The whole tribe had gathered around the last field, waiting to find out which would be chosen. Some had been gathering handfuls of the grain that nodded over the stone fences, arguing amongst themselves and Mike as pretty sure he saw some surreptitious betting on which field would win.
Mike was surprised, though, when he saw the harvester headed towards their position. He was under the impression the field for the Keldara’s beer was to be harvested by hand. But it was headed their way, driven by the farm manager, Genadi.
As the harvester neared, Mother Lenka waved to him and imperiously pointed at two fields. There were some mild groans in the crowd and Mike saw Sawn, one of the team leaders, collecting money.
As the harvester, which could rip through the five hectare fields in a few minutes, began to harvest the definite losers, the Mothers went back through the other fields.
“This is taking forever,” Adams finally muttered. “I’m gonna go get a beer.”
By the time Adams got back, Genadi had started on two more fields that didn’t make the cut. The mothers wandered back and forth between the final two and finally met near Mike’s position. This time there didn’t seem to be any argument, just a lot of nodding.
“The barley is chosen,” Mother Lenka shouted, very formally, holding up her arms. “Let it be harvested.”
Six young men, followed by four of the younger unmarried women, entered the field. The men were carrying scythes and working their shoulders, clearly preparing for the harvest. The girls were just giggling. Gretchen was among them and she broke off with Nikolai Mahona, one of the machine-gunners from Oleg’s team. Mike didn’t know the girls as well as he did the guys but he was able to pick out enough names to figure out that the teams were broken down by Families. Six families, six teams.
“It’s a race,” Vil said, coming over to lean on the fence by the Kildar.
“Hey, Vil,” Mike said. “We needed some cultural explanation.”
Vil was tall, slim and dark of hair. Very handsome as all the Keldara were, he looked just a tad like Omar Sharif.
When he first formed the militia, Mike had, with some “help”, chosen six of the younger Keldara to be the team leaders. He hadn’t realized just how carefully he had been steered until later. The six team leaders were the acknowledged heirs of the Families, the men who, when it was their time, would almost certainly be the Fathers of each family.
They, in turn, had chosen their team members in a process that reminded Mike of teams being chosen in school. He’d insisted that the teams have members from every house, spread as much as possible, so that if one team was badly damaged in a battle no one Family would bear the brunt. But, naturally, the team leaders had chosen people that they were most comfortable with. What had resulted were six distinctly different teams. Oh, each could do any basic job, but they each had specific vocation, a set of skills that leaned to one use or another.
Oleg was a big, “bull forward” guy and he’d chosen big, “bull forward” people for his team. If you needed something flattened, Team Oleg would do it best. Sawn Makanee was one of the more thoughtful Keldara and he’d chosen people who, like him, were a tad more intellectual. They talked about international politics and philosophy rather than beer. Oh, they could flatten stuff, too, but they would rather figure out if it really needed to be flattened. And so on.
Vil was a rapier to Oleg’s battleaxe. His team specialized in raid and ambush, hit and run, maneuver and feint. He had the faintly aristocratic air usually associated in old movies with British fops. But Mike would rather have him on a raid mission than any two of the other team leaders. And the guy was strong as hell, Mike had seen him lift twice his own weight in unwieldy rock before.
“When we used to do all this stuff by hand,” he continued, waving around the valley languidly, “the Chosen field would be left for last. The field is then harvested by six teams, chosen from unmarried men and women. When the last stalk is cut we make a sort of puppet which we call the sanbahn.”
“Old woman, probably,” Vanner said.
“That’s what we call it, yes,” Vil said, smiling faintly. “More books, yes?”
“Yep,” Vanner said. “Gotta love ’em.”
“The sanbahn is carried up the dun,” Vil continued, pointing to the hill, “and at the end of the ceremony it’s thrown in the bonfire. Then we get down to the real purpose of the whole thing which is drinking all of last year’s beer we possibly can. Can’t have old beer hanging around, can we?”
“Who carries the sanbahn?” Mike asked.
“Oh, the oldest girl of the losing team,” Vil said. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” Mike said, glancing over at Vanner and shaking his head as the intel guy started to say something.
Mother Lenka had reached the point where the six teams waited, the other Mothers leaving the field and now raised her hands. She looked at each of the men then dropped her arms.
The harvesters already had their scythes back and swung downward as one, cutting a swathe then stepping forward. As soon as they were clear the girls moved forward, gathering up armfuls of the grain and binding them in their own stalks.
To shouts of encouragement, and in some cases derision, from the Keldara the six teams raced down the field.
“Nikolai is going too fast,” Vil said, gesturing to the machine gunner. “Mahona is likely to lose.”
“He’s ahead of two of the other teams,” Adams argued.
“I know Nikolai and while he has plenty of strength and lots of strength in his legs, he doesn’t have much stamina for this sort of thing. He’ll start tiring about the last third. Bet you a hundred rubles he comes in second to or dead last.”
“You’re on,” Adams said.
But, sure enough, as they got into the last part of the cutting, Mike could tell he was flagging. His cuts were getting ragged and he, twice, had to overcut to get all the grain. That put him second to last and Georgi Makanee, who was last right up until the end, managed to cut his stand just as Nikolai was raising his blade.
“Halt!” Mother Lenka called. She’d gotten behind the team towards the end and now walked over. “Mahona is last,” she cried.
“Nikolai’s in for it now,” Vil said. “Oh, not as bad as the caillean, but he’ll be teased a good bit. And now Gretchen will be the ogbahn, the carrier of the sanbahn.” He frowned at that.
“And that means?” Mike asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Vil replied. “Nothing at all.”
“Come on, Vil, give,” Vanner said.
“Well,” Vil said, frowning. “It’s said that the ogbahn can never be the sanbahn.”
“The sanbahn is a puppet made out of straw,” Mike said. The last shief had been cut and Mother Lenka was already binding it into the figure. Mike shivered suddenly in the chill wind. You could smell the storm approaching.
“It also, as Mr. Vanner so astutely pointed out, means old woman,” Vil replied. “It’s the term for… someone. An old woman.” He turned and looked at the Kildar, frowning still. “It means Gretchen will never be old. If you believe in that sort of thing.”
“Of course, she’ll never be old,” Vanner said after Vil had wandered off. “She used to be sacrificed.”
“Yep,” Mike said. “A sacrifice to the old gods. The daughter of spring given to the god of the dead, the god of the underworld.”
“That’s terrible,” Anastasia said. “I can’t believe anyone would perform human sacrifice!”
“Oh, not these days,” Mike said. “Probably. But it used to be really common, even up to the time of the Romans. They got rid of most of it, after they gave it up. And that was by a vote of the Roman Senate not long before Caesar was born. They were the ones that stopped the sacrifices in Gaul, France now, and Britain. The Germans took longer. And even the Romans kept it up in some remote areas, right up until they started to become Christians. And the Russians only stopped around the time of the Mongols when Christianity finally had a firm hold. Outside Europe it was common right up until the colonial period. Given how… traditional the Keldara are, I figure they probably stopped around the same time as the Russians. Say… the 1300s.”