Casca 9: The Sentinel (15 page)

He ignored Ireina's protestations and waved her out of his presence. Her cries were muffled by a calloused hand as she was dragged back to her cell in the cisterns.

Gregory made his excuses to the palace, claiming illness. He prayed for four days and nights on his knees on the stone floor. He had set out the spear of Longinus to aid in him in his devotions. Neither food nor wine did he take. He fed on the passion of his soul, trying to reach out to the spirit of God and find what he must do.

His fevered brain tossed, turning in on its own fantasies and fears. He heard a thousand voices speaking to him from all around, within and without his being. He prayed for guidance, and it came. There was one answer to his problem, and it could be settled by a simple test.

If the brat was the child of the godless one, had he inherited the curse with his blood? Could the spawn of Satan sire a whole race of immortals that would one day do battle against the righteous armies of Jesus on the day of the resurrection?

If there was the remotest possibility of that, he had to stop it. He must find out, and the answer was simplicity itself, as the truth always is.

Rising from his devotions, he went to his couch and slept the good sleep of the devout servant who serves his master well. When he woke, all would be made clear.

With the dawn he rose and performed his ablutions, dressing carefully in his finest robe of white linen, his scrubbed face cherubic and friendly. After he had breakfasted, he called for the boy to be brought to him in his study.

Young Demos was brought to him, still rubbing the sleep from his six-year-old eyes, wondering why he had been taken from his mother and why they were here. No one had hurt them, but he didn't understand why they kept him from going out to play or why his mother held him so close in her sleep and cried so hard when the tall men came for him and took him away.

He was shown into the study by Gregory's personal secretary, a tall blond man with bland features that betrayed no emotions, only blind obedience to the laws of the Brotherhood.

Gregory gave Timoteus permission to leave and then smiled gently at the child and motioned for him to come closer to his table. The child was handsome and had a body that would grow square and strong. His eyes were a darker blue than his mother's, and his hair likewise was brown instead of her silver.

Gregory spoke pleasantly to the boy, who showed no fear at being alone with him. The Elder gave him fresh fruit and sweetmeats to eat as he examined the child from every angle, looking for any sign that this was indeed the child of evil.

Gregory could see only that he bore more of a resemblance to someone else than he did to his mother, and the woman swore that he was the child of Casca. Gregory sat back on his chair and sighed. There was only one way to be absolutely certain.

Calling the boy to him, he said easily, "Come here, child, and sit with me. I'll tell you a story."

Demos did as he was bade and climbed into the lap of the smiling, friendly man who offered to peel him an orange and tell him a story. Gregory stroked the soft, brown, curling hair of the child and touched the fair unscarred skin with easy fingers. He held the child gently to him and told him a story of a warrior who had sinned greatly against God and had passed this way many years before and had gone on to reach the wall that runs forever and beyond that to the lands of China and how he had returned but, when he did, brought back with him a great evil.

Demos lifted his eyes from his half-eaten orange to ask, "What evil was that, sir?"

Gregory held the child close to his chest with his left arm and whispered into the child's ear, "You!"

Swiftly, he slid the knife, concealed in the cushion of his chair, straight into the innocent heart of the trusting child, sinking the blade into its hilt. He held Demos to him in a firm grip as the boy quivered gently and died, his mouth opening to let fall a piece of bloody orange onto the clean white robes of the Elder.

Gregory lay the small body down on a couch and moved his chair to sit by him. Now it was time to wait. He removed the tunic from the child's chest that he might see the wound. If the wound healed, the child was Casca's. If the boy didn't return to life, he had saved an innocent child from a life of being corrupted by the spawn of evil that was Longinus. This way, the child was a martyr and would sit at the foot of God in heaven.

All that day and through the night, his eyes never left the pale body of the child, and the wound stayed open. There was no sign of healing or a return of the life force. By the dawn, Gregory was convinced that the child was truly dead. He said a mass for his spirit and called for the body to be removed and disposed of. The servant who had brought Demos in came and wrapped the tiny remains in a small rug and took him away. The waters of the Bosphorus would conceal their act for all time.

