weeks at sea without a landfall, but Casca would not let a single man go ashore until weapons were cleaned and ready for action. Blades were shiny, axes sharp, and the bowmen took from waterproof bags made of seal bladders the strings for their deadly bows. Quickly they strung their weapons and refletched such arrows as needed care. At last all was to Casca's liking.
He sent a party to reconnoiter the landing site. The men piled into the coracles of animal hides, made their way to shore, beached the coracles, and then their horned and furred figures disappeared into the forest. Casca thought they were taking their own sweet time, and he was about at the point of doing something about it when they finally reappeared on the sandy beach and waved to the others to come ashore. So another party was launched from each ship, and this time Casca himself went ashore. The unexpected feel of the un-moving land beneath his feet gave him a quick sense of nausea, but the queasiness soon passed when he saw that his men were carrying a good-sized buck deer that one of the bowmen had shot.
Olaf, the leader of that particular party, fairly beamed.
'Lord, it is a rich land. There is food a-plenty, and more deer than in the forests at home. Also large birds. There are signs that there are plenty of bears. We shall not starve in this land, wherever it is.'
'What of men?' Casca asked. 'Did you find any signs of men in this place?'
Olaf nodded in the negative, his horned head bobbing. 'No, my lord, there was no sign. But we have not seen much of the land. It appears that this is no small island but a large land going on for leagues. I climbed a tall tree on the highest hill and looked as far as I could see. There was naught but great valleys and forests.'
'Good,' grunted Casca in his familiar manner. 'Then here we shall work on our ships and make them ready for sea again. But I still want scouting parties out night and day, and a particularly careful watch at night. We shall not be taken by surprise by anyone. If there are people here, then we will be prepared for them. One thing I learned in the legion was to always prepare an armed camp before doing anything else. Get the men ashore except for a skeleton crew on each ship. First we will build here a fort from which we can be secure. Then and then only will we fix the ships.'
Olaf saluted as he had seen his father do, thumping his hand to his chest. 'Aye, lord. So it shall be.' Turning, he gave the orders necessary to carry out Casca's will. The Vikings set to work. Axes that carve a man can also cut trees; by nightfall they had built a small, tight camp and were secure. Four more deer were roasting over the fires, sending the rich smell of the cooking venison into the air. Many of the men could not wait and wolfed down large chunks of the almost raw, smoking meat, wiping the deer grease on their beards and mustaches.
But their weapons were always close at hand…
On the following days they expanded the camp, dug trenches about it, and implanted sharp stakes, points out, in the trenches. They added two small watchtowers. Then and only then did they beach the ships and proceed with the work of making them seaworthy again. They caulked and sealed every leaking seam, packing and tamping in the punk. They scraped off the barnacles that had accumulated; the ships would be faster when they returned to the sea. They went over every inch of the hulls and the insides of the ships. Corio had built well; there was only minor repair work to be done and plenty of timber available for it. They worked in relays. While some labored on the ships others hunted and fished. The game was abundant; the waters incredibly rich. The men scouted ever farther inland. Still they found no sight of any salt sea. There were only great rivers and great valleys. They turned their hands to reprovisioning the ships. Meat was packed and salted down, or hung in thin strips to dry in the smoke of their fires and then packed carefully. Birds of many kinds added to the food store. Fresh water was everywhere. It would have been an ideal place to live if they had had women and children, but having none they began to tire of this pleasant land. The urge to sail was upon them. Their confidence restored by the weeks of good food and weather, they looked forward to the time when Casca would give the orders that put them to sea again.
That time seemed long in coming.
