by Tony Roberts
“Open that and you’ll be on the other side of this wall. It runs alongside the river. Be careful, there is a long drop to the water and it is rocky. A narrow path leads you to a path that goes down through the trees. At the bottom is a narrow bridge that is under the surface of the river – it is a secret. Nobody realizes it is there except a few of us. Good luck!”
Casca kissed her and struggled with the bolt. It was rusted but finally gave into his insistent force and he lifted the wooden bar up from the metal brackets is was resting on. The gate creaked open outwards and he could, indeed, see that it was a gateway to a narrow path running at the top of the riverbank that plunged down to the river some twenty feet or more below. The slope was dotted with shrubs and spindly ash trees. “Look after yourself, Carole,” he whispered.
She mouthed a kiss and shut the door was he passed through.
Alone again, and reunited with his sword and dagger thanks to the buxom girl, he slowly made his way cautiously along the path until it turned left and ran down the slope. It was slick with the rain that was pattering down yet again, but he managed it thanks to the frequent roots that protruded and allowed him to gain purchase and not plunge headfirst down the sharp drop.
At the bottom there was a small space to stand in by two willows and he peered into the inky darkness of the river. Was there a bridge below the river surface? He doubted it would be of wood, as it would perish in no time. It had to be of stone. Using his sword, he probed the river, and sure enough something solid was there, a few inches down and about a foot wide. Very narrow, but there again he guessed it would have to be.
Taking a deep breath he began walking in a straight line, sucking in his breath at the cold of the water. It went up to his ankle bone but no more than that. The river was twelve feet across at that point, and he made it to the other side, shaking his feet to rid them of excess water. He knew it would make little difference as the rain would make him wet anyway.
The other side was less steep and he climbed up to the far edge of the bridge across the river and stood on the north side. He had made it and now he could set off on the heels of his comrades, no more than a day ahead of him. With luck he may even catch up with the rearguard before dark.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The road running east was littered with the detritus of the English army, and he knew he was catching them up rapidly. The one thing he had to watch out for now was the occasional French band that followed the rearguard, hoping to pick a straggler off. Bodies lay by the roadside in places, all stripped, all showing mutilations where they had been robbed. This was not the work of regular soldiers. Anything of value had been taken. Hands were missing, or fingers. Throats were cut.
Nearly all the corpses had signs of extreme hunger; they were thin and gaunt, and a fair number were definitely dysentery sufferers. It looked as if all had been taken unawares and overwhelmed.
He came to a village. Here, a lone archer was hanging from an improvised gibbet. There was a sign hanging round his neck. It was in English. ‘Here hangs a thief who stole from a church, may God have mercy on his soul.’ Casca’s face grew grimmer. It looked as if Henry was cracking down hard on the men; the only thing that held the English army together now was discipline. If that went then they’d be nothing other than a disorganized rabble and easy meat for the vengeful French.
He strode on, pausing only to eat his rations. They were pretty good, too. Carole clearly had favored him, perhaps pleased at her nightly activities. At least, that’s what he liked to think. The male ego demanded it. He grinned, despite himself. Pip hadn’t been dead two days before he’d been copulating with another woman, but to a man like Casca, with his unique situation, it had become part of what he was. Without being able to form a long lasting attachment to a woman because he never aged, he couldn’t afford to bond to one, at least in the normal sense of the word.
Only Lida and, more recently, Adil had been different. Lida though was the one he always thought back to, even though he’d had hundreds of women since. He had tried to love each in his own way, but it was so hard when he knew they would die and he would carry on without changing. Metah had died when he’d tried, selfishly, to make her immortal by giving her his blood. The realization that his blood was poison had hurt him deeply, and he’d blamed himself for ages for her death.
He’d found it hard to attach to another for a long time after that, and it was only when that Armenian slave Anobia had come to him after he’d set her free had he been brave enough to have another as his ‘wife’. That had lasted some years before he’d been arrested and burned at the stake. She’d been sent back to her people and he’d recovered from yet another ‘death’.
