Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire (26 page)

Three weeks passed. Three weeks of brutal labour at the salt face. Every day they were afforded a few hours of sleep, and without daylight, the concept of day and night was lost to them. They would be woken by Gorzam’s rattling spear tip on the bars, fed and watered, then shackled and ushered to the salt crystal near the main shaft. Here, the dust was so thick it stole the breath from their lungs, stung their eyes and burned in Pavo’s whip wounds – which had turned to scar tissue after nearly two weeks of agony. Their lips and mouths were constantly cracked and bleeding, their hands raw and their feet callused. They filled basket after basket, loading each one on the pulley before returning to the salt face with an empty one. Men worked all around them, coughing and panting. Nobody spoke, nobody even made eye contact.
Don’t ever look the guards in the eye,
Khaled had told Pavo,
I have seen them kill men for less!

In his first days of mining, Pavo realised that they were deep underground – in the fourth of seven chambers, each linked by the main shaft.
So far under the surface that we could cry out until our lungs bled and nobody would hear us up there,
Khaled had confirmed, dryly. On taking a full basket to the pulley, Pavo had glanced down into the dark hole of the main shaft, and wondered how many of his vexillatio toiled in the chambers below. He saw another slave nearby, neglecting his work and looking up wistfully. Pavo also risked a look up. High above, he saw a tiny disc of white. Daylight and the world of the living. He only realised he was gawping at it when he heard Khaled’s whispered warning. He turned his eyes down at once, his skin crawling as he heard footsteps thunder over to him. Gorzam had stormed past him and grappled the other slave by the throat. Khaled and Pavo could only stare at the salt crystal and continue to hack at it as Gorzam whipped at the slave again and again until the poor wretch collapsed. Even then, Gorzam did not relent, whipping at the man’s head until the flesh came away and the skull crumpled. He enjoyed every lash. Then he and a comrade kicked the dead slave’s corpse towards the darkness of the main shaft. Another slave chained to the dead man dropped his pickaxe and clutched at the chains as he was dragged towards the shaft as well, begging Gorzam for mercy. The man’s pleas went unheard and he toppled into the abyss with the dead man. His cries echoed until they halted with an abrupt and distant crunch. The monotonous, rhythmic chink-chink of pickaxe on salt continued as if nothing had happened.

At the start of the fifth week of his incarceration, Pavo woke first to the soothing melody of Zoroastrian prayer. The voices of so many tortured souls in this place came together to recite the
gathas
, and the lilting verses echoed throughout the mines like the tumbling currents of a gentle brook. But the prayer halted abruptly at the sound of a cracking whip and the wailing of some poor slave on the end of its barbed tips. He sat bolt upright. The pain in his ribs and on his back had almost faded, but the burning in his lungs from the infernal salt dust seemed to grow fierier with every day. He scratched at his now wiry beard and straw-like, salt-encrusted hair. Khaled wakened at the same time and the two peered through the bars at the glowing crystalline cavern. Another long shift at the salt crystals lay ahead.

The bars of the cells nearby rattled to the tune of a spearpoint. Pavo and Khaled stiffened.

‘Come drink your water, dogs!’ a grating voice called out gleefully. There was a shuffling of thirsty men rushing to the bars of their cells. Gorzam soon came to their cell, rattling his spearpoint more slowly, as if he had been looking forward to this. He held the whip in his other hand as if in expectation, and the guard with him carried a large water skin. ‘Cups,’ Gorzam rasped.

He and Khaled approached the bars as the second guard readied the skin to pour. They passed their cups through the bars, avoiding the guards’ gaze, Pavo struggling to resist a glance at the phalera on Gorzam’s chest. Gorzam watched as the other guard filled the cups, then took them and handed them back through. Pavo reached out for his cup and Khaled his. His fingers were but an inch from clasping it, when Gorzam let both go. The cups bounced on the floor and the water soaked into the salt and dust in a heartbeat. Khaled and Pavo stepped back, stifling their anger.

‘Ah, it is a shame to see the precious water go to waste, is it not?’ Gorzam grinned. ‘Still, at least you have your food.’ He nodded to the other guard. The man turned to rummage in the hemp sack he carried and produced two lumps of bread.

As Gorzam moved on to the next cell, Pavo prodded at the flint-hard, stale bread, then looked to the spilled water cups. He felt the absence of his spatha more keenly than ever. He pressed his face to the bars, watching as Gorzam halted, he and the other guard pouring water into cups of their own, then squeezing some viscous, grainy substance into it. Pavo frowned, seeing Gorzam lick his lips then gulp at this hungrily. The guard drained the cup then spotted Pavo watching. In a flash, the whip cracked towards the bars of Pavo’s cell. Pavo leapt back, the barbs gouging at the iron where his face had been a heartbeat ago.

