Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire

by Gordon Doherty

  The pair moved gingerly to the edge of the black abyss, then stepped off. For a moment, they were weightless and falling, just like so many poor wretches cast down here by Gorzam. Suddenly, the world around Pavo jolted. The bones in his arms creaked and groaned and his shoulders almost leapt from their sockets. He slid a few feet but then steadied himself. The rope swung out across the shaft, past the revolving timber pole, then back again, eventually coming to a halt with Pavo dangling in the darkness by the pole, Sura a few feet above. The pair’s breath froze in their lungs when they heard a scuffling of boots above. Pavo peered up: the three guards had come to the ground they had stood on just moments ago. He could see their wrinkled faces looking around, then squinting into the shaft, right at him, but unable to see anything other than blackness.

  ‘What’s going on over here?’ One of the guards asked.

  Pavo realised they had accosted the crazed slave.

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all bar the same toil I have enjoyed for the last five years.’

  ‘We heard you talking to someone,’ another guard growled. A shower of dust, salt and rubble toppled past Sura and Pavo. Pavo looked up to see the crazed man being held out over the precipice by the throat, his back turned to the shaft, his feet on the lip of the drop and his arms out wide to balance.

  A dry cackle belied any fear the man felt. ‘I talk to many people when I work alone. The dead walk in these places, you know. Many of them were once my friends. Let me fall, then I can join them and be free of this place.’

  The guard growled, then pulled the man back from the edge and shoved him away. ‘Work hard, old man – I’ll be expecting fifteen baskets from you today. If not, then you will feel the barbs of my whip.’ After a moment’s silence, the guards slipped away from the edge of the shaft and their footsteps faded.

  In the blackness, Pavo could just make out Sura, clinging to the rope a few feet above him, his eyes wide. The pair expelled a sigh of relief, then Sura motioned to descend. Pavo shinned down the rope until there was only blackness all round. The air was utterly stale and dead here, and it had taken on an odd chill too. He looked up and realised he could no longer see the disc of light above. How far had they descended, he wondered? For a moment, he imagined that the shaft was bottomless, and the thought of an everlasting fall into darkness played havoc with his imagination. His grip on the rope grew tighter and his descent more careful. Finally, he reached the end of the rope and halted, clinging to the frayed fibres.

  ‘The rope’s not long enough!’ He hissed up to Sura.

  ‘What? No, I heard it from the guards themselves. Sixty feet, they said, I’m certain of it.’

  Pavo tentatively stretched out a foot into the darkness below, poking out in search of ground. Nothing.

  ‘Then how come there’s no ground below my - ’ the frayed ends of the rope unwound in his hands. His grip deserted him and he plummeted. The terror of the fall into blackness was real. He flailed and sucked in a breath to cry out. But before the cry could manifest, he crunched onto hard ground, only feet below.

  He looked up, his head spinning. A sense of relief swirled in his heart only to be snatched away again: From the surrounding gloom, three dark shapes moved towards him, arms outstretched. He clasped for the sharpened shaving stone, tearing it from his loincloth. The nearest of the figures reached out for him and he swiped at it. Another grappled him by the shoulders. The sharpened stone fell to the ground. Terror welled in his chest and a cry leapt from his lungs. A filthy hand clasped over his mouth to stifle it.

  Zosimus looked up from the ridge of salt crystal, resting an elbow on his pickaxe momentarily.

  ‘Are you bloody insane?’ Felix hissed beside him. ‘Get your head down, or you’ll lose it!’

  ‘Aye,’ Quadratus whispered from nearby, ‘don’t draw their attention.’

  But Zosimus ignored them, his eyes narrowing on the prone form near the main shaft, and the absence of Sura working the baskets on the pulley. Another guard was calling out from the other side of the chamber, his face wrinkled in suspicion as he eyed this scene too. This guard stalked round the edge of the main shaft to the pulley and froze. He stared at the prone form, then crouched, shaking the still figure.

  ‘If that’s Sura sleeping on duty . . . ’ Felix whispered by Zosimus’ side.

  Quadratus now broke cover to look with them. ‘That’s not Sura,’ he jabbed a finger at the prone figure who was now coming around groggily, his stark white skin and hair now visible as he sat up, ‘that’s a guard – and someone’s knocked seven shades out of him.’

