatted in a line to face Hengall and his tribal elders. The Outfolk had brought their own interpreter, a trader whom many of Ratharryn’s folk knew and feared. He was called Haragg and he was a giant; a huge, brutal-faced man who travelled with his deaf-mute son who was even taller and more frightening. The son had not come with this embassy, and Haragg, who usually arrived at Ratharryn with fine stone axes and heavy bronze blades, had brought nothing but words, though his companions all carried heavy leather bags that Hengall’s people looked at expectantly.

The sun was at its height when the talking began. The strangers first announced that they came from Sarmennyn, a place as far west as a man could walk before he met the wild sea and a country, they said, of hard rock, high hills and thin soil. Sarmennyn, they went on, was far away, very far, which meant they had come a long distance to talk with the great Hengall, chief of Ratharryn, though that flattery went past Hengall with as much effect as dawn mist drifting by a temple post. Despite the day’s warmth the chief had draped his black bear pelt across his shoulders and was carrying his great stone mace.

The leader of the strangers, a tall, gaunt man with a scarred face and one blind eye, explained that one of their own people, a young and foolish man, had stolen some paltry treasures belonging to the tribe. The thief had fled. Now the strangers had heard that he had come to Hengall’s land and there died, which was no more than he deserved. Small as the treasures were, the strangers still sought their return and were willing to pay well for them.

Hengall listened to Haragg’s long translation, then objected that he had been sleeping and did not understand why the Outlanders had woken him if all they wanted was to exchange a few trifles. Still, he conceded, since the strangers had disturbed his sleep, and since they were being respectful, he was willing to waste a little time in seeing what offerings they had brought. Hengall did not trust Haragg to interpret for him, so instead his speech was translated by Valan, a slave who had been captured from the Outfolk many years before. Valan had served Hengall a long time and was now the chief’s friend rather than his slave and was even allowed to keep his own hut, cattle and wife.

The one-eyed man apologized for waking the great Hengall and said he would have happily conducted the transaction with one of Hengall’s servants, but since the chief had been gracious enough to listen to their plea, would he also be kind enough to confirm that the missing treasures were indeed in his keeping?

‘We normally throw trifles away,’ Hengall said, ‘but perhaps we kept them.’ He gestured to the embankment where a group of small children, bored with the talk, were tumbling among the woad plants growing just beneath the Outlanders’ heads that Lengar had brought back from the forest. Those heads had not come from the Outfolk of Sarmennyn, but from other Outfolk tribes who lived closer to Ratharryn, but their presence was still unsettling to the visitors. ‘Children like bright things,’ Hengall said, nodding towards the impaled heads, ‘so maybe we kept your treasures to amuse the young ones? But you say you have brought other things to exchange for them?’

The strangers laid their gifts on the turf. There were some fine otter hides and seal skins, a basket of sea-shells, three bronze bars, a rod of copper, some curious sharp teeth that they claimed came from ocean monsters, a portion of shiny turtle shell and, best of all, some lumps of amber that were scarce as gold. Hengall must have noted that the bags were still half full for he stretched his arms, yawned again, tugged at the tangles in his beard and finally said that so long as he was awake he might go and talk to the goddess Mai about the prospect of catching some fish from her river. ‘We saw some large pike there yesterday, did we not?’ he called to Galeth.

‘Very large pike.’

‘I like eating pike,’ Hengall said.

The strangers hastily added more bronze ingots and the people of Ratharryn murmured astonishment at the value of the gifts. And still the offerings came; some finely carved bone needles, a dozen bone combs, a tangle of fish-hooks, three bronze knives of great delicacy, and finally a stone axe with a beautifully polished head that had a blueish tinge and glittered with tiny shining flecks. Hengall lusted after that axe, but he forced himself to sound unimpressed as he wondered why the Outfolk had bothered to carry such miserable offerings so far from their own country.

