you have been around a bit; those cut marks on your hide look to be enough for five or six men to have died from.”
Sea spray whipped over the deck, freshening Casca’ s face. ‘Aye, Captain, I have been carved up a bit, but they are not as bad as they look. Dull blades don’t cut deep, just gouge out a lot of meat, and I still have some to spare.
Ortius liked the look of the man before him, a strong looking rascal and one you could not easily scare.
“Good enough. As a courtesy to a castaway, you will be my guest. Just don’t start any trouble and we’ll make port tomorrow. We lost some way in the night and the damned winds have shifted again; my oarsmen could barely keep their own against it and we couldn’t set sails until just before dawn. Now, I have duties to attend to, make yourself comfortable and perhaps we’ll talk later. I used to have some shipmates who worked out of Pireaus, perhaps you’ll know them.” The bandy-legged barrelchested little Sicilian laughed at the memory. “Remind me to tell you about the whorehouse in the south of the village where a Greek whore tried to castrate me for short changing her.”
Casca laughed; the scar running from his left eye to his cheek seemed to tingle.
The day turned bright and clear as they tacked first to port and starboard working against the cross angles of the wind as the sea miles dropped steadily behind. Casca spent the rest of the day cleaning his weapons, wiping the salt from his blade and honing down the edge of his double-edged dagger he kept in his leggings. During his years in the north countries, he had grown used to having them on and continued to wear them. -
He looked out seaward back across the distance he had come on the Viking longship, wending its way to the safety of the Keep at Helsfjord. “Another part of my life gone… Wassail, Olaf Glamson, take my ships home, and if your father lives, tell him I still walk this earth-though I believe he would ‘know it anyway, that great ugly bear of a man. The wheel of life turned again.”
In the flickering waters, for a moment, he saw the face of Liu Shao Tze, the sage from the lands of far Khitai, who had taught him the way of open-hand fighting. Automatically, he turned his head to face the East. “Khitai, perhaps it’s time for me to see the lands beyond the Indus.”
“Sail off the starboard,” the lookouts cried.
Instantly, every head turned to see what vessel was approaching. Unable to make her out, the captain cried up to the lookout perched on top of the single mast, “Can you make her out?”
“Aye, Captain. I will wager my bonus she’s a Saxon; the cut of her sails tell me that and the wind is with her. She’ll be on us in less than an hour.”
The captain spit, “Saxons, damn them all to the bowels of the darkest pit in hades. One more day and we would have made port. Keep your eye on her and tell me if she changes her course. All hands on deck, prepare for boarders!”
The crew rushed to the weapons rack taking out their personal preferences from pikes to axes. Several had bows but not enough; with enough archers, they probably would be able to keep the raider at a distance until nightfall and lose them in the fogs that always came to the coast of this land when the dark settled.
“A good crew, no panic,” thought Casca as he watched the look of grim determination set in on the faces of the crew and slaves alike.
The slaves too took up weapons, Ortius having made all his slaves a bargain: “Serve me for three years and you will be given your letter of manumission.” This bargain had been to his benefit in the past and was one of the reasons that he had so little trouble from his slaves’ part, they knew the captain would keep his word and it would still be better to be an oar slave than to be taken by those long-haired bearded devils called Saxons. It was said they ate the hearts of their prisoners and sacrificed them to their terrible gods.
Casca moved to the side of the captain. “Sir, have you ever fought the Saxons before?”
Ortius looked Casca in the face and saw a change that sent a shiver over him. “No, but I have talked to those that have and they are wild animals. This day we win, or die.”
Casca grunted, fingering his sword hilt. “I’ve fought them several times. They are poor archers, but when it comes to close quarters, they are the best axe men on the face of the earth. Most carry two or more throwing axes which they can throw in unison to keep their enemies undercover for a moment while they rush and throw themselves like a pack of dogs onto their opponents, using a combination of axes and lances. The bastards are tough, Captain. But I have beaten them before and have no intention of losing this time either.”
The Saxon ship was in sight now, closing fast. The faces of her wild crew became rapidly discernable, wild men with long flowing hair blowing to the front from the wind behind, their mustaches and beards giving them an even wilder look under the horned helmets and conical steel caps. Across the water, battle cries could be heard as they worked themselves into a killer frenzy.
Ortius ordered the cooking fire extinguished and all hands to stand by to repel boarders. The fat trader was no match for the swift raider. But Ortius was no coward and donned a breastplate of antique armor he had picked up in Bithynia. Casca recalled when it had been the newest style among the wealthy young nobles of the Eques, the Cavalry.
Casca placed himself, watching carefully for the spot where the two vessels would join and the raiders would toss their grappling hooks to tie them together in an umbilical cord of death.
As they neared the raider, Casca thought one wild looking bastard looked vaguely familiar but underneath all that hair it was difficult to tell. As the Romans said, “All barbarians look alike.”
All thoughts of the past months fled. The basic soldier in Casca came to the fore. As his pulse rate increased, he took short sharp breaths, pumping oxygen into his system automatically. He began to call out orders, commanding the sailors nearest the side to get ready and duck on his order.
Ortius looked at him and, seeing a man who knew his business, said nothing, just nodding in agreement for the others to follow Casca’s lead. The captain knew ships, but this was different. In Casca, he recognized a professional and in this instant he made the decision to turn the order of the battle over to this stranger from the sea.
“Do as the soldier orders,” he bellowed, loud enough for the Saxons less than a hundred yards away to hear.
The sailors huddled together instinctively, and Casca roared at them to separate to make smaller targets for the wave of axes that would come.
The Saxon ship began to close alongside the trader. Their leader stood in the bow, a massively built man with blond-grey flowing hair and mustache, axe held high. With his downward stroke, the Saxons rose to throw. Casca waiting for this moment, cried out to the sailors to fall flat on their faces; the sheer force of his order made most of them hit the deck like they had been pole-axed. Those too late to obey, had their skulls and chests laid open by the wave of thrown axes that raced across the small distance separating the two ships. As the axes were thrown, so were the grappling hooks and before the death cry of the stricken sailors could really begin, the Saxons were hauling the two ships side by side, the wood giving a strange muffled shriek as they dragged together. The Saxons crowded at the side, standing on the railing, ready to leap aboard the trader.
In their eagerness, two fell into the water between the ships and were mashed into a protoplasmic red jelly when the waves brought them back together again, leaving only a red stain on each ship to show that here had been two men who were no more.
“Up and at them!” The command stirred the defenders and they rose in time to catch the Saxons at their most vulnerable point when they were attempting the crossing from their ship to the trader. Normally the barrage of thrown axes would have given them the necessary seconds to make an uncontested assault, but now they faced desperate men with pikes in their hands and murder in their hearts.
The Saxons were stopped. But only for a moment. Then the leader of the enemy ship threw himself across the gap, landing on board. He began striking down sailors left and right, caving in skulls and chests, as he cleared an area through which the rest of his band eagerly followed.
The seamen were no match in close combat for the ferocity of the German pirates and were easily being forced back. More and more Saxons rushed into the bridgehead created by their leader, Skoldbjom, who was slicing down all who opposed him, bellowing for Thor to give him strength to kill all who dared to stand in front of his axe, which was red and dripping with the lifeblood of the sailors. His whirling attack came to a sudden stop as his axe was knocked back with enough force that it left his arm and hand tingling.
Casca pushed him back using a combination of sword and dagger; thrust, jab, strike high, then low. Casca dodged a blow to the head that would have split him to the chest and whirled low to the deck pivoting in a tight
