by Al Halsey
Lucius ignored his comrade and continued down the stairs. The air was stale, an oddly metallic scent that left a strange taste in his mouth. As the eight moved deeper, occasional stains of fresh blood were apparent on the sandstone. Suddenly, the stairs ended against a smooth wall. Several bloody handprints were pressed against the stone: further evidence that legionnaires had travelled down the flight after the conflict above. As Lucius leaned against the wall with his ear against the rock, he could hear the thrums of the wind behind.
“This is some type of door: in place to confound egress. Find a lever, or rope that will unlock said barrier,” Lucius ordered. The legionnaires pushed against the stairs and walls to discover the mechanism that opened the stone. It took several minutes in the confined well for one of the soldiers’ fingers to find one of the tiny stones protuberances that moved. The rock resisted, but then clicked. The sandstone wall slowly lowered itself to reveal a hallway. The eight listened as stone ground against stone. Hidden machinery moved the slab into the floor to provide entrance to the hallway. The torches could not deliver enough light to penetrate the length of the corridor.
“The wind is louder now, from down this passage,” Laelius said. The corridor was low and the eight continued to shuffle slowly forward. They kneeled, shields presented forward with pilums extended. Several steps off of the stairwell they moved down the hall. The stone was smooth except for strange lines and those groups of tiny stones. Smears of blood indicated something had been drug across the stone floor.
“We are deep below the desert now, maybe moving north,” Lucius said, barely heard over the distant winds. “Odd that the sound of yonder tempest is so powerful, yet barely stirs the air in this tunnel.”
Behind the group, something grated: the sound of stone against metal. The eight stopped, and a hole appeared in the floor. The soldier beside Lucius stumbled as he fell into the pit. Behind him, another Roman grabbed him, but the weight pulled them both down. The two screamed as they fell, the light from the torch of one of the two carried illuminated their fall.
Lucius watched as the light flickered then waned and extinguished as the bodies hit a distant floor. “Damn this labyrinth,” he said grimly, then turned to face the long hall. “At least they met their end quickly.”
The six now forged ahead down the long corridor. “Lucius,” Hortensius whispered. “Just beyond our torches’ light. Something moves.”
Lucius peered into the darkness. “Nothing stirs that I can detect.” Something whistled: a keen cut through the roar of the wind. The glint of metal caught his eye. He flinched and pushed his scutum up quickly. Something clanged against his shield. The legionnaire behind him staggered and he turned to see one of those shanks impaled in his comrade’s eye socket. For a few seconds he stood, good eye transfixed on the distant dark before he fell to the stone.
The Roman twitched in his death throes. Blood pooled below his head as he squirmed. Lucius grabbed the torch the dead man had dropped and stayed concealed behind his scutum. Several more blades clattered against his shield and tumbled onto the stone floor. Several of the legionnaires blindly hurled plumbatae into the darkness. “We must withdraw from this tomb. Three dead already with no victory in sight,” Laelius said.
Lucius continued to peer over the edge of his shield. “We will do no such thing.” He advanced and the others took several quick steps to catch up to him as he moved. Down the confined hall they advanced, the darts that had been hurled scattered across the stone. One of the other soldiers picked one up and held it close to the torch.
“It is dry,” Lucius said as he inspected the weapon. “No blood shed. Whatever attacked is a wily foe.”
The five continued to move cautiously until the light revealed massive stone columns that bordered a door fixed with a bronze ring. The blood smears went underneath the door. One of the soldiers reached out with shaky hand and pulled on the loop. The thick door swung towards the Romans, perfectly balanced on hidden hinges. In front of them, a massive chamber became apparent: the roof far out of reach of torchlight. The sound of the distant wind now seethed louder. Angrier. Like the very maelstrom was responding to the legionnaire’s intrusion into the catacombs.
They moved together with their shields up. Lucius felt relieved as he stood upright, his knees tight from the crawl through the tiny corridors and stairs. What they saw before the darkness swallowed the light was two rows of thick, carved columns that vanished upwards into the black. The smears of blood on the floor spread out like spider webs. The crimson trails led to where their comrades had disappeared. The walls were decorated with frescoes, brightly colored like the work of the Egyptians on their temples.
