Summer Read online

  Pell might be bigger, but Indo was a renowned fighter. Everyone feared Indo with good reason. Indo’d killed opponents in a couple of fights.

  Nolo glanced at the men who were preparing the cow and decided there wasn’t much for him to do there. Unable to restrain his curiosity, he angled across the village clearing. He didn’t want to go directly to Frinca’s hut in case someone took exception to his presence. Instead, he aimed for the hut next to hers, thinking, I’ll tell them we’re preparing a feast and ask if they can help.

  Nolo slowed as he got closer. When Pell walked around the corner of the hut, he looked into the area where Nolo knew Frinca’s private fire pit stood and where Nolo thought the women would be working. Pell said, “We made a kill, so there’ll be meat for the feast. How are you coming with the treats?” Then he glanced to his right and said mildly, “Hello Indo, did you decide to help with the feast after all?”

  Nolo recognized Indo’s distinctive voice, “I’ve got a couple of fish I’d contribute… in exchange for a kiss from Gia.”

  Pell laughed as if they hadn’t just been insulted and said, “Don’t worry about it then. We caught some fish ourselves, so we don’t need yours. This does seem strange to us though. In our tribe, we share our food and I thought everyone did that. I guess different tribes have different traditions.”

  “Yeah,” Indo replied in a surly tone, “in this tribe the successful hunters decide what to do with their own shares. If your pathetic friend Woday hadn’t left us to go suck at your tribe’s teat, he’d probably have starved by now.”

  “Well,” Pell said cheerfully, “there’s no danger of that anymore. Woday’s learned how to catch fish well enough he’ll be able to feed himself and quite a few others.” Without waiting for Indo to respond, Pell turned his head to the right, apparently speaking to Frinca. “Woday asked me to see if you knew who’d have a big water skin we could use to boil crayfish?”

  Indo laughed derisively, “Crayfish! That’s the kind of fish I could believe even Woday caught.”

  Still speaking pleasantly, Pell said, “I like crayfish, but he caught three regular fish too.” Admiringly, he continued, “The fish here are much bigger than we’re used to catching in the little stream near us.”

  Nolo thought about the three fish Woday had, Those were bigger than most fish we usually catch. Big ones like those usually live too deep to spear.

  Nolo didn’t hear what Frinca said to Pell, but she came around the corner of the hut a moment later, evidently going to ask someone for a skin to boil crayfish.

  Quickly scratching at the corner post of the hut he’d been standing beside, Nolo waited for a response then told them that a feast was being prepared at the big fire pit if they’d like to help.

  Nolo went from hut to hut, telling people about the feast and asking them to help. They began wandering out toward the main fire pit and Nolo soon heard exclamations of delight as they saw the cow.

  Soon such exclamations started drawing people from their huts before Nolo even arrived. The last few huts he came to were already empty.

  Completing the circle, Nolo walked up to the opposite side of Frinca’s hut. There he found Nuna, Canna, Gurix, and the beautiful Gia stacking little cakes in a basket. They seemed to be carrying on a strained conversation. A glance to the other side of the hut showed Nolo that Indo still stood there—probably the source of their discomfort.

  Indo thought of himself as quite the lover but had a reputation for being demanding and forceful, definitely not romantic and gentle. Nolo suspected that Indo’d been making suggestive and even lewd comments to their beautiful guest and was surprised that Pell didn’t seem to be there. Like he had at the other huts, he said, “They’re getting ready for the roast out at the community’s fire pit.” Then he asked, “Where’s Pell?”

  The women glanced at one another uncomfortably. Canna was the one who answered. “He said he was going to cut spits for roasting the meat.” She shrugged, “I told him the village had spits, but he seemed to think we needed new ones.”

  Nolo thought, The village does have spits, but they aren’t big enough for that cow. Then he realized Pell probably knew that, since Nolo had made it rather obvious that the village rarely, if ever, made a kill so large. They usually only went after young calves when they laid in wait along the water trails. He’d not only need to cut a heavy spit, but also the forked stands for it. Cutting wood that thick using a hand axe could take enough time for the sun to move several fists in the sky, and it was already twilight. Then the forked stands would still have to be driven into the ground, a challenging task in itself.