After that – he thought hard as he walked along the road chewing on a hunk of bread and cheese – who had he loved and lived with? He discounted those who had been brief liaisons. Ireina had chosen him, lovely simple Ireina. Her death at the hands of the Brotherhood had sparked off a war of vengeance against the sect that had ended with him emotionally burned out, and he’d ended up caring for Carina until she’d grown up and married that handsome Byzantine officer Longinus. They had taken his name in honor of his guardianship to Carina. They’d founded a family he’d bumped into in Italy a few years later.
That was when he’d gone to Egypt and spent years with Ayesha, and again the Brotherhood had taken her away from him, but this time by turning her into one of them. He’d not been able to kill her when they’d encountered one another again a short while later, and the memory of that second meeting still gave him the shivers. After that – well, he’d been busy with the Islamic conquests of Syria and Egypt to bother too much with a semi-permanent relationship. That was until Rebecca. Yes, the slave girl in Ceuta. He’d gone over to Spain and she’d gone with him, only yet again an early death had separated them.
He’d then lived as a count in the court of the Frankish kings, and had plenty of willing maids, but none for very long. More wars, then a return to the north and the Vikings. That had been good; two women in particular, but he’d had to move on again and after many years wandering east and then south he’d settled down as a Magyar with Elisabeta. She had been beautiful, but people die from other causes than war, and pestilence was just as bad.
He’d been a farmer in Normandy, and then gotten involved with Aveline and he’d lived with her for a few happy years in England. Sadly, as he knew, that time had to end too, and he’d left her one night, much in the same way he’d left his first real love, Neda, leaving her his land and title and joined a band of adventuring Normans who traveled to Sicily to carve out a kingdom there.
He’d not known love there really, and then had crossed the Adriatic to the lands of the Byzantines and been busy fighting what seemed a hopeless cause for Alexius Komnenus, the brilliant general and later emperor. Although feted and honored by Alexius, Casca hadn’t settled and had moved on, only to fall foul of Muslim slavers and he’d spent too long getting out of a real mess, so that he’d returned to Alexius and joined the crusade to Jerusalem.
Ah, yes, the crusade. He’d teamed up with Giselle de Doumanche, an impoverished minor noblewoman, on her journey to the Holy City, but that had been more out of convenience, and she’d died en route of the plague. After Jerusalem Casca had wandered throughout Asia, sometimes settling but never for long. China, Japan, the Middle East again, then the crazy times with the Mongols. Genghis Khan had made him his right hand man and Casca had taken a woman to sleep with him, but again it wasn’t anything serious, and he’d left her as soon as he tired of the endless wars and slaughter. India was next, and enslavement, so he’d escaped and rejoined the Mongols. He’d had a woman there, Tatiana, and had gone with her to the shrinking lands of the Byzantines once more and had enjoyed some time with her, and it had been a very loving relationship, until he’d seen that look in her eye that told him he would have to go. Not ageing whereas those around you did caused many problems, and it was best to go before curiosity turned to hostility and
fear.
He’d wandered to Venice and gotten mixed up with that crazy kid Marco Polo and his family’s journey to the court of Kubilai Khan in China. Casca had shacked up with the Chinese girl Ko until her murder, then had returned west and been in Scotland, England and France, with no long term relationship. It was only when he’d gone east again and encountered yet another slave girl – why was it he fell for slave girls? – Adil, that he’d had a really serious relationship, one that had lasted decades. She was in awe of him and had accepted him for what he was, thanks to the Mongol legends of the Old Young One. She, like Lida, had stayed with him and had died an old woman in his arms.
She had been the last of his long lived loves. Since then, he’d drifted west until he’d ended up in Southampton and his liaison with Elizabeth/Pip. A liaison. Yes, that was it. He’d not really opened his heart to her, despite the fact they’d become lovers, so that explained why he hadn’t felt pangs of guilt when readily accepting Carole’s offer of love making.