The leader of the strangers added one final treasure: a bar of gold. The bar was the size of a spearhead and heavy enough to need two hands to carry it, and the watching crowd gasped. By itself that shining lump contained more gold than was in all the lozenges. The Outfolk were well known to be grudging with their gold, yet now they were offering a great piece of it, and that was a mistake for it contradicted their assertion that the missing treasures were mere trifles. Hengall, still pretending to be indifferent, pressed the strangers until, reluctantly, they confessed that the missing treasures were not trivial at all, but sacred objects that arrayed the sun’s bride each year. The treasures, the grim-faced Haragg admitted, had been gifts from their sea god to Erek himself and the people of Sarmennyn feared that their loss would bring ill fortune. The strangers were pleading now. They wanted their treasures back, and they would pay for them dearly because they were terrified of Erek’s displeasure.

‘Erek is their name for Slaol,’ Valan told Hengall.

Hengall, pleased to have forced the admission from the strangers, stood. ‘We shall think on this matter,’ he announced.

Food was fetched from the settlement. There was cold pork, flat bread, smoked fish, and bowls of chickweed and sorrel. The strangers ate warily, fearful of being poisoned, but afraid to give offence by rejecting the food. Only their priest did not eat, but just lay staring into the sky. Gilan and Ratharryn’s priests huddled together, whispering fiercely, while Lengar and his friends formed another small group at the circle’s far side. Folk came to inspect the offered gifts, though none crossed the charm-ringed circle to touch them for the gifts had still not been cleansed of Outfolk sorcery by Ratharryn’s priests. Hengall talked with the elders and sometimes asked questions of the priests, though it was mainly with Gilan that he talked. The priest had now made two visits to Cathallo and he spoke urgently with Hengall who listened, nodded and finally seemed convinced by whatever Gilan urged on him.

The sun was sliding down to its western home when Hengall resumed his place, but custom demanded that any man in the tribe could have his opinion heard before Hengall pronounced a decision. A few men did stand and most advised accepting the Outfolk’s payment. ‘The gold is not ours,’ Galeth said, ‘but was stolen from a god. How can it bring us good luck? Let the strangers have their treasures.’ Voices murmured in support, then Lengar beat the ground with his spear staff and the murmurs died as Hengall’s son stood to address the crowd.

‘Galeth is right!’ Lengar said, causing surprise among those who thought that the two men could never agree. ‘The Outfolk should have their treasures back. But we should demand a higher price than these scourings from their huts.’ He gestured at the goods piled in front of the strangers. ‘If the Outfolk want their treasures returned, then let them come from their far country with all their spears and all their bows and offer themselves to our service for a year.’

Haragg, the Outfolk interpreter, whispered to his companions, who looked worried, but Hengall shook his head. ‘And how are we to feed this horde of armed Outfolk?’ he asked his son.

‘They will feed from the crops and cattle that they capture with their weapons.’

‘And what crops and cattle are they?’ Hengall asked.

‘Those that grow and graze to the north of us,’ Lengar answered defiantly, and many in the tribe voiced their agreement. The tribe of Sarmennyn was famous for its warriors. They were lean, hungry men from a bare land and they took with their spears what their country could not provide. Such feared warriors would surely make brief work of Cathallo and more of Hengall’s folk raised their voices in Lengar’s support.

Hengall raised his vast club for silence. ‘The army of Sarmennyn,’ he said, ‘has never reached this far into the heartland. Yet now you would invite them? And if they do come with their spears and their bows and their axes, how do we rid ourselves of them? What is to stop them turning on us?’

‘We shall outnumber them!’ Lengar declared confidently.

Hengall looked scornful. ‘You know how many spears they muster?’ he demanded, pointing to the strangers.

‘I know that with their help we can destroy our enemies,’ Lengar retorted.

Hengall stood, a sign that Lengar’s time of talking was over. Lengar stayed on his feet for a few heartbeats, then reluctantly squatted. Hengall spoke in a loud voice that reached the outermost part of the crowd. ‘Cathallo is not our enemy! Cathallo is powerful, yes, but so are we! The two of us are like dogs. We can fight and maim each other, but the wounds we would inflict would be so deep that neither of us might live. But if we hunt together we shall feed well.’ The tribe stared at him in silent surprise. They had expected a decision about the gold lozenges and instead the chief was talking of the problem of Cathallo.