  Nolo wandered back out to the community’s big fire pit and found a large crowd gathered to admire and salivate over the huge quantities of beef the hunt had produced. When he peered over the shoulders of the crowd, he was astonished to see the men trussing the carcass of the cow to a spit as big around as a strong man’s upper arm. “Where in the world did you get that spit?”

  Manute looked up from where he was slicing strip after strip of meat off of some of the muscular areas of the carcass. “Pell cut it,” he said, as if such a feat, even carried out in the brief amount of time Pell’d had, was commonplace.

  Nolo glanced at the fire pit to see if by some miracle someone had planted the kind of large forked stands it would take to hold such a large spit and the burden of all that beef. None were evident, so he said dubiously, “How are you going to hold it up?”

  “Pell and Yadin are cutting stands for that now.”

  In fact, when Nolo looked up, he saw Pell and Yadin walking back into the village center carrying six stout poles and a bundle of smaller ones. The poles weren’t as big as the spit, but there were six of them. Cutting the poles should also have taken a lot more time than they’d had. The poles weren’t forked, so Nolo wasn’t quite sure how they planned to hold the spit up with them. Nolo saw several men from the village had accompanied Pell and Yadin; he suspected because they’d wanted to see how Pell had cut such a large piece of wood in so little time. From the way they were jabbering to one another, it appeared they were pretty excited about however it’d been done.

  To Nolo’s fascination, Yadin and Pell set up three poles each, quickly tying them together near the top to make a tripod on either side of the fire. Each tripod had the short ends of the poles sticking up above the tie to form a fork where—Nolo could immediately visualize it—the spit could be rested. He wondered why he’d never thought of such an arrangement.

  A few hundred heartbeats later, although Nolo had no idea why, the rest of the visiting men had joined Manute in slicing strips of meat off the bulkiest part of the cow’s carcass. Manute already had a huge pile of meat strips laid out on a skin beside the cow. Gia, Nuna, Canna, Gurix, and Frinca started taking the strips of meat and hanging them over the slender poles Yadin and Pell brought back.

  There was a brief discussion amongst the four men, then they grabbed the spit at both ends and carried it around to mount it over the fire pit on the two tripods. Nolo turned to Manute, “Why cut meat off the carcass before you cook it?”

  “We cut it off the thick parts. Otherwise, those sections take too long to cook. The outside gets burned, yet the inner part’s still raw. This way a lot of the cow will be ready to eat at the same time.”

  “What are you going to do with all the meat you cut off of it?”

  “Ah,” Manute said, an almost beatific expression on his face, “that’s Pell’s most amazing idea. We’ll hang those strips of meat in the smoke of the fire until they’ve dried. Then you can eat them later.” Manute turned to look Nolo in the eye and winked, “Moons later.”

  In fact, when Nolo turned to look, two of the women were carrying some of the slender poles they’d hung the strips of meat on to the fire pit. They braced the poles so that the meat was suspended in the thickest areas of the rising smoke.

  Woday’s fish were placed in the coals. They were done long before the beef and people were hungry, so th
e fish were cut up into little pieces. Each person had a few bites of fish while they were waiting for some aurochs. After a half fist, rather than turning the spit like Nolo had expected, the Cold Springs people lifted it off and cut away all the well-cooked meat.

  The spit with the trussed cow went back over the fire with the other side down. People started eating the cooked meat that’d been cut off. When the spit came off again, they cut away more cooked meat and put it back up. Everyone was stuffed after the second round of meat so Nolo wondered why they were cooking more.

  Gurix carried around the basket full of small honey cakes. A few people tasted them despite complaints that they couldn’t possibly eat more. Those people were so enthusiastic about the taste of the cakes that everyone made enough room for a few bites.

