Empire of Dragons

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Uxal shook his head. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The story of a Greek doctor who lived at the court of Emperor Artaxerxes.’

  ‘Ah,’ replied Uxal. ‘Anyway, you in particular have got me worried. You’re a soldier, aren’t you?’

  ‘We all are.’

  ‘But you more than the others. The way you look is a permanent challenge. Your eyes are defiant. Hide both if you want to live.’

  ‘I have to live,’ said Metellus, ‘and so do my comrades.’

  ‘Fine. Then do as I’ve said and you may last a little longer.’

  As he spoke, the expressions of the others darkened; the signs of consternation were painted on the faces of those men who had all been accustomed for years to facing the worst dangers, to risking their skins constantly. But the prospect of a life without hope, a life of degradation and humiliation, dragging on for who knows how long only to meet an abominable death, made many of them think of suicide, a much more honourable end for soldiers.

  It seemed that Uxal had read their thoughts when he began to speak again after a brief interruption. ‘Tomorrow you’ll see that hell exists, but remember that there’s worse: the third level, the bottom galleries. Whoever ends up down there is branded first, and then never again allowed to see the light of day. Only cadavers come out of those dark tunnels.

  ‘Some of you will probably decide to commit suicide. That’s the rule: usually two or three out of ten, but that depends on the type of men you are. I don’t know you yet, so I couldn’t say. I’ve seen men crush their skulls against a rock, or throw themselves into one of the wells or run themselves through on their pickaxes. It’s a choice I respect. I’ve considered it myself more than once. But if you want my advice, try to keep going. You never know what the future holds. To tell the truth, I’ve seen men leave here.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Publius.

  ‘Three . . . in twenty years.’

  ‘Not that many,’ commented Quadratus sarcastically.

  ‘Depends on your point of view,’ replied Uxal.

  ‘And do you know how they managed to get out?’ asked Balbus.

  ‘That I don’t know.’

  ‘Ransom?’ asked Metellus.

  ‘Maybe. But I’m not certain.’

  ‘We are grateful for the warnings and the information you’ve given us, but I’d say it’s best to get some rest now. Tomorrow we begin work in the mine.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. We’re all in the same shit. I thought you should know the way things are. One last thing: don’t trust anybody and don’t speak with anyone you don’t know. Everyone’s a spy here. Ready to sell you off, or report you, for an extra spoonful of soup.’

  ‘You’re a spy as well, I suppose,’ said Metellus.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because I have my dignity. I’ve never lost it because I’ve always kept it hidden. Not all men are the same. That’s why I’ve never decided to take my own life. I’ve met a lot of interesting people in here, after all. Many of them have died, lucky them. Others are still alive.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice. And now, if you don’t mind, we should try to get some sleep.’

  ‘Just one more thing . . . a question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There was a strange rumour going around the camp before you arrived.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He nodded. ‘They were saying that among you is a person of exceptional importance . . .’

  Metellus did not bite.

  Uxal leaned forward and examined the faces of the newcomers. ‘I wonder which one of you is this big fish . . . this great man . . .’

  Metellus still did not say a word. Uxal’s gaze rested on Valerian. ‘It’s you. No doubt about it. It can’t be anyone but you . . . the emperor of the Romans. Incredible!’ His lip twisted. ‘Human destiny makes no sense . . . no sense at all. You who commanded half the world are now less important than this toothless old fellow you have in front of you.’

  Metellus, who was closest to him, grabbed his miserable rags. ‘That’s enough, old man. One more word and you’ll never feel like joking again.’

  Uxal cracked a half-smile. ‘Calm down, General, it’s not me that the emperor here has to fear. It’s just that I’ve never seen an emperor before. If I had died yesterday, I would have missed this opportunity.’ He lay down on his pallet but continued to mutter to himself, ‘Unbelievable . . . Who would have believed such a thing . . .’

  Metellus lay down as well. ‘Try to rest, men, and try to survive. At any cost. Even suicide is desertion. Remember that.’