Lucius focused ahead again and began to advance. Several steps into the chamber, his relief became horror at the sight before him. A squat stone slab, a low altar with the mutilated body of one of his countrymen between two of sandstone pillars. Gold chains held the corpse in place, the restraints anchored to large metal loops in the slab. Blood was splattered around the stone: the dead legionnaire had struggled while he died. Two of the soldiers gasped. Several cursed.
Lucius advanced with his pilum raised, and stood over the dead man. Long, thin rods of silver metal had pierced the corpse’s chest and neck. He noticed that blood had run into two small grooves carved on either side of the slab, then spilled down and disappeared into a tiny hole in the floor. “What in Jupiter’s name?” he said angrily.
One of the other soldiers pointed past the bloody slab. A row of blocks, identical in size and shape, splattered in crimson. Each held a legionnaire who was impaled with those long pins.
“This is hell,” Hortensius shouted. “You have led us into hell, Lucius Marianus!” He turned, screamed, and ran back toward the doorway to the vault. A crack sounded in the darkness: metal ground and a spear thrust from the floor through the cowardly soldier.
The shaft impaled itself into Hortensius’ chest and lifted him off his feet. The spike emerged the back of his lorica segmentata. Like a fish on a spear, he wriggled. Blood gushed from his wounds. His torch tumbled across the stone and extinguished itself in a cloud of sparks.
He hung in the air and twitched, then finally dropped his pilum. It clattered on the rock. Each end bounced until it lay motionless on ancient stone. Hortensius continued his death throes as Lucius watched.
With only two torches left, the four legionnaires reformed two by two and faced outwards, their backs to each other. “This is not the place to be lost in the dark,” Lucius said over the cacophony of unnatural wind. “Withdrawal now is in order. Any hope of rescuing our people is over.”
The four headed back towards the door, past their comrade who hung like meat in the market. Lucius could see the stone gate swing inwards and he lunged towards the entry. He was not fast enough. It slammed shut, the sound of stone against stone echoed through the chamber. The four pressed against the valve, to no avail.
“Trapped like dogs,” Laelius yelled. “And we will die like dogs!”
Lucius reached out and grabbed Laelius by the shoulder. “If today is our day to die, let us die like Romans and not sniveling boy-loving Greeks!” he bellowed.
“Prior Lucius,” Laelius shouted over the sound of the winds. The volume of the maelstrom increased. “We are not alone in this tomb.”
Something skittered just past the dim torchlight behind the altars and pillars. A hail of tiny blades flashed and clashed against the soldier’s shields. Lucius hurled his pilum into the darkness: the javelin traveling fast and straight. Something screamed. The inhuman discordance of pain that issued forth was unlike anything he had ever heard. The intensity of the sound of wind increased exponentially. No longer was it the pure sound of massed air as it swirled and whirled. The Prior began to hear individual chatters and chitters: the malignant sing-song of diabolical entities. A huge gust of wind carried the pungent scent of fresh blood and ancient death.
The legionnaires were pushed back against the wall by the unexpected
gale, but they stood ready with weapons raised. Another rain of razor-sharp shanks clanged against scutums. One of the soldiers was too slow and the blade impaled itself into his neck. He gagged and fell: blood squirted from the wound as he toppled onto the floor. His fingers struggled in vain at this throat to remove the metal.
“Keep backs to the door, lest we become encircled by our antagonists,” Lucius ordered. “Show yourselves!” he screamed into the darkness. Against the stone he glanced, now close to one of the painted frescoes and he held up his torch. For a fleeting moment before he turned forward to face the unseen enemy, the image of a dark figure that stood over a sacrifice with dissected chest became visible on the wall. The Legionnaire shuddered.
“Who are our unseen enemies?” Laelius demanded. “What bedevils us in this crypt of evil?”
The three formed a shield wall together with their backs against the sandstone. The dirty form of Anok Sabé staggered into view. The slave was naked, streaked in blood and dirt. His eyes now empty sockets of mangled flesh.
“Hail, Roman conquerors,” the Egyptian said hollowly. The blind holes stared towards the soldiers. “Warnings were unheeded, so now you all will die. The things buried in these deserts, long forgotten by the gods were best left forgotten. Now you have stirred the walking dead from their dreams to feel their wrath.”
