Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire

by Gordon Doherty

  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.

  ‘Be calm,’ Khaled grasped him by the shoulders. ‘Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Let each breath reach your stomach, fill your lungs, enrich your blood.’

  Pavo nodded, clenching his eyes shut. His heart hammered at first, then it slowed. The air was still foul but the deeper breaths seemed to cool and calm him. His heartbeat returned to normal as he fought back his fears.

  ‘Now come,’ Khaled beckoned, one eye on the guard scowling at them from the mouth of the tunnel.

  They carried on until the torchlight from the main cavern offered only a dull glow that danced from the crystals. Every so often, the tunnel widened where men worked into the salt face. There were pairs and trios of men, bent double as they hacked and chiselled at the salt face.

  ‘Why do they continue to work – there are no guards in these tunnels, it seems?’ Pavo asked.

  ‘That’s because no guard would want to come down into these deathly passages,’ Khaled replied. ‘They continue to work because the guards waiting at the mouth of each tunnel know how many men are in there, and they expect twelve crates of salt per man per shift. If there is one crate less . . . ’

  Pavo nodded, ‘I can imagine.’

  They continued on, passing another group of workers. One skeletal figure trembled, racked with fever and struggling to draw breath. As Pavo passed by, the man retched and spat thick gobbets of blood. Black blood. Pavo’s heart iced at the sight, remembering Khaled’s description of the disease. He wondered whether to pity or envy the man – for surely death would be a freedom of sorts.

  They came to the end of the tunnel and eyed the sheet of salt crystal before them. Blessedly, they could stand tall at this point, but there was little else to relish in this location. He and Khaled shared a weary glance before they took to hacking at the face. Salt shards and dust showered back at them with every strike.

  Pavo halted, coughing. He turned to fill a basket, grunting as he hefted the salt chunks into it. ‘You could fit a man in one of these.’

  ‘Many have tried to do just what you are thinking of; hiding in the baskets that are lifted to the surface on the pulley.’

  ‘Aye?’ Pavo’s eyes narrowed, intrigued.

  ‘Aye, the shaft is the only way in or out.’ Khaled shook his head. ‘But at the top, they have men checking every basket. Those they find hiding, they send straight back down. No need for ladders, if you get my meaning.’

  Pavo nodded faintly, horrified. He looked to the shattered salt face before them then weighed the pickaxe a few times. ‘Has anyone ever tried tunnelling their way out?’

  Khaled’s face fell, then he boomed with laughter that filled the end of the tunnel. ‘If they have tried, then perhaps in a few hundred years they might reach the surface!’ He jabbed a finger upwards. ‘I told you, hundreds and hundreds of feet of pure rock. If you think it’s hard mining the salt, then try swinging your axe at that!’ he said, nodding to a flat patch of blue shale, veined with russet sedimentary rock.

  Pavo shrugged and returned to swinging his pickaxe. Within a few hours, they had filled eight baskets. Pavo transported each full basket back to the tunnel mouth and into the cavern, his callused feet moving over the jagged floor more easily now. The air in the main cavern felt almost luxurious in comparison to that of the cramped tunnel. He hurried over to the edge of the main shaft where he latched the basket onto the pulley system. He risked a glance up to the disc of light above, and shuddered at the thought of the poor wretches who had hidden in the baskets and come within feet of freedom, bathed in a few heartbeats of daylight, only to be cast back down the shaft to their deaths.

  When he felt Gorzam’s glare upon him he hurried back into the tunnel and stooped to scuttle along to its end. Khaled and he carried on hacking at the salt face. Another hour passed until Pavo’s shoulders ached. He had become used to the burning thirst that accompanied every shift but in this airless tunnel it was intensified. Self-pity drained away and then anger took over. He found a new surge of strength and began to hack furiously. The vexillatio had been all but wiped out, his friends dead or lost somewhere in this underground Hades. The mission ha
d been swatted like a gnat by this Tamur and his master, Ramak. And the dark-hearted bastard Gorzam walked these mines wearing the phalera. Father’s phalera. Father, whose bones no doubt lay somewhere in the dust of this stinking, filthy hole in the heart of Persia, a hole he too would die in as a slave. As a slave! He snarled and his teeth ground like rocks. He smashed at the salt face until shards – some as large as men – toppled to the floor around him.

  ‘Stop!’ Khaled cried, grabbing his bicep.

  Pavo halted, pickaxe raised overhead, panting.

