Casca 18: The Cursed

by Barry Sadler

  He furiously booted the squatting man in the throat, and hacked his belly clean open with his sword as he fell. Then he turned his wrist for the upswing, catching the next soldier between the legs; the slice continuing all the way up the red tunic till the point of the sword lifted him by the chin as it slit his throat.

  Red blood sprayed all over Casca, and he shook it from his eyes as he hacked and slashed at everything that stood before him.

  The square broke, the soldiers falling back in a wave to make a path for the blood drenched horror with the iron face of a fiend from the very gates of hell.

  Then Casca was fighting his way up the steps amongst the British officers. They fenced well, but none of them was any sort of match for the mindless, murdering monster that Casca had become.

  Two captains and a major fell before his sword, and he dispatched the colonel with a single up-thrust to the fat belly on the steps above him.

  Still climbing the steps, he twisted his sword out of the falling colonel's gut and was bringing it up to guard position when it was almost struck from his grasp.

  He backed away crab-like across the steps, and kept moving as a relentless rain of blows clashed steel against his steel.

  The British legate had at last unsheathed his sword, and was flailing it at Casca with enormous energy and fantastic skill.

  The whole of the rest of the battle vanished from Casca's awareness as he fought for his life.

  For his part, the legate knew that he was the last Englishman between the Chinese and the women and children in the building, and he was determined to hold them all off single handed.

  In two thousand years of sword fighting Casca had learned barely enough to keep his measure with this man, just managing to stay out of reach of the furious Britisher's sword, but unable to make a stand that put him within striking distance.

  They fought the whole width of the broad steps, and then the legate was forcing Casca down the slope toward the backs of the last of the retreating redcoats. He had killed a dozen or more men coming up these steps, and now one lone old man was slamming him back toward where he had come from.

  And the benefit was all to the legate. He took advantage of his superior position and pushed Casca one step at a time, Casca wasting energy as he tried to reach up at him, while being forced to yield step after step.

  When Casca backed away rapidly the legate declined to fall for the ploy and only reached after him with the tip of his sword, keeping him engaged, but despite his fury, running the fight as it suited himself.

  And when the legate again closed, he advanced down step in time with a slash or a thrust so that Casca had to parry and retreat and could not get in position to return the attack.

  Casca recognized that he had met a better swordsman than he had ever before encountered, even among the gladiators of the Circus Maximus.

  "But, fuck it, I've died once today, and that's enough," he spat.

  Instead of retreating yet another step, he bent his knees so that he was almost squatting, and then came up in riposte, turning his wrist to bring up his sword in a great underhand swipe, the whole force of his straightening legs and back behind it, the edge of his sword reaching to slash beneath the legate's guard and open his belly.

  But the old man simply wasn't there.

  He had kept one foot on the upper step, and as Casca started his enormous slash he stepped up and away so that Casca's sword met empty air.

  And then the legate's sword came down with all the fury of a man who was no longer fighting for a queen's empire, but for the lives of his own family.

  His sword took Casca squarely in the face, the iron mask smashing his nose to pulp as it disintegrated into its several pieces.

  Casca stood numbed by the blow.

  Two steps above him the legate, too, stood still, momentarily shocked by the sight of a white face and blue eyes.

  It was his last sight on this planet as Casca lunged automatically and buried half the length of his sword in the old man's gut, and the cocked hat and the elegant sword fell to the steps.

  Casca allowed the falling body to slide off the length of his sword. He muttered as he surveyed the now empty steps: "Thank all the gods there are no more like you."

  He briefly saluted the crumpled blue tunic and raced down the steps to the redcoats' backs, cleaving skulls, severing spines, lopping heads, and spitting kidneys as the startled troops found themselves squeezed between his sword and those of Huang and his men advancing up the steps.

  In a few minutes there was not an Englishman alive on the steps.

  Actually, there was scarcely an Englishman alive anywhere within the legation grounds. The thousand strong Chinese soldiers who had stormed the walls with Casca and Huang had been followed by an even greater swarm of peasants, and these, together with the survivors of Sen Yung's attack force, were rampaging through the grounds, hacking and stabbing with their clumsy implements, even tearing at wounded redcoats with their bare hands until not a single foreign devil breathed.

  And now they swept up the steps toward the great doors of the legation.

  For a single instant Casca thought of trying to order them to desist, then he shrugged and turned away as they forced open the huge double barred doors by sheer weight of numbers.

  Scream followed terrible scream as the English women were raped and mutilated and their children torn apart by the frenzied mob.

  Casca sheathed his sword and walked slowly down the steps and across the forecourt and out into the street to where his ostler stood patiently holding his horse.

  Wearily he climbed into the saddle; he sat there while the horse slowly found its own way back to his palace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Five days passed, and the city remained at a standstill, the normally placid Chinese peasants shocked out of their wits at their own monstrousness.

  After the sack of the British legation the mob had turned its fury on the smaller and less protected legations of all the other foreign powers. And on their churches, missions, monasteries, nunneries, schools, hospitals, orphanages.

