The Boy with the Bronze Axe

by Kathleen Fidler

  The children nodded, breathing fast with excitement.

  Tenko rose in one swift movement. Birno stood up too. His boat wobbled a little but he soon got it balanced again.

  “Ready, Birno?” Tenko whispered.

  They took sights along their arrows at the bulk of the whale just ahead of them.

  “Now!”

  The bows twanged. The arrows flew straight. The barbs penetrated the skin and well into the flesh of the whale and stuck there, quivering. The whale jumped as the arrows stung him and he leaped into the air. He came down with a flop on the water, which made their boats rock. Tenko quickly steadied his craft.

  “Now, you, Kali and Brockan!”

  With two paddles outspread Tenko balanced the boat. Kali and Brockan took aim. Two more arrows pierced the whale’s skin.

  Now the great fish was aware he was being attacked. He threshed about with his tail, churning up the water. The canoes swung this way and that.

  “We must get in even nearer,” Tenko said, wielding his paddle furiously. For a minute the whale remained still. Tenko and Birno used that minute to fit two more arrows to their bows. Then they rose swiftly and let fly.

  This time the arrows penetrated deeper and blood began to pour from the small wounds they had inflicted on the whale. Suddenly the whale turned to face his attackers. This was the most perilous moment. Tenko was ready for it with another sharp barbed arrow fitted to his bow. “Steady now!” he yelled to the children.

  The whale charged towards Birno’s boat. In that instant Tenko let fly. The barb struck the whale just inside his tiny eye and lodged there. The rush of the whale halted. Terrified, he swung round. He plunged and thrashed in an effort to dislodge Tenko’s last arrow. The sea boiled round the log-boats. Tenko managed to keep his larger boat from overturning, but Birno’s boat rolled over. He gave a yell as he found himself in the seething water.

  “Oh, Father! Father!” Kali cried in terror.

  Birno surfaced in a moment. He was a powerful swimmer and in a few strokes he reached his boat again. He managed to right it and climb in, but he had lost bow and arrows and paddle. Tenko had quickly brought his boat round to rescue Birno. The paddle went floating past Tenko’s boat. Kali reached out an arm and grabbed it.

  “Well done, Kali!” Tenko cried. “Are you all right, Birno?”

  “Look! The whale!” Brockan yelled.

  Tenko swung round, thinking the whale was coming to the attack again. The whale, however, had been seized by the panic which had affected the herring. He only wanted to get away from his attackers. He was heading blindly for the shore.

  “After him! After him! The tide has turned!” Tenko cried. “We mustn’t let him turn back now.”

  Kali passed Birno his paddle and the two boats sped after the whale. Once again they were within shooting distance. Tenko and Brockan both shot again, Kali steadying their boat. The arrows lodged in the whale’s tail. Terrified, he took a leap towards the land. His leap took him over a reef of rocks below the water.

  “We’ve got him! He can’t get away from there easily,” Tenko yelled, excited. “Follow him up!”

  The whale had realised his danger and turned to head out to sea once more. The boats reached the reef. Tenko shot one more arrow, this time at the other eye. Never had he shot so well! The blinded whale turned again, not knowing which way he was headed. He flopped in the shallowing water over the reef and into a pool at the other side. Then, blowing out his breath in a column of vapour, he gulped in air again and sank down into the pool.

  “The water will run quickly out of that pool. It will not be long before he finds himself on the sand,” Tenko said.

  True enough, the great whale felt his body touch the bottom of the pool. He gave another leap to try to get back into the sea but slipped off the jagged teeth of the rock back into the pool again. He turned in panic and gave a convulsive leap in the opposite direction. He found himself lying on the shingle beach. He tried to edge himself backwards into the water again, but a barbed arrow poked into his flesh. Spent and breathing hard, he lay on the shingle. The water in the pool grew less. Every minute he lay there, he had less chance of getting back into the sea.

