Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire (36 page)

Pavo spun to find Sura wrestling with the other guard to gain control of the spear. He stooped to pick up Gorzam’s spear then lunged forward, punching the tip into the guard’s gut, driving the gurgling foe away from Sura and then on until the man crunched against the corridor wall.

‘A weapon, for pity’s sake!’ Sura yelled.

Pavo threw him the second guard’s spear, then the pair rushed to the fray between Felix, the XI Claudia men and the remaining guards. Six guards remained, fighting like jackals with Felix, Zosimus, Quadratus, Noster and Habitus. Rufus and the two slaves who had come with them lay in bloody heaps on the corridor floor.

Pavo rushed to aid Noster, who was being beaten back by the furious spear jabs of one guard. But before he could reach the pair, the guard plunged his spear through Noster’s throat. The young legionary gurgled and gawped at his killer, then he sunk to his knees and the life was gone from him. Pavo charged for the guard but the man spun to block. Their spear shafts clashed and the pair growled, noses inches apart. The guard kicked out at Pavo’s knee. Pavo stumbled back, then ducked to one side to avoid the follow up jab but the guard managed to kick out again, snapping Pavo’s spear. At a disadvantage, Pavo backed away, then stumbled on a rock and fell. As he righted himself, he scooped up a handful of salt and hurled it at the man’s face. The guard staggered back, waving his spear this way and that, blinded. Pavo grappled the splintered half of his own spear and rushed for the man, lancing him through the ribs, the tip bursting from the man’s other side. The cracking of bone was accompanied by a thick splash of blood and organs spilling from the wound.

Before the man had toppled to the ground, Pavo spun to find his next opponent. But it was over. The other guards lay still and silent. Felix was bleeding from a wound to the abdomen, but Quadratus and Zosimus were standing like a pair of twin oaks as usual – sweating, cut and bruised, but alive. Habitus had made it too, doubled over and retching.

Bashu was the only one of Gorzam’s party remaining. Now he was trapped between the panting legionaries and the end of the corridor, scrabbling to and fro like a trapped rat, his face contorted in fear. Quadratus strode over to him, lifting a spear to his neck.

‘I am one of you, a slave!’ Bashu nodded hurriedly, a sickly grin belying the fear in his eyes, his hands dropping by his sides.

Pavo beheld his cowering form. For just a moment, pity snaked into his heart. Then he saw the glinting dagger blade the man held just behind his back.

‘No, you are a traitor,’ Pavo replied stonily, then booted Bashu in the chest, toppling him into the salt pit. Bashu wailed. In moments, the salt had spilled over his arms and legs. He thrashed, and this only served to pull him down all the faster. In a heartbeat, he was up to his neck. His silver eyes bulged in panic. The man’s roar of terror was abruptly cut short as the salt spilled into his mouth and then swamped his head. His outstretched, trembling hand was the last part of him to disappear. The salt pit had fed and was still again.

Silence filled the passageway as all eyes looked over the scene.

‘You two,’ Felix said weakly at last, forking two fingers at Pavo and Sura, clutching his wound with the other hand, ‘better bloody well have a plan.’

Pavo looked back blankly.

‘He doesn’t have a bloody plan,’ Quadratus snorted in disbelief.

‘I don’t. But my father does,’ he motioned to Falco. He and the other slaves from the wheel were still chipping and battering at the salt face blocking the end of the corridor.

‘Your father?’ Zosimus uttered in confusion.

But Pavo ignored this and strode over to Falco. The aged men were struggling to break through the crystal. ‘Father, what is this?’ he asked. Then he heard it. Just as he had heard it with Khaled. The sound of running water. But this was different, not just a faint hiss, this sounded like a rumbling torrent. Furious, endless, desperate to be unleashed.

Falco clasped his forearm. ‘This mine is man-made. But around it weaves a honeycomb of natural caverns and springs. Behind this crystal, an underground river rages. We have speculated for years as to whether it leads even deeper underground, to the darkest dominions? Or, perhaps,’ he pointed upwards, ‘to freedom?’

