The Chalk Giants (18 page)

Toward the end of one such baking day a column of waggons and riders rumbled steadily between hills of smooth brown grass. At the head of the cavalcade rode a troop of Warriors, their skins tawny, their beards and flowing hair dark. They carried bows and spears; and each man wore a skullcap of burnished steel. Behind them jolted an ornate siege engine, the tip of its throwing arm carved in the likeness of a great horse’s head. More Warriors brought up the rear, driving a little rabble of wailing women. Clouds had thickened steadily through the day, trapping the heat even closer to the earth. Thunder boomed and grumbled overhead; from time to time men glanced up uneasily, or back to the skyline where showed the palisade and ruined watchtowers of a village. Flames licked them, bright in the gloom; a cloud of velvet smoke hung and stooped, drifting slowly to the south.

Behind the tailboard of the last waggon staggered half a dozen men. They were naked, or nearly so, and streaked with dust and blood. Their wrists were bound; ropes of plaited hide passed round their necks, tethering them to the vehicle. Two more wretches had given up the unequal struggle; the bodies towed limply, jolting over the ridges and boulders of the track.

Shouts from ahead brought the column to a halt. The pale dust swirled, settling on men and horses; the prisoners dropped to their knees, groaning and fumbling at the nooses. A group of men cantered down the line of waggons, reined. They were richly dressed in trews and tunics of figured silk; and each wore a mask of woven grass, fringed with heads of green barley. Their leader carried a gilded Staff of Power; on his chest, proudly blazoned, was the great spear of the Corn Lord.

He nodded now gravely to the Horseman at his side. ‘You have done well,’ he said. ‘The spoil of the first waggon, the grain and unbleached cloth, is forfeit to my God. Also one in ten of the draught animals, and what sheep and goats you drive in from the hills.’ He held his palms up, fingers spread. ‘The rest the God returns to you, to do with as you choose. This the Reborn ordered me to say; will it be pleasing to you?’

The other showed his teeth. ‘Cha’Ensil,’ he said, ‘it will be as your Mistress desires. The Horse Warriors too know how to be generous.’

But the other had stiffened, eyes glittering through the mask. He said, ‘What have we here?’

The Horseman shrugged. ‘Prisoners, for the sacrifice,’ he said. He glanced at the lowering sky. ‘Our God becomes impatient when the nights are sultry,’ he said. ‘Have you not heard his hooves among the clouds?’

‘I heard the Corn Lord chuckle in his sleep,’ said the priest crushingly. He pointed with the Staff. ‘Show this one to me,’ he said. ‘Lift his face.’

The Warrior grunted, waving an arm. A man dismounted, walked to the prisoner. He twined his fingers in the matted hair, yanked. The priest drew his breath; then reached slowly to unlatch the mask. ‘Closer,’ he said. ‘Bring him here.’

The victim was dragged forward. Cha’Ensil stared; then leaned to place strong fingers beneath the other’s jaw. The cheekbones were high and delicately shaped, the nose tip-tilted and short. The green-grey eyes, glazed now with pain, were fringed with black. Blood had dried on muzzle and throat; the parted lips showed even white teeth.

A wait, while the oxen belched and grumbled, the horses jangled their bits. Then the priest turned. ‘He is little more than a child,’ he said. ‘He will not be pleasing to your God.’ He reached again to jerk at the leather noose. ‘The Corn Lord claims him,’ he said. ‘Put him in the wagon.’

The Horseman glared, hand on his sword hilt, face flushed with anger; and Cha’Ensil raised the glittering staff level with his eyes. ‘This is the God’s will,’ he said. ‘A little price to pay, for many blessings.’

Another wait, while the other pulled at his beard. The priest he would have defied readily enough; but behind him stood One whose displeasure was not lightly to be incurred. The thunder grumbled again; and he shrugged and turned his horse. ‘Take him,’ he said sardonically, ‘since your God gains such pleasure from striplings. The rest will serve our needs.’

The priest stared after him, with no friendly expression; then turned, gesturing once more with the Staff. A knife flashed, severing the noose. Released, the prisoner stood swaying; he was bundled forward with scant ceremony, slung into the leading cart. The tail-gate was latched shut; and Cha’Ensil rose in his stirrups, with a long yell. Whips cracked; the waggon turned jerkily from the line of march, lumbering to the south.

