Free Casca 17: The Warrior by Barry Sadler Page B

job."
    "Don't say it too loud or you'll be stuck with it for life. They distrust ambition and only reward performance."
    Casca shrugged. Well, why the hell not? He'd led armies often enough before. This wouldn't be so different.
    Ateca came toward the dying warrior, carrying a green-stone axe, the sun glinting from the razor- sharp blade. She stood between Casca and the enemy, chanting slowly. She held the head of the axe toward Casca, then turned gracefully, raising it high above her head.
    Casca felt his own testicles leap up into his pelvic cavity as the axe was buried in the ground with a dull thump, severing the warrior's genitals from his body.
    A great cheer went up.
    Ateca picked up the severed piece and inserted a green twig into the root of the penis. As the stick stretched the penis to about erect length there were shrieks and giggles from the women and laughs and grunts from the men.
    The fire in the pit was now roaring, and Ateca held the meat out over the fringe of the fire, carefully toasting it, continually withdrawing it before it burned.
    Casca was so intrigued by this South Pacific cuisine that for a moment he failed to notice what was happening to the rest of the body. Two women were squatting between the still breathing man's legs, reaching into the body cavity through the hole that Ateca had opened and dragging out handfuls of intestines which they passed to a number of small children, who ran around dragging the entrails about like lengths of rope. Other women were spearing the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys on twigs and holding them out over the edge of the flames.
    Ateca placed the cooked meat on a banana leaf and presented it to Casca.
    He stared, horror stricken, at the penis, the outer skin crisped to black-brown and split apart by the heat, showing the pink lightly cooked meat inside. The testicles had shrunk to the size of grapes.
    Repressing a shudder, Casca looked around. The other organs were being shared out among the village elders. The heart was on a banana leaf before Semele, and the old chief sat waiting, looking expectantly at Casca.
    "You're holding up dinner, your chiefness," he heard Sandy say as he realized that he was expected to start the feast.
    He couldn't possibly do it. Then he looked up at the hundred expectant faces and realized that he couldn't possibly not do it. "Oh, no," he groaned.
    "Sweetbreads we call 'em at home." Sandy chuckled. "They're considered a delicacy . 'Course, we get 'em off bulls." He chuckled some more and all the people around joined in.
    The fire pit was now being filled with stones, and women were hacking the body into pieces, wrapping each piece in banana leaves and placing them on the hot stones together with enormous quantities of taro, cassava, and yams. Then the pit was filled in, covering the meat with earth.
    He heard a sharp intake of breath and glanced around to see that the smile had left Sandy's face as he was handed the man's barbecued liver. "Oy mon, I don't think I can do this," he groaned.
    A polite cough from the old chief alerted Casca that he had stalled about as long as politeness would allow. All around him men were waiting for him to eat so that they, too, could start on the tasty morsels before them.
    "They call roasted man long pig," Larsen said. "It's probably not so bad."
    "An acquired taste I suppose," Casca muttered, and picking up the prick, chewed off one of the balls.
    To his amazement he found the meat tender and tasty.
    He looked around him at the grinning faces as a dozen men followed his example and began to eat. Semele took to the heart with gusto, but the others took one big bite of their piece of offal and passed the rest along.
    Relieved to discover this way out of his predicament, Casca, while chewing lustily on one of the late departed's most precious possessions, passed the rest to the man next to him.
    The reaction was immediate, and on all sides Casca saw consternation. Everybody had stopped eating and they