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  Once inside, they were greeted by the wife of Sicarus, who accepted at face value their story that they were on the trail of traitors who had been seen in the area. She agreed to call in all her field workers and house servants. When asked if there was anyone else on the premises, she admitted to having a guest and her child staying with her, saying with pride that her guest's husband was serving her own man at the siege of Carthage.

  The officers of the Sparthos-cublicar were very polite but insistent that their orders required that they ask everyone they met about the traitors and whether they had been seen. Even the child might have seen something he had not told his elders, thinking it of no importance. She sent for Ireina and Demos. There was no reason for her not to honor their request. Even if they were eunuchs, they did have beautiful manners.

  The field workers and house staff were assembled in the patio as Ireina and Demos came out of the house. Aeolius, the elder of the two captains, inquired if she was the wife of the man known as Casca and if the boy with her was his son. Once she had acknowledged this, he whispered in her ear that he had a message for her from Casca and that it was for her ears only. To avoid any interference from the wife of Sicarus or any others, they had worked out a plan. Using the guise of searching for traitors, they would question each member of the farm individually. To this end, all had been lined up single file to wait their turn.

  The first was the wife of Sicarus. Unsuspecting, she obeyed the request for her to go inside the house to the inner storeroom, where she was quickly and silently stabbed to death by the castrati of the Sparthos-cublicar. One at a time they repeated this process till all were put to the sword. Ireina knew nothing of this, as she and Demos were quickly put on horseback and taken away from the farm before they could have any hint that murder was being done to those who had sheltered them. Her questions as to what the message from her husband was about were silenced by gags in the mouths of both her and her son. As they crested a small hill, she looked back to the farm; from which tendrils of smoke were already rising as the buildings were put to the torch and the dead were scattered about the grounds to add credence to the story that bandits had raided the farm.

  Ireina and Demos were brought to the home of Gregory and there were placed in rooms that were guarded by carefully selected members of the Brotherhood. Gregory spent many hours watching them through hidden eye slits, trying to see whether there was anything about them that was different from other humans. The child especially drew his attention. He wondered time and again if the young boy carried the seeds of immortality in his blood.

  He rejoiced in his soul that he had the means to bring the spawn of Satan to him. He had locks of their hair, both mother and child, brought to him to be included in the message that he would send to Carthage.

  For that mission, he selected the captain of the Sparthos-cublicar who had destroyed the farm of Sicarus. This was an added precaution in the event that Casca didn't believe the letter or the hair. The captain would be able to give him their descriptions in such detail that there could be no doubt as to the truth of the letter.

  Casca would come to him, and soon. Gregory delayed as long as he could the testing of the child but at last gave in to his desire to know the truth. Once the letter was sent, there was no longer any need to delay. He had to find out.

  Ireina was dragged before Gregory, who sat on a plain curule-shaped chair of dark wood, his soft features looking like those of a parent who has to lecture an unruly child.

  Shaking off the hands of the guards, she faced the man who had ordered her taken from Sicarus's wife and brought here with their son. It was a relief finally to be able to face the one responsible. The not knowing was worse than anything she could imagine. At last, she hoped to find the reason for her captivity.

  Gregory knew what was in her mind and answered her questions before she had a chance to speak them. He pursed his fingers under his round chin and spoke to her gently.

  "Child," he began, "you have brought to us that which Casca will come after: you and your child."

  Ireina broke in spontaneously, "Our child?"

  Gregory halted his prepared statement. His eyes narrowed into puffy slits as his voice lowered to even more gentle and softer tones, yet the venom behind the easy words was unmistakable. "Our child? Yours and Casca's?"

  Ireina didn't know why, but she was suddenly more afraid than she had ever been; yet she would not deny her own son and his father. Straightening her back, she responded with passion, "Yes, ours. Mine and Casca's! What is that to you?"

  Gregory pulled his hood over his head to conceal his face. This was something that would require thought. If what the woman said was true, they were faced with a problem even more pressing than having Casca come to Constantinople.

  He ignored Ireina's protestations and waved her out of his presence. Her cries were muffled by a calloused hand as she was dragged back to her cell in the cisterns.

  Gregory made his excuses to the palace, claiming illness. He prayed for four days and nights on his knees on the stone floor. He had set out the spear of Longinus to aid in him in his devotions. Neither food nor wine did he take. He fed on the passion of his soul, trying to reach out to the spirit of God and find what he must do.

  His fevered brain tossed, turning in on its own fantasies and fears. He heard a thousand voices speaking to him from all around, within and without his being. He prayed for guidance, and it came. There was one answer to his problem, and it could be settled by a simple test.

  If the brat was the child of the godless one, had he inherited the curse with his blood? Could the spawn of Satan sire a whole race of immortals that would one day do battle against the righteous armies of Jesus on the day of the resurrection?

  If there was the remotest possibility of that, he had to stop it. He must find out, and the answer was simplicity itself, as the truth always is.

  Rising from his devotions, he went to his couch and slept the good sleep of the devout servant who serves his master well. When he woke, all would be made clear.

  With the dawn he rose and performed his ablutions, dressing carefully in his finest robe of white linen, his scrubbed face cherubic and friendly. After he had breakfasted, he called for the boy to be brought to him in his study.