  Sated and happy, people began to talk. Ramay turned to Yadin and said, “I hear you have a new kind of axe. Actually, it’s pretty obvious from how quickly the wood was cut for the spit. Although some of our men saw you use the new axe, could you explain it to us?”

  Yadin glanced over at Pell. For a moment it looked as if Yadin didn’t want to explain it or perhaps wanted Pell to explain it instead. Then he pulled out what he called a “hafted axe.” A large oddly shaped flint axe was wedged into a piece of wood Yadin called a handle. The handle was a little shorter than a man’s arm. “I’m a flint worker, so I shaped this axe head,” Yadin said, pointing to the large flint. He explained how it needed to be broader at the cutting-edge end so that it wouldn’t be driven back through the hole in the wooden handle. “Deltin, another man from our tribe who works with wood, shaped the handle.” Pointing to some twists in the grain, Yadin said, “Deltin cut the hole through the axe handle between two knots in the wood. He says the knots keep the handle from splitting when the axe head wedges into it.”

  “So,” Ramay said frowning in concentration, “this hafted axe lets you work faster because you can hit the wood harder without fearing you’ll injure your fingers?”

  Yadin glanced at Pell again, leading Nolo to wonder why the older man kept deferring to the younger. Perhaps it’s like Ramay avoids making Indo angry? But Pell seemed calm and pleasant. He hadn’t gotten angry, even when Indo had appeared to be trying to get under the younger man’s skin.

  When Pell didn’t react to Yadin’s glance, Yadin shrugged and continued, “There’s that, of course. No matter how good you are with a hand axe, you’ve probably bruised a finger occasionally. But Pell says…” Yadin glanced one more time at Pell, then continued, “that the handle lets you hit harder. The same way a club lets you hit harder.”

  A snort of derision came from the back of the crowd. Having lived there for a long time, Nolo easily recognized Indo’s tone. “The only one who’d benefit from that thing would be someone too clumsy to use a hand axe.”

  Nolo thought, Indo must not know how quickly Pell cut down the tree they made the spit out of.

  Yadin looked like he was about to respond to Indo’s comment when Pell got up. Directing his attention apparently to the crowd as a whole and not to Indo, he said mildly, “I’ll get a piece of firewood and we can let people try chopping it with the hafted axe.” He looked around the crowd without actually looking at Indo, “If someone would bring a good hand axe people could try cutting wood with the hafted axe and compare it to how fast they can cut with the hand axe.”

  Pell dragged a big chunk of firewood over from the pile. Yadin handed him the hafted axe and Pell proceeded to make chips fly.

  Big chips.

  Once the group saw the speed with which the axe head traveled and heard the loud “thock” it made when it struck, there was no doubt the hafted axe was far better than anything they’d been using. The size of the chunks of wood it chopped free was unprecedented as well.

  One of the villagers showed up then with a nice hand axe he’d gone to get from his hut. He’d been standing there gaping at the cavity Pell’d already chopped in the piece of firewood when Pell saw him. Pell held the hafted axe out to him and said, “You want to compare this to your hand axe?”

  The man barked a little laugh, then said, “I already know your axe is better, but, sure, I’ll try chopping with both.” He started with his hand axe. He certainly wasn’t clumsy with it, but he’d only taken out a small wedge of wood after ten blows. Ten blows with the hafted axe chunked out a much bigger wedge even though the man wasn’t used to it. After his tenth blow, he held it up to study it, saying, “This thing’s amazing!”

  Nolo glanced around to see Indo’s reaction, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  As man after man tried the hafted axe, Nolo noticed Ramay standing next to him. He said, “Did they tell you that after they killed their cow, they killed a lion that was trying to steal it from them?”

  Ramay turned awed eyes on Nolo. “They killed a lion?” he breathed. Nolo assumed this meant that none of the visitors had mentioned it,

  Nolo nodded. “And they killed the aurochs with those little spears of theirs…” he paused at the disbelief in Ramay’s eyes, “while standing in the bushes 40 feet from it.”

  Ramay said, “You can’t…” and stumbled to a stop as he recognized the incontrovertible evidence that they could.

