The Persian c-6

  The Persian

  ( Casca - 6 )

  Barry Sadler

  Barry Sadler

  The Persian

  PROLOGUE

  Julius Goldman wandered among the booths and stands of the purveyors of medical supplies and goods. Stethoscopes and enema kits mingled with the latest in medical technology, while machines that could represent a three-dimensional scan of the human body were displayed alongside films demonstrating the use of laser beams to seal off tiny bleeders in the eyes.

  This annual gathering of the American Medical Association was always interesting and exciting to him. He knew many of those present and a lot of them were close colleagues, but Goldman's eyes were searching for one face in particular.

  He finally found him in the maze of booths and slick presentations. He was leaning over the counter of one of the booths talking to one of the bright-faced, pretty young girls, hired to attract the attentions of the doctors to a particular booth.

  Goldman worked his way through the crowd and touched the man he'd been looking for on the shoulder.

  "Doctor Landries?"

  The former Army colonel, and Goldman's onetime commanding officer, turned around. He was still tanned and lean, extraordinarily healthy looking. His hair was thinner now and completely silver, but his eyes and manner were quick and sure as ever; so was his grasp of Goldman's hand in a sincere display of pleasure at seeing his old comrade again. He laughed pleasantly.

  "Goldman! The Hebraic hero of the Eighth Field Hospital, and terror of all nurses. How in the hell are you, son?"

  He took Goldman's arm, completely forgetting the sweet young thing he'd been talking to. She was pouting a bit now, Goldman could see, at losing the attention of Bob Landries, but another, younger neurosurgeon was moving in to replace him.

  He guided Goldman out of the convention center and they boarded one of the buses that made regular runs to the hotels servicing the center.

  Goldman was genuinely happy at seeing his friend again. It had been a long time. Landries ran his hand through his thinning hair and looked out the window of the bus, watching the streets of Atlanta pass by as they pulled on to Peach tree, heading to the downtown area.

  "Have you heard any more about our mutual friend?"

  Goldman knew who Landries was talking about. He smoothed down the vest of his conservative three-piece pinstripe suit, a little uncomfortable at the tightness of the vest at the midriff. He would have to lose some weight.

  "Yes!" He started to continue but Landries stopped him.

  "Wait until we get to the hotel. We'll settle down with a drink and talk. I always have a need for one when the name of Casey Romain comes up."

  Goldman agreed and the two talked of things doctors talk about: new techniques, prices for services, and, naturally, the good old days when they were some years younger.

  Landries was seven years Goldman's senior, but looked about the same age, with his tanned face and lean body. He'd always been an exercise nut, Goldman remembered, feeling a little guilty at letting himself go to pot over the past few years. After looking at his old boss he made himself a promise — knowing he more than likely would not keep it- that he would try and put himself back into shape.

  Taking their turn, they exited the bus and entered the air-conditioned enclosure of the hotel. It was a modern inn with elevators of glass chutes and an open-air restaurant and lounge in the lobby. They found a table with a degree of privacy beside an indoor pond where goldfish swam with studied unconcern.

  Drinks were ordered. Landries, as usual, had a double Blackjack and water; Goldman ordered Scotch and soda. The two men waited until their drinks were served and their waitress with the airline smile had left them before they commenced talking about that which both knew was the main reason for their meeting.

  Goldman began first, after taking a sip of his drink.

  "Casca… or Casey, as you and I knew him…"

  The names called to Landries' memory the time they'd first met the man Romain, who'd been brought to them as a casualty in Vietnam. Goldman continued his story, and Bob Landries was slightly envious that Casca had chosen Goldman to tell his story to. But then Goldman had been the one who'd spotted the strange healing process of a wound that should have been fatal, and had heard the beginnings of the weird tale of the man who'd killed Jesus at Golgotha, and of the punishment that Jesus had given him. To wander the earth unable to die until the Second Coming, forever a soldier-condemned to a life of endless wandering and war. He smiled a little, recalling how he and Goldman had had the man's medical records destroyed after Casca, or Casey, had disappeared from the hospital. No one would have believed them.

