Casca 2: God of Death Read online

  Glam taught Casca the way of the Norsemen. Here were few towns in the style of those found in the lands and provinces of Imperial Rome. But there was no shortage of people; they merely chose not to live one on top of the other. Glam rambled through these woods resembling in his fur robes and shuffling gait one of the brown bears that inhabited these regions. He was a strange partner for Casca the Roman, this northern barbarian, but they became friends and comrades. Their lives were intertwined and their loyalties tested by battles and time. Glam told Casca of immense lands that ran from the frozen sea to the mountains that held up the sky. Here the tribes roamed at will, and those with great chieftains had tens of thousands of warriors at their call. To Glam this was the best of all lands, the women more beautiful, the men braver, the beer stronger. The two wound their way slowly, bearing north, ever northward.

  Glam grumbled about the way the tribes on the Roman sides of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe had become but pale shadows of their former glory when they had been worthy foes. Now they aped the Roman in all things and were, to Glam's thinking, little better than falsetto – voiced castratti like all those from Italia – present company excluded, of course, he hastily added as he caught Casca thoughtfully eyeing his crotch. Glam instantly recalled Casca's threat to braid his legs and thus end his sex life to the detriment of untapped legions of fair maids....

  Glam changed the subject and went more into a travelogue. Indicating the general area to the east with a broad sweep of his hand, he said in his most officious voice: "There. Over there are trackless lands that have never seen the foot of man. Others where only the wildest savages live – half man, half horse – great hordes of them ... small gnomes whose legs are bent so badly they can hardly walk on the ground because they've spent so much time on horseback that their legs have grown crooked. And there are others almost as bad. Hundreds of thousands of them. Still they are only specks on the great steppes of Scythia and the even more desolate region that runs untold leagues beyond. Mark my words, Casca. One day we will have more than our share of trouble coming out of the east. If those devils ever start to move, they won't leave enough grass behind them to feed a family of grasshoppers."

  "You have seen these people you talk of, Glam?"

  "Aye, Lord Casca, I have. Several came as emissaries once to the king of the Alani when I was renting him the use of my sword as a bodyguard for a while. He was having family problems at the time and didn't trust his own men too closely. Yes, these ugly bowlegged little bastards even conducted their treaties from horseback. I got one stewed on fermented mare's milk – which they drink – and learned a little from him. They are indeed going to be moving west sometime. Now there is only a trickle this way, but, from the little bastard I talked to, I learned that they have their problems, too. Even greater and more terrible tribes are pushing them out of the lands they inhabit on the endless prairies near the wall, `The Wall That Goes on Forever' – at least that's what he called it, though I am sure he is a bit of a liar. A wall that goes on forever! Indeed!" Glam snorted through his mustache at the idea. "From what I saw of those beasts they would be extremely unpleasant to have as neighbors. They have absolutely no sense of appreciation for the finer things of life as we of the northlands do."

  Glam squashed a particularly fat louse and blinked as the body popped between his thick nails. He ambled on, unaware that Casca was sore put to keep from breaking out in laughter at Glam's wounded sense of propriety and sensitivity.

  He was the mainstay when Casca met Lida at Ragnar's Hold.

  Lida.

  Now there was something strange.

  Glam knew all about women – as women. And he expected Casca to be like himself. But the thing between Casca and Lida, golden-haired, lovely, beautiful young Lida, daughter of Ragnar the Brutal One, was like one of those romances the poets sang about. From the moment their eyes touched, something passed between them that was above and beyond the normal way of man and maid. Old Ragnar found out, of course. Old Ragnar, to whom even a daughter was only property that no man dared touch. In his insane rage when Lida had the temerity to stand up to him and say, "I have eyes only for Casca," he had blinded her with a torch jerked from the wall, crying, "Then, by Thor, you'll have no eyes!" And when he ordered Casca tossed into a dungeon to starve to death, even his hardened warriors were so frightened by Ragnar's enormous rage and brutal act toward his own daughter that they carried out his orders, smothering Casca by sheer weight of numbers before the Roman could find out what had occurred in Ragnar's rooms – for they sensed that if he knew, even the force of the Aesir would not hold him back.

