The Eternal Mercenary Read online

  Now he broke through the jam beyond the entrance, past the overseers with their whips and the guards trying to get the slaves into a semblance of order. Twice someone tried to help him with Lucius, but Casca strongly rebuffed them with kicks and curses. Lucius was his. Laying the overseer down, Casca arose and tried to keep his balance. The world was moving. He felt a strange sensation, like seasickness, from the swaying the earth was doing in response to the great explosions still going on.

  Then all was still except for the cries of the panic-stricken and the injured. While he cleaned off the face of Lucius, Casca mused to himself: How strange it is that people in the worst possible conditions will strive to maintain their pathetic lives rather than take the easy way out! Perhaps it was that no one really knew what happened in death that made them cling so tenaciously to their miserable existence. Damn fools. The world was full of them.

  Lucius opened his eyes.

  The first thing his clearing vision saw was the frighteningly hairy face of Casca in all its filthy, dirt-encrusted splendor.

  "What...? Where...?"

  Casca soothed him, saying in gentle tones: "You were struck by a falling timber, master, and, remembering your kindness, I could not leave you to perish as did so many others in the falling rocks and flames. I carried you out here to the light."

  Memory returned to Lucius. The last thing he recalled was covering up his head while the earth seemed to fall in around him. But this slave, the one they called "The Old One," had saved him. He would not die. He would live to eat and drink and make love. And this slave was responsible. Lucius Minitre felt a deep swelling in his bosom. A surge of brotherly love came sweeping over him. This great hairy beast had remembered his kindnesses... and everyone, even his wife, said he was too good-hearted. This man had brought him out of the bowels of the inferno. Lucius could hardly keep from hugging Casca – and would have if the years of accumulated filth had not left their mark. Casca stank.

  Rising to his feet with the help of Casca's strong arm, Minitre said to one of the lesser overseers:

  "See that this man is assigned to surface duty. Let him work with the cooks. And see that he is cleaned up."

  Casca gloated inside, chuckling to himself. I made it. I'm outside again. How long has it been?

  His question was answered, but not immediately. They showed him to the stream where he was allowed to scrape and rinse most of the filth from his body. A razor was loaned to him while the owner watched with careful eyes and an armed guard stood by. Casca cursed and moaned as the dull brass razor pulled clouts of hair and skin from his face and neck.

  But the beard came off. Then the guard handed him a clean tunic, making the comment that the mining superintendent liked to have everything topside clean – including the personnel. Casca, remembering his times in the legion, felt a twinge of nostalgia.

  The guard noticed Casca's slave tag and took a closer look. "By Mithra, man. Tiberius has been dead for over thirty years. You must be at least sixty, but you don't look it. By the gods, whatever they fed you in the mines damn sure agreed with you."

  Laughing to himself at his small joke, the guard returned Casca to his new quarters, a barracks-type hut with a wooden bed and a straw pallet all his own. By comparison with what he had known for the past decades in the mines it was all sheer luxury.

  Decades! The thought staggered Casca's imagination. He had been here for the length of a normal life-time, yet –

  He remembered the face that had stared back at him from the small bronze mirror of the man whose razor he had borrowed, his face, the beard gone. Now he rubbed his hand lightly along his cheek as if to reassure himself that what he had seen in the small mirror was true. So many years, yet his face was essentially the same. Perhaps leaner. Perhaps more craggy looking. But he did not by any stretch of the imagination look his true age of –

  The slave medallion! I must get rid of it...

  Going to the outside, Casca returned to the pit area and began helping the other slaves aid their comrades, both the living and the dead. In this service he exchanged medallions for a more recent one, one that bore the likeness of Claudius. The dead slave he swapped medallions with did not complain...