  By the third day there was not a live European to be found in the entire city. Nor were there many who had died easily.

  The troops defending the legations had been smothered by endless numbers of Chinese who poured relentlessly over their lightly defended walls, ignoring the bullets and bayonets that killed them in their thousands till they came to grips with the foreign devils. The European and American soldiers and diplomats and businessmen and their families had been cut to pieces often one piece at a time with kitchen knives; disemboweled, castrated, mutilated, their women raped, their children butchered.

  Casca had stayed in his palace throughout the massacre, keeping his troops within the palace grounds, exercising and training them for the inevitable reprisals that he realized must come soon.

  The British navy, Casca well knew, had more than three hundred ships of the line, and Britain launched more than a thousand new merchant ships each year. And he also knew too well that the British would sail every one of those ships up the Han River to Tsungkow if necessary to avenge the legation and to reinstate Victoria's rule.

  The news that came to his palace from around the country was almost all bad.

  The uprising had been almost entirely abortive, ill conceived, not at all planned, and badly led. The faith of the Boxers in their newfound philosophy compounded from the Bible, Paine, Marx, and Queensberry had been profoundly ill placed. And the faith of the peasants in the leadership of these crazy young men had served them very badly.

  The uprising had, as expected, erupted throughout the entire country, but Tsungkow was one of the few places where it had met with any success. In other cities and county seats the foreign legations had been attacked and hundreds of Europeans and Americans had been massacred. But tens of thousands of Chinese had died in the event, and within a few days the rebellion had faltered to a standstill, the peasants sated with blood and disgusted with themselv
es, their Boxer leaders fighting amongst themselves, or simply having no idea what to do once they were in command of a village or town.

  Worst of all, none of the expected support had materialized. The Freemasons had turned their backs on the rebels. Businessmen like Mr. Song had not even provided the expected money and arms. Sun Yat Sen and his Kuomintang Democrats had quite ignored the events. And the emperor and almost all of the imperial nobles had sided with the British and the other foreign devils.

  In Chaochow, Baron Ying had ruthlessly put down the rebellion at first light on the first day of the new year, and, Sen Yung's messengers warned, was even now moving against Tsungkow without waiting for the British to make it up the river from Swatow.

  Casca sat at ease on the raised inner wall of his palace with Liang Yongming massaging his feet while he watched Huang Chu exercising troops for the coming battle.

  Defeat was virtually certain, but Casca intended to make the best possible fight of it. The only hope of minimizing the reprisals was to reduce the number of able bodied troops who could exact them.

  A much chastened David Sen Yung sat beside Casca. Despite his best efforts, he had failed to die in the attack on the legation and had been forced to swallow the bitter fruit of his dreams. Yet still he dreamed.

  At every piece of good news of the rebellion he waxed enthusiastic once more. In Shanghai, Sian, Chengtu, and a number of other cities the Boxers had succeeded to some degree. In Kwangtung, Szechwan, and even in the capital, Peking, many of the top Manchu officials had been assassinated. And in Nanking the Boxers had declared a provisional government independent of the Manchu emperor. The local Boxer leader declared that henceforth Chinese would create their own modern civilization, promote a peaceful life, and ensure that China would never again be a subdued nation.

  "Fine sentiments," Casca grunted when Sen Yung read a copy of the proclamation. "There's a familiar ring to them."

  But from other cities there came very bad news. Yangchow, once one of China's oldest and most important cities, had almost been completely destroyed in the British counterattack with the loss of tens of thousands of lives. A special tragedy, as the city had only recently been rebuilt, having been destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion just thirty five years earlier.

  Casca and Huang had put the five days to good use, and every soldier in every one of the city's numerous garrisons was on duty, living within the garrison with arms and armor close to hand. The smaller garrisons had forces of five to six thousand men under arms; some of the larger ones had twenty to twenty five thousand. The men of all the garrisons had been divided into watches, and one third of them were standing by, ready for action at all hours. The remainder could be called upon within minutes.

  Watchmen were on duty day and night in all the city's watchtowers, striking gongs every hour from sunrise to sunrise as water clocks measured out the time.

  Trenches and holes for marksmen had been dug all around the outer perimeter of the city and in every open space between the walls. Atop the walls, coal fires were set, ready to be lit, and nearby were vessels full of water, fire pots full of oil, and ingots of lead ready to be heated and poured upon attackers.

  Just outside the outer city wall Casca had set up a number of ballistas, giant slings that could hurl missiles of around ten pounds for distances of a quarter of a mile.

  But when it came, the attack held no element of surprise.

  Baron Ying rode toward the city at the head of an army of forty thousand men. In the late afternoon he encamped at a distance of a mile and sent ahead messengers demanding the surrender of the city and offering to spare Casca's life if he surrendered without a fight and gave up David Sen-Yung and all the Boxer ringleaders, the Pao, the colonel of the city, and the leading elders.

  Casca replied that none of these men was responsible for the sacking of the legations, and that he alone bore responsibility. He called upon Ying to withdraw his troops, warning him that if he failed to so do, he would attack his camp at dawn.