In the last of the light the vehicle and its escort reached a pass set between high chalk hills. The cloud-wrack, trailing skirts of mist, alternately hid and revealed the bulging slopes, crossed with sheep tracks, set with clumps of darker scrub. On the nearer crest, smears and nubbles of black showed the remnants of a village. On the flanks below sprawled a great chalk figure, while foursquare in the pass rose a steep and grassy mound. Across its summit, revealed by flickerings from above, curved a long ridge of roof; round it, among spikes and nodules of stone, straggled a mass of secondary building, pale plastered walls, gables of green-grey thatch. There was a stockade, topped with disembowelling spikes; and a gateway fronted by a deep ditch and flanked by vast drums of stone, themselves leaning till the arrow slits that once had faced the valley stared sightless at the green jungle below. Between them the party cantered, with a final jangle and clash. Torches were called for and a litter, the gates re-manned; and Cha’Ensil moved upward across the sloping lower ward. The rising wind fluttered at his cloak, whipping the pine-knots into screaming beards of flame.

The little chamber was windowless and hot, hazed with a blue smoke heavy with the scent of poppies. Torchlight gleamed on white walls and close grey thatch, flickered on the Chief Priest’s face as he stood expressionlessly, staring down. Finally he nodded. ‘This is well,’ he said. ‘Prepare him. Clean the dirt away.’

A rustling of skirts, whisper of feet on the bare earth floor; clink of a costly copper bowl. The limbs of the sleeping boy were sponged, his chest and belly washed with scented water. Lastly the stained cloth-scrap was cut away.

The priest drew breath between his teeth. ‘His hands and feet,’ he said. ‘Neglect no skill.’

The nails of the sleeper were cleaned with pointed sticks, the hair scraped from beneath his arms. His head was raised, his hair rinsed, combed with bone combs and rinsed again. Thunder grumbled close above the roof; and Cha’Ensil whitened his knuckles on his Staff. ‘Prepare his face,’ he said. ‘Use all your art.’

Stoppers were withdrawn from jars of faceted crystal; the women, working delicately, heightened the eyelids with a ghosting of dark green, shaped the full brows to a gender curve. The lashes, already lustrous, were blackened with a tiny brush. The sleeper sighed, and smiled.

‘Now,’ said Cha’Ensil. ‘Those parts that make him like a God.’

The nipples of the boy were stained with a bright dye; and the priest himself laid fingers to the groin, pressing and kneading till the member rose and firmed. Belly and thighs were brushed with a fine red powder; and Cha’Ensil stepped back. ‘Put the big necklet on him,’ he said. ‘And circlets for his arms.’

The dreamer was set upright, a cloak of fine wool hung from his shoulders. The women waited, expectantly; and Cha’Ensil once more gripped the boy’s chin, turned the face till the brilliant drugged eyes stared into his own. ‘You were dead,’ he muttered, ‘and you were raised. Blood ran from you; it was staunched. Mud dirtied you; it was washed away. Now you go as a God. Go by the Staff and Spear; and the God’s strength be with you.’ He turned away, abruptly. ‘Take him to the Long House,’ he said. ‘Leave him in the place appointed, and return to me. We must pray.’

The rumbling intensified, till it seemed boulders and great stones were rolled crashing through the sky. Lightning, flickering from cloud to cloud, showed the heads of grasses in restless motion, discovered hills and trees in washes of broad grey light. The light blazed far across the sea, flecking the restless plain of water; then the night was split.

With the breaking of the storm came rain. It fell not as rain customarily falls, but in sheets and solid bars; so that men in far-off villages, woken by the roaring on their roofs, saw what seemed silver spears driven into the earth. The parched dust leaped and quivered. Rivulets foamed on the eroded flanks of hills; twigs and green leaves were beaten from the taller trees. In the chalk pass, the brook that circled the base of the Mound raced in its deep bed; but toward dawn the violence died away. A morning wind moved across the hills, searching and cold as a knife; it brought with it a great sweet smell of leaves and fresh-soaked earth.

At first light two figures picked their way across the Mound, moving between the fingers and bosses of stone. Both were cloaked, both masked. Once they turned, staring it seemed at the flanking slope, the ruins and the chalk colossus that glimmered in the grass; and the taller inclined his head. ‘My Lady,’ he said in a strong, musical voice, ‘when have I injured you, or played you false? When have my words to you not become true?’

The woman’s voice when she answered was sharper-edged. ‘Cha’Ensil,’ she said, ‘we are both grown folk; grown older than our years perhaps in service of the God. So keep your tales for the little new priestesses; their lips are sweeter when they are afraid. Or tell them to the Horsemen, who are little children too. Perhaps there was a Great One in the land, long ago; but he left us, in a time best forgotten, and will scarcely return now. It isn’t good to joke about such things; least of all to me.’

