Barry Sadler - Casca 06 - The Persian

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CASCA,VolumeSix
BARRY SADLER
“Yes, and I have the story in my room. Do you want to read it?”
Landries gave a short laugh, almost a snort.
“That is a dumb question, Goldman. You know that I would travel halfway around the world to read his
story. But doesn’t it exhaust you to be the sounding board for him? How can you stand living through all
his pain, his suffering and disappoint-ments?”
Goldman shook his head. “I don’t know, but I have to finish what we started. It’s like being hooked on
drugs. I have to complete it, and the worst of it is,I know that I never will. He has out-lived the Roman
Empire, the Persian and British Empires and I see no indicator that he will not out-live the both of
us—that is, unless the Second Com-ing of Christ arrives sooner than we expect ...”
In the cab, and in spite ofhimself , Landries opened the manuscript and peeked at the cover to see the
title. Perhaps it would give him a clue as to Casca’s location in this particular segment of his history. His
eyes fell upon it—
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
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FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
PROLOGUE
Julius Goldman wandered among the booths and stands of the purveyors of medical supplies and goods.
Stethoscopes and enema kits mingled with the latest in medical technology, while ma-chines that could
represent a three-dimensional scan of the human body were displayed alongside films demonstrating the
use of laser beams to seal off tiny bleeders in the eyes.
This annual gathering of the American Medical Association was always interesting and exciting to him.
He knew many of those present and a lot of them were close colleagues, but Goldman’s eyes were
searching for one face in particular.
He finally found him in the maze of booths and slick presentations. He was leaning over the coun-ter of
one of the booths talking to one of the bright-faced, pretty young girls, hired to attract the attentions of
the doctors to a particular booth.
Goldman worked his way through the crowd and touched the man he’d been looking for on the
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shoulder.
“Doctor Landries?”
The former Army colonel, and Goldman’s onetime commanding officer, turned around. He was still
tanned and lean, extraordinarily healthy look-ing. His hair was thinner now and completely sil-ver, but his
eyes and manner were quick and sure as ever; so was his grasp of Goldman’s hand in a sincere display
of pleasure at seeing his old com-rade again. He laughed pleasantly.
“Goldman!The Hebraic hero of the Eighth Field Hospital, and terror of all nurses. How in the hell are
you, son?”
He took Goldman’s arm, completely forgetting the sweet young thing he’d been talking to. She was
pouting a bit now, Goldman could see, at losing the attention of Bob Landries, but another, younger
neurosurgeon was moving in to replace him.
He guided Goldman out of the convention cen-ter and they boarded one of the buses that made regular
runs to the hotels servicing the center.
Goldman was genuinely happy at seeing his friend again. It had been a long time. Landries ran his hand
through his thinning hair and looked out the window of the bus, watching the streets of At-lanta pass by
as they pulled on to Peach tree, head-ing to the downtown area.
“Have you heard any more about our mutual friend?”
Goldman knew who Landries was talking about. He smoothed down the vest of his conservative
three-piece pinstripe suit, a little uncomfortable at the tightness of the vest at the midriff. He would have
to lose some weight.
“Yes!” He started to continue but Landries stopped him.
“Wait until we get to the hotel. We’ll settle down with a drink and talk. I always have a need for one
when the name of Casey Romain comes up.”
Goldman agreed and the two talked of things doctors talk about: new techniques, prices for ser-vices,
and, naturally, the good old days when they were some years younger.
Landries was seven years Goldman’s senior, but looked about the same age, with his tanned face and
lean body. He’d always been an exercise nut, Goldman remembered, feeling a little guilty at let-ting
himself go to pot over the past few years. After looking at his old boss he made himself a promise
—knowing he more than likely would not keep it— that he would try and put himself back into shape.
Taking their turn, they exited the bus and en-tered the air-conditioned enclosure of the hotel. It was a
modern inn with elevators of glass chutes and an open-air restaurant and lounge in the lob-by. They
found a table with a degree of privacy beside an indoor pond where goldfish swam with studied
unconcern.
Drinks were ordered. Landries, as usual, had a double Blackjack and water; Goldman ordered Scotch
and soda. The two men waited until their drinks were served and their waitress with the air-line smile had
left them before they commenced talking about that which both knew was the main reason for their
meeting.
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Goldman began first, after taking a sip of his drink.
“Casca ... or Casey, as you and I knew him...”
