by Barry Sadler
The curved blade swinging at his side meant business, not play. "Ho, Roman," he called as he reigned his horse to a dead stop, leaping from its back to stand in front of Casca.
Grinning, Casca said, "It's good to see you, Jugotai. I had not thought we would meet again before I left. I see you have gained that which you sought."
The boy smiled, dark eyes flashing. He pulled himself up to his full height and stuck out his chest which had started to put some meat on it and no longer resembled a starved chicken breast so strongly.
"Yes, and I have a wife now to bear my sons to fight against the Hsuing-nu."
Casca dismounted and took the boy's hand in the Roman manner of holding the wrists.
"I am pleased and happy for you. You were a good friend and travel companion. I wish you were going with me, but I know that Tsin-ta'i has plans for you here. But, who knows, perhaps we will meet again one day. I must return and if the gods are kind, our paths will cross once more."
The boy's dusky face lit up with pleasure.
"Roman, take the saddle from your mount and put it and your gear on mine. This is my gift to you."
Casca looked from his sleek roan gelding to the runty, shaggy beast that Jugotai wished to trade.
Catching his look, Jugotai laughed. "I am not going to rob you, Roman. This fine animal you ride now will not serve you half as well as this tough nasty tempered one I wish you to take." Jugotai thumped the horse on the rib cage listening with a cocked ear to the hollow thump that issued forth.
"This miserable creature was bred and raised in the mountains and can live on dirt alone for weeks and go without water for days in the desert. He is like us of the Yeuh-chih; perhaps not as pretty as the refined nobles of Rome, but we can go the distance after the fine bloods have dropped over from bad food and water. Believe me, you will not regret the exchange."
The shaggy beast rolled his eyes around and Casca took a good look. The little bastard seemed to be pretty tough.
"Well, Jugotai, if you say he's the horse for me, then so be it." They swiftly changed saddles and gear. Casca swung himself up into the sheepskin-lined saddle, his feet almost reaching the ground. The nasty looking horse gave him only one dirty look and ignored him while eating the bark from a tree, even though young grass was easily available.
Jugotai swung into his saddle with the grace of an acrobat and turned the horse's head back to the bridge, whirling his blade above his head. He reared the horse back on his hind legs and cried, "Ride well, Roman. The road is before you. Remember you have friends among the tribes of Kushan. Be not a stranger." With that, Jugotai raced back over the bridge and out of sight.
Days came one on the other as Casca followed the torrents of the Indus through gorges that seemed to drop into the bowels of Hades and rise until he thought it would be possible to touch the stars overhead. Jugotai was right, his cruddy little beast had the agility of a mountain goat and could eat anything, including a portion of one of Casca's tunics he left lying too close to the beast, while he fixed his meal for the day.
Lacking anything better, Casca named the horse Glam, after his old friend at the hold of Helsfjord. There was a resemblance; both were tough and shaggy and had an intelligence that their appearance belied.
Several times Casca met small caravans heading to the lands of the Kushan. From these he would receive information as to the trail ahead. Twice he stopped at what served as an inn for the tough and daring folk of these highlands where he tried as best he could to develop a taste for the fermented mare's milk and curds that the wiry inhabitants smacked their mouths over with such relish. At night they would huddle together in a mass of snoring, foul smelling bodies. Each would transfer a number of his vermin to those sleeping next to him. Their bed was a large flat stone inside the inn, beneath which a small fire was kept burning to provide warmth. They were a happy folk with great attention paid to manners, almost to the point that it was impossible to talk straight to them.
Weeks passed and Casca finally reached the junction where the Indus was joined by the Panglong Shoa. The two formed a raging muddy torrent where they merged. The great peaks of the Naga Parat were far behind and now the trail passed through ranges that would lead to the desert.