‘Together!’ Hengall shouted. ‘Together, Cathallo and Ratharryn will be as strong as any land in this earth. So we shall bind ourselves in a marriage of tribes.’ That news caused a loud gasp from the crowd. ‘On midsummer’s eve we shall go to Cathallo and dance with their people.’ The crowd thought about that, then a slow-growing murmur of agreement spread among them. Only a moment before they had been eagerly supporting Lengar’s idea of conquering Cathallo, now they were seduced by Hengall’s vision of peace. ‘Gilan has talked with their chief and he has agreed that we shall not be one tribe,’ Hengall declared, ‘but two tribes united like a man and a woman in marriage.’

‘And which tribe is the man?’ Lengar dared to shout.

Hengall ignored him. ‘There will be no war,’ he said flatly, then he looked down at the strangers. ‘And there will be no exchange,’ he went on. ‘Your god was given the treasures, but you lost them, and they were brought to us. They came to our Old Temple, which tells me they are meant to stay here. If we give back the gold, we insult the gods who sent the treasures to our keeping. Their coming is a sign that the temple must be restored, and so it shall be! It will be rebuilt!’ Gilan, who had been urging that course, looked pleased.

The one-eyed man protested, threatening to bring war to Ratharryn.

‘War?’ Hengall brandished his great club. ‘War!’ he shouted. ‘I will give you war if you come to Ratharryn. I will piss on your souls, enslave your children, make playthings of your women and grind your bones to powder. That is war as we know it!’ He spat towards the strangers. ‘Take your belongings and go,’ he ordered.

The strangers’ priest howled at the sky and their leader tried a last appeal, but Hengall would not listen. He had rejected the exchange and the Outfolk had no choice but to pick up their gifts and return to their horses.

But that evening, when the sun was tangled among the western trees like a fish caught in a woven-willow trap, Lengar and a dozen of his closest supporters left Ratharryn. They carried bows and spears and had their hounds leashed on long leather ropes, and they claimed they were going back to their hunting grounds. But it was noted that Lengar also took an Outfolk slave, a woman, and that shocked the tribe for women were not taken on hunting expeditions. And that night a half-dozen more young women slipped out of Ratharryn, so next morning the horrified tribe realized that Lengar had not gone hunting at all, but had fled, and that the women had followed their warrior lovers. Hengall’s anger overflowed like the river flooding with storm water. He raged at the malign fate that had sent him such an elder son, then he sent warriors on Lengar’s trail, though none expected to catch up with the fugitives who had too long a start. Then Hengall heard that Jegar, who was reckoned Lengar’s closest friend, was still in Ratharryn and the chief summoned Jegar to his hut door and there ordered him to abase himself.

Jegar lay flat on the ground while Hengall raised his war club over the young man’s head. ‘Where has my son gone?’ he demanded coldly.

‘To Sarmennyn,’ Jegar answered, ‘to the Outfolk.’

‘You knew they planned this,’ Hengall asked, his rage mounting again, ‘and did not tell me?’

‘Your son put a curse on my life if I betrayed him,’ Jegar said.

Hengall kept the club poised. ‘And why did you not go with him? Are you not his soul’s friend?’

‘I did not go,’ Jegar answered humbly, ‘because you are my chief and this is my home and I would not live in a far country beside the sea.’

Hengall hesitated. He plainly wanted to slam the club down and spatter the earth with blood, but he was a fair man and he controlled his anger and so lowered the weapon. Jegar had answered his questions well and though Hengall had no liking for the young man, he still raised him to his feet, embraced him, and gave him a small bronze knife as a reward for his loyalty.