Khaled placed an arm on his shoulder. ‘He has but two joys in life: one is the strained seeds from the joy plant – the poppy,’ Khaled whispered. ‘Its juices calm his pickled mind – one day hopefully he will take too much and it will kill him. The other, and by far his favourite pleasure, is to provoke the poor bastards in this place,’ Khaled said, stooping to pick up the two water cups. ‘Don’t give him what he seeks.’ He pushed Pavo’s cup into his hand. ‘Here, drink the drops that are still in there, it will give you moisture enough to chew on this year-old bread. Failing that, we can set about it with our pickaxes,’ he grinned wearily.

Pavo sat with a sigh. ‘That’s two days running he’s denied us water.’

‘It is a complement of sorts. He sees us as a threat. If they spoil our food we will be weak – not so weak we cannot work, but not so strong that we might think about tackling him or his comrades.’ Khaled nodded through the bars to where another guard was crushing the bread of another slave under his heel. ‘There are thousands of wretches in this underground vault, and only a few hundred guards.’

‘Aye, an army . . . but half-blind and lame,’ Pavo commented wryly, seeing the sorry packs of slaves cowering under the guards’ whips all around the cavern. Suddenly, a cracking of bone sounded behind him. He swung round to see Khaled stretching his painfully thin and knotted limbs, his arms looped behind his back and the bones in his chest popping.

‘I tell you, it means less misery at the end of the shift,’ Khaled said, seeing Pavo wince with every crunch and grind. ‘Did it not aid you yesterday and the day before?’

Pavo sighed, nodded and set about following the man’s routine. First, he stretched his hamstrings by sitting on the flattest area of the cell floor and reaching out to grasp the toes of one foot until the back of his leg burned, before switching to the other leg. He shot furtive glances at Khaled and wondered again how long the man had been in here. Years, was all Khaled had said when he asked.

‘Tell me, when you were brought here, Spahbad Tamur must have been little more than a boy?’ he asked in an attempt to date Khaled’s time in the mines.

‘Ah, yes, a young boy with a supple, malleable mind,’ Khaled shrugged, then twisted until his shoulder blades cracked. An incongruous grin of relief followed this. ‘His father, Cyrus, was the Spahbad of Persis before him. A noble soul, but one who neglected to nurture and educate his son. Thus, Tamur has fallen under the influence of others . . . ’

Pavo frowned as he dipped to rest his weight on one knee then pressed forward upon it, stretching his quadriceps. ‘Aye, who?’

‘The same cur responsible for casting me into this place. Ramak, Archimagus of the Fire Temple.’ Khaled’s gaze grew distant and haunted. ‘Spahbad Tamur controls a vast wing of the Savaran. Shahanshah Shapur trusts Tamur. But it is Ramak who truly rules the Satrapy of Persis. There was an internecine war, thirteen years ago, I was chained at the ankle and forced to fight as a paighan in the armies of Tamur. He was a young warrior then – little more than a boy, as you say - over-eager and yet to understand that his orders could cost the lives of men. He sent us in against a gund of clibanarii that day. A thousand iron riders. Man for man, paighan versus clibanarius.’ Khaled shook his head.

‘The clibanarii are all but invincible, are they not?’ Pavo asked, recalling the fearsome iron-plated, masked riders from the desert.

‘Invincible? I thought so too, once. The finest blades – lances and swords – will blunt on their plate-armour. Then I saw a shepherd’s boy fell one of them with his sling. The shot punctured the iron plate as if it was paper. So I had a sling in my belt that day on the battlefield.’ He made a gesture with his arm, as if spinning an imaginary sling. ‘Took down three of them before we were overrun. Tamur’s army was beaten back that day. He still had some light in his heart then, and consoled us at first. But when Ramak questioned him in front of the ranks, seeking answers for his defeat, his mood grew foul. So he took out his ire upon his paighan, claiming some of us tried to run and caused the defeat. Some of us did,’ he shrugged, ‘but not me. Regardless, Ramak saw fit to blame me and the hundred who fought under my drafsh.’ He held out his arms as if in wonderment. ‘And this is my reward.’ His bitter smile faded. ‘Many of my people follow the noble traditions of old Persia, the traditions I was raised by: speak quietly and eloquently, never criticise bad advice, do not leer at food being brought to you, always speak the truth . . . never mistreat a slave. In the far-flung satrapies, slaves are allowed three days of rest a month, they are not subjected to violence and can aspire to freedom. Such virtues are smiled upon by our God, Ahura Mazda, but not in these lands – not by Ramak. The archimagus does little to uphold Ahura Mazda’s glory, for he is too preoccupied coveting and multiplying his own. He talks of Persia and Rome as the truth and the lie. The only truth is that Ramak
is
the lie.’ He stopped for a moment, struggling to control his anger. Then a canny smile lined his aged features. ‘When an ambitious man seeks to harness the gods; kings, empires and armies should beware.’