  ‘You will bring the tunnel down on top of us,’ Khaled continued, wide-eyed, pointing to the large crack snaking across the ceiling. ‘I have seen many men perish like this, crushed under the crystals.’

  Pavo fell back, slumping against the tunnel wall, his head falling into his hands.

  Khaled crouched before him. ‘Pavo? What’s wrong?’

  ‘What is right?’ Pavo shrugged, pulling the rag from his mouth and nose. ‘This place drains hope from my every thought. If escape is impossible, then what point is there in living on in this cursed routine?’

  Khaled nodded and sat, clasping his hands before him. ‘Your words echo my thoughts from my first year here. I was faced with the impossible; to live through this torture every day in the hope that something would change for me – that I would be free again.’

  ‘Hope?’ Pavo looked up, shaking his head.

  ‘It comes from my faith, Pavo. Archimagus Ramak took everything from me the day he cast me down here. Every day since, Gorzam salts those wounds. But nobody can take the light of Ahura Mazda from my heart. His truth is my inspiration.’ He clasped a hand to his bony breast. ‘It lives on in me and I live on because of it.’ He frowned and fixed Pavo with a firm gaze. ‘You have yet to tell me – what god do your legions look to in times of darkness?’

  Pavo thought of the pious and bellicose Baptista, now but bones in the desert. He thought of his Mithras-worshipping comrades in the XI Claudia – how many of them were now but shades? ‘These are changing times for the men of Rome’s legions. Many now worship the Christian God; others, like the men of my legion, they stay true to the old ways and worship . . . worshipped Mithras.’

  ‘Mithras – the friend of Ahura Mazda?’ Khaled’s face lifted with a broad smile.

  Pavo nodded uncertainly. He knew only that the Mithraism of the legions had its origins far east of the Roman Empire. Before the fall of the Danubian Limes, he had often visited the Mithraeum near the fort in Durostorum with his comrades in the XI Claudia. He remembered vividly the initiation rite in that dank, underground chamber – Quadratus pressing a heated blade against his bicep. Yet he had found faith not in Mithras, but in the legionaries he had come to know like family. They trusted him like a brother. And he them. A stinging sorrow needled behind his eyes.

  But Khaled seemed transported from the mine as he recalled; ‘Mithras shares Ahura Mazda’s truth. Mithras is love, affection, friendship, the light of the sun. Mithras is a companion in life, in battle and in the afterlife.’ He glanced back to Pavo as if snapping out of a trance. ‘You and your men have chosen their faith wisely, Roman.’

  ‘Perhaps, but then I’d hope Mithras would offer me a sign of hope . . . ’ he stopped, frowning.

  Khaled frowned too.

  They both looked to the salt face at the end of the tunnel. From behind there, where Pavo had gouged the huge chunks of salt crystal, there was the faintest sound. A faraway hissing.

  ‘Water?’ The pair whispered at once.

  They crawled back to the salt face and chipped carefully at it. They worked towards the sound of hissing for over an hour until they could hear it clearly. When Pavo chipped away another shard, the sound changed to a gurgling. Both men yelped as a meagre trickle of crystal-clear, ice-cold water tumbled from the tiny opening, poured across a lip of sedimentary rock and then drained through a crack in the floor. They looked at one another, faces stretched in impossible smiles, then cupped their hands under the stream. Each took a handful and drank in silence, draining every last drop. They did the same again and again until their bellies were full, then they took to lashing the water over their faces and hair, cooling themselves and washing off the grime of sweat and dust. The coldness inside and out was like the most soothing of balms. Pavo wondered at the sound of his and Khaled’s laughter – a salve that helped dissolve his dark thoughts. He hefted his pickaxe carefully to chip more crystal from the opening to the spring, when Khaled grappled his wrist again.

  ‘No. We are not the first to hear the rushing of water behind the rock and the salt. What trickles through here as a gentle spring might be a torrent behind these crystals. If we mine too far, the tunnel could be flooded in moments and we would drown.’

  Pavo tilted his head to one side in agreement, lowering his pickaxe. ‘Aye, a spring will do for me.’ Then he looked to Khaled, grinning. ‘But we must fill our quota of baskets, then perhaps we will be sent back in here tomorrow?’

  But Khaled’s grin faded and he looked past Pavo’s shoulder, down the tunnel.

  A pair of eyes glinted in the gloom, blinked, then disappeared.

