by J. E. Gurley
“I ate my first fig as a boy in Ischia, Flavius. Will I taste my last one here in this dead place?”
Flavius sat up straighter. “Not as long as I have my sword,” he growled.
“Good Flavius, I fear our weapons might be no match for our enemy.”
Flavius’ screwed up his face as if Gaius’ words had offended him. “Good Roman iron is a match for any blade.”
Gaius nodded. “Yes, for an enemy we can see. What good against these wraiths?”
“Wraith, witch, ghost, or goblin, we will defeat them.”
Gaius took a bite of the fig, letting the sweet juice fill his mouth. As he swallowed, he shuddered. Will I ever again see Rome? “Yes, yes, I grow maudlin. We will find our enemy and slay him.” He raised his goblet to Flavius. “Victory.”
Flavius held out his goblet, splashing a little of its dark red contents on the sand. “Victory,” he repeated.
Gaius looked at the stained sand at Flavius’ feet, the color of the sea at Ischia. He shuddered again and pulled his tunic tighter against a sudden chill only he felt.
“How many men accompany us to this dead city?” Flavius asked as he raised his goblet.
“We will strike camp. All will go.”
Flavius stopped his goblet before it touched his lips. “All?” he asked.
“We number but 64. We would risk losing the few we leave behind. The temptation to desert would be strong. We are safer together.”
“Yes.” The tone of Flavius’ voice indicated hesitation.
Gaius glared at his second-in-command, irked by Flavius’ reluctance to spit out what he wanted to say. “You disagree?”
“No. These walls have proven no defense, no matter how high we build them. The walls of a city, even a dead one, should be easier to defend.”
Gaius suspected Flavius of leaving something unsaid. “You wish to say more?” he prompted.
Flavius shuffled his feet nervously. “We were ordered to establish this fortification here at this location. Abandoning it and moving deeper into the desert might be construed as desertion.”
Gaius understood Flavius’ reasoning. An order, even the order to establish a punishment camp in the middle of nowhere, was one to obey. In Rome’s long history, more than one Praetor had formed his own personal legion, sometimes using it to oppose Rome’s power. Rome moved swiftly to quash rebellion and punish commanders who overreached their authority.
“We can wait here on this useless piece of rock for our enemy to attack us, or we can seek him out. I prefer offense to defense.”
Flavius nodded his head. Gaius saw a flicker of anticipation in his eyes. “A legionnaire is useless behind a stockade or stone wall.” He slapped his sword. “Attack is the only way to defeat an enemy.”
“We will return to Rome together or die here, our bones bleaching in the desert. There can be no alternative.”
“With the sound of swords clashing in our ears,” Flavius added.
Flavius suddenly stood, set his empty wine goblet aside, and walked away, surprising Gaius.
“Where are you going?”
Over his shoulder, Flavius replied, “These Tebu require more training if we are to depend on them in battle. They will soon learn to hate me.”
Gaius smiled at Flavius’ back. My optio pushes hard. That is good. “Let them hate you, so long as they fear you,” he said.
A stomach spasm wrenched Gaius’ guts, as if someone had jabbed the butt end of a gladius into his midsection. He doubled over in intense pain, grasping the edge of the tent flap to keep from falling. He called out to his aide, standing just outside his tent. “Bring me the medicus,” he gasped.
The aide rushed off to fetch the physician. Gaius clasped his stomach with both hands trying to quell the rushes of agony. He struggled across the tent to his cot and lay down. The pain now sliced him open from the inside out. He looked down expecting to see a blood-smeared blade protruding from his belly.
The physician, a gruff looking, dark-complexioned man whose stony face appeared to never have produced a smile, entered without announcing himself. He took one look at Gaius, frowned, and crossed over to his cot. If the troops were outcasts, Gaius wondered what twist of fate had brought the physician to such a lonely outpost.
“My stomach pains me,” he told the physician. “I have chewed dried licorice root, but it no longer works. Have you some herb or ointment that can ease this discomfort?”
