And Casca cried.
Tears flowed down his face as he fought and killed, fought and killed, and killed again. His face struck terror into those who confronted this insane crying Roman. When his rank was signaled to step back, he refused. Unconscious of the order, he stayed in the front line, chopping and hacking. Time and again blows struck him, tearing holes in his armor, gouging chunks of meat from him. Then there came a burning in his left thigh. Looking down, he saw an arrow shaft sticking out of his leg. Roaring in rage-filled anguish and mental grief, he grabbed the shaft and pulled. The barbed head remained inside, but the gut bindings used to hold the bronze arrowhead to the shaft came loose under his tugging, and the shaft came out. A Parthian noble, gorgeous in bright Tyrian purple, threw himself bodily over the head of some of his countrymen to get at this mad Roman. Casca caught him as he came over, and with one hand he squeezed the life out of the noble while at the same time smashing the brains out of a wounded Parthian bowman with his shield. He regained his sword and hacked away.
The butchery continued through the day. Only chest-heaving exhaustion forced Casca to stop his personal slaughtering. He lay behind while the ranks of the Romans forced the Parthians back. Back against the river and the walls. Casca lay and sobbed, his mind whirling with images and patterns he could not understand. The battle was almost done. Raising himself, he stumbled over the battlefield, stepping heedlessly over the bodies of the dead and dying. Crying still, he screamed out loud, but no one paid any attention to him. Madness in one form or another was not unusual in battle.
"Is this all there is for me?" he cried to the unanswering heavens. "Is this what I am condemned to repeat over and over, never ending? Is this what I really am, a beast fit only for butchering his own kind?"
But there was no answer from the sky, darkening now with a coming storm.
The last of the Parthians was dead or in chains.
The wailing of the women in the city was an eerie testimony to the devastation outside the walls. The noble Avidius Cassius had promised they would be spared and not sold into slavery if their men came out. At least they and their children would be spared that. But their men were dead.
The arrow in Casca's leg burned like the acid in his soul as he worked his way mindlessly across and away from the battlefield. He sobbed, and stumbled with tear-blinded eyes.
It was over.
For now, at least, it was over…
TWENTY-FIVE
Dark clouds raced low over the plains of Parthia. Streaks of lightning shot from them like shining lances spearing the raped earth beneath. The waters of the Tigris reflected rust-colored lights.
Blood, Casca thought. Death.
He climbed wearily to the top of a mound and sat upon a pile of once-sunbaked bricks, now lead gray in the stormlight, and looked across the plains. The roof of a house showed that the mound he sat on was covering a ruined building from the mists of antiquity. To the southeast lay ancient Babylon, abandoned, forsaken all these centuries, knowing the footsteps of only a few shepherds. Eternity… Casca looked at his hands. They were covered with blood that was turning black from exposure to the air and drying on his skin. The arrowhead in his thigh had settled in with a dull throbbing. He raised his grime-streaked face to the skies. The storm clouds were great cumulus stallions racing toward some unknown infinity. As they crowded together, the dark deepened. In the flickering light and shadows that preceded darkness he looked out upon a scene that could only have come from a tortured mind. Below on the plains were forty-five thousand men locked in an obscene caricature of humanity, holding each other in contorted positions of death. Broken spears and gear littered the earth as far as Casca could see. For what? He looked toward the cause, that great city.
Ctesiphon was no more. The flames of the burning city reached up with black, greasy fingers to the stormy sky. The screams of the inhabitants blended with the roar of the flames. Ctesiphon was being put to the sword and to the torch, her remaining people marched off into slavery-after the soldiers had first taken their pleasures, for is not rape the right of conquest? And what purpose do women serve other than that of servicing men? Those too old were put to the sword. The children were loaded into carts for the long journey to the slave markets of Syria where they would be auctioned off.
The Parthian commander, surrounded by his dead followers, lay on the field, his mouth filled with dirt. The noble had died in spasms, biting at his wounds and the earth like a mad dog. At this moment his favorite wife was opening her legs and letting a squad of legionnaires take their pleasure with her in the hope that she and her children would be spared. The king's sons had already been quickly put to the sword-even to the babes. The best way to stop a royal line from cropping up to give trouble later was to wipe it out completely- and the Romans were practical men.
Four thousand surviving warriors were chained together and were even now passing over the horizon, the cries of their women still ringing in their ears. Ctesiphon burned. The Roman eagles were triumphant. Only a small detachment remained behind for mopping up operations and to occupy the capital for a while. What remained of Ctesiphon would serve as a forward base and headquarters. The bulk of the army was already on the march for the glory of its general.
While the city burned, another flame was born in the brain of its conqueror. Warmed with pleasure over the victory, Avidius Cassius considered his worth as a senator and leader of Rome. He reflected the true value of Roman honor; it seemed only natural that the thought would come: Ave Avidius, Imperator! The spark caught in his mind…Imperator!
There were no sparks in Casca's mind. He turned his eyes upon the forty-five thousand dead men littering the field of battle. Other battles, other dead. How many scenes like this had he lived through? How many more could he face? Dead men… their corpses littered the ground as far as the eye could see. Horses… they screamed like women, their shrieks rising in the stormy air until, one by one, a member of the mop-up squad would mercifully slice the beast's throat, letting its rich blood join that of its human master in feeding the hungry soil beneath. Scavenging soldiers… Romans walked over the field below him, looting the bodies of the vanquished enemy. Parthia was no more. Killing the wounded was the final act of this dreadful scenario. Forty-five thousand men… eyes wide and staring… accusing the gods and forces that drove them… their mouths black gaping holes filled with silent screams… hands frozen in the act of clawing to reach the heavens… or digging into the torn earth as if seeking comfort. Dead. Dead. Dead!
Dead… dead… all could kill, all could be killed-all but me! The thought came screaming into Casca's mind.
Enough!
Taking his torn and bloody armor from his chest, he raised his voice to the now-thundering skies above. The memory of another day and another storm washed over him… How long ago? Two hundred years? Fat drops of rain fell to the ground. Distant thunder rumbled its way closer.
Tears streaked Casca's face, and the years of his anguish rushed up into his throat and burst forth in a soul-ripping cry. Drawing his gladius from its scabbard, the blade notched and dull from the day's slaughter, he cried out:
"Yeshua! Jesus! Jew! God or devil!"
His own voice seemed to be one with the thunder. Raising himself erect and holding the sword to the heavens, he cried:
"In the name of pity, let me die! What I did to you those long years ago in Jerusalem was as nothing to what you have done to me. I have been punished a thousand times over. You are the one without pity or compassion. The love your followers preach is a lie. You are far more cruel than me or any man. You have died-let me do the same!"