Casca 2: God of Death (4 page)

Old Glam was right.

The pain eased....

The weeks until the green of spring would break on them seemed all too short for the work that had to be done. This was to be no ordinary raiding voyage. This was to be a Nordic odyssey. The amount of preparation involved was staggering.

Had it not been that it was Lord Casca leading them, few would have dared to venture forth on such an expedition, but these young men had been raised on tales of their strange and mysterious lord. He had bounced them on his knees when they were children, and he had taught most of them their first use of weapons. From their earliest memories he had been the same: changed perhaps, but never older. The greatest change was that of the sadness that had come when his lady, the daughter of the brutal Ragnar, had died. The sadness... and the sense of time running on forever...

As children, they had seen him in his
armor, with his famed short sword, leading their fathers and their elder brothers out to do battle with those who dared to challenge the right of their lord to his domain and Hold. Many were the nights when they had listened to old Glam tell of his and Casca's adventures when Glam was young ... how they had found their way to an ancient keep after Ragnar had blinded his own daughter because she said she had eyes for no one but Casca ... how Casca had taken his terrible revenge on Ragnar ... and had brought Lida to this spot. Here he had devoted himself to Lida, and all who served and loved both him and her made her days good. All were pledged to one great secret: None told the Lady Lida that her man Casca did not age, that while time turned her hair to silver Casca remained as always. He had grown a beard so that his lady could not feel there were no lines in his face from age. All had kept faith with their strange Lord of the Hold. All knew that anyone who broke faith would face his wrath, a great and terrible wrath, for, as Glam had told them, Casca was as one who had been touched by the gods and was not to be taken lightly. But they also served the Lord Casca and his lady as much out of love and affection as they did out of fear and respect for the strength of Casca's arm. To them, they were part of a living legend, privileged to be part of that legend ... the legend of Casca the Unchanging.

This morning Casca shaved.

Neither he nor anyone else of his people knew that outside in the cold, men were watching the fort....

The men watching Casca's fort that morning so soon after Lida's death might have thought twice about attacking it had they known of the black grief gripping Casca, or had they known of his prowess with blade and axe. Might have thought twice... but perhaps not. They were not ordinary men.

They stood in the cold, the icy wind whipping their beards and
mustaches. Big men. Outcasts. The thieves and murderers of a dozen different tribes. Their bodies were clad in furs, and they had the feral look of wolves; wolves they resembled so much in temper and taste that no man, woman, or child was safe from them. Their weapons were ready to drink the blood of any and all they could reach. These men-wolves reveled in their bestiality. Now, as they watched the small fort lying below in the valley, they thought it easy pickings. They had watched long, and knew there were no more than forty men in the Hold. The others, as was the custom of this land, were on their farms with their families waiting for the spring thaw to set the fjord free from the ice, for then they could set sail to fish and trade-and occasionally raid an enemy land.

These men-beasts had been careful to avoid any of the farmhouses. They took no chances of being spotted, of the warning being given so that the villagers could rally to the fort below.

Their leader watched. Big. Singularly repulsive. His teeth were black and worn – down almost to the gums. He suffered constantly from toothache and had been known to bash in the skull of his nearest comrade just for being too close when the worst aching came. His beard was black, streaked with gray. He was not tall for one of his race, but he made up for it in width; his shoulders and hips were almost the same size, and his legs were like tree stumps in their fur wrappings. A hide of bearskin served to keep out the worst of the icy wind, but it failed to cover all the matted, dirty hair and skin beneath.

The reason he had been cast out from his own tribe was that he was so cruel even his own kin could not tolerate him. He had been driven from their camps for killing all the members of his family in a black rage – even the children of his own body.
Malgak the Killer, he was named – and he was so in truth. No man had ever stood before his axe and lived to speak of it. This well-used chunk of iron weighed over fifteen pounds, yet its owner handled it as a child would a toy.

Malgak
turned from watching the fort and grunted to his men to move back to the rude shelters they had set up. No fires for cooking. They would eat cold meat, most of it raw. Like wolves, they had developed a taste for blood... and not only that of animals... With the night they would take the Hold. Two hundred and eleven of them should be more than enough to settle with these farmers and fishermen.

Malgak
crawled on his knees into the small skin tent he called home and looked at the slender form of the young girl he had taken captive a week before when they burned out her home and put her family to the sword. Her face was dirty and frightened. She whimpered when he entered and drew back against the tent wall, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her hair had once been blonde and her skin fair, but now she was merely a dirty child, bruised, with matted hair and sores.

