Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire (45 page)

At that moment, the corpse juddered. The charred, crispy eyelids cracked open, and Ramak’s predatory glare was upon him once again. Terror lanced through Tamur’s veins.

‘You . . . will . . . obey me, Spahbad,’ Ramak hissed in little more than a whisper. The skin of his throat had melded together with that of his jaw, fusing some serrated wound there and offering him a desperate grip on life. ‘The army . . . must wait . . . until I recover . . . ’

Tamur’s terror turned to ire. Fury that this creature still tried to control him. ‘I have listened to your words for too long, Archimagus. Aye, the conquest will begin. But your time is over.’ He looked this way and that; nobody else was in the central chamber. Nobody had seen that the archimagus still clung to life.

Ramak’s eyes grew wide as Tamur reached out with both hands, clasped them to Ramak’s head, then twisted, his great arms bulging. With a tortured crunching of bone and snapping of sinew, the archimagus’ head swivelled sharply and then fell limp, dangling at an absurd angle.

Tamur stood, his nostrils flaring. ‘Now I will lead my armies. I will seize my own destiny!’

He left the ruined temple and flitted down from the acropolis in a blur. First, the Romans had to be stopped before they could take word back to the empire. It was doubtful they would ever make it across such a vast distance in any case, but he had to be sure. He barged through the city streets towards the western gates, shoving the crush of sweating, babbling fools from his path. When one prune-faced old stable hand nearly tripped him, he swiped his shamshir from his scabbard and slashed it across the old fool’s belly. The man’s scream was piercing. His guts bulged from the cut and then toppled onto the street. The swell of people nearby broke out into a panicked chorus at this too.

‘Clear a path for me!’ Tamur barked.

At once, the pack of ironclad pushtigban following him drew their blade. The rasping of iron was enough to split the crowd. They reached the western gatehouse and Tamur motioned to his men. ‘Have the gates closed. Not a soul enters or leaves this city.’

‘But, Noble Spahbad, the palace is still ablaze, the palms on the slopes have caught light and now the northern quarter of the city is in flames too. Our homes will burn unless we can ferry enough river water through the gates. The levels of the cistern and the underwater canal are too low and . . . ’

Tamur’s arm knotted like tough rope and then he brought his knuckles round to smack into the man’s mouth. The pushtigban warrior stumbled back, blood washing down his iron chestplate. Tamur glowered at the rest of his guards. Not one held his gaze, each of them shuffling to stand upright. ‘You do as I say, you do it immediately and cut down any who try to pass through these gates. If this city burns to the ground then so be it. The Romans must not leave these walls.’

As one, they dropped to their knees and kissed the ground, then leapt once more to their feet. They clipped their iron masks on and fanned out across the gates, facing into the city, spears levelled. Behind them, the western gates swung shut. Those clutching vessels and rushing to leave for the riverbank halted, gawping at the closed gates and the line of soulless iron masks gazing back at them. At once, a wail of despair rang out, pleading for the gates to be reopened.

Tamur ignored this chorus of mewling as he ascended the stairs to the gatehouse. Smoke needled at his eyes and the late-afternoon sun burned on his glistening skin. He reached the battlements and saw that the two Median spearmen there looked terrified as they saluted.
Good,
he mused,
fear is power!

‘The gates are to remain closed. Five Romans are looking to escape from the city . . . ’ he stopped, seeing the taller of the two glance at the other nervously. This was more than just fear. ‘You have something to tell me?’

‘There were a group of riders, Spahbad. Just a short while ago, five of them.’ He pointed a finger to a small dust plume in the west, heading towards the Persian Gulf. ‘We thought they looked different. They trotted out for a few hundred feet and then broke into a gallop.’

