The Eternal Mercenary Page 6

  He looked at his feet. The swelling remained, but, surprisingly, the pain was almost gone. Surprisingly? "... until we meet again..." The words of the Jew haunted him. What has happened to me?

  He got to his feet, found he could stand, and limped back to the bed of straw against the farther wall. But before he lay down he looked at the skin of his feet again. Though the light was now dim, it seemed that even the battered flesh was now healing. Impossible!... Taking the index finger of his right hand, he dug his strong nail into the tender flesh of his left forearm, dug it in deeper until the blood flowed freely. The pain was as nothing compared to what he had been through. He dragged the nail halfway up the arm... and stopped. His mouth dropped open as he saw... saw in the part darkness... the bleeding cease before his eyes, the pain leave, and a scab form.

  Casca cried out, "No! No!" and he beat his head against the cell wall in terror and confusion.

  The jailer, hearing the outcry, rushed to him. Seeing Casca apparently trying to beat his brains out, he called for help, and, with the assistance of two guards, was able to get Casca put into restraints that would keep him from doing any further harm to himself.

  If the bastard died before Tigelanius judged him, there would be hell to pay.

  Casca slept all that night, a troubled and uneasy sleep, a dark time that alternated between despair and mental agony.

  But the night ended.

  In the morning he was trussed and cleaned and brought before Tigelanius, Commander of the Garrison of Jerusalem.

  Tigelanius sat in day dress, not wearing his uniform. He was wrapped in a toga of state, one with the purple border to show his touch of royal blood. His sword was beside him. Beside him, also, a scribe stood, with the charges written down. Two other officers of the Tribuni Militarium stood as advisers to the court.

  Turning his cultured and sensitive face to the accused, Tigelanius looked at the prisoner in distaste. Making a wrinkle in his nose, he said, ascetically, "You still stink" and ordered the officer of the day to have the jailer given ten lashes. Turning his attention back to Casca, he called for the scribe to read off the charges...

  This done, Tigelanius asked Casca if he had anything to say in way of defense before sentence was passed.

  Casca said nothing. He stood motionless, his mind full of wonder. Today the scab on his arm was gone, and only a thin pink line showed where he had dug out enough meat to fill up a thimble.

  Tigelanius made a motion to the scribe. "Note that the accused has nothing to offer in his defense." Rising to his full height, the tribune stood in front of Casca. "You, Casca Rufio Longinus, are hereby relieved from the rolls of the Tenth Legion, and your name shall be stricken from her rolls of honor. Your awards for valor are taken from you and do not exist. As of this moment, you are no longer a person. You are the property of the emperor and are to be sent to the copper mines in Achaia. There you will be permitted to serve your emperor, and Rome, for whatever time you have to remain on this earth. You are dismissed."

  And, turning away from the prisoner, he made the comment to one of the witnessing officers: "Now, let's get on to some important matters. Mettelius, how many will you be bringing to dinner tonight beside yourself and your lovely lady?"

  Casca was stripped down and issued a loincloth and robe in place of his legion dress. His manacles were replaced by simple leg irons, and the medallion with the likeness of Tiberius on it was put around his neck. To be caught without the medallion being worn as it should be was to be killed immediately.

  He was hooked up into a coffle of some twenty other slaves who were to be sent to the same copper mines in the distant southern provinces of Greece. There they would dig the greenish red ore from the side of the mountains until they died.

  They were marched the fifty kilometers from Jerusalem to the port of Joppa. There they were loaded on a bireme, a twin-banked coastal ship that would take them to the port of Cenchrea.

  The crossing was uneventful, but the quarters were crowded and the food scanty. They were fed once a day and watered twice, but there was no unnecessary cruelty. The Romans did not torture their slaves needlessly, just as most people would not beat their domestic animals without reason.

  One small squall had several of the slaves throwing up, but Casca did not seem to be bothered by it at all, and indeed the food seemed to be enough for him, too. At least it seemed that he had less trouble adapting than many of the others. They credited that to his being a former legionnaire and therefore used to diet restrictions. Only one man died on the voyage, a merchant who had been foolish enough to be caught with rigged weights when he was selling supplies to the garrison at Samaria.

  The ship made all the coastal stops along the rim of the Mediterranean toward Greece, stopping to let off passengers at Caesarea and Tyre and taking on a cargo of wool at Sidon. At Sidon they also picked up the governor of Cyprus and took him on to Paphos. His Excellency had been to a conference of governors at Antioch, and like all such politicians on an expense account had made a little side trip to meet with some old friends in Sidon for a couple of weeks before returning to his governmental duties on his own miserable little pigsty.

  From Crete, the bireme made a straight approach to Rhodes for a two-day stop during which Casca and the others were allowed to exercise themselves on deck (the crew used them to help load a cargo of skins and other items into the hold next to the slave section). The ship made one more stop at Ephesus, and then it was onto Cenchrea at Achaia, the southernmost province of Greece, home of the legendary Spartans and supposedly a former resting place of the great Ulysses. All in all a nice tour for tourists, but damn little fun and games for slaves.