The physician used a dirty finger to pull up Gaius’ eyelids and examined his eyes, and then his tongue. He took two steps back and studied the prostrate Centurion. “How long has your stomach bothered you?”
Gaius couldn’t remember exactly when the pains had begun, sometime after leaving Syria Palaestina. “Three or four months.”
“Do they grow steadily worse?”
“Yes,” Gaius answered grimacing as another bolt of pain shot through him.
The physician nodded. “I have seen this condition before, Centurion. It is a cancer of the stomach.”
“Give me a balm,” Gaius said.
The physician pulled a small vial from his satchel. “I have henbane powder for when the pain becomes too severe.” He also handed Gaius a packet of herbs. “This is dried rhubarb and yarrow root. They will soothe minor pains, much like the licorice you chew, but soon the pain will become more than you can bear.”
Gaius wondered how it could become more severe. “What can you do?”
The physician stared at him. “Do? I can do nothing. The cancer is eating at you, and you will eventually die.”
The physician’s diagnosis, delivered in such a cold, matter of fact manner, stunned Gaius, forcing him to face his own mortality. “Your bedside manner needs improving, physician. How long?”
The physician shrugged. “I cannot say with certainty, only guess. Perhaps a year longer with proper care, but here in this hellhole, who can say? Less, I would venture.”
He stood there as Gaius’ mind raced through possibilities, but came up with nothing. “Tell no one, physician.”
A brief flicker of anguish crossed the physician’s face. “The men allow me to treat their blisters and their ills, but they do not talk to me. It is unlikely any will ask. Do you know why I am here, Centurion?”
Gaius shook his head, not interested, but the physician seemed determined to speak. “I know not.”
The physician glanced out the tent to the men outside. “They do. I killed a man, an officer.” He held out his hands. “Once, these hands could perform fine surgeries. I saved the lives of many men after battles. My demon was wine. I attempted to remove an arrow from a Legate’s side while I was in my cups.” He raised his hands and frowned. “These unsteady hands slipped and he died. He went to his Hades, and the Emperor sent me sent to mine. I envy the man I killed. His death was mercifully quick.” As the physician stared at him, Gaius saw pity in his eyes. “Call on me when you need more medicine.” He looked upward. “Call on the gods if you want mercy. I do not believe they can hear you from this desolate place, but you can try.”
When he left, Gaius sprinkled some of the henbane powder in his goblet and poured wine over it. He downed the draft in one gulp. The medicine tasted as sour as vinegar, but not as bitter as the physician’s pronouncement of doom. It would be better to die in battle. He waited half an hour for the sedative to ease the pain, and then summoned the Berber to him.
When Rashid arrived a few minutes later, he bore a vivid purple bruise on his right cheek, and the eye above it was swollen and almost closed. He stood at the entrance to Gaius’ tent, his hands bound tightly in front of him. Gaius slipped his pugio from his belt and used the dagger’s keen edge to slice Rashid’s bonds. The Berber rubbed his raw wrists as he examined the furnishings of Gaius’ tent.
“You Romans believe in your comfort,” he said after his survey.
Rashid’s observations surprised Gaius. He had always believed his personal belongings sparse and utilitarian. Too much comfort distanced him fr
om the men under his command. By eating and sleeping as they did, he earned their respect and better understood their limitations. Each libra of weight of personal belongings the pack animals or wagons carried meant that much less food, weapons, or water. As a soldier lifted from the ranks, he preferred extra weapons to extra clothing. Then he remembered the leather tub in the back of the tent. Though lightweight, to a desert dweller, such a contrivance would seem extravagant.
“We are unused to this desert heat.”
Rashid smiled. “Perhaps you Romans should return to more favorable climes.”
Gaius scowled but ignored the taunt. “Any soil beneath a Roman Eagle is a favorable clime.” He pointed to Rashid’s face. “I see my men treated you roughly. I did not order it.”
Rashid touched the bruise above his eye and winced. “It is nothing, a disagreement over my iharz.”
