Casca 1: The Eternal Mercenary (16 page)

Stroke, stroke, stroke came the beat of the gavel of the hortator. Endless times it seemed Casca followed these orders. His body moved with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. There was no wasted effort or motion, only the giant muscles rippling over his back. His beard reached to his chest as he rowed in sync with the other slaves.

The galley sliced the waters of the Mediterranean on her patrols and missions. The snap of the slave master's whip was a familiar sound that would jerk him from his sleep and automatically send his arms reaching for the oars. He served on the same ship until after the great fire when Rome burned. They were at sea, and the flames of the city were seen from the port of Ostia where the navy stood by ready to perform whatever service it might be ordered to do, but nothing came of it. Nero blamed the Christians; and Casca, when he heard the story, didn't put it past them. If they thought their judgment day was too long in corning, they just might try to hurry it up a bit. Anyway, Nero was the best friend they had because for every follower of the Jew he killed, two more seemed to spring up. Nero probably single-handedly doubled the number of Christians in the empire.

Two more ships Casca went through before the word of Nero's death came. Casca chuckled as he thought:
One down, and an empire to go.

But if the news of Nero's death pleased Casca, it pleased the man next to him on the oars even more. This man had been a merchant who had failed to give a proper accounting. He loved to talk of his friends in high places and how they would soon set him free now that Galba was emperor. He delighted in the telling of Nero's history
– probably because he also delighted in hearing the sound of his own voice. Casca listened. There wasn't much else to do when they lay at anchor. The merchant's voice assumed that slightly superior tone that some priests and lawyers use – or that women have when talking to people they consider their inferiors. The essence of his story was:

"Well, all things considered, Nero started off well enough. But the incipient degeneracy that he had kept hidden while under the control of his mother Agrippina soon vanished once he had the reins of power in his hands. He had been known to murmur to his friends that his mother needed to have her tongue stilled, so he did just that and had her murdered along with Britannicus, Claudius's legitimate son. Claudius had never renounced the boy even though the fact of his being sired by Claudius was open to conjecture, especially after Claudius had the mother killed for her infidelities.

"Unlike Claudius with his somewhat austere tastes, Nero leaned toward the opulence of decadent Greece and the Orient. By exercising the treason law he kept down any opposition to him, and he plundered the rich families through a form of imperial blackmail. But he soon had the empire in turmoil with uprisings against him in Britain led by Queen Boadicea eventually being crushed. However, other disturbances arose in ever-troublesome Parthia, and a disastrous defeat at Rhandeia led many provincial governors to rise against him, including Vindex in Gaul and Galba in Spain. Nero's last success was the detection and destruction of a plot against him by Gaius Piso, but at last even the Praetorian Guard could stand no more of the insanities and depravities of their sworn emperor, and they abandoned him. The simple act of their leaving him without their protection was enough to end his reign and he was forced to flee from Rome.

"Nero sought sanctuary, but found none. Everywhere his enemies were searching for him, and no friends could be found. In a poverty-stricken farmer's hut he fell upon his knife and, with the help of a slave, died in filth and poverty. The last of the Julio-Claudian emperors left the empire in rebellion and civil war." The merchant finished his tale with obvious relish.

Casca felt a small sense of satisfaction at the news of Nero's death, but then a thought struck him, and he laughed out loud, startling his oar mate. "What was it Nero said, there was room for only one immortal, and he already had that honor?" Casca laughed again, bitterly, drawing the oar master's attention to him and getting him another light dose of the lash in order to keep his mind on the oars. They were casting off. The drumming beat of the timer striking the drum with his mallets settled into his brain like a pulse throbbing in his temple. He let himself fall into the pattern, losing all track of time until the orders came to ship oars and the sails were run up so that the silent wind could do the job of the hundred and sixty slaves below. The oarsmen then collapsed over their oars, the old-timers controlling their breathing and letting their bodies relax, the new slaves often throwing up at what seemed to be the impossible strain of sending a hundred tons racking through the ocean with only men's backs for power. Casca recalled well the first galley he had slaved on. The oar master was a bitter and petty man who took pleasure in the pain of his helpless charges. On that galley Casca had added to his collection of thin hairline white crisscrossing scars on his back, scars that spoke reams about his years of service.

