Noreen
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Noreen
Doyle
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Callum's Feast
"I won't have Redmane Mabryd coming onto Da's land! I won't!" Callum heard his own voice crack in the fierceness of the whisper. Shivering beneath a fox-skin cape which had belonged to his father, he crouched beside his cousin in the faded, prickly heather of the moor. Wind whipped off the sea with the cold promise of winter, though it was only Year End and winter lay two full months away. What Callum would give if it were only winter already. Were it any time of year but the End. He said, "Redmane brought nothing but misery upon poor Da. Now he comes walking onto Surry lands like some uncle of mine home for dinner, when Da's just a month 'neath the cairn. Do you hear me, Barric?" "I hear you," his cousin said and dug a calloused thumb into the fur of his boots."“But I'll listen to you only when you start talking sense." Barric waved to men dismounting ponies on the next hilltop. Each of the chieftains gathered here tonight, even Barric, was a big man, and each had broad shoulders from swinging axes into trees and laying stone boundary walls and punting into the Wetmeadow to cut peat. "It is sense I'm talking," Callum muttered. He shrugged his narrow shoulders and the fox-skin cape slid from his back. He marvelled at the big men greeting each other with hard claps to the arm, always first and always hardest from Redmane Mabryd. Try as he might, like a rabbit caught by a snake, Callum could not wrench his eyes from Redmane. A head taller than any other man, with a chest as great around as a holy oak tree and corded arms and thighs to match, among these big men Redmane Mabryd loomed a giant. Only the wind had ever braided his hair. He had been born with it, they said, a great shock of flame on a big-boned babe his mother died pushing from her womb. Some went so far as to say that he had been born with the wild beard that draped down so low that when he stood bare-chested none could see his navel. Each step he took shook the earth beneath Callum's feet. Each swing of one corded arm or the other landed like a blow upon Callum's back. "He can go home," Callum said. He turned his back on the men, sat down and dug his heels into the dirt. "You don't have any choice, Callum," replied Barric, sounding less curt than before but perhaps a little more pitying. Callum did not want pity. "Redmane is a chieftain just like the rest of the guests. The laws of Year-End hospitality say you can't keep him out," "The guests must have a choice, then! Let them all go to someone else's land for the feast." Barric clucked his tongue with thinning patience. "Your father was Champion of the Year-End Feast last year. That means that he would have been host this year. If he'd lived." "But he didn't. And I don't want to be host. Let one of my uncles be host." Callum thrust a thumb toward the cream-colored glow of neep-lanterns on another hill. In the light of candles housed in turnip shells carved fancy with faces, gathered the women, the children, and those men not privileged to join the feast. They were having dinner of their own, of turnip hollowings and boiled fish. "Your da's brothers are not here because they cannot be. They are not chieftains," Barric replied. "You're a chieftain, Barric. You take the Right Knife!" Callum took a knife from his belt. It was terribly old, made not of iron like an everyday knife but of stone, and it was duller than featherdown. For all that it was the pride prize of the chieftains, won fairly last Year End by Callum's father, who had openly boasted that he looked forward to passing it along to the next Champion, whosoever that may be -- Redmane not excepted. There was honor in that, his father would have said in his great gravelly voice. If he had lived. Barric did not take the Right Knife. "You're the host, Callum Surry, like it or not. Nobody will challenge you, anyway. The laws of Year-End hospitality forbid fighting. But I'll see that Redmane makes no trouble for your grandmother." Barric tousled Callum's hair and ran off to join the other chieftains. Callum envied his cousin, a man with a man's braids and a good start on a man's beard. At scarcely fourteen (or perhaps a little less; his sisters used to tease that he would never be old enough to be a man, though they had said nothing of that since Da's death), Callum still had his hair cut short by his grandmother or one of his sisters every other fortnight. Callum would try to be out with the sheep or occupied in the far garden but they always found him. Only a little fuzz fringed his upper lip, like the down on his forearms. But now, beard or no, like it or no, he had to play the part of a man. There on the hill Redmane Mabryd stood with arms akimbo, waiting for Barric to catch up, but his gaze wandered farther and came to rest where Callum hid like a rabbit. He was, Callum knew, looking for the son of Adalthic Surry. Like a rabbit Callum could slip away through the stones that dotted the scrubby moorlands where foxes hunted and shaggy cattle roamed wild. This time no one would find him: not his grandmother, not his cousin, not Redmane Mabryd. He said to the wind and the spirits who rode it tonight, "O Da, why did you have to die?" He heard no answer. The stare of Redmane Mabryd had, perhaps, frightened the spirits away. His father would never have fled. No, Adalthic Surry lived a hero's life unto death, but that did not make Callum feel any better. One month ago Adalthic had gone up into the hills to drive the cattle home from the summer pastures. That was the cycle of life on the Surry lands: the cattle grazed up-country in summer, and wintered in byres near the village. Every family had a cow or three, from the poorest broom-maker to chieftains like Adalthic. While women and children brought in the harvest, men took care of the cattle. It should have been easy work. Dogs did most of it, and the cattle knew the way home by themselves. But it had not been easy this year. Robbers had ambushed Callum's father not far from this very spot. They stole his rings and clipped off his long grey braids, but Adalthic got the cattle home before he died. Callum watched Barric escort the other chieftains toward a flat hilltop on which a small, licking bonfire had been kindled. Redmane Mabryd walked long-strided until he overtook Barric and it appeared that he, not Barric, was leading. They were silhouettes along the crest of the hill, a giant followed by big men. For years Redmane Mabryd had argued with Callum's father over who should graze a certain pasture where a brook ran cold and clear beneath an ancient stone bridge. Redmane Mabryd always lost, but these arguments still made Adalthic an unhappy man. Callum hated Redmane for that. And he feared him for that too. The argument was one more thing Callum inherited from his father. He drew himself tall, shook his trimmed mop of black hair. His hand patted the dull Right Knife, then fell upon the hilt of his iron blade. Yes, it should have been Redmane Mabryd, not Callum's father, murdered by robbers on this lonely stretch of road. Callum snagged his father's fox-skin cape from the ground and threw it over his shoulders. It was too big but did not drag in the grass until he went downhill, and then the twiggy heather and earth-knobs caught at it and held fast. Not even big enough to wear your da's fox-skin cape, Callum mourned. And they expect you to bear up under his duties. read the rest of the story in the Summer 2000 issue of Weird Tales
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 Fantasy short story Weird Tales Summer 2000 (No. 320) Weird Tales other excerpts: Ankhtifi the Brave is dying. The Chapter of Bringing a Boat into Heaven The Chapter of Coming forth by Night The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold The Dovecote The Execration Horizon The Rope Shadow of the Pyramid Trading Places |
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