by Tony Roberts
“Does this thing go underground, then?” Carlos asked, eyeing the ground rush past.
“Haven’t tried that yet, but I’m trying to avoid any radar lock-on. There’s so many factions hereabouts,” she explained without taking her eyes from the windshield. “Gaddafi’s men, the rebels, the French, Brits, some other goddam faction or other – they’re all here trying to grab what they can before it all falls.”
“Gaddafi’s finished; his supporters are trying to get out with what they can take,” Carlos said. “How long to the rendezvous point?”
Hayley flicked her green eyes to a couple of readouts before her. “Twenty minutes. What’s the procedure? We hand the two over to the petroleum shirts?”
“In return for a nice fat payoff,” Carlos nodded. “Three million dollars. They must be valuable members of their company,” he added thoughtfully.
“Nah, three million is probably their cash float for their packed lunches,” the woman quipped. “Oil companies are rolling in it.”
“You said it, Hayley.”
Carlos returned to the cargo area and briefed the others on what was going to happen at the meeting point. They shook hands with the two company men, and in no time Hayley was landing the machine on a concrete platform in the middle of nowhere, where an oil pipe ran into the middle distance. There was a reception committee with a smaller, civilian-type helicopter with the oil company’s logo emblazoned in orange across it, and the two men gratefully ran to a couple of men standing in the center, shaking hands and embracing.
Three hefty bodyguards stood around with obvious bulges under their left armpits. Carlos smiled to himself. If they tried any shit they’d be shot to pieces by his mercs. One of the greeters approached Carlos. “Three million dollars, Mr Romano,” he said, his eyes hidden by wrap-round sunglasses.
“As agreed. Your men are safe and sound, Mr Kryzowski.”
“Indeed. Nice doing business with you. If we ever need your services again…..”
“Contact us on the same number. I’m sure we could come to another arrangement.” Kryzowski nodded and flipped open his cellphone. He spoke a few words into it and terminated the call. “Your account is being credited as we speak,” he said.
Carlos extended his hand to Kryzowski.
The oil company man shook it. “Farewell, and thank you.”
“Thank you, Mr Kryzowski.”
Hayley was on the headset in the cockpit and Carlos turned to look up at her. She put her thumb up. Danny, back in the States, was monitoring the bank accounts and had given the all-clear as the money was registered as incoming.
Back in the air, Hayley took them in a loop west, then north. They reached the coast close to the ruins of Lepsis Magna, and Carlos looked wistfully down at them, noting the few dark specks of people moving around them.
“Memories?” Hayley asked, noting his attention on the old Roman ruins.
“Aye. Passed through there once or twice when it was in its heyday. Really odd now seeing them as ruins. Always makes me maudlin.” He shut his eyes and tried to think of something else. He’d gone through the town after his time with the Lombards on his way to Egypt and he’d met Ayesha before the Brotherhood had turned her into one of them. Happy times.
“What about one of your old tales, to pass the time?”
Carlos grinned. “Nope. It’d ruin your concentration flying. When we get to Sicily then I promise.”
Sicily wasn’t too far and they landed on private land, owned by Casrom Inc, the company Danny had set up the previous year. There were small parcels of land now owned all over the place, nothing big, but out of the way places to stay and do their thing away from prying eyes.
The four other mercs led the way to the house in the middle of the area, surrounded by olive groves and scrub, and were already looking forward to spending their hard-earned money. Carlos and Hayley arrived, the woman now without her flying helmet, showing her long flowing red locks. Combined with her long legs, tight fitting trousers and a jacket unzipped halfway down her chest, it was enough to stop the conversations.
“Tongues away, guys,” Carlos said. “Meet Hayley, our pilot.”
Four men grinned and crowded round, keen to get to know her.
“Hey Klinger, you got two broads in Jo’burg,” Ryder complained when the South African pushed in ahead of him. “I’ve got nobody back home in Cockermouth.”
“Where?” Morgan demanded. “Is that a sexual activity?”
“Cumbria, north-west coast,” Ryder corrected him.
