“Your brother won’t let me,” Saban said, nodding to the spearmen who watched him on Scathel’s orders. Today Saban would become the high priest’s hostage. He wondered why he had not fled eastward in the night, and he knew it was because of Aurenna. He loved her and he could not leave her, even if by staying he could do nothing to help her.
Haragg and Cagan crossed the river in a log boat and vanished among the trees. A moment later Scathel emerged from Kereval’s large hut. The high priest wore his feather cloak that ruffled and shivered in the wind. His hair had been stiffened with red mud, while around his neck hung a chain of sea-monster teeth. At his waist was a belt at which two knives were scabbarded. Leckan, the next most senior priest, was wearing a cape made from tanned human skin and the faces of the two men whose hides had been flayed hung down his back with their long hair trailing. Another priest had antlers on his head. They danced from the hut, and the waiting tribe began to shuffle from side to side. A drummer began to beat a skin and the shuffle took rhythm as someone began to sing. Camaban joined the dance. He was wearing a cloak of deerskin and had smeared his face with strips of soot.
Scathel pointed at Saban. “Take him!” he ordered, and a dozen of the red-painted warriors closed on Saban with their spears. They herded him to the pit’s edge, but before they could throw him into its depths Aurenna appeared.
Her white face was drawn and shadowed, but her tall body was swathed in the fresh woolen robe and the replacement gold glinted at her breast and neck. Her hair had been combed straight, though the wind immediately lifted it as she walked slowly toward the dancing priests. She did not look at Saban, but kept her eyes on the ground, and then, when Scathel summoned her, she turned obediently toward the gate. The crowd sighed and the dancers moved to join the procession that would take her to the Sea Temple.
Scathel nodded to the spearmen guarding Saban and two of them pulled the cloak from his shoulders while a third drew a knife and slashed Saban’s tunic from neck to hem, then tugged the garment away so that he was naked. “Jump,” the spearman ordered.
Saban looked round a last time. Camaban was not looking at him and Aurenna had gone beyond the gate, then one of the impatient spearmen threatened him and so, resigned, he jumped into the prison pit. It was deep and the impact of the fall was painful, and when he stood he saw that he could not reach to the pit’s top. The great trellis of branches was placed over his prison and was fixed in place with wooden pegs that were banged into the earth.
Then there was just the sigh of the wind and the sound of the drumming that faded as the tribe left the settlement. One of the two spearmen who had been left to guard Saban dropped a skin of water through the trellis, then went away, and Saban huddled in a corner with his arms about his knees and his head dropped on to a forearm.
Aurenna would die. And he would be tortured, blinded and maimed. Because the gold had gone to Ratharryn.
In Ratharryn the priests had also determined that this day was midsummer and so, as dusk approached, the tribe lit the fires and prepared themselves for the bull-dancing and the flame-jumping. Derrewyn ignored the excitement. She was hunched in a corner of Lengar’s hut, hidden from the men by a leather curtain. She was naked. Lengar insisted on it, for he enjoyed humiliating her, calling her the whore of Cathallo. She was Lengar’s wife, forced to marry him in Slaol’s temple, but in the last moons any of Lengar’s friends could summon Derrewyn and she must go to them or else risk a beating, and there were scars on her face, shoulders and arms where they had all drunkenly thrashed her. Jegar had beat her the worst because she mocked him most. She mocked them all, for that had been her best defence. Now she crouched by the curtain, listened to the three men talk and felt the baby stir in her belly. She knew it was Lengar’s baby, and she was certain it would be a son. It would be born in two or maybe three moons. The men took less interest in her now that she was pregnant, but still they insulted her. None, however, detected the seething anger that burned within her. They believed they had defeated her.
The three men in the hut, Lengar, Jegar and Vakkal, were talking of Cathallo. Vakkal was the war leader from Sarmennyn who had helped Lengar gain the chieftainship; he now boasted blue scars like the warriors of Ratharryn and spoke in Ratharryn’s tongue. He was another of the men who had been given permission to summon Derrewyn whenever he wished, the privilege of Lengar’s friends. Now he listened as Lengar declared Cathallo was ripe for defeat. The tribe had never recovered from Sannas’s death and with her had gone the sorcery that Lengar believed had kept Cathallo safe. So in the late summer, Lengar said, Ratharryn should attack Cathallo again, only this time they would leave their enemy’s settlement burned. They would pull down its great temple, level the Sacred Mound and piss on the grave mounds of Cathallo’s ancestors.
