Casca 04: The War Lord by Barry Sadler

Author:Barry Sadler [Sadler, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: War & Military, Adventure and adventurers
ISBN: 9780352316035
Publisher: W.H. Allen
Published: 1985-07-18T14:50:47+00:00

03 The War Lord

Glam grew fat again in a short time. His powers of recuperation were almost as outstanding as Casca’s. The road to the Jade Gate was clear and well marked. When he left Yumen behind, he knew he was on the final part of his journey. The name itself had a magic to it—The Jade Gate—or was it that he still sometimes in his sleep felt on his face the mask of Jade he once wore among the Teotec tribes so far away?

A steady gait dissolved the miles behind him. He was now heading southwest, keeping the Na Shan mountains to the right. He traveled on; summer was full on them and usually he rode at night, taking shelter in the shade of crags and crevices until the worst of the heat was done. He would ride on, lost in his thoughts and dreams of his life and past and what might be, while sitting on Glam’s back, like a hairy ship. He dozed and dreamed of faces and sounds which rocked him on his journey: Rome, Persia, Germania, the hold at Helsfjord, the Roman square standing with locked shields or forming the tortoise to assault a city’s walls. And always he awoke with the sour taste of battle in his mouth.

Thirteen THE WALL

One-thousand-five-hundred miles of stone forming the greatest single work in the life of the world, turned and twisted, like a monstrous serpent, and seemed to fall back on itself as it crested the twisting mountains and turned and finally disappeared over the horizon.

Casca wore a cloak of wild goatskin and breeches of camelskins made pliable by the chewing of the hides and scraping and pounding of the women of the Yueh-chih.

The wind was blowing from behind, in from the plains. Soon the direction would change and the wind come from the seas bringing the spring rains and floods, but for now, the jacket and breeches were welcome to cut the chill edges that searched through the lacings of his clothes. His hair had grown long and hung to his shoulders; his face was darkened by the winds and the sun.

Old Shao Tze was right, the wall seemed to run forever. He had told Casca on the galley that it had been started by the Emperor Shih Huang Ti, two hundred and fourteen years before the birth of the crucified prophet, Yesuah. It had been designed to keep out the marauding Mongolian peoples who preceded the Huns.

Riding alongside the wall, after four days he finally came to a portal where one of the permanent garrisons was maintained. Frequently he had seen mounted riders and archers watching him from the walls, but no words were spoken. However, long before he reached the portal, his coming was well known.

From the height of the wall, he resembled to the watchers one of the wandering nomads of the steppes. Stopping for the night in the sheltered crevices among the rocks, he would feed on chunks of horsemeat which he placed

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