  Tenko and Birno brought their boats over the shallow water on the reef and into the quieter channel on the other side. The whale gave a flip of his tail but could not move his great bulk more than an inch or two. His huge body was his own undoing. His great weight was meant to be supported by the sea. As he lay on the beach the bulk of his flesh was pressed against his lungs. He could not breathe properly. He tried to raise himself on his paddle-like flippers but sank to the sand again. Slowly his own weight suffocated him. His struggles grew feebler.

  “He is nearly finished,” Tenko said.

  Tenko and Birno took their boats to the edge of the pool now well below the whale. The tide was running out fast. A knot of the Skara people had gathered on the shore. They had watched Tenko and Birno pursue the whale. Now they waited for the whale’s end to come.

  The whale’s breath came shallower and faster. There was a little pause for a few moments and then the breathing would start up again. The pauses became longer. The whale was dying. He could only live if he could get back to deep water and that was now impossible. The folk of Skara watched and waited.

  At last the great whale lay quite still. There were no more whistling breaths. Not a tremor came from a flipper. Tenko leaped from his boat to the sandy bank of the pool. “Wait!” he shouted to the others.

  With bated breath Kali watched him approach the whale. Tenko took out the bronze axe from the deep pocket inside his tunic where he always carried it. He stood beside the whale for a moment, looking at it. He seemed so small beside the great shape. The folk on shore stood as if turned to stone as they kept their eyes on him. There was stillness and silence everywhere. Tenko raised his axe. He brought it crashing down on the blunt forehead of the whale. Blood gushed from the gash, but no movement came from the whale. He was dead indeed. Tenko gave a shout of triumph.

  It was as though Tenko’s shout released everyone from a spell. Birno and the children leaped from their boats. The people from Skara came running along the beach. They gathered round the whale, shouting for joy. Lokar came, hanging on to Lemba’s arm.

  “Well done, Tenko, my son! Well done, Birno! We watched you from the dunes as you chased the great creature ashore. What will you have done with it now?”

  “There is meat here for the tribe for many days,” Tenko told him. “The great bones can be used for many things, for weapons and for tools.”

  Tribal memories stirred in Lokar. “From the fat of the whale there comes oil. Oil will burn with a flame that will give us light in our dwellings on dark winter nights.”

  Tenko gave a glance at the sea. “Come, people, out with your axes and knives. Let every man take away as much flesh as he can carry for himself and his family. You must work quickly before the tide rises again and floats away the whale.”

  Tenko mounted on the slippery body of the whale and began hacking away with his axe. The men of the tribe came with their stone axes and flint knives and began tearing at the whale’s flesh.

  “Why, it is red like the flesh of cattle!” they cried in surprise. All the fish they had known had white flesh. Here was a creature of the sea with flesh like that of their own animals!

  There was a thick layer of fat underneath the skin. This the men stripped off. The women carried it away in their big earthenware bowls. From all points of the compass screaming gulls and gannets descended on the shore, brought there by the sight and smell of the meat. The children were set to scare them away. The men tore at the red flesh. There was a terrible pandemonium what with the shouts of the men, the yelling of the children and the screaming of the seabirds.

  Blood ran everywhere. The arms and tunics of the men were soaked in it as they hacked at the carcass and staggered with great lumps of meat to the dunes. The air was thick with the stench of blubber and whale mea
t. The women built peat fires in the hollows of the dunes to smoke the pieces of meat, so that they could be rubbed with salt and preserved for a time in stone chambers under the ground. The folk of Skara did not even pause to eat. Eating could be done later. Now they had to save their precious booty from the grasp of the sea. They worked away feverishly.

  When twilight came the tide was returning. The fires still burned and the smell of roasted whale meat filled the air. The gulls were still screaming and darting in to seize pieces of meat. Most of the flesh had been stripped off the whale. The bony skeleton was left with scraps of meat still adhering to it.

  “The bones are light enough for us to pull out of the reach of the sea,” Birno decided. “Bring leather thongs from your houses.”

  The men knotted the thongs together to make reins. Each man harnessed himself to the reins by a loop tied in the thongs. Even boys like Brockan joined the teams of men. The leather reins were tied to the whale’s skeleton. When all was ready Birno gave the word.