He supposed that was because he wasn’t yet ready to trust either himself or a woman to have a long term love affair. Lida and Adil were the only two he’d had, and he doubted he’d find another like them for a long, long time, if ever. It was a crushing thought.
He longed for the simpler days of yore when pagans accepted unusual happenings as working of the gods, unlike the monotheists who were riddled with suspicion and self-righteous fervor. Religion! He spat, scowling.
His self-absorption almost got him in trouble, for as he crested a rise he suddenly caught sight of a group of men ahead of him, all armed and making their way along the road, seemingly stalking someone. There were six of them, dressed like vagabonds but armed with a mixture of weapons, spears, axes and a couple of bill-like polearms. They were crouching low and creeping forward on either side of the road, using shrubs and long grass for cover.
He glanced along the road and saw a dark shape by the side of the road. No doubt their quarry. Looked like someone trying to have a crap. Another suffering Englishman about to be picked off by the local militia.
He loosened the sword in his scabbard and trotted down the slight slope. The men turned in annoyance as they caught the sound of his boots dislodging the small stones on the roadway. They took one look at him and stood up, crowding onto the high part of the highway.
Casca slowed and slid his sword out of its sheath. “Well, my brave fellows,” he greeted them, “about to win another famous victory for France against a vastly superior foe?”
“Why don’t you shut up, you English whore’s offspring?” a man in dull green demanded, standing before him, swinging an axe. “We shall take care of you, won’t we, comrades?”
The others nodded and smiled their gap-toothed death’s dead grimaces. Casca sneered and planted both feet wide. “I doubt that; you’re nothing but untrained killers. You look as if you have no idea how to hold those things correctly. God’s blood, I’ll hardly break into a sweat taking you out.”
The axeman’s face darkened. “Arrogant bastard! Kiss my blade!” and he swung forward, his axe raised high.
Casca raised his blade and met the downward chop above his head. He noted that two more were coming at him from left and right, spears in their hands. He slammed his blade down across the axeman’s face who wasn’t able to protect himself, and the man shuddered and fell aside, dropping his axe. One spearman thrust forward. The eternal mercenary danced to his right, his sword already swinging to block. The spear was forced aside and Casca’s swing halted and came back. The spearman took the blade full across the neck. Blood spurted out and the victim spun round, clutching his throat, gurgling.
The other spearman jabbed desperately, but Casca was out of reach. The three others, armed with bills and a long handled axe, bumped into one another in their eagerness to get at him.
Casca stepped off the road. As the French followed Casca stepped forward, his sword blurring at waist height. He took the right hand man across the guts and then danced two steps away. The counter blow missed and the luckless Frenchman sank to the ground, holding his stomach.
The spearman panicked and threw his weapon. It narrowly missed Casca but he was now unarmed. Frightened, he turned and ran. The last two sliced the air before Casca with their bills. The one to the right swung too hard and was off balance. Casca went for the other man, slashing down from head to groin, opening up the Frenchman completely. The man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell noiselessly to the ground, his body almost cut in two. The last man desperately swung again, equally as wildly, and missed again.
Casca stepped inside the reach of the bill and thrust forward, his blade sinking deep into the man’s guts and out of his back. The Frenchman gasped and was left staggering uselessly after the scarred warrior pulled his blade free. He would soon die from that wound.
He looked round dispassionately. One man was fleeing up the hill into the distance. Fuck him, he was gone. The other five were dying or dead already. One or two were moving feebly, their life blood draining into the ground. The axeman was holding his ruined face and looked up at him with wide, white-rimmed eyes. “If you’re lucky you’ll die,” Casca said dully. “Otherwise you’ll have to wear a mask the rest of your life and probably won’t be able to speak clearly. Ghouls like you deserve your fate; you haven’t the courage to face enemies like men. You sneak up on people and ambush them. Good riddance to you all.”