Pavo’s eyes darted. ‘Has anyone ever seen this river?’

Falco shrugged, gesturing to his empty eye sockets and to his blind companions. ‘Well that would be hard, down here. But no, we have talked about breaking down this wall for years. Every time we have hesitated. It could simply drown us and flood the mines.’ He cocked his head to one side wryly. ‘Though that option has its own merits.’

Just then, another babble of voices and footsteps sounded from the other end of the seventh chamber, at the main shaft and the stalagmite ring. Habitus staggered up to the open end of the corridor, then came rushing back. ‘More guards, thirty at least!’

‘We have no choice – we must break through that crystal,’ Arius said, his face drawn with fear.

Pavo’s eyes widened and he grasped Falco by the shoulders. ‘Stand back, have your men stand back too.’

Falco frowned, then ushered his aged comrades back from the boulder.

Pavo called on Zosimus. ‘Sir!’

Zosimus frowned, then batted Quadratus on the arm. The pair came over and eyed the salt face. Their eyebrows rose in unison as they heard the rushing water.

‘A swim or a fight?’ Zosimus mused, looking from the rock to the far end of the corridor and the approaching footsteps.

‘Ach, I’ve had a fight already,’ Quadratus shrugged, smoothing his salt-encrusted moustache, ‘And I need a good wash.’

The pair of them hefted their pick axes, throwing others to Felix, Habitus, Pavo and Sura. They went at the salt face like men possessed. Shards of crystal flew in all directions, powder blinding them, coating their skin. The rushing of water grew louder and louder, as did the thundering footsteps of the guards. Pavo glanced back to see the thirty approaching shapes at the open end of the tapering corridor, their spears glinting in the light of the torches they carried. Then a splash of something icy cold around his ankles jolted him back to the salt face. He looked down to see foaming water washing from a growing fissure, spilling out across the corridor floor. The fissure in the salt face was narrow – about the width of a blade. He hefted his pickaxe to strike again, when Falco called from the corner of the corridor end where he and his comrades huddled.

‘No, no more! Get back – over here!’

Pavo frowned, then heard a dull, ominous crack run through the salt face. He, Sura and the others shared a tacit agreement, dropping their pickaxes and rushing over to the corner with Falco and his men.

‘Be ready,’ Falco cried. ‘As soon as the water comes, get your backs against the wall and hold on tight!’ The guards were now only a handful of paces away, and they snarled and cursed in Parsi, some hurling their spears forward, the lances clattering against the corridor end, inches from Pavo.

Then, with a ferocious crack like a clap of thunder, the centre of the corridor-end salt face collapsed. The guards stumbled to a halt, their eyes bulging. At that moment, the arid seventh chamber of the Dalaki salt mines was quenched with a tumultuous roar. The underground river spat forth, blowing chunks of salt and rock from the opening, widening it and intensifying the deluge. Pavo and those nestled in the corner of the corridor end were spared the ferocious thrust of the river, but the cries of the guards were drowned out, their bodies punched back through the corridor by the force of the flood. Sharp cracking rang out as the torrents dashed their bodies against the stalagmites at the other end of the chamber, the water washing the stony spikes clean of the layers of gore that had accumulated there over the years.

Pavo blinked through the spray as the river claimed the corridor. The intense flooding had slowed, but now the water level rose swiftly and steadily. It splashed around his chest, so they shuffled to stand higher upon rocks – his head scraping on the passageway ceiling. In moments it was chest high again, then it lapped around their necks. ‘Father . . . what now?’ he cried as the water inched up with every heartbeat until it touched his chin.

‘Now take a deep breath, be ready to swim just as I taught you, and pray that the gods wish us to be free,’ Father replied.