  A few years after the Vietnam debacle had ended, their patient had shown up at Goldman's house and begun telling him the full story of his odyssey through the ages. He had the power to take Goldman into his life and enable him to experience all that he had done. Since then, Goldman had developed a compulsion to put down the words and story of Casca Rufio Longinus, soldier of Imperial Rome, whose travels and adventures over the face of the earth made the journey of Ulysses seem no more than a mild weekend excursion in the country.

  Landries half emptied his glass and called for another. He coughed, clearing his throat.

  "I suppose the reason you came to this gathering of the entire medical world is that you've had another visit from our friend?"

  Goldman nodded his head in the affirmative. "Yes, and I have the story in my room. Do you want to read it?"

  Landries gave a short laugh, almost a snort.

  "That is a dumb question, Goldman. You know that I would travel halfway around the world to read his story. But doesn't it exhaust you to be the sounding board for him? How can you stand living through all his pain, his suffering and disappointments?"

  Goldman shook his head. "I don't know, but I have to finish what we started. It's like being hooked on drugs. I have to complete it, and the worst of it is, I know that I never will. He has outlived the Roman Empire, the Persian and British Empires and I see no indicator that he will not outlive the both of us-that is, unless the Second Coming of Christ arrives sooner than we expect." Meeting Casca had left Goldman with a few questions. He was fast doubting the teachings of his faith about Jesus not being the Son of God. He continued.

  "Let's finish these and go up to my room. I'll give you the manuscript to take back to your own room and read."

  Landries agreed and paid their tab. They took one of the glass-cocooned elevators up to Goldman's room. Inside, Goldman handed the manuscript to Landries and they returned to the lobby. He escorted Landries to the doorway, where the heat of the Atlanta streets was being restrained outside.

  Landries was anxious to get started on the reading of the next story of Casca and asked Goldman, "Where is he this time?"

  Goldman smiled. "Be patient, Bob. After all, Casca has been patient for years, hasn't he?"

  Landries agreed, and after he'd made Goldman promise to mail him all the manuscripts from there on, they shook hands and said goodbye.

  Landries exited the hotel into the midday heat, hailing a cab to return him to his own hotel. He didn't feel like waiting for the buses that came by every thirty minutes. He had to get back, relax, and see what had happened to Casca.

  In the cab, and in spite of himself, he opened the manuscript and peeked at the cover to see the title. Perhaps it would give him a clue as to Casca's location in this particular segment of his

  history. His eyes fell upon it CASCA, The Persian…

  ONE

  Hot, boiling, shimmering, the sun broke over the rim of the world, sending spears of flaming light across the clear skies of the high steppes. By midday it would be hot enough to cook a brain in its own pan. But for now
there was still enough chill left over from the night air to make the breath of the horse and its rider visible in the small clouds of vapor that were whisked away by the freshening morning breeze.

  That cool breeze would soon change into a moisture-sucking blast furnace. Before then, the man and his horse would have to find shelter, as had the snakes and lizards. Shelter from the killing rays of the life-giving and-taking sun of high Asia.

  To the west, the lifeless, barren, sky-reaching peaks known as the roof of the world, with their eternal caps of ice and gale-swept snow, seemed terribly distant and aloof from the sufferings of those who ventured to cross the desolate wastes of the desert in its shadow.

  The rider raised his eyes, red-rimmed and sore from the ever-present grains of sand that invaded every pore and opening of his body, and even the food he ate. He understood now why the men of this region's tribes nearly always had their teeth worn down to stubs before their beards turned gray.

  There was sand in everything they ate from the time of their birth to their death. Every day the grit ground their teeth down a little more until there was nothing left but smooth stubs resting against the gums. The thought of it made his own teeth ache.