  Several other men had turned to listen. Nolo wasn’t sure exactly what Ramay thought couldn’t be done, but he just gave a slow nod and said, “They can. They have sticks that let them throw the spears very hard. The little spears fly so quickly they’re hard to see, like the wings of a fluttering bird.” Nolo shook his head, “They threw six of the spears. Four of them sank so deeply into the cow’s chest they nearly came out the other side.”

  “And the lion?”

  Nolo realized that quite a few men were gathering to hear whatever he was saying. He heard someone in the back explaining to a newcomer, “Nolo says the visitors killed the aurochs with those little spears they carry. They have some new way of throwing them.”

  Nolo answered Ramay, speaking a little louder for his larger audience. “After the cow went down, they went out onto the plain to get it. They’d started dragging it off the grasslands when I saw a lion coming…” Ramay paused at the gasps and denials from the village men around him. “I told them it was coming and said they should run. They only backed up a little, then used their throwing sticks to start flinging stones at the lion.”

  “You’d have to be crazy,” someone muttered, and someone else said, “Hitting a lion with a rock would only make him mad.”

  “The stones hit really hard,” Nolo said. “Like that hafted axe. The stones hit the lion on the head. It stopped and shook its head like you might if you were badly stung. Then it roared so loud my bowels turned to water. While it roared, rather than running, Pell threw a stone into its open mouth. I think the stone went into the lion’s windpipe because it went crazy. It seemed to struggle for breath. By the time we got the cow into the bushes, it looked dead.”

  The crowd of men looked at one another disbelievingly. One dubiously asked, “How do these throwing sticks work?”

  Nolo said, “I don’t know how they work. I’ve only seen them used.” He stood tiptoe to look over their heads for the men from Cold Springs. To his astonishment, the men were back at the cow carcass, carving meat strips off of it while some of the women hung the strips on more of the sticks to position in the smoke. It’s like they’re always working! he thought. He was much more used to the laid-back attitude of other hunter-gatherer societies. Since they couldn’t preserve food well, they were used to searching for their next meal when they were about to eat it, rather than working to stockpile some for a day in the future. To the men around him, he said, “I’ll bet they’d be willing to show you how the throwing sticks work in the morning.”

  Nolo wandered over to watch the people from Cold Springs. They were still working away at the cow’s carcass. He realized some of the women were doing something different from the rest. When he went to watch them, he saw that, rather than discarding the intestines, someone had washed th
em out. The women were stuffing bits of meat and fat into the intestine and tying it off into sections. “What are you making?” Nolo asked.

  “We call them sausages,” Gia answered. “We’ll hang them in the smoke too. After they’re smoked, they’ll keep for a long time, and they’re really good to eat later.”

  Nolo stood watching them stuff sausages for a little while and wondering if these people were crazy. Preserving food would be wonderful, but he just couldn’t imagine that what they were doing would work. “Um, where did you learn about smoking meat and making sausages?”

  Gia gave him a grin, “They’re things Pell thought up.”

  Nolo turned to look back over his shoulder at the tall, muscular young man, still talking to the crowd of villagers. He’s too young to have… Nolo realized he didn’t know what he thought Pell was too young for. He wasn’t used to the concept of someone thinking up new tools or ways to do things. Occasionally when he’d gone to a trade meeting, someone would have a new way to do something a little better, but they’d always learned it from someone else. I guess someone, somewhere, has to have been the first one to have thought of whatever new methods there are?

  Nolo wondered where Indo’d gone. He won’t like not being the center of attention, Nolo thought. His eye caught on Indo, striding toward the group Pell was speaking to. The way Indo was walking, Nolo had the feeling he wanted to cause trouble—which, after all, was pretty much Indo’s natural state.

  Indo strode directly up to Pell and, interrupting whatever Pell had been saying, loudly proclaimed, “I hear you claim you killed a lion today.” He turned to the rest of the men, “It’s a lie! I went out to the grasslands where this’s supposed to have happened. There’s no dead lion out there.”