Casca 35: Sword of the Brotherhood Read online

  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: #35 Sword of the Brotherhood

  Casca Ebooks are published by arrangement with the copyright holder

  Copyright © 2011 by Tony Roberts

  Cover design by Greg Brantley

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  BARRY SADLER

  Barry Sadler was a legend amongst fighting men everywhere. A special forces and Vietnam veteran, he rose to fame with his hit song Ballad of the Green Berets and his phenomenally successful action adventure series Casca: The Eternal Mercenary, writing the first 22 novels in the series. He also wrote numerous military thrillers including Phu Nam, Seppuku, The Shooter and Run For The Sun.

  His sudden and mysterious death in 1989 shocked the world, but the name of Barry Sadler will live forever through his dramatic and authentic novels.

  TONY ROBERTS

  Briton Tony Roberts, like Barry Sadler, was born in the month of November. A long-time fan of the Casca series, he started the Casca website www.casca.net in 2000 and through it established a world- wide network of fans and contacts. His life-long interest in history and writing gave him the chance to continue the Casca series when offered the post in 2005. His first novel, Halls of Montezuma, established him as a worthy successor to Barry Sadler as author of the Eternal Mercenary series.

  Casca: Sword of the Brotherhood is Roberts’ ninth Casca novel. He still lives in the city of his birth, Bristol, where he shares his home with his partner Jane and a tabby cat called Nero, and continues to run the popular Casca website, as well as fitting in time for a full-time job with the British Civil Service.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  Continuing Casca’s adventures, book 36 The Minuteman

  THE CASCA SERIES IN EBOOKS

  PROLOGUE

  Regaining consciousness was an unwelcome process for Casca that morning. He groaned and rolled over, a hand automatically fumbling to the spot on his head where he felt the throbbing pain was the worst. Bad move - it felt as though it had suddenly exploded. He cried out and jerked his hand away from his pounding skull. One good thing about it was he was rapidly surfacing from the deep black pit of oblivion, and when he found who’d put him there, he’d take full revenge.

  He opened his eyes and stared for a moment up at the blurred object he first saw in front of him. Waiting for his eyes to focus, he realized he was in some sort of room. Gritting his teeth he tried to recall his last conscious memory….. he’d been walking with his woman, Ayesha, through the dark streets of Alexandria trying to avoid the mounted patrols of Persians who’d unexpectedly been all over the place. That was the last thing he remembered.

  Or was it? He now realized he was staring up at a ceiling. Muttering dire threats against whomever had whacked him from behind, he rolled over onto his belly and slowly got to his knees, trying to keep his head from exploding again. There was straw on the floor and the walls. The walls were, from what he could tell, made of stone. Egyptian houses were normally built of mud brick, except for the homes of the rich and privileged. Or maybe he was in a municipal building. Those sort of buildings were normally of stone.

  A cell. He swore. The one door was barred and undeniably that of a prison cell. So the Persians had caught him. Why? And what the Hades were Persians doing in Alexandria of all places? What had happened to the Empire of the Romans? Had some disaster overtaken it and now all were under the heel of their traditional eastern enemies? He had to find out. And where was Ayesha?

  He stumbled to his feet and made for the door, trying not to throw up. It was daylight; the light spilling through the single small square opening near the ceiling in one corner was enough to illuminate the small cell, so he’d been unconscious for at least half a day. Whoever had hit him had taken no chances. He screwed both eyes shut and felt the back of his head. The hair was sticky with blood. There was a huge swelling and a deep cut still there. His remarkable healing powers were working its usual wonders but even so, the wound was massive. It would have killed a normal man. “Some damned enthusiastic maniac,” he muttered. “Now how the Hades do I get out of here?”

  The usual thing was to cause trouble, so he decided things couldn’t get any worse. He yelled through the narrow slot in the wooden door. Within seconds, Casca heard footsteps and jangling keys. Casca stepped back and tensed. He may have just come round but he was angry and in pain, and someone would pay. The door swung open into the room and three men stood framed in the entrance, two armed with spears and the third holding the keys.

  Casca relaxed and forced himself to wait. He had no desire to impale himself on the wicked looking blades. “Why am I here? I’ve done nothing wrong.” Casca spoke in Coptic, guessing it would be understood here.

  The jailer, a small man with stubble, lank hair and a rat’s expression the jailers the world over always seemed to have, smiled. Blackened teeth and gaps revealed themselves. “That’s what they all say,” he said, in badly accented Coptic. At least he wasn’t Persian. The two guards weren’t either, and Casca wondered at that. They looked Semitic. Locals?

  “Come with us,” one of the guards growled, his voice emanating from his boots.

  “What if I refuse?” Casca countered, fed up with not knowing what was going on.

  The guard said nothing but smiled humorlessly. “Then you will be impaled and dragged to see the Elder, Longinus.”

