Casca 35: Sword of the Brotherhood

by Tony Roberts

  Casca donned a poor quality sacking overcoat and made his way out of the village, his sword arranged underneath it from an adjusted scabbard, rather in an old way he’d used many years before, strapped across his chest. He didn’t want anyone spying on him and seeing he was armed. The land sloped up towards rocky peaks that dropped away again to the next grassy valley, but set higher than the one the village was placed in.

  There were few trees, and he caught sight of a buzzard circling high above a long slope, catching the thermals or up draughts to gain height, and his lungs and legs began to ache from the climb.

  He always marveled at how people could be concealed in these high pastures. He knew they were there but he was damned if he could see any. But there were paths trodden in the grass, leading up, and they were relatively fresh. They could be animal pathways but there were definitely human footprints in the disturbed ground.

  Coming around a large outcrop of jagged rocks he saw smoke spiraling up from a distant rocky canyon, and knew that was where the bandits would be. He also guessed he was now in their sight, as nobody would let someone this close to their hideout unobserved.

  He sat on one of the sloped ledges of rock and studied the distant canyon. There were fallen boulders masking the entrance which was probably why that place was chosen in the first place; high up, away from any center of civilization and sheltered, from what Casca could see. He got up and walked back and forth a couple of times, then smiled as he caught sight of three men making their way down to him, keeping in single file. It must be steeper there than it seemed, Casca mused. He returned to the outcrop and waited for the arrival of the trio, who were wearing a variety of clothing, all with belts and military type tunics, both Persian and Imperial.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the leading man demanded as soon as they were in speaking distance. Now they spread out and swords were in their hands.

  Casca wiped his hands and stood up. “Who’s asking?”

  The spokesman scowled. “Right, a big mouth, eh? We’ll teach you manners.”

  Casca laughed out loud. “How? You don’t have any yourself, you brainless peasant.”

  The three men stared incredulously at the lone defiant man. He looked tough, what with those scars and muscles, but one man against three? They moved in confidently.

  Casca ripped off his coat, simply by tearing it in two. He flung the torn fabric at the man in the middle, causing him to hesitate. In no time Casca was armed and springing across the rocks to the one on the far left, the one he’d picked out as being the least experienced.

  The bandit cut down at Casca but he’d struck too soon, rushed because of a sudden nervousness at facing an armed man. A quick step aside then one forward and the sharp blade was sinking into the exposed gut of the shocked man. Casca twisted hard and turned around, his blade already rising to a guard position.

  The two others came at him, faces hard and determined. They now knew they weren’t facing a hapless peasant; this was the real deal. Their lives were on the line. No time for pretty stuff or talking about what they were going to do. This was do or die. The leader tested Casca, stabbing at his face again and again, while the other moved away from the rocks and came at him from the left.

  Casca stepped back, and back again, giving himself space. He moved out from the rocks before retracing his path, making the two bandits get in each other’s way in their eagerness to bring him down. One downward blow and the leader’s throat was opened to the air and he fell to his knees, clutching his neck, vainly trying to keep his arterial blood from spraying out everywhere.

  The Eternal Mercenary now smiled humorlessly at the last one. This bandit swallowed in fear, knowing his life was in danger. He wasn’t that brave. He’d become a bandit by deserting the Greek army, and found preying on defenseless civilians more to his taste. He had no stomach for a one-on-one fight if the opponent knew which end of the sword to hold. His nerve left him. He dropped his sword and went to his knees, begging for mercy.

  Casca stood over him in disgust. This wasn’t a man. He’d not wanted to kill him anyway, as he needed a messenger to return to the bandit hideout to lure the rest of those vipers out. “Go to your master,” he said with a sneer. “And tell him the villagers won’t give any of you as much as a grain of wheat this year. You can damned well starve. Tell him that from me.” He finished by slapping the man on the jaw, knocking him over. “Now get out of here, you whelp.”