Now Gregory wondered about the woman. Perhaps he should dispose of her too. No! She might make Casca more tractable as a hostage, and then he would be more likely to be obedient to their wishes.

The woman would live a while longer. He would tell her that the child had been sent away to live on a farm until Casca came to claim them. Then they would be reunited. There was no sense having a
hysterical mother on his hands. He knew that to give Ireina even the tiniest of hopes would make her easier to control.

A cry vibrated over the desert surrounding the broken walls of Carthage. Holding the locks of hair from Ireina and Demos in his hand, Casca felt his entire body shaking in white rage. Aeolius believed that all that was keeping him alive was the fact that the child and its mother were being held hostage by the Elder.

In that supposition, Aeolius was mortally wrong. If the Elder wanted him, Casca knew that the messenger was of no importance once he had delivered his message. But he was of great importance to Casca. He advanced on Aeolius, eyes narrowed to piggish slits, face pale as he removed the thin, slightly curved skinning knife from its scabbard.

Aeolius started to move away. The madness in Casca's eyes made him doubt the length of his remaining time on earth. A blow from a knotted fist struck the thin bone behind his ear, paralyzing him. He was awake but couldn't force his limbs to obey the commands he kept giving them to run or crawl. Strips of cloth wrapped about his wrists and feet ensured that he would remain immobile. Before he could regain control of his vocal chords, a rag was stuffed in his mouth.

Casca leaned over him, whispering, "You're going to tell me everything, and then I'll let you die. But not too soon. First, you're going to suffer, to know pain such as you have never dreamed of. Then and only then will I give the mercy of death."

The skinning knife went to work. In his centuries, Casca had taken the hides from hundreds of animals. This was his first and only human. He took his time making the slits under the skin, drawing the blade delicately along the strip running from the neck to the tip of the shoulders. Then, easing the thin blade under the skin till he could get a grip on it, he began the slow, careful process of pulling and then slicing a bit more to loosen the flesh from the outer hide.

Aeolius was ready to talk before the first square inch of skin had been sliced from his body, but he couldn't speak. The gag in his mouth became clotted with his own blood where he chewed at the sides of his mouth in agony. Casca had seen this process in several places. He knew how to take his time and when to stop to give the subject a bit of a rest before continuing.

By this time he had peeled the skin from the back of the captain to where it now hung, a red wet flap around the man's waist, leaving his upper torso a mass of red and blue veins, nerve endings that screamed at the slightest touch, even at Casca's hot breath as he worked with single-minded mania.

Aeolius was near the edge of madness himself. Seeing this, Casca knew that it was time to stop. The captain would answer all his questions. He forced back the hate from his mind to gain enough control to ask the questions he needed to have answered. Aeolius did as Casca had foretold. He spoke of everything: of the Sparthos-cublicar and their raid on the farm of Sicarus, of the slaughter done there, and of how the woman of Casca and her child had been taken to Constantinople to the Elder, who was also the magister officorum. He spoke till Casca lived up to his bargain and gave him an end to pain by taking his thin blade and severing the nerves between the vertebrae at the rear of the captain's neck.

It was in this state that Hrolvath found him; he nearly threw up after getting a good look at the bloody thing lying on the floor of Casca's tent. Casca had to forcibly sit Hrolvath down and explain what had taken place. He told him only that he had enemies from many years back and that they had taken his wife and son hostage and would kill them. What he had done was necessary to find out where they were being held.

Hrolvath still avoided looking at the raw draining thing that had been a man. But it was a violent world they lived in, and if that was what had to be done, he had enough faith in his friend to try to understand it. The clincher came when Casca told him that Sicarus's family had been destroyed and all there, including his wife, put to the sword by the same men who had taken Ireina and Demos.

Hrolvath promised to keep what had happened secret. He helped Casca haul the body out to the battlefield to let it lie with those of the Vandals, where there was little likelihood that anyone would take notice of one more among the thousands.