“Are you listening, whore?” Jegar called. Derrewyn did not answer. “Sullen bitch,” Jegar said, and Derrewyn heard the slurring in his voice and knew he was drinking the Outfolk liquor.
Tonight, Vakkal was saying, they would be burning the sun bride in Sarmennyn.
“Maybe we should burn Derrewyn,” Jegar suggested.
“Slaol wouldn’t want her,” Lengar said. “Give Slaol a whore and he’ll turn his back on us.”
“He will not thank us,” Vakkal said, “if we do not watch his setting tonight.” The fires were already burning in Ratharryn’s fields and the bull men were waiting to dance among the wooden poles of Slaol’s temple.
“We must go,” Lengar said. “Stay here, whore!” he called to Derrewyn beyond the curtain and he left one of his young warriors in the hut to guard the treasures that were hidden beneath the floor and under the great piles of precious hides. “If the whore gives you trouble,” Lengar told the young spearman, “hit her.”
The spearman settled beside the fire. He was very young, though he already possessed two blue scars to represent the two warriors of Cathallo whom he had slaughtered at a battle on the heights above Maden. Like many of the young men in the tribe he revered Lengar because the new chief had made Ratharryn’s spearmen feared and his followers wealthy. The youth dreamed of owning many cattle and wives. He dreamed of a great hut all of his own and of heroic songs sung about his exploits.
A sound made him turn his head and he saw that Derrewyn had appeared at the edge of the curtain. She was kneeling and when the warrior looked at her she dropped her head submissively. She had combed her long hair and hung an amber pendant round her neck, but otherwise she was naked. She kept her eyes lowered and made a whimpering sound as she shuffled forward on her knees. The spearman instinctively looked at the door to see if anyone was watching, but no one was there. Only the very old and the sick were left in Ratharryn; the rest of the folk were at Slaol’s temple where the bull men were covering the girls in Slaol’s honor.
The spearman watched Derrewyn approach. The fire made the shadows of her small breasts livid and lit her swollen belly. Then she looked up at him and there was an immense sadness in her big eyes. She mewed pitifully, then crept forward into the heat of the fire. The warrior frowned. “You must go back,” he said nervously.
“Hold me,” she begged him. “I’m lonely. Hold me.”
“You must go back!” he insisted. He was frightened that her glistening pregnant belly might burst if he used force to push her back behind the curtain.
“Hold me,” she said again, and she edged his spear aside and put her left arm round his neck. “Please hold me.”
“No,” he said, “no,” but he was too scared of her to push her away and so he let her pull his head toward hers. He smelt her hair. “You must go back,” he said, and Derrewyn put her right hand between her thighs where the short bronze-bladed knife was clamped and she ripped the weapon upward, straight into his belly, and the spearman’s eyes widened, then he gasped as she twisted the blade in his guts and jerked it on upward, through the band of muscle under his lungs and into the tangle of blood tubes about his heart so that she felt the warm gush of his life surge over
her wrist and thighs. He tried to push her away, but his strength was gone; she heard the rattle in his throat and saw his eyes turn cloudy and Derrewyn felt the first real joy she had known since Lengar’s return. It was as though Sannas’s restless spirit had come to fill her and that thought made her go very still, but then the dead man’s weight fell onto her and she wrenched the bloody knife free and tilted him sideways so that his head fell in the fire. His hair, greasy because he had wiped his fingers in its strands after eating, crackled and flared bright in the gloom.
Derrewyn was already across the hut. She went to the pile of furs that was Lengar’s bed, hauled the pelts aside and began scraping at the soil with the bloody blade. She tore the earth open, delving down until the knife struck leather and then she scrabbled the soil clear and hauled the bag into the firelight.