Kicking Glam in the sides with his heels he turned north. Glam never failed him, even when he slept on his back. The horse seemed to have unlimited endurance and would continue on placidly ignoring the man on his back as if he were carrying no more than a feather. In the heights of the Karakoram pass Casca ate his pack horse and smoked enough of the remaining meat to last him for another week, which should see him through and beyond the Suget.
Finally the Suget side of the pass showed the veins of the mountains, red streaks and bands of granite, massive slabs where the alternating heating and cooling of the mountain made cracks that finally split and let the boulders break away to leave fresh scars that the winds and time would smooth away in a few centuries.
Four days more and Casca looked out over the basin of the Karim, stretching, it seemed, forever. The descent from his present height of eight thousand feet to the floor below was quick and uneventful. The trail was worn and the thicker air made him almost drunk after his months in the thin air of the Kushan and Indus valleys.
Chapter Twelve - THE TARIM
Tsin-ta'i and the map were on the money. The trail leading to the east on the edge of the endless wastes of the Tarim basin was liberally sprinkled with the bones of man and beast; the strangest were the skeletons of the camels, their curved spines looking like huge skeletal snakes with legs.
Examining several of the human remains with a professional eye, Casca found indicators that spoke of violent death; a clean cut in the skull made by a sword, cracked ribs which could have come from a blow with a club or mace and several had arrowheads lodged in the ribs. There was no sign of wooden shafts or anything of wood. As the desert provided little wood, the raiders would naturally have taken any they found usable, even for extra kindling to throw on their fires.
In the three days it took Casca to reach Ho-T'ien, he encountered two caravans, one of which numbered over three hundred pack animals carrying cargoes of rare spices, gems, ivory, slaves and the item most coveted by the matrons of Rome: silk. The caravans were well-armed, escorted by hired bands of mercenaries and slaves who preferred to work for the caravan masters rather than the desert raiders. Many of the mercenaries were Huns remaining from the Eastern tribes that hadn't been forced out by the pressures of the Hsuing-nu and had been migrating in ever greater numbers to the west. These were tough men who had spent so much time in the saddle that their legs were deformed and they could hardly stand on even ground. As children their faces had been seared with red hot irons to stop the growth of beards, leaving only the upper lip with long mustaches that reached below their chins. In contrast, Casca also noticed a number of blue-eyed riders from the Caucasus Mountains who were like giants next to the gnome like Huns when standing. But in the saddle, the Huns with their laminated bows were the equal – if not the master – of all they met.
Casca hoarded his water even though his map showed water only a few days from Ho-T'ien. He felt relief when he reached the banks of the Khotan. He crossed a river shallow enough to be forded and made his way into a prosperous city. The predominant race was the same as Tsin, from Han. These were the merchant princes who bought and sold cargoes for transshipment east and west. Though the largest bulk of commerce went to the west, there was little that the Han needed from the barbarian countries to the west. When the merchants reached their destinations, they would sell all goods, animals and slaves and then wait until enough of them were gathered to hire a new batch of guards to protect them and make the long journey back, this time much faster without the hindrance of pack animals. One successful journey could make a man as rich as a Persian prince. The dangers were great – as attested to by the thousands of bones lying along the trail – but so were the rewards.
Casca made his way through clean
streets without the familiar garbage smell of Europe. Bright intelligent faces watched his progress with interest. This was a city that thrived on visitors and anyone unusual might mean money.
Adjusting the small packet that contained the letters from Kushan to the Peacock Throne, Casca swung out of the saddle and handed the reins to a dirty stable boy with eyes much older than his 12 years. Flipping the child a copper coin, he entered the Inn of the Circling Road.
All saloons and taverns have a sameness to them, though the talk may be in different tongues and unfamiliar drinks. Men sat to talk business or politics – Huns, Mongols and Hsuing-nu – all had an unspoken agreement that no blades would be drawn in the city of Ho-Tien and all arguments would be settled outside the boundaries of the town. Their chieftains knew well the value of the Silk Road, for supplies and weapons could be obtained only with difficulty elsewhere. Though occasionally the city was sacked by a tribe who felt strong enough to get away with it, this had not occurred in ninety years.