  Once secured in the dungeon, though, Casca had been told – by Ragnar himself whose sense of vengeance was as strong as his hate. Casca raged, but even his great strength was of no avail against such great stones as enclosed the dungeon.

  Old Ragnar was a mean old shit, so used to having his way that he never doubted he would always have it. Casca stayed in the dungeon for six months until one day Ragnar, sure that Casca was long dead, gave orders for a new prisoner to be lodged there. But when the door opened, Casca came out, naked as a jaybird, nothing but bones and skin. He had eaten all his clothing – even the lacings on his leggings – along with every insect, bug, and rat that dared showed itself in the black cell. Water he licked from the walls where it condensed in drops. Surely there was not enough to keep any man alive two weeks, much less six months, but Casca lived.

  He snapped the jailer's neck with one of his strange blows, took the man's weapon, and like some weird nightmare of a man, wild beard falling from his chin, he sought out and killed old Ragnar at his own table where, the brutal old bastard was entertaining guests. Glam had been there, having found himself local employment in order to keep an eye on Lida. Casca had told him to wait, no matter how long, and from the things Glam had seen on the trail, he believed the strange Roman. Joyfully, Glam shouted and reached for his sword when this filthy, starved, weird-looking wretch leaped into the middle of Ragnar's table with an axe in one hand and a leg of mutton in the other. He scared the crap out of everyone there, sending all but the sturdiest warriors running for their lives. They thought he must surely be some demon out of the netherworld sent by Loki. Glam roared with amusement as he watched Casca bashing out the brains of old Ragnar with the leg of meat while whacking two of the household bodyguards with the axe – and never missing a bite. Glam's own joyful efforts to assist Casca helped speed up the demise of the few who dared resist them. For the rest, the sight of the lord being debrained by a hairy, filthy skeleton of a demon wielding a leg of mutton and a battleaxe was too much. They fled the house, leaving Ragnar's Hold to the madman. They were afraid of nothing human. But this was too much....

  Forty years ago Lida was a golden-haired thing of light and silver. She moved like a summer breeze....

  Old Glam snuffled in his beard. Even sightless she knew every inch of the Hold that was then hers and Casca's. Casca became the Lord of the Hold, and none disputed it – and lived...

  Wiping a tear from his eyes, Glam thought, I loved her, too, Casca. And she was beautiful to the end. A lovely lady with a heart for everyone and everything. Especially you, you lousy dago. This had been a good place for them. It took only a few fights around the neighborhood to show that this was no place to muck about with.

  Glam shivered as he saw again those clear white sightless eyes of Lady Lida. Forty years and she never knew Casca's secret.... That's the greatest miracle of all. I never saw a man love anyone as much as he did her. When she died, I thought for a moment he was going to have himself buried with her. But then he's a strange little bastard. Those touched by the gods always are. He has his fate to follow, and personally I don't envy him.

  But the years have been good....

  Laughing in his mead, Glam chuckled and muttered softly: "What was it he first called me? Turnip dick? Ha!"

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dr. Julius Goldman entered the magnificent doors leading into the sacro
sanct interior of the Boston Museum of History. He was late. His footsteps clattered over the polished marble floor, his own sense of urgency seeming to precede him with the echoing sound as he passed the priceless relics of antiquity, the emblems of vanished civilizations. Vases from China. Amphorae from Greece. Each a lonely and mute survivor of its past. Ancient weapons. Time-forgotten ornaments. Each seemed ready to speak, to tell some dark secret of the ages. Despite his haste, Goldman felt the atmosphere of the museum seeping into his brain.

  He turned left down an exhibit hall leading toward his destination, the newly acquired exhibit of Mesoamerican art from Mexico. On the way, though, he approached a well-used and exquisitely preserved set of Roman gladiatorial armor, its great helmet and famed Roman short sword hanging expectantly in the silent museum as though suspended in time. Involuntarily his steps slowed, and he stopped in front of the carefully mounted pieces. A gash ran along the belly of the armor, exposing the leather wrappings beneath. Goldman wondered how the man who had been wearing it had come out. As he stood before the armor, images flashed in his brain, and a feeling of second sight came over him, a tumbling of memories lost and found and then gone again before awareness. He saw in his mind's eye a massive stadium filled with people crying for blood. He saw men wearing the armor of the Secutor and the Mirimillone locked in mortal combat, straining to let the lifeblood out of their opponents, and not with any reluctance for they were glorying in their strength. Goldman felt himself part of the Roman games: the smell of the blood-soaked sand stank in his nostrils.