Pavo looked to the gaping hole the river had blown in the end of the corridor. Darkness lay beyond. ‘But what if - ’ the water spilled into his mouth and then over his eyes. A heartbeat later, the air was utterly gone and the corridor completely flooded. At once, he could hear only the pounding of blood in his ears and the muffled underwater cries of his fellow legionaries as they thrashed to right themselves. He felt Falco’s arms clasp around his waist. Father needed him. His comrades needed him. He looked through the murky darkness to the hole in the end of the corridor, then waved towards it. In the gloom, Quadratus saw him and beckoned the others.

He swam with all his strength towards the opening, fighting the steady current. All the while one question rang in his thoughts.
What in Hades lies on the other side?

He felt the roof of the opening scrape against his heel as he passed through it. On the other side was nothing but near-black water. Bubbles rushed past his ears in thundering torrents. The water stung at his eyes, and he saw only swirling murky shapes and the thrashing limbs of his comrades. He kicked in the direction he prayed was up, but saw no sign of a surface or light of any kind. He clasped his hands to Father’s. Suddenly, the current grappled them like an invisible titan, pulling and twisting their bodies round and round. After that, there was only pure darkness. The next thing he knew, they were falling. They were plummeting downwards, deeper and deeper underground – of that there could be no doubt. They had gambled and lost. The snatched half-breath in his lungs had lost its freshness and now his chest stung, demanding more air. Panic insisted that he open his mouth to yell out, to breathe again, but then another current smashed into him from the side, parting him from Father and propelling him onwards at great haste. He tumbled round and round until he lost all sense of direction. Up, down, all around, blackness. Nausea, burning lungs. Terror.

Chapter 16

Zubin and his goats climbed the last of the foothills before the Zagros Mountains. The hubbub around Bishapur fell away behind him and was replaced by the babbling torrents of the river gorge. He was glad to be clear of the goings on near the city. The place had become a hive of activity and expectation as the Festival Day loomed ever closer – just a week away. At market, all the talk was of the fine new arena and the blood games it was to hold, yet Zubin had no urge to see men spill blood for entertainment, and he was sure Ahura Mazda thought likewise.

He reached the peak of the hill and stopped, wheezing as he looked down into the gorge. For this short stretch, the river widened and the foaming waters calmed to a gentle babble. The sun-bathed banks were lined with shingle and pebbles, speckled with wild red poppies and shaded in parts by twisting tamarisk trees. Some said the waters on this stretch of the river had healing powers, the mountain meltwater augmented by a network of mineral-rich springs. As always, it would make a pleasant place to rest and eat while his goat herd drank and grazed on the tufts of long grass dividing the shingle and the gorge-side. But it was not for the agreeable surroundings that he chose to come here almost every day. He gazed up to the towering mountain peaks. His eyes rested on the tumbled, circular structure atop the nearest. Tears stung his eyelids and his bottom lip trembled.

Just then, three leaping, bleating goat kids swept past him from behind, their ears rising and falling in play. Zubin yelped in fright, then turned to the mother goat, who ambled up the hillside to join him, her ears hanging flat to her face, her grey beard and body showing the signs of age. ‘I remember when I used to feel like them,’ he muttered absently, watching as the kids scrambled down the steep gorge-side. They tumbled through the shingle over to the long grass, play-biting and butting at one another. ‘Now I feel I have more in common with you,’ he said, stroking the mother goat’s neck. Chuckling, he made to descend the scree slope in the wake of the kids, but he froze. There, in the centre of the calm river surface, something stirred. Bubbles frothed and the water grew choppy. Suddenly, like a leaping salmon, a hulking figure burst from the water, gasping for air, arms flailing. Moments later, another figure shot up, then another and another.

‘Mithras!’ one of the figures yelled in delight. A haggard brute of a man with a blonde moustache and beard. Beside this one, another of the same stature and a squashed nose let loose an ecstatic volley of obscenities, arms outstretched to the sky, as if he had not seen the sun in years. They clawed and scrambled their way to the shingle.

Zubin gulped, then shared a nervous glance with the mother goat.