Malgak
stripped his breeches off and threw her under him, taking the fourteen-year-old girl as he would an animal. He thrust, grunted, and sweated over her, slapping her in a futile attempt to get some response. It did not take him long to finish. He looked at her then, thinking of the women they would have when they took the fort tonight. He no longer needed this one, so he took her small head in his hands and snapped her neck as one would snap the neck of a chicken. Throwing the carcass out the flap of skin that served as a door, he immediately dismissed her from his mind, as though she were nothing.

Satisfying his hunger on a piece of raw horseflesh, he thought again of the fort below and grinned, his black stumps worrying over the tough flesh. They had butchered the last of their horses and pack animals two days before. Their food would be gone tomorrow.
But no matter. They would have their fill before dawn.

The rest of his hairy band slept as best they could, wrapped in their fur robes and skins, curling up in knots to get warmth from each other's bodies, in the process exchanging an unknown quantity of lice and fleas. They, too, dreamed of the women and food in the fort. The only clean things about them were their weapons. These showed no signs of mistreatment or rust. They were clean, sparkling, sharp – ready for use.
Earlier they had cut down fifty tall pines and trimmed the branches off short, leaving just enough to use as hand and foot grips. These would be their scaling ladders. With fifty of them there would be no way the forty defenders of the small fort below could keep them from scaling the walls and getting inside.

Between the midnight hour and the dawn, when men sleep the deepest and the sentries' eyes are fogged from looking out into the dark,
Malgak gathered his men, his human vermin, and they slipped silently close to the walls, first walking, then crawling, the snow and ice sliding inside their furs and leaving cold, clean spots unseen beneath the rags they wore.

Inside the fort, Casca could not sleep. The image of
Lida kept returning to haunt him... Lida as she was when she was young and beautiful. That was how he saw her, even to the end when she quietly wasted away and fell into the sleep of no return. To him she would always be young.

He checked his sentries, giving an encouraging word and a slap on the back to those who looked too drowsy. He walked the ramparts. The cold wind coming in from the sea had the taste of salt to it and chilled his skin into a red glow. It felt good.

Casca wore only a light cloak and trousers of flax, dyed blue. There was no need for armor this night, only for sword and dagger. His sword hung from a shoulder belt on his right side, in the Roman manner. The dagger was in the wide black leather stomach belt that fastened in the back with straps. He looked out on the darkened countryside. Old habits die hard, he thought. Even though there had been no sign of trouble for months, he scanned the blackness, using his eyes as he had been taught; turning his head slightly off-center, he searched the shadows with his side vision, knowing that he would be able to see better with such peripheral sight.

Nothing.

He leaned between the stone crenellations and looked down, letting his eyes sweep the rocky, snow-covered ground and keeping his ears alert for any unusual sound.

What the Hades!?

A muffled thump, barely audible, seemed to flow vaguely out of the dark, and then Casca definitely heard an involuntary, whispered curse. Someone is out there.... Casca slowly, now more carefully, focused his eyes on every shadow and saw movement. Here one movement, there another. Finally he made out definite figures.
Oh, shit. There's a bunch of them out there. And it looks like they're carrying something to scale the walls with. Probably trimmed trees.... How many?
Now that he had spotted the first, his eyes seemed to sharpen tenfold and the figures became clearer. From his height they looked in the dim light and ground fog more like the trolls out of Norse legend than men. He came to a quick decision: too many of them to meet on the walls.
We'd be spread too thin to cover every approach.

Casca cursed himself for his carelessness. He had been sunk so deep in self-pity that he had forgotten that others needed his care and attention. Guilt slapped him. He was responsible for this.

Turning swiftly, and half-running, he reached the first of his watch. Vlad the Dark stood as silent as his name, spear relaxed in his grip, but the man's physical attitude spoke of his instant ability to turn into action. Whispering in Vlad's ear, Casca sent him to circle the walls and also to send a runner to the sleeping quarters and quietly rouse the men. They were to put those unable to fight down into the dungeons where they were to bar themselves in until the fight was over. The women and children were to be especially quiet this night. There must be no sound from anyone. They had but minutes before the invaders would begin climbing the walls. They must hurry.

As Casca was securing his people,
Malgak and his scabby force had reached the walls. Frost from their breaths made small wispy clouds rise from each bearded face. No sound reached them from the top of the walls to indicate they had been seen. Malgak grinned his black-stumped leer, pleased that they had reached the wall without being noticed. It was better luck than he had counted on. Those toads behind the walls and on the ramparts must be asleep. He motioned silently to his men.

