LITMIR.BIZ

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noticed, for the very first time, how the ring of chalk had been placed on a slope so that it was very slightly tilted towards the place where the sun rose in midsummer.

      ‘It looks beautiful,’ Lidda, Galeth’s woman, said.

      ‘It does look beautiful,’ Galeth agreed. It was Galeth, practical, strong and efficient, who would have to raise the stones, and he tried to imagine how the eight great boulders would look in that clean setting of grass and chalk. ‘Slaol will be pleased,’ he decided.

      There was thunder that night, but no rain. Just thunder, far off, and in the darkness two of the tribe’s children died. Both had been sick, though no one had thought they would die. But in the morning the sun rose to make the newly cleared chalk-ring shine, and the gods, folk reckoned, were once again smiling on Ratharryn.

      Derrewyn was not yet a woman, but it was a custom in both Ratharryn and Cathallo that betrothed girls would live with their prospective husband’s family, so Derrewyn came to Ratharryn to live in the hut of Hengall’s oldest surviving wife.

      Her arrival disturbed the tribe. She might be a year from womanhood, but her beauty had blossomed early and the young warriors of Ratharryn stared at her with undisguised yearning, for Derrewyn of Cathallo was a girl to stir men’s dreams. Her black hair hung below her waist and her long legs were tanned dark by the sun. About her ankles and her neck she wore delicate chains of pure white sea-shells, all the shells alike and of a size. Her eyes were dark, her face was slender and high-boned, and her spirit as quick as a kingfisher’s flight. The young warriors of Hengall’s tribe noted her, watched her, and reckoned she was too good for Saban who was still only a child. Hengall, seeing their desire, ordered Gilan to work a protective charm on the girl, so the high priest placed a human skull on the roof of Derrewyn’s hut and beside it he put a phallus of unfired clay and every man who saw the charm understood its threat. Touch Derrewyn without permission, the skull and phallus said, and you will die, and from that time the men looked, but did nothing more.

      Saban also looked and yearned, and some in the tribe noted how Derrewyn gazed back at Saban, for he was promising to be a handsome man. He was still growing, but already he was as tall as his father and he had all Lengar’s quickness of eye and hand. He was accurate with a yew bow, was one of the fastest runners in the tribe and yet was modest, calm-tempered and well liked in Ratharryn. He promised to be a good man, but if he failed his ordeals he would never be reckoned an adult, so, in the months after his first meeting with Derrewyn, he was kept busy learning the secrets of the woods and the ways of the beasts. He watched the stags fighting and rutting, found where the otters had their dens and learned how to steal honey from irate bees. He was not allowed to sleep in the woods for he was still a child, but he killed his first wolf in early winter, felling it with a well-aimed arrow and ending the wounded beast’s life with a blow of a stone axe. Galeth’s woman, Lidda, pierced the wolf’s claws and threaded them on a sinew, then gave the necklace to Saban.

      Saban might have been the son of the chief, but he was expected to work like everyone else. ‘A man who does nothing,’ Hengall liked to say, ‘eats nothing.’ Galeth was the tribe’s best woodworker, and for seven years Saban had been learning his uncle’s trade. He had learned all the names of the tree gods and how to placate them before an axe was laid to a trunk, and he had learned how to shape oak and ash into beams, posts and rafters. Galeth taught him how to make an adze blade from flint, and how to tie it to the haft with wet oxhide strips that shrank tight so that the head did not loosen during work. Saban was allowed to use flint tools, but neither he nor Galeth’s son, who had been born to Galeth’s first wife, were ever permitted to touch the two precious bronze axes that had been carried long distances across the land and had cost Galeth dearly in pigs and cattle.

      Saban learned to carve beechwood into bowls and willow into paddles. He learned how to whittle a branch of stone-hard yew wood into a deer-killing bow. He learned to joint wood, and how to auger it with spikes of flint, bone or holly. He learned how to take an elm trunk and shape it into a hollow boat that could float all the way down the river to the sea and bring back bags of salt, shells and dried fish. He learned how to peg green oak so that it shrank into place, and he learned well, for in the winter before Saban’s ordeals Galeth trusted him to raise a new roof on the hut where Derrewyn slept.