The slave stood stoically. Behind him movement was detected: some menace in the blackness. Laelius screamed unintelligibly to Lucius and hurled his pilum. The blade of the javelin skewered the Egyptian through the neck and he fell to the floor. The slave’s dirty hands wrapped around the shaft. In his rage, the legionnaire pulled dart after dart from the back of his scutum and threw the plumbatae into the dark at whatever scuttled in concealment.
The wind roared in anger. Undecipherable syllables babbled together in no cohesive form of language Lucius had ever heard. Another flight of blades flew through the air and he dropped behind his shield. The shanks clattered against the scutum. One of the other soldiers was a fraction of a second too slow as several of the darts impaled into his face. He shrieked and dropped. On the floor he writhed and flailed. His torch clattered and spun, the flame dying on the stone along with the soldier.
The wind gusted and in the circle of weak light, a form crawled forward from the darkness. Lucius peered over the edge of his shield. He gasped at the sight of the creature: no doubt some primordial nightmare long since vanished from the sight of the gods. If Jupiter had spied such an abomination as it reared up on hind legs, he would have rained fire and lightning down on these catacombs.
It was not a large creature, short of stature like a deformed child. It stood precariously on its hind legs. Its misshapen body was covered by an ornate black robe, sewn with tiny gold plates and jewelry. Two small hands ended in talons; four fingers and a gold-tipped thumb like a man. The most terrifying part of the diminutive demon was its head. The huge jaw was lined with teeth like a crocodile. The jaw was rounder than one of the beasts that infested the Nile, the upper jaw slightly larger than the lower. No nose was visible. The abomination’s forehead was hideously swelled to protrude over dark, piercing eyes. Jagged horns jutted from the brow of the beast, each topped with a sharp, gold cap. Even more disturbing than the malformed features of the devil, was that the flesh of the thing was translucent. Shadows and lines of the columns behind the beast were visible through the corpulent skin.
The thing pointed a gold claw towards the soldiers. Laelius screamed and for a second he stared at Lucius. The two made eye contact and Lucius could feel the despair in his comrade’s eyes. Smoothly, with practiced skill Laelius put the point of his gladius against the bottom of his chin, breathed deep and ran the blade up into his skull. Blood flowed as the sword punctured the top of his galea, the tip of the blade pushed all the way up and out his helmet.
The soldier toppled and twitched, the gladius still impaled through his brain and head. Lucius gritted his teeth at the sight. He was now the only survivor of the Triarri of legionnaires that had marched into this hell from Memphis. He turned forward again to see more of the monsters that had crept out of the darkness. It faced him. Shaky fingers grasped one of the fallen soldiers’ javelins, and hurled the pilum into the line of devils. The javelin skewered one of the beasts that had not yet risen up in a twisted parody of a man on inhuman legs.
The shaft impaled itself through the ornate robe. The thing shuddered and clawed at the stone floor, gold tipped nails sparked against the rock. In the midst of the gale, another voice chattered, shriller than the others, and it cut through the noise. It was the screams of the monster, ran through with the pilum.
The other crocodile men staggered to their feet, their nailed hands drew wicked curved blades from folds in dark robes. Lucius pulled his gladius and stood fast behind his shield.
“Whatever you are, you die like any other creature on the earth. Come on then!”
The air chilled, the gale-force winds lashed against him as the unearthly chatter grew louder. The things came forward, their blades poised to slice as they moved. Behind his scutum, he waited for the abominations that inhabited the deep darkness under the desert.
Augustinus looked back at the ruins of the ancient outpost as he forced one foot in front of the other. He led one camel by the reins: the animal’s packs were emptied and the contents left behind if his fellows needed supplies.
His honor ached with every step away from his comrades as they faced whatever was behind. His sword should have been drawn with the other Romans as they entered the stone edifice, but Lucius was right that someone should return to tell what had been encountered here.