The inn was a two-storied building of baked mud, bricks and stone. The inside was lit by the central cooking fire and tallow or oil lamps. Most of the customers had bare arms and chests, or at most, tunics of thin material, their skins and furs put away for the night, which was cold enough to frost a man's breath in these high altitudes with days hot enough to bake a man's brains in his own pan.
The weeks spent in Kushan with Tsin learning what he could of the language of Chin, served him in good stead. Taking a room from the keeper, he spent the next week talking and listening; the melodic tones of the Orientals came to him readily. If somewhat stilted in style, he could still make himself understood and each day the feel of the new tongue became a little more natural. He thanked whatever powers there were for his ability to pick up languages. Here also he obtained news of the trail ahead, the best places to water and rest; this information came from the merchants of Chin. The Hsuing-nu, Mongols, and Huns spoke to no one other than their own and, though no blades were drawn, they swaggered through the city like conquerors pushing the milder merchants and visitors out of the way. This was accepted as a fact of life and the people of Ho-T'ien merely sighed and went about their daily business, clucking over the bad manners of the savages.
Rested, Casca decided the time had come for one more leg of his travels. Paying his bill with small coins of silver, he loaded his small horse with skins of water and bought a new pack animal; a wall-eyed bay mare who looked as if she were made out of leather, her legs were good and her teeth showed she still had a few good years left. Though he did not relish eating her, as tough as she looked, he knew he would have to cut off chunks of her and put them under his saddle, riding on them for days until they were tender enough to swallow.
Thumping Glam in the side to get him started, the smaller horse gave one quick snap at Casca's toes to let him know he wasn't pleased to be leaving. The week of good fodder and rest had swelled his belly to the point he looked pregnant.
The morning sun felt good on his face as he rode out. Glam's small hooves kicked up clouds of sand and dust as they rode. Casca settled into the jarring back-aching bounce that horses use when they want to show who's boss. The flat-roofed buildings of Ho T'ien were not out of sight when the familiar sounds of death reached his ears, wounded horses screaming like women and the lesser deeper battle cries of men in conflict. The sounds even reached the ears of some in the city, but the things that went on outside were none of their concern; the city was all that mattered.
Hesitating for a moment, he started to turn his horse's head around and go back to the city when the sound of a woman's cry was heard. Dropping the pack horse's lead rope, he kicked Glam in the side and galloped forward as he took his shield from his pack. It was round with four steel bosses holding the arm straps inside. He pulled his sword from the scabbard and, leaning over in the saddle, kicked the horse into a run with the wind whipping in his face. The old familiar call to battle began to build along with the pulse racing faster as he crested a small rocky rise.
The scene greeting his eyes was that of a small caravan of about twenty pack animals and thirty men being overwhelmed by a band of Hsuing-nu. Several women were already on the ground, legs spread and being gang raped by the warriors more interested in ass than loot. The remaining men clustered around a fallen camel with a palaquin on its back, the kind in which the women of the rich rode, shielded from the elements. From within, a thin cry of fear reached him from across the distance.
Slapping Glam on the butt with the flat of his sword, he raced, filling his lungs to the bursting point and letting loose a long scream that jerked the heads of the Hsuing-nu around to see what had interrupted their pleasures. The small knot of guards were doing good work holding off the tribesmen, fighting frantically, several sending arrow after arrow into the circling screaming tribesmen, making them keep their distance.
For the most part, the tribesmen were letting them use up their supply of arrows and then it would be all over. Casca leaned over in the saddle and with a long swipe cut through the back of the neck of a Hsuing-nu who was just about to spill his load into the belly of the screaming woman beneath him. The feel of cold steel slicing through the vertebrae kept him from enjoying to the fullest his final moment of sex. Glam trampled two of his comrades under his sharp hooves and whinnied with pleasure.
