Casca offered no resistance to being chained and manacled. He was still half in a stupor. He looked dazedly down at the heavy manacles, but the meaning of them could not reach his brain. He felt doped. He did not exist.
The two troopers led him to the stocks where he was laid on his back and the sandals taken from his feet. The older trooper looked down at him and spoke, the words coming through the fog of Casca's consciousness:
"Man, I am sorry about this, Casca, but you heard the orders, and you know that if we don't do the job right, the old man will put us down there with you. So, no hard feelings. There's nothing personal in this."
The trooper's voice was quiet, and the tone familiar, and because of that, realization came to Casca, and he was acutely aware of what was going to happen to him. But he did not let it show in his face as he watched the troopers get ready.
Taking one of the two whiplike four-foot rods, each about the thickness of a forefinger, the first trooper whished it back and forth in the air a couple of times to get the feel of it, and then handed the other one to his comrade. His face twitched in distaste for what was about to occur, and he said to his associate, "Let's get this over with, Corio."
The troopers took position, one on each side of the stocks, took off their helmets, and got themselves set.
Casca said nothing. Now completely out of the stupor, he knew full well the extent of the forthcoming pain, having been on the other end of the whiplike rods more than once, and having seen what that pain would do to even the toughest trooper. By some odd trick of the mind he seemed to feel the pain before the rods even touched his feet, and it took all the strength of his will to fight down an impulse to scream wildly.
He could feel his heart racing madly. Had he been merely a casual observer this punishment might not seem particularly harsh, but Casca, like every legionnaire, knew the reality. The mere threat of the rods would set any legionnaire's pulse to racing madly.
Whish! The rod arced through the sunlight.
Casca's body arched in a spasm of agony as the first stroke of the rod hit the soles of his bare feet. The pain was unbearable. And then again. And again. The whipping rods flashed in the air. The pain passed the realm of reality and became one continuous blur of fire. His body jerked uncontrollably with the lashing. His teeth bit through his lower lip. The salt taste of his own blood was almost a relief.
But there was no relief. It would go on forever.
Then it was done.
No more did the flashing rods come down.
But still the pain continued to mount. He thought he had experienced the worst, but this pain was even greater, building with the swelling of his tortured feet. The insteps were swollen to at least three times their normal size and were a deep purple in color. It seemed that the skin would burst open under the internal pressure of the bruised tissue.
The two legionnaires assigned to the punishment detail wiped the sweat from their foreheads, undid the stocks, and carried Casca back to the stockade, to the cell that the jailer had assigned him.
Casca lay in the straw, curled into a fetal knot. His body twitched with uncontrolled nervous reactions. Time stopped.
After a while he began to edge his way across the filth-encrusted floor toward the water jug in the far corner, moaning to himself, trying to keep from crying aloud. He pawed clumsily at the water jug, like an animal. He lifted the terra-cotta vessel to his cracked lips. The small flow of the precious liquid was like the ambrosia of the gods. Sitting up, he tilted the jug and carefully poured a few drops onto his feet. The coolness of the lukewarm water on the inflamed feet started another spasm of pain, but he poured more, and the cooling relief began to spread through him.
He took another swallow of water from the jug.
He became himself again, but a self drowned in a wave of grief and confusion as his mind searched for an answer to what was happening to him.
Shit! The whole deal was absurd. What the hell is this? Are the gods out to screw me? I have always been a good and loyal soldier. What's turned the world upside down? Why have all these things happened to me? Why? Why? He was alone in the cell, but a face came up into his consciousness. That Hebrew… Yeshua… Jesus… whatever he was called. Nothing has been the same since.
He moved restlessly, and as he twisted his legs, a small stone on the floor touched one of his feet, sending a fresh spasm of pain lancing through his feet and legs, and a moan broke through his lips. The pain which until then had settled down to a deep, hot throbbing was instantly freshened. But a curious thing happened. He was more concerned with the questioning in his mind than with the pain, and he regained control of himself.
He would have to face it. His world was over. The tribune is going to expel me from the legion… The thought was shocking to Casca. How could it happen to him? Why? Why are all these things happening to me? Have I become something that I wasn't? Then, who am I?
He was lying in the dirt of the stockade cell, and it was not the best place to wrestle with fate, but the thought of leaving the legion was the most appalling thing that had ever come into his mind, and here it was, bolder than the rat that stared contemptuously at him from the opposite corner. Being a legionnaire was his life. It was what he was. It was the core of his being. I could handle the punishment of the penal battalions, but to be thrown out of the Tenth…
The rat was joined by two others. They crouched in the dark, eyeing Casca… like the three Fates…
But Casca had no mind for rats. He spat at the three. "Piss on you," he said… and closed his eyes and dreamed of the glories of the Roman legions.