  His horse stumbled, then caught itself on wobbly legs. It scarcely resembled the fine-blooded, pampered animal it had been when Sung mi Hsiung, the commander of the garrison at the Jade Gate, had given it to him. Its rider was scarcely in any better condition. His posture told of the weary, lonely miles they had come. He doubted that if he tried to trade in the animal right now, he could receive even a couple of sick goats in exchange.

  But they had come far from the wall that runs forever. He had chosen not to take the Suget pass trail back to the Capital of Kushan on the banks of the Indus. No, this time he followed the silk road, but now was the wrong time for such a crossing. The last two waterholes had been dry; even when he dug down a depth of several feet he could find no trace of moisture.

  The rider raised his eyes to the sky, the pale blue of them almost washed out by the gray of the dawn. Deep lines crinkled at the edges of them gave him a slightly Oriental look. From a distance, he could have passed for a nomadic tribesman as the skin that was exposed was as dark as a mongol's.

  Nowhere had he heard such silence as that of this region of the great wastes, where it was said, made on the winds was the howling of the lost souls, as dunes of sand were shifted from one spot to another, one grain at a time. For months, that was the only sign of movement until the wind demons came in their full fury. The force of the wind, carrying the sand with it in sky-darkening clouds, would strip the flesh from a man's body in a few minutes and leave nothing but bare bones and rags as silent testimony to the vengeance of the wind demons.

  The lands of Chin lay a thousand and more miles behind him. He had lived there longer than he had in any other place in his life and felt as if he were leaving a part of him behind. But his own personal demon was driving him, back to the land of his birth, back to Rome.

  For all of his life, he had thought that Rome was the center of the world and the only real barrier against the hordes of barbarism. But in the lands behind the Great Wall, he had found out that in comparison to the culture and refinements of Chin, Rome itself was only a few steps ahead of the barbarians. Still, Rome was the place of his birth and sometimes, no matter how a man may have been treated, he has to go back to his source. He was still Casca Rufio Longinus, a soldier and sometimes even a slave of the Empire.

  Ahead of him, he knew, still lay the lands of Sogdiana and Parthia, which he would have to pass through before reaching the first of the Romancominions. Parthia! It still held a bitter taste for him. He had fought there under the Eagles of Avidius Cassius and participated in the sacking of the city of Cestiphon-where forty-five thousand had died in one day.

  Pulling his horse to a stop, he dismounted, took the reins, and led the animal to a cluster of tall brush and withered, leafless trees. There he carefully doled out a slim measure of his precious water supply to wipe the muzzle and moisten the delicate membranes of the horse's nostrils to keep them from bleeding. A handful for the horse to taste, and he licked the remaining moisture from his own fingers, careful to waste nothing. Taking what had once been a fine cloak of red silk, he spread it over the branches of the withered trees to make a sheltered spot to protect them from the sun that would soon be over them.

  Placing the horse where he could have some benefit from their meager shelter, he stripped down to the skin in order to shake out his tunic and the loose trousers he wore. His body was crisscrossed with uncounted scars of various degrees of severity. Some he had received as a slave in the war galleys of Rome, others came from battles he now found hard to recall.

  When he was satisfied that he had shaken out most of the sand that had managed to creep into every seam and wrinkle, he redressed himself, wincing at the raw spots in his groin and armpits. Lying down, he tried to make himself as comfortable as possible moving several rocks from under tender spots. But his leg had an ache in it. A dull, burning throb where a brass arrow head was imbedded deep in the muscles of his left thigh. A souvenir from a Parthian marksman at Cestiphon,

  Closing his eyes, he tried to rest, ignoring the labored breathing of his horse. If they didn't come to water soon the horse would die, and that meant he would walk, for Mithra only knew how many miles until he could steal or buy another one. As far as horses dying, that didn't particularly concern him. At least he'd have some fresh meat and the blood would give him strength. The Romans were practical people, not given to an excess of sentiment.

