Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire (25 page)

‘That’s it,’ a foreign voice said, ‘let your body waken at its own pace.’

Pavo’s heart jolted. ‘Who’s there?’ he yelped, instinctively trying to sit bolt upright. The effort sent a white-hot pain racing through his ribs and he clutched his midriff with a cry. This in turn sent another wave of vice-like agony through his head.

‘Your rib is still not healed, I see,’ the voice continued. ‘And your head is bound to hurt for some time.’

Pavo drew his bleary gaze around, but he could see nothing other than dull shapes. He touched a hand to his ribs. They had been bandaged with a strip of filthy cloth. ‘You did this?’ He frowned.

‘I am no healer, but I did what I could,’ the voice replied in a wistful tone.

Pavo winced with every burning breath that pressed his lungs against his ribs. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes until he could make out the blurry outline of his surroundings. He was in a small alcove gouged into slate-blue rock. The space was cordoned off by iron bars. The ceiling, floor and walls were jagged and dancing with the shadows cast by distant torchlight from beyond the bars. He was sitting upon a rocky shelf on one side of the cell, while the blurry figure who had spoken sat on the shelf opposite, legs crossed, head bowed.

Pavo eyed the figure nervously, then shuffled towards the bars, clasping them and straining to focus his eyes on what lay outside. He noticed a fine, white powder coating his hands. Indeed, every inch of his skin seemed to be clad in the stuff, with only beads of sweat breaking through the film. The blurriness was fading and he beheld what lay beyond the bars.

A vast, underground cavern yawned before him. The cavern walls were encrusted with glistening, jagged white crystals, some as big as towers, glinting like stars in the night sky. Pillars of this shimmering crystal climbed from the floor of the cavern and huge spikes of it hung from the ceiling. Torches crackled, fixed to the cavern walls here and there, illuminating the cave in an eerie half-light reflected all around by the crystals. Where there was no crystal, a network of walkways had been gouged into the dark-blue and russet-veined rock of the cavern walls, leading to myriad cells like this one. Timber ladders rested here and there, linking the walkways to the cavern floor. The air in the place rippled in a haze of foul heat and everything was coated in the fine white powder.

Is this Hades?
he wondered. ‘Where am I?’ he muttered to himself.

‘The home of Ahriman, the realm of the lie,’ the figure replied. ‘Just a few of the monikers this place goes by. Though every man sent down here has his own name for it.’

Pavo frowned, then saw that the cavern seemed to writhe. Men, he realised, rubbing his eyes again until his vision sharpened completely. Men clustered around the crystal face like larvae, caked in a crust of the white dust and sweat. They were dressed only in filthy loincloths and some had rags of cloth tied over their noses and mouths. Their backs were hunched and bleeding from whip wounds and their ankles were raw from their shackles. Some worked at the crystal face with pickaxes and chisels, swinging their tools into the crystal, shattering it and bringing showers of powder and chunks tumbling to the ground around them. Others trudged to and fro, heads bowed, crystal-laden baskets strapped to their backs. These men formed a train, like ants, filing towards the middle of the cavern.

There at the centre of the cavern floor was a dark, circular hole. Directly above, the ceiling bore a matching hole. Through this broad shaft something moved vertically, like some giant, slithering serpent. A pulley, he realised, tirelessly hauling basket-loads of this crystal up to some chamber above and lowering empty baskets back down into the darkness of another chamber below. Watching over these wretches were dark figures in baked leather armour and caps, whips and spears clasped in their hands, faces wrapped in cloth revealing only glowering eyes.

Realisation dawned on him as he crumbled some of the white powder between thumb and forefinger. Finally, he looked up to the far side of the cell and the shadowy figure.

‘I am in the salt mines of Dalaki, am I not?’ he said. The words sounded distant and even then he refused to believe them. His eyes darted around the cavern outside.
Father?
But every hunched and rasping soul he saw seemed racked with illness, few over thirty years old. A chill finger of reality traced his skin.

‘Dalaki? That is another name for this place, yes,’ the figure replied. ‘While the Persian nobles and citizens of nearby Bishapur bathe in sunlight and dine on fresh bread and dates, we know only foul air, torchlight and scraps.’