  Young Demos was brought to him, still rubbing the sleep from his six-year-old eyes, wondering why he had been taken from his mother and why they were here. No one had hurt them, but he didn't understand why they kept him from going out to play or why his mother held him so close in her sleep and cried so hard when the tall men came for him and took him away.

  He was shown into the study by Gregory's personal secretary, a tall blond man with bland features that betrayed no emotions, only blind obedience to the laws of the Brotherhood.

  Gregory gave Timoteus permission to leave and then smiled gently at the child and motioned for him to come closer to his table. The child was handsome and had a body that would grow square and strong. His eyes were a darker blue than his mother's, and his hair likewise was brown instead of her silver.

  Gregory spoke pleasantly to the boy, who showed no fear at being alone with him. The Elder gave him fresh fruit and sweetmeats to eat as he examined the child from every angle, looking for any sign that this was indeed the child of evil.

  Gregory could see only that he bore more of a resemblance to someone else than he did to his mother, and the woman swore that he was the child of Casca. Gregory sat back on his chair and sighed. There was only one way to be absolutely certain.

  Calling the boy to him, he said easily, "Come here, child, and sit with me. I'll tell you a story."

  Demos did as he was bade and climbed into the lap of the smiling, friendly man who offered to peel him an orange and tell him a story. Gregory stroked the soft, brown, curling hair of the child and touched the fair unscarred skin with easy fingers. He held the child gently to him and told him a story of a warrior who had sinned greatly against God and had passed this way many years befor
e and had gone on to reach the wall that runs forever and beyond that to the lands of China and how he had returned but, when he did, brought back with him a great evil.

  Demos lifted his eyes from his half-eaten orange to ask, "What evil was that, sir?"

  Gregory held the child close to his chest with his left arm and whispered into the child's ear, "You!"

  Swiftly, he slid the knife, concealed in the cushion of his chair, straight into the innocent heart of the trusting child, sinking the blade into its hilt. He held Demos to him in a firm grip as the boy quivered gently and died, his mouth opening to let fall a piece of bloody orange onto the clean white robes of the Elder.

  Gregory lay the small body down on a couch and moved his chair to sit by him. Now it was time to wait. He removed the tunic from the child's chest that he might see the wound. If the wound healed, the child was Casca's. If the boy didn't return to life, he had saved an innocent child from a life of being corrupted by the spawn of evil that was Longinus. This way, the child was a martyr and would sit at the foot of God in heaven.

  All that day and through the night, his eyes never left the pale body of the child, and the wound stayed open. There was no sign of healing or a return of the life force. By the dawn, Gregory was convinced that the child was truly dead. He said a mass for his spirit and called for the body to be removed and disposed of. The servant who had brought Demos in came and wrapped the tiny remains in a small rug and took him away. The waters of the Bosphorus would conceal their act for all time.

  Now Gregory wondered about the woman. Perhaps he should dispose of her too. No! She might make Casca more tractable as a hostage, and then he would be more likely to be obedient to their wishes.

  The woman would live a while longer. He would tell her that the child had been sent away to live on a farm until Casca came to claim them. Then they would be reunited. There was no sense having a hysterical mother on his hands. He knew that to give Ireina even the tiniest of hopes would make her easier to control.

  A cry vibrated over the desert surrounding the broken walls of Carthage. Holding the locks of hair from Ireina and Demos in his hand, Casca felt his entire body shaking in white rage. Aeolius believed that all that was keeping him alive was the fact that the child and its mother were being held hostage by the Elder.

  In that supposition, Aeolius was mortally wrong. If the Elder wanted him, Casca knew that the messenger was of no importance once he had delivered his message. But he was of great importance to Casca. He advanced on Aeolius, eyes narrowed to piggish slits, face pale as he removed the thin, slightly curved skinning knife from its scabbard.

  Aeolius started to move away. The madness in Casca's eyes made him doubt the length of his remaining time on earth. A blow from a knotted fist struck the thin bone behind his ear, paralyzing him. He was awake but couldn't force his limbs to obey the commands he kept giving them to run or crawl. Strips of cloth wrapped about his wrists and feet ensured that he would remain immobile. Before he could regain control of his vocal chords, a rag was stuffed in his mouth.

  Casca leaned over him, whispering, "You're going to tell me everything, and then I'll let you die. But not too soon. First, you're going to suffer, to know pain such as you have never dreamed of. Then and only then will I give the mercy of death."

  The skinning knife went to work. In his centuries, Casca had taken the hides from hundreds of animals. This was his first and only human. He took his time making the slits under the skin, drawing the blade delicately along the strip running from the neck to the tip of the shoulders. Then, easing the thin blade under the skin till he could get a grip on it, he began the slow, careful process of pulling and then slicing a bit more to loosen the flesh from the outer hide.

  Aeolius was ready to talk before the first square inch of skin had been sliced from his body, but he couldn't speak. The gag in his mouth became clotted with his own blood where he chewed at the sides of his mouth in agony. Casca had seen this process in several places. He knew how to take his time and when to stop to give the subject a bit of a rest before continuing.

