Barry Sadler - God Of Death

And while the priests of the gentle Jesus had burned the unredeemed alive, the soldiers of Cortez had raped and looted and destroyed the remnants of a great people, all in the name of glory: glory and loot for themselves and for the King of Spain. The story was an old one, and a common one, and for a moment Goldman, thinking of it, lost the sense of mystery that had engulfed him in the museum. He turned away from Quetzalcoatl and walked past other relics and art objects, and then he saw the one for whom he had cancelled his day's appointments and had rushed through the packed, horn-honking, morning traffic of Boston.

The man's back was to Goldman, and he was leaning over a glass display case, but there was no mistaking who it was. The back was broad, and the muscles beneath the conservatively cut suit seemed almost ready to burst through.

Making his way past several other display cases and standing slightly behind the man, Goldman started to clear his throat in order to announce his presence, but, before he could, the man at the display case spoke, his voice deep and steady:

"Welcome, Dr. Goldman. It is good of you to come at such short notice." And with that he straightened from, the display case and turned to face Goldman.

Goldman was speechless.

The stocky man locked his gray-blue eyes on Goldman and scanned the doctor up and down. "You're looking well, Doctor," he said. "The years have obviously been good to you. I'm glad you were able to come. For some reason we seem to have our lives involved with each other ever since that night in the Eighth Field Hospital in Nha Trang."

Goldman's mind did a quick retake, an instant replay of that astounding night in the hospital ward, when, after removing a piece of shrapnel from the brain of the man now confronting him, an unbelievable story had unfolded unbelievable except for the living proof of it, which was a man known then as Sgt. Casey Romain. At least that was what his dogtags and personnel records said he was called…

"Casca," Goldman said. "Is that what I should call you?" He shifted uncomfortably, but the steel-colored eyes of the man he called Casca held an amused glint.

"It's good enough, Doctor. I will answer to that or to any one of a number of others." Extending his right hand to the doctor, he said easily, "Here. This is for your collection. I should have left it with you when last we met, but after carrying it around in my leg for the last two thousand years I grew kind of attached to it." He dropped into Goldman's palm a shining bronze arrowhead. " You deserve it, Doctor. After all, you're the one who removed it from my leg."

Casca smiled and looked the doctor over carefully. " Yes, you are looking prosperous. The hair is a little thinner, and the extra pounds look good on you. In Nam you had that half-starved look that people who have either religious or work fetishes get along with hot eyes and thin bodies. But, yes, now you do look well." Abruptly he took the doctor's elbow with a grip that had the feel of cold steel in it and directed Goldman's attention to the object in the case over which he had been bending when Goldman arrived. The object, the case placard said, was one of the rarest and most priceless of its kind, one of the prizes the museum was able to get the Mexican government to lend for this exhibit.

Casca pointed at the object.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

It was beautiful, this life mask of deep sea green Mexican jade, full human size, looking as though it had been worn by a living man only yesterday. The workmanship, the artistry, was superb; the mask was detailed to the last degree. The only thing out of place were the eyes. They were a peculiar gray-blue turquoise. There was something strange about the mask, and, had Goldman still been in the awed mood that had first overtaken him in the museum, he might have reacted differently. As it was, he was a little puzzled by Casca's interest. He said, impatiently, "Yes, it is beautiful. But it's just a turquoise mask of some ancient king or priest from one of the Mexican empires. Perhaps Toltec. Or even Maya."

Casca smiled, an odd, tolerant Goldman would have swom ironic twist to his lips… as though he knew a secret the doctor did not.

"No, Doctor, that is not where the mask is from. It's from the city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico hundreds of years before the Toltecs. There, when the shamans sacrificed special victims on the most holy of days, a mask was made in the likeness of the victim's face, and the victims would wear these masks when they were brought up to the altar on the pyramid and had their hearts cut out with flint or obsidian daggers. The mask was then taken and placed in a shrine along with all the others that were worn on similar occasions. Actually, only seven were ever made, but they were held as holy objects something like the relics of the saints that the Europeans worshipped and thought had mystic powers." Casca's smile tightened, became even more ironic. "But, look closer at the mask, Doctor. Look closer. What do you see?"

Goldman let his eyes run over the sea green surface of the mask, examining it millimeter by millimeter. At first he was puzzled by Casca's insistence, for he saw nothing unusual.

And then it hit him.

On the left side of the mask, almost invisible, was what appeared to be a thin line where the jade pieces were joined, but on closer inspection, Goldman saw that the thin line was not a break in the jade, but that it had been intentionally carved to represent a thin hairline scar running from the eye to the corner of the mouth.

Goldman turned back to Casca, and his mouth dropped open in shock.

The same scar was on Casca's living face: the thin hairline scar that left Casca with a permanent smile or grin or as some called it leer. The correspondence leaped out at the doctor. He looked quickly back at the mask. The rest of the features fell into place.

"It's you," he said. "That mask is a mask of your face."

Pleased as though he had pulled a practical joke on the doctor, Casca grinned. "Yes, it's me. And how did I get my face on a Teotihuacano sacrificial mask? Look at the mask, Doctor." Casca's voice took on a commanding quality that was not to be disobeyed. Twice before Goldman had heard that tone of voice. "Look at the eyes of the mask, Doctor. The story is there."

Goldman turned back to the mask, and the gray-blue eyes of the sacrificial mask seemed to blaze with an inner fire, forcing his attention upon them, pulling him into their glowing depths. As his consciousness sank into the turquoise flames, Casca's voice accompanied him:

"Remember, Doctor, where I stopped before? I was at the Hold of Helsfjord, and Lida had died. The year was A.D. 252, by the Christian reckoning…"

At Lida's death Casca was inconsolable. The deep black grief that settled over him seemed to have only one remedy: the beckoning sea. Ever more frequently, from his stronghold at Helsfjord, he would sail out his dragon ship, often taking a turn at the oars himself as if by exhausting labor he could rid himself of his pain, but always, always the sea beckoned, the empty sea. The very magnitude of the gray ocean's immensity and its loneliness fitted his need, and the waves, slapping the hull, whispered to him over and over, gently urging…

There came this day…

Glam, the gray-bearded and balding giant, turned from the parapets facing the sea and looked at his friend and master, Casca. Forty years they had been together since that time they had met and fought on the banks of the Rhine, and in all those years Glam had remained Casca's man… and friend. Now, Glam's still-powerful frame was beginning to bend, and his gnarled hands could no longer wield the great sword with the same vigor they had known in youth. Of late he had suffered from ague, but he was still a man and a Norseman, a Norseman from a line of heroes. He seemed to sense what his master was going to say before Casca spoke.