Hrolvath gave Casca what money he had and escorted him to the docks to buy passage on the next ship for Constantinople. Hrolvath didn't know whether he should have told Sicarus of the loss of his wife.

Casca made up his mind for him, saying flatly, "There is nothing he can do for his wife or servants now, but Belisarius still needs him here. He will find out soon enough. When he does, then you can tell him that I have gone to take revenge on those who did it for both of us."

He left a bewildered and stunned young man behind as he went to find a ship to take him back to Constantinople. Carthage no longer held any interest for him. That would remain for Belisarius to clean up. He had something to do in the city of Justinian that could not wait one second longer for anyone or anything. He could be in Constantinople in a week.

Casca spoke to no one when he had to change ships at Chrysopolis, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, for the short ride across the straits to Constantinople. Paying his fare, he found a place on the bow where he could see the far shore. In the distance, rising over the sky, he could see dark tendrils of oily smoke rising to the sky. The capital was dying. Plague walked the streets of Constantinople. Plague, the most democratic of killers, sparing neither child nor warrior, noble or slave; the messenger of death touched every door.

The thought of Ireina and his son inside those walls made him sick to his stomach. He had seen the handiwork of the disease many times,
Those who had done this thing would pay. Of that he was certain. In his mind, anger burned red, setting his teeth grinding against each other, the muscles in his jaws working constantly. His hand touched his sword, gripping the hilt so hard that he nearly bent it. Someone was going to pay, and if they had hurt Ireina and his son, there would not be enough blood in their bodies to settle the score.

The sails of the shallow-draft vessel flapped listlessly. Slaves had to help it along, their oars slapping in series against the darkening waters, each stroke of the sweeps sending him closer.

He didn't see the small dark shape in its sack that had recently come back to the surface of the waters as if waiting to greet someone as it rode gently in the hollow of a wave that lightly bumped the ferry. Then it was gone, taken back into the deep. As they neared the bank, the wind shifted slightly. He smelled the taste of death, the sweet, cloying odor of decay and smoke. He saw lines of wagons and hand-pushed carts on the road carrying their cargoes of bodies to be dumped into the waters of the Bosphorus.

The ferry pulled up to the wharf on the Thracian side, and Casca was over the bow and on the dock before the boat stopped moving. Sandaled feet slapping the wet stones, he rushed past the porters and slaves waiting to offload the ferry. He ignored the gruesome carts and their cargoes. There was nothing he could do for them, but there might still be something he could do for his own. The Brotherhood wanted him to come to them; by all the demons of hell, he was here. They would live only long enough to wish that they had left him alone. He reached the walls just minutes before the gates would have been shut. Soldiers of the palace garrison lined the access to the gates, making certain that all slaves who had left the city returned. By order of Justinian, no one was to be permitted to leave until the death had run its course. No one, that is, except the rich and powerful, who were retreating to their villas and estates.

As Casca passed through the gates, one of the guards fell face forward on the stones. An order was shouted out by a corporal, and the man's body was hefted by slaves onto a cart to lie with those of a family of Byzantine merchants. Only his weapons were removed from him and handed over to the corporal.

Beating and cursing his way past the weary, foot-dragging slaves, he passed under the eye of the portal guards, who didn't ask to see his papers. They had only been ordered to stop anyone from leaving, not entering, though why anyone would come to this place
now, they didn't know and didn't care. Most of them had escape on their minds, and the rate of desertion among their ranks was rising every day. Only the promise of more gold kept any of them at their posts.

Plague! The mere mention of the word could turn even the bravest of men into puling cowards. Casca had seen it more than once. On the side of the streets he saw the bodies of dead rats lying about. When the rats began to die, humans were next. He didn't know why, but always in the past it was known that the rats began to die first; then
came the sickness to people, as if in their death the rats passed on whatever it was that killed.

Yellow clouds of sulphur smoke drifted through the streets, where only the death slaves worked, hauling bodies out of buildings and alleys to load them on carts. Down the Via Honorius, he could hear the ringing of a hand bell as a shrill voice cried out to the buildings on either side, "Bring out your dead, bring out your dead."