  ‘Someone? Aye, Sura,’ Felix groaned.

  Just then, the alarmed guard stood up and clenched his spear, looking this way and that. His groggy comrade muttered something over and over.

  ‘They went below, get Gorzam,’ he croaked once more. At this, the alarmed guard hurried up the ladders into the chamber above.

  ‘Did I just hear that?’ Zosimus gawped. ‘They went down the main shaft? They being Sura and . . . ’

  ‘Pavo!’ Felix and Quadratus finished for him.

  Their eyes sparkled as they looked to one another, each holding their pickaxes. Each thinking the same thing.

  The hand slid away from Pavo’s mouth as his eyes acclimatised to the darkness. Slaves, he realised, seeing the dirt-encrusted features of the man before him. Almond-shaped eyes almost devoid of colour dominated his gaunt features. His hair was thin and tousled, his beard tangled. He was aged, but knotted muscle seemed to strain under his taut skin and his back was broad and hunched like some beast of burden, and he wore only a ragged loincloth. The man held up a finger to his lips.

  ‘Be silent. The guards hear everything,’ he whispered in Parsi, pointing a finger up the shaft.

  Behind this man and the two with him, three other hunched figures groaned like oxen as they turned a vast timber wheel. Each man drove at a handle projecting from this wheel, turning it and the iron-studded pole that drove the pulley system. There were seven handles, four of them unoccupied. The three men strained to keep the wheel turning, but it slowed and then ground to a halt, the squeaking of settling baskets echoing above.

  Footsteps crunched through the dust in the chamber above. The almond-eyed man’s face lengthened and his milky eyes darted. A bark from a guard echoed down through the shaft.

  ‘Get the pulley moving, or I will come down there with my comrades. My whip is thirsty!’

  The other two who had grappled Pavo hurried back to the empty poles on the wheel. With pained grunts, they drove the pulley back into life, the rumbling and squeaking of baskets picking up once more. With a low growl and then fading, crunching footsteps, the guard above was gone.

  As soon as the guard’s footsteps had died completely, Sura thudded down next to Pavo, startling the almond-eyed man, then raising his fists as if readying for a fight.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Pavo said hurriedly in Greek, lifting and tucking the sharpened rock back into the waist of his loincloth, ‘he’s one of us.’

  ‘Who is?’ Sura hissed, blinking. ‘I can hardly see a bloody thing!

  At this, the almond-eyed man moved forward, frowning. He held out his hands to Sura’s face, and traced his fingertips across his features.

  Sura backed away until he bumped into some rocky column. ‘Take your hands off . . . ’ he started.

  ‘You are no Persian,’ the man cut him off.

  The breath caught in Pavo and Sura’s throats. The man had spoken in Greek. Not the broken, accented Greek of the Persians they had met in this land. Greek of the empire.

  Pavo’s skin tingled, seeing the aquiline nose and pale skin under the filth coating the man’s face. ‘And neither are you.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure just what I am anymore, after so long in the darkness,’ the man said, then turned to Pavo, tracing his fingers across his jaw and then his brow. As he ran a finger over Pavo’s beaky nose, his brow creased in a frown. ‘Interesting . . . ’

  Pavo peered at eac
h of the men working the wheel. There were six there including this man, it seemed. ‘You are a legionary? These are your comrades?’

  ‘Aye, brothers till the bitter end,’ he gestured dryly towards the wheel.

  ‘Then you are of Legio II Parthica.’

  For but a heartbeat, the man’s face lit up. ‘I am Quintus Clovius Arius of the second cohort, second century.’ Then the light left him and his shoulders slumped. ‘These men you see before you are all that remains of my proud legion. It is a long time since I last set eyes upon them,’ he said sadly, passing a hand across his milky, sightless eyes.

  Pavo’s heart hammered on his ribs and he looked at the men by the wheel again and again. As each man strained past, turning the wheel, he saw the same sightless eyes, the callused feet scraping in the dust. Their faces were illuminated in the gloom just enough for Pavo to see. To see that not one of them was Father.

  Sura took over, stepping forward to place a hand on Pavo’s shoulder. ‘There are no others down here?’ he asked Arius.

  ‘None bar the few in this foul space,’ Arius replied flatly, extending his arms to the blackness around the wheel.

