Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online

said.
    “B-b-but I am,” Camaban said. He was Slaol’s fool, and he dreamed dreams.
    But no one took any notice, for he was crippled. So they would kill him.
    Next morning Neel had two men dig a shallow grave in Lahanna’s temple, just beside the outer ring of poles. It was, the men agreed, an auspicious day for the sacrifice for the clouds that had trailedthe storm were thinning fast and Lahanna was showing her pale face in Slaol’s sky.
    A few darker clouds appeared as the crowd gathered about the temple’s five rings and some feared that Hirac would delay the sacrifice, but he must not have been concerned about the clouds for at last the dancers appeared from the high priest’s hut. The dancers were women who carried leafy ash branches with which they swept the ground as they capered ahead of the seven priests whose naked bodies had been whitened with the slurry of chalk in which finger patterns swirled. Hirac wore a pair of antlers tied to his head with leather laces and the horns tossed dangerously as he danced behind the women. A ring of bones circled his waist, more bones hung from his mud-crusted hair, and a shining talisman of amber dangled at his neck. Neel, the youngest priest, played a flute made from the leg bone of a swan and its notes skittered wildly as he danced. Gilan, who was next oldest after Hirac, led Camaban by the hand. The boy had been allowed back into Ratharryn for this one day, and while he was inside the embankment the women had woven flowers into his black hair that had been untangled with bone combs so that it now fell straight to his thin waist. He too was naked, and his washed skin looked unnaturally clean. The red mark of Lahanna showed on his flat belly. Like Hengall’s other two sons he was tall, though each time he stepped on his left foot his whole body made a grotesque twisting dip. Hengall and the tribe’s elders followed the priests.
    Four men began to beat wooden drums as the procession approached, and the tribe, ringing the temple, began to dance. At first they just swayed from side to side, but as the drummers increased the speed of their beating they stepped sunwise about the circle. They paused only to make way for the priests and the elders and, once the procession had passed through them, the dancing ring closed up.
    Only the priests and the victim were allowed through the gap in the shallow bank that ringed the temple. Hirac was first, and he went to the newly dug grave where he howled up at the faded moon to draw the goddess’s attention while Gilan led Camaban to the circle’s far side as the other priests capered about the temple rings. One held the tribe’s skull pole high so that the ancestorscould see what important thing was being done in Ratharryn this day, while another carried the massive thigh bone of an aurochs. One end of the bone was a gnarled and knobbly mass that had been painted with red ochre. It was the tribe’s Kill-Child, and the watching children, who danced with their parents to the beat of the drums, eyed it warily.
    Hengall stood in the temple entrance. He alone did not dance. At his feet lay gifts for the goddess: a stone mace, an ingot of bronze and an Outfolk jar with its pattern of cords pressed into the clay. The priests, who did no work in the fields and raised no flocks or herds, would keep those gifts and trade them for food.
    The tribe danced until their legs were tired, until they were almost in a trance induced by the drums and by their own chanting. They called Lahanna’s name while the sweepers, who had driven away any spirits that might try to intrude on the ceremony, dropped their ash branches and began to sing a repetitive song that called on the moon goddess. Watch us, they sang, see what we bring to you, watch us, and there was happiness in their voices for they knew that the gift would bring pleasure to the goddess.
    Hirac danced with closed eyes. The sweat was making runnels through the chalked pattern on his skin and it