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.