by Tony Roberts
Casca had sighed and stopped, and had looked at the four with Philatelis; they had looked like the usual collection of bullies, cowards and sycophants the boors the world over collect. No doubt they intimidated the rest of the unit, but Casca had been determined that this nonsense would stop right then. “What would you want a sword for, you goatherd?” he had snapped, irritated with the man, “swords are for trained warriors, not sheep-fuckers.”
Philatelis had stared in disbelief, hardly able to believe the words he’d just heard. “You want to lose your life as well as your sword? You must be simple of mind, you stupid tyro!”
Casca had then flexed his shoulders. “You want my sword? Then come take it, if you’ve got the balls which I doubt. You sound like a castrato – or a woman.”
Philatelis’ mouth had opened in shock and it had still been open when Casca’s fist had smashed into it, snapping the Greek’s head back. He’d staggered four steps, then had fallen hard onto his ass and had sat in the dirt, clutching his bleeding nose and lips. The four comrades of the downed man had then advanced, grim expressions on their faces, so Casca had decided to act fast. He’d swung his shield up and crashed it into the face and chest of the first to his left, while at the same time his fist had swung in a blur to take the first on his right under the rib cage.
Casca had then stepped back to give himself room, dropping the shield and eyeing the two that had been still standing. Philatelis had struggled to his feet, blood seeping through his fingers. “Kill him!” he’d mumbled through his fingers.
Casca had smiled hungrily at the hesitating duo. “So who’s going to kiss life goodbye first? Is it you?” he’d spoken to a curly-haired slim individual with an aquiline nose. “Have you tired of life so early in years?”
The man had shaken his head and backed off. The last man then had lost what courage that remained and had backed off, shaking his head. Casca had ignored him and had gone after Philatelis who’d squealed in fright and had turned to run, but a thick, coarse hand had closed round his shirt and had pulled him back. “Listen, whoever you are,” Casca had growled into the white face of the Greek, “I don’t care for you or your boyfriends. You try anything again with me and I’ll rip your balls off and feed you them. You understand?”
Philatelis had nodded fearfully and was then released. As Casca had turned to retrieve his shield, the Greek had pulled out a dagger, his face a mask of hatred.
“Look out!” a voice from the onlooking group had yelled.
Casca had turned quickly and grabbed the arm as it had struck, twisting it so the hand had opened, dropping the blade to the dust. Casca had looked at it for a moment, then his eyes had bored into the dark ones of the Greek. “That was very stupid,” he’d hissed. He’d sent a fist into Philatelis’ stomach, then sent a left uppercut to his chin that had propelled him arcing back through the air to fall unconscious in the dirt. Casca had picked up the dagger and advanced on the helpless man, obviously intent on carrying out his promise.
The man who’d shouted the warning, a slim dark haired man with a straight nose and firm lips, had stepped forward, his hand out in a conciliatory manner. “Hey, no need to do anything else to him; you get caught you’ll be whipped. Want to get that for him?”
Casca had stopped, weighing up things. The growing crowd would attract an officer in no time, so he’d dropped the dagger and stepped aside. “As you say, he’s not worth it.” He’d looked at the man. “The name’s Casca. Just joined the army.”
“Demetros,” they had shaken hands. “Been in the army the past two years. Thought it would be better than starving in the suburbs of Nicomedia. Where you from? Somewhere sunny, by the looks of things.”
“Egypt,” Casca had said shortly, looking round. The crowd had then begun to disperse, and the prone figure of Philatelis had been borne away by two of his colleagues. The man Casca had hit in the ribs had staggered away unsteadily in their wake.
Since that moment Casca had noticed two things; one, Demetros had become his shadow, keen to make friends, and two, Philatelis and his cronies had kept their distance although none of them said a word to him and whenever they passed kicked stones in his path or bumped into him, or some other petty thing.
