by Tony Roberts
Then, taking one last look at the two Brotherhood agents, left.
The throne room was occupied with robe wearing Persians, grouped around the dead guards. They looked up at Casca’s entry and slowly stepped back, allowing him passage through their ranks. They looked like courtiers and civil servants. “Send word to Dastagird,” Casca said quietly, “the army is lost and there is nothing left to stop the Romans from taking what they want. There is nothing left for the Shah to fight with. For all the difference it makes, you guys might as well help yourself to the contents of the treasure room while you still can; the Romans will simply take it anyway.”
He turned his back on them and left, stepping over the carnage in the corridor outside and increasing his pace the further he went, wishing to be away from that place. The sunshine outside was like stepping out of Hades into the living world, and he spied his horse, still being tended to by a Persian servant.
He took both his horse and one of the two others. The slave looked at him enquiringly. “There are no others coming. You may keep that horse and do with it what you wish.” He sounded tired. Gods! He felt tired. He knew there was nothing to stop him leaving the city now, and he turned his horse round and slowly walked it along the street towards the gate and the beginning of his journey to free Ayesha.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The dark was Casca’s ally, giving him plenty of cover as he made his way to the Church of the Holy Nativity. He saw few people on his way, and he used the deep shadows to conceal himself. He was wrapped in a dark cloak, both to help hide him and to give him comfort against the cold night. Jerusalem in February was cold at night.
The church loomed above him but Casca wasn’t interested in the church itself. His destination was the entrance to the crypt beneath it, a portal close by where the old Roman sewers had partly collapsed and had been shored up with wood and spare bricks.
He gripped the spear he carried tightly. He was close, close to the Brotherhood, close to Ayesha, if she was still alive. It had taken so long to retrieve what the Brotherhood wanted, and anyone held captive by those mad bastards for that amount of time, over five years, would probably never be the same again.
Perhaps it was for the better; he couldn’t stay with Ayesha forever, but he knew he had a duty to her – he owed her – to get her away from their clutches. But he knew they’d do their best to get the Spear and not hold up their end of the bargain.
The ground sloped from left down to right. The entrance was a dark hole, inviting but threatening at the same time. A fire flickered on the roadside right outside the entrance and two figures sat around it, warming their hands. Guards.
They didn’t look like guards or were visibly armed, as that would attract attention, but their robes and loose clothing would no doubt be hiding weapons beneath them. Casca took a deep breath, steeled himself, then strode forward. The two men, looking like nondescript citizens of Jerusalem, looked up and watched as Casca approached. His features were hidden in the shadow of the hooded cloak and so he managed to get next to the first before the light from the fire fell across his scarred features.
“Longinus!” the man gasped, scrambling to his feet.
Casca’s jaw tightened and he rammed the spear butt across his face and raised it high as the man staggered back, then brought it down across his head viciously. The man crashed against the hard stone wall behind him and slid to the ground. The second man tugged aside his robes and hauled out his sword, face twisted into a mask of hate. Casca swung the spear again and the shaft slammed against the guard’s arm, numbing it. The man cried out in pain and the sword clattered to the ground. Casca dropped the spear and bunched his fist before slamming it into the man’s jaw, sending him up off his feet and then falling to the ground where he lay still.
Casca checked both before picking up the spear. Now that that was done he could take care of what was inside. The two guards were out for a while by the looks of things, so Casca slipped into the dark passageway, using the flickering light of the fire outside to guide him along the stone flagged floor.
After about ten feet there was a door, and Casca slowly turned the handle. The door opened inwards and the smell of incense came to him. Frankincense? Jerusalem was on the trade route from Arabia where it came from, so that was likely. There were torches hanging from brackets in the walls, and they lit his way along the corridor beyond the door. He crept, breathing as shallowly as he could, his senses tingling. He was in the lair of the enemy, and his very being was screaming to him to get out of there, but he couldn’t without finding out if Ayesha was alive. He had to get her out of there; he’d promised.
