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  Olaf, the leader of that particular party, fairly beamed.

  "Lord, it is a rich land. There is food a-plenty, and more deer than in the forests at home. Also large birds. There are signs that there are plenty of bears. We shall not starve in this land, wherever it is."

  "What of men?" Casca asked. "Did you find any signs of men in this place?"

  Olaf nodded in the negative, his horned head bobbing. "No, my lord, there was no sign. But we have not seen much of the land. It appears that this is no small island but a large land going on for leagues. I climbed a tall tree on the highest hill and looked as far as I could see. There was naught but great valleys and forests."

  "Good," grunted Casca in his familiar manner. "Then here we shall work on our ships and make them ready for sea again. But I still want scouting parties out night and day, and a particularly careful watch at night. We shall not be taken by surprise by anyone. If there are people here, then we will be prepared for them. One thing I learned in the legion was to always prepare an armed camp before doing anything else. Get the men ashore except for a skeleton crew on each ship. First we will build here a fort from which we can be secure. Then – and then only – will we fix the ships."

  Olaf saluted as he had seen his father do, thumping his hand to his chest. "Aye, lord. So it shall be." Turning, he gave the orders necessary to carry out Casca's will. The Vikings set to work. Axes that carve a man can also cut trees; by nightfall they had built a small, tight camp and were secure. Four more deer were roasting over the fires, sending the rich smell of the cooking venison into the air. Many of the men could not wait and wolfed down large chunks of the almost raw, smoking meat, wiping the deer grease on their beards and mustaches.

  But their weapons were always close at hand...

  On the following days they expanded the camp, dug trenches about it, and implanted sharp stakes, points out, in the trenches. They added two small watchtowers. Then – and only then – did they beach the ships and proceed with the work of making them seaworthy again. They caulked and sealed every leaking seam, packing and tamping in the punk. They scraped off the barnacles that had accumulated; the ships would be faster when they returned to the sea. They went over every inch of the hulls and the insides of the ships. Corio had built well; there was only minor repair work to be done – and plenty of timber available for it. They worked in relays. While some labored on the ships others hunted and fished. The game was abundant; the waters incredibly rich. The men scouted ever farther inland. Still they found no sight of any salt sea. There were only great rivers and great valleys. They turned their hands to reprovisioning the ships. Meat was packed and salted down, or hung in thin strips to dry in the smoke of their fires and then packed carefully. Birds of many kinds added to the food store. Fresh water was everywhere. It would have been an ideal place to live if they had women and children, but having none they began to tire of this pleasant land. The urge to sail was upon them. Their confidence restored by the weeks of good food and weather, they looked forward to the time when Casca would give the orders that put them to sea again.

  That time seemed long in coming.

  During the long days and quiet nights of the voyage south Casca had ample time to think. Often his thoughts had been of Rome. He was out of touch with the Empire, for his years in the Hold on the fjord had not brought him much information until he had acquired the services of Corio the shipbuilder who was also fortunately an educated man. From Corio, Casca learned what had transpired in the Empire since he had crossed the Rhine those long years ago. How long had it been? he had thought. Fifty-one years ... a lifetime for most men.... During those years another stream of so-called "Caesars" had sat on the eagle throne, each having his day and then passing on, leaving the seat of power to yet others. Septimus Severus had sought to restore order after the civil war in which he took the power from the degenerate Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius. But Septimus Severus had remade the old fatal mistake of giving power to two brothers who hated each other. He had left instructions that after him his two sons would rule jointly, one in the east, the other in the west, from Rome. The result was the old and time-tried result: the elder brother murdered the younger. The year 235 saw the first professional soldier become emperor. When the army took control after killing the emperor Alexander, it installed Maximin. The killing of Alexander had seemed a necessity. He was a coward and a weak ruler, but what the army considered his greatest betrayal of Rome was his buying peace with the Rhineland Germans. To top it all, the peace fiasco had come on the heels of a miserable and disastrous campaign in Persia wherein the defeat was the direct responsibility not only of Alexander's cowardice, but also of his mother's meddling. It was too much for the professional soldiers to bear. They killed Alexander and made Maximin emperor. But they had reckoned without the senate of Rome. That August body thrust Italy into rebellion. The senators won, and they in turn had Maximin killed. Rome saw five emperors within six years. According to Corio the current emperor was one named Philip from the Arabian colonies who had so far been successful in beating off three attacks from Decius who aspired to the purple.

  "It never changes," Casca said out loud, waking a sleeping Viking near him.

  "What is it, lord ?"

  "Nothing," Casca answered. "Go back to sleep. It is nothing of any matter...."

  Casca gave the orders.

  The ships sailed. In two weeks they saw their first palm trees. The weather had grown warmer every day of the voyage south along this apparently endless coast. They pulled in to rest and stretch their legs along a marshy region. Casca saw animals here that looked exactly like the crocodiles of Egypt, only smaller. They had the same appetites, and Casca almost lost a man to one of them when the fellow bent over to drink. One of the beasts grabbed his arm and tried to pull him under. Fortunately the reptile's appetite was greater than his size. The fellow's comrades dragged him and the beast to shore and dispatched the lizard with spear stabs. They took the teeth to make jewelry.