Tamur felt his top lip twitch in fury as he gazed out over the western plain. The five had a good start and there were several hours of light left in the day. He rested his fingers on the honeycomb hilt of his shamshir and considered taking the heads from this pair. Their deaths would solve nothing, but might quell his anger a fraction. He turned to gaze back across his burning city, then saw the answer to the east. Just behind Bishapur, a sea of flickering silver moved closer, pouring from the Zagros Mountain roads like a ferocious tide. The Savaran were here. He relaxed his grip on his sword and saw the pair of sentries visibly slump in relief. A chill laugh toppled from his lips as he looked back to the west and the fleeing five.

‘Flee then, Romans. But these lands are vast and your horses will soon tire. The Savaran will be on your heels by morning. The carrion birds will feast on your corpses by noon. And I will be there to watch.’

Chapter 21

The five lay flat in their saddles, galloping in silence across the brushland of the Persis Satrapy. After Carbo’s last act had given them precious moments to escape the arena, they had slipped into the panicked crowds thronging the city streets. They had acquired these mounts from a stable at the acropolis foot, unguarded by anyone bar a deaf and dithering old stable hand with a face like a well-dried prune. He had insisted on giving them several water skins and a sack of food too, seemingly thinking they were Persian scouts. More, he had been intent on leading them to the western gates, all the while muttering about his wife’s mother. They had ridden through the streets with their heads down, and it was like swimming upriver at times, with endless waves of people rushing in the opposite direction, carrying vessels of water from the cistern. But, to their relief, the gates were open to allow streams of people to bring water in from the riverbank. The two guards on the gatehouse did seem to overly scrutinise them, but offered no challenge. At the last, the good-hearted, prune-faced old man had left them outside the gates and wandered back inside.

Pavo hoped the old man would not be punished for his part in helping them escape. A good man who was merely doing his job. A thought had crossed his mind at that moment; for every dark-hearted cur they had encountered in Persian lands, there had been just as many good souls. He thought of Khaled, of Zubin.

They rode hard for a good two hours, staying close to the Shapur River gorge. Apart from this jagged fissure, the dusty plain ahead was featureless, dry, and utterly flat. The faint band of blue that heralded the Persian Gulf seemed to forever slip further away. Worse, the outline of Bishapur still loomed behind them, magnified by the smudges of dark smoke that coiled from it and reached up into the dusk sky like claws.

As tiredness set in, Pavo found his thoughts jumbled and jabbering. His heart ached with every beat as he thought of Father. This was tempered only by the occasional glow of pride as he recalled Father striking the life from Ramak. He ran a hand over his dirt and blood-encrusted beard, then took to smoothing at the worn leather bracelet Father had tied around his wrist. They were free. But Father was gone. Now there was no more guessing, no more doubt. He twisted to look back over his shoulder and wondered at all that burned in that city; Father, the tortured remains of Emperor Valerian, the vile creature, Ramak and, down on the arena floor, Felix. The little Greek had been at the heart of the XI Claudia since the day he had enlisted. Ever since that day, many such men had died, and now so few remained. Habitus, Noster, Sextus and Rufus, just a few of the many that had been lost along the way in this mission. Then there was Carbo. A man who had betrayed his comrades in exchange for freedom, then found that he could not live with his deeds, marching back to the scene of his shame to die. His emotions were tangled over the centurion. On one hand, he had betrayed Father. On the other hand, if Father had been so underhand to secure his own freedom, would Pavo have shunned him for it?

A wheezing from his bay mare snapped him from his thoughts. She was sweating and frothing at the mouth. He stroked her mane as they rode, pouring some water over her neck. ‘Easy, girl,’ he whispered, lying flatter in the saddle.

The others and their mounts were in a similar shape. At last, with darkness almost conquering the last of the navy blue sky in the west, Gallus called out; ‘Enough. If we ride on then our mounts will be crippled.’

They crossed the river at a shallow section then tethered their horses on the banks of the far side where dry grass provided plenty of fodder. Pavo gathered kindling and soon they had a fire crackling in a small, rocky nook by the riverside. The babbling torrents of the river, the singing cicada song and the distant howling of some desert dog was all there was to be heard. Wordlessly, they sat in the shingle around the flames, sharing out the contents of the food sack. There were three flatbreads, a clay pot of yoghurt, a cut of salted goat mutton, a parcel of dates and a small container of honey.