  The man scrambled to his feet and rushed off, looking over his shoulder in fear a few times. Casca remained where he was for a moment, then turned, looked at the two now dead bandits, snorted, and set about cleaning his blade before walking downhill to the village.

  Now for the second part of his plan.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They spent the night in the village, housed and fed by the nervous villagers. Now blood had been spilled their timidity had returned and they worried Casca had bitten off more than he could chew. He was confident however. His men had been busy in his absence, carrying out his instructions, and a few of the older men had helped, providing implements and old unused equipment.

  They were as ready as they could be. It was two hours before dawn, when the coldness of the night was at its deepest, and eyes at their heaviest, that the sentry, Xanthios, came lightly into the church that Casca was using as his HQ and reported that figures could be seen coming down from the hills in the faint moonlight.

  “How many?”

  Xanthios shrugged. “Too dark to tell for sure, but there were a couple of torches. I guess thirty all told.”

  “Right, get the villagers out of their homes and into here. Best they don’t get mixed up in what’s to come. It’s going to be brutal and the last thing I want are innocents caught up in this.”

  “Yes, Sarge,” the soldier vanished. Casca looked about the interior of the church, a single chamber with high rafters. It was cold in here but would be the best place for the villagers. The windows were high up and small, except the tall one behind the altar. One door in and out which could be barred from within.

  As the sleepy but apprehensive villagers began filing in, Casca quietly pointed out where they were to go and gave the last of them instructions to shut and bar the door and not let anyone in unless they gave the password ‘Ayesha’. He felt a sudden pang at the name, but it had come unbidden to his lips.

  He made his way to the edge of the village and knelt next to Andronikus. “Where are they?” he whispered.

  “Out there,” the soldier nodded. “Just heard two of them disturbing stones and telling each other to be quiet.”

  “On my command,” Casca said and moved sideways, keeping his eyes staring into the darkness ahead. It was pretty dark but the starlight gave off enough illumination to see darker shapes against the deep grey of the background. He saw two – no, three – shapes suddenly move in towards the village, off to his right, and he moved swiftly, crouching low so as to be below the level of the warped wooden fences surrounding the rear of a row of houses he was passing, and came upon two more of his men, waiting behind a pile of long slim objects by the corner of one hut.

  Making sure they knew what to do, Casca scuttled along to where an unpleasant smell met him. The village waste pit, set away from the inhabited parts of the village and on the edge where a large pen was situated. The villagers used this for their own and the animal waste products. It stank.

  Casca held his nose and crouched low. Two points of flickering flame were coming towards him, two bandits holding torches showing the others the way to come. All very well but they had the disadvantage of being seen while Casca and his men were hiding, and had their night vision while the bandits had theirs compromised.

  Loud whispers came to his ears and two men suddenly materialized out of the dark, holding swords. Casca grimaced as he took his hand away from his nose and tensed. He had men at every route through the village towards the church in the center, so nobody ought to be able to pass through
without coming up against his men.

  Now was the time. He rose up as the first man came alongside and rammed his sword deep into his gut, the steel shaft seeking out and finding the heart, slicing it in two. The man collapsed stone dead at Casca’s feet, the movement together with Casca’s pull bringing his sword free of the dead man.

  His comrade swung at Casca with an automatic reflex motion but missed. Casca slammed his pommel into the bandit’s jaw, breaking teeth, and he heaved him up and over the edge of the pit which he fell into, landing in the foul stinking mass with a gut turning squelch. The bandit opened his mouth to scream but it was filled instantly with indescribable semi liquid foulness, and blackness mercifully engulfed him before he was fully aware of what he’d landed in.

  Casca ran along the edge of the village, aiming for the two torches. Noises of people clashing came to him now, and he heard the sound of heavy objects being thrown through the air. His men were doing their job of spreading confusion. Heavy lengths of wood, to be used as replacement fences, were being thrown at the attackers. It would slow them down and confuse the hell out of them.