From that time as a child in the Tuscan hills, when he watched the Tenth pass through on their way back from Gaul, Casca had wanted to be a legionnaire. And his Uncle Tontine had served with the great Julius when Julius put down the rebellion of the Belgae tribes on the far banks of the Rubicon… was there when the most fierce of that tribe of warriors, the Nervii, fell upon the Seventh and Twelfth legions and almost destroyed both as effective fighting forces, killing all their officers.
Now, those were days of glory!
The Nervii had hidden all their women and children in the deep forests of the land and had fallen on Caesar with a force of over sixty thousand tribesmen. They routed his cavalry, which was unsuited for duty in these dank woods, and surrounded the Seventh and Twelfth legions. Caesar himself was forced to take up a shield and strike against the barbarians like a common soldier. When the Tenth legion came upon the scene and saw the danger to Caesar, they attacked with such vigor that they turned back the Nervii even though they were outnumbered more than twenty to one. With the example of Caesar's courage, they fought like madmen. Yet, even with Caesar leading them, they could not force the Nervii from the field of battle.
Those brave and fanatical fighters died where they stood. Out of the sixty thousand who fell upon the Seventh and the Twelfth, less than five hundred lived to see the night. And only four of the Nervii leaders survived. For this victory the Senate ordered that sacrifices and celebrations should be held for a period of fifteen days to honor Caesar and his legions. Never before had a votive of this size been awarded.
Casca let the thoughts of his mind flow back through the years of his own service. The army had been his home, not just symbolically, but, after his family was wiped out in a pestilence, in reality as well.
The scene came up in his mind of his leaving…flames… the smell of burning straw… the crackle of the blaze. After he had made his final offerings to the Lares and the Penates, the household gods, he had set fire to the roof of his house-as the town wise women had said he should-to destroy the evil spirits within.
It was the last time he had listened to the advice of women. He had turned his back on them and the village and walked to Livorno where he enlisted in the service of the Empire. His was a man's world from then on. What was it the Jew had said?…You are what you are… that you shall remain. What the hell was wrong with being a soldier?
From the beginning it had been a good life for Casca. The days of training and discipline were like a tonic to his mind. His hours were too filled to allow much time for grief over the loss of his family which, like all normal men, he had loved dearly. Now the service was his family, and Casca, like others before him, discovered the joy of discipline. Shit! What could civilians know about the order and discipline of military life?… Almost before he knew it, he had finished his basic training and was being assigned to the Seventh, stationed on the frontier separating the Germans of the Marcomanii from the Helvetians. He liked the duty, for Casca intuitively grasped the importance of military force. The legions of Rome were all that prevented a continuous war from being waged between these ancient enemies. Yes, it had been a good duty. Here he had tasted his first blood in the heat of battle, and here he had learned the wisdom of his leaders' training programs.
Like the power of the Roman square…
On a one-to-one basis, in a fight against the monster Germans, the German had the advantage. The Roman was much smaller and weaker, and the great sword of the barbarian would usually win out; one German could always defeat one Roman. But when the square was formed, and the legionnaires had the support of their comrades, training and discipline won out time and again against vastly superior odds. The barbarians lacked discipline, and when the battle began, many of them became afflicted with what they called the "berserker rage" in which it was not uncommon for them to use "the fountain of Tyr," one of their war gods. When a barbarian had his forearm or wrist lopped off, he would point the spurting stump into the face of his enemy, trying to blind him for just enough time to take another soul to Valhalla with him and would die crying out for Tyr and his Valkyrie to take him…Odd folk, those damn barbarians.
The legion was the mother and father of battle, a point of certainty, home. No matter which legion you might be assigned to, you always knew what to do and where everything was. Every legion laid out its camp identically each time. It would be no different in Egypt than it would be in Sarmatia or Britain. A soldier of the legion always knew where he was supposed to be because the constant training and close order drill were designed to make the soldier's response automatic. Drilling, marching… and digging… There was a saying that, if you were going to be a good legionnaire, it helped to have gopher blood. Often, the most important item in the kit you carried would be your shovel-and the gods help you if you lost it. The legion had survived many a surprise attack because regulations said that a unit must always, according to plan, lay out its defenses before retiring for the night. The picket lines must be laid out and the ditches dug and properly prepared with sharpened stakes to ward off a surprise attack. For a commander to be caught in camp without these measures being taken was to invite disaster.
Because war was killing…
Killing…
Casca shivered at the thought of his first kill.