  By this time he had peeled the skin from the back of the captain to where it now hung, a red wet flap around the man's waist, leaving his upper torso a mass of red and blue veins, nerve endings that screamed at the slightest touch, even at Casca's hot breath as he worked with single-minded mania.

  Aeolius was near the edge of madness himself. Seeing this, Casca knew that it was time to stop. The captain would answer all his questions. He forced back the hate from his mind to gain enough control to ask the questions he needed to have answered. Aeolius did as Casca had foretold. He spoke of everything: of the Sparthos-cublicar and their raid on the farm of Sicarus, of the slaughter done there, and of how the woman of Casca and her child had been taken to Constantinople to the Elder, who was also the magister officorum. He spoke till Casca lived up to his bargain and gave him an end to pain by taking his thin blade and severing the nerves between the vertebrae at the rear of the captain's neck.

  It was in this state that Hrolvath found him; he nearly threw up after getting a good look at the bloody thing lying on the floor of Casca's tent. Casca had to forcibly sit Hrolvath down and explain what had taken place. He told him only that he had enemies from many years back and that they had taken his wife and son hostage and would kill them. What he had done was necessary to find out where they were being held.

  Hrolvath still avoided looking at the raw draining thing that had been a man. But it was a violent world they lived in, and if that was what had to be done, he had enough faith in his friend to try to understand it. The clincher came when Casca told him that Sicarus's family had been destroyed and all there, including his wife, put to the sword by the same men who had taken Ireina and Demos.

  Hrolvath promised to keep what had happened secret. He helped Casca haul the body out to the battlefield to let it lie with those of the Vandals, where there was little likelihood that anyone would take notice of one more among the thousands.

  Hrolvath gave Casca what money he had and escorted him to the docks to buy passage on the next ship for Constantinople. Hrolvath didn't know whether he should have told Sicarus of the loss of his wife.

  Casca made up his mind for him, saying flatly, "There is nothing he can do for his wife or servants now, but Belisarius still needs him here. He will find out soon enough. When he does, then you can tell him that I have gone to take revenge on those who did it for both of us."

  He left a bewildered and stunned young man behind as he went to find a ship to take him back to Constantinople. Carthage no longer held any interest for him. That would remain for Belisarius to clean up. He had something to do in the city of Justinian that could not wait one second longer for anyone or anything. He could be in Constantinople in a week.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Casca spoke to no one when he had to change ships at Chrysopolis, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, for the short ride across the straits to Constantinople. Paying his fare, he found a place on the bow where he could see the far shore. In the distance, rising over the sky, he could see dark tendrils of oily smoke rising to the sky. The capital was dying. Plague walked the streets of Constantinople. Plague, the most democratic of killers, sparing neither child nor warrior, noble or slave; the messenger of death touched every door.

  The thought of Ireina and his son inside those walls made him sick to his stomach. He had seen the handiwork of the disease many times, Those who had done this thing would pay. Of that he was certain. In his mind, anger burned red, setting his teeth grinding against each other, the muscles in his jaws working constantly. His hand touched his sword, gripping the hilt so hard that he nearly bent it. Someone was going to pay, and if they had hurt Ireina and his son, there would not be enough blood in their bodies to settle the score.

  The sails of the shallow-draft vessel flapped listlessly. Slaves had to help it along, their oars slapping in series against the darkening waters, each stroke of the sweeps sending him closer.<
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  He didn't see the small dark shape in its sack that had recently come back to the surface of the waters as if waiting to greet someone as it rode gently in the hollow of a wave that lightly bumped the ferry. Then it was gone, taken back into the deep. As they neared the bank, the wind shifted slightly. He smelled the taste of death, the sweet, cloying odor of decay and smoke. He saw lines of wagons and hand-pushed carts on the road carrying their cargoes of bodies to be dumped into the waters of the Bosphorus.

  The ferry pulled up to the wharf on the Thracian side, and Casca was over the bow and on the dock before the boat stopped moving. Sandaled feet slapping the wet stones, he rushed past the porters and slaves waiting to offload the ferry. He ignored the gruesome carts and their cargoes. There was nothing he could do for them, but there might still be something he could do for his own. The Brotherhood wanted him to come to them; by all the demons of hell, he was here. They would live only long enough to wish that they had left him alone. He reached the walls just minutes before the gates would have been shut. Soldiers of the palace garrison lined the access to the gates, making certain that all slaves who had left the city returned. By order of Justinian, no one was to be permitted to leave until the death had run its course. No one, that is, except the rich and powerful, who were retreating to their villas and estates.

  As Casca passed through the gates, one of the guards fell face forward on the stones. An order was shouted out by a corporal, and the man's body was hefted by slaves onto a cart to lie with those of a family of Byzantine merchants. Only his weapons were removed from him and handed over to the corporal.

  Beating and cursing his way past the weary, foot-dragging slaves, he passed under the eye of the portal guards, who didn't ask to see his papers. They had only been ordered to stop anyone from leaving, not entering, though why anyone would come to this place now, they didn't know and didn't care. Most of them had escape on their minds, and the rate of desertion among their ranks was rising every day. Only the promise of more gold kept any of them at their posts.