Doors stood to left and right but he went past them all. There was no sound down there and his hackles rose. He knew they were there but where, he had no idea. It felt warm and alive, and didn’t have the abandoned feel to it. And there was the smell of incense.
The passage came to a few steps and they went down to another door, a dark wooden one with a symbol of a fish on it. The Brotherhood symbol. Casca stopped and loosened the sword in his scabbard. He had a feeling he’d need it. There were five stone steps and the door was right at the bottom, so he gently pushed. It held. There was a latch of iron and he gently lifted it. The door opened inward.
The smell grew stronger and there was a straight passage beyond that ended in a pair of double doors. Two men stood by them, armed with swords, and they stood up straight as they caught sight of Casca, twenty feet away. He judged he was right below the main body of the church above at this point.
One of the guards opened one of the doors behind him and spoke quickly. Casca tensed and took a few steps forward and stopped, unwrapping the cloak and dropping it to the floor behind him. Now he could draw his sword without hindrance. Both doors opened and a group of hooded figures flowed out from what looked to be a chamber beyond. All had the ubiquitous brown homespun woolen robes he’d seen all too many times before.
“So, Longinus,” the Elder he recognized from Alexandria spoke, “you have returned. With the Spear. Alone.”
“I promised I would bring it to you. Now you keep your promise.”
“Where are the two who I arranged to accompany you?”
“They – met with accidents on the way here. Now where’s Ayesha you bastard?”
The Elder seemed to sigh. “Pity they aren’t here; you were told not to harm any of us.”
Casca gripped the spear shaft hard. “Those two charming swine tried to kill me once I had the Spear. I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that?”
“I regret their actions; they must have been acting on their own initiative.”
Casca was getting fed up. “Where’s Ayesha? No Ayesha, no Spear.”
The Elder stepped aside and a slimmer figure stepped forward, also wearing the brown homespun wool of the Brotherhood. The hood was pushed off the head to reveal the delicate features of Ayesha, but an Ayesha somehow different than how Casca remembered. Her eyes glittered in the torchlight, eyes now hard and fanatical. Casca’s heart sank. “Ayesha?”
“Greetings, Longinus,” she said huskily. “I’m pleased you returned the Brotherhood’s property. At least you keep your word.”
Casca pleaded with his eyes, hoping that what she was saying and how she was appearing was not true. “Ayesha, now we can go free…” his voice trailed off.
“I have found my home here. Now I can worship the Holy of Holies, and you can be punished for the evil you have done.”
“No! What have they done to you? Ayesha!” Casca screamed in pain and dismay.
Ayesha remained standing, saying nothing more. The Elder stepped forward, a triumphant smile on his face, hand outstretched. “And now, the Spear. Yes, we kept our side of the bargain, she is unharmed. But now she is one of us and will experience just what it is to touch the Holy of Holies. Give it to me.”
Casca screamed in rage. Those bastards had played him for the fool all these years. The door behind opened towards him as more guards
appeared to trap him in the passageway.
“You want the Spear? Then have it!” Casca roared. He raised it and with all the fury and anger he felt, launched it at the still grinning Elder. The point plunged through his robe and caved in his ribs, sending him hurtling back off his feet to strike the two standing directly behind him. All three fell to the ground, the Spear sticking up obscenely from the Elder’s chest.
Casca dragged out his sword and swung round. The three guards behind him were coming through the doorway, one at a time, and Casca slashed down at the first, which was blocked in desperation. Closing right up to the Brotherhood guard, Casca rammed his fist hard into his guts, feeling the sting against his knuckles as he hit chain mail. The guard had no time to recover. Casca snarled and with all his hatred of the Brotherhood, slammed his blade up through the man’s throat. The blade exploded out of the guard’s neck, showering his comrade behind him with blood.