The logs were put into position and raised. The invaders tried to maintain that silence that pervaded all in this night. Even the cold breeze from the sea seemed to add to the crisp sense of silence. They began to climb. Those with swords went first, carrying their blades between their teeth. These were followed by the others with shields and weapons in scabbards or slung by thongs and belts from their backs and waists. Fortune was smiling upon them.

Casca had no time to return to his rooms and don his armor. As he was, he would fight. His men silently went to the positions assigned them and lay quiet, waiting for their lord's word to fight. Until then, silence was the rule. The torches lighting the way down the halls were extinguished. Only in the main room of the Hold were the fires and torches kept burning. The rest of the stone fort was wrapped in cold dark. Glam was in charge of the men in the feast room. Casca had taken Glam's son and Vlad with him, along with Holdbod the Berserker, as a reserve force to the hall leading to the feasting room where Glam and the others waited with swords drawn and battleaxes held ready. Anticipation brought cold drops of sweat to more than one young Viking's brow. Many would soon be experiencing their first true battle. They had practiced often enough, spearing and striking with blunted swords and axes, but there they had stopped short of killing. There would be no stopping this night.

In the hall leading to the sanctuary, the way had been lined with piles of fresh straw to keep the deep chill from giving a man's feet frostbite. A door opened on both ends, leading to the hall and
further down to the feasting room. The invaders would have to come this way to reach them. Even the entrance to the dungeons and storage rooms below were in this room. The women and children and the old men could not be reached until the invaders had disposed of those in this room.

They waited.

The only sounds were the soft breathing of the men and the thin rasp of metal against metal. Most of Casca's men had on their helmets, conical steel caps with horns of oxen or wings of birds attached according to the owner's taste. Only a few had any kind of armor to cover the chest. Most wore only tunics of flax or leather, but each had his shield, a round thing of stretched hide with a round steel boss in the center. A dozen archers lined the walkway leading to the upper chambers, bows strung, steel-tipped arrows at the ready.

The first invader on the ramparts was a wiry, quick
Marcomanni, one of the fierce German tribes. He held his weapon low and ready for the fight. Making no sound, no alarm, like wraiths in the night, his associates in death joined him until the ramparts were covered. Malgak was the last to climb. He was no fool. If they were to be caught on the logs climbing, he would be sure that the brunt of the defenders' killing fell on someone other than himself. Not a coward, he still valued his own flea-infested hide more than those of his men.

But the lack of opposition puzzled him.

"Where the shit are they? Surely they must have sentries posted somewhere on the walls."

The word sent to him by others of his band was that there was indeed no sign of life on the walls, that the ramparts had been completely deserted.

Malgak chewed on his mustache, killing one of its inhabitants, a particularly large flea. He spat it out, along with a few of his own hairs. His face took on a slightly confused look. Warily, he slowly scanned all of the fort in sight... the courtyard beneath, the storerooms by the main building.

No sign of life. No sound of alarm.

"I like this not," Malgak muttered. "But no matter. We know their numbers. They must be here someplace." Still, he was a little uncertain. He passed the word that there might be a trap and then motioned for his men to leave the wall. They raced down the stone steps. One man hit a patch of slick ice, slipped, and fell to the courtyard below with a dull thump that was accented by his back cracking.

Even this brought no response from the Hold's defenders... wherever they were.

The invaders swarmed into the courtyard, ready for bloodletting. Surely, here the defenders must fight... but, again, nothing...

Vlad the Dark slipped back from the doorway where he had watched the advance of the invaders. He whispered in Casca's ear. Casca nodded and, in low tones, told him to deliver a message to Glam, waiting in the feasting room. Vlad disappeared. The shadows seemed to swallow him as he went to do his master's bidding.

Glam grunted in amusement as he received Casca's instructions.

Casca had his men spread a container of liquid over the straw floor from end to end.

Laughter reached the ears of the silent invaders. Malgak listened to the boisterous, loud laughter coming from the interior. He could make out slurred speech and boasting. He grinned his death's-head leer. "So, that's it. The bastards are drunk. That's why the walls are deserted." He hoped the defenders had not consumed too much of their master's cellar. He and his men thirsted. They had no more than a few barrels of thin beer for the last two weeks, beer they had gotten when they burned the girl's home.