Barry Sadler - God Of Death

Uneasily, Glam looked away for a moment. There was something about this stranger that was disturbing, something for which there was no ready answer. A power? What could it be? But he looked back full in Casca's eyes and said, "Good enough. You are the leader until our road ends."

The road Casca and Glam took was, for the most part, a good one. The two rapidly found a fondness for each other that went far beyond the relationship of master and servant. Glam, with his boisterous humor, was almost as good as he thought he was though he never got used to the idea that the smaller Roman had whipped him without even using weapons. That summer of A.D. 210 they walked through the great dank forests of Germania. Casca kept his Roman armor out of sight in his kit bag. The sight of the hated Roman cuirass might lead to more trouble than they wanted. The trail through the woods had the rich smell of life, of green and growing things. The sun broke through the treetops with shining, hazy blades of light and lit up the floor of the forest so that it glowed with green fire. The feel of such spots was most welcome for in the morning and in the afternoon a chill would come.

Glam taught Casca the way of the Norsemen. Here were few towns in the style of those found in the lands and provinces of Imperial Rome. But there was no shortage of people; they merely chose not to live one on top of the other. Glam rambled through these woods resembling in his fur robes and shuffling gait one of the brown bears that inhabited these regions. He was a strange partner for Casca the Roman, this northern barbarian, but they became friends and comrades. Their lives were intertwined and their loyalties tested by battles and time. Glam told Casca of immense lands that ran from the frozen sea to the mountains that held up the sky. Here the tribes roamed at will, and those with great chieftains had tens of thousands of warriors at their call. To Glam this was the best of all lands, the women more beautiful, the men braver, the beer stronger. The two wound their way slowly, bearing north, ever northward.

Glam grumbled about the way the tribes on the Roman sides of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe had become but pale shadows of their former glory when they had been worthy foes. Now they aped the Roman in all things and were, to Glam's thinking, little better than falsetto-voiced castratti like all those from Italia present company excluded, of course, he hastily added as he caught Casca thoughtfully eyeing his crotch. Glam instantly recalled Casca's threat to braid his legs and thus end his sex life… to the detriment of untapped legions of fair maids…

Glam changed the subject and went more into a travelogue. Indicating the general area to the east with a broad sweep of his hand, he said in his most officious voice: "There. Over there are trackless lands that have never seen the foot of man. Others where only the wildest savages live half man, half horse great hordes of them… small gnomes whose legs are bent so badly they can hardly walk on the ground because they've spent so much time on horseback that their legs have grown crooked. And there are others almost as bad. Hundreds of thousands of them. Still they are only specks on the great steppes of Scythia and the even more desolate region that runs untold leagues beyond. Mark my words, Casca. One day we will have more than our share of trouble coming out of the east. If those devils ever start to move, they won't leave enough grass behind them to feed a family of grasshoppers."

"You have seen these people you talk of, Glam?" "Aye, Lord Casca, I have. Several came as emissaries once to the king of the Alani when I was renting him the use of my sword as a bodyguard for a while. He was having family problems at the time and didn't trust his own men too closely. Yes, these ugly bowlegged little bastards even conducted their treaties from horseback. I got one stewed on fermented mare's milk which they drink and learned a little from him. They are indeed going to be moving west sometime. Now there is only a trickle this way, but, from the little bastard I talked to, I learned that they have their problems, too. Even greater and more terrible tribes are pushing them out of the lands they inhabit on the endless prairies near the wall, 'The Wall That Goes on Forever' at least that's what he called it, though I am sure he is a bit of a liar. A wall that goes on forever! Indeed!" Glam snorted through his mustache at the idea. "From what I saw of those beasts they would be extremely unpleasant to have as neighbors. They have absolutely no sense of appreciation for the finer things of life as we of the northlands do."

Glam squashed a particularly fat louse and blinked as the body popped between his thick nails. He ambled on, unaware that Casca was sore put to keep from breaking out in laughter at Glam's wounded sense of propriety and sensitivity.

He was the mainstay when Casca met Lida at Ragnar's Hold.

Lida.

Now there was something strange.

Glam knew all about women as women. And he expected Casca to be like himself. But the thing between Casca and Lida, golden-haired, lovely, beautiful young Lida, daughter of Ragnar the Brutal One, was like one of those romances the poets sang about. From the moment their eyes touched, something passed between them that was above and beyond the normal way of man and maid. Old Ragnar found out, of course. Old Ragnar, to whom even a daughter was only property that no man dared touch. In his insane rage when Lida had the temerity to stand up to him and say, "I have eyes only for Casca," he had blinded her with a torch jerked from the wall, crying, "Then, by Thor, you'll have no eyes!" And when he ordered Casca tossed into a dungeon to starve to death, even his hardened warriors were so frightened by Ragnar's enormous rage and brutal act toward his own daughter that they carried out his orders, smothering Casca by sheer weight of numbers before the Roman could find out what had occurred in Ragnar's rooms for they sensed that if he knew, even the force of the Aesir would not hold him back.

Once secured in the dungeon, though, Casca had been told by Ragnar himself whose sense of vengeance was as strong as his hate. Casca raged, but even his great strength was of no avail against such great stones as enclosed the dungeon.

Old Ragnar was a mean old shit, so used to having his way that he never doubted he would always have it. Casca stayed in the dungeon for six months until one day Ragnar, sure that Casca was long dead, gave orders for a new prisoner to be lodged there. But when the door opened, Casca came out, naked as a jaybird, nothing but bones and skin. He had eaten all his clothing even the lacings on his leggings along with every insect; bug, and rat that dared showed itself in the black cell. Water he licked from the walls where it condensed in drops. Surely there was not enough to keep any man alive two weeks, much less six months, but Casca lived.

He snapped the jailer's neck with one of his strange blows, took the man's weapon, and like some weird nightmare of a man, wild beard falling from his chin, he sought out and killed old Ragnar at his own table where the brutal old bastard was entertaining guests. Glam had been there, having found himself local employment in order to keep an eye on Lida. Casca had told him to wait, no matter how long, and from the things Glam had seen on the trail, he believed the strange Roman. Joyfully, Glam shouted and reached for his sword when this filthy, starved, weird-looking wretch leaped into the middle of Ragnar's table with an axe in one hand and a leg of mutton in the other. He scared the crap out of everyone there, sending all but the sturdiest warriors running for their lives. They thought he must surely be some demon out of the netherworld sent by Loki. Glam roared with amusement as he watched Casca bashing out the brains of old Ragnar with the leg of meat while whacking two of the household bodyguards with the axe and never missing a bite. Glam's own joyful efforts to assist Casca helped speed up the demise of the few who dared resist them. For the rest, the sight of the lord being debrained by a hairy, filthy skeleton of a demon wielding a leg of mutton and a battleaxe was too much. They fled the house, leaving Ragnar's Hold to the madman. They were afraid of nothing human. But this was too much…