  IT WAS STILL DARK when they were awakened and their chains removed. A jailer gave each of them a shovel and a pickaxe and Metellus noticed that, as the tools were being handed out, the armed guards were never more than a few feet away, their swords unsheathed. Groups of five men at a time were made to step on a platform tied to a winch with ropes. They were lowered underground to the point where the tunnels branched off. Each man was given a lamp to light up the dark, narrow burrows of the mine.

  When the newcomers arrived at the worksite, Metellus took the emperor aside. ‘Caesar, you must not strain yourself. There are eleven of us and we’re more than capable of producing your share as well. It will only mean a slight effort on our part, but your life is precious, and it is our duty to protect it in every way we can.’

  Valerian replied in a calm, firm voice, ‘No. Here we are all the same. I will do my part. It is not right that you sacrifice yourselves for me.’

  The others insisted as well. ‘Caesar,’ urged Quadratus, ‘you must preserve your strength for the day you will be ransomed. You are responsible for the empire. You are the father of our nation and you must return, whatever the cost.’

  ‘I’m nothing now, my friends. Nothing more than a companion in misfortune. I’m sorry to disappoint your hopes, but if my son had tried to ransom me, we would know something by now. Messages between governors fly much faster than the caravan that brought us here. And now let’s get to work. The time we have is barely enough to fulfil the daily task that our jailers have set for us.’ He took an axe and began to strike the rock with considerable strength. The fragments flew in every direction.

  Metellus, Quadratus, Balbus and Antoninus grasped their own pickaxes and began digging. The others began to gather the fragments, to load the baskets and pile them up in the main gallery where the elevator hoist was. One of the jailers noted the number of baskets per miner, then gave a signal and the hoist rose creaking towards the light.

  As work proceeded, the tunnel was invaded by a dense dust which settled on the miners, turning them into white ghosts, stealing away their breath and burning their eyes. The airless atmosphere sucked away their energy and the heat made their toil unbearable.

  The day seemed interminable and, when Metellus and the others were lifted to the surface, they could barely stand up. The awful-smelling soup tasted delectable and the water soothing their scorched throats a balm.

  ‘Everything is relative,’ Uxal commented after he had distributed the water. ‘This stuff would make anyone vomit under normal circumstances, but after such a hellish day, it’s not bad, is it?’

  ‘You’re right, old man,’ replied Antoninus, swallowing the soup with his eyes closed.

  ‘Listen well to what I have to say. Beginning tomorrow, cover your noses and mouths with damp rags, or in a very short while, you’ll no longer be able to draw breath.’

  Valerian approached him. ‘Why are you doing this for us? The man who made you a slave was a Roman. You should hate us.’

  Uxal’s toothless mouth broke into a grin. He evidently felt very honoured to be conversing on such intimate terms with the emperor of the Romans. ‘My master was a son of a bitch before he was a Roman – there are plenty of those everywhere. The reason why I want to help you? I don’t know. Maybe because you act and speak like civilized people.’

  ‘We have mines as well,
with slaves working them exactly the way we are now.’

  ‘Slaves exist everywhere and they will always exist in some form, but when I travelled in your world I also saw temples, squares, libraries, fountains and aqueducts, streets like nowhere else in the world, public baths with hot and cold water . . . Once I was in a city called Lambaesis: it was bang in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere. Yet there was a library full of books and a market with clerks checking the weights on the scales and the capacity of the wine and oil jars. There were baths and fountains fed with the water of an aqueduct that came from hundreds of miles away. And when I travelled, every night I stopped in a place where there was something to eat, a clean bed to sleep in and soldiers to keep thieves, swindlers and murderers away.’

  Valerian was moved. That humble man who had travelled through his empire was recalling the very aspects of civilized living that he had sought to revive during the years he had ruled; the years of his government. ‘Your words give me pleasure,’ he said, ‘even though they are not completely justified. All you know of the Persian world is what you’ve seen in this hellhole. If you had visited Persepolis, Pasargade, Babylonia, Susa, you’d surely be speaking of them with enthusiasm.’