His hand went to his neck and Gaius saw that the blue-jeweled amulet no longer hung from around his neck. “I will see that it is returned. Sit.”
Rashid ignored the stool Gaius offered and instead sat cross-legged on the sand facing Gaius. He continued to rub his wrists.
“We are returning to Hamad Rus.” Gaius didn’t know why he bothered announcing his plans to Rashid, but he felt that he somehow needed the Berber’s presence with him.
Rashid nodded. “So I suspected. You will all die.”
“You will die before us if you do not tell me all you know of this unseen enemy,” Gaius growled.
Rashid stared at Gaius as if judging him. “They are the Dark Ones, invisible, deadly shadows that kill silently. Your weapons will not protect you.” He raised his hands and spread them wide. “What more is there to know? Flee this place while you can.”
Gaius ignored Rashid’s advice. “I saw fresh blood on an altar in the temple at Hamad Rus. Why was it there?”
Rashid sighed. “The Inyosh worship an even darker god they name Nergal, ruler of the underworld. The people of Hamad Rus built the temple in an attempt to appease Nergal.” He shrugged. “They failed.”
The wild tale Rashid wove intrigued him. The Berber believed his words to be true, but Gaius listened with increasing skepticism. Lies and half lies, he thought; then, wondered why he shuddered at the name Nergal. He had heard more believable tales for a few copper denarii from fakirs wandering the deserts of Mesopotamia, but the Berber’s conviction was undeniable.
“And the blood?”
“The creatures offer the blood to Nergal. What they do with the flesh and bones of their victims I do not know.”
“How did you learn of these … Dark Ones?”
“From my grandfather. He learned from an Egyptian, a priest of Thoth in the temple of Gz-eh near Karnack. The priest fled Egypt during a religious purge by the Roman Governor Marcus Sempronius Liberalis. He gave my father the amulet your men took from me. Upon his death, it became mine.”
Gaius remembered the hypnotic lure of the stone of the amulet, like liquid lapis lazuli, which glowed softly as if smoldering from a flame within, but it was a pretty bauble and nothing more. He lost his temper at Rashid’s ridiculous ramblings, meant no doubt to elevate his position from that of a lowly expendable hostage to an expert of their invisible enemy.
“Di Omnes! By the gods do not lie to me,” he snarled. “If these Dark Ones have been here in this desert for centuries as you claim, why have they not wiped out your people?”
“Once they were content to haunt the old city and the nearby caverns, preying only on the unwary or the unlucky. Something has disturbed them.” He turned his head toward Gaius and smirked. “Perhaps it is the presence of you Romans. You enjoy stirring ant nests.”
Gaius felt a fleeting moment of sympathy for his captive, but let if pass. Hating Romans was the world’s pastime, the fate of the conquered. “You hate us so much?”
Rashid shrugged. “Greeks, Persians, Carthaginians, Romans, Parthians, and Egyptians – You are all the same. You claim to worship your gods, but you conveniently ignore your own religious beliefs if they conflict with your desires. My people have lived in these deserts for millennia, yet you try to enslave us and take from us land you do not want or know how to use. Now, you drive us deeper into the desert, and we face the same creatures you now seek out. I will take you to them in hopes that your bones and blood will satiate them, perhaps saving my people.”
“If you attempt to deceive me ….” Gaius warned.
Rashid laughed and shrugged. “Yes, yes. You will kill me. So be it. We are all dead men if we return to Hamad Rus.”
Gaius pointed to the wine flagon. “Do you wish wine?”
“I drink no wine while mourning the deaths of my friends and kin. If you offer water, I will take it.”
Gaius picked up the goblet Flavius had drunk from and poured water from a goatskin water bag. He handed it to Rashid. The Berber’s eyes fell to the dagger in Gaius’ belt well within his reach, but he ignored it and accepted the water. Draining it, he held the empty goblet in his hands, staring at it, rubbing his fingers over the etched floral design around its base. Gaius wondered if Rashid thought he might use the heavy goblet as a weapon.