The names called to Landries’ memory the time they’d first met the man Romain, who’d been brought to
them as a casualty in Vietnam. Gold-man continued his story, and Bob Landries was slightly envious that
Casca had chosen Goldman to tell his story to. But then Goldman had been the one who’d spotted the
strange healing process of a wound that should have been fatal, and had heard the beginnings of the
weird tale of the man who’d killed Jesus at Golgotha, and of the punishment that Jesus had given him. To
wander the earth un-able to die until the Second Coming, forever a sol-dier—condemned to a life of
endless wandering and war. He smiled a little, recalling how he and Goldman had had the man’s medical
records de-stroyed after Casca, or Casey, had disappeared from the hospital. No one would have
believed them.
A few years after the Vietnam debacle hadended, their patient had shown up at Goldman’s house and
begun telling him the full story of his odyssey through the ages. He had the power to take Goldman into
his life and enable him to expe-rience all that he had done. Since then, Goldman had developed a
compulsion to put down the words and story of CascaRufio Longinus, soldier of Imperial Rome, whose
travels and adventures over the face of the earth made the journey of Ulysses seem no more than a mild
weekend ex-cursion in the country.
Landries half emptied his glass and called for an-other. He coughed, clearing his throat.
“I suppose the reason you came to this gathering of the entire medical world is that you’ve had an-other
visit from our friend?”
Goldman nodded his head in the affirmative. “Yes, and I have the story in my room. Do you want to
read it?”
Landries gave a short laugh, almost a snort.
“That is a dumb question, Goldman. You know that I would travel halfway around the world to read his
story. But doesn’t it exhaust you to be the sounding board for him? How can you stand living through all
his pain, his suffering and disappoint-ments?”
Goldman shook his head. “I don’t know, but I have to finish what we started. It’s like being hooked on
drugs. I have to complete it, and the worst of it is,I know that I never will. He has out-lived the Roman
Empire, the Persian and British Empires and I see no indicator that he will not out-live the both of
us—that is, unless the Second Com-ing of Christ arrives sooner than we expect.” Meet-ing Casca had
left Goldman with a few questions. Hewas fast doubting the teachings of his faith about Jesus not being
the Son of God. He contin-ued.
“Let’s finish these and go up to my room. I’ll give you the manuscript to take back to your own room
and read.”
Landries agreed and paid their tab. They took one of the glass-cocooned elevators up to Goldman’s
room. Inside, Goldman handed the manuscript to Landries and they returned to the lobby. He escorted
Landries to the doorway, where the heat of the Atlanta streets was being restrained outside.
Landries was anxious to get started on the read-ing of the next story of Casca and asked Goldman,
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“Where is he this time?”
Goldman smiled. “Be patient, Bob. After all, Casca has been patient for years, hasn’t he?”
Landries agreed, and after he’d made Goldman promise to mail him all the manuscripts from there on,
they shook hands and said goodbye.
Landries exited the hotel into the midday heat, hailing a cab to return him to his own hotel. He didn’t feel
like waiting for the buses that came by every thirty minutes. He had to get back, relax, and see what had
happened to Casca.
In the cab, and in spite ofhimself , he opened the manuscript and peeked at the cover to see the title.
Perhaps it would give him a clue as to Casca’s loca-tion in this particular segment of his history. His eyes
fell upon it—
CASCA,The Persian. . . .
ONE
Hot, boiling, shimmering, the sun broke over the rim of the world, sending spears of flaming light across
the clear skies of the high steppes. By mid-day it would be hot enough to cook a brain in its own pan.
But for now there was still enough chill left over from the night air to make the breath of the horse and its
rider visible in the small clouds of vapor that were whisked away by the freshening morning breeze.
That cool breeze would soon change into a moisture-sucking blast furnace. Before then, the man and his
horse would have to find shelter, as had the snakes and lizards.Shelter from the killing rays of the
life-giving and-taking sun of high Asia.
To the west, the lifeless, barren, sky-reaching peaks known as the roof of the world, with their eternal
caps of ice and gale-swept snow, seemed terribly distant and aloof from the sufferings of those who
ventured to cross the desolate wastes of the desert in its shadow.
The rider raised his eyes, red-rimmed and sore from the ever-present grains of sand that invaded every
pore and opening of his body, and even the food he ate. He understood now why the men of this
region’s tribes nearly always had their teeth worn down to stubs before their beards turned gray.