  A shape suddenly loomed in front of him, holding a spear, and Casca slashed at him as he passed, the shock of the impact traveling up the sword to his hands and he knew he’d inflicted a killing blow just by the feel of it. Voices were babbling away and the sound of sword on sword carried to him.

  Two knots of men fighting on the paths could be seen, thanks to the torchlight, and the bandits were massing at both points, trying to push through. Their numbers didn’t help matters and they were getting compressed just as Casca had hoped. The lengths of wood had blocked the only other route through and as a bonus, had laid out a bandit who could be half seen underneath the pile.

  Andronikus and Demetros were fighting hard to keep the attackers at bay, and one of their leaders was shouting for his men to kill them all. All very well but when his men were squashed into a restricted space, it was hard to use their weapons. Casca knew this from studying the Battle of Cannae, when Hannibal had defeated a vastly superior Roman force. He’d done much the same, compressing the space the legions could use by allowing his infantry to sag backwards in the center but hold the flanks secure, so the press of men had resulted in all the Roman soldiers being unable to wield their swords.

  Then the trap had closed behind the Romans with the Carthaginian cavalry coming into the rear and it was finis.

  While no Cannae, this was similar. The huts played the part of the flanking infantry, half his men the facing infantry and now he and the rest who were coming round the rear, the cavalry. They plowed into the rear of the bandits, screaming loudly and flailing their swords lethally. Four bandits went down before any could turn to face the new threat. Casca slammed his blade down the front of another, ripping open his sternum and opening his ribs to the world. He went down to lie at the feet of one of the torch holding leaders.

  This was a big, bearded brute who was holding an axe as well as a torch. He battered one of his own men out of the way in order to turn and raise his axe at Casca. The Eternal Mercenary blocked the first vicious blow, and countered with a side swipe that tore open the leader’s tunic. Enraged, the bandit swung hard in a huge arc that had Casca ducking hard. The air breathed on Casca’s face as the blade narrowly missed him, and ended up burying itself into the neck of one of his own men. The unfortunate made a peculiar gurgling noise and sank to the ground where he stood; he couldn’t fall either way as he was jammed there by his comrades.

  Casca pushed forward and sank the first three feet of his blade into the huge gut of the bandit. The big man yelled and struck out blindly. Casca had barely time to hurl himself to the ground as the axe grazed his shoulder, then was spinning lazily through the night air into the distance.

  One of his men was hit and went down, and Casca retrieved his own sword and faced another man who had the space now to move, thanks to the number of bandits who had been cut down. He struck out, and Casca parried. They had to maneuver backwards in order to avoid the bodies that littered the ground, and now it was almost equal numbers.

  The bandits had split into two; one lot facing Andronikus and Demetros and their men, while about ten took on Casca and his remaining four blocking their escape back into the hills. The attackers pressed forward desperately, trying to get out of the trap they’d fallen into. Casca knocked aside another blow and sent his blade ripping up through the bandit’s waist and through his torso, sending him spinning round before he collapsed to the ground.

  Three more came at him furiously, blades thrashing madly. Casca had to step back and then thrust quickly to avoid being cut. His blow struck one man in the shoulder and he screamed in pain. One of the others caught Casca across the chest, cutting through his tunic and the flesh, and waves of pain shot through him. Roaring in rage Casca swung upwards hard and saw a limb go cart wheeling into the air, then he planted his right leg hard on the ground and swung in a huge circle, bringing the blade back down to slice across the last man’s back as he fled past, sending this one head over heels to lie still at the village boundary.

  Casca clutched his wounded chest and staggered sideways, feeling waves of weakness course through him. Two of his men remained and three of the enemy had escaped, but the rest lay on the ground. “Go help the rest,” Casca ordered them. “I’m fine.”

  He had to lean against one of the fences, screwing his face up against the pain. A whimpering sound came to him and he opened his eyes to see the bandit whose arm he’d severed, kneeling a few feet away, shaking in terror and agony.

