Free Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell Page A

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 center 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 toward 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 honored Lahanna. Cathallo’s wonders really were true, and Hengall’s people fell silent as they followed the priests north. They dancedas they climbed, clumsily for they were tired, but dutifully shuffling from one side of the avenue to the other, zig-zagging 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 toward a great chalk embankment that reared up from the low ground. Word passed down the column of travelers that the white embankment surrounded Cathallo’s shrine and Hengall’s folk