  There was no reply from the baron, and on the stroke of midnight Casca unleashed upon his camp a massive barrage of rockets fired from the palace, accompanied by several thousand agny astras, the fire darts being launched upon Ying's tents by troops who had crept to within a hundred or so yards under cover of darkness.

  Hundreds of tents caught fire, and their occupants were milling around in confusion when Casca's archers opened fire on them and his swordsmen waded into them.

  Ying's men had no chance. Few of them were within reach of their arms, the cavalry's horses had been driven off, and most of them had no choice but to flee.

  Ying appeared, raging, and tried desperately to rally his men, but to little effect. By the time the sun started to light the sky the bodies of thousands of his warriors littered the field, and thousands more were in full flight.

  Full dawn revealed that Casca had won, and at almost no cost to his own forces.

  From the palace walls Casca and Huang saw the result, but did not bother to congratulate each other. They knew well that the real danger did not come from Ying's primitively armed Chinese troops.

  The watchmen in the towers had barely started to sound the alarm when cannonballs started to fall upon the city and the palace.

  Six British ships lay in the river, broadside on to the city, their banks of cannon belching fire and round shot. The British commodore had sailed his ships upstream to within a few miles of the city, then waited for darkness and launched longboats, the rowing crews towing the ships into place in the dark.

  Casca had expected some such tactic, but the tables were nonetheless nicely turned on him. The cannonfire demolished whole buildings, including some of the garrisons, throwing the townspeople and the soldiers into panic. The British sailors knew exactly what they were doing, placing their shots about the city where they had the most telling effect.

  Casca had a mental image of the British officers on their gun decks, working with detailed maps of the city that they had been preparing for years against just such an occasion.

  Then the guns started firing chain and grape shot into the garrisons and the surrounding streets, cutting the surprised Chinese soldiers and the terrified citizenry to pieces, turning panic into rout.

  Marines poured ashore from the ships and advanced in lines, firing as they marched, pausing to reload while the next rank leapfrogged, and then the next, maintaining a continuous fusillade that killed all before it.

  Huang Chu managed to get some of his troops into order and his captains made stands here and there, but the archers were no match for the British rifles. The swordsmen could get nowhere near them, and the Chinese were forced to retreat continually.

  And when the British troops came to open spaces like the city squares and the temple grounds or long stretches of straight street, they were able to set up their Maxim guns, and the Chinese were cut to shreds.

  Street by street and corner by corner they advanced. Here and there Huang's men made determined stands, but to little avail.

  The rocket crews turned their racks to face the river, and when they adjusted their aim, scored a number of hits on the ships, setting fire to two of them, and igniting one powder magazine so that one whole ship exploded.

  But in the narrow, twisting streets the rockets could not be brought to bear on the marines who advanced relentlessly, their rifles clearing street after street, the machine guns adding to the slaughter.

  From the palace walls Casca watched. It was worse than he had feared. His archers accounted for only a few of the riflemen, while the advancing Enfields and machine guns killed soldiers and civilians indiscriminately in enormous numbers.

  And the British cannoneers quickly got the range of the rocket launchers and put them out of action in quick succession.

  Then the marines were at the outer city walls, the defenders at last able to take some toll on their numbers. But once the machine guns were set up, the defenders on the walls were quickly wiped out.

  Bo
iling water and lead and exploding clay pots full of burning oil rained down upon the attackers, but most of them stayed out of range and waited for the Maxims to wipe the defenders from the walls.

  Chanting sailors came dragging small cannon along the streets to within a hundred yards of the outer walls of the city, and the huge wooden gates disappeared in a fiery mess of splintered wood and bleeding bodies.

  The marines rushed through the gap and established a square of riflemen, and then a machine gun crew set up inside the gates and swept hot lead about the space to the second wall.

  When the cannon blew away the second set of gates, Casca wearily buckled on his sword belt, picked up his mace, and started dawn from the wall.

  As he reached the ground he turned for a last look at his palace. Huang Chu, he knew, would die in the battle or be executed after it. His faithful Pao and the city elders would likewise be executed as an example to those in other cities. David Sen Yung had rushed out into the streets at the first cannonade and had probably thrown away his life.

  Casca had said good bye to all his concubines the previous night, and tenderly to Liang Yongming that morning. He raised one hand to wave farewell to his palace and his reign as Hsia.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  "And where might the killer of Christ be going?" The woman's voice startled him and he turned to see the diminutive nun who had lashed him with her feather duster and with her tongue.

  "Where the hell did you come from?" Casca laughed. He was actually pleased to see that the demented old fanatic had survived the slaughter.

  Sister Martina laughed, too. "Oh, I know this palace better than you do. Better than even the Pao, or Tian, or any of the team of concubines that you disgrace yourself with.

  "This palace was first built in 635 A.D., during the T'ang dynasty. The T'ang dynasty granted refuge to Nestorian Christians who were being persecuted elsewhere as heretics which they were and are. Around the tenth century they were persecuted again, and again in the sixteenth century, then in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and now in the twentieth century.