  But they were properly impressed with the beast, for they had never seen its like before. Casca, of course, had. He told his men of the monstrous Egyptian crocodiles that were worshiped as gods along the Nile. "Some were said to be the length of three tall men or more," he explained. His men looked at him. Three tall men? But no one said anything. After all, the Lord Casca was a most unusual man. If he said a beast was as long as three men, then that was the way it was.

  Further south the ships rounded a peninsula, always keeping the coastline in sight. They never lacked for food. A few hours stop and they could catch enough fish to feed twice their number. In addition, there were huge crabs, and oysters a foot across. Ashore there was plenty of game, and animals new to them. One animal that scared the crap out of them, the one they came to fear more than any other, was the snake with the beads on its tail, which it would shake at a man before biting. One Viking found to his regret that the bite was fatal. It took two days for him to die. After that the Norsemen gave these snakes a wide berth.

  They continued sailing along the coast. There seemed no end to this great land. Day followed day, and they sailed on. The sun beating on them turned their skins first red and flushed, and then slowly dark. They discovered that after their skins had darkened they could work all day in the burning heat and feel no discomfort. Their furs they had long since stowed in the leather sleeping bags. Now the nights were warm enough for them to sleep naked on the deck.

  Two more weeks passed, and they had to put in again for repairs, more warily this time, for they had seen fires at night – not forest fires or brush burnings, but the controlled glows that meant men were on that shore. What kind of men the Norsemen did not know, but there were people here. Sometime they must meet.

  When the time came to go in for a landing, Casca stood in the bow, naked except for his loincloth. His hide was tanned brown, the many scars on his body, being slightly paler, standing out like crisscrossed hairs and ropes. He pointed the way into a good harbor. They h
ad seen no fires for four days, and had laid off this position for two of those days. When they were convinced that there was no one else in the vicinity except themselves, they went in – but they followed the same precautions as at every landing before. First a stockade and ditch; then the ships brought in. The precautions seemed useless. They had seen nothing...

  But they, themselves, had been seen.

  Eyes had watched them from the forest, the eyes of men. These watchers wore the skins of an animal resembling the leopard, and, like the beast, they wore its likeness in a fantastic headdress, a headdress that made it seem as if the man's head had been swallowed by one of the cats and the man was looking out the open jaws.

  These men dispatched runners to tell their leaders of Casca and his ships, and while they waited for word from their leaders, they watched the strange Norsemen.

  Had the Norsemen seen them they would have seen men who were as a race handsome, swarthy, square-faced with brown or black eyes. Their bodies were lean, with no trace of fat. These men were hunters. Not of animals. Hunters of men.

  They watched the strangers from the sea, puzzled by the huge ships. Careful to keep from being seen themselves, they moved through the jungles of the coast like shadows. The only metal they had was of gold, worn in necklaces and bracelets that were studded with stones of many colors. These were the soldiers of the Jaguar, proud and cruel. Many had teeth filed to points to show their bravery and devotion, to show that they sought to imitate their god in all things.

  They were part of a raiding party. They had been sent out to punish a city, a city delinquent in its tribute to their own city far in the interior, near the great marshes in the Valley of the Serpent. Now they watched Casca and his men and waited for orders.

  For twelve days they watched, and then runners came back with word that the king and priests wished them to bring back one man from these invaders to be questioned to see if he was worthy of being a messenger. To aid them in the venture of securing one of the invaders' men, along with the runners came another forty Jaguar soldiers armed with spears having flint tips, with axes faced with glasslike rock. The soldiers' faces were painted for war.

  They waited.

  The strangers they watched were cautious, and the look of them said they were fighters – but so were the Jaguar men.

  They watched.

  And they selected their man, the one they would take back as a messenger – the big one with the twisted muscled arms and many scars. He was apparently the leader. He was the one they would have.

  To attack the fort would be foolish. If they were patient, time would present them with the object of their desires. In the meantime the raiding party punished the offending village by burning it to the ground and taking all the young men as slaves. When they had their last man, they put all the captives in a slave coffle and waited in the jungle for the other Jaguar men to capture the "messenger" Casca. The captured slaves were bound with ropes of woven leather for the journey to the capital of, the Jaguar men, the great city of Teotah. These men were the Teotec.

  Now, all that remained was to capture Casca. The Jaguar men were patient...

  The time came – as they knew it would. The pale strangers decided the area was uninhabited and began to venture forth in small parties, hunting and exploring. The watchers in the trees made sure that the strangers retained the delusion of an uninhabited land. No sign of the watchers did the Vikings see at any time, even though many of them passed so close to Jaguar soldiers that they might have reached out and touched them with their fingertips had they known they were there. The Jaguar men were not interested in them; they waited for the leader.

  Finally, Casca came out walking with the Vikings. He wore no armor. It was too hot, and there was no reason he could see why he should load himself with steel and brass that would surely bake him like a fish in this climate. He took only his short sword. He, Olaf, and a man named Ragnar walked out into the jungle, away from the eyes of their shipmates.