  “Shut up and die like a man,” Casca growled, envious that this man would soon know that which he, Casca, had craved for so long. Death. So many times he’d wished to die, to be finished with this life of suffering and loneliness. But he knew that luxury was denied him. Jesus had ensured that. “Be thankful your miserable life is over.”

  The bandit sobbed, then fell onto his side and the sounds ceased.

  The sounds of fighting had died out too. Wearily, and with a whispered curse, Casca pushed himself away from the fence which creaked in protest, and, still clutching his chest, made his way to the center of the village. The corpses of the bandits lay thickly there, and his men were standing in a group, thankful they had made it. He counted seven. One other had fallen besides the two who had been with him. Not bad for a night’s work.

  “Only three got away,” Casca said, breathing hard. “Good work.”

  “Andronikus fell,” Demetros said sadly. “Two got him, and he was dead before I could get to him.”

  Casca sighed. “He died as a soldier should. You should be proud of him.” There wasn’t much else he could add. After experiencing death so many times, he’d become indifferent to it. But his men would feel the loss, so he had to look as if it mattered to him too. “He’ll be given a proper burial.”

  “What about them?” Demetros asked, pointing at the dead bandits.

  “Throw them into the shit pit. Take anything of value off them first. I’ll go get the villagers and tell them all’s well.”

  It was dawn before the business of disposing of the dead had been done; Andronikus and the two other Greeks would be buried by the villagers close to the church; they insisted they would do it to honor their sacrifices. It was the least the grateful villagers could do. When they asked Casca his name, and it was given, the headman said the church would be rededicated to Saint Longinus.

  Casca was speechless. When he managed to speak, he tried to explain he was no saint, and only a Patriarch could make someone a saint, and that they had to be dead. But it was no use; the villagers were so ecstatic at being freed from the terror of the bandits that they saw Casca and his men as saints.

  With no priest to argue, their minds were set. Casca gave up. The bandits were thrown naked into the pit, severed limbs and all. The surviving soldiers took half of the possessions of the bandits while the villagers had the clothes that could be saved plus the rest of the plunder. Casca took n
othing.

  His wound was healed enough for him to lead his men away from the village by midday, after another meal of bread and goat cheese, and they were waved off by the happy villagers and their re-consecrated church of Saint Longinus.

  His men made jokes about being led by a living saint, and Casca shook his head. Demetros scowled. “Not a good thing to blaspheme,” he said darkly.

  “They’re only having a joke,” Casca said, “at my expense, naturally.”

  “But it’s taking the Lord in vain,” Demetros insisted.

  Casca stopped and looked at the serious man. He waved the others to take a break and rest for a few minutes. He took Demetros aside from the others and prodded him in the chest. “Those villagers showed the only way they were able to thank us for what we did for them back there. They have no money, no possession to speak of. They have their faith, something you ought to know. The sacrifices of Andronikus and the others will be remembered every time they pray.

  “You and I and these others here know the truth; we know I’m no saint and I told them. But you heard what they said. Leave them to do what they wish. They’re simple but kind people. Who is it harming? You? Me? These guys? No.”

  “But God will punish them…”

  “So leave it to God, then!” Casca snapped. “Don’t go judging them; it’s not your place! Isn’t there a story in the bible about stone throwers?”

  Demetros nodded. “’Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’.”

  Casca grunted. “Well, then, shut up about it. As far as I’m concerned it’s all forgotten. You think we’ll ever see this place again?”

  “No,” Demetros said quietly, cowed by his NCO’s vehement argument.

  “Neither do I,” Casca agreed. “So I don’t want to see you looking like you’re chewing a wasp on this subject again. Clear?” Casca waved Demetros off. He stood there staring into the middle distance for a while, wondering whether he’d started something he might regret in the centuries to come. What would come of this village? Would the legend of Saint Longinus grow and spread? How would it change and embellish itself in time? He muttered under his breath.