Each day the indicators of the coming spring became more pronounced, and work on the expedition quickened. The young warriors sharpened their weapons, honing the edges ever finer. Old Corio, the shipbuilder whom Casca had brought to his keep, fussed over the two longships that they would take. Like an old hen over her chicks, Corio clucked and scolded, testing every line and seam in the ships he had built for Casca. The ships themselves were a blending of the Roman galleys less the ram and the long, shallow draft vessels the local inhabitants used for fishing and commerce. The local vessels used no sails. When Casca had first come to this rockbound coast, he had been quick to realize the value of the sea lanes. The man who could use them more efficiently would prosper, and so would his people. Making use of his many years as a slave on the Roman war galleys, Casca set about to exploit the sea's potential. He bought old Corio the ship builder from a Tedesci chieftain inland who had no use for a shipbuilder. Between the two of them, Casca and Corio, they had designed this mixture of galley and sailing ship. Their new vessel could slide through the waves as light as a sea nymph.
The way the new design came about was unusual.
Casca had spent many hours on the coast watching his favorite animals at play, the flashing and twisting sea otters. He had noticed how they turned and twisted their bodies to slide more easily through the rough waters. He had remarked to Corio that if a ship could do the same, it would have a much better chance for survival in rough seas. Corio, then not so old, thought on the problem for weeks. Finally he had the answer. He made use of an ingenious system of interlocking planks that, even when they moved and twisted, still remained water tight. They built the vessel. It worked. They named it the Lida. Sure enough, on her maiden voyage, the Lida slipped like one of the sea otters she was modeled after between the rough ocean troughs and rose swiftly over the peaks of the waves, answering her master's desires quickly and with a feeling of expectancy. Indeed, thought Casca, ships seem to be more alive than anything else man has created. The wind, humming through the Lida's rigging, appeared to agree with him.
Although Casca's years as an oar slave certainly did not qualify him as a master mariner, they had given him a feeling for what was right in the way a ship moved through different waters. He could tell if there was something wrong in the basic design simply by the way the ship felt and sounded. This instinct, coupled with Corio's years of experience as a shipwright, enabled them to build what would be the prototype of all the Viking long-ships that wreaked such havoc in the civilized world three hundred years later.
Now, of the three ships built and lying at anchor, the two largest were being made ready for sea. Cor-io was as rigid in his demands as a Roman decurion. Everything must be as near perfect as he could make it. After all, he knew these young men who would be going out into the unknown waters with the Lord Casca. He had seen them grow up. He had played with them and taught them seamanship. They were like family, and he would send no members of his family out on the deep without making sure that all was in order.
When Casca looked out on the combination of his young men, the ships, and the sea, his pulse quickened in spite of himself. "You'd think that after all these years it would take more than going to sea to excite me, he thought. But perhaps that is what keeps me from going mad. And thank whatever powers that be that women still can make my blood boil; the thrill has never grown old for me. The little bitch of a scullery maid was the best thing for me. Put my mind in order and finally got my shit together. So… now… in two weeks we sail. The ice is breaking up outside the fjord, and soon the sea will be clear. When it is, we sail. Two weeks…
His thoughts turned back to the auburn-haired girl, and he felt a stirring in his groin and a feeling of being watched. Turning, he looked to the archers' aperture just to his rear and on the second level near where his rooms were. Sure enough, the maid stood there, smiling, her face bright and shining. Since she had become the lord's woman she now had a favored position in the household and took proper advantage of it to see that her appearance was at its best. Casca chuckled and breathed deep, enjoying the feeling in his chest as the muscles stretched and tightened. Well, why not? There's nothing wrong with a nooner. It'll wake up my appetite…
As he headed up to her, he thought, I'll have to do something for her before I leave… to reward her and to make sure that the other women of the Hold don't get on her ass after I'm gone. Women are so much damn meaner than men. I'll give her a dowry. That will guarantee a good husband. Pleased with himself, he continued up to where the girl was already in his bed.
She, too, was pleased with herself.
Glam wandered through the keep like a grouchy old walrus. He strongly resembled the same, barking at everyone who got in his way. Nothing pleased him. The young men did not have proper respect for their elders. They had no real values. All they wanted was to party. No sense of responsibility. Discipline, that was what they needed. Casca was too easy on them. I'm going to talk to him about that. If they're going to be warriors, they have to learn to take orders and obey.
Bursting unannounced into Casca's quarters, he got a quick glimpse of his master well-mounted in the saddle.
"By Loki's bloodshot one eye, man," Glam exclaimed, "I said a little roll in the hay with a sweet girl would be good for you; I didn't mean for you to make it your life's work! Now roll your over-muscled carcass off that sweet young thing and come on down to the hall. We need to talk." Not waiting for an answer, Glam headed for the hall, grumbling to himself that a man Casca's age should know better. But then Casca always was a strange bird… even bathed two or three times a week. Ah, well, there's no accounting for those the gods have touched.
Casca joined him shortly. The two sat over a bowl of wine, and Casca took the chiding that Glam gave him, acknowledging that he had been too easy on the young men, but that beginning in the morning he would give them some of that good Roman army discipline and whip them into order in double time. They were good men at heart.