  ‘Who is it?’ Pavo whispered.

  ‘Bashu!’ Khaled gasped.

  ‘A guard?’

  ‘No.’ A broad grin spread across Khaled’s face, lifting his moustache. ‘Something more precious than a seam of gold . . . a friend!’

  The eyes jostled ever closer, then the lean form of a young man emerged into the end of the tunnel. He was handsome, with silver eyes and dark hair swept back from his face. ‘Did I just see that?’ Bashu asked, his eyes glinting as he beheld the trickling water.

  ‘You can do more than see it,’ Khaled said, gesturing for Bashu to approach, ‘drink your fill!’

  The man nodded in greeting to Pavo, then cupped his hands under the water and drank copiously.

  Pavo watched him. ‘Khaled, perhaps we should keep this to ourselves, for now?’ he whispered.

  ‘Do not fear this man,’ Khaled gestured towards Bashu. ‘There was a traitor in the mines recently. A slave who was Gorzam’s dog. He told the guards everything we spoke of. Many I once knew are now dead because of that cur. Bashu here put an end to his deeds.’

  Bashu turned back from the spring, grinning, swinging his pickaxe round and cocking an eyebrow towards the tip. ‘Aye, the fool strayed between me and the salt face at the wrong moment, if you take my meaning?’

  Pavo nodded. ‘I think I understand.’

  Bashu looked to the whip scars on Pavo’s shoulders. ‘You already understand Gorzam’s whip, I see?’

  ‘That one will push someone too far one day,’ Pavo shrugged and stooped to pick up the basket by his feet, brimming with salt crystal.

  Bashu smiled at this. ‘Aye, that will be a fine day!’

  Pavo bent double to scuttle back through the tunnel, leaving Khaled and Bashu to talk. He rose as he came to the end of the tunnel and back into the main cavern, then headed straight over to the pulley by the main shaft. For once, the pulley was still. He questioned this for but a moment, dumping his basket to the ground. He found his thoughts drifting. Once more, despite a voice inside him screaming at him to stop, he risked a look upwards. The distant light of day seemed curious and foreign now, so long it had been since he last felt it upon his skin. For just an instant, he let his thoughts drift. That last night with Felicia. His belly full and his heart content. The warm comfort of the bed. Her smooth, scented skin.

  A roar of laughter from Gorzam was enough to snap him back to the grim present. The giant guard stood up on a shadowy alcove on the cavern wall, supping the dregs from his cup of water and crushed poppy seeds. It seemed Gorzam needed a regular dose of the mixture – a few hours into every shift. The big guard drained his cup and began to descend a rocky path towards the cavern floor. The man’s usually twisted features seemed relaxed, his eyelids hooded slightly from the concoction. Pavo lifted an empty basket and made to turn for the tunnel entrance again. But he
froze, his gaze locked on the lip of the main shaft before him. A salt-coated, blonde mopped figure emerged at the tip of the ladder, coming from the chamber below. His heart thundered.

  He and the other gawped at one another.

  ‘Pavo?’ Sura croaked.

  Pavo stepped forward gingerly, as if wary of dispelling this mirage. But this was no illusion. His heart ached as he beheld his friend; joyous that he was alive and sickened at his gaunt form. Sura’s eyes were sunken and black-ringed. His cheekbone had been broken, no doubt at the hands of the guards. His ankles were caked in salt, barely masking the raw flesh where he had been chained and marched through the desert. His ribs and shoulders jutted just like Khaled’s.

  ‘Well don’t look at me like that – you look like a beggar’s breakfast too you know,’ Sura frowned.

  It was all Pavo could do not to burst out in laughter and embrace his friend. He snatched a glance to either side, seeing Gorzam making his way over. ‘I don’t have long – where are you being kept?’

  ‘We’re in the chamber below. I’ve been sent up here for some rope – the pulley’s broken. I’m supposed to collect the baskets that come down from the chambers above.’

  ‘We?’ Pavo snatched on the word.

  ‘Zosimus, Quadratus and Felix are down there too. I’d be mining alongside them at the salt face but . . . I tried telling them I’m the best salt miner in Adrianople . . . even I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean.’ He offered with a wheezing cough and a weak grin. ‘Habitus and Noster are in the chamber below us. There were others, but . . . ’ he shook his head.

  Pavo’s eyes darted. ‘Gallus . . . what about Gallus?’

  Sura’s face fell and he shook his head.