  Once the wall of the jungle closed on Casca's small party, the Jaguar soldiers began to move. Making the sounds of birds, they gave directions to their comrades that the quarry was near and soon to be had. Slowly they closed in – first from the rear to cut off escape, and then from the sides. They crept forward, sometimes crawling on their bellies like snakes. Slowly, patiently, inch by inch, they tightened the trap on the Vikings. Casca and his two companions knew nothing of what was going on around them. They had not been raised in woods like these. Even if they had, the mottled hide of the hunting cat that the jaguar men wore was a nearly perfect camouflage from any reasonable distance, and against the bushes and trees they were almost invisible.

  To Casca and his companions the walk was a lark. Casca pointed out the monkeys in the trees. He had seen monkeys himself when he was in the East, but the animals were totally strange to the Vikings. They asked Casca if these little people were gnomes or spirits.

  "No," Casca laughed, "they are just animals. But they do have some of our traits, I see." He pointed out one amorous little bastard who was hanging by his tail and getting a little off a squealing female of his species.

  The Vikings joined in his laughter.

  But suddenly Casca froze.

  A sense of uneasiness came over him. There was no tangible reason for it, but Casca had been around too long, had known too much danger not to intuitively sense when he was being watched. He felt that eyes were on him right now. Someone was close. Speaking softly, he alerted Olaf and Ragnar to the danger. He drew his sword on the pretext of examining a strange fruit on a tree and cutting it down. The others did likewise, pretending to taste the fruit. At least now their weapons were in their hands. There was no reason to expect an attack, but if one came, they were prepared for it.

  And come it did.

  Without warning, fifty jaguar skin-clad figures screamed the cry of the hunt and threw themselves from the trees onto their prey. Weird, strange figures they were in their fantastic dress, but the Vikings were of the stuff that they would fight the One-Eyed Loki himself if he gave them just a little in the way of odds.

  The Vikings' swords and axes whirled through the air, cutting down one fur-clad brown figure after another. Back to back, they fought their way to a great tree that would protect their rear. They fought and sliced the oncoming Jaguar soldiers to pieces. The attackers seemed to be more interested in taking them alive than dead, and the Vikings made maximum use of that fact – until a sudden thrust from one of those ugly stone-tipped spears pierced the eye of Ragnar, sending him to Valhalla, if the Valkyrie could find this place so far removed from their homeland.

  Catching his breath, Casca carved one more Teotec to the waist and told Olaf that he was going to rush them and for Olaf to slip around the tree and head for the camp, that he would return as soon as he was able. He stopped Olaf s protest with a curt: "Obey. Or die." Nodding reluctantly, Olaf did as he was told.

  Then Casca gave a great roar that bounced off the trees and sent hundreds of monkeys into a chattering fit. He threw himself on the Teotec warriors, hacking, beating them back, using every trick he had learned in the Roman arena. Like a living whirlwind he sped among them, killing and hacking. But his sword was knocked out of his hand by an obsidian-lined club, numbing his right arm. Though Casca went on to kill three more with his open hand blows, they eventually overcame him, smothering him under the weight of their piled-up bodies.

  The odor of those bodies was itself overpowering. Shit! What in Hades do these people wear for perfume? he thought, not at the time being familiar with the use of the juice from the glands of the skunk as an aid in warding off avaricious mosquitoes!

  Quickly the downed Casca was trussed up like a side of beef, removed from the scene of combat, and taken into the jungle. To the jaguar men the mission was complete. They had what they wanted. Let the other pale stranger go. He was of no importance. This one would be the best messenger they had ever had – if his courage and fighting skills were any indica
tors.

  Olaf and a rescue party made their way back to the sight of the ambush, but of Casca – or of even wounded or dead enemies – there was no sign. Only puddles of blood, now covered with flies, at tested to the violence that had taken place. Under a bush they found Casca's short sword. Olaf stuck it in his belt. After further fruitless searching they returned to their camp. Olaf relayed Casca's order that they were to await his return. For Olaf, it was enough. He would obey – and wait while he had life. So would the others. Here they would wait until the Lord of the Hold, the Walker, returned. As he said, so he would. Of that Olaf had no doubts. Casca was not as other men.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The magnificently garbed Teotec warriors were preparing for the journey to the interior. On one of the hills facing the beach and ocean they had assembled their captives and Casca. By signs they made it known that if the captives made no trouble they would be well treated. Using their fingers they indicated that it would take ten to twelve days to reach the city that was their destination. Casca was impressed. The warriors were handsome in their elaborate feathered robes and weird headdresses of jaguars and other strange beasts and birds. Professionally, he evaluated them as a military force. There seemed to be at least one dominant group in the unit escorting them. These men wore the emblem and likeness of a leopard like animal, but one with which he was unfamiliar. Some of the men seemed to be of higher rank than the others. He presumed these to be officers. They wore the elaborate costumes of feathers and skins. The common soldiers, however, wore plaited suits of some kind of fiber. Their shields were mostly of wickerwork, though some shields were of animal hides stretched over a wooden hoop. None carried weapons of metal. He would have thought they had no knowledge of metalworking at all had not a few worn ornaments of gold. The most common weapons were spears and clubs edged with stone. Nowhere was a bow or anything like it to be seen.