Casca grinned to himself. He’d sort them out given time. The more important matter was Demetros. Casca wasn’t sure whether he was really sincere in wanting to be friends and a sword-buddy, or whether he were a member of the Brotherhood sent to keep a close eye on him. Casca was in no doubt that the Brotherhood had agents here watching him. Their instructions had been clear; to act as normal as part of Heraclius’ army until they passed him an instruction. Failure to obey, or attacking or killing any of the Brotherhood would result in some body part – unspecified – of Ayesha being sent to him.
The Brotherhood was quite adept at this. About three hundred years ago one of them had even lopped off his hand, and only the Curse and the skill of the boy Jugotai had saved it. Casca looked down at his wrist and flexed his hand. The scar encircling his wrist was one of the tell-tale marks to identify him to the Brotherhood, as was the facial scar.
Casca couldn’t do much about either. He was stuck with them. Besides, he was in a perverse way more relaxed as he didn’t have to try to hide himself from the sect. They knew he was here, so he could be himself. Fully. As long as he didn’t hurt any of the Brotherhood, he could be Casca Rufio Longinus. Excepting of course that he had to still hide the fact he was an old Roman Legionary who’d served under Tiberius, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, to name but three emperors. Getting hurt in a fight or battle might be risky, since his amazing healing properties would be noticed by anyone with keen eyes. And nowadays under the Christian God people were less tolerant and less inclined to let things be.
His humor faded. Another thought came to him. Maybe Demetros fancied him. Greeks were notorious in that respect. What was the name of that Greek innkeeper in Dubrae when he’d enjoyed those whores that memorable evening? Paetius. Yes, the huge Greek Paetius. Casca smiled fondly at the memory, then went serious again. He ran his whetstone along the blade of his sword slowly. He’d find that one out soon enough. He remembered the Spartans practiced the art of love between men as a matter of course. Boys were inducted into their army and when they reached a certain age were shown love by the older men who tutored them. Only in their twenties were they permitted to take a wife. Bugger that. Casca grinned again at his pun.
Even as he thought, Demetros was approaching, his face beaming with good humor. “You’ll never guess what I’ve just heard, Casca.”
“You’re right; I’ll never guess.” Casca slid his sword into his scabbard and stood up. “What’s the news? Persia has surrendered? The Emperor is with child? The Patriarch has converted to Judaism?”
“Shhhh!” Demetros urged, suddenly apprehensive. “You want to get into trouble for such words?” He looked around, hoping nobody had heard his big companion’s blasphemous words. The smile returned to his face. “No, the Ekatontarch has decided there’s still not enough recruits to fill the ranks so he’s put together a few recruiting squads.”
Uh-oh, Casca thought to himself, I don’t like the sound of this. “Alright, Demetros, so what does that mean?”
“We’ve been picked to accompany the squad leader into town to recruit some more men.” Demetros looked pleased. Casca grunted by way of a response. The slim curly-haired Demetros frowned. “You don’t seem pleased, Casca. Why ever not? Town is exciting!”
“Is it? Plenty of whores I suppose?”
“Whores?” the young man looked outraged. “By heaven, Casca, how can you think of such things?”
“You prefer men to girls, then, Demetros?” It was totally tactless but Casca was fed up, frustrated and wanted to vent is anger at someone, anyone, because of his situation. If Demetros were in the Brotherhood, then it might make him feel better by baiting him.
Demetros shook his head. “No, no, no, Casca. You misunderstand. Some of the guys here might, but I’m
more interested in the churches and the architecture. And the stories of the past. Don’t you think our past has been glorious?”
“Depends on how far back you want to go, Demetros.” Casca was not going to say too much on the subject. In some ways he was history. “Alexander?”
“Oh yes!” Demetros looked at Casca in reverence. “What a man! An empire never seen again! Not even in our recent past under the Caesars of Rome.”
Casca shrugged. Even though the vast majority of the Byzantines were Greek, they still called themselves Romanoi. “Everything goes in circles, Demetros my friend.” Casca felt a shiver go through him; he’d almost repeated Shiu Lao Tze’s words spoken to him five and a half centuries past.
“Which is why I believe our mission will succeed,” the young Greek beamed. “We’re at a low, and now this wheel you speak of will turn and we will come out triumphant.”