Pavo’s thoughts churned. He had seen the dot on Gallus’ map representing the Dalaki mines. Thirty miles or more east of the Persian Gulf, deep in the belly of the Persis Satrapy, many weeks’ march from the oasis and his last memories. ‘How long have I been here?’

‘Three days,’ the figure said. ‘When they dumped you in here they said you had been feverish and muttering for some weeks before that as well.’ At last, he stood up from the stony shelf and approached Pavo. The flickering torchlight revealed an emaciated figure of average height, dressed in a filthy rag of a loincloth. He had surely seen his fortieth year, Pavo guessed. His skin was sallow but caked in the white powder, as was his thick moustache – twisted to points at either end under a broad nose. His short, thick black hair and dark, age-lined eyes instantly announced him as a Persian. He had the broad shoulders of a man who was once a warrior, but his ribs jutted and his belly was puckered, and the thick red lines of whip wounds coiled over his shoulders from his back. ‘I am Khaled,’ he announced. He held a filthy clay cup in his hand, offering it to Pavo. ‘Here, drink this. It is briny and hot, but it is all they give us.’

Pavo backed away until he felt his back press against the cell wall.

‘You fear a wretch like me?’ Khaled said with raised eyebrows, gesturing towards his jutting ribs. ‘Come on, drink – you did not reject me when I watered you in these last days,’ he said with a grin.

Pavo frowned, remembering the nightmare, the soothing voice and the drinking vessel at his lips. ‘Thank you for dressing my ribs,’ he said, then took the cup gingerly. He sipped at the foul water, but found his rampant thirst outweighed his disgust. He gripped it with both hands and in moments, he had drained the cup. Suddenly he realised how hungry he was. He touched a hand to his belly, taut and puckered like Khaled’s. He could not remember the last time he had eaten. Had it been the unchewable, dry hard tack on the dunes, weeks ago?

As if reading his thoughts, Khaled turned and dug something from a pile of the white powder on the floor. A stringy mass of something. He tore it in two and handed Pavo a piece. It was a chunk of white meat, no bigger than his thumb. Pavo held it to his lips tentatively.

‘The salt disguises the taste,’ Khaled said.

Pavo chewed on it and found the texture of the meat and the sensation of eating innervating. Then he saw the long, pink tail jutting from the pile of salt, and the red eyes and fangs of the dead rat. He closed his eyes and finished the morsel.

‘In this place you soon forget the decorum of the real world. Indeed, it pays to forget all of the real world. Down here, you have no name, no future, no hope . . . ’ he stopped as the dry air caught in his throat, then erupted into a fit of coughing, cupping his hands over his lips. It sounded serrated, as if every organ in his body rattled from the effort. The man’s legs buckled and he shot out a hand to stop himself from collapsing. Instinctively, Pavo shot up, grasping Khaled’s hand, guiding him back to sitting. He saw blood on Khaled’s lips. ‘What’s wrong with you?

Khaled wiped the blood away with the back of his hand. ‘The same thing that afflicts every man who sets foot in these mines. The lung disease spares no one,’ he nodded through the bars to the workers out there. ‘Once it takes hold . . . it is only a matter of time.’ He held up his hand. ‘When the blood is red, like this, you might have many months or even years of suffering left in you. When it is black . . . then you should make peace with your god. Few last but a handful of years in this realm.’

Pavo’s eyes darted this way and that. Father had been brought here more than fifteen years ago.
No,
he mouthed, clutching for the phalera, then his breath froze when he found it was not there. He recalled the last moments before the blackness; the spearman tearing the medallion from his neck.

‘You have lost something?’ Khaled said. ‘That is no surprise to me. If they could denude you of your dignity on the way in, they would. Those who bring new slaves in usually strip them of valuables and sell them to the guards.’

The phalera, the strip of silk from Felicia. Gone. Pavo’s head throbbed again. He slumped back down onto the stony shelf, raking his fingers across his scalp. He was surprised to find his hair had grown in and he could grasp it between his fingers. Likewise, he found a short beard had sprouted on his jaw. Confusion danced across his thoughts. He looked up to Khaled. ‘You said the Savaran spent weeks bringing me here?’