  The next few days were spent in a general cleaning up of the mine area. During this time Casca learned much of what had happened in the outside world since his banishment to the nether regions of Achaia. Some of it brought back old memories. The emperor that had followed Augustus was Tiberius. Casca had served under his command for a time in Gaul. He remembered Tiberius as a good soldier and a steady man, but, according to what he was told, while Tiberius had started out well as an emperor, he had turned into a tyrant in his last years.

  The slaves who told Casca this were the old ones, in their late fifties and early sixties. Only they could remember back that far, and they were a special class of slaves. They had survived because they were indispensable to their master's comfort-household slaves, cooks, masseurs, poets, teachers. Here they served the governor and his family at his big villa out of sight of the mines. There they went every morning before dawn, returning to the mines area when the governor had no further need of them. It was not like serving some of the great houses of Greece or Rome, but it beat the pits by far, and, after all, they were criminals, guilty of such enormous crimes as petty theft or showing a little temper to their masters. Sometimes when one lived in the great houses one forgot that one was not a person and as such was not entitled to such things as opinions. Well, that was the way the world was. Casca had no intention of changing it. Not that he could –

  All the slaves agreed that the worst thing that Tiberius had done – even worse than his paranoid proscription – was the naming of the mad dog Caligula to the throne. The best thing about Caligula's reign was that it only lasted four years before the Praetorian Guard finally had enough of the damned sodomist, killed him, and put his uncle, Claudius, on the throne. They liked Claudius. The old man was – surprisingly enough – a quite competent administrator. Yes, they all agreed, old man Claudius was a gentleman – even if the rest of the patrician families and the nobility felt he was somewhat republican in his tastes. The old man had done right well, all things considered, but it was rumored that his second wife, Agrippina, had poisoned him so that she could put her son on the throne – her son Nero that the old man had adopted. Odd thing, this emperor business. It seemed that even for the good ones, being Imperator of the most powerful empire in the history of man carried with it certain occupational hazards: the rulers lately seemed not to enjoy a great deal of longevity after taking power.

  So, today Gaius Nero was Imperator. So far his reign was going quite well. The more knowledgeable slaves thought that was because he was following the guidance of his mentor, Seneca, and listening to the advice of Burrus, head of the Praetorian Guard, on foreign affairs. They had helped the young Nero from making too many critical errors. They, and his mother, kept a tight rein on things. Well, it was nothing to Casca. Let the emperors come and go.

  It did not take long for Casca to settle into the routines of his new job. After the mines this was almost unbelievable luxury: bathe once a week... see the sun... feel rain on his face instead of dirt.

  Lucius Minitre tried in every way to make Casca's servitude easier, and he even developed a certain fondness for the tough-looking former legionnaire. One morning, taking, him aside, the overseer motioned for Casca to sit on a bench with him and share a bowl of wine.

  "Casca, you saved my life, and I won't forget it. I cannot set you free, but I can be of help in making your life more bearable." He stopped, took a sip of the wine, and cut it a little with a touch of water from an earthenware pitcher. He tried another sip and nodded, pleased with the mixture. Clearing his throat, he continued: "I have been here for eight years, and I heard stories about you from the man I succeeded. He was here for fifteen years, and he said that you had been here long before he came." He peered at Casca through uneasy eyes and asked: "Why do you live?"
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  Casca did not answer.

  The overseer continued: "You do not appear to be very old, but you must be. I know that the medallion you originally wore was not that of Claudius. But I will tell no one. Have the gods some special interest in you? Or did you find a way to keep the ravages of time away?"

  The man turned his eyes away, a little frightened by his daring and his assumptions. Keeping his eyes averted, he poured another drink for himself and Casca.

  Casca felt a great relief run through him. At last he could speak of his torment. So he told Minitre the story of himself and the Jew.

  The overseer did not laugh. Everything Casca said he believed. After all, was not the world filled with magic and sorcerers?

  Casca finished his tale. Lucius Minitre sat silent, his eyes wide. Casca looked at him and grinned a crooked smile... the first time he had smiled in over twenty years. The unfamiliar usage of facial muscles gave him a cramp.