Casca snorted but clapped Demetros on the shoulder. He was a dreamer and a romantic. Pretty unlike a typical Brotherhood member, but Casca still couldn’t be entirely sure. “We’ll do our best. So how come we got picked for recruitment duty, and what’s our job? Bodyguards to the recruiter?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got to report to the squad leader now. Come on!”
Demetros led Casca across the stony slope towards one tent in particular amongst the many in the camp. Men were milling about here and there, either under orders or on their way to some destination, and it took a few moments to push their way through. The squad leader, a thickly built man by the name of Kalatios, greeted them without smiling. Casca had never seen the man smile since he’d been in camp and he doubted the man ever would; he looked the life-long soldiering type, with no time for wasters or civilians, and one who followed orders to the letter and expected those below him to do the same. A steady officer but without imagination or humor.
“Here you are, Longinus,” he said as though speaking to a tardy child. “One thing you must learn as part of my squad is to be here as soon as you’re ordered. There’s no place for time wasters in my unit.”
“No, sir. What are your orders?”
The squad leader waved a calloused hand at three others standing in the baking sun, sweat dripping down their faces. “Your comrades. Together we’re to go into Tarsus and recruit as many for the army as possible. I have my orders here to use persuasive measures. So if anyone causes any trouble with any of you, you have my authority to apprehend them and drag them off to camp. Clear?”
There were a chorus of murmurs. The three others looked mightily pissed off and didn’t like hanging round in the sun dressed up like they were on parade. Casca noticed that both Kalatios and Demetros were in their best uniforms too. He by contrast had just his rough camp gear on; a loose linen skirt, a homespun tunic of buff and a light leather belt. He looked scruffy in comparison.
“Get your best gear on now and report to me by the Tarsus Gate without delay. If you’re late I’ll have you on cleaning duties, Longinus.” Kalatios nodded emphatically to reinforce his words.
Casca saluted, slapping his right arm across his chest, and turned away, muttering darkly to himself. It was a short distance to his tent so he trotted across the dry, dusty earth to his quarters, leaving a low billowing cloud behind him. He flung aside the flap to his tent and noticed on his bunk a single sheet of papyrus with a wax seal upon it. He picked it up and felt a cold chill run down his spine. It had the stylized symbol of a fish upon it. The sign of the Brotherhood.
CHAPTER FOUR
He hadn’t been in a good mood before he’d got the Brotherhood’s message. Now an onlooker could almost see the black cloud floating above his head with lightning forking out of it. He stamped up to the Tarsus Gate of the camp and took his place without saying a word or even acknowledging the others’ nods. They, including Demetros, shrugged and decided if he were in a funny mood then they’d ignore him. Maybe it was woman trouble. It usually was, they all knew.
Casca was now wearing, like the others, undergarments of white, which was the official army color. Emperor Heraclius had determined that along with the rebuilding and reorganizing of the army, they were all to have a common color. Casca’s short sleeved hauberk of chainmail sat over his white shirt and he carried his stout spear and sword that the Brotherhood had supplied to him back in Alexandria.
As the squad tramped along the stony path along the hilly terrain away from the camp towards nearby Tarsus, Casca’s mind went over the words that he’d read in his tent a short while back. The Brotherhood had warned him not to leave the army at any time unless they ordered otherwise, to be ready to undertake any specific job they wanted him to do so, and be ready to travel long distances at a moment’s notice.
Casca had torn the message into fragments and scattered it over the floor of his tent. What the hell was he? A slave of the damned sect? Of course he wouldn’t desert! He could easily; walk away and leave the damned lot of them, the Brotherhood, the Byzantines in their war of survival and Ayesha. But the sect knew he wouldn’t because of Ayesha. Casca just couldn’t do it. As long as he thought he had a chance of saving her, he would go along with their nasty little scheme.
On the trudge through the heat of the Anatolian summer sun, Casca’s mind went over his options. Somehow he had to get on top of the situation, to turn the tables on those mad bastards. He knew the moment he returned the Spear to them they’d kill the woman and do something unpleasant to him. He knew also that they would never release her, for that would then mean they had no further hold on him and he could run amok through their ranks.