  As he slept, the heat of the day grew in intensity. Hot and dry, it sucked the moisture from his skin as fast as it appeared, leaving only traces of his body salts behind to streak his tunic. Flies buzzed in frustration as they tried to beat the sun to the life-giving moisture that came from his pores. Flies, it seemed, were the only creatures in existence that could appear from nowhere, in a hellhole such as this where even the lizards buried themselves in the sand to escape the heat.

  Semiconscious, he would sweep them away from his face and eyes, then turn and dream of places and people long dead, faces of those he had loved and of those he had killed. They came in a jumbled torrent until all merged together and he couldn't tell them apart.

  His horse hung its head low and tried to sleep also, tail twitching from side to side, shivers running up its flanks. It too tried to shake off the nagging drone of the flies. As these two tossed and squirmed in their restless sleep, others were awake and moving. Two forces of men were converging on a waterhole some twenty miles in front. Each unaware of the other, they followed separate trails. Both parties had the look of hard men about them.

  Those from the south were led by a slender warrior with his head shaved bald except for a long scalp-lock. He was the youngest of the warriors in whose bloodlines showed some trace of the west. Several had fair hair and light-colored eyes. The other party coming from the north was made up of short, stocky men whose faces had been seared with red hot irons at the moment of their birth, so that only mustaches grew on their lips and nothing at all on their chins. These riders' legs were twisted and deformed from the years they had spent on horseback. The bows they carried were made of laminated wood and horn, similar to those of the Parthians. One thing they had that was different from those coming from the south: they had not just the look of men who killed, but men who lusted after it. Huns! Those nomadic tribesmen worshipped the primal spirits of the earth and sky and prayed before a naked sword.

  They would meet those from the south at the waterhole and when they did, men would die, for the Huns and the men of Kushan were blood enemies and had been so for five hundred years.

  Casca, former Baron of Chin, used his saddlebags for a pillow. The fortune in gems, given to him by the Emperor Tzin as a parting gift, gave him small comfort. At that moment he would have traded them all for a full goatskin of rancid swamp water. Moving, he tried to find a more comfortable position as his purse
dug into his groin. The irritating object inside the leather pouch was his seal of office. TheChuhou wang of a noble of the court of the Son of Heaven; a solid gold seal, with a rounded knob of tortoise shell. This seal was whathe had needed to gain horses, food, and lodging while in the lands of Chin. But here it was just as useless as the gems in his saddlebags.

  The short double-edged sword close to his hand was infinitely more valuable than either the gems or the seal, at least until he reached lands civilized enough to appreciate the value of the small collection of rainbows that rested under his brown shaggy-haired head.

  Several times he would wake for a few heat-drugged moments, then drop back off into his uneasy slumber. Not until the sun began its decline did he finally stir himself to rising. Taking a double handful of dried mare's milk curds, he mixed them with enough water to soften them and give the illusion of wetness. He ate one handful and fed the rest to his horse as he watched the heat waves dance and shimmer over the floor of the desert.

  That night, as he led his horse over the sands, he looked to the skies and the twinkling, distant stars. It was said in Chin that the astronomers there had charted the courses of over eleven thousand of the sparkling lights. To what purpose, he really didn't understand, but those distant lights were as important to them as were their gods. It was said that they could tell the future from them. But if they could, he couldn't see how man could keep screwing things up-especially if he knew beforehand what was going to happen.

  As the constellation known as The Hunter passed overhead, he came across the mummified remains of a camel and its rider, lying side by side on the trail. The skin of the man was drawn tight in a perpetual leathery sneer, the lips pulled back from the teeth. Here, not even the vultures ventured to clean up. The packs on the camel had already been opened and picked over so Casca didn't bother. Others had come this way since the unknown traveler had died. It could have been a month or even several years ago. It didn't matter to him and certainly not to the desiccated husk lying there.