There was sand in everything they ate from the time of their birth to their death. Every day the grit
ground their teeth down a little more until there was nothing left but smooth stubs resting against the gums.
The thought of it madehis own teeth ache.
His horse stumbled,then caught itself on wobbly legs. It scarcely resembled the fine-blooded, pam-pered
animal it had been when Sung miHsiung , the commander of the garrison at the Jade Gate, had given it to
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him. Its rider was scarcely in any better condition. His posture told of the weary, lonely miles they had
come. He doubted that if he tried to trade in the animal right now, he could re-ceive even a couple of sick
goats in exchange.
But they had come far from the wall that runs forever. He had chosen not to take theSuget pass trail
back to the Capital of Kushan on the banks of the Indus. No, this time he followed thesilk road , but now
was the wrong time for such a crossing. The last two waterholes had been dry; even when he dug down
a depth of several feet he could find no trace of moisture.
The rider raised his eyes to the sky, the pale blue of them almost washed out by the gray of the dawn.
Deep lines crinkled at the edges of them gave him a slightly Oriental look. From a distance, he could have
passed for a nomadic tribesman as the skin that was exposed was as dark as a Mongol’s.
Nowhere had he heard such silence as that of this region of the great wastes, where it was said, made on
the winds was the howling of the lost souls, as dunes of sand were shifted from one spot to another, one
grain at a time. For months, that was the only sign of movement until the wind de-mons came in their full
fury. The force of the wind, carrying the sand with it in sky-darkening clouds, would strip the flesh from a
man’s body in a few minutes and leave nothing but bare bones and rags as silent testimony to the
vengeance of the wind demons.
The lands of Chin lay a thousand and more miles behind him. He had lived there longer than he had in
any other place in his life and felt as if he were leaving a part of him behind. But his own personal demon
was driving him, back to the land of his birth, back to Rome.
For all of his life, he had thought that Rome was the center of the world and the only real barrier against
the hordes of barbarism. But in the lands behind the Great Wall, he had found out that in comparison to
the culture and refinements of Chin, Rome itself was only a few steps ahead of the barbarians. Still, Rome
was the place of his birth and sometimes, no matter how a man may have been treated, he has to go
back to his source. He was still CascaRufio Longinus, a soldier and sometimeseven a slave of the
Empire.
Ahead of him, heknew, still lay the lands ofSogdiana andParthia , which he would have to pass through
before reaching the first of the Romancominions.Parthia ! It still held a bitter taste for him. He had fought
there under the Eagles ofAvidius Cassius and participated in the sacking of the city ofCestiphon —where
forty-five thousand had died in one day.
Pulling his horse to a stop, he dismounted, took the reins, and led the animal to a cluster of tall brush and
withered, leafless trees. There he care-fully doled out a slim measure of his precious water supply to wipe
the muzzle and moisten the delicate membranes of the horse’s nostrils to keep them from bleeding. A
handful for the horse totaste, and he licked the remaining moisture from his own fingers, careful to waste
nothing. Taking what had once been a fine cloak of red silk, he spread it over the branches of the
withered trees to make a sheltered spot to protect them from the sun that would soon be over them.
Placing the horse where he could have some ben-efit from their meager shelter, he stripped down to the
skin in order to shake out his tunic and the loose trousers he wore. His body was crisscrossed with
uncounted scars of various degrees of severity. Some he had received as a slave in the war galleys of
Rome, others came from battles he now found hard to recall.
When he was satisfied that he had shaken out most of the sand that had managed to creep into every
seam and wrinkle, he redressed himself, winc-ing at the raw spots in his groin and armpits. Lying down,
he tried to make himself as comfortable as possible moving several rocks from under tender spots. But
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his leg had an ache in it. A dull, burning throb where a brass arrow head was imbedded deep in the
muscles of his left thigh. A souvenir from a Parthian marksman atCestiphon ,
Closing his eyes, he tried to rest, ignoring the la-bored breathing of his horse. If they didn’t come to
water soon the horse would die, and that meant he would walk, forMithra only knew how many miles
until he could steal or buy another one. As far as horses dying, that didn’t particularly concern him. At
least he’d have some fresh meat and the blood would give him strength. The Romans were prac-tical
people, not given to an excess of sentiment.
