Page 59 of Circle of Days

They always told each other what they had done.

Neen often lay with a stranger from the north, someone she would probably never see again; she enjoyed the feeling that what she was doing would have no consequences.

Seft hoped to find a group of women and men all having sex with each other at the same time.

There was no love in it: that was part of the attraction.

They came to the edge of the village. Fires had been lit at intervals, taking the bite from the winter air.

Most people were still looking around, some alone, some in pairs, a few in small groups, searching for whatever it was they liked.

A few had begun, and several shearling coats were humping up and down already.

Seft and Neen kissed affectionately. Neen said: “Have a good time.”

Seft said: “You too.”

Then they went in different directions.

Sometimes Joia envied those who liked sex with people they did not love, or did not even know.

It might be fun to enjoy the pleasure then forget the person.

But she could not do it. She had tried, with a priestess at a revel, but it had left her unmoved and reluctant to try again.

So, when the poet ended his story, she headed back to the Monument.

There would be a few traders outside now, she expected, guarding the goods left there overnight. Some would be walking around, chatting to each other, while others would be asleep.

However, as she got closer she realized that it was not so. She could hear strange noises and she smelled smoke. She broke into a run.

The possessions of the traders littered the ground outside the earth bank, but there seemed to be no one guarding them.

Looking closer, she saw a boy peeping out from under a leather blanket.

She recognized him as Janno, grandson of El the flint knapper.

She knelt down beside him. “What’s happening, Janno? ” she said.

He was terrified and barely coherent. “They killed my sister!” he said hysterically. He pointed, and Joia saw the body of a young woman on the ground.

“I’m very sorry, Janno,” Joia said. “That’s very sad. But you must tell me something else. What did they steal?”

“Nothing!” he said.

Joia was baffled. What did they want? And who were they?

She looked toward the Monument. The moonlight showed her five or six figures on the circular bank, presumably traders who had been guarding their pitches.

At first she thought they must be dead, but then she saw that they were moving.

They seemed to be peeping over the edge—as she had done so many midsummers ago—but what were they watching?

There could be no ceremony going on: none was scheduled, and the priestesses were still at Riverbend.

Fear seized her.

She ran to the bank and up the slope to the top, then looked into the circle. She was horrified by what she saw.

The Monument was burning.

Some thirty men and women were there, and by their bare feet she knew they were woodlanders.

She could see the remains of the dry twigs they had used as tinder, and she could smell the birch tar they had applied to make sure the timbers blazed up quickly.

Now all the posts were on fire and some of the crossbars were already smoldering.

Two figures lay still on the ground, and Joia knew by their long tunics that they were priestesses.

They must have decided to skip the revel and come straight home, as Joia had.

But they had been ahead of her and had tried to stop the woodlanders burning the Monument.

The positions of their bodies, and their splayed limbs, told her they were dead.

One of the woodlanders was Bez.

Joia stood upright at the very top of the ridge and yelled: “Bez! Bez! This is me—I am Joia!”

All the woodlanders looked at her. She could tell by their faces that their blood was up and they wanted to kill her. She had acted without thinking—again—and she had done something stupid and dangerous.

But she could not stop now.

She walked slowly down the slope into the circle, making herself appear calm while inside she was terrified. Speaking loudly, but not shouting, she said: “Stop, please, Bez.” She hoped they could not hear the tremor in her voice.

Bez said: “The gods demand a balance.”

One of the woodlanders ran at her and hit her with a club. She dodged, and the weapon missed her head but hit her shoulder, and she fell to her knees. I’m going to die now, she thought. And I have so much yet to do!

She looked at the man as he raised his club again. Then she heard Bez shout: “Omun!” then something peremptory in the woodlander tongue.

The man called Omun lowered his club and backed away.

Joia’s shoulder hurt like fire but she struggled up.

She looked at Bez, his face lit red by the flames.

He spoke again in the woodlander tongue, and pointed at the break in the bank that served as the entrance and exit.

Some of them spoke back angrily to him, and she guessed they wanted to kill her.

But Bez prevailed, and reluctantly they turned away from Joia and began to run.

She shouted: “Why are you doing this, Bez?”

“The gods demand a balance,” he said. “For a fire, there must be flame; and for a death, there will be killing.” Then he ran after the others.

She watched them leave the circle and charge along the path that led to Riverbend. What were they planning to do in the village? Whatever it was, they would meet more resistance there than they had at the Monument.

She had no way to warn the people in Riverbend. She could not run faster than woodlanders, so she could not overtake them and warn her family, and there was no means of giving the alarm at a distance.

Instead she knelt by the two priestesses on the ground. But her first instinct had been right: neither was breathing. Their heads had been smashed with clubs.

Struggling not to cry, she looked at the burning Monument.

She took off her tunic and tried to fight the fire with it.

She wrapped the leather around a burning post and succeeded in dousing the flames, then moved to the next post; but a moment later both posts collapsed, and the crossbar—also burning—fell to the ground.

There were seventy-five pieces of timber in the Monument—she was one of the few people who could count that high—and she realized that on her own she could do nothing to prevent the whole thing burning down.

She sat on the ground and cried.

A woman Seft had met for the first time that afternoon was on top of him, kissing him, while his hands explored two other people, a man and a woman, one on each side of him.

Then he began to hear shouts and screams that were not sounds of delight.

He fell still. The woman on top of him said: “What’s the matter?

” then she heard it, too, and said: “It sounds like a fight.”

It was a fight. Seft scrambled out from under her and got to his feet.

He saw a barefoot woodlander coming toward him at top speed, club raised.

He moved without thinking: he dodged the man, then tripped him, causing him to fall flat, then grabbed the club out of his hands.

The man got to his knees but, before he could stand, Seft brought the club down hard on his head.

The man fell on his face and lay still. For two or three moments Seft had acted mechanically, without emotion, but now he was filled with rage, and he hit the man again, three times, until his head was a pulp and he was undoubtedly dead.

He looked around, suddenly alert and fearful.

In the light of the fires he saw that the man who had run at him had not been alone.

A small army of woodlanders was attacking, using clubs and flint knives.

He thought of his three children, fast asleep at home, and knew that he should go to them even before he searched for Neen.

He broke into a run, swerving around pairs and groups of fighting people, desperate to reach his children; but someone came at him from behind, catching him by surprise. He was hit on his head and fell on his front.

As soon as he landed he rolled, in fear of his life, knowing the man would strike him again, as mercilessly as Seft himself had struck moments ago, and he looked up to see a woodlander raising a stone hammer.

Then the woodlander was in turn hit from behind. A hand holding a stone came down on the back of the man’s head, and he staggered.

Seft jumped to his feet, still determinedly holding the club.

He saw that the person who had saved him was Neen, and he felt a jolt of elation, seeing that she was unharmed.

But the fight was not over yet. The woodlander spun round and raised his hammer to hit Neen.

Seft swung his club to hit him in the side exposed by the raised arm, and the overwhelming impulse to protect Neen gave him supernatural strength.

He connected with the woodlander’s right shoulder, and the man dropped the hammer and staggered sideways.

Neen hit the woodlander’s head with her stone, and Seft hit him with his club, and the man fell.

Seft was filled with savage fury and would have beaten the fallen man to death, but Neen said: “The children,” and they ran together, not waiting to find out whether their attacker was dead or alive.

They raced through the village to their house. They went inside and found all three children sleeping. Tears of relief ran down Seft’s face into his beard.

He bent over the children, staring hard at each in turn, looking at their peaceful faces. It seemed strange that they could sleep through a battle, but perhaps a few shouts in the night were not so unusual. In any case, the noise was dying down.