But Lengar had gone to the Outfolk. So Hengall burned his son’s hut and pounded his pots to dust. He killed Lengar’s mother, who had been his own first wife, and he ordered Gilan to use the Kill-Child on a boy who was popularly supposed to be Lengar’s son. The child’s mother screamed, begging for mercy, but the aurochs’ bone swung and the boy died. ‘He never lived,’ Hengall decreed of Lengar. ‘He is no more.’

Next day was the eve of midsummer and the tribe would walk to Cathallo. To make peace. And to face Sannas.

At the dawn of the day on which the tribe was to walk north, Saban’s father brought him a deerskin tunic, a necklace of boar’s teeth and a wooden-handled, flint-bladed knife to wear in the belt. ‘You are my son,’ Hengall told him, ‘my only son. So you must look like a chief’s son. Tie your hair back. Stand straight!’ He nodded curtly to Saban’s mother, his third wife, whom he had long since ceased to summon to his hut, then went to examine the white sacrificial heifer that would be goaded to Cathallo.

Even Camaban went to Cathallo. Hengall had not wanted him to go, but Gilan insisted Sannas wanted to see Camaban for herself. So Galeth had fetched the crippled boy from his lair in the Old Temple, and now Camaban limped a few paces behind Saban, Galeth and Galeth’s pregnant woman, Lidda. They walked north along the hills above the river valley and it took a whole morning to reach the edge of that high land which meant they were now halfway to Cathallo. For most of the people who stood on the crest and gazed at the woods and marshes ahead, that was the greatest distance they had ever walked from home.

Their path now dropped steeply into thick woods dotted with small fields. This was Maden’s land, a place of rich soil, tall trees and wide bogs.

The men of Hengall’s tribe moved close to their women as they entered the trees and small boys were given bundles of straw bound tight to sticks, and the straw was set alight from smouldering coals carried in perforated clay pots. The boys then raced up and down the path, waving their smoky clubs and shrieking to drive away the malevolent spirits who might otherwise come and impregnate the women. The priests chanted, the women clutched talismans, and the men beat their spear staves against the tree trunks. Even more chants were needed to propitiate the spirits as the tribe crossed a tangle of small streams close to Maden.

Hengall walked at the head of his tribe, but he waited on the bank of one of the bigger streams for Saban to catch up. ‘We must talk,’ he told his son, then glanced at Camaban who limped just a few steps behind. The boy had found another rotting sheep’s pelt to replace his old tunic, and carried a crude leather bag in which his few belongings, his bones and snakeskin and charms, were stored. He stank, and his hair was once again tangled and dirty. He looked up at his father, gave a shudder, then spat onto the path.

Hengall turned disgustedly away and paced ahead with Saban. After a while he asked Saban if he had noticed how plump Maden’s wheat looked? It seemed the storm had spared those fields, Hengall said enviously, then commented that there had been some fine fat pigs in the woods by the river. Pigs and wheat, he said, were all folk needed for life, and for that he thanked the gods. ‘Maybe only pigs,’ he mused, ‘maybe that’s all we need to eat. Pigs and fish. The wheat’s just a nuisance. It won’t seed itself, that’s the trouble.’ Hengall was carrying a leather bag that clinked as he walked and Saban guessed it contained some of the tribe’s treasures. The people far ahead had started singing and the song grew louder as folk caught up the tune. It passed to the walkers behind, but neither Hengall nor Saban joined in. ‘In a few years,’ Hengall said abruptly, ‘you’ll be old enough to become chief.’

‘If the priests and the people agree,’ Saban said cautiously.

‘The priests just need bribes,’ Hengall said, ‘and the people do as they’re told.’ A pigeon clattered through the leaves and Hengall looked up to see in what direction the bird flew, hoping that it would be a good omen. It was, for the bird made towards the sun.

‘Sannas will want to see you,’ Hengall said ominously. ‘Kneel to her and bow your head. I know she’s a woman, but treat her like a chief.’ He frowned. ‘She’s a hard woman, hard and cruel, but she has powers. The gods love her, or else they fear her.’ He shook his shaggy head in amazement. ‘She was already old when I was a boy!’