  ‘That might be,’ replied Uxal, ‘but each man can only speak of his own experiences. You know, my dream was to be a Roman citizen. Can you believe that?’

  ‘I can,’ replied Valerian. ‘It’s still the dream of many. For what it’s worth, I have the power to grant your wish. I have not been deprived of my office and thus, by virtue of the humanity you have shown towards me and my companions, I, Licinius Valerian Caesar, declare you a Roman citizen.’

  Uxal glanced at the others with an amazed expression, then looked the emperor in the eye. ‘I’m a Roman citizen. Incredible. If they’d told me, I would never have believed it. What can I do?’

  Balbus spoke up. ‘Well, first of all you can vote and elect public officials, and you can bequeathe an inheritance and the right of citizenship to your children. In case of trial you are entitled to appeal against the sentence and if you are condemned to death you have the right to a rapid execution by decapitation . . .’

  ‘Hmmm . . . all advantages that I fear I’ll never be able to enjoy, but I’m happy all the same. Thank you, Emperor.’

  Valerian smiled and went to take his ration of food from the bucket.

  Quadratus approached Uxal. ‘Tell me something, old man, now that we are compatriots. Hasn’t anyone ever thought of using his work tools to take out the jailers and the guards?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ replied Uxal. ‘But no one has ever tried, at least since I’ve been here.’

  ‘Why, if I may ask?’

  ‘Because after a month in the mine you’ve barely got the strength to pull yourself out of that hole in the evening and crawl to your pallet of stinking straw. Do you think you’d be able to overcome well-armed and nourished men who greatly outnumber you?’

  ‘I get it,’ mumbled Quadratus.

  ‘Good. Now lie down, because the jailer will soon be here to shackle us.’

  They heard the sound of a bolt being drawn and Uxal gestured to everyone to stay down. The jailer entered and passed a chain through the rings that each man wore at his ankle, except for Uxal. He then padlocked the chain and left after closing the door at his back.

  ‘Why don’t they put you in fetters?’ asked Antoninus.

  ‘Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t,’ replied Uxal. ‘They know that I’d never try to get away. They can tell when someone is resigned to his fate. And where would I go anyway? They’d get hold of me after half a mile tops, and I don’t want to end up with a stake through my guts.’

  AFTER A WHILE, all the men were sleeping or seemed to be, but Metellus lay there for a long time with his eyes open, thinking of Clelia and of little Titus, whom he missed more with every passing day. He had never found himself in such a hopeless situation and he thought for the first time of how fate can overturn a man’s life. He thought of the morning that he had gone out at the emperor’s side to face Shapur; he remembered his feeling of foreboding, but he could never have imagined how radically his life would change. That his existence would end at the bottom of a mineshaft, in a dark pit where no one could reach him.

  Yet, despite the deep feeling of despair that had taken hold of him, he tried to think philosophically about his fate: just as destiny had so utterly changed his existence once, it might as easily – for reasons which were unimaginable at the present – reverse the course of events again. The important thing was to stay alive and to protect the emperor’s life.

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling and there, between the cracks of the wooden planks, he saw a star. It shone with an intense, sparkling light and he tried to work out which constellation it belonged to. He was determined to keep his mind occupied, to not let himself be beaten down by despair. He tried to go through every possible escape route in his mind, despite Uxal’s warnings. The enemy had taken away their freedom but not their intelligence, or their will or their resourcefulness. Not only were these still intact, but circumstances would hone them to the full. They were powerful weapons that the men would have to keep hidden from their jailers in order to use them to their maximum advantage when the opportunity arose.

  For years and years, Metellus had been trained to do battle, to withstand fatigue, pain and privation, but the test which faced him now was more arduous than the most bitter combat, than the most exhausting march, than the most agonizing wound. He earnestly called on his ancestors to succour him in this abyss, then he gave in to weariness and fell into an anguished nightmare: neither awake nor asleep, neither alive nor dead.