      Saban stripped the rotting thatch, but first handed the skull down to Derrewyn who, knowing that it protected her, kissed its forehead and then looked up at Saban. ‘And the rest,’ she said, smiling.

      ‘The rest?’

      ‘The clay,’ she said. The unfired clay phallus had crumbled in the weather, but Saban collected what he could from among the rotting thatch and gave it to her. She grimaced at the dirty scraps of clay, but found one fragment that was cleaner than the rest and reached up to give it back to Saban. ‘Swallow it,’ she ordered him.

      ‘Swallow it?’

      ‘Do it!’ she insisted, then laughed at his expression as he forced the lump down his throat.

      ‘Why did I do that?’ Saban asked her, but she just laughed and then the laugh faded as Jegar came round the hut’s corner.

      Jegar was now the tribe’s best hunter. He went into the forest for days, leading a band of young men who brought back carcasses and tusks. There were some in the tribe who believed Jegar should succeed Hengall, for it was plain the gods favoured him, though if Jegar shared that opinion he showed no sign of it. Instead he was respectful to Hengall and took care to offer the chief the best cuts of meat from his kill and Hengall, in turn, dealt cautiously with the man who had once been Lengar’s closest companion.

      Jegar now stared at Derrewyn. Like the other men of the tribe he had been deterred by the skull on her roof, but he could not hide his longing for her, nor his jealousy of Saban. In the new year, when Saban undertook the ordeals of manhood, he would be hunted in the deep forest and all the tribe knew that Jegar and his hounds would be on Saban’s trail. And if Saban failed, then Saban could not marry.

      Jegar smiled at Derrewyn who clutched the skull to her breasts and spat. Jegar laughed, then licked his spear blade and pointed it at Saban. ‘Next year, little one,’ he said, ‘we shall meet in the trees. You, me, my hunting companions and my hounds.’

      ‘You need friends and hounds to beat me?’ Saban asked. Derrewyn was watching him and her gaze made him reckless. ‘Tell me about next year, Jegar,’ he said. He knew it was dangerously foolish to taunt Jegar, but he feared Derrewyn would despise him if he meekly allowed Jegar to bully him. ‘What will you do if you catch me in the forest?’ he demanded, jumping down to the ground.

      ‘Thrash you, little one,’ Jegar said.

      ‘You don’t have the strength,’ Saban said, and he picked up a long ash pole that was used to measure the lengths of the replacement rafters. He was taller than Jegar, and he also knew that Jegar would not dare kill him here in the settlement where so many were watching, but he was still risking a painful beating. ‘You couldn’t thrash a kitten,’ he added scornfully.

      ‘Go back to work, boy,’ Jegar said, but Saban just slashed the pole at him, making the smaller man step back. Saban slashed again, and the clumsy weapon whipped past Jegar’s face. This time the hunter snarled and levelled his spear. ‘Careful,’ he said.

      ‘Why should I be careful of you?’ Saban asked. Fear and exhilaration were competing in him. He knew this was stupidity, but Derrewyn’s presence had driven him to it and his own pride would not let him back down. ‘You’re a bully, Jegar,’ he said, drawing back the pole, ‘and I’ll thrash you bloody.’

      ‘You child!’ Jegar said, and ran at Saban, but Saban had guessed what Jegar would do and he let the pole’s tip fall so that it tangled Jegar’s legs, and then he twisted the pole, tripping Jegar, and as Jegar fell Saban jumped on him and beat his enemy’s head with his fists. He landed two hard blows before Jegar managed to twist round and lash back. Jegar could not use his spear for Saban was on top of him, so first he tried to punch the boy away, then he clawed at Saban’s eyes. Saban bit one of the probing fingers and tasted blood, then hands seized and dragged him off Jegar. Other hands pulled Jegar away.

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