As he slept, the heat of the day grew in intensity. Hot and dry, it sucked the moisture from his skin as
fast as it appeared, leaving only traces of his body salts behind to streak his tunic. Flies buzzed in
frustration as they tried to beat the sun to the life-giving moisture that came from his pores. Flies, it
seemed, were the only creatures in ex-istence that could appear from nowhere, in a hellhole such as this
where even the lizards buried themselves in the sand to escape the heat.
Semiconscious, he would sweep them away from his face and eyes, then turn and dream of places and
people long dead, faces of those he had loved and of those he had killed. They came in a jumbled torrent
until all merged together and he couldn’t tell them apart.
His horse hung its head low and tried to sleep also, tail twitching from side to side, shivers run-ning up its
flanks. It too tried to shake off the nag-ging drone of the flies. As these two tossed and squirmed in their
restless sleep, others were awake and moving. Two forces of men were converging on a waterhole some
twenty miles in front. Each unaware of the other, they followed separate trails. Both parties had the look
of hard men about them.
Those from the south were led by a slender warrior with his head shaved bald except for a long
scalp-lock. He was the youngest of the warriors in whose bloodlines showed some trace of the west.
Several had fair hair and light-colored eyes. The other par-ty coming from the north was made up of
short, stocky men whose faces had been seared with red hot irons at the moment of their birth, so that
only mustaches grew on their lips and nothing at all on their chins. These riders’ legs were twisted and
de-formed from the years they had spent on horse-back. The bows they carried were made of
lami-nated wood and horn, similar to those of theParthians . One thing they had that was different from
those coming from the south: they had not just the look of men who killed, but men who lusted after it.
Huns! Those nomadic tribesmen worshipped the primal spirits of the earth and sky and prayed before a
naked sword.
They would meet those from the south at the waterhole and when they did, men would die, for the Huns
and the men of Kushan were blood enemies and had been so for five hundred years.
Casca, former Baron of Chin, used his saddle-bags for a pillow. The fortune in gems, given to him by the
Emperor Tzin as a parting gift, gave him small comfort. At that moment he would have traded them all for
a full goatskin of rancid swamp water. Moving, he tried to find a more comfortable position as his purse
dug into his groin. The irritat-ing object inside the leather pouch was his seal of office.TheChuhouwang
of a noble of the court of the Son of Heaven; a solid gold seal, with a rounded knob of tortoise shell. This
seal was whathe had needed to gain horses, food, and lodging while in the lands of Chin. But here it was
just as useless as the gems in his saddlebags.
The short double-edged sword close to his hand was infinitely more valuable than either the gems or the
seal, at least until he reached lands civilized enough to appreciate the value of the small collec-tion of
rainbows that rested under his brown shaggy-haired head.
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Several times he would wake for a few heat-drugged moments,then drop back off into his un-easy
slumber. Not until the sun began its decline did he finally stir himself to rising. Taking a double handful of
dried mare’s milk curds, he mixed them with enough water to soften them and give the il-lusion of
wetness. He ate one handful and fed the rest to his horse as he watched the heat waves dance and
shimmer over the floor of the desert.
That night, as he led his horse over the sands, he looked to the skies and the twinkling, distant stars. It
was said in Chin that the astronomers there had charted the courses of over eleven thousand of the
sparkling lights. To what purpose, he really didn’t understand, but those distant lights were as impor-tant
to them as were their gods. It was said that they could tell the future from them. But if they could, he
couldn’t see how man could keep screw-ing things up—especially if he knew beforehand what was
going to happen.
As the constellation known as The Hunter passed overhead, he came across the mummified remains of a
camel and its rider, lying side by side on the trail. The skin of the man was drawn tight in a perpetual
leathery sneer, the lips pulled back from the teeth. Here, not even the vultures ven-tured to clean up. The
packs on the camel had al-ready been opened and picked over so Casca didn’t bother. Others had
come this way since the un-known traveler had died. It could have been a month or even several years
ago. It didn’t matter to him and certainly not to the desiccated husk lying there.
The warriors of Kushan had reached the water-hole as Casca passed the dead man and the camel. They
were lying now, drinking, face down in the murky waters of the spring-fed refuge. From a nearby hill, a
lone horseman watched them. The Hun disappeared back into the darkness to rejoin his gnomish
comrades.
There was not room for both groups at the oasis and the Huns were not known for sharing any-thing,
even if the Kushanites would have been so inclined, which was not likely.