Saban felt fear at the prospect of meeting Sannas. ‘Why will she want to see me?’

‘Because you’re to marry a Cathallo girl,’ Hengall said flatly, ‘and Sannas will choose her. There’s no decision made in Cathallo without Sannas. They call Kital chief, but he sucks on the old woman’s tits. They all do.’

Saban said nothing. He knew he could not marry anyone until he had passed the ordeals of manhood, but he liked the idea.

‘So you’re to take a bride from Cathallo,’ Hengall said, ‘as a sign that our tribes are at peace. You understand that?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘But Cathallo doesn’t know you’re my only son now,’ Hengall said, ‘and they won’t be happy that you’re still a boy. That’s why you must impress Sannas.’

‘Yes, father,’ Saban said again. He understood now that Kital and Sannas were expecting Lengar to come to Cathallo and claim a bride, but Lengar was gone and so he must take his place.

‘And you will be chief,’ Hengall said heavily, ‘and that means you have to be a leader of our people. But being chief doesn’t mean you can do what you want. Folk don’t realize that. They want heroes, but heroes get their people killed. The best chiefs know that. They know they can’t turn night into day. I can only do what’s possible, nothing more. I can break down beavers’ dams to stop the fish-traps drying out, but I can’t order the river to do it for me.’

‘I understand,’ Saban said.

‘And we can’t have war,’ Hengall said forcibly. ‘I’m not worried that we’d lose, but that we’d be weakened whether we won or lost. You understand that?’

‘Yes,’ Saban.

‘Not that I mean to die yet!’ Hengall went on. ‘I must be close to thirty-five summers. Think of that, thirty-five! But I’ve plenty of good years left! My father lived more than fifty years.’

‘So will you, I hope,’ Saban said clumsily.

‘But you must prepare yourself,’ Hengall said. ‘Pass your ordeals, go hunting, take some Outfolk heads. Show the tribe the gods favour you.’ He nodded abruptly and, without another word, turned and signalled for his friend Valan to join him.

Saban waited for Galeth to catch up. ‘What did he want?’ Galeth asked.

‘To tell me I’m to marry a girl from Cathallo,’ Saban said.

Galeth smiled. ‘And so you should.’ Galeth knew the decision meant that Saban was favoured to become the next chief, but Galeth bore no grudge for that. The big man was happiest when he was working with wood, and had no great desire to succeed his elder brother. He cuffed Saban lightly across the head. ‘I just hope the girl’s pretty.’

‘Of course she will be,’ Saban said, though he was suddenly afraid that she might not be.

The tribe crossed the last of the marshes, then climbed into hills that were thick with trees, though the woods gradually thinned to reveal the splendours of Cathallo. They passed an ancient shrine, its timber posts rotting and its circle as overgrown with hazels as Ratharryn’s Old Temple, then saw grave mounds on the hill slopes ahead. Those hills were as low as the slopes about Ratharryn, but were steeper, and among them was the famous Sacred Mound. There was nothing like it in Ratharryn, and though some of the tribe’s travellers had brought back stories of other sacred mounds, all agreed that none was the size of Cathallo’s. It was vast, a hill fit to stand among other hills, but this hill had been made by man; it reached from a valley to touch the sky and it was all gleaming white for it had been made by heaping chalk on top of more chalk. It was taller, far taller than Ratharryn’s embankment; as tall, indeed, as the surrounding hills.

‘Why did they make it?’ Lidda asked Galeth.

‘It’s Lahanna’s image,’ Galeth said, his voice touched with awe, and explained that the moon goddess, staring down from the stars, could see herself remade upon the earth and would know that Cathallo revered her. Lidda, hearing the explanation, touched her forehead in obeisance to the goddess for she, like most women, revered Lahanna above all the gods and spirits, but Camaban, who was still limping close behind, suddenly laughed. ‘What’s funny?’ Galeth asked.

‘They have giant moles in C-C-Cathallo,’ Camaban said.