  Pavo heard the words like an icy blade to the heart.

  ‘And definitely no guards?’ Sura continued.

  Arius smiled a weary smile. ‘The guards refuse to work in this place. They come to visit us, yes, usually to mete out punishment should the pulley run slowly or stop for too long. The only other visitors we get are . . . ’ he extended a hand to the gloom encircling the wheel.

  Pavo gazed into this blackness. At last, he made out the nest of jagged stony spikes that ringed the wheel and the foot of the mine’s main shaft. Like huge teeth, jutting from the ground, twice the height of a man.

  ‘Stalagmites,’ Sura said by his side, reaching out to one.

  Pavo stumbled numbly towards the spikes. At that moment, he caught scent of the raw, metallic stench coming from them. He leapt back, the breath catching in his throat. ‘What in Hades?’ The jagged rocky spikes were littered with white shards, like broken pottery. But this was no pottery. Skulls grinned, shattered and cracked. Skeletons lay impaled through the ribs where they had landed. Smashed bones lay in piles like kindling. Pavo twisted to see this horror all around them. Some bodies were fresher – glistening red or dark-brown, and rats worked on tearing the last flesh from the bones. So this was the resting place of every soul thrown down the shaft. Pavo twisted away from the scene, at once thinking of poor Khaled. His gaze fell upon a thick pile of animal remains near the wheel – some chicken bones and many rat bones.

  ‘At least Gorzam feeds us well,’ Arius spoke bitterly, gesturing towards the animal remains. Beside it was a bucket of water, half full, that looked like it had been lowered down from the chamber above. ‘And he keeps us well-watered too – as a farmer would do for his oxen. For if the pulley does not continue to turn and lift salt to the surface then he will feel his master’s wrath.’

  Pavo glanced at Arius and the five men nearby in the gloom at the wheel. ‘Yet there are so few of you?’

  Arius nodded; ‘When we were first sent down here, there were more of us. Those who perished soon after, we buried as best we could in the jagged rocks. When bodies were thrown down from above, we would try to bury them too, to honour them. But when we lost our sight, we lost the ability to offer the dead such dignity, to tell one shattered body from another.’

  ‘You buried your comrades in there?’ Pavo turned back to the nest of stalagmites and the piles of skeletal remains. A chill finger traced his spine as he remembered his own vow. Even if only to reclaim your bones, Father, I will find you. ‘Then the man I sought lies in there too.’

  ‘You came here looking for someone?’ Arius frowned, then his face creased in a sardonic half-grin. ‘I did wonder why any man would choose to come down here.’

  Pavo felt his legs move under him, his eyes hanging on the jumble of remains in the stony spikes, one hand reaching out. ‘I came here for Mettius Vitellius Falco.’

  ‘Falco?’ the almond-eyed man replied, familiarity lacing his words.

  ‘Aye, he was my father,’ Pavo said, crouching to look into the pile of bones.

  ‘Then you are looking in the wrong place,’ Arius said flatly.

  ‘No,’ Pavo shook his head, ‘he was sent down here. I know this.’

  ‘Pavo,’ Sura gasped.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sura. I was wrong. All this has been for nothing. You shouldn’t have come down here with me . . . ’

  ‘Pavo!’ Sura hissed again, then clamped a hand on Pavo’s shoulder, twisting him round.

  Pavo stood tall, frowning at his friend, then followed Sura’s outstretched arm and pointing finger. There, from the shadows at the far side of the wheel, a seventh figure shuffled forward.

  A shiver of realisation raced up Pavo’s spine; seven handles on the wheel . . . seven men!

  This one wore a torn rag like a Roman robe. He carried with him a flat piece of slate containing a meagre pile of bloodied rat meat scraps. He was grey-haired. The long, thick tumbling locks were caked in salt dust, his shoulders were crooked and his back hunched like the others. When the man looked up, Pavo’s stomach fell away. He gawped at the aged, tired face, the blood-matted sockets where his eyes had once been. The wiry beard under a hawk-beak nose that had been broken many times. The stigma on his knotted, scarred bicep.

  Legio II Parthica.

  Pavo’s heart crashed like a war drum. A warm wash of tears spilled across his cheeks, splitting the white coating of salt dust. ‘Father?’