A hundred times since passing through the Jade Gate, Casca had cursed himself for leaving behind him
the silken pavilions and comforts of Chin. He could have waited a little longer before leaving, but
smartass that he was,he had to try a crossing at this time. Before dawn he made camp once more, this
time in a cluster of boulders. The ground had become rougher, but at least he knew that he was leaving
the sands behind him. From his map he knew that the waterhole was not far ahead. He would rest a little
while in the shade of the rocks and then move on and try to reach it before the next nightfall. He didn’t
want to take a chance on passing it in the dark.
The Huns had moved in closer to the waterhole and were preparing for the slaughter. They took strips of
leather to cover their horses’ hooves, to muffle even more the slight sounds made by their unshod hooves
as they crossed over the rocky ground leading to the oasis in the rocks.
Half their number had dismounted and now moved on twisted legs to vantage points in the rocks, where
they would take easy shots with their bows at the targets below them.
Exhausted, the Kushanites slept. The four sen-tries on watch at the entrance to the spring also fell into a
deep, deep sleep, heads nodding. It was to be a sleep from which they would never wake. The young
leader of the Kushanites would have had their heads if he had known of their dereliction. He was of the
tribe of theYuehChih and had more of the blood of Asia in his veins. But this night he slept deeply,
wrapped in his horse blanket and un-aware of the death that was slowly approaching.
The Hunnish bowmen waited until the two Kushanite sentries were taken out, their throats slit with
skinning knives,then they drew back the strings and targeted the sleeping bodies below. Their targets
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were easy to mark in the glow of the campfire by the dark waters of the spring.
A half-dozenarrows found their way into the backs and stomachs of the sleeping warriors before one
managed a scream of agony. The rest leapt to their feet, weapons at the ready, only to be trod down
under the muffled hooves of the Huns’ war horses. Heads fell to the ground to lie grinning ob-scenely by
the rocks, as the bodies they had just recently been so attached to jerked and twitched, heels drumming
against the hard earth.
The young warrior of the YuenChih managed to sink his sword into the chest of one Hun’s horse,
sending it and its rider crashing to the ground, where he dispatched the seared face of the barbarian with
a well-aimed stroke of hisyatagai. His victory yell was short-lived as a thrown ax struck with the flat of
its blade, sending him back into the darkness he had so recently come out of. The rest of his band died
where they stood, no sur-vivors. Prisoners were a luxury the Huns could ill afford at this time. They had
been ordered to make all haste to the felt yurts of the tribes gathering far to the east, where there was to
be a great killing. They had been driven far from the Great Wall by the armies of Chin, but now they
were coming back in greater numbers than ever before and the wall would not long stand between them
and riches of Chin.
Their only survivor was spared for the moment. The Hun leader wished to question him as to the reason
warriors of Kushan were so far from their borders. But until the young warrior regained con-sciousness,
he was of little use. Meanwhile, his cap-tors helped themselves to whatever they liked from the packs
and bodies of the dead. They slit the throat of one of the Kushan horses and soon had the rich red flesh
sizzling over hot coals.
Casca raised his face and sniffed the wind. Meat, freshly cooking meat! His mouth tried to salivate and
failed; there was too little moisture in his sys-tem to waste for such luxuries. Tying his animal’s reins to a
bush, he readied himself to see just whoit was that was having a hot meal. In this region, it was not
probable that he would be made welcome. Loosening his blade in its scabbard, he then strung his bow,
grunting from the effort to bend it down to where he could slip the gut string on it. The bow was a gift
from Sung Ti the Baron of ChungWei , made years ago when they had fought the Mongols and Huns
together in the service of the Son of Heaven. Less than four feet long when strung, the bow, made in
Hunnish manner, could drive an ar-row through the side of a horse and still have enough power to kill a
man on the other side.
Making his way cautiously through the boulders and scrub brush, he came upon the signs left by the
Huns. There were at least ten of them, maybe more. Snaking his way closer to the smell of roast-ing
meat, he crested a small rise and looked down on the spring.
Whistling between his teeth, he counted them. Eleven Huns lay about the hole in various states of stupor.
They had gorged themselves on red meat and fermented mare’s milk. The bodies of the Kushanites had
been dragged off to the side and piled in a heap. There, they served to keep the flies off the Huns and on
the dead, where even now the insects clustered in black, moving clots on the still-draining bodies.
