Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘He died many years past,’ Khaled replied, the words flattening Pavo’s nascent hope. ‘But he passed his knowledge of the scroll on before he died, to a group who worked with him.’

  Pavo’s hopes picked up once more. ‘What happened to this group?’

  Khaled’s face darkened and he shook his head.

  ‘Dead?’

  Khaled fixed him with his gaze. ‘Worse. They were consigned to the seventh chamber, right at the foot of the mine. They say it is so far underground that the light from the top of the shaft cannot even penetrate into the darkness there.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘The passage of time is difficult to record in this place. But I would guess that it was about a year after I came here.’

  ‘Twelve years ago?’ Pavo’s heart leadened. ‘Then surely they have perished down there?’

  Khaled’s face grew weary. ‘Aye, I am almost certain they have by now. A year in those depths must feel like a lifetime . . . ’

  As Khaled spoke of the seventh chamber, Pavo sought a grain of hope. Their chances of escape were gone. An ember of possibility that the scroll might be found had been extinguished too. He shook his head and pulled the phalera medallion from the waist of his loincloth. His fanciful hopes of finding some trace of Father were further away than anything else, he realised, absently tracing a finger over the engraving.

  Legio II Parthica.

  He heard Khaled’s words as if from a faraway place; ‘Some Persians can survive in the dry, stale air down there for that length of time, perhaps, but not Romans. No, they have surely perished in that deepest chamber. Indeed, we consider any souls sent down there as dead men.’

  The breath froze in Pavo’s lungs. One word rang over and over in his thoughts. Romans? ‘They were Roman? The men sent to the seventh chamber?’

  Khaled looked up, eyebrows raised, then nodded. ‘Yes. This place was once worked by many of your kind. Not so many recently. It was a surprise when you and your comrades arrived.’

  Pavo slid off the stone shelf and knelt before Khaled. ‘But they were Romans?’

  ‘Aye,’ Khaled nodded, then jabbed a finger to the phalera, ‘some wore trinkets just like yours.’

  An intense shiver danced across Pavo’s skin. ‘Khaled, I need you to think back,’ he said holding up the phalera. ‘The engraving on this – did the Romans you speak of have the same markings, exactly the same?’

  Khaled curled his bottom lip and nodded. ‘Yes. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Romans in the seventh chamber know the whereabouts of the scroll? Legionaries of the II Parthica . . . ’ Pavo staggered back, his head swimming, his eyes combing the floor of the cell as if to organise his jumbled thoughts. A bewildered laugh toppled from his lips.

  Khaled smoothed the ends of his moustache. ‘Remember, this was some twelve years ago. These men are likely to be nothing but bones now. Do not trouble yourself with thoughts of their fate . . . ’

  ‘My father may well have been one of them,’ he cut Khaled off.

  Khaled’s eyes widened. ‘Your father? The one you speak of in your nightmares.’ He nodded in realisation. ‘Of course.’

  ‘So you realise that I must go down there. When my legion set out to the east, I promised myself I would find my Father or honour his bones.’

  A long silence passed, then a sorrowful smile crept across Khaled’s face and he laid his hands on Pavo’s shoulders. ‘I understand, friend. Just as I long to be reunited with my loved ones, you feel you must do this.’

  ‘It is not a feeling, nor a compulsion of some sort.’ He fixed Khaled with an unblinking gaze. ‘It is a certainty. I am going down there.’

  Tears appeared in Khaled’s eyes. ‘I once had your fire in me, lad. Many years past.’ He blinked the glassiness away and came closer to Pavo. ‘If you are to do this, then know that you are not alone. I will do all I can to aid you . . . ’ his words trailed off and he gawped over Pavo’s shoulder, to the cell gates.

  An icy chill danced across Pavo’s skin as the iron bars groaned open. He hurriedly tucked the phalera into his loincloth then spun to see Gorzam, trembling with rage. A second guard fumbled with the keys to the cell whilst another figure stood behind the pair. Bashu failed to meet their gaze.

  ‘It was them?’ Gorzam seethed.

  Bashu nodded. ‘Aye, it was them who poisoned you. I saw them put the concoction in your water – they threatened to kill me if I told you this.’