  Casca felt ice run through his bowels. His face mirrored the shock he felt. Those two words just uttered made him realize he was in a world of shit. The Elder could only mean one thing; the leader of the Brotherhood of the Lamb, that fanatical sect dedicated to hunting him down and inflicting maximum pain on him. And the fact he’d just been called Longinus meant they knew damned well who he was.

  And he was their prisoner. Helpless.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The speed of modern living was getting faster, Carlos Romano decided. The cars were speeding past on the road like bats out of hell, and even trying to step out would invite an appalling injury. Even so, he had to get over the other side of the Piazza Venezia, the wide six-lane inner city road. Buses, mopeds and trucks were vying with the cars to dance along the lanes in some crazy set of moves that were baffling to anyone watching them.

  It had been said by some helpful soul that in order
to cross any road in Rome on a pedestrian crossing one had to stare down the vehicles and keep on walking. That’s all very well until you’re faced with making that decision. Carlos looked to the right where the grand white monstrosity, the Victor Emmanuel Monument, built in 1911 loomed. The locals affectionately referred to it as the ‘typewriter’. Well it sure as hell looked like one. He remembered when it hadn’t been there. In fact, he remembered the scene two thousand years back. Then it had been the gateway to the Forum and the inner sanctum of the young Roman Empire. The ruins were still there on the other side, but he had no desire to walk amongst them. He’d known them when they had been complete. Now he had no wish to walk amongst the throngs of Germans, Japanese and other nationalities in their orgiastic wonder. It felt as though they were trespassing.

  In fact he didn’t come to Rome if he could help it. It always brought back painful memories. But today he had an appointment and he wasn’t the man to let anyone down, particularly this certain young American waiting for him on the other side of the Piazza Venezia. Carlos could see Danny Landries waiting, dark sunglasses dominating his swarthy face. Landries could pass for an Italian. So could Carlos. But then, Carlos had been born one Casca Rufio Longinus in what is now Tuscany, in the year 2AD, during the reign of Augustus Caesar. So he was as bona fide an Italian as anyone.

  Deciding to trust his luck, he stepped out as a gap appeared in the traffic, and walked steadily across the road in front of a bus. True to what he’d been informed, the driver slowed and allowed Carlos to pass in front of him. Other vehicles did likewise, some even swerving around him to carry on their journey undeterred. “Hi, Carlos,” Danny greeted him as he reached the safety of the other side.

  “Danny,” Carlos shook his hand. “Good to see you again. How’s the good doctor?”

  “Julius is well, considering.” Danny shrugged. Goldman was well into his late 60s and not in the best of health. Doctor Goldman had been a confidant of Carlos’s since that fateful day in Nha Trang, Vietnam, when he, then known as Casey Romain, had been brought in with half his scalp hanging off after a Viet Cong mortar attack. Goldman had noticed the phenomenal healing properties of his patient and since then had been compelled to listen to his life story. Even though it had been over thirty years or so since, this remarkable man’s life story hadn’t even reached halfway.

  Danny’s father had been Goldman’s superior. Now with Landries senior dead and Goldman becoming more infirm, Danny had taken up the mantle of listening to the incredible story of the man who had been cursed by Jesus to immortality for the act of spearing Him on the cross. Danny pointed to a small café where they could buy small pizza slices and a drink. Carlos nodded and the two walked through the milling throng of tourists and locals towards the café. “He’s looking forward to hearing your latest adventure, though.”

  “I bet. Sorry I’ve dragged you across half of Europe, but you know how things are.” Carlos’s scar that ran down the left hand side of his face whitened as he smiled.

  “Sure. Mercenary work is pretty lucrative. Lucky I took two weeks’ vacation.”

  Carlos grunted. He was a soldier, and where there was trouble, he would be found. His identity needed to be secret, obviously, so he shied away from the regular armed forces these days and hired himself out as a mercenary. It was what he did best, after all.

  They bought some food and drink and wandered out towards the ‘typewriter’. “Where d’you want to sit?” Danny asked, still a little awed in the presence of the muscular man who exuded power and strength. He still couldn’t quite get his head round the fact the man with him was alive when the ruins of this city were built.

  “Up there,” Carlos nodded up the long wide steps to the top of the rise where the Piazza del Campidoglio stretched. People were all about but there were one or two places free of tourists, like oases of calm. They found a stone bench to one side of the wide plaza, across from the Palazzo Nuovo museum, designed by Michelangelo, and ate in silence. Carlos’s size and attitude deterred anyone from sharing the bench and that was the way he wanted it. What he was about to tell Danny he didn’t want anyone else listening in on.

  “I think it would be interesting to tell you, and the good doctor, about the time the Brotherhood recruited me for a job.”

  “What?” Danny’s jaw fell open. “You mean the Brotherhood…” he looked about and lowered his voice, “..of the Lamb?”

  “Yep.” Carlos grinned and enjoyed Danny’s confusion. “The very same.”