‘Aye, I’ll say,’ Pavo pulled a wry smile, remembering the events surrounding the Bosporus mission. Then he stood to begin stretching his arms. He wondered at the significance of this pair, Tamur and Ramak. They knew of the mission for the scroll, it seemed. So they must have known of its importance. He had said nothing of the scroll to Khaled yet. He had quickly grown to like the man, and was now starting to trust him, but past experience had told him to be wary of strangers in the guise of friends. Thus, he decided to tread cautiously. ‘This Ramak . . . how far could his designs for power stretch?’

Khaled shook his arms and rolled his head on his shoulders. ‘The man would gladly slide a blade between Shahanshah Shapur’s ribs then sit upon his throne in Ctesiphon, and still he would not be content. But he cannot do so – for the rest of the Satrapies would crush him. Controlling the Persis Satrapy alone will not realise Ramak’s wants. He needs gold to swell his forces, to challenge Shapur.’

A cold shiver ran down Pavo’s spine, thinking of the ruinous state of the Strata Diocletiana, and then of Roman Syria and the riches a conqueror could harvest from that land. ‘A ripe target. And if the scroll remains lost, a viable one,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Eh?’ Khaled cocked his head to one side.

Pavo shook his head. ‘Nothing . . . perhaps I will talk of it later.’ He sought to change the subject, then realised Khaled had finally answered his question. ‘You were captured and brought here thirteen years ago, you said?’

Khaled flinched at this. ‘Indeed,’ he said, his lips tightening as he twirled the ends of his moustache. ‘It has been a long time. But this place will not break me. I will not allow it. I pray to Ahura Mazda every day, and ask him to deliver me back to my family. They are out there,’ he said, gazing up as if able to see through the hundreds of feet of thick rock and out into the light of day. ‘I will be with them again.’

Pavo dropped his gaze. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think of that which troubles you.’ But something screamed in his thoughts.
If Khaled has survived here for thirteen years, then perhaps there were others who had survived for . . .

‘That I know of no other in these mines who has been here longer than me tells me something,’ Khaled continued, a single tear hovering on his eyelid. ‘That I am destined to live on until I am reunited with them.’

His words hit Pavo like a blow to the guts. Father was dead. He had known this in the deepest recesses of his mind all along, but the truth felt like an icy dagger to the heart. He disguised his anguish by hurriedly tying a rag of cloth over his nose and mouth in preparation for the coming shift. But his lips trembled and a stinging behind his eyes blurred his vision with a veil of tears.

Suddenly, a spear tip rattled along the bars once more. Both men braced. Pavo’s heart thundered. Gorzam unlocked the cell and ushered in another pair of guards, who hurried to poke their spear tips at Pavo and Khaled’s backs. Gorzam cracked the whip down on the dusty, salty cell floor and the noise was cue enough for both men to shuffle out into the cavern obediently.

The echoing rhythm of pickaxes intensified as they trudged along one of the walkways that snaked round the cavern wall. When they came to a ramp that led down onto the cavern floor and the salt face they had worked these last weeks, Pavo turned to descend.

But Gorzam thrust his whip-wielding hand into Pavo’s chest. ‘Not today,’ he barked, then nodded to the far edge of the cavern. There, a network of tunnels spidered off from the main cavern and into the rock. Each tunnel was barely lit and only tall enough for a crouching man to fit into. Gorzam struggled to contain his joy. ‘Today, you work in the wormholes.’

Pavo sensed Khaled brace at this. Then another guard jabbed his spear butt into the Persian’s back, sending him stumbling onwards, round the walkway towards the nearest tunnel entrance. Khaled picked up a basket and a pickaxe from the pile near the tunnel, then crouched and entered the space. Pavo took a pickaxe and followed, stooping so his back was horizontal. The air in here was sweltering and he felt his chest tighten at once. His quickened breaths barely fought off a tingling dizziness. As he stumbled along, the jagged rock overhead scraped on his back, and clouds of dust thicker than ever wafted into his eyes and mouth. Panic began to grip him as he felt the walls of the tunnel grow narrower, almost tomb-like. He stumbled and fell, then righted himself, back pressed against the dagger-sharp crystals of the tunnel wall, panting swiftly.