During the long days and quiet nights of the voyage south Casca had had ample time to think. Often his thoughts had been of Rome. He was out of touch with the Empire, for his years in the Hold on the fjord had not brought him much information until he had acquired the services of Corio the shipbuilder who was also fortunately an educated man. From Corio, Casca learned what had transpired in the Empire since he had crossed the Rhine those long years ago. How long had it been? he had thought. Fifty-one years… a lifetime for most men… During those years another stream of so-called 'Caesars' had sat on the eagle throne, each having his day and then passing on, leaving the seat of power to yet others. Septimus Severus had sought to restore order after the civil war in which he took the power from the degenerate Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius. But Septimus Severus had remade the old fatal mistake of giving power to two brothers who hated each other. He had left instructions that after him his two sons would rule jointly, one in the east, the other in the west, from Rome. The result was the old and time-tried result: the elder brother murdered the younger. The year 235 saw the first professional soldier become emperor. When the army took control after killing the emperor Alexander, it installed Maximin. The killing of Alexander had seemed a necessity. He was a coward and a weak ruler, but what the army considered his greatest betrayal of Rome was his buying peace with the Rhineland Germans. To top it all, the peace fiasco had come on the heels of a miserable and disastrous campaign in Persia wherein the defeat was the direct responsibility not only of Alexander's cowardice, but also of his mother's meddling. It was too much for the professional soldiers to bear. They killed Alexander and made Max-imin emperor. But they had reckoned without the senate of Rome. That august body thrust Italy into rebellion. The senators won, and they in turn had Maximin killed. Rome saw five emperors within six years. According to Corio the current emperor was one named Philip from the Arabian colonies who had so far been successful in beating off three attacks from Decius who aspired to the purple.
'It never changes,' Casca said out loud, waking a sleeping Viking near him.
'What is it, lord?'
'Nothing,' Casca answered. 'Go back to sleep. It is nothing of any matter…'
Casca gave the orders.
The ships sailed. In two weeks they saw their first palm trees. The weather had grown warmer every day of the voyage south along this apparently endless coast. They pulled in to rest and stretch their legs along a marshy region. Casca saw animals here that looked exactly like the crocodiles of Egypt, only smaller. They had the same appetites, and Casca almost lost a man to one of them when the fellow bent over to drink. One of the beasts grabbed his arm and tried to pull him under. Fortunately the reptile's appetite was greater than his size. The fellow's comrades dragged him and the beast to shore and dispatched the lizard with spear stabs. They took the teeth to make jewelry.
But they were properly impressed with the beast, for they had never seen its like before. Casca, of course, had. He told his men of the monstrous Egyptian crocodiles that were worshipped as gods along the Nile. 'Some were said to be the length of three tall men or more,' he explained. His men looked at him. Three tall men? But no one said anything. After all, the Lord Casca was a most unusual man. If he said a beast was as long as three men, then that was the way it was.
Further south the ships rounded a peninsula, always keeping the coastline in sight. They never lacked for food. A few hours stop and they could catch enough fish to feed twice their number. In addition, there were huge crabs, and oysters a foot across. Ashore there was plenty of game, and animals new to them. One animal that scared the crap out of them, the one they came to fear more than any other, was the snake with the beads on its tail, which it would shake at a man before biting. One Viking found to his regret that the bite was fatal. It took two days for him to die. After that the Norsemen gave these snakes a wide berth.
They continued sailing along the coast. There seemed no end to this great land. Day followed day, and they sailed on. The sun beating on them turned their skins first red and flushed, and then slowly dark. They discovered that after their skins had darkened they could work all day in the burning heat and feel no discomfort. Their furs they had long since stowed in the leather sleeping bags. Now the nights were warm enough for them to sleep naked on the deck
Two more weeks passed, and they had to put in again for repairs, more warily this time, for they had seen fires at night not forest fires or brush burnings, but the controlled glows that meant men were on that shore. What kind of men the Norsemen did not know, but there were people here. Sometime they must meet.
When the time came to go in for a landing, Casca stood in the bow, naked except for his loincloth. His hide was tanned brown, the many scars on his body, being slightly paler, standing out like crisscrossed hairs and ropes. He pointed the way in to a good harbor. They had seen no fires for four days, and had laid off this position for two of those days. When they were convinced that there was no one else in the vicinity except themselves, they went in but they followed the same precautions as at every landing before: First a stockade and ditch; then the ships