Neither side could afford to honor the bargain, yet neither side could afford to dishonor it until the time came for the exchange. Until then, Casca could plan and plan and try to work out how to get Ayesha back and deny them the Spear.
The other binding fact in Casca’s mind, and probably something the Brotherhood didn’t understand, was this very war. The Empire was his only link to his past. He was still in his heart a Roman, and the empire of Heraclius and these Greeks was what remained of the Roman Empire. When the Western half fell something had died within Casca. He remembered the moment it happened, standing alongside his captor, Alaric the Goth, watching as the horde of barbarians ransacked Rome.
Since then his link to his past, his origins, his identity, had weakened but remained in place, thanks to the East’s survival. That part of the Roman Empire had withstood the collapse and had then recovered much of the western part of the old empire until it had overreached itself.
Now it was collapsing, but not under barbarian pressure, rather in face of their old adversary the Persians. Casca had no love for Persia. His treatment from their King Shapur II still gave him nightmares, and the heat of flames gave him uncomfortable feelings even to this day. His burning at the stake had been the work of the Brotherhood and ordered by Shapur, so he had little love for Persia as well as the damned Brotherhood.
So even if he hadn’t been ordered to join the army by the Brotherhood, he’d’ve joined up as soon as he had learned of the war. He had no desire to see Rome’s successor Empire fall to the old enemy, and so he was here as much for his own past as under the dictates of the sect. One thing he’d learned about the Brotherhood; they had no love for either, and they’d turn on the Byzantines if it suited them. It was just coincidence that his wishes and theirs ran parallel at this moment.
Tarsus came into sight over a stony ridge, a walled city of stone buildings nestled in a valley with the impressive Taurus Mountains rearing up in the background beyond them. Goats were being herded off to one side on a grassy area and irrigated fields close to the city were being tended to by farmers. Over his left shoulder glittered the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean and he wished he would walk over there and plunge himself into the cool, welcoming waters. But it was not to be. Instead he was trudging in the wake of the others along a dry, baked, stony path towards Tarsus. As the back man he was getting the worst of the dust the others were kicking up and it hardly helped his t
emper. Ahead he could see the old Roman road that ran from Cappadocia through the Taurus Mountains, through Tarsus, then east through Issus and then south to the great city of Antioch. If that clod Kalatios had left through the northern gate of the camp and headed that way for a few miles they’d’ve hit the road and then been able to walk along it in relative comfort without this damned dust until they got to the city gates. But since nobody senior to him had ordered it, the dumb ass NCO had walked across the most god forsaken dry exposed stony and fucking dusty route possible.
Oh for a sudden promotion of three ranks to sergeant.
Tarsus was surrounded by a smooth rendered stone wall of twenty feet in height, battlemented, punctuated by square towers at regular intervals, and pierced by arched gates through which trooped a variety of people and beasts. Trade caravans headed for Syria, Arabia and beyond, farmers returning to their homesteads having sold their wares or on their way into the markets. Rich members of the nobility were being carried in or out through the gate in covered chairs, hidden behind curtains, and even the occasional warrior type carrying a spear or some other weapon passed through.
The civilians stopped and watched with interest as Kalatios led his five charges in his wake onto the cobbled stones of the Roman road, now shiny and rutted through all the centuries of use and neglect, and approached the impressive arched gateway. Casca could see the wall was about the thickness of the height of two tall men, and two immense gates stood back against the inside of the gateway. At dusk these would be shut and barred.
Two spear-toting guards stepped forward and challenged Kalatios who produced the written orders he had from the camp and the six men were allowed entry after a perfunctory examination.
The city was laid out in the classic grid pattern, with the best houses and municipal buildings along the main thoroughfare, and those of lesser quality and importance off along the side streets. Kalatios led the squad along the main street, brushing past sellers offering tasty looking watermelons, dates or olives, or textile sellers pushing the best ever quality linen at the soldiers, and marched into the market square.