LITMIR.BIZ

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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,

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