Casca stepped around a pile of bodies. One of them, a woman in her thirties, was still wearing a bracelet of gold set with large stones of amber. Many of the slaves would acquire enough wealth from the looting of bodies to buy their freedom, if they survived. He covered his nose and mouth with the edge of his cloak to keep out the terrible stench of bodies that had lain too long before being found. The heavy sweetness of decay was impossible to avoid.

Added to the thin pealings of the deathmonger's bell came the heavier, more vibrant tone of the bells of the cathedrals of Constantinople, where masses were being held day and night. He knew that the churches would be crowded with the sick and the well – the one praying to be healed, the other not to get sick – and in their hearts each of them hoping that if someone had to die, let it be the one next to him, that he himself might be spared. He also knew that the death passed most quickly where people were close together in crowds or groups. Turning a corner, he knocked over the body of a priest who had died sitting up, still in his brown cassock, hands folded together in the act of prayer. The face was thin and yellow. His tongue, black and swollen, protruded between the teeth.

The dark was gathering quickly, throwing into shadows the narrow corridors of the streets. Casca knew that the palace of the magister would be well guarded, but he thought he knew how to get by. Gregory expected him to come knocking politely on his door and beg permission to enter. Casca would not accept that invitation, even though they held Ireina and his son. He knew that the word and honor of the priests of the Brotherhood was good only as long as it served their purposes; they were not to be trusted. He would see Gregory, but on his own terms.

From the houses on either side he would occasionally hear the sounds of mourning as someone grieved over a dead parent, lover, or child. Several times he saw doors furtively open for a moment as a body was hauled out to be added to the hundreds that still lay uncollected. Then there was the sound of the doors being shut and bolted.

Pulling his cloak over his head to conceal his features, Casca tried to get his thoughts organized. It was hard to avoid the temptation to just barge in and take his family back from them. But good sense dictated that he wait a while longer, until the early hours before the next dawn, when eyes were the heaviest among guards who would be half asleep waiting for their relief to come. He took the street leading to the palace of Gregory in order to take a look at the layout before finding somewhere to hole up till it was time for his visit. The streets were emptying of what few had dared to leave their homes. In the distance he could smell smoke from a fire that consumed a series of apartments. The fire would last until it burned itself out. There would no one this night to put the flames out.

On the high ground, where the officials and favorites of the court kept their palaces, the signs of death were less obvious. The streets were clear of bodies, but the aura of the plague was not to be denied; it had visited here, too. He stayed to the shadows, not wishing to give any watchful eyes warning that he had arrived. They would find out soon enough. The palace of Gregory was not the largest there, but it had high walls on which he could see dim figures, which meant that there were guards who still served their master.

He made two passes, each an hour apart, circling the palace. There were two entrances, neither of which he could use. He would have to go over the wall. There were no trees to climb or anything near enough to them that he could climb to and then jump from. He would have to think of another way to scale the walls. In spite of his anger, which had now settled down into a deep dull pain, he knew he would need to rest before finishing his business. Leaving by the Via Augustinus, he went back to the main city to find a hole for the next few hours.

A two-story villa from which he could see no lights showing had its front door open, swinging on loose brass hinges and inviting him inside. He kicked away two pariah dogs that were worrying at the body of an old man near the steps. Removing his sword from its scabbard, he entered the dark atrium, closing the door behind him and latching it. Stopping, he held his breath to hear better, turning his head first one way and then the other to see if he could catch any sound that might mean others were in the house with him. He was tired, but instinct and habit made him search the house from room to room. In the kitchen, he found the desiccated body of a woman lying by the fireplace used for cooking. Her clothes were rich, of fine carded wool with silk threads woven into the cloth. In the bedroom he found the body of a man and woman lying together side by side. He was glad it was dark so that he didn't have to look at them. The odor was enough to make a vulture ill.