“My thanks. I tell you this. If I thought you could defeat these creatures, I would welcome your weapons, but you cannot. Your deaths will only bring more Romans into this country seeking revenge on my people. I implore you. Leave this place.”
“I cannot.”
Rashid sighed and nodded. “So I feared. I overheard your men speaking of you. You displeased your Emperor, and he sent you here to my country as punishment. You are a warrior and believe a victory will carry you back to Rome with honors.” He shook his head. “There can be no victory over that which has existed since the dawn of time. You and your men will die here and become a legion of the dead.”
“You read omens now in an empty water flagon?”
Rashid set the empty goblet on the ground in front of him. “I read your death in the blood of my murdered kin and in the eyes of your frightened men. Death awaits you in Hamad Rus, and you go to meet it in typical Roman fashion, eagle held aloft, shields and swords glinting in the sun, trumpets blaring.” He shook his head. “You cannot fight shadows as you would fight a living foe. You cannot win this battle, Roman.”
“We will see.”
Smiling, Rashid said, “You are brave but foolish.”
Rashid’s smile angered Gaius. He rose quickly and stood looming over him. Rashid didn’t flinch. “I have fought many men of many lands and have defeated them. I have also extracted information from recalcitrant captives. Do not force me to turn you over to men who would take pleasure from your pain.”
Rashid threw his arms wide and bowed his head until it brushed the sand. “All I know I will tell. I will accompany you to our deaths to prove the truth of my words. In the end, it will make no difference.”
A strong compulsion to strike the Berber gripped Gaius, but he resisted. Pain inflicted for no purpose other than from anger served no purpose. He didn’t claim to be a truthsayer able to discern the sincerity of men’s words, but he felt the Berber prisoner had spoken truthfully. He couldn’t punish him simply for hating Romans. Half the civilized world hated Rome, even some countries who called her friend and ally. He called out to his aide waiting patiently outside the tent.
“Take the prisoner back to his tent. Do not bind him but watch him closely. Treat his wound and see that he has proper food and water. Warn his guards that if they strike him again, I will duplicate his wounds on their backs twofold with a flagrum. Have them return his amulet.”
The aide blanched at the mention of the flagrum. He had seen the savaged back of the legionnaire bound to the rack. He swallowed hard, nodded, and followed Rashid back to his place of confinement. Gaius noted that the Berber strode across the compound with a confidence uncommon to a prisoner, especially a lowly salt merchant as he claimed to be. It looked as if he were escorting the aide instead of vice versa.
Gaius poured more wine into his cup a
nd brought it to his lips, but didn’t drink. He wondered if he made a mistake by not executing the Berber now and rid himself of his insufferable presence. However, something inside, a small voice that had kept him alive through many heated battles, warned him that Rashid’s life now inexorably intertwined with his.
A shudder of disgust passed through him at the thought of some intangible bond with a member of an inferior race. He had seen many Berbers, as well as Carthaginians, Jews, and Numidians on the slave blocks in Leptis Magna. As a Roman by birth and one of the ruling class, to give a Berber equal standing for any reason demeaned him.
He tossed the untouched wine outside his tent and dropped the empty cup beside his cot. “This country and its people vex me,” he said.
He collapsed on his cot and flung his arm over his eyes in a fit of annoyance, an attempt to erase from his vision the pitifully small encampment in the middle of a vast emptiness, as far removed from the pleasures of Rome as the sky from the earth. He lay there for a considerable time, letting the memories of the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks below his uncle’s villa wash away the dull, boring sounds of camp life. Not until he heard the call for the evening meal did he reluctantly emerge from his stupor.
Darkness often came to the desert with a swiftness with which those unfamiliar with such barren vistas are not accustomed, sometimes as completely as a drape pulled over the land, cloaking it in mystery and shadows. The brief span of time between complete darkness and the rising of the moon or the appearance of the stars was a time of uncertainty. Would the night be pitch black, impenetrable, and frightening, or illuminated by the heavens?