  Pavo scrambled to the back of the cell and Khaled joined him. ‘Bashu? No . . . ’

  Gorzam stomped in and raised his whip. Khaled’s cries were drowned out by the thrashing of the barbed tails, the ripping of flesh and the thick blood-spray that coated all in the cell. As Khaled cowered, Pavo tried to grapple him and pull him clear of the next lash, but Gorzam was unstoppable, and the barbs gouged at Pavo’s arm, sending him staggering back. As Khaled took the brunt of the next blow, the second guard pinned Pavo back with his spear tip. ‘Move . . . die,’ he grunted in broken Greek.

  Pavo winced at every blow, hearing Khaled’s cries grow fainter with each. Eventually, the lash carried on to utter silence. Pavo was wet with Khaled’s blood and Gorzam wore a dripping, crimson mask. After an eternity, the whipping stopped. Gorzam panted, resting his hands on his knees. Pavo saw Khaled’s staring eyes, the light in them dimming. He reached out for his friend, but Gorzam booted him away.

  The giant glared at Pavo. ‘I will be back to take the skin from your back later. And then every day after that. I plan to keep you alive for a few weeks. I want to see how long a man can live with the flesh ripped clear of his bones.’ He nodded to the second guard and stabbed a finger at the mutilated, flayed mass that was Khaled. ‘Come; let us haul this dog to the shaft.’ They lifted the still body and then with a clanging of the cell door, they were gone.

  Pavo stared at the spot where Khaled had been moments ago. The flesh on his arm where he had been struck was raw, ripped to the bone. Fresh barbs, he realised, sickened. He found himself praying hurriedly to Mithras that Khaled was already dead and would not have to suffer being thrown down the main shaft. ‘I pray you meet with your family soon, friend,’ he sobbed, a chill settling on his heart.

  He wiped at his tears, then lifted the phalera once more, glancing from it to the cell floor and the thought of what might lie deep below.

  The seventh chamber beckoned him. Nothing would stop him.

  Nothing.

  Chapter 15

  The gymnasium echoed with the scraping of feet on sand. Gallus and Carbo circled, back-to-back, their eyes tracking the three pushtigban who stalked around them. The three wore their full bronze armour and the hammer-wielder directed the other two with clipped commands. Gallus and Carbo faced them wearing just loincloths, helms, spathas and small, circular wooden shields. Nothing more.

  Gallus glanced over to the shaded area at one side of the training court. There, Ramak and Tamur watched on. As always, Tamur seemed encouraged by some rhetoric Ramak was whispering in his ear, fists clenched as if strangling some invisible enemy. After six weeks of imprisonment, the Festival of Iron was just over a week away. The arena at the foot of the acropolis was nearly complete. Now it seemed that the archimagus and the spahbad wanted to rehearse the glorious slaughter of their Roman prisoners. The pushtigban grinned eagerly – as if in hope that this could be more than a rehearsal.

  Suddenly, the warrior with the spike hammer lunged forward and smashed his weapon down. Gallus threw up his shield arm and felt the blow like a falling rock. He crumpled to his knees and the shield shattered, half crumbling away. Numb, he pushed up, barging the splintered shield boss into the pushtigban’s face. The warrior stumbled back, growling, hefting his hammer as if for a death blow.

  ‘No blood, not today,’ Ramak stood and called out.

  The hammer-wielder seemed to wilt under Ramak’s glare. He lowered his weapon and sneered; ‘You make it all the worse for yourself, Roman. At the festival, you will suffer, and the
last thing you will see will be my face. I will be smiling as I dash out your brains.’ He smoothed a finger over the point of the spike on his hammer as he said this.

  Just then, another pushtigban swiped his spear around for Carbo’s shins. The centurion leapt over the swipe, but as he landed, the other warrior jabbed his spear forward, scoring Carbo’s thigh. Carbo could not contain a yell of pain, and he staggered, struggling to stay on his feet.

  At this, Ramak sat forward. ‘I said enough! I want them to walk unaided into the arena on the day of their deaths.’

  The three pushtigban turned, prostrated themselves in the direction of the archimagus, then kissed the ground.

  ‘But show me how you will despatch them,’ Ramak finished, a predatory grin stretching across his face.

  The three pushtigban stood up. The hammer-wielding warrior flicked his head to one side then the other. One of his comrades swept his spear round to bash the spatha from Gallus’ grip, then the other prodded his spear at Gallus’ throat, driving him back until his ankle thwacked against the execution stone. ‘Kneel,’ the spearman spat.