In the last room, at the rear of the second floor, he found one other corpse, that of a younger man, judging from the build, lying near a chest of carved dark wood. Obviously, the dead man had been trying to get to the chest. Therefore, it had to be important. Casca moved the body out of the way by pulling the man's sleeve. Once the body was clear, he opened the chest after breaking the lock with a twist of his sword blade. The chest contained articles of jewelry, silks, and several small bags of silver and gold.

The man had been trying to get to it when the death took him. Perhaps it would serve another purpose. Casca removed the chest, carrying it with him to an empty room, where he made a thin pallet of his cloak and lay down to get what sleep he could until it was time to go. He had his plan worked out for getting over the wall without being spotted before he went to sleep. He set his mental clock for the right number of hours to rest before awakening.

At the right moment, his eyes clicked open; he was instantly alert. It was the right time. He had two hours before dawn. Scrounging around the room, he found a lamp made of terra cotta. Striking off the flint from his fire kit onto a patch of lint, he ignited the oil in the lamp. By the thin red glow, he was able to go through the chest and remove the items he would need later. The silver and gold he put into his own, nearly empty pouch, keeping one sack of each to use later. Once he had Ireina and Demos, they would have need for money to make good their escape.

He covered his own, too recognizable warrior's garments with a robe of fine green silk from the chest. On his wrists he placed bracelets of gold and silver where they could be seen easily. Once he had finished with his costume, he was ready. The lamp was extinguished, plunging the room back into darkness.

He returned to the empty streets. In the distance, he could hear the howling of a dog, punctuated by the pealing of bells from the cathedrals. Low wisps of mist rose from the stones of the streets and gutters and were moved gently by the night air. Pulling up the hood of his new robe, he quickly retraced his steps to the place of the eunuch Gregory. If the sentries there were like most, the changing of the guard would not take place for at least another two hours. That was all the time he would have. It should be enough. The stench of decay walked with him, permeating the damp air blown in from the Bosphorus.

Finding his original position by the walls, Casca moved close to the gate. There wasn't any way for him to get over the walls without aid. He would have to come in from the front. He tried to make himself smaller. Twisting his shoulders and walking with stiff heavy steps, he kept his face averted from the glow of the torch in an iron bracket by the barred gate to Gregory's palace. In the flickering of the flame, he could see eyes watching his approach from an archer's aperture in the watch gate.

Stumbling forward, he half collapsed. Beating at the door with a feeble hand, he choked out a weak cry: "Help me, please let me in. All my family is dead. Let me in." He whimpered, "I don't want to die." He coughed, raising a hand to his mouth and letting the gold and silver bracelets sparkle in the glow of the torch.

He heard a movement behind the walls. Perhaps they needed a bit more incentive. He fell to his knees; holding his hands clasped as if in prayer, he begged them to let him in. Fumbling under his robe, he took out his purse and raised it above his head, crying out to them: "I have gold and jewels, enough to make you rich men for the rest of your lives. If only you'll let me in; it's all yours, take it all." He sobbed, turning the sack upside down to let the coins of gold and silver fall in a bright rain to the ground as his body shook and shuddered. He had seen death come enough times to know the symptoms.

The sounds behind the wall had increased when he opened the purse. He knew that he had their attention. Now for the coup de grace. Casca fell face forward to the wall, hands outstretched. He cried, "I have more much more on me; it's all yours." He doubled himself over as if cramps were tearing at his abdomen. From his throat came the sounds of choking. His body went into a convulsive spasm and then was still.

Behind the wall, the two sentries argued over what they should do. They knew that it meant death for them to let anyone from the outside in. But the man outside was dead, and the gold he carried would be taken by some filthy slaves if they didn't take it for themselves first. Surely there could be no harm if they opened the gate for just enough time to strip the body. No one would ever be the wiser as long as they kept their mouths shut. And there was enough to split between them that they might be able to get out of the city and find safety for themselves, away from the plague.

Casca could hear the sound of the gate being unlatched and then a thin squeak as the door opened just enough to permit one of the two sentries inside to squeeze his body out. He held his breath. Beneath his robe, his sword was already drawn. He would need it to keep the gate from being shut on him.