  “Pull!” he shouted.

  The men heaved on the leather reins. The skeleton of the whale came slowly up out of the hollow in the sand it had made for itself. When it was halfway up the shingle they paused to get their breath and ease their aching muscles. The tide was beginning to run rapidly over the sand.

  “Pull again!” Birno cried.

  With chests almost bursting with effort they strained again at the leather thongs. The women left the children to keep the marauding birds off the meat. Headed by Stempsi, they came down to help the men. Stempsi organised them into a team to push at the skeleton while the men heaved. Foot by foot, yard by yard, they brought the great framework of whalebone to the foot of the dunes, where it was among dry sand and pebbles and out of the reach of the tide.

  “It is all right now,” Birno shouted from his place at the forefront of the men. “We can let the seabirds have it now. They will pick the bones clean for us.”

  Hardly had they loosed the leather thongs from it and staggered away than the seabirds descended in a cloud upon the remains of the whale.

  That night at Skara a great feast was held. Never had there been so much meat to eat. Tenko’s and Birno’s names were spoken with gratitude. Birno and his family ate well too, but Tenko remembered that a hunter should never eat too much or he might become too slow. The men ate and ate and slept, but not Tenko. Outside it was moonlight. Tenko stepped over the snoring men and along the passages to the huts. From her stone bunk Kali saw him go. Like a shadow she rose and followed him. At the entrance to the village she called, “Wait for me, Tenko!”

  Tenko turned at her voice and waited till she caught up with him.

  “Where are you going, Tenko?” Her voice trembled a little.

  “Just to look at the whale.”

  “You were not … not going away in your boat?”

  “Why, no!” Tenko was surprised.

  In the moonlight tears of relief gleamed in Kali’s eyes.

  “Why, Kali, what is the matter?” Tenko asked.

  “Promise me you will never leave the island unless you take me with you,” Kali entreated earnestly.

  Tenko did not reply at once. “Come with me to look at the whale,” he said. “I will answer you then.”

  They ran barefoot over the grassy dunes. There before them was the great skeleton of the whale, picked clean now by the beaks of seabirds and gleaming white in the moonlight. They slowed down as they came up to it. Tenko laid his hand upon the framework of the ribs.

  “Kali, a hunter cannot stay for ever in one place. I am not a herdsman like the folk of Skara. My people move from forest to forest, from shore to shore. It was as Lokar told you. Once both our peoples came from a great land and a great sea far away towards the midday sun. We have always taken journeys. Some day the call will come to me to go and I shall have to answer it.”

  “I know! I know!” There was a sob in Kali’s voice.

  “But this I promise you, Kali. By the bones of this great whale we have hunted together I swear I will take you with me wherever I go.”

  Kali gave a long fluttering sigh of relief. “And Brockan?” she asked.

  “Brockan shall come too if he wishes. He is my brother.”

  “We are your brother and sister always,” Kali said.

  Tenko looked long at Kali in the moonlight. “You are my sister now, Kali, but you may not always be my sister.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “It is not the time yet for understanding,” Tenko said with a wisdom beyond his years. “That day is not yet. Now let us go back to the hut where they sleep.”

  7. The Festival of the Sun

  With their stone axes and Tenko with his bronze axe, the men of Skara broke up the skeleton of the whale. Each man was given a share of the whalebone. Lokar saw that all was done fairly.

  “As Birno and Tenko, Kali and Brockan brought the whale to our shore, to them should go the bones they choose.”

  “I choose the two jawbones,” Birno decided. “With them I will make rafters for the thatch of my roof.”

  “And you, Tenko?” Lokar asked.

  “I will take some of the smaller bones to make harpoons and enough of the whale’s teeth to make a necklace.”

  Brockan chose a bone that he could shape into a large knife.

  When Kali’s turn came she pointed to the whale’s backbone.

  “Those bones could be used for little dishes to hold paint when the men paint their bodies for the Festival of the Sun. I should like some small bones too that I could shape into bone pins for our cloaks.”

