Free Casca 18: The Cursed by Barry Sadler Page A

rider's lance caught him in the throat and stopped him in mid rush.
    He opened his hand so that the knife lay on his palm and swung overarm to hurl the knife at the baron's throat. But his wounds sent a spasm through the arm as he threw, and the knife went wild.
    He stood glowering, four lances and a sword pointed at him.
    The hell with it. He wasn't about to run onto a lance. He didn't intend to suffer an agonizing death from which he knew he would come back to life.
    He sat on the ground and went back to trying to unbuckle Hu's sword belt so that he could get at his pistol. "Well," the one who had identified him, said, "you're made of better material than your reputation would suggest. I understood your specialty to be fighting women and old men."
    "I am not who you think I am."
    "Then get up," the baron said, "and we will learn who you are."
    Casca seethed. He cursed the Nazarene, whose curse deprived him of the dignity of an honorable death.
    "Which way?" he spat from his position on the ground.
    The baron gestured with his lance. "To Shou Chang, where I believe we will find your master Zhang Jintao and his horde."
    "I do not know this Zhang," Casca said, "but I doubt that five men can defeat his forces."
    The baron smiled and socketed his lance. He waved his arm and pointed toward Shou Chang. Casca heard the movement of many men, and a small army appeared on the road at the crest of the hill where they had been resting amongst the trees that fringed the road.
    "Get up, dog," the leader repeated, "we have need of your information."
    Well, he wasn't finished yet.
    The whip that had been wound around his neck now lay on the ground beside him. He snatched it up and came to his feet, flailing it about, taking out the swordsman's eye, and lashing the mounted horses so that they bolted away with their riders struggling to control them.
    He leaped into the, one empty saddle and hammered his heels into the horse's flanks, racing down the road past two of the riders who were just succeeding in bringing their mounts under control.
    The flailing whip caught one horse in the throat and it reared and threw the rider. The other he lashed on the rump and it broke into a wild gallop, crashing through the trees that lined the roadside to fall heavily into an irrigation ditch.
    Three thoughts suddenly came to Casca. All bad.
    His left wrist, which he had used to haul himself into the saddle and to hold the reins, was now aching horribly and he could feel the fingers growing numb.
    His right arm, thanks to the wound in his shoulder blade and the other in the arm, was now also a throbbing agony, and he could scarcely hold on to the whip.
    Worst of all he was going the wrong way.
    His heels were still raking the horse's sides with his spurs, the animal giving its all as it galloped toward Shou Chang, where the warlord Zhang and his troops waited. And they would scarcely welcome the man who had slain and robbed their tax collector.
    And behind him were the five nobles he had escaped, and behind them their small army. There was nothing for it but to keep going.
    Well, at least the gate guards would not stand in his way.
    They didn't.
    They saw him coming from a distance, and Casca's fast clouding senses were just sufficient enough for him to remember to pull up the face guard.
    The gate guards stood carefully aside as he raced through the portal. The warlord's two men laughed uproariously: "That's Hu Wei. Always in a hurry." In spite of his wounds Casca laughed. Another few moments and they would be in something of a hurry themselves.
    But, by the great balls of Mars, what the fuck was he going to do now?
    As if in answer, Deng Ziyang chose that moment to haul his cart into the road.
    Casca tried to wheel his horse, but in the narrow street there was nowhere to go, and no space to stop.
    He tried desperately to will the horse to jump the width of the small cart as he had often seen cowboys do in America, but neither he nor the horse knew