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.
It was Galeth who had hauled Saban away. ‘You fool!’ Galeth said. ‘You want to die?’
‘I was beating him!’
‘He’s a man. You’re a boy! And you’re going to have a black eye.’ Galeth pushed Saban away, then turned on Jegar. ‘Leave him alone,’ he ordered. ‘Your chance comes next year.’
‘He attacked me!’ Jegar said. His hand was bleeding where Saban had bitten it. He sucked at the blood, then picked up his spear. There was rage in his eyes, for he knew he had been humiliated. ‘A boy who attacks a man has to be punished,’ he insisted.
‘No one attacked anyone,’ Galeth said. He was huge, and his anger was frightening. ‘Nothing happened here. You hear me? Nothing happened!’ He drove Jegar back. ‘Nothing happened!’ He turned on Derrewyn who had watched the fight with wide eyes. ‘Be about your work, girl,’ he ordered, then pushed Saban back to the roof. ‘And you’ve got work to do, so do it.’
Hengall chuckled when he heard about the fight. ‘Was he really winning?’ he asked Galeth.
‘He wouldn’t have lasted,’ Galeth said, ‘but yes, he was winning.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ Hengall said approvingly, ‘a good boy!’
‘But Jegar will try to stop him passing the ordeals,’ Galeth warned.
Hengall dismissed his younger brother’s fears. ‘If Saban is to be chief,’ he said, ‘then he must be able to deal with men like Jegar.’ He chuckled again, delighted that Saban had shown such courage. ‘You’ll keep an eye on the boy through the winter?’ he asked. ‘He deserves better than to be speared in the back.’
‘I shall watch him,’ Galeth promised grimly.
It proved a cruelly hard winter, and the only good news of that cold season was that the warriors of Cathallo abandoned their raids on Hengall’s land. The peace, which would be sealed by Saban’s marriage, was holding, though some folk reckoned Cathallo was just waiting for Hengall’s death before snapping up Ratharryn as they had conquered Maden. Others reckoned that it was the weather that kept Kital’s men at bay, for the snow lay thick for days and the river froze so that the women had to break the ice to fetch their daily water. There were days when the snow on the hills blew from the low crests like smoke, when the fires seemed to give no warmth and the ice-bound huts crouched in a grey-white land that offered no hope of warmth or life. The weak of the tribe, the old, the young, the sick and the cursed, died. There was hunger, but the warriors of the tribe hunted in the forests. None rivalled Jegar and his band who, day after day, brought back carcasses that were butchered outside the settlement where the guts steamed in the cold air as the tribe’s dogs circled in hope of spoil. The hunters gave the stags’ skulls to women who fed their cooking fires with wood till they burned fierce, then held the roots of the antlers in the flames so that they would snap clean from the bone. There would be work to be done on the Old Temple in the spring, and the tribe would need scores of antler picks to make holes for the new stones that were to be fetched from Cathallo.
That winter never seemed to end. Wolves were seen by the river, but Gilan assured the tribe that all would be well when the new temple was made. This winter is the last of our woes, the high priest said, the last ill fortune before the new temple changes Ratharryn’s fate. There would be life again, and love, and warmth and happiness, and all things, Gilan assured the tribe, would be good.
Camaban had gone to Cathallo to learn. He had been alone for years, scavenging a thin living beyond Ratharryn’s embankment, and in those years he had listened to the voices in his head and he had thought about what they told him. Now he wanted to test that knowledge against the world’s other wisdom, and no one was wiser than Sannas, sorceress of Cathallo, and so Camaban listened.
In the beginning, Sannas said, Slaol and Lahanna had been lovers. They had circled the world in an endless dance, the one ever close to the other, but then Slaol had glimpsed Garlanna, the goddess of the earth who was Lahanna’s daughter, and he had fallen in love with Garlanna and rejected Lahanna.
So Lahanna had lost her brightness, and thus night came to the world.
But Garlanna, Sannas insisted, stayed loyal to her mother by refusing to join Slaol’s dance and so the sun god sulked and winter came to the earth. And Slaol still sulked, and would not listen to the folk on earth, for they reminded him of Garlanna. Which is why, Sannas insisted, Lahanna should be worshipped above all other gods because she alone had the power to protect the world from Slaol’s petulance.
Camaban listened, just as he listened to Morthor, Derrewyn’s father, who was high priest at Cathallo, and Morthor told a similar tale, though in his telling it was Lahanna who sulked and who hid her face in shame because she had tried and failed to dim her lover’s brightness. She still tried to diminish Slaol, and those were fearful times when Lahanna slid herself in front of Slaol to bring night in the daytime. Morthor claimed that Lahanna was the petulant goddess, and though he was Sannas’s grandson and though the two disagreed, they did not fight. ‘The gods must be balanced,’ Morthor claimed. ‘Lahanna might try to punish us because we live on Garlanna’s earth, but she is still powerful and must be placated.’
‘Men won’t condemn Slaol,’ Sannas told Camaban, ‘for they see nothing wrong with him loving a mother and her daughter.’ She spat. ‘Men are like pigs rolling in their own dung.’
‘If you visit a strange tribe,’ Morthor said, ‘to whom do you go? Its chief! So we must worship Slaol above all the gods.’
‘Men can worship whatever they want,’ Sannas said, ‘but it is a woman’s prayer that is heard, and women pray to Lahanna.’
On one thing, though, both Sannas and Morthor agreed: that the grief of this world had come when Slaol and Lahanna parted, and that ever since the tribes of men had striven to balance their worship of the two jealous gods. It was the same belief that Hirac had held, a belief that