Inside the bag was one of Sarmennyn’s great lozenges and two of their small ones. She had hoped all the gold might be there, but Lengar must have divided the treasure and hidden the other pieces elsewhere in the hut. For a moment she considered tearing the hut apart, upsetting the pelts and scratching at the earth, but these three pieces, surely, would be enough.
She dressed in one of Lengar’s tunics, tied leather shoes onto her feet and seized Lengar’s precious bronze sword which hung from one of the hut’s poles. She took the bag with the three gold pieces and went to the hut’s door where she paused. It was still not quite dark, but she could see no one and so she gathered the folds of the tunic and ducked under the lintel.
There were spearmen guarding both the causeways that led through Ratharryn’s great embankment, so Derrewyn ran to the ditch halfway between the entrances. There had been rain that summer and the bottom of the ditch was marshy, but she splashed through and then climbed the vast bank. She went slowly so she would meld with the shadows and either the gate guards did not see her or else Lahanna was looking after Derrewyn this night for she reached the embankment’s crest undetected. She stopped there for a moment and turned to see that the sun was glinting brilliant through a slit in the dark clouds that otherwise obscured the southwestern horizon. The tribe was dancing around the temple poles, while far off, up on the higher land, the new Sky Temple stood deserted again.
She hissed at the sun like a cat. Lengar worshipped Slaol, so Slaol was Derrewyn’s enemy, and she crouched above the skulls that topped the embankment and spat at the sun that had turned all the bruised clouds red and gold. Then, quite suddenly, his brightness vanished.
And Derrewyn vanished with him. She slid down the outer bank and through the dark trees until she reached the river where she turned northward, and as she passed the island where she had first lain with Saban she remembered him, but there was no trace of fondness in the memory. Fondness had been banished from her, along with kindness and laughter and pity, all washed from her by tears. She had become Cathallo’s whore and now she would work Cathallo’s revenge.
The short midsummer night fell and still she went north.
Later, much later, she heard the hounds baying behind her, but she had taken to the river and hounds cannot follow a spirit across water so Derrewyn knew she was free. She still had to slip past the spearmen who garrisoned Maden and cross the swamps, but she felt confident and strong because Lahanna was shining above her and in her hand she held some of the precious power of the sun god that she would give to Lahanna.
She had escaped, she carried Lengar’s child, and now she would make war.
In Sarmennyn it began to rain in the afternoon. The wind was rising, the rain fell heavier and beyond the trellis of branches Saban could see that the sky had become a turbulent gray shot through with black. The wind was flicking the thatch from the huts and the rain began to flood the pit.
When the first thunder sounded Saban put his head back and cried to the god of thunder and then he scrabbled at the dripping wet sides of the pit until he had prised out a sharp-edged stone that he used to make a step in the soil. He hacked a second step, a third, and then tried to climb the steps, but his bare feet slipped on the wet soil and he constantly fell back into the rising water.
He sobbed with frustration, found the stone again and tried to enlarge the steps. The water had risen to his ankles. Rain was thrashing on the trellis and dripping onto his face, the wind was a constant howl and the noise was so loud that he did not hear the splintering as the trellis was lifted clean away from the pit. He only knew he was rescued when a wet cloak was lowered to him and Haragg’s voice shouted at him to take hold.
Saban saw Haragg and Cagan in the gloom above him. He gripped the cloak and Cagan lifted him like a child, swinging him up and out of the pit so that he sprawled on the grass. He lay there, wet and shaking, staring into the eye of the storm that had come from the sea to batter and thrash the coast. The trees tossed in the screeching gale while whole armloads of thatch were being torn from the huts and blown beyond the river. There was no sign of the men left to guard Saban.
“We must go,” Haragg said, lifting Saban from the grass, but Saban shook off the trader’s hand. Instead he went to Kereval’s hut and pushed past the curtain, half expecting to find his guards inside, but the hut was empty and he dried himself by rolling on a great pelt, then pulled on a deerskin tunic.
Haragg had followed him into the hut. “We must go,” he said again.
“Go where?”
“Far off. There is madness here. We must get you away from Scathel.”