The next three weeks for the spring did not come as quickly as Casca had at first anticipated Casca gave short order drill that would have delighted the heart of Augustus Caesar. He gave the young men their first real taste of discipline, of obedience to orders at all costs. He taught them that orders were more important than friends and that to disobey an order was the greatest shame and dishonor they could know. Each man must depend on the knowledge that his comrades would respond as ordered. None could break and act independently. Such was the great secret of success of the Roman legions, and Casca made sure that every man in his command understood it perfectly. These men already had the ability to handle weapons. Weapons they had been raised with. But the concept of obedience to whomever was in command was something new. Twice Casca relieved men whom he had put in charge of work details when they failed to enforce their authority and let their friends get away with infractions of the rules the lord laid down. Their punishment was to be denied the right to go on the voyage. They would be left behind. These two examples, more than anything else, reinforced the youngsters' readiness to obey.
By the time the longships were ready to sail the young men were already taking pride in their new discipline and order. And when Casca told them that to disobey on the voyage meant death or abandonment at sea, they understood fully the deadly seriousness of having order. It was an effort, but they managed to constrain their wild Nordic spirits.
Extra sails were stored aboard the two ships, and salt fish and smoked meat packed in Greek type amphorae were stowed carefully belowdecks. Fresh water, dried vegetables all the supplies and equipment needed for a long voyage were laid in. As of late the tone at the keep had become more somber as the reality of leaving took the last feelings of childhood from many of the teen-aged Norsemen.
In their homes, the night before the sailing, wassail was sung and farewells made and gifts given. The parents knew that some of those sailing would never return, but like all parents they hoped and prayed to their gods that their own sons would be among those who sailed back to the fjord with the stories and spoils of the voyage.
The time had come.
In the morning they would sail.
That night Casca made his farewell to the auburn-haired girl and gave her a large enough dowry to wed a baron if she wished or to make her independent, if that was what she wanted.
Glam, though, was something else.
The old warrior sat in his cups, despondent because he was being left behind. Casca took him by the arm and ran the others out of the hall with the words that they would need their sleep. Alone with Glam, he said:
"Glam, old friend, listen to me. We have gone on a long road together, but the time is here for us to part, not because I wish it, but because that is the way of it. I need you here to keep things safe for me until I return. It may be years or even decades before I come back, so it is for you to see that I am not forgotten. Sometime in the future I may need the Hold again, and it is for you to see that my coming back will be welcome. You are my Keeper of the Hold, and when you go to Valhalla, before you go, you must be careful to select one who will honor your charge and keep faith with me. Though I be gone a century or more, he and each Keeper of the Hold in his turn must swear to honor my claim and wait for me to return, as I will one day."
Glam-raised his red-rimmed eyes to his lord and friend. Snuffling, he said, "I know that what you say is true. I know that I am too old for the sailing you are going on. But my heart goes with you. You have never told me why you are what you are, and I am not even sure of exactly what that is, but you have been friend and brother to me for over forty years, and now with my age I feel more to you as a father would even though you are much older than I. So, my son of the ages, I will keep your Hold in your name and will see that all who follow me do likewise. Someday you may need this place, and it will be here for you. The only request I have is that you take my son Olaf with you."
Raising a horn of honeyed mead, the old barbarian cried out with a voice that rang through the hold:
"Wassail! And farewell, my friend!"
There was one final moment for Casca.
In the early hours before the sailing he sat alone beside the fire he and Lida had shared so often. Lida… without her the Hold was an empty shell. Thirty-one years he had lived here with her.
Casca drank deep from a flagon of honeyed mead, his thoughts flowing through his mind. The fire crackled and sparks leaped forth to die un-tended on the stones,
The road has been long and will, I fear, be much longer yet. But I could not stay here. Everywhere are things that remind me of Lida. Perhaps somewhere out there on the sea I will be released either from my life or my memories.
Memories…
They crowd in on me at times. He stared into the flickering fire, made drowsy by the flames, and just before sleep overtook him he set the flagon of mead down on the warm stones. The face of the yellow sage, Shiu Lao Tze, was appearing in the red coals just before his eyes closed. Casca slept.
In his sleep dreams and memories rushed into his brain one after another, appearing and then quickly vanishing to make way for others. At the beginning there was the Jew on the Cross whom he, Casca Rufio Longinus, had struck with the spear… and the Jew had condemned him to live until they met again. That life flickered through his brain like the flames in the fire he had just watched… the slave years in Greece where he had lived in the mines like a blind mole for over fifty years… the Roman arena and the giant Nubian Jubala… the detailed scene came back to him of how he had killed the black with his bare hands using the art taught him by the yellow sage from the land of Khitai beyond the Indus River. Casca's own thoughts appeared in his dream: Shiu Lao Tze always tried to teach me more than I could understand of his beliefs and philosophy. He always said that life is a circle that goes on and on, endlessly repeating itself. All that was will be. Perhaps so. It makes as much sense as anything else I have heard… When he had killed Jubala he had won the wooden sword from the hands of Gaius Nero himself. It had made him a freeman for a short time. Then a slave again… ship after ship as a galley slave… Then more years. And Neta, the first woman he had loved. How he had to leave her when he saw the worry in her eyes as her hair turned gray and the wrinkles came yet Casca remained the same, unchanging. The legion again… The great battle at the walls of Ctesiphon under the Consul Avidius Cassius and still Casca was denied death… The distinct image came to him of how he had walked from the legion that day as the city was burning and the inhabitants being marched off to slave pens in Syria… More years whipped by… old Glam standing on the banks of the Rhine, daring him to come out. He had. They had marched along together. Then Lida… twenty years old and fresh as the spring breeze. She entered his life and heart. Lida was the only one who could not see that he did not change with the years, Casca had loved her to the end, and she was all that had made life bearable. Now she was gone, and he must leave again. The wheel turns…
The images faded from his brain, and in the welcome blankness his soul knew peace.
Casca slept.