  With no option but to comply, Gallus knelt and lay his head on the stone. The stench of dried blood and innards encrusting the filthy stone turned his gut. The spearman stood back, then he felt the boot of the hammer-wielder press upon the back of his neck. Beside him, Carbo had been pinned to the ground likewise, the two spearmen holding the tips of their weapons to the centurion’s breast.

  Gallus grimaced as the hammer wielder hefted the bronzed weapon. He refused to avoid the man’s glare. The man looked over to Ramak and Tamur for approval, then grinned and let out a roar. The hammer came sweeping down then halted, the spike barely an inch from Gallus’ temple.

  At this, the hammer-wielder laughed aloud and looked up to his watching masters. ‘Archimagus, Spahbad; this is how the Roman’s brains will be cast across the sand. It will be a fine festival. In years to come I will regale my men,’ he pushed down, pressing on Gallus’ windpipe, ‘with tales of this wretch’s pleas for mercy.’

  Still, Gallus refused to look away.

  Pavo chipped at the salt face at the edge of the cavern. The salt stung at his eyes, worked into his lungs and burned like fire in the seeping wounds inflicted by Gorzam’s whip. Khaled’s cries still echoed in his every thought, and his every waking moment had been consumed with honouring the vow he had made with the man at the last. The seventh chamber, he affirmed, glancing over at the main shaft, or death.

  He heard Gorzam’s rasping laughter echo through the cavern, turning to see the giant in conversation with his colleagues. Then his gaze drifted beyond the gathering and up the sides of the chamber wall. Behind the bars of the cell up there, he saw a shadowy shape move. Bashu! The man’s reward for his foul betrayal had merely been this cell slightly higher on the wall than his old dwelling. So far, the treacherous dog had kept well away from Pavo. A shrewd strategy, cur, he grimaced, then twisted away to look back at the salt face.

  A sharp pain stabbed into his hip and he stifled a cry just in time, then adjusted the slat of sharpened stone tucked in there. It was Khaled’s shaving stone. He had found a whetstone of sorts to grind it to perfection. Indeed, he had slept little in between shifts in this last week, honing at the blade over and over instead. All for this moment.

  He smashed his pickaxe into a shard of salt crystal, then scooped up the pieces that fell away and pressed them into his near-full basket. He heaved the basket to the pulley and hooked it onto the ropes, stooping to pick up an empty basket. Gorzam and his men had grown complacent in these last days, thinking the brutal murder of Khaled had cowed the spirit of the slaves. Indeed it had – many of them visibly trembled and cowered when Gorzam strode past. Pavo had elected to feign fear too, cowering and pleading to be excused of his daily beatings. And it had worked, for now their eyes were not upon him. They thought him broken. They were wrong.

  In a heartbeat, he stepped into an empty basket on the downwards pulley and crouched to conceal himself. The basket swung and squeaked as it settled and began to descend. The fourth chamber disappeared and the jagged rock of the main shaft rolled past. He held his breath as the rock opened out again into the fifth chamber, then glanced up to the rim of the basket. This chamber was darker and had a lower ceiling than the one Pavo had worked in all this time. It also had pillars of rock and salt blocking the view across the space – fortunately one such column part-obscured the area around the pulley from the rest of the cavern. He looked to the stack of baskets near the pulley. A single, dark figure stood there, hunched and still. He had not heard from Sura since their foiled escape attempt. He peered at the figure, and was sure he could see a blonde lock.

  ‘Sura,’ Pavo whispered.

  The hunched figure stood upright and spun round. It was not Sura. The albino guard wore a menacing scowl and grasped for his spear, resting nearby.

  Panic gripped Pavo’s heart. He leapt from the basket, the pulley juddering behind him, and swung a desperate right hook into the guard’s jaw. The blow was fierce, and his knuckles cracked. The guard staggered back, stunned, then sucked in a breath to raise the alarm. But the words never left the man’s lips, a hefty salt shard crashing down on his head from behind, splintering into dust and a thousand smaller pieces. The guard crumpled and Sura stood in his place, coughing at the salt dust.

