Barry Sadler
God Of Death
PROLOGUE
Casca came to the Rhine at the same spot where he had fought his first battle against the German tribesmen known as the Suevii; the grass always seemed to be a little richer where blood had been spilled. In his mind he could almost make out the outlines of the fight, a smaller patch of green a hundred yards distant where the young men of the cavalry unit assigned to Casca's unit had been pulled from their horses by long-hooked poles and had their throats slit with fishknives while they lay on the ground. That barbarian ambush had almost been successful. Only the legion's automatic response to danger and the immediate forming of the square had saved them all from being butchered and having their heads stuck on poles outside the longhouses of the barbaric tribesmen from across the Rhine.
Casca walked slowly, memories rushing upon him. Stopping, he bent over and picked up a piece of metal protruding from the earth. It was the bandle of a knife, a knife stuck in something. Tugging gently, Casca freed it. The rusty blade came forth, almost completely eaten away but still strong enough to hold the piece of human skull it had penetrated so many years ago. Ours? Or theirs? Casca mused. He hooked his pack up higher and looked in the direction of the river. He walked toward it, his footsteps taking him back to that first battle when he was young and the copper taste of piss-blinding fear was in his mouth. He knew that beneath his feet were the bones of men whom he had known and served with, some friends, some not, but all comrades. The legion… the legion… my only true home… my father and my mother… Here is where I killed my first man over a hundred and fifty years ago. The wheel turns. As I told the leader of the caravan out of Anatolia before we headed for Damascus, the wheels of the gods grind slow, yet they grind exceedingly fine. Everything is as it was and will be. The only exception is me. I am what I was and apparently always will be until the Jew comes again. I am the continuation of myself. Shit, where the hell did I learn to talk like that? Continuation my ass. I am what I am, and perhaps I get a little maudlin now and then. But life is still interesting. There are yet places to go, people to meet, women to love… and leave…
Casca drew himself erect, his hand on his belt. He looked across the river. The Jew said it: What I am, that I shall be. Good enough. I am Casca, soldier of the legions, part-time slave but I exist. Cogito, ergo sum. I will beat the Jew yet. My fortunes lie in front of me… in life and adventure.
Certainly I get feelings of sympathy for myself now and then, but, as He said, I am what I am. Therefore I shall live the life that my destiny demands. But as my own man.
Absorbed in his interior monologue, Casca had reached the river.
The Rhine, dark and swift, flowed before him., He knelt at the same spot where he had slaked his thirst in the then bloody waters of that battle so long ago… his battle thirst after the Suevii had broken and run, and the legionnaires had slaughtered them all the way to the river and even in it. The passing face of a young German boy ran before Casca's eyes… and faded. One he had killed? It grew hard to recall them all after a while. Casca sat by the bank of the great river looking across to where no Roman in his right mind would want to be. Germania. Terra incognita. The unknown lands of the fiercest tribesmen on earth. The Germans and the Parthians were the only peoples to stand against the might of Imperial Rome. But the Parthians were cultured and rich, with not only the heritage of the great Persian Empire, but with the sophistication of their first conquerors, the Greeks, under the young warrior, Alexander. The Germans were something else. Casca had the feeling they would always be a pain in the ass to the rest of the world no matter how civilized they might eventually become on the surface. They had born in them, and nurtured by the first taste of their mothers' milk, a lust for life that fulfilled itself only in battle.
By all the demons of whatever reality there are, it seems as if the sage Shiu Lao Tze was right.
Everything is a great circle and repeats itself like that endless line of slaves in the mines of Greece, never ending, always coming back to the beginning. Or is it the end? Perhaps beginning and ending are both the same.
The night was close upon him, and the water looked too damned cold for swimming across in the dark. Tomorrow is time enough. Building a small fire, Casca waited, letting the warmth of the red embers reach deep within him. The piece of donkey meat he was cooking crackled and sizzled. The rich smell of the roasting meat made his mouth salivate. In anticipation, he smacked his lips. Ahh! There's nothing like a nice hot piece of young ass to set a man's mouth watering…
As the meat turned crisp and juicy, Casca reached over and cut off a slice and filled his mouth with the strong taste of young ass. He gulped the meat down, pulled his cloak around him, rolled over, and went to sleep facing the fire.
Tomorrow, Germany…
When the dawn came and Casca awoke, there was the same type fog rolling across the river as had surrounded the ghostlike images of the Suevii floating across the Rhine on logs so many years ago. But this time it was Casca's turn to enter the whirling waters.
The coals of his fire had long since died. Grumbling as he rose, he walked to the water's edge, scratching his ass. He farted and joined his stream with that of the mighty river. Going back to his campsite, he stirred the dead coals hopefully and looked questioningly at a piece of the donkey flesh that remained, but it was now black and charred. Restraining a belch, he mumbled, 'No way. There's no way I'm going to eat a piece of cold burned ass this early in the morning.'
The ground fog swirled around him and the trees. The dawn became day. The rising sun burned off the mist, a few rays breaking through the surrounding trees to give a sense of impending warmth.
'Well, shit,' he said aloud, looking at the river, 'I might as well get it over with. The sooner I get across, the sooner I can dry off.' He dragged a log to the river's edge, tied his gear, a chunk of donkey meat, and his pack to it, and shoved off into the frigid, dark waters, gingerly at first as he waded in, cursing at the icy cold. 'Ooh! Ah! Damn, that's cold!' As the Rhine slowly advanced up his legs, his scrotum tried to climb up even higher to avoid the chilling advance, but, as nature wills it, his balls could only go up so far. Then he was in, and the coldness became warm as he struck off and began paddling across, letting the current take him. It really didn't make a damn where he landed, so he let the river do the work.
The waters finally took him to where his feet could touch bottom. Groaning, he pushed the log to the edge of the bank and began to take his gear from it before leaving the water himself.
'Ho, little man! What do you here?'
The speaker, unexpected as he was, seemed to exemplify that popular image of German barbarism. He stood six-foot-three, and he was two hundred and fifty pounds of meat-stuffed flesh if he was an ounce. He wore a horned helmet, and his sweeping mustache would have made a walrus proud.
'Ho, little man!' he repeated, his voice the thundering bellow of an oversize Germanic ox. 'Do you ashore come? I can see that you are not of the tribes, so therefore you must pay before entering this land. As I am a reasonable man, I will take only your pack and weapons, leaving you your clothes. They would not fit anyway. Fair enough? Or do you wish to dispute me over the matter?' With this he drew a monstrous long sword that must have weighed forty pounds and swung it easily through the air, the slicing blade whistling. He used just one hand and then brought the sword down, resting the point at his thong-wrapped feet.
'Well, what will it be, my wet little titmouse? Though you are larger than most of your sickly ilk, I can see by your rags that you are a Latin. May Wotan piss in your soup.'
Oh, no, thought Casca. This is all I need to start the day off. Getting a firm footing on the slippery bottom, he raised himself up to a full height of five-foot-ten which still seemed small, woefully small, in comparison to the huge barbarian.
'Now, listen to me, lard guts,' he said in German. 'I have had just about enough of your mouth and this river. Take your large, overstuffed carcass away and leave me in peace, or I'll ruin your love life by braiding your legs. Verstand, sheiss kopf?'
'Shit head you dare call me? Glam Tyrsbjorn a shit head? Come out of the water, you dago mouse, and I'll teach you some manners.'
