Free Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell

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 beaver’s 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 thegods favor you.” He nodded abruptly and, without another word, turned and signaled 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 favored 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 travelers 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