Casca 18: The Cursed by Barry Sadler

Author:Barry Sadler [Sadler, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

The door opened, but Casca heard only the lightest of footfalls. He turned his head to see a tiny nun in a black habit and a coif. Only her face and hands showed. One hand carried a feather duster.

She came to the bench and peered down at Casca through thick pebble spectacles. "Have you escaped us, you fiend?" she scowled at him.

Casca smiled at her concentrated malevolence. "Escaped?"

"Well, you can talk anyway. Can you think, I wonder?"

Casca stared up at her. Think? About what? "I think you're a nun. A Christian nun." He felt faintly pleased, but also disturbed. He couldn't quite think what a nun was, or a Christian. Something to do with a teacher called Christ. And Christ had something to do with his being a soldier.

"Oh, Christ," he muttered aloud.

Swish. The cane handle of the feather duster came down across his face, making him yelp in pain. "Don't you take the name of the Lord in vain, you swine."

"Oh, my God," Casca groaned and earned another cruel slash with the cane. This one caught him across the chest, but it still hurt. "Hey, take it easy with that thing, Sister."

"What? Does the Roman executioner beg for mercy? You showed none to the Lamb of God."

What the hell is this old broad talking about? Roman? Executioner? Who does she think I am?

Then a surge of panic. Who am I? Where am I?

He could feel a thousand thoughts trying to make themselves felt, but out of the conflict he could only isolate a few unrelated specks of memory.

A fall from a horse. An elegant Chinese. A comic image of a man at the end of a rope flapping about like a bird. A man on a cross...

"Jesus."

Another swish of the cane and Casca yelled again. "Hey, hold it there, Sister. What the hell are you doing? Just who do you think I am?"

"I know who you are. I don't know what you call yourself, but I know you, Casca Rufio Longinus, torturer of the Son of God. Accursed to soldier forever."

So I'm a soldier. But I think I'm in the British army. And it's a hell of a long time since Christ died. So how old am I?

The nun's face came nearer. She stared into Casca's eyes, concern showing on her face. "Then you have lost your mind? You have escaped us and the curse."

More confused flashes of memory came to Casca. Women. Lots of women. They came rolling through his mind in rapid succession like strumpets tumbling together in a bed. And fighting. Fighting, fighting, fighting. He saw in his mind's eye one enemy after another. This one wielding a great ax, this one on horseback with a long lance, a horde of tribesmen with spears and shields, a giant with a huge, two handed sword. And all of them dying. Dying on his sword, his knife, between his hands.

Then came flashes of himself being hacked open with an ax, run through with a sword, being strangled, a hand chopped off.

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