On one voyage his heart had jumped into his throat when he heard a familiar tinkling laugh come from the upper deck above. Shiu was on board! Straining his ears, Casca caught the words of the yellow man telling of his returning home to tell his brothers of the wonders he had seen and how there was one special person that he had met and loved like a son and hoped one day would find his way to Khitai ...

Khitai ... the word seemed like a dream to Casca.
Good journey, old friend, Casca thought. It's best if you don't know where I am. But you are right about things repeating. One day I will go to Khitai, and if you are not there, then there will be as you said one like you. Who knows? If I live long enough, perhaps I will see you in your reincarnation, for surely you would not come back as anything other than what you are now. Vale, old friend, vale...

They let Shiu off in Antioch where he followed the path of the great Alexander to the Indus river. Once there, the way to his home was open.

Casca was on a bireme out of Antium when Vesuvius blew and smothered Herculaneum and Pompeii beneath tons of ash and lava. The ashes reached the bireme far out at sea and turned the ship into a filthy mess of wet ash and powdered pumice that invaded everything from the pores of their skins to the, food they ate. They sailed into Pompeii, amazed to see that the sea had pulled back and left the wharves bare to the sand. People by the hundreds tried to crowd on deck, but only those with permits issued by the harbor master were taken aboard. The rest had to take their chances that other ships were on the way and would reach them in time. Some did. But not all ... The two cities died.

And Casca lived to see another four emperors pass. From time to time he was moved from one side of the ship to the other so as not to let him get lopsided from rowing on only one side. His captains passed his story around, but most did not believe it, thinking it only an exaggeration. No one knew how long he had really been rowing since his papers had long since been lost or destroyed. But he was a slave and a strong one, and as such they really did not care as long as he could pull the twin-banked oars.

The fear greatest in the mind of Casca was the same one that had haunted him in the mines of Greece: being buried alive, this time in water. What if the galley were sunk and he was chained to the oars? He would be unable to free himself until the chains rusted away.

But, could he drown?

The answer came in a storm off Tergeste when his ship was smashed upon rocks and the bottom torn out of her. The waves rushed in, smothering all and dragging the ship down. The sounds of her breaking up were like a woman – or horse – in pain, as the timbers tore in two or were twisted in small pieces and smashed on the rocks. Casca found himself under water. The chains holding him down to his bench were free as the bench itself was torn apart. The waters closed over him, and the blackness came. His last thought was:
Perhaps I can drown...

But consciousness returned to him, a consciousness where he was on the beach throwing up. His mouth was full of seaweed and sand, his chains were wrapped around him, and the storm still raged. But he was alive and on the beach. And alone. Pieces of his galley were strewn all about him. Casca's lungs gave a heave and water poured out of them in a flow. They emptied, and then with a spasm sucked air back in. His beard and hair were a tangled mass, looking amazingly like the seaweed surrounding him.

Pulling himself erect, Casca looked to the sea and down the beach. The rain whipped his face as the storm continued its efforts to destroy the land. Raising his chains to the storm, he cried out: "Well, damn it, here I go again. The wheel turns once more. The circle repeats."

He made his way from the beach. Passing a fisherman's shack, he looked in. The place was empty, but there were a few rags of clothing lying on a cot. They were infinitely better than the soiled loin cloth he had been wearing without change for the last four years.

It was in the last year of the reign of Domitian when Casca's ship foundered on the rocks and freed him from the oars, but time now had little meaning for him. Season followed season, year after year, until the days and the decades were all one. Sometimes it seemed to him as if time itself was compressed; at other times it was exaggerated; but he did what he had always done – lived by the sword, one way or another. The only pattern was that he was always a mercenary, whether as a soldier, or as a bodyguard for a merchant, or as a guard for a petty prince. He preferred the money of the merchants to the chancy and risky favors of the princes.