Carlos shook his head grinning, and got onto his cellphone, one of the newest additions to his inventory. He got through to Danny after a few moments. “Transfer the agreed fees to the accounts of Morgan, Klinger, Ryder and Berger, Danny.”
“Sure thing,” Danny’s voice came down the ether in that tinny, scratchy manner familiar to those who used these devices. “Everything went fine?”
“Yup. Will brief you about it when we meet up.”
Hayley fought through the men, looking slightly flustered and stood next to Carlos. “It’s like trying to get through cacti plants!”
“I’ve only got one thorn,” Morgan leered, “and it’s a big one, honey.”
Hayley rolled her eyes. “Morgan, I’ve heard so many chat-up lines and that’s got to be one of the worst!”
“Sure you’d like a taste of Texan beef!”
“Knock it off, Morgan. Your share is in your account now, as are all of yours,” Carlos said, putting his phone away onto his belt.
The four men sought out their belongings in the various rooms. They would shortly be on their way back to their respective homes, richer and sporting sun tans. It had been an interesting six weeks. Later that evening Hayley joined Carlos in the garden, facing west as the sun began to sink towards the distant mountains of central Sicily. She had a beer, like he did, and slumped gratefully into her chair.
“Long flight, wasn’t it?” Carlos said.
“Some. Got asked a coupla dumb questions in Reykjavik but managed to bullshit my way through. Danny’s going to have to fix it so we’ve got two of these things; one for the Americas, another for Europe.” She took a swallow of the beer and sighed, wiping her glistening forehead. Casca caught sight of a flash of light on her finger.
“You got something to tell me, Richter?” he asked, eyeing a platinum ring with what looked like a diamond on her left ring finger.
She glanced at her finger, then grinned. “Yeah. We got engaged a couple of months back.”
“That was fast!” Carlos said in admiration. “You sure Danny’s the right man for you?”
“Hell, what do any of us know? He’s a sweet guy, got brains and money – and he ain’t such a bad looking feller either.”
“Well, good luck to both of you. That calls for a party. Once I wind down from this one I’ll come over and we’ll throw one.”
Hayley grinned and eased her neck and shoulders. “So what about you telling me one of your stories? Danny says you really drag the listener into it. I’d like to experience it.”
“Got a recorder anywhere? Danny will want to listen to it as will Doctor Goldman.”
“Oh yeah, just a minute,” she said and vanished. She came back a moment later and flicked a switch on a mini recorder. “Ready.”
“Okay.” Carlos shut his eyes and thought for a moment. “Something I’ve mentioned a couple of times in the past but never gone into is my part in that famous campaign of Henry V in France.”
“Agincourt?” Hayley hazarded. She’d seen the movie with Olivier in her youth, and like many had read a couple of Shakespeare plays.
“Uh-huh. Damned bloody affair it was, but there was much more to it than just that. Typical middle ages campign; muck, blood, guts and shit. A real dirty one, that. I’ll go back to the summer of 1415 and start near Southampton where Henry was gathering everyone for the crossing. He’d spared no expense for this one and all the nobility was coming from all corners of the realm. And me?�
� Carlos grinned. “I was on the run from a bunch of murderers and thieves and wanted away from England as soon as possible, and going over with an army under the king was as good a way as any, and it paid and got me into a war, which I always seemed to find, no matter what.”
Hayley found her vision dimming and then sweeping into a vortex. She wanted to cry out, but resisted. It was a weird thing, but Danny had warned her about this. Suddenly there was a green field before her and thousands of gaily colored tents.
CHAPTER TWO
The smell was bad; any army camp tended to be, to be honest. Casca Rufio Longinus made his way through the sea of tents and ropes, avoiding piles of clothes, packs and dung, and sought out a minor noble who had an entourage of archers. Any English army had them a-plenty, their weapon of terror. No other nation used archers to the devastating extent the English did and it almost guaranteed a victory. Time and time again the French had fought their enemy and come away shattered and bloodied, furious that the English used common rabble to do their fighting when chivalry demanded knights took on one another man-to-man.