  ‘I told you,’ Arius spoke next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder to pat him warmly, ‘you will not find Falco amongst in the bones. He is a hardy whoreson who refuses to die, like the rest of us!’

  Pavo heard Arius’ words like a distant echo. Father approached him, holding out one shaking and knotted hand, a broad and frayed leather bracelet hanging loose around his sinewy wrist. He said nothing, then clasped his hands over Pavo’s.

  ‘Is this another of the dreams, taunting me?’ Falco spoke in that gravelly tone Pavo had not heard since childhood.

  Pavo shook his head, but was unable to reply, his lips trembling. He clasped the phalera and held it to Father’s hands.

  Falco gripped the phalera, an intense frown knitting his brow as he traced a fingertip across the engraving. At last he reached up to touch the hot tears on Pavo’s cheeks. ‘Son?’

  ‘Father, I . . . ’ his words dissolved and he and Falco embraced. It was long and lasting, both men sobbing. Myriad memories exploded through Pavo’s mind. The past, the warmth of the sun on his skin as he and Father had paddled in the waters of the Propontus, the joy of Father returning from campaign, the games he would play in the streets with his friends under Father’s doting gaze. Then he recalled the last time he had embraced Father like this in the year before Bezabde; he had barely been chest-high to the broad warrior in freshly oiled armour with the scent of wood smoke and dust in his tousled chestnut locks. Now, he towered nearly a foot over Father. The years in this dark Hades had reaped their toll.

  ‘You are the warrior now,’ Falco sobbed, as if reading his thoughts.

  ‘So many years, Father. So many years I thought you were dead,’ Pavo shook his head as they stood back. A flurry of questions danced into his mind. ‘Your eyes,’ Pavo raised a hand, his fingers hovering just before the bloody sockets. Memories of the nightmare barged into his thoughts. ‘Gorzam did this to you?’

  Falco smiled dryly at this. ‘Gorzam? No. He is responsible for many of the scars that lace my back, and for putting my men and I down into this chamber. But if that witless creature were to heat an iron to burn out my eyes, he’d doubtless pick the iron up by the hot end and injure himself. No, this happened to me before I was brought to the mines. After the fall of Bezabde, my men and I were taken to Bishapur. We were paraded in chains, marched before the spahbad in his palace, then taken to the Fire Temple. I was made an example of. The Persian Archimagu
s, he lifted the glowing iron from the Sacred Fire,’ his head dropped in defeat, ‘his was the last face I ever saw.’

  Pavo shook with rage. ‘Ramak?’

  Falco grappled him by the shoulders. ‘Pavo, do not be angry . . . ’ he said then broke down in a coughing fit. The coughs were dry and rasping, thick dashes of blood spitting forth with each one. The lung disease had its claws deep in his chest, it seemed.

  Pavo saw the blood but could not make out its colour in the gloom. Red or black? He bowed his head and pressed his lips to the phalera, trying in vain to stifle his fury. Then another question rose to the fore. ‘This,’ he held up the phalera, ‘you sent it to me?’

  Falco reached out, feeling the bronze disc and clamping it in his hands again. ‘I did, Pavo.’

  ‘The crone, how did she carry it from here to Constantinople?’ Pavo remembered the withered old woman who had hobbled up to him and pressed the piece into his palm on the day he was sold into slavery.

  ‘The crone? Is that what she was? I was sightless when she came to me. In fact, I wondered if she was real at all and not just a voice in my head.’

  Pavo’s eyes darted this way and that, trying to make sense of it all.

  Falco pushed the phalera back into Pavo’s hands. ‘It does not matter how the piece came to you. What matters is that you have had it these past years. I prayed it would give you strength, to remember me and all that I taught you. I have never felt guilt such as that which overcame me when I was first sent down here. I realised just how alone you would be, so far away.’

  Pavo nodded, tucking the phalera into the waist of his loincloth, tears dripping from his chin. ‘Father, the phalera, the memories of you. They have made me everything I am today. I was never alone.’

  ‘That warms my heart like sunlight itself,’ Falco sighed, clasping both hands to Pavo’s shoulders. Then his face wrinkled in concern. ‘But I never wished to draw you here, to this gods-forsaken realm. Indeed, my few moments of rest and sleep in this place have been plagued with nightmares of you setting out to find me. Every time, I saw you, reaching out to me . . . ’