Leaving the group to their fate, he walked on and came to the shape he’d seen earlier. It was a sick, white-faced archer. He looked up in fear. “Oh, I thought you was a Frenchie,” he said.
“I nearly was,” Casca said, looking back. “But I took care of those swine. Are you able to walk?”
“Dunno. I got terrible guts ache,” he said in pain, twisting his face. “Hurts each time I try to.”
“Come on, let me help.” Casca helped the man up who groaned in pain, but, bent over, was able to make progress with Casca’s help. Speaking to the man, a Cheshire bowman called Fred Chirk, Casca learned that the rearguard wasn’t that far away and they were heading for a town called Nesle. They hoped to get food there, the provisions they’d managed to get from the Burgundians were running out.
Thanks to Casca’s help, they caught up with the rearmost elements of the army before it got dark, and Casca left a grateful Fred with the men there, striding on past the halting line of men towards the middle guard and his own people.
And Ned.
He paused as he spotted the flag of Sir Godfrey Fulk. He couldn’t go barging in and announce his return, minus Pip. Ned would be warned and probably flee. No, he needed to be sneaky, here. The army was beginning to camp for the night, again out in the open, and the rains had thankfully ceased. A cold wind blew from the south-west, as it tended to do in this part of the world, and the skies were clearing, revealing a full moon. It would be bright that night, and Casca cursed. He had hoped to deal with Ned under the cover of darkness but the elements had conspired to thwart that plan. He’d have to do something else.
The camp fires were being encouraged into life, thick smoke billowing from the damp wood, and once or twice the acrid smoke got into his eyes and lungs, making his eyes water and causing him to cough a few times, but it was nothing. He passed through the groups of men, nodding to a few and waving to the few who still bothered to call out to one of their own men. Most were sunken in their personal miseries.
The land was thick with vegetation and pickets were being set up in large numbers; it would be easy for robbers, brigands and members of the garrison at Nesle, standing bleakly in their path, to sneak up on the English and steal, kill and destroy. The King wished for none of that, so he issued orders that everyone be on their guard.
It clearly made people nervous, for Casca was challenged a couple of times. A few swear words and promises of emasculation in blunt Anglo-Saxon was as good as anything. Nobody could doubt Casca was one of them. He stood amongst a growth of privet, wrinkling his nose at the vaguely unpleasant
smell coming from the evergreen shrub, but at least it hid him from his comrades, sitting round a camp fire no more than fifty yards away.
Ned was amongst them and Casca itched to get at the swine. But how? He sat down, uncaring that the wet ground seeped into his breeches. He was wet enough as it was. He badly wanted to warm and dry himself by the fire, but first things first.
Will was on sentry duty, wandering back and forth a short way off, and eventually time came for him to take a leak. The privet growth was easily the thickest cover in the vicinity and he began to make his way over to it.
Casca edged away, his mouth watering now as the smell of cooking came to him; he’d eaten his supplies given him by Carole and hunger was once more making itself known. He guessed he’d used up a lot of energy making good time in the wake of the army, and in the fight back on the road. Will stood against the privet, unfastening his breeches. Casca allowed him to have his relief before moving round behind him.
“Hey, Will,” Casca said in a low voice as the young man refastened his clothing.
“Shit!” Will exclaimed whirling round, his axe in his hand. “Cass! You have me a fright there!”
“Sshhh!” Casca put his finger to his lips. “Not so much noise; I don’t want to be overheard.”
“Why?” Will said, dropping his voice, looking round. “Where’s Pip?”
“Dead,” Casca said dully. “And Ned tried to kill me while I was burying her.”
“Oh, Cass, I’m sorry…what did you say? Ned tried to kill you? Why?”
Casca told him the brief tale, leaving out a few details he felt wouldn’t help. “Ned is Cooper’s hireling, sent to kill both of us. Poor Pip was dead by the time he got to us but he had a right go at me. Luckily I got away and he left before the Frenchies turned up. He must have thought I was dead.”