Lidda touched her groin. She was uncomfortable being so close to the cripple, fearing for the child in her belly, and she wished Camaban would fall behind, but he had stubbornly stayed close all day and still dogged her steps as they splashed through a small river and climbed a hill to the east of the mound. The hill was crowned by a temple that came as a relief to many of Hengall’s people for it was much smaller than any of the temples at Ratharryn, though it did have stone markers in place of timber poles. The low stones were rough-hewn, mere stumps of rock, and some folk reckoned they were ugly compared to a properly trimmed pole. A group of Cathallo’s priests waited at the temple, and it was to them that the first of Ratharryn’s gifts was given: the white heifer that had been goaded bloody on the long journey and was now driven through the gap in the temple ditch. Cathallo’s priests examined the beast warily. It was not, perhaps, the whitest heifer in Ratharryn, but she was still a good animal with a nearly unblemished hide and there were murmurs of resentment among Hengall’s people as the priests appeared to doubt the beast’s quality. At last, after prodding and smelling the animal, they grudgingly deemed her acceptable and dragged her to the centre of their small temple where a young priest, naked but for a pair of antlers tied onto his head, waited with a pole-axe. The heifer, seeming to understand what was about to happen, strained to escape the men holding her, so the priests cut the tendons of her legs and the immobilized beast bellowed mournfully as the great axe swung.

Hengall’s folk sang Lahanna’s lament as they filed through the heifer’s wet blood and followed the priests along a path of paired stones. The temple might have failed to impress them, but the avenue of stones did not, for these stones were larger than the temple markers and they led far across the open country. The boulder-edged avenue dipped from the temple to the valley, but swerved before it reached the great chalk mound to stride north towards the crest of a wide down. There were so many stones flanking the sacred track that they could not be counted, and all were as tall or even taller than a man. Some were pillars, symbolizing Slaol, and each pillar was paired with a vast lozenge-shaped slab that honoured Lahanna. Cathallo’s wonders really were true, and Hengall’s people fell silent as they followed the priests north. They danced as they climbed, clumsily for they were tired, but dutifully shuffling from one side of the avenue to the other, zigzagging their way up to the crest where some folk from Cathallo had assembled to see the visitors. One group of warriors, their bodies greased and hair plaited, leaned on their spears to watch the women pass, though the sight of Camaban prompted the young men to cover their eyes and spit in case his clubbed foot brought them evil.

Saban, who had never visited Cathallo before, had assumed that the massive paired stones lined a path that led from Cathallo’s settlement to the small stone temple where the heifer had been sacrificed, but as he crossed the crest of the down he suddenly realized that the small temple, far from being the end of the sacred path, was merely its beginning, and that the true wonders of Cathallo still lay ahead.

The settlement, unwalled, lay to the west, and that was not where the path went. Rather it led towards a great chalk embankment that reared up from the low ground. Word passed down the column of travellers that the white embankment surrounded Cathallo’s shrine and Hengall’s folk fell silent as they marvelled at the vast wall which looked to be as high and as extensive as the embankment which surrounded Ratharryn. The wall’s long summit was crowned with animal and human skulls, while from within the great enclosure came the heavy beat of wooden drums.

The path did not lead direct to the vast temple, but instead, just outside the shrine’s entrance, made a double turn so that the wonders within the high chalk circle would not be revealed until the very last moment of the approach. Saban shuffled his dance steps about the double bend and there, suddenly visible beyond the shoulders of the great encircling bank, was Cathallo’s shrine. Saban’s first impression was of stones. Stones and more stones, for the great space within the soaring chalk wall seemed filled with heavy, high, grey boulders, and some had been newly wetted so that glints of light shone from their rough surfaces. The giant stones lay ringed by a ditch that had been dug inside the chalk wall, and the ditch was as deep as the rampart was high, and the area enclosed by the ditch and wall was almost as large as Ratharryn itself and Ratharryn was a tribe’s settlement with winter room for cattle, while this was just one temple.

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.