‘No, not the Savaran. They said they would have slit your throat from ear to ear where they captured you. But your comrades pleaded to carry you with them, through the desert.’

Pavo’s ears perked up. ‘My comrades – they are in here?’ He glanced out through the bars, his eyes scouring every sorry, hobbling figure out there.

‘There were very few Romans with you, and they were in a dire state. Many struggled just to stay on their feet.’

But Pavo barely heard him. He remembered Tamur’s order to slay every second legionary. How many had then survived the trek across the desert to this place? He filled his lungs, belying the pain in his ribs and head. ‘Sura?’ he bellowed, grappling the bars once more. His cry echoed around the cavern. Many heads turned, the slaves wore fearful looks, the guards wore scowls.

‘No!’ Khaled wrapped a hand over his mouth and pulled him back from the bars. ‘Your comrades, or those that have survived their wounds, are in the lower chambers, they will not hear you. Do not draw attention to yourself – the guards in here, they detest us as much as they despise their jobs. If you give them an excuse to . . . ’ he stopped, gawping up at the bars.

A rattling of iron bars sounded from off to the left of their cell, growing louder and closer.

‘Who . . . what is that?’ Pavo whispered.

‘It is Gorzam – a dark-hearted cur. Lie down,’ Khaled gasped, gesturing to the stone shelf. ‘Pretend you are still unconscious!’

‘Why?’

Khaled bundled him onto the shelf, then scuttled over to the other shelf to lie down.

The rattling slowed and then stopped, and Pavo sensed a shadow creeping across him.

‘Ah, Khaled,’ an acerbic voice hissed, then muttered something in Parsi. The guard’s eyes then locked onto Pavo and he switched to the Greek tongue. ‘You two choose to make trouble?’

Pavo cracked open an eye where he lay. Khaled lay motionless, eyes closed as if asleep. But the tall, bear-shouldered guard standing outside the bars knew otherwise. He wore a baked leather cuirass over a linen tunic and a hardened leather helm. He carried a whip in one hand and a spear in the other. The guard unlocked the cell gate and stepped inside, then reached up to unbuckle the thick cloth that obscured his face. His pitted features creased in a scowl and his dark eyes raked over Khaled’s prone form like a butcher eyeing a cut of meat.

‘Lost your voice, dog?’ the guard spat, lifting a leg and stamping on Khaled’s gut. With a cry, Khaled rolled from his stone shelf, hacking and coughing, blood dripping from his lips. ‘Gorzam, please,’ he pleaded.

Gorzam’s face split into a gleeful black-toothed smile and he swung the whip back, the barbed tails glinting in the torchlight.

‘Stop!’ Pavo cried, standing.

Gorzam froze. Khaled’s eyes widened and he shook his head.

Gorzam twisted round to behold Pavo. ‘Ah, the Roman is awake. I have been looking forward to this.’

Pavo squared his shoulders as best he could, but this giant still dwarfed him. ‘It was me you heard calling out, not Khaled.’

Gorzam’s grin broadened and he laughed long and hard. ‘I care little whether it was you or him. You will both suffer!’ His grin faded into a grimace and he hefted the whip back, ready to bring it down upon Pavo.

‘Perhaps he is fit to work?’ Khaled offered quickly. ‘If you flog him he will be of no use to you for days.’

Gorzam froze once more, then his grin returned. ‘So be it,’ he hissed and lashed the whip down regardless. The iron barbs wrapped around Pavo’s back like claws, sinking into the flesh under his ribs and shoulder blades, gouging into muscle and sinew, ripping chunks of flesh free. He heard his own roar as if it had come from another. He toppled back onto the stony shelf and writhed as the pain wracked him to his core. He looked up to see Gorzam’s wild eyes and rotten-toothed grin as he hefted the whip back again. His mind flitted with those awful memories of his childhood as a slave in Senator Tarquitius’ cellar and the savage beatings he had witnessed there. Then he saw something glint on Gorzam’s chest. The missing phalera, spattered with the spray of his own blood.

This was not Hades. This was worse.