Augustinus contemplated the sound of distant howling winds that interrupted the nights. The agitation of the natives. The trapped entrance of the ruins. The odd Anok Sabé and his cryptic rants of fears that lurked, and dead that walked below the sands. Whatever the truth of all of it, this had been the oddest series of events he had ever seen in his twenty-three years. Jupiter had surely turned a blind eye to this desert and its strange inhabitants.
Almost four hours after he had left his comrades, he arrived at the abandoned Egyptian village. All was as it was left earlier in the day, so he began organizing his gear for the long journey. Augustinus had enough rations to wait for the resupply caravan, but he chose to trek back towards the Nile. Doubtful that in the vast sea of sand I will see the caravan, but they will realize something is amiss and return west once they arrive to find no one camped, he thought.
He ate salted fish and two stale cyllestis he found in the stores. Then he finished storing extra food for when Lucius and the other legionnaires returned to the camp. Augustinus packed what he needed for his journey and some extra in case of something unforeseen.
He worked into the evening, and finally packed his gear and loaded two extra pilums and several dozen plumbatae. He made sure the camel was fed, watered and bedded down for the night. The morning sun came early and harsh, the harbinger of another scorched day on the Egyptian desert. Augustinus geared up and wrapped loose desert garments around him, then led the camel west.
Several hours into the journey, he stopped and drank from a water skin. The distance shimmered and seemed to move. The mirage appeared blacker, jumpier than just illusions from hot sands. Augustinus watched and sipped at the water. He took a final mouthful, swished it and spit it where the thirsty sand immediately soaked it up.
The dark mirage seemed to grow and stretch. He realized that the mirage was not a desert illusion, but tangible. The camel fidgeted and he kept a tight hold on the reins as he watched the distant speck. For a few minutes, he waited. Then the image cleared and he realized that a group of riders approached him. They were ragged warriors on camelback. He realized the hoard that approached was Berbers, the bloodthirsty nomads west of the Nile valley that infested the desert and the coast.
Augustinus unlashed his scutum from the camel’s pack and slung it onto his shoulder. He pushed the pilums into the sand beside him, and
let go of the reins of the camel.
The beast bolted. Augustinus drew his gladius and waited. At least two dozen nomads bore down on him.
“Come then,” he shouted and waved his sword. “Come test Roman mettle and see yourselves to hell!”
He drew up the shield, gritted his teeth and clenched the pommel tight. A wall of one, a trained Roman soldier. The barbarians spurred their camels closer. The sun glinted off jagged cleavers and long spears. Clouds of grit billowed behind the Berbers. Once they met in glorious combat, Augustinus sent many of the savages to hell before he followed.
The Prefect of the Roman Province of Aegyptus, Gaius Cornelius Gallus, sat at a fine table in his palace in Alexandria. An Egyptian servant poured another cup of dark red wine for the Roman. He took a final swig, then swished the sweet liquid around his mouth before he swallowed it.
Large sandstone columns supported the room’s high ceiling. Tapestries and fine linens hung on walls from ceiling to floor. Neatly arranged, gilded wood furniture was of the finest craftsmanship. When Cleopatra and Marc Antony lived here, it was plush, even by Egyptian standards.
Cornelius excused the servant and continued to review the inventories of grain shipments back to the Republic. He had almost reached his quota and he was pleased with the progress.
Vabianus Varius entered the room, a dark-haired, swarthy man who nodded politely and pulled up a chair. “Good morning, Prefect.”
“And the kindness is returned,” Cornelius said quietly. “Shipments of grains back to the Republic are ahead of schedule. Caesar should be most pleased. And try some of this wine, from distant Spain. It is most sweet.”
“Thank you,” Vabianus said. “Matters more pressing have come to my attention, Prefect.”
“More pressing than wine from Spain? Do tell, good Vabianus, of this great mystery that has me spellbound ‘pon the edge of seat,” Cornelius said, taking another drink. “But this wine is very sweet.”
“Our resupply caravan that we sent into the eastern desert has returned with no word of Primus Vitus Tatius or his Triarri. I fear that we have lost them to the shifting sands, just like the unit before them. The hope was that some tomb robbing would refill our coffers, help repay the costs of our campaign to reclaim this province. However, now one hundred-twenty good legionnaires with accompanying slaves and auxiliaries are beyond our reach.”