  Some of the men used the ribs of the whale to make supports for their roofs; the women rejoiced over bone to make needles to sew their sheepskin garments. Even the children were given large flakes of bone to work into knives. The tribe felt richer than it had been for many years.

  The summer days grew longer. The sea sparkled round the islands, fringing the edges of the shore with curling white. On the cliffs the seabirds fed their young. The gannets dived after fish, the terns wheeled over the sea, giving their plaintive, wailing cries, the black shag quarrelled among themselves as they stood in rows on the rocky ledges. The hills sloped greenly to their rocky summits and on the lower slopes the flocks of the tribe grazed.

  It was drawing near Midsummer day. There was hardly any night at all in Orkney. By the Point of Howana the sun plunged into the sea to appear again three hours later over the shoulder of the Hill of Cruaday. As each night became shorter, excitement grew in the tribe of Skara. Soon there would be the Festival of the Sun, when the tribesmen of Orkney met on the rising hill of Brodgar between the two great lakes. There, in the circle of giant stones, at midday on the longest day, the men would make a sacrifice to the Sun God.

  The women prepared new tunics of the softest sheepskin. With flint scrapers they scraped away the wool and washed the skins in the stream that ran from the Loch of Skaill. They kneaded and pounded them on the stones till the skins were soft and supple. Then they shaped them into tunics, sewing up the sides with sinews from the sheep. Kali joined the women in their work. She had begged two soft lambskins from Salik and these she worked on till they were soft as the lambswool itself. Kali sewed them into a tunic, but she was not content with that. She bored holes in sheeps’ teeth she had collected and sewed them round the neck of the garment in a pattern. She tacked a deep pocket on the inside of the tunic and fastened it with whalebone pins. When it was finished she took it to Tenko.

  “This is a new tunic for you to wear at the Festival of the Sun. Your deerskin is stained by salt water and torn by the rocks.”

  Tenko looked at the tunic with delight. For a moment he was speechless. Then he stammered, “You … you made this for me, Kali?”

  “Yes, the womenfolk of Skara always make new tunics for the men of their families when they walk in procession at the Festival of the Sun,” Kali told him. “My mother has made a new tunic for my father and one for Brockan. I made this one for yo
u, Tenko.”

  Tenko put out a hand and stroked the soft skins. “I have never had such a beautiful tunic,” he declared. He fingered the bead-like pattern. “But you, Kali … What will you wear at the Festival of the Sun? Should not this tunic be for you?”

  Kali shook her head. “The women do not walk in the procession. We follow after the men in a crowd. No woman is allowed within the Ring of Brodgar, so we watch from the outside. We wear what necklaces we possess. I shall wear the eagle’s claw you gave me. No one else will have an eagle’s claw,” she said proudly.

  Tenko suddenly dipped into the deep pocket of his old tunic where he always kept his bronze axe.

  “I have been making something for you too, Kali.” He pulled out a necklace. It was made of the teeth of many animals, beautifully polished and shining white. They were graded from the very small teeth of rabbits and lambs to the larger teeth of sheep and cows. There were nearly a hundred of these ivory beads and from the centre hung two of the great teeth of the killer whale they had forced ashore.

  Kali exclaimed in delight, “Oh, Tenko! Not a woman of my tribe has such a fine necklace!”

  “Put it on,” Tenko said to her. “I will fasten it behind your neck for you.” Carefully he tied the sheep’s sinew on which the beads were threaded into a firm knot.

  Kali knelt and looked at her reflection in a still shallow seapool. She drew in her breath sharply.

  “Oh, Tenko! The necklace is so beautiful! I will wear it always. It shall never leave me, waking or sleeping.”

  Tenko looked more than pleased.

  From behind a rock Korwen had watched the exchange of gifts. His face grew dark with hatred and jealousy. He sought out Tresko and told him what he had seen.

  “The stranger from the sea will have a finer tunic than any of us,” he said.

  Tresko sat chewing his nails for a few minutes and then he laughed shortly.