There was a confused babbling of voices. Casca pushed the dying man against the two others, delaying them for a few seconds. He turned to see Ayesha clutching the spear shaft, crying out incoherently, three other hooded figures also grasping it, attempting to pull it out of the chest of the Elder. Alongside them three armed men advanced on Casca, two guards and behind them, the captain.
“Ayesha!” Casca screamed.
Ayesha carried on holding the shaft and Casca could now see she was crying out in an orgiastic pleasure, her eyes closed, face shining in ecstasy. She was holding the Holy of Holies and it was sending waves of pleasure through her body. It was hindering the three others but the spear was slowly rising from the ruined chest of the dead Elder.
Casca filled the corridor with the sound of rage and swung round, blade dripping with blood. The two guards coming from the steps had pushed aside their dead comrade and now closed in. Casca slashed down hard. The nearest guard blocked desperately. Casca was in no mood to be gentle. This was the Brotherhood, and they’d stolen Ayesha from him. He attacked again and again, battering down the defense of the guard. His sword cut deep into the man’s shoulder and he screamed in pain.
But the two guards from the chamber end were now at his back. Casca felt the pain of a blade sinking into his back and he swung round, blade an arc of death at throat height, cutting through the man who’d stabbed him, almost decapitating him.
The captain urged the last man with him to finish off the Beast but Casca grabbed him and pulled him forwards, sending his pommel smashing into his face, crushing cartilage and bone. The last man by the steps saw his opportunity and cut down, slicing into Casca’s shoulder and side.
The Eternal Mercenary screamed in pain and fury and threw himself against the guard, crushing him into the wall of the passage. The man had no room to move and Casca sent his sword into his guts, twisting it violently, before hauling it out. The guard sank to the floor, clutching his ruined gut, face twisted in pain.
The man he’d smashed in the face tried to strike but his timing and co-ordination was ruined as much as his face was. Casca back handed a blow that scored a cut across his chest and the man fell back against the far wall and slid to the floor.
The captain remained, blocking Casca’s route to the knot of Brotherhood priests and Ayesha. They’d pulled the Spear out and were now carrying both it and Ayesha into the chamber, Ayesha screaming in orgasm as she pressed the shaft against her vagina. She’d pulled up her robe so that it directly touched her there and she was beyond pleasure.
“You’re going to die, you bastard!” Casca gasped, pain coursing through his body. The two wounds had his back and side aflame, and he was going now only on adrenaline and rage.
“As long as they escape, I shall have done my duty,” the captain said grimly. He had no illusions about his survival. He was a man who had risen to his post purely by ceremonial means, and the executing of the occasional fool was hardly a match for a man who lived and breathed war.
With a martial roar Casca attacked, his blade pounding down again and again. The captain blocked and blocked, desperation and determination etched across his features. But the outcome was never in doubt. One particularly huge two-handed blow shattered the captain’s blade and he staggered back, clutching the hilt and ten inches of broken steel. Casca’s next blow sliced through muscle, bone and flesh, and the captain screamed, throwing both arms up and the hilt struck the ceiling and clattered to the stone floor.
Casca struck again, cutting the man down and the captain crashed to the floor, blood spattering the wall next to him.
With nobody left to face, Casca staggered to the doors of the chamber and saw the last of the priests passing through a small door in the far wall of what obviously was a prayer chamber. “Ayesha!” he screamed with all of his failing strength.
The priest paused and turned, halfway through the portal. “She is ours now, Longinus. You will never find us, but we will find you, one day.” With that he passed through and the door shut, and Casca could hear two bolts sliding shut across it from the other side.
Exhausted and wracked with pain, he slowly slid to the floor and looked back along the passage. Now it was merely a cemetery. Corpses littered the floor. His gaze fell across the Elder, his chest a mess where the Spear had plunged into it and afterwards been hauled out brutally. Beyond him lay the captain. Casca hadn’t just killed him, he’d annihilated him. The guards lay or sat slumped where they’d been cut down and blood dripped from where it’d splattered the walls.