  He turned from the armor and entered the Aztec exhibit. The museum had just opened and was practically empty, but Goldman had been here the previous week and he recalled with particular distaste seeing two aficionados of this pre-Columbian culture standing before these exhibits, indulging themselves in a form of controlled, vicarious, mental masturbation... as if by touching and looking at these relics they could claim some kinship with the ones who had actually worn and used the items. Their attitude had been not dissimilar from the motorcycle gangs who wore the swastikas and emblems of Nazi Germany – the iron crosses and German helmets – and somehow felt that owning and wearing such items imparted the strength and ability to inflict their will on others through terror.

  Yet Goldman, too, felt a strange fascination emanating from the exhibits. The artistic level achieved in many of the items was astounding in its detail work. One item particularly arrested Goldman: a feathered shield of cobalt blue feathers with the emblem of the Jaguar god superimposed in tiny gold feathers. It must have taken over a thousand birds to make this one shield for some unknown noble.

  Representations of the gods of the Aztecs stood in their cases, imperturbable, the countenance and dress showing the overwhelming Aztec fascination with death. Most horrible of all was Coatlicue, the mother of the Aztec pantheon. Her image towered over the others by the sheer force of her accouterments. Her dress was made of serpents woven together as if they were reeds. She wore a crown of two snake heads. This was set off by a necklace of chopped-off hands and hearts, while monstrous claws took the place of human feet. She and her children seemed to wait patiently for the time when they could again feed on the living hearts and blood of sacrificial victims. In their time, blood had fed them – and the Aztecs made sure the gods never hungered for long.

  One god, a powerful priest-king, was the most powerful figure in their mythology. Quetzalcoatl and his symbol, the feathered serpent, was honored in almost all of ancient Mexico's panoply of gods. Even the Toltec and the Maya knew of him. The Maya honored him under the name of the Kukulcan and told of his coming.

  Perhaps because this god was so different from the others, Goldman lingered before his emblem. The fascination of the museum had gripped him.

  Part of his mind told him to hurry toward his appointment. Part held him here, immersed in the aura of the land of the feathered serpent.

  The Aztecs had inherited Quetzalcoatl along with several other gods when they conquered the Valley of Mexico and its inhabitants. There, at the ruined city they called "The City of the Gods," Teotihuacan, they had found the great temple of the feathered serpent and of Tlaloc, the rain god. Goldman considered the irony of the Aztec inheritance. Many of their names for the gods, many of their words for daily terms came from a bastardization of the captured people's tongue – and with the words had come a fateful legend – that of the return of Quetzalcoatl.. From the conquered people the Aztecs had learned of the great metropolis that had once stood there and how it had fallen to disease and curse when the inhabitants had lost faith with Quetzalcoatl. Their shamans had then foretold that Quetzalcoatl would return in "one reed," which occurred every fifty-two years. And the Aztecs, taking over the calendar of their predecessors from the few remaining survivors, had also taken over not only the legend, but the predicted time of Quetzalcoatl's return "from the sea." So it was in the year of Our Lord, 1519, on Good Friday – or one reed, as the Aztecs reckoned – that a fair-haired man set foot on the shores of Mexico. Hernan Cortez had arrived with his men, in suits of shining armor, with horses, with weapons of steel. To the Aztec king, Moctezuma, it was the fulfillment of the ancient legends, for the original priest- king had been fair of hair and had come from the sea. The legends had said that he would return in the same manner as his first appearance.

