He tossed it once, lightly, just to get a feel for the rotation. The handle hit the target instead of the head. So he retrieved the axe, knowing the Keldara were judging him carefully, and tried again. That time was just about right with the head impacting backwards. A bit more emphasis on rotation would get it.
The third time he threw the weapon lighter than he could, but got the spin just right. The handle hit with a distinct “bong” and the head thunked in an inch or so. He knew he could do better, but no reason to show that off, yet.
“Good throw, Kildar,” Father Ferani said, frowning. “You have thrown axes before.”
“Not like this,” Mike said, going downrange to retrieve the weapon. “I will try again when the young men get here.”
He gave the axe to one of the Keldara and waited with them for the younger men. In the meantime, he listened as the men talked about the festival. There would be games and competitions during the day, then a feast in the evening.
“There are oxen that are supposed to be stalled for the Kildar, aren’t there?” he asked Father Makanee. “Would it be appropriate to donate one to the feast? There are not just the Keldara to be fed, but the trainers as well.”
“Yes, Kildar,” the elder said, smiling. “That would be excellent. We could slaughter it in the morning and then have it cook all day for the feast in the evening.”
“Do it,” Mike said. “If I’m going to be the Kildar, I should be the Kildar all the way. What are you doing with the other oxen that are no longer being used for work?” Oxen were male cattle that had been gelded, effectively steers. They made for the best beef if properly fed up.
“They are turned out to pasture,” Father Makanee said, gesturing towards the pastures on the east side of the valley.
“I’ll get Genadi to get some feed for them,” Mike said. “We can partially graze them and partially feed them up, then slaughter what we don’t eat this year in the fall. I like a good steak. And with all this unused beef trotting around, it seems a shame not to have plenty. Not to mention contributing to other festivals. Are there more I should know about?”
“There are four major festivals that we celebrate,” Father Makanee said. “One for each season. There is another in midsummer, then a harvest festival and the winter festival. They are called Balar, Laman, Samnan and Imbol.”
“Crap,” Mike muttered. “Do you burn fires at the summer festival?”
“At each, with the largest being at Imbol,” Father Makanee said, looking at him askance. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing,” Mike said, frowning. “Okay, let’s just say that it reminds me of something, strongly, and that something doesn’t add up. Plenty of societies have… festivals at each of those points. But the specific practices vary and the names vary a lot. The names you just gave, and some of the practices, match closest to the Celts. Which has one of two reasons: Either you’re displaced Celts or originals. The Celts came from somewhere in Eastern Europe back in the Neolithic.” He looked at Father Makanee and shrugged. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“Who are the Celts?” Father Makanee asked.
“Wow, ask an easy one,” Mike replied. “The Celts were a tribe that probably exploded out of Eastern Europe back when people used stone tools. They spread through northern Europe as lords over the population that was originally there and founded various separate tribes. The Gauls were Celts, as were the Irish and the Scottish. There’s some argument that the Germanic tribes, including the Norse, were a Celtic offshoot. They’re best known, though, in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The point is that when people got around to studying their seasonal festivals, they found that they had four major ones: Imbolc, at the point between the winter solstice and the spring solstice, Beltane, around May first or now, Lammas, between the summer solstice and the fall solstice and Samhain, what’s celebrated these days as Halloween, between the fall solstice and the winter. Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain. And yours are Imbol, Balar, Laman and Samnan. That can’t be coincidence. For that matter, the fires in Scandinavia at Lammas are called ‘Baldur’s Balar.’ Baldur’s Balefire. Of course, by the time anyone got around to recording things like that, they’d converted to Christianity and the old reasons for the fires had faded.”
“You speak of Baldur?” Father Mahona asked, curiously. “What do you know of Baldur?”
“Baldur was the Norse god of the spring and summer,” Mike said, dredging out his memory of the Norse mythology. “His symbol was the mistletoe because it was the one plant that could kill him. Loki tricked… someone, Frey maybe, into throwing a spear made of mistletoe at him and it killed him. His mother was so grief stricken that she turned her face from the world and brought winter. The gods bring him back for six months every year, though, and that is spring and summer. When he is in the underworld it is winter. The Celts had a slightly different take on it, but the Norse and Celts celebrate similar rituals at similar times. Heck, there are similarities to the Adonis myth, for that matter, and Persephone.”
Father Mahona and Father Makanee traded a look for a moment which Mike caught but couldn’t interpret. The locals were regular Sunday church goers at the small church in Alerrso and there was no reason for them to celebrate Norse or Celtic rituals. The similarities had to be coincidence. Practically every society in the Northern Hemisphere had similar seasonal rituals. Of course, most of them dated back to prehistoric rituals involving the old gods. But none of the societies maintained the actual religion.
“How is the training going?” Father Mahona said, clearing his throat.
“Too early to tell,” Mike replied, willing to change the subject. “The guys are just getting zeroed today. Ask me in a couple of months.”
“Much like the planting,” Father Makanee said. “The seed is in the ground. Ask us in a couple of months if there will be a good crop.”
“Well, the seed is good and the planting went well,” Mike said, smiling. “The crop should be excellent.”
“There could be a late frost,” Father Makanee said. “Or a sudden storm as it is about to be brought in. Many things can happen to ruin the crop.”
“I was actually talking about the militia,” Mike said, smiling again.
“So was I,” Father Makanee replied.
“I’m worried about the actual crop,” Father Mahona said, unhappily. “I know that Genadi thinks we’ll get more from these new hybrids, but we haven’t planted as much land as last year…”
“With the new plows we planted nearly as much,” Father Makanee replied, shaking his head. “And we were able to leave more fallow, which is good. You know we’ve been overusing the Sardana field. It’s just not producing like it did once. Let it lie for a while…”
“But we put a crop in the Sardana,” Mahona snapped. “Bloody clover if you can believe it! What’s wrong just turning the cattle out on it?”
“Genadi says we will later in the season,” Makanee said, soothingly.
“We’ll never get enough food in for winter, you’ll see,” Mahona said, balefully. “What with all that junk he had us spray the fields with…”
“Weed killer’s only going to help,” Mike said. “We’re trying to grow wheat and oats and barley and peas, not thistles. What do you think the barley crop will do?”
“Well, the barley’s our own,” Father Makanee said. “Not a hybrid. We’ve used the same barley for generations and the women won’t let us change. So we’ll have to see what we see with that. But I think the wheat and peas will do well. Next year, we’re going to see about soybeans.”