Casca had been an archer in an English army in the past. He’d learned his craft in Wales, where many of the yeoman in the English armies came from, and had been drafted as a result into the army of Edward III and had been part of their triumph at Crecy. That was eighty years or so ago, and Casca had been away in the east since then, trying to avoid the Black Death and the death it brought – he just hated seeing those bloated, rotting corpses everywhere. He’d enjoyed time in Tamerlane’s armies but as all things do, that eventually turned sour and he had moved on, finally returning to Europe and he had made his way eventually to England.
Again events conspired to force him to move on. He’d not been part of any war for over ten years and the life of a town dweller had become boring in the meantime. Healed in his mind, he felt the time was once again ripe for him to ply his professional trade, that of a soldier. So it seemed it was to be England, once more.
A tent with a red flag fluttering above it attracted his attention. The flag had three rams’ heads on it. He had no idea which noble that was, but he decided to find out. He had to stop to avoid a pair of men wrestling a non-co-operative squealing pig, then loped across the mud and grass to a man seated in front of it with a small collapsible table in front of him.
“Looking for recruits?” Casca asked.
The man, a burly, dark-haired man who seemed to need a shave quite badly, peered up at Casca. He liked what he saw; rough scarred face, big frame. Clearly someone used to fighting and taking care of himself. “What’s your skill?”
“Archer, swordsman. You name it.”
“You ain’t nobility, and you got no weapons, right?”
“Right,” Casca nodded. “I’ve used the great bow, though,” he nodded at a stack of bows standing in a loose collection next to the tent.
“Well, we’ll have to check that, you know. Name?”
“Cass Long.”
“Local? You’ve not got a local accent.”
“Nah,” Casca drawled. He thought hard on a place he’d been to in the past. “Hastings.”
“Really? A little way from home, Mister Long. Still, pick a bow and a sheaf and go with Will here to the practice butts. Will, check this fellow out, says he’s an archer.”
A young man, tall and willowy and fair-haired with a badly spotted face, pushed away from a pile of cases and crates and trudged over. He was wearing a sword that hung from his belt, and was dressed in the livery of the three rams. He waved Casca to follow him off to the right. Casca grabbed a bow and a leather quiver and strode hard to catch up with the man who wasn’t hanging about.
“Who’s the noble you look to?”
Will paused and glanced at Casca. “Sir Godfrey Fulk of Montgomery.”
“Montgomery? The Welsh borders?”
“Aye. Know of it?”
“Yes, been there a long time ago,” Casca said. He’d passed through there on his way to join Edward’s army eighty or so years back. He didn’t know who Fulk was but guessed he was a minor who had been given land either through loyalty to the current king or from a marriage. England had been through an upheaval recently and if you’d been on the wrong side, you most likely would have lost land, to be awarded by a grateful king to his supporters. After Edward’s death the young Richard had succeeded him but he hadn’t been a popular king and finally one of the senior nobles, a Henry Bolingbroke, had had enough and deposed him with support from the other nobility.
The trouble had then come about when those supporters expected bigger rewards than Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, had been able to grant them, and this had led to revolts. The Welsh had risen up, supported by the northern lords, most notably Percy known as ‘Hotspur’, and the year before Casca had reached England, Bolingbroke and his son, the now king Henry V, had met and defeated Hotspur at Shrewsbury, close to the Welsh border. It had been a brutal fight, the advance made into the teeth of an archer arrow storm, and the winners had lost many men. However it had cemented Henry as king.
Now Bolingbroke was dead, two years previously, and his son Henry was monarch. Henry was itching to show the people he was a worthy king and had decided to revive the argument with France over who was to rule it.