  During the voyage Casca had his first real taste of what it meant to be a slave. No longer a man. Not even human. Just property. But being property had some surprising overtones.

  They were not put on the oars because they did not know how to row properly, and it would take too long to train them. Those on the oars were a combination of slaves and free men working for hire. The slaves were not beaten except when one was caught slacking off – and then not enough to cripple him. After all, slaves were property and worth something. Even if they were not good oarsmen, they could still be traded in for new stock. But a disabled slave brought nothing. So, as long as the slaves did their jobs with no trouble, they were treated relatively well – if being ignored could be called good, and Casca realized that it could.

  After the disembarkation at Cenchrea, the slaves destined for the mines were separated from the others and hooked into a new coffle and headed up into the hills where the mines were. They trudged along, quickly learning to keep in step with each other so as not to stumble. Casca found that the rhythms of slavery came quick and easy... not letting yourself think was another way to stay sane.

  Unthinking, the coffle marched like some crookedly jointed centipede up into the rocky hills of Greece toward the pits where they would spend the rest of their lives underground, digging copper for the wealth of the Caesars and for the profit of the proconsul governing there. By now the chains had cushions of calluses to rest upon and no longer ate away at the skin. Pads of calluses would develop in other areas, too. They could smell the mines before they reached them. The sound came also, but it was the smell that came first. After the relative cleanliness of the galley, the smell of thousands of sweating, unwashed men assailed their nostrils. The first slaves they saw were carrying baskets of red earth to the dumping ground. They seemed part of a seemingly unending line of dirt-encrusted humanity. Like the legendary worm that ate itself, they never stopped. They were one continuous great circle of misery. Here the whips cracked frequently on the backs of the slaves. These were the expendable ones. The mine superintendent needed a certain death rate just to have room for all the newcomers he was being sent. He had complained to his superior in Athens at this constant overload he was forced to contend with, and how difficult it was to maintain a balance. He had cut their rations to a third – and still
the animals wouldn't die fast enough. Now, here came a new batch. Where the hell was he to put them? The latest war had thrown thousands of slaves on the market, and they were a glut. He got all the rejects... the troublemakers and murderers. Damn top management... don't know what they're doing.

  Casca was numbered in by the number on his slave tag, and he was chained to his new work mate. The leg irons here were longer than they had been on the march. A slave in the mines needed a little more slack.

  Casca and his mate were assigned to a pit on the northwest side of the mountain. He was lucky. Here he would at least have some fresh air and sun. Below, in the shafts that ran down a thousand feet below the surface, the slaves might not see the light of day again for the rest of their lives.

  Casca fell into the routine of his job and soon learned how to avoid the overseer's whip. The one third rations did not seem to bother him very much. What he didn't know at the time was that his system's metabolism was simply adjusting itself to whatever intake it was receiving and making the most efficient use of it. Casca had a bowel movement less than once a week, and then it was small. Everything he ate was turned to energy. His body grew dark from the sun. His muscles became bands of steel. He not only did his own work but much of his chain mates' chores as well.

  The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and yet he worked, and his chain mates died. He had gone through three of them and was now with his fourth. Four years had passed, and he grew ever stronger. Yet, even with careful planning, he could not avoid entirely the lash of the overseer, and his back looked like a street map because of the thin scars of the whip. But he survived while others died.

  And always the Jew's voice came to him when he was attached to a new slave by the iron umbilical cord: "Until we meet again..." There were times, too, when the voice came to him in his sleep... when he would curl up in the little hole he had dug for himself and his chain mate for protection against the worst of the storms that periodically raged over the island.

  Casca kept silent, talking little to his mates or the others around him, but they knew something about him was different. And after a time even the overseer began to stop by and touch him for a bit of luck.

  But that was before he was sent underground... and The Horror began...

  ELEVEN

  For Casca, the years assumed a sameness that was torture in itself. He was unable to differentiate the passage of time other than through the change of seasons, and each seemed to last forever. Always he dug deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, always deeper and deeper...

  In his seventh year he was sent underground.

  The surface overseer had become uneasy when Casca was around. The other slaves died or grew emaciated or sickly; Casca did none of these things. The only thing that he had in common with the other prisoners was the covering of filth and encrusted dirt and clay that only came off his body when it rained. He looked less human than animal – more, a mechanical thing of earth as timeless as the soil itself.

  The emperors in Rome changed. Politicians and heroes rose and fell. And still Casca toiled.

  He grew sullen and quiet, an object of wonder and fear to the other slaves. His beard was almost to his waist and matted with knots and tangles. He would have become a total beast, insane and nonhuman, but it was his mind that saved him. He used his imagination to keep from going mad. Eleven chain mates he went through and still he remained unchanged.

  When he first went underground, the overseer of his shift wondered at this strange man. Under filth, Casca's age was indeterminate, but his strength was unreal. He could do the work of three, and he could lift more than any two other men in the mines. Casca was a solid knot of sinewy muscle and tendons. He always got his full share at feeding time. No one cared to challenge him for his choice of a sleeping place. Casca could have been the boss of the underground if he had so chosen. But he did not. The overseer wondered why. He could not read Casca's mind.

