Free Casca 1: The Eternal Mercenary by Barry Sadler

destined for the mines were separated from the others and hooked into a new coffle and headed up into the hills where the mines were. They trudged along, quickly learning to keep in step with each other so as not to stumble. Casca found that the rhythms of slavery came quick and easy... not letting yourself think was another way to stay sane.
    Unthinking, the co ffle marched like some crookedly jointed centipede up into the rocky hills of Greece toward the pits where they would spend the rest of their lives underground, digging copper for the wealth of the Caesars and for the profit of the proconsul governing there. By now the chains had cushions of calluses to rest upon and no longer ate away at the skin. Pads of calluses would develop in other areas, too. They could smell the mines before they reached them. The sound came also, but it was the smell that came first. After the relative cleanliness of the galley, the smell of thousands of sweating, unwashed men assailed their nostrils. The first slaves they saw were carrying baskets of red earth to the dumping ground. They seemed part of a seemingly unending line of dirt-encrusted humanity. Like the legendary worm that ate itself, they never stopped. They were one continuous great circle of misery. Here the whips cracked frequently on the backs of the slaves. These were the expendable ones. The mine superintendent needed a certain death rate just to have room for all the newcomers he was being sent. He had complained to his superior in Athens at this constant overload he was forced to contend with, and how difficult it was to maintain a balance. He had cut their rations to a third – and still the animals wouldn't die fast enough. Now, here came a new batch. Where the hell was he to put them? The latest war had thrown thousands of slaves on the market, and they were a glut. He got all the rejects... the troublemakers and murderers. Damn top management... don't know what they're doing.
    Casca was numbered in by the number on his slave tag, and he was chained to his new work mate. The leg irons here were longer than they had been on the march. A slave in the mines needed a little more slack.
    Casca and his mate were assigned to a pit on the northwest side of the mountain. He was lucky. Here he would at least have some fresh air and sun. Below, in the shafts that ran down a thousand feet below the surface, the slaves might not see the light of day again for the rest of their lives.
    Casca fell into the routine of his job and soon learned how to avoid the overseer's whip. The one third rations did not seem to bother him very much. What he didn't know at the time was that his system's metabolism was simply adjusting itself to whatever intake it was receiving and making the most efficient use of it. Casca had a bowel movement less than once a week, and then it was small. Everything he ate was turned to energy. His body grew dark from the sun. His muscles became bands of steel. He not only did his own work but much of his chain mates' chores as well.
    The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and yet he worked, and his chain mates died. He had gone through three of them and was now with his fourth. Four years had passed, and he grew ever stronger. Yet, even with careful planning, he could not avoid entirely the lash of the overseer, and his back looked like a street map because of the thin scars of the whip. But he survived while others died.
    And always the Jew's voice came to him when he was attached to a new slave by the iron umbilical cord: "Until we meet again..." There were times, too, when the voice came to him in his sleep... when he would curl up in the little hole he had dug for himself and his chain mate for protection against the worst of the storms that periodically raged over the island.
    Casca kept silent, talking little to his mates or the others around him, but they knew something about him was different. And after a time even the overseer began to stop