Casca broke into the circling line of warriors, hacking right and left. The band of Hsuing-nu had no more than fifty when the attack began. The arrows of the defenders had reduced them somewhat, though man-for-man, the guards were no match for the horsemen. Half the guards were dead or dying and the remainder clustered together, several began their death chants.
Casca's short sword stuck in the ribs of a small grease-covered nomad, his blade almost snapping with the force it took to twist and pull it out; then he was finished.
Leaping from the saddle, he quickly bent Glam's right front foreleg under him and threw the horse to his side, next to the sheltering body of a dead camel, then turned to face the Hsuing-nu, snapping commands to the surviving guards, he whipped them into a line, making them put away their swords, ordering those with spears and lances to stand ready, to place the butts of the spears in the ground and wait.
Facing the enemy and placing his shield on his back to protect it, he ran into the circling line, bending low as he felt the thump of blades striking off his shield. He would swipe and cut the legs out from under any horse that passed within range and then jump back and take another one. The horsemen crowded in, each anxious to kill this stranger and in their own eagerness, they got in each other's way as he leaped in and out among them slashing and striking screaming, a strange battle cry: Odin...
One youngster came too close and Casca leaped and dragged him from his saddle. The boy did not have a full mustache yet or beard and as he kicked and tried to shove his blade into Casca's gut, Casca twisted the boy's wrist bones until they snapped with an audible cracking. He then held the youth in front of him as a shield.
The circling Hsuing-nu halted. The sides of their animals heaving, they stood silent and still. Casca faced the boy first one way and then another, waiting for the attack which did not come. The riders parted and a smaller tribesmen with three heads tied to his saddle pommel, rode between them.
Older than the others with grey thinning hair which hung in greasy wisps down his back, a weathered thick face from years in the sun, he pointed at the boy, crying out in a guttural tongue.
Casca shook his head, to show he couldn't understand. The old man took a breath and shook his head as if trying to find some long unstudied thoughts:
"Mine," he spoke in the tongue of Chin. "Mine." His voice cracked. "Give him, me ...mine." The youngster squirmed and Casca gave a short jerk that ground the broken bones of the wrist together.
The old man winced at the cry of pain from the boy.
"Give me," the old one extended his hand out pleading. "The old man's son or grandson and I've got this little shit by the short hairs," th
ought Casca.
Holding the boy closer to him, Casca pointed to the survivors and back to the city. "They go, I give." He twisted the boy's arm again.
The old man chewed his upper lip, worry written all over him. Pointing his fingers to Casca, he called out, his voice cracking with restrained emotion, "They go.....you stay." Bobbing his head, he would give so much, but no more and keep face with his men.
"Good enough, you dog thief, but you go to the hills and wait. When they reach the city, I will let this little viper free, but I want enough distance to be able to get a running start before you come after me."
The chieftain bobbed his head in agreement. After all, they were masters of the plains and deserts.
None could outrace them on horseback. Whirling, the Hsuing-nu left in a cloud of sand and dust, riding to the hills Casca had indicated a mile away.
Keeping a close eye on them, Casca made his way back to the cluster of guards where the surviving women who had just been raped lay whimpering.
The guards opened ranks and wondered. Pointing back to the city of Ho-T'ien, Casca ordered, "Get yourselves and the animals that can move out of here. They won't attack until you are inside the city. Before you leave, I would suggest slitting the throats of the wounded men and animals so they will not suffer."
The leader of the guards quickly agreed and sent two of his men to perform the grisly task. The cries of hurt animals and men became less one by one until only the silence of the desert breeze was to be heard.
A man in silken robes carrying a knife that looked out of place, came and bowed low in front of the Roman.
"Oh, noble stranger. I am the merchant Wu Ch'ing, whose miserable life you saved. Know also you have protected a gift to his Highness the Emperor Tzin of the Western Kingdom." With that, he opened the closed curtains of the palanquin and a tiny graceful hand came forth, followed by a face with such beauty it took Casca's breath away.