Casca 46: The Cavalryman Read online

  CASCA

  THE CAVALYMAN

  This is a book of fiction. All the names, characters and events portrayed in this book are

  Fictional and any resemblance to real people and incidents are purely coincidental.

  CASCA: THE CAVALRYMAN

  Published by arrangement with Eastaboga Entertainment, Inc.

  Printing History

  2017

  Americana Books

  A Division of Lonewolf Group Inc.

  Copyright 2017 Eastaboga Entertainment, Inc.

  Cover Design by John Thompson

  All Rights Reserved

  Including the rights to reproduce this book or portions thereof

  In any form or format without permission.

  For information contact

  Americana Books

  P.O. Box 210314

  Nashville TN 37221

  ISBN 978-1513619194

  Printed in the United States of America

  TONY ROBERTS

  My mother was my unlikely route into becoming a Casca fan. On one shopping trip she bought me a copy of Casca 3: The Warlord. 3 was not a great place to start but I devoured it anyway, loved the character and the sense of history made real. Then followed 13 years while I collected the original series; without the help of the internet. Then what to do, the series was over. I started to write my own Casca novels, and set up my website www.casca.net, building a worldwide base for Casca fans and contacts.

  My first Casca novel, Halls of Montezuma, was published in 2006. The Cavalryman is my twentieth novel in the series.

  I live in Bristol, with my partner Jane and a fluffy cat called Cassia.

  I also publish other books in the UK. To see these, visit my website www.tonyrobertsauthor.com

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Casca series available new in paperback

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sea was timeless, an ever-present organism, unchanged from when man first set eyes on it. Millions of years may have passed since that day but it still pounded the shores of every land it touched, eroding a piece here, a little bit there.

  Along the coast of one huge mass of land, there stood a long stretch of sand, running as far as the eye could see in either direction. The coast here was relatively flat and the sand did not extend too far inland. There was a sandy ridge of about two men’s height running parallel to the shore into the distance.

  It was deserted, for nobody needed anything here. The few centres of population lay to the south, the cities growing with an influx of people following the discovery of gold in the hills, but here the land was relatively untouched. Even so, not too long before, the area had been admitted into the growing United States as the State of Oregon.

  Storms sometimes lashed the coast, and it was then that the sea, in its mindless manner, offered up to the land some of its contents, as if to appease the sand, earth and rocks with sacrifices in apology for its brutal treatment.

  Wood, seaweed, dead marine creatures. The high tide left these at its furthest mark before retreating, almost as if its head was bowed in worship, leaving the offerings to the land. Much of it was dead, but occasionally something was left alive to take its chances in a completely different world. Nearly always it perished.

  One object however seemed to still be a going concern that day. It was bigger than most of the other items left high and dry, and now the sun had come out. Covered initially in seaweed, it moved spasmodically, trying to free itself from the dark mass of marine life.

  A man. A man with scars all over his body. He groaned, breathing deeply. Sea water had been ejected from his mouth once he had begun breathing again, hours after being dumped by the ocean. He should be dead, but he was not. He was once again returning to life, maintained by the Curse that had been placed upon him one thousand, eight hundred and thirty-eight years previously.

  Casca Rufio Longinus. Former Roman legionary and known to a few as the one who had speared Jesus on the cross at the crucifixion. For that, he had been damned to live for eternity until the Second Coming.

  He was a bear of a man, thickly-muscled, standing at around five feet ten. His hair was that kind of tone that could be dark blonde or brown, depending on how the sun struck it and what light was available at any given time. His eyes were light blue, a marker for his north Latin heritage. He may have been a north Latin from the region then known as Etruria, but now he had no nationality, save for the one he professed at any given time. To a man who had lived for all these centuries, nationality was a fleeting thing, to be picked up and discarded whenever he felt it necessary. Nations had risen and fallen in his time, so he felt no allegiance to any.

  The scars were testimony to the suffering he had endured in his time. Sword cuts, arrow wounds, spear thrusts; slashing, crushing blows, and more recently, bullet wounds. He had seen it all, from the wars of the Caesars to the American Civil War; where he had been on the losing side and had moved west to California.

  Then. Oh, he rolled over onto his back and squinted painfully. His mind began to sluggishly move. Where am I? Where was I? He forced his sea-sodden mind to process. Ah yes, the island of Navola Levu, where he had been tricked into becoming a kind of chieftain, and then sacrificed to their gods when he had been covered up in a pit to hold up their religious pole.

  Religion. Gah! He detested religions. Religion had been his downfall and the prophet Jesus had cursed him, and he had fallen foul of the priests and the fanatical followers of religions throughout the centuries. He wanted to avoid the lot if he could.

  He’d left Navola Levu after an earthquake had freed him, and had sailed into the wide blue yonder and skipped from island to island, always heading east, trying to get back to North America. Well, some damned storm had hit him and next thing he had been helpfully deposited on shore. Where, though? He propped himself up and looked around. Nothing in sight, nobody in sight.