Will showed Casca the target range. A few archers were practicing as they approached, but one butt was free and Casca took up his place at one end and looked down the gentle slope to the bales of hay that had been stacked together and tied to make a butt. He tested his weapon. Typical English bow, made of yew, was as tall as him. It was an ugly looking thing but deadly as hell. He held the string in his left hand, using the classic three fingers to grip it, and fitted the slot in the base of the arrow he picked to the string. Now he pushed hard with his right and hauled hard with his left, forcing the wood to bend against its will. The arrow, thirty inches in length, slid back across his right fist. He held the trembling wood in his hand, his strength enough to keep it from dominating him, and he aimed at the butt.
He estimated it was a hundred paces, short range for the bow. He aimed fractionally above the top, knowing the arrow would arc down to strike it, and released. The string leaped forward, sending the arrow tearing through the air. Casca watched as the missile impacted into the hay, making it shake, and he gently lowered the bow, allowing it to face the ground.
“Impressive,” Will acknowledged. “But can you do that five more times?”
Casca smiled ironically and, without another word, calmly shot five more arrows into the butt. On the last impact it toppled over, the arrows sticking up into the air. He handed the bow to Will. “Good enough?”
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Will said, piqued that someone had played a trick on him. Nobody was that good unless they used a bow regularly. He wasn’t to know Casca hadn’t touched an English greatbow for over fifty years, but the skills he’d picked up then had stayed with him. He passed the bow back to the thick-set scarred man. “You look like a fighter, Cass. You fought the Frenchies before?”
“Aye. Don’t worry, I know my stuff. I’ve done plenty of mercenary work and know them as well as anyone here.”
Will shrewdly regarded him on their walk back to the camp proper. “Hey, what about joining my group? It’d be good to have an experienced fellow like you amongst us. What do you say?”
“Don’t see why not,” Casca shrugged. “Who leads the group?”
“A sergeant-at-arms called Harry Wakeley. He’s from Cheshire, thinks the Cheshire Yeomanry to be the best in the world. Doesn’t like the Welsh.”
“I’m not Welsh so that’s not going to be a problem,” Casca said, dodging a squad of well-armed men marching in the wake of an armored knight. They looked like proper professional soldiers. The English were putting together a proper army by the looks of things, not merely a hotch-potch of all-comers. “I don’t really call any place my own these days.”
“Hmm, can’t place your accent, Cass. Where you from, anyway?�
��
“Never knew that,” Casca said, looking out of the corner of his eye. “Folks were travelling from one place to another. Lived some time in the London area, some time in Scotland and more again in Wales. Lived in Southampton these past couple of years.”
“Real nomad then. Me, I’m from Gloucester. Joined Sir Godfrey’s entourage as they marched down from Montgomery. Had to quit Gloucester really sudden, like. Long story, but it involves rent owed.”
Casca chuckled. “Mine’s more down to earth. A woman.”
Will snorted. “That’s what most of them say. Still, you seem honest enough about that, so I suppose it’s got to be true. Got her in the family way?”
“Oh, nothing like that,” Casca said. One of the results of being turned immortal by the blood of Jesus that day on Golgotha was to make him sterile; he couldn’t father a child. “She’s someone else’s and I decided to quit the neighborhood; it was getting a little warm for my liking. Besides, there’s nothing like a good old honest war against the French, is there?”
“You got that right, Cass. Here we are,” Will waved at a collection of men dressed in a motley collection of leather and padded tunics, cleaning swords or axes, sewing holes in hose or peeling an assortment of vegetables. “This is our little family. Gentlemen, may I introduce our newest recruit, Cass Long of Southampton.”
The men appraised him, squinting up at him in the sunlight. Many were unshaven and needed a tidy up but here in the West that went as normal amongst the common folk, so different to the East. “Can he shoot?” one asked, growling skeptically.
“Yes I can,” Casca said pointedly, deciding if the guy wanted to discuss things about him when he was there, then he’d be best to speak to him direct.
“Huh,” the man said and spat into the earth at his own feet. “You’d best be good ‘cuz we don’t want to carry no freeloader.”
“I can cook, loose, hunt as good as any man I know,” Casca said, leaning on his bow. “I can fight better than any of you and that’s no boast. I’ve done more campaigning than any of you here. I think if anyone is carried around here, it won’t be me.”