Casca started to move back and away, content to leave them the waterhole until they finished and
moved on. The odds were they wouldn’t stay there very long. As he started to crawl back on his belly, a
movement in the pile of bodies caught his atten-tion. One wasn’t dead. He watched as the figure twisted
and tried to sit up, arms and feet bound with strips of rawhide. Something about the man stopped him
from retreating. The way he held his head, the set of the jaw, something? Then it came to him. Jugotai!
Jugotai, the youngster who had been his guide when he first came to the east from across the mountains.
From this distance it was hard to be certain but it damned sure looked like him, and thosewere Kushanite
dead stacked up down there. It bothered him, because the young man down there could not be old
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enough to have been his guide. That had been nearly thirty years ago. Sighing deeply, he grunted. “Well,
if that’s the way of it, I might as well get started.”
He laid his quiver of arrows beside him and looked over the situation again. Not so good; there were still
a lot of Huns down there, and while he might get three or four before the rest got up and moving, it was
still risky.
No, he’d have to do something really dirty to get the boy free. Alright, first off I have to reduce the odds
a bit, he thought. From where he was perched, there was only one exit for the Huns to take on
horseback. All the horses were tied in a line near some dry brush they had been feeding on. There’s only
one thing that Huns really hate to do, and that is to walk. There were sixteen horses, counting those of the
Kushanites. Casca doubted that he would have time to kill them and handle the Huns too! Besides, he
wasn’t an expert marksman. He could hit the broad side of the target usually, but nothing fancy. The
Huns were heavy into sleep. When they awoke, they would have some bad heads from the fermented
mare’s milk. He knew from personal experience the aftereffects of a nightof drinking Kvass. Taking a
thatch of dry grass, he pulled some threads from his tunic, tied the grass around the shafts of two arrows,
and then laid out the rest of the shafts on the ground, close at hand. The horses were only about one
hundred feet away so he wouldn’t have any trouble hitting the brush beside them, and, as dry as it was, it
should catch on fire pretty fast and still leave him enough time to shoot down at least a couple from the
back while they were still sleeping. He struck off a spark from his flint and tinder, blowing it into a small
smoke-less flame, and touched off the fire arrows. Quickly he sighted, rose to his knees, and drew the
cord almost to his ear, letting fly first one, then the oth-er. The twanging of the bow wasn’t loud enough
to be heard.
The arrows smoked their way into the brush where the horses were tied. As he expected, it didn’t take
but a few seconds before the brush burst into a rapidly burning flame. The horses shied away from the
licking flames and Casca picked new targets.A snoring, sleeping Hun. This time he drew the string all the
way back to his ear and the arrow pinned the sleeping man to the earth. He got off two more shots
before the whin-nying of the horses, combined with the screaming of one of the Huns he had shot, roused
the rest of the sleepers. They stumbled to their feet, red-eyed and hung over, reaching for their weapons
in con-fusion. He shot another in the groin, the flat-bladed arrow taking off one testicle.
“Shit,” he cursed. He had been aiming at the man’s stomach. The horses broke and began to shy away
from the flames, but they weren’t running. So he took the time to send a couple of shafts into the nearest
of the animals’ rear ends. This served to give the rest of them the needed impetus to break and run, as
did the Huns on their twisted legs, looking for cover and trying to locate their enemy. Casca took one
more out with a lucky shot that hit the man squarely between the shoulder blades and exited at
hands-length out the front of his chest. By then, he’d had to dodge a couple of arrows himself. He had
the advantage of being on the high ground or they probably would have nailed him right off. They were,
he admitted, all damned better bowmen than he was.
Yelling down to them, he spoke in the language of Chin. One called back to him, “What is it that you
want and who are you thathides from us likea pariah dog? Come down and fight.”
Casca grinned, his eyes never leaving the Huns in the rocks. “I’m glad to see at least one of you has the
ability to speak in more than grunts, grunts that are the natural tongue of your tribes. What I want is to
make a deal.”
The Hun leader yelled back. “I’m listening.”
“Unless you bowlegged little bastards would be fond of walking out of this place and across the desert, I
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CASCA,VolumeSixBARRYSADLER“Yes,andIhavethestoryinmyroom.Doyouwanttoreadit?”Landriesgaveashortlaugh,almostasnort.“Thatisadumbquestion,Goldman.YouknowthatIwouldtravelhalfwayaroundtheworldtoreadhisstory.Butdoesn’titexhaustyoutobethesoundingboardforhim?Howcanyoustandlivingthroughallhispain,hissufferinga...

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