He even put in some time as a pirate operating out of the Kikladhes island chain off Greece
– near where he had served in the mines. His prowess with the sword and fantastic strength made him welcome wherever it seemed there was going to be trouble – and he usually found it. But he always moved on, afraid to stay in one place too long lest someone question his youthful appearance and draw conclusions that could be dangerous for him.

For a time he was chief of a tribe in the Caucus mountains. He had killed the former chief in an argument over a herd of goats. But again, while the life style there was simple, the elders started looking at him a little strangely since he seemed to show no sign of aging. And when the youngest and most beautiful woman in the tribe offered him everything his heart could desire if he would just share his secret of continuing youth with her, he knew that it was time to move on without any good-byes, and he did. By ship out of Po
ti, he sailed to Varna in Thrace, taking with him the treasury of the village. It wasn't much. Most of the village wealth was in goats, but there was enough silver to tide him over for a while.

And so he came to Pela.

He was outside the city, taking his time, enjoying the Greek spring, when the smell of smoke came close on him. In those rocky hills, that usually meant not a forest fire but a house. Casca hiked his pack up higher on his back and began to trot toward the spiraling column of smoke he had spotted. Cresting a small rise, he threw himself flat and took in the situation. Bandits were looting a house, and right now two of them were trying to get the legs apart on a female they were holding to the ground. Even from Casca's vantage point her legs looked good, but ...
None of my business,
he thought, and started to back away out of sight. But he stopped for one more look at the woman.

"Shiu was right," Casca grumbled to himself.
“I’m a damned do-gooder. One of these days I'm going to get my head beat in for sticking my big nose where it doesn't belong." Dropping his pack, he took his sword from its scabbard and looked over the situation. There were two holding the woman down while a third was piling up the house possessions they wanted to take.
Well, might as well get it on.
Casca began trotting down the rise, slowly at first, then faster. The two were intent on getting some ass and didn't look up – until the slapping sound of his sandals told them he was almost on them. One rose up, an embarrassed look on his face, and Casca's blade took his head off. Without any hesitation he turned and lopped the right arm off the man just trying to get his loincloth back up. The one looting the house got one look at what was happening and took off for high ground, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and that madman.

The woman, Neda, was not ungrateful, and her husband had been killed by the bandits. Also, Casca was still a pretty good-looking man if one liked them a little thick and rough. Neda knew how to gentle him, and Casca worked the farm. The nights sitting with his woman were good, and he knew the first contentment of his life. The farm prospered, and soon they bought the four adjoining parcels of land and had ten freedmen working for them. The years were good. Casca had discovered love. Neda was the first woman he had ever really loved, not merely used. More, for the first time he knew the power of a woman's love, for Neda loved him as much as he loved her. Life was an idyll. Not only did he know the pleasure of her magnificent body, but there was a thrill in simply watching her walk. Her hips rolled with each step in a way only she could. In a crowd of a hundred women he could recognize her from the back instantly just by that sweet, tantalizing roll of hips. But even idylls have their endings.

The time came when he found her looking at him strangely. Traces of silver had begun to appear in her own hair, but none in his. When she asked him how he kept from going gray he knew that the end of his first and only home was in sight.

So the night came when he lay with her for the last time and took her with a gentleness that would not have been possible before he met her. He gave her the full measure of his love and lay in the dark, listening to her breathing, her head on his chest. He could imagine her dark eyes closed, a small smile on her lips as she slept the deep sleep of a woman who knows she has been loved with all the intensity of soul a man can know. Her long, soft, brown hair smelled of the sun and fields, fresh and clean. It was a dream-light blanket
covering them both. Casca leaned down and kissed her softly, fearful that she would wake. He eased gently out of the bed and crept out of the house and crossed the fields to where the foreman of his workers lived with his woman. Waking the man, he gave him a letter for his woman, then turned his face to the East. He was walking away from the only woman he had ever loved. Where would he go? There was word that there would be another war with Parthia. His face darkened. The wheel would turn once more.