  Moctezuma, believing that Cortez really was the returning Quetzalcoatl, waited too long to resist the Spaniards. It was his belief, not his lack of power, that caused his defeat, for when he had ascended to the throne he had ordered 30,000 people sacrificed to celebrate his becoming emperor. There were only several hundred Spaniards, and Moctezuma could have destroyed them easily. The legend's power was fatal; not until Moctezuma's own son, Qualtemoc, ordered his father killed, was the power of the Aztecs used. They promptly drove the Spaniards from the Aztec capital city, Tenochtitlan. Though many Spaniards escaped, not all did, and for the next several weeks the terrible gods of the Aztecs fed on the blood and beating hearts of Europeans.

  But the Aztec triumph was short-lived. The gold of Moctezuma was an irresistible lure, and the doom of the proud Aztec nation was inevitable. Greed – coupled with the religious fanaticism of the Spanish Jesuits, those devoted followers of the Inquisition as ordained by the pious Torquemada conquered. Goldman pondered the paradox of the Jesuits. Here were men who felt themselves to be soldiers of their crucified God, Jesus, and in His name, and in the name of pity and love and mercy, they did not hesitate in their holy duty. In a religious fervor that approached ecstasy they were able to burn thousands of heathen sinners alive at the stake. This was done, of course, in order to save the heathens' immortal souls – to open the way to the glories of heaven for these heathen. By no means did the Jesuits consider their acts to be acts of cruelty. On the contrary, what they did was done from love. Ironic, Goldman thought, that the Spaniards considered themselves so different from the Aztecs. For, of course, the heathen Indians had sent their sacrificial victims to their gods in order to deliver their prayers....

  And while the priests of the gentle Jesus had burned the unredeemed alive, the soldiers of Cortez had raped and looted – and destroyed the remnants of a great people, all in the name of glory: glory and loot for themselves and for the King of Spain. The story was an old one, and a common one, and for a moment Goldman, thinking of it, lost the sense of mystery that had engulfed him in the museum. He turned away from Quetzalcoatl and walked past other relics and art objects, and then he saw the one for whom he had cancelled his day's appointments and had rushed through the packed, horn-honking, morning traffic of Boston.

  The man's back was to Goldman, and he was leaning over a glass display case, but there was no mistaking who it was. The back was broad, and the muscles beneath the conservatively cut suit seemed almost ready to burst through.

  Making his way past several other display cases and standing slightly behind the man, Goldman started to clear his throat in order to announce his presence, but, before he cou
ld, the man at the display case spoke, his voice deep and steady:

  "Welcome, Dr. Goldman. It is good of you to come at such short notice." And with that he straightened from the display case and turned to face Goldman.

  Goldman was speechless.

  The stocky man locked his gray-blue eyes on Goldman and scanned the doctor up and down. "You're looking well, Doctor," he said. "The years have obviously been good to you. I'm glad you were able to come. For some reason we seem to have our lives involved with each other – ever since that night in the Eighth Field Hospital in Nha Trang."

  Goldman's mind did a quick retake, an instant replay of that astounding night in the hospital ward, when, after removing a piece of shrapnel from the brain of the man now confronting him, an unbelievable, story had unfolded – unbelievable except for the living proof of it, which was a man known then as Sgt. Casey Romain. At least that was what his dogtags and personnel records said he was called....

  "Casca," Goldman said. "Is that what I should call you?" He shifted uncomfortably, but the steel-colored eyes of the man he called Casca held an amused glint.

  "It's good enough, Doctor. I will answer to that – or to any one of a number of others." Extending his right hand to the doctor, he said easily, "Here. This is for your collection. I should have left it with you when last we met, but after carrying it around in my leg for the last two thousand years I grew kind of attached to it." He dropped into Goldman's palm a shining bronze arrowhead. "You deserve it, Doctor. After all, you're the one who removed it from my leg."

  Casca smiled and looked the doctor over carefully. "Yes, you are looking prosperous. The hair is a little thinner, and the extra pounds look good on you. In Nam you had that half-starved look that people who have either religious or work fetishes get – along with hot eyes and thin bodies. But, yes, now you do look well." Abruptly he took the doctor's elbow with a grip that had the feel of cold steel in it and directed Goldman's attention to the object in the case over which he had been bending when Goldman arrived. The object, the case placard said, was one of the rarest and most priceless of its kind, one of the prizes the museum was able to get the Mexican government to lend for this exhibit.