They had reached the portal of the great hut crowning the Mound. Above, green rush demons glared eyeless at the distant heath. To either side stood bundles of bound reeds, each taller than a man; the Signs of the God. The priest laid his hand to the nearer, smiling gravely. ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘wise you are most certainly, and wiser in many things than any man. Yet I say this. The God has many forms, and lives to some extent in each of us. In most men he is hidden; but I have seen him shine most gloriously. Now I tell you I found him, lashed to a Horseman’s waggon. I knew him by the blood he shed, before I saw his face; for all Gods bleed, as penance for their people. I raised him with these hands, and placed him where he waits. As you will see.’

She stared up at him. ‘Once,’ she said coldly, ‘a child came here, hungering for just such a God. Now I tell you this, Cha’Ensil; I raised you, and what is raised can be thrown down again. If you jest with me, you have jested once too often.’

He spread his arms. ‘Lady,’ he said humbly, ‘my hands are at your service, and my heart. If I must give my head, then give it I shall; and that right willingly.’ He stooped, preceding her into the darkness of the hut.

She paused, as always, at sight of the remembered place. She saw the floor of swept and beaten earth, the gleam of roofpoles in the half dark; she smelled the great pond-smell of the thatch. At the wattle screens that closed off the end of the long chamber she stopped again, uncertain; and his hand touched her arm. ‘Behold,’ he said softly. ‘See the God...’

The boy lay quiet on the bracken bed within, his breathing even and deep. A woollen shawl partly covered him; the priest lifted it aside, and heard her catch her breath. ‘If I mistook,’ he said, ‘then blame the weakness of my eyes on gathering age.’

She took his wrist, not looking at him. ‘Priest,’ she said huskily, ‘there is wisdom in you. Wisdom and great love, that chides me what I spoke.’ She unfastened her cloak, laid it aside. ‘I will wait with him,’ she said, ‘and be here when he wakes. Let no one else approach.’ She sat quietly on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap; and Cha’Ensil bowed, slipping silently from the chamber.

Beyond the fringe of trees the hillside sloped broad and brilliant in sunlight. Above the boy as he lay the grass heads arched and whispered, each freighted with its load of golden specks. Between the stems he could see the valley and the tree-grown river, the reed beds where dragonflies hawked through the still afternoons. Beyond the river the chalk hills rose again, distant and massive. On the skyline, just visible from where he lay, stood the stockade and watchtower of his village.

His jerkin was unlaced; he wriggled luxuriously, feeling the coolness of the grass stroke belly and chest. He pulled a stem, lay sucking and nibbling at the sweetness. He closed his eyes; the hum of midsummer faded and boomed .close, heavy with the throb of distant tides. Below him the sheep grazed the slope like fat woollen maggots; and the ram moved restlessly, bonking his wooden bell, staring with his little yellow eyes.

The boy’s own eyes jerked open, narrowed.

She climbed slowly, crossing the hillside below him, gripping tussocks of grass to steady herself on the steepening slope. Once she straightened, seeming to stare directly toward where he lay; and he frowned and glanced behind him, as if considering further retreat. She stood hands on hips, searching the face of the hill; then turned away, continuing the long climb to the crest. On the skyline she once more turned; a tall, brown-skinned girl, dark hair blowing across face and throat. Then she moved forward, and clumps of bushes hid her from his sight.

He groaned, as he had groaned before; a strange, husky noise, half between moan and whimper. His teeth pulled at his lip, distractedly; but already the blood was pounding in his ears. He glared, guilty, at the indifferently cropping sheep, back to the skyline; then rose abruptly, hurrying from the shelter of the trees. Below the crest he stooped, dropping to hands and knees. He wriggled the rest of the way, peered down. The grass of the hillside was lush and long, spangled with the brilliant cups of flowers. He glimpsed her briefly, a hundred paces off; ducked, waited, and scuttled in pursuit.

There was a dell to which she came, he knew it well enough; a private place, screened with tangled bushes, shaded by a massive pale-trunked beech. He reached it panting, crawled to where he could once more see.

She lay on her back beneath the tree, hands clasped behind her head, her legs pushed out straight. Her feet were bare, and grimy round the shins; her skirt was drawn up, showing her long brown thighs. He edged forward, parting the grasses, groaning again. A long time she lay, still as a sleeper; then she began. She sat up, passing her hands across her breasts, squeezing them beneath her tunic. Then she pulled at its lacings; then shook her head till the hair cascaded across her face and rolled again and again, showing her belly, the great dark patch that meant now she was a woman.