“This is Erek’s madness,” Saban said as he helped himself to boots and a cloak and one of Kereval’s bronze-bladed spears. “We must go to the Sea Temple,” he told Haragg.
“To see her die?” Haragg asked.
“To see what sign Erek is sending,” Saban said, and he pushed past the leather curtain into the howling rain. One of the spearmen was now out in the settlement’s center where he was peering into the empty pit. As he turned to shout to his fellow guard he saw Saban and ran at him with his spear leveled. “You must go into the hole!” he shouted, though his words were snatched away in the wind’s fury.
Saban hefted his spear. The guard shook his head, as though to indicate that he had no intention of stabbing Saban, but merely wanted him to go voluntarily to Scathel’s pit. Instead Saban began walking to the gate and the guard lunged to head him off and Saban knocked the spear aside. Suddenly he was overcome by all the frustrations of the last few weeks, by the helplessness of watching Aurenna go so placidly to her death, and he drove his own spear back at the guard like a swinging axe so that the blade sliced across the guard’s face. Blood started into the wind and was whipped away in a red spray, and Saban, screaming hate, plunged the spear into the man’s belly and went on thrusting so that the guard fell back into the mud and Saban had to put his booted foot onto the dying man’s belly to tug the blade free.
Then he ran, and Haragg and Cagan followed him.
Saban was not running for fear of the dying man’s spirit, but because the long day was already close to dark, though he guessed that darkness was brought by the storm clouds rather than by Slaol’s setting. And this, he reckoned, was a storm like that which had brought the gold to Ratharryn, a storm caused by a war among the gods. Saban staggered in the wind’s hard blast. The cloak was almost torn from him, flapping at his shoulders like a monstrous bat’s wing and he untied the lace at his throat and watched the leather whip away across a land running with water. He struggled on into the rain, near blinded and deafened by the wind.
He came to the hills above the sea and he watched in awe as the ocean tried to break the land to pieces. The waves were ragged, white-crested and large as hills, and their spray burst on rocks then leapt to the black clouds before flying inland on the gale. On Saban went with his head down, stung by salt, buffeting into the wind, and the sky seemed darker than ever. Haragg and Cagan walked with him. There would surely be no last sight of Slaol this day, and perhaps, Saban thought, there would be no sight of Slaol ever again. Perhaps this was the world’s ending, and he cried aloud for
that thought.
A stab of lightning hissed to the far sea, making all the world white and black, and then a crash of thunder sounded overhead and Saban whimpered in fear of the gods. He was climbing a low hill and another jagged bolt tore from the sky as he reached the crest and in its wicked light he saw the Sea Temple beneath him. At first he thought it was deserted, but then he saw that the crowd of folk had scattered into the fields where they huddled for shelter in tumbled rocks. Only a few men were still in the temple circle and their presence drove Saban on. Haragg and Cagan stayed on the hill crest, sheltering among its boulders.
A great sea tore itself into oblivion at the foot of the cliff and the spray whipped over the cliff’s summit to drench the temple stones. On the ledge just below the cliff top, where there should have been a raging fire, there was nothing but wisps of steam or smoke. Priests and spearmen crouched in the stone ring and, as Saban ran closer, he saw Aurenna’s white robe among them.
She still lived.
Spearmen carried wood to the cliff’s edge and dropped the damp timber on to the failing fire. Scathel was standing and shouting, his robe stripped of its feathers by the wind’s rage, and if he saw Saban’s arrival he took no notice. Kereval looked aghast, fearing what this omen meant.
Camaban saw Saban, and it was then that Camaban performed the rites. He dragged Aurenna to the beginning of the avenue that led to the fire and he drew a knife from his belt and cut off the pieces of gold that Kereval had bought to replace the lost treasures of Erek. Aurenna seemed in a trance. Scathel pushed against the wind to bellow a protest at Camaban, but Camaban shouted back and it was Scathel who stepped away, and then Saban was beside his brother. “She must go to the fire!” Camaban shouted.
“There is no fire!”
“She must go to the fire, fool!” Camaban shouted, and he seized the neck of Aurenna’s drenched white robe and slashed at it with his knife.