  5

  MONTHS PASSED, MADE UP OF unchanging days, of brutal toil, of deprivation and humiliation. As did the seasons. Autumn, winter, the sun which descended ever lower on the horizon only to began its ascent once again. The shacks were freezing at first, then hot, then scorching, or all three things together depending on whether it was night or day. The sun slowly began to decline again, and the dust of the storms penetrated every crack and covered everything with the same grey colour: men and objects.

  The first to die was Aemilius, the Christian, one night in late autumn. It was not the exertion that broke him as much as the confinement, the dark, the beatings. The continuous beatings inflicted upon him by one of the jailers, who had singled him out for no particular reason. In the end, he could not bear the mortification. He stopped eating and let himself waste away, day after day.

  His Judaean god had not been capable of freeing him or saving his life. For Metellus and the others, it was normal to think that the gods might not occupy themselves with the plight of men. But not for Aemilius. He thought that his god loved him personally, that he had chosen to suffer two hundred years before under prefect Pontius Pilate to expiate the sins of all humanity. He believed that beyond death there was another life, in which his god would console him for his sufferings. If only that were so, thought Metellus, as inside their hut he closed his friend’s eyes.

  ‘Sleep, soldier,’ he told him. ‘You’ll suffer no more. And wherever you go, take with you the part of our hearts that belongs to you.’

  Then he turned to Uxal. ‘I have to ask you a favour.’

  ‘There’s not much I can do, but ask away.’

  ‘Would you ask the head jailer if we can bury him? Christians want to be buried, as far as I know.’

  ‘Forget it. The Persians believe that the dead contaminate the earth. Which is sacred. They expose their dead on the tops of high towers, like the ones you can see down there on the hill. They call them “towers of silence”. The bodies are eaten up by vultures, and the bones slowly decompose in the sun, the cold, the rain and the snow. Maybe they don’t have it all wrong. It seems better to me than putting people underground. Anyway, you’ve got no choice. Throw him into the pit along with the others. It won’t make much difference.’

  ‘Of course it makes a difference,’ rep
lied Metellus. ‘Of course it does. None of my soldiers has ever died without receiving funeral honours from the assembled ranks.’

  ‘You stiff-necked Roman,’ grumbled Uxal, ‘can’t you see what you’re reduced to? Can you imagine what you look like? I’d like to have a mirror so you could see yourself. You look a wreck, a . . .’

  ‘I don’t need a mirror,’ replied Metellus. ‘I see myself in the eyes of my men, in their demeanour, in their unhealing wounds. I mirror myself in the unspeakable humiliation of my emperor.’

  He then made up a rudimentary litter with two acacia sticks and some runners and nodded to his men, who placed Aemilius’s body upon it.

  When he saw they were about to leave the shack like this, Uxal stopped them. ‘Just a moment, blast you. Do you want to all get killed? Let me tell the guard that you want to accompany your friend’s body to the ravine.’

  Metellus halted his men.

  Uxal came back shortly later. ‘You can go, but not before it gets dark. Don’t walk in a straight line, mill around as if you weren’t up to anything special. Don’t show any signs of military discipline and carry his body low, not up on your shoulders. And leave your chief here. It’s best he doesn’t go with you.’

  ‘All right,’ replied Metellus, exchanging a look with Valerian.

  They waited until the sun had dipped below the horizon and then went out with their comrade’s body. They crossed the camp under the distracted eyes of the guards, who had moved off to the side to eat their dinner, but as soon as they were out of sight, Metellus ordered his men to hoist Aemilius’s body to their shoulders and to follow the rough bier lined up two-by-two and walking in step. At the edge of the gorge, they lowered him to the ground.

  ‘Does anyone know a Christian prayer?’ asked Metellus.

  ‘I do,’ replied Severus.

  ‘Are you Christian too?’

  ‘No. But I was.’

  ‘Then say the prayer. We’ll listen.’