  "It is remarkable," Minitre murmured. "You will live forever. You will never die. Or at least until you meet the Jew again, and who knows when that will happen? Perhaps never."

  "But if what the Jew said is true, I have to get free. I cannot endure eternity in chains. Something must happen so that I can get my freedom, but the Mediterranean is a Roman lake, and without money I have no real chance of escape."

  Lucius Minitre thought for a moment. He was thrilled to be this close to one who had been touched by the gods – even a Jewish god. He told Casca of the growth of the Jew's cult... how it had spread. Even with persecutions and mass killings in the arenas they seemed to grow in numbers... and prosper. There were even followers of the Jew here in the mines. Not many, mind you, but there were several. You could tell them by their constant praying and singing which only stopped when they were given a touch of the lash. But, why couldn't the Jew be a god? After all, the divine Augustus was made one just after he died. And now, so even old Claudius had some worshippers. And what about Tiberius? He had made his mother a goddess, complete with a temple of her own and priestesses.

  Casca smiled. Thoughts ran through his mind:

  Gods and priests... blessings and curses. Well, if I am cursed, I'll make it pay. I have had enough of being pushed around. If live I must, then by all demons and foul spirits of this world, live I will.

  TWELVE

  "Minitre," Casca began, his voice low, his manner conspiratorial, "we have to get me out of here. There must be some way I can get my freedom and become a man again."

  "All men want to be free."

  "Yes, but I have had years to think about my condition. If all the things we think are true are as we see them then I have a lot to worry about."

  "But why should you worry? Surely, all you have to do is wait. All things change in time – and in your case it appears you have plenty of that on your side."

  Casca laughed bitterly. "Wait, you say. Man, my years weigh as heavily on me as they do on any man. But what I fear has more to do with something else than just time. Think what it would be like for me if I tried to escape and were captured. The punishment for an escaped slave is anything from crucifixion to being impaled with a sharpened stake run up the rectum. Think what that would be like for me if I am unable to die."

  Minitre's face paled. He took another hasty swallow of wine, most of which ran down his windpipe. He choked, coughed, and his face turned red. Casca pounded him on the back until he could get his wind again.

  Wheezing, he said, "I never thought of it that way. Of course you're right. We must set you legally free. But how?" He gulped a swallow of wine, then thought out loud: "There aren't many ways a state-owned slave may receive manumission. The province governor in whose charge the slave is assigned may grant freedom on special occasions for service to the empire. Then, of course, there are the periodic sales of government surplus slaves in those regions where they are overstocked. Somebody could buy you and give you your freedom. The only other way is for a gladiator to win the wooden sword in the arena – but you aren't a gladiator."

  He pulled at the wine again. A light came into his eyes. "Suppose we got you to the surplus sales. If you were auctioned off, perhaps I would be able to buy you and set you free myself. That would be something to tell my grandchildren – how I was fortunate enough to give an immortal his freedom." Minitre fairly glowed with the thought. "Truly," he said, "the days of miracles and wonders are not over."

  The sight of this round, red-faced little man's sincerity and eagerness to be involved in what he thought of as the business of gods touched a long forgotten note in Casca, and he laughed. Not at Minitre, but for him. The sound of laughter was alien to his own ears.

  "Minitre," he said, "waiting for a government sale may well take years to come about, and even then we couldn't be sure you would have the price. After all, I am a pretty healthy hunk of beef, and you would be in real trouble if they sold me by the pound." Laughing, he touched Minitre's shoulder gently. "No, my friend. We must find another way."

  They sat thinking quietly. Minitre scratched absently at a flea. The damn things were everywhere and were just one of the curses of this goat-ridden peninsula.

  Minitre sat up straight, his eyes sparkling in his cherub-like face. "I have it! The governor. You will save the governor's life, and he, in gratitude, will set you free. It is simple, is it not?" He swelled with pride at his solution.