Casca looked at the dead Elder once more. His harsh breathing was the only sound to be heard, and he knew that unconsciousness wasn’t far off. He dropped his sword to the floor and clutched his stinging side. It had all been for nothing; the Brotherhood had, indeed, double crossed him. Five years of following their commands, doing their bidding, and they’d been brainwashing the woman all this time so now she was as fanatical and dedicated to their evil ways as any of them. He felt an emptiness.
But then, bubbling up from deep within him, came something else. Laughter. A vengeful, triumphant laughter.
He rolled his head back against the coolness of the wall and began chuckling. “You stupid bastard,” he addressed the dead Elder. “You idiotic, stupid, blind bastard!”
He broke out into a laugh, then hissed as the movement sent fresh waves of pain through him. “You think you’ve won? Do you?” he addressed the passageway of bodies. “Well I’ve news for you. You may have stolen her from me, but I’ve got one over you all.”
His chuckling began to subside as his vision dimmed and he began to slowly fall onto his side. But the smile never left his lips. For underneath the floor of a church in Antioch rested the real Spear. He’d switched it for one he’d bought in the city on his way to Jerusalem; one he made sure looked almost identical to and weighed nearly the same as the original. And they didn’t know. His vision swam again and then faded.
EPILOGUE
The sound of the modern world broke into Danny Landries’ consciousness and he opened his eyes in shock. It was like having a bucket of cold water thrown over him. He looked around and saw Casca sat, relaxed, at the end of the bench. The late afternoon sunshine bathed him and to Danny he looked drained. Maybe the telling of his tale did that to him. It sure as hell knocked him for a home run. He now could better understand why Dr. Goldman was getting too old and tired to do this anymore.
“Jeez, Carlos,” he said, stretching himself. “One helluva story. Did you ever see Ayesha again?”
Carlos looked at him, his eyes full of some deep emotion Danny couldn’t fathom. “I’ll let you wonder about that,” he said. “But if I ever tell you the story that came after that, it won’t be for a long time. I went to Arabia.”
“Arabia?”
“Yes,” Carlos said, his eyes losing their focus as he remembered that part of his life. “I’d heard of a new prophet spreading religion there, and thought maybe Jesus had returned. Turned out it was a guy called Mohammed.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Danny exclaimed. “You mean….�
�
“Yes, THE Mohammed. But I don’t think that part of my life story is ready to be told today. Maybe in a generation or so. But not now.”
“Sure, sure,” Danny shook his head, trying to clear it. Carlos stood up and Danny followed suit. “So now what happens? I mean, do you contact me or Uncle Jules?”
Carlos smiled. He couldn’t get used to Goldman’s familiar title from the clean cut young American. “I’ll contact you some time soon. But I need to speak to you now about something much more important. You’re a whiz kid with computers, so the good doctor tells me.”
“Some,” Danny grinned. Here he was on firm ground. “What d’ya want from me?”
“Anonymity. It’s getting damned hard to keep hidden from the government agencies these days, and I’ve no idea if the Brotherhood is watching me as we speak. Being anonymous is the only way I can keep ahead of these people. Can you do?”
“Sure. But the CIA will be one tough cookie to hide from.”
“Yeah I know. I’ve done some work for them in the past, amongst others, but they know me as Casey Romain. And he’s dead now, as I told you back in Cracow. I don’t want them tracking me down as Carlos Romano. I’ll also need a dozen other identities for the other parts of the world. I’ll also need financial security and anonymity. I know the Swiss banks are experts at this.”
“Well, Carlos,” Danny smiled widely. “You’ve done your talking for the past, what,” he looked at his watch. “Three hours? Goddammit, that long? Anyway, now it’s my time to talk. Best to do it on the move. No idea if any of these buildings house listening devices!”
Carlos nodded, and led Danny past the Wedding Cake and down the long steps into the forum, passing carefree tourists and tour guides, talking about the future with the young man.