  He looked at himself. Naked. Yeah, figures. So, get clothes, get water, get food, get shelter. What had he to use hereabouts? Some debris washed up might be of use. He’d have a look. Maybe find some animal and use its skin as clothes? He’d been around long enough now to know how to hunt, trap, gut, skin, eat and cure the hide of many animals. He’d need a little luck and opportunity, unless he came across civilization.

  He staggered to his feet and stumbled. He was weaker than he thought, so must have been in the water for a while. Damn it, he would have to exercise some and build himself up a little before he could get going again. His stomach lurched and he bent double, vomiting the last of the sea from his body. Wiping his mouth, he straightened and looked about.

  Something over to the right. Maybe a crab. Might be something to eat. He’d get a rock and crack it open. Time to start feeling human again.

  A few hours later as the sun passed its zenith he had eaten a few bits and pieces and found some grass and seaweed to fashion a rudimentary loin cover, so at least he would have his modesty covered up. Wood provided a handy club and so he set off inland, hoping to find somewhere to hole up and get his head together.

  Being an immortal had some advantages but also plenty that were the opposite. Folks always wanted to try
to live longer and forever. Why? Same old shit, he decided. Someone could so easily get bored of it all, and there were plenty of assholes around to screw up things. The land seemed to climb ahead in the distance and he remembered the Rocky Mountain range ran down the western side of the North American continent. He didn’t know where he was precisely but the sheer size and geography of the place told him where he was. He also had gotten pretty good at identifying places generally by the plant or wildlife types. Plenty of woodland here, too.

  Towards the end of the day, just as he was getting tired of hurting the soles of his feet on stones, rough plants or twigs, he spotted a small collection of tents and ramshackle huts in a clearing and a fire blazing away nicely.

  Taking a couple of deep breaths, he walked boldly into the center of the settlement, or whatever it was. A well stood off to one side and two people were tending the fire, obviously building it up for a meal. They looked across as him and gaped at the sight.

  “Am I seeing things?” one asked in a German accent.

  “Nope, he’s real, or at least as real as I can make out,” the second replied, grinning. He sounded more Irish. “Hey, stranger, lost your pants?”

  “And my sense of direction,” Casca answered, trying to look as harmless as possible. “I’m totally lost. Care to point me in the direction of some place I can get a job to pay for a set of clothes?”

  “Ha. Long way from anywhere like that, friend,” the German-sounding one said, standing straight and examining him. “Interesting outfit. Gone native?”

  “Trying not to,” Casca said, putting the club down and nodding to the fire. “Mind if I warm myself? Gotten tired of feeling cold air in places they’re not meant to feel it.”

  The two men chuckled and waved him over. “Sean O’Neill,” the Irish-sounding man introduced himself. Red-haired, bearded, with a pale complexion and a long, off-center nose, as if someone had smacked it that way in the past.

  “Gerry Schneider. Proper name’s Gerhard but these heathens like to make things easier for their uneducated tongues.” The German shook hands with Casca, who quickly thought of an identity.

  “Casey Long,” he used a name he’d not quite used before. Long, yes, but Casey, never before. It sounded just the kind of informal name folks hereabouts might use. “Lately out of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Yeah, you look it,” O’Neill laughed. “Shipwreck?”

  “Lost overboard, clung to some flotsam, ended up on the beach back there with no memory of how I got there.”

  “Lucky bastard,” Schneider said. “We’ve come west looking to settle and have some land. They’ve moved the Indians off to some reservation someplace close. This place is up for grabs.”

  “Last time I was here it was just after the civil war. I was in San Francisco, took a ship into the ocean. Didn’t work out though. Think I’ll try my luck here again.”

  Schneider crouched down and slid a chunk of beef onto a metal spike and hung it above the flames. “Doing what? You look like you’ve been tortured, I hope you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Casca – or Casey as he ought to think himself of from now on – replied thoughtfully. “Let’s just say I had some difference of opinion with some people south of here. By the way, where is ‘here’, exactly?”

  “Oregon. There’s a dozen of us trying our luck. Might do farming, or fishing, or something. Dunno what. Plenty of timber hereabouts. Could try lumbering I suppose.” O’Neill shrugged. “For now we’re busy settling down and looking to survive.”

  “A dozen, you say?” Casey looked around. Lights were coming on in other places. Some others were emerging, curious as to the new voice. “They might be upset by my appearance.”

  Schneider snorted. “We can rustle up some clothes for you, I guess. Shoes, too. In return we could do with a pair of strong hands for some fence-building and wood chopping. You up for that?”

  Casey said he could. By the time the meal was ready he had been given a rough set of clothes to wear, a pair of old shoes, a worn pair of pants and a faded shirt. Nothing much but by hell it beat wearing a rough and itchy set of plants. With a warm belly full of decent food and some ale, he sat against a thick wooden post and listened to the others. They were a disparate collection of people, four ‘families’ or so. O’Neill was the young man of his group, made up of his ‘Da’, an older version of him, called Dermot, who hailed originally from Lisburn in the Ulster province of Ireland. Usual tale of fleeing the potato famine with his wife and kids. Lost wife and a couple of kids by the time they had set out from Kentucky westwards. The other member of his family was the younger daughter, Helen, a brown-haired young woman of around eighteen.