  Casca was trying to figure out his fate, spending hours, days, every waking moment, trying to comprehend his plight. The enormity of it... I cannot die. The Jew won't let me. Then, if 1 cannot die, all I have to do is wait. Everything changes in time, and, I have all time to myself at least all time until, as the Jew said, 'Until we meet again.' Meet again? Perhaps he is in the next shaft; shoring up the sides with timbers. But I will get out of here. An opportunity will present itself It would do no good to attack the guards and try to escape. They would just overpower me and put me in chains. No, I must get my way to the surface again. Down here, there is nothing but the prospect of being buried alive-

  Buried alive!...The thought slammed into his brain.

  Buried alive!...

  He could not die!

  If he were buried alive, it would be for all eternity.

  Now the days of real horror began.

  There was always a very good chance of being buried alive in the mine. It happened often to others. Periodically tons of earth would claim a slave. Stay here long enough, and it would happen to him. And he had all of time itself, not just the short lifetime of these others who had been buried alive. The thought of being buried alive for eternity drove Casca almost mad... the thought of lying, unable to die, under tons of earth was a horror that consumed his hours.

  It would not go away. It preyed on his mind... like some monstrous animal gnawing at his brain. Out. Out. I must get out! Before the mine caved in on him.

  In the seventh year of the Emperor Gaius Nero the cave-in came.

  There was little warning. Casca was working in his shaft, not far from his overseer, Lucius Minitre. Ironically, it was one of the few times when he had forgotten his obsession momentarily since the vein of unusual rock they were working had caught his interest.

  The rumbling started... the shifting of the earth overhead.

  There was an almost unbearable feeling that came with the change in air pressure. Millions of tons of earth and rock began to settle.

  The slaves froze.

  For one seemingly eternal but uncertain moment time stopped. Then the roof covering two hundred feet of tunnel dropped, crushing the lives out of forty slaves.

  The fall of the first roof started a chain reaction that spread through the other galleries. Throughout the network of tunnels the screams of panic-stricken men echoed one upon the other as the walls grumbled and heaved around them.

  Minitre, the overseer, was not a particularly brave man. This was just a job to him. He hid himself behind one of the slaves cowering in a side passage.

  Casca paid little attention to the overseer. His own chain mate lay beside him with only part of his head visible under the boulder that had relieved him of the honor of toiling for the glory of Rome. It had also relieved him of two-thirds of his brain case. Casca was wondering how to get free from the ankle chains that bound him to his dead mate. The overseer was only a few feet away, cowering, his hands over his head and his face to the dirt floor. His eyes were closed tightly, and he knew nothing except the depths of his fear. Now Casca took a look at the overseer and saw the short knife in the belt of Lucius. A broken piece of timber lay close by. Casca reached over, hefted the lump of wood in his hand, turned rapidly, and knocked the overseer into the bliss of unconsciousness.

  Taking the small blade, he went to work cutting his chain mate's foot off at the ankle. The job took longer than it should have due to the dullness of the blade and the smallness of the knife, but finally he cut all the way through, having a particularly rough time with the ankle joint. He had to cut through the tendons so that he could get to the other side, and that meant working the blade back and forth in the socket. For a moment he thought the blade would break, but it held, and he was through to the other side.

  Casca was free of his chain. Well enough, he thought. I didn't like him much anyway. Talked too much. But he was chained to me. I wasn't going to cut my own leg off... not yet, anyway. He looked at the unconscious overseer. I may have my way out of here lying at my feet.
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  Wiping the sticky blood from the amputation off on his dusty beard, Casca bent down and put the shift overseer on his shoulders and began to make his way out of the depths and up to where the sun waited. He carried, pulled, and crawled with Lucius past sealed-off tunnels where men by the dozen were dying or already dead, knowing that only one thought was running through the minds of the trapped slaves: Would the mine superintendent think them valuable enough to try and save – or would he just requisition some more slaves from the penal colony on Cyprus?

  Casca ignored all pleas for help. One man grasped at his feet, begging to be helped to the surface. Casca kicked him in the face to break his grip. The man cried through sobbing lips for pity, "Don't leave me to die!"

  Casca sneered at him. "Fool, is that all you have to worry about?" Taking the small knife from his waistband, he tossed it to the terrified slave. "Here is your way out. Use it and be free. It's more than I can do." He turned away and began his trek back the surface.

  Crawling and dragging his unconscious burden over rocks and rubble, he at last reached the entrance. The full light hurt his eyes, nearly blinded him after all the time in the dimness underground, but to him it was a glorious sight for it lit the way to the pits.

  As he forced his way out among the crowd of slaves trying to reach safety, a great rumble began deep in the mine, one that grew and grew, louder – and deeper in tone. The growing rumble finally burst its way to the surface in a great spout of dust and flame.

  Somewhere deep below a gas pocket had been ignited by one of the flickering torches, and level after level of the mine fell in on itself, carrying hundreds of men to their deaths beneath the falling rock. He had escaped just in time.