  “But-but they hate you! They want to do all sorts of horrible things to you! Why the hell would you work for them?”

  Carlos’s face took on a faraway look. “Yes, why indeed? The mad religious sect that had vowed to bring harm to me and anyone who befriended me? The same group of people who actively sought me out – and still does even today – to try to inflict as much pain on me for what I did on Golgotha on that damned fateful day?” He stared at Danny, fixing him with his clear grey-blue eyes, drawing the young man into them, sucking his consciousness away from modern Rome to a time and place long ago. Danny felt his world swimming before his very eyes and suddenly a new place appeared, a place with no smog, no traffic noises. Sun baked brick houses appeared, scattered along the coast of a glittering sea, and he suddenly plunged down towards a city that appeared beneath him, knowing suddenly for no reason that it was Alexandria. As he swooped low over the flat rooftops and palm trees, a voice echoed in his mind, the voice of Carlos – now Casca. “I was a prisoner of the Brotherhood, yet they needed me for something they couldn’t get themselves, a job so incredible that it made even me shocked out of my skin.”

  Danny swooped into a building through an open window and found himself looking on a scene that could have come out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Standing before a seated man, flanked by spear-wielding guards, was the former legionary Casca Rufio Longinus, unchained and oddly free of any restraints. Yet still a prisoner.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The man sat behind the roughly cut table was swarthy, bearded, and a merchant of some description. He was dressed in fine clothing, decorated with embroidered motifs of birds, and wore a necklace of gold. He was wealthy, but had the mad fanatical glow in his eyes of a religious zealot, and he was glaring hotly at the man stood in front of him.

  “So, the Beast is here,” he said needlessly. “The vilest creature of all creation.”

  Casca sighed. He’d heard such many times before. “Look,” he said, “if I wanted pleasantries I’d exchange them with you, but to be honest I can’t be bothered. Now either get to the point as to why you want to talk to me, or lock me up. After all, that’s what you want, isn’t it? Or is there something else you want? I mean, you’re taking a huge risk leaving me unchained.”

  The merchant scowled. He was used to dealing with other merchants, and a certain etiquette was used, an etiquette between equally civilized people. He wasn’t used to blunt rudeness. He regarded the unwashed, unshaven and filthy figure in front of him. The scars that covered his arms repelled him, and the scar down his face gave Longinus a sinister look, which only added to the feeling of disgust he felt. “Very well, I shall be direct. We hold your woman prisoner and she will be executed if you try to escape. We could chain you up but I am in need of your expertise.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Casca leaned forward. The spear points moved towards him so Casca stopped and stared at the merchant. “You need me?” He laughed.

  The merchant scowled again. “We need someone who can fight, yet not be killed. I have many warriors at my call but they are mortal and already I have lost too many I can’t afford to lose. You falling into our hands is a blessing from Jesus.”

  “He’s dead,” Casca reminded the man bluntly. One of the guards struck Casca on the back of the head, increasing the pain that had been slowly subsiding. The pain and the force of the blow knocked Casca to his knees and the room swam for a moment. Rough hands hauled him up and he faced the merchant again, vowing under his breath a
ll kinds of hurt on the bastard and his guards.

  “Longinus, you must not blaspheme. We do not take kindly to such profanities,” the merchant gently reminded the Eternal Mercenary. “However, we must tolerate your evil presence because, as I said, we need your skills for a very serious task.”

  Casca rubbed his head and focused once again on the man. “You’re the Elder, aren’t you? So this must be your headquarters. What the Hades are the Persians doing here? Is this your work?”

  “The Persians are as much our foes as they are yours – and the Empire’s. For the moment we are all working for the same aim, so much as it hurts to admit it, we are allies. For the moment.”

  Casca stopped rubbing his head. “What are you talking about? It must be damned serious. What’s the matter – someone’s taken the Spear?”

  The expression on the Elder’s face said it all. Casca stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh by Jupiter’s brass balls! Someone has taken it! The Persians, I bet! Well, good for them!”

  The Elder’s expression turned hard, his eyes flint-like and pitiless. “We have your woman here, Longinus. She dies if you do not assist us in getting the holiest relic of our order back from the filthy Persians.”

  Casca chuckled and relaxed. “Okay, you need me. Then before we even begin you don’t hit me or tie me up. You keep on letting your dead-heads here strike me you don’t have a deal. So tell them to back off and you’d better tell me what has been going on since I left Italy after the Lombards arrived. That’s when I last knew what was going on.”

  The Elder flicked a finger and the two guards stepped back, reluctantly. “Very well. That was fifty years or so ago. Thanks to your efforts our Order had to leave Constantinople and we ended up in Jerusalem. We thought it best to return to the Holy City where we could regroup. In the meantime the Empire had an emperor who helped the Persian king, a man called Kusrau, to gain power. As part of the deal, Kusrau signed an eternal peace with the Empire. That left the emperor to focus his efforts in the west and the army was posted to the frontier.”