  Schneider was one of four. His wife Lotte and two kids Paul and Ilse made up his family. The children were eleven and nine. The remaining five were of two parties, one solitary man called Buck Calloran, a big bearded man who chopped wood for a living, and a group of four people from further east, a man called Sam Tucker and three natives, his wife called Mary, although Casey knew that wasn’t her original name, and two children who seemed to be someone else’s but the Tuckers had taken them in under their wing. Nobody was saying much about them and Casey got the impression things weren’t that settled between them and the rest.

  Casey shrugged. What business was it of his anyway?

  He had intended staying a couple of days and then maybe moving on somewhere else. But, hell, he found chopping trees and building fences therapeutic. Made a change to shooting Feds or getting seasick or taking part in constant South Sea orgies where food competed with women, and appetites were expected to be big for both. Hell, an outdoor life answering to nobody and sitting round a campfire with a nice warm meal inside you discussing the world with people sort of appealed.

  Or was it the O’Neill girl that kept him from leaving?

  Helen. Mmm, now there was a beauty.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Helen O’Neill was a fresh-faced friendly young woman, with a thick growth of brown hair cascading down her upper back and that kind of slightly cheeky smile that hinted at things too good to be true. She had pale skin and clear blue eyes and Casey found himself spending far too much time either looking at her or thinking of her.

  He spent a fair amount of time away from the developing settlement, cutting wood and shaping it. Buck Calloran showed him a more efficient way of chopping. It wasn’t just a case of hitting it as hard as you could with an axe, he said, it was the method and style. Casey caught on after a while but only after ruefully treating blistered hands for a few evenings.

  The shaping was done by others, too, and in a short time they had a few more huts erected. They also got a couple of storage sheds made and a foray by Schneider and O’Neill brought back a couple of animals they had shot. All the men had guns except Tucker, who was satisfied with a knife. Tucker was a skinner and his woman Mary set to making rugs for the group.

  One evening Casey sat looking out into the night, the smell of the fire and the cooked meat strong. Schneider sat next to him and the two stared out into the darkness for a while. “So what is Tucker’s story?” he finally asked the German.

  “Oh, took Mary as his wife after he found her some way back east, something to do with her being the only one left after some massacre. Says a bunch of cavalry troopers came in and slaughtered the lot. Don’t care much for the army, neither.”

  “Ah.” Casey wondered at that. The conflict for land would always end in a struggle between red and white, and the whites had all the advantages. “And the two kids?”

  “Saved from another massacre. Think they came across this Sioux village that had been raided and these two had lost their parents. Whatever, Tucker took them on and they left for the mountains. We picked them up east side of the Rockies and they agreed to work their way. Fair play to them, they’ve lived up to their promise.”

  “So why is everyone not talking to them? Its like the rest of you wouldn’t want them here.”


  Schneider took a swill of ale and passed it to Casey. “There’s talk of Tucker being wanted for murder.”

  “Come again?”

  The German glanced over at the newly-completed Tucker shack which had its lights on inside but the door was shut. “When the kids were rescued I heard Tucker shot a couple of cavalrymen who were going to kill them. So he might be a wanted man.”

  “Saving kids ain’t murder,” Casey observed. “Seems to me he did a good deed.”

  “You serious? Saving Indians?”

  Casey spat into the distance. “Don’t tell me you’re one of these ‘the only good Injun’s a dead Injun’ types? That’s dumb. Plenty of whites are far worse. I don’t give a shit about whatever side it is. If someone is going to murder children I’ll gun them down dead on the spot.”

  Schneider shifted uncomfortably. “Well, that’s one version. I don’t know how true it is. He might have killed the troopers for another reason.”

  “Let’s not make any judgements. Tucker’s done a good job on skinning those animals. He don’t seem to be a bad type.”

  “Mmm,” Schneider shrugged. “He ain’t the friendly type though, and that suits me fine.”

  “Fair enough,” Casey said and stretched. “So what’s your plans? Can’t see much more that can be done here with the materials we have. We need more people and some kind of bartering system. This place is going nowhere unless we set up a trade with other places.”

  “We’re on a side trail. Others will come along soon enough. They can stay or push on, and we’ll set up some kind of trade with them; after all, they’ll need wood and that kind of thing. We have water, wood and animals. All we need.”

  “For now. Been here a few months. Wait till the winter, that’ll sort the men from the boys.” Casey slapped Schneider on the back and heaved himself up. “Gotta take a leak, then its bed for me. So long.”

  “Yeah. See you.”

  Casey returned to his shack, a small two-room construction, made up of a living space and a bedroom. It wasn’t huge, but then this was a basic settlement and yet to get going. His furniture, such as it was, consisted of a rough bed and an open box for what belongings he would amass. So far he had nothing in there. There was a number of tree stumps that served as chairs or stools and a bigger one that was a table. The bed was the only half-decent item he had. Even then, he only just fitted. The blankets were made up of spares from people. The mattress was two sheets sewn together and stuffed with grass and leaves. In time to come maybe something better would happen his way but for now, well he was content enough.