  Somewhat laconically, Casca asked: "And just how are we going to bring that about, my friend?"

  Minitre looked long and seriously at Casca. His voice, when he spoke, implied that his feelings had been hurt a little.

  "You may have lived here a long time, Casca, but while you were in the pits I was outside, and I have learned a few things. You leave the planning of this to me. I have it all figured out. You were a soldier, were you not? So you can use weapons. And you are certainly the strongest man I have ever seen. The years in the mines have turned you into nothing if not a great heap of twisted muscles lying on top of twisted muscles. We will use your training and your strength to set you free. Believe in me. I have found a way." His manner and voice strengthened with determination. "You go back to the slave barracks, and I will see you in the morning."

  The look of confidence on the overseer's face spoke to Casca. Standing, Casca put out his hand, and the two shook in the manner of friends and equals.

  Casca had found a friend.

  That night, while the slaves slept, Minitre went into the port of Cenchrea. Visiting one den of iniquity after another, warding off whores and pimps, he finally found those he searched for, and, in muted conversation in the rear of a dingy tavern otherwise filled with the dregs of waterside humanity, he made his deal with those he had found. They talked and planned until cockcrow said it was time for Lucius to return to the mines. The day shift was coming on duty shortly, and he must be there.

  Minitre had just arrived back at the mines as the slaves were being fed. He caught Casca's eyes and nodded slightly, smiling all the while. Casca felt a sudden surge of hope. Minitre had obviously found out something or done something to advance the cause of his freedom. He hardly even tasted the gruel and hard bread. His thoughts were on when he could next talk to his friend and find out what had transpired.

  But there was work to be done. He checked in with the assignment supervisor and was sent to the surface pits as a waterbearer for the slave crews. The day grew long, but the sun felt good on his bare back as he went about his job carrying the goatskin bag of water to the thirsty slaves. It was a dull yet somehow pleasant routine: he went from man to man until the bag was empty, then made the half-mile walk up the hill to where the spring was. He would refill the bag and repeat the action over and over until the day ended. Casca steeled his mind against the misery of the slaves. Compassion was a commodity he could ill afford right now.

  Besides, he had never been a particularly sympathetic type to start with.

  The sun of Greece continued to burn him darker and darker. Only his scars showed up in lighter color
. While he worked his mouth was set in the semi-smirk that the whore's knife had left on him long ago.

  The day passed. The endless worm of slaves continued to feed on itself until the whistle of the pit overseer sounded the shift change.

  Casca returned to his barracks and waited his turn at the troughs where he could wash off the day's dirt. Then, alone, he ate his last meal of the day, lentil soup with just the hint of the taste of goat in it. And then, again, alone, he sat outside the barracks listening to the old men inside discuss the ways of the world and their viewpoints concerning the relative importance of the scheme of things. Casca savored this time to himself and waited for Minitre.

  He let his eyes search the heavens while the cool air of the Mediterranean wafted over him. The constellation known as the Pleiades was clearly visible. After the years of being chained to somebody the luxury of being alone was something to be savored in full.

  The bobbing form of Minitre came in sight on the trail leading down to the barracks. The chubby man wheezed his way up the small grade, sighted Casca, and waved. "Vale, soldier," he called softly and motioned for Casca to follow him.

  Lucius led them to a clearing far enough away from the barracks that there would be no chance of their being overheard.

  "Listen to me," Lucius whispered. The excitement in his voice was contagious. "It's all set."

  Casca started to interrupt, but Lucius waved him silent. "Let me finish. Day after tomorrow you will be assigned to the detail going into Cenchrea to bring back supplies. Also, the governor will be in town at the same time. He goes there every few days to spend some time with his mistress. He leaves early – but not as early as we will – and gets to Cenchrea just before midday. When he gets to his whore's house, thugs will jump him in a robbery attempt, but they will be foiled by the efforts of a valiant former legionary who comes to the rescue and saves the governor's precious skin. There. Do you like it?"