  Sura looked at him with an incredulous glare. ‘Pavo – what in Hades? What are you doing down here?’ he hissed, shooting glances either side of the salt column; slaves chipped away there, heads bowed. Guards stalked amongst them, snarling and cracking their whips. But nobody had witnessed the incident, it seemed. He grappled the prone guard by the arms and nodded to the feet. ‘Grab his ankles; we need to get him out of sight.’

  They lifted the guard back into the shadows by the column and crouched there. Their dry, rasping breaths quietened for a moment.

  ‘I didn’t mean to get you involved, or for this to happen,’ Pavo said, gesturing at the guard. ‘I just wanted to tell you, I’m going down. To the very bottom of this place.’

  ‘The seventh chamber?’ Sura gawped, then drummed a finger against his chest. ‘And they say I’m the demented one?’

  ‘Sura,’ he grasped his friend’s forearm. ‘Legionaries were sent down there, legionaries who knew the whereabouts of the scroll. Some thirteen years ago. And my father may well have been one of them. Khaled told me, before they . . . ’

  Sura gulped. ‘Are you sure?’ His brow knitted in a frown. ‘Pavo, thirteen years down there,’ he started, shaking his head.

  Pavo gazed at him, unblinking.

  Sura fell silent and nodded. ‘I understand.’ His eyes darted across the ground before him, then he looked up; ‘But I’m coming with you. When this one wakes up or is discovered, I’m a dead man anyway, he was assigned to watch me specifically,’ he said, rising from the shadows to pull a coil of rope from the topmost basket in the stack. ‘And we’ll need this. I’ve heard the guards talking: there’s no ladder in or out of the seventh chamber, just darkness and a sixty foot drop.’

  ‘I don’t want you to get hurt for my - ’ Pavo started.

  Sura grasped his arm, stopping him. ‘You’re doing this for your father, Pavo. Let me do this for you, brother,’ he finished with a trademark grin that belied his fraught, weary features.

  Pavo clasped his arm to Sura’s. ‘Come on.’

  He slipped into a basket on the down pulley and crouched below the rim, Sura doing likewise in the next basket. They remained crouched and undetected as they descended to the sixth chamber. Here, the pulley slowed. The downward rope rolled around a polished timber wheel and the baskets began to rise again. Pavo peeked from the edge of the basket – there were no guards nearby in this, the darkest of the chambers he had been in so far. He leapt out, starting as he came face to face with a gawping slave carrying a full basket of salt. The man was probably only in his early forties, but the mines had rendered him a pitiful sight – more like a man twice
that age. He was rake-thin. Tendrils of dried blood stained his wiry moustache and beard. Pavo’s lips flapped to say something as Sura leapt from the other basket to stand by him.

  But the slave spoke first; ‘When I was young, I used to dream of escaping,’ he raised a shaking hand and pointed to the disc of light, high above. ‘But I would dream of travelling up . . . you’re going the wrong way!’ he said, then erupted in a bout of painfully dry cackling, his teeth stained with blood.

  ‘Come on,’ Sura said, frowning at the crazed man and backing away around the lip of the main shaft. ‘We don’t have long.’

  Pavo followed Sura’s outstretched finger to see the dull outline of a trio of guards striding through the gloom, as yet unaware of their presence.

  ‘How do we get down?’ Pavo looked into the blackness below and then for some fixture to tie the coil of rope to. His gaze snagged on a jagged outcrop of rock that hung over the shaft. ‘There, what about that?’

  ‘No, I’ve seen the rocks here crumble under the weight of a man. But we can latch onto that thing,’ Sura pointed to the pulley wheel in the centre of the main shaft. Attached to it by an iron axel was a cog, and revolving against the edge of this cog was another, its edge oblique to the first. Extending from the base of this second cog was a thick, vertical timber pole, studded with iron pins, revolving and driving the whole pulley system. This sturdy timber pole disappeared down into the darkness.

  Pavo shivered as he heard pained groans from below, where the pole surely ended. ‘What is that?’ he whispered.

  ‘Did you think the pulley ran on the will of the Persian God, or the power of Quadratus’ farts?’ Sura cocked an eyebrow, then threw a looped end of the rope out and around the axle between the cog and the wheel. The rope looped round on itself. Sura yanked at it, then beckoned Pavo over. ‘Ready?’

  Pavo took up a piece of the rope while Sura held a section six feet along. ‘Ready!’