Pavo chewed ravenously on the meat, and it seemed to reinvigorate his limbs. The dates, yoghurt and quickly toasted bread filled his belly and made him drowsy. They washed this down with fresh river water, and let the fire die to mere embers. Each of them looked to one another with weary gazes. Gallus had the look of a hunting wolf, his usually tidy, greying peak of hair tousled and matted, his jaw lined with thick, dark stubble, his limbs taut and bulging from his months of training in the Persian gymnasium. Zosimus and Quadratus, the two titans of the XI Claudia, were equally haggard. Quadratus’ blonde beard and moustache were flowing and tangled like his hair – giving him the look more apt for his Gaulish ancestors than a hardy Roman. Zosimus’ usually perma-stubbled anvil jaw and scalp were likewise sprawling with thick, dark-brown hair like some kind of unkempt street-sweeping brush, and he seemed to have aged in these last months – his broken nose more severe and his foul glare just a fraction fouler. Sura too looked ragged – his unkempt blonde mop and beard framing his sunken cheekbone. But the eyes were the key, Pavo thought, looking round each of them once more. Each pair of eyes told the story of these last few months. The march, the treachery, the ambushes, the sandstorms, the mines, the arena, the palace. One question hung on everyone’s lips. Pavo was the first to air it.

‘What now?’ he said, stoking the embers with a twig.

‘When we reach the Gulf, perhaps we might buy a berth on a merchant cog,’ Gallus suggested, avoiding the issues of their lack of coin and the certainty that there would be a massive price on their heads.

‘Aye, well we certainly aren’t walking back,’ Quadratus said with a wry smirk.

At this, Zosimus, Sura and Pavo erupted in a chorus of dry laughter, Gallus going as far as cocking a languid eyebrow.

When the laughter faded, Sura held up his water skin. ‘If . . . when we make it back, then we’ll drain the taverns of ale for Felix.’ For once, he said this with no mischief and not a trace of his trademark grin. Pavo raised his water skin along with the others.

After a short silence, Gallus turned to Pavo. ‘You still have the scroll?’

Pavo nodded, pulling it from his belt and handing it to him.

Gallus unfurled it and read, his eyes sparkling at first, then dulling as he came to the clause that rendered it useless. ‘So Jovian chose to protect the empire only while he held the throne.’

‘Saved his own skin and to Hades with the future of the empire?’ Quadratus scowled.

Zosimus shrugged. ‘Aye, but then he saved the lives of his army on that day too. Had he not put his seal to that scroll, they might all have been slain . . . or worse,’ he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the Dalaki salt mines.

‘Who knows what Jovian was thinking,’ Gallus surmised. ‘Reading the minds of the living is difficult and dangerous enough. Reading the minds of the dead . . . ’ his words tapered off into a mirthless chuckle as he tucked the scroll inside his robe.

‘Has it all been for nothing?’ Zosimus shrugged, staring into the fire.

Pavo felt as if the big Thracian had reached into his heart and pulled the words from there.

‘We’ve lost a lot in getting this far,’ Gallus nodded. ‘We have little to show for it. But we tried,’ he clenched a fist and glanced at the darkness and the veil of stars that cloaked the sky. ‘By Mithras, we tried. That must mean something.’

Pavo saw a glassiness welling in Gallus’ eyes as he searched the ether for an answer, the idol of Mithras clutched in the tribunus’ right hand.

As if aware he was being watched, Gallus tossed a sinew of goat meat into the embers of the fire, then stood, his eyes at once turning icy cold and his lips growing taut. ‘All that remains is for us to ensure that word gets back to the empire. Emperor Valens must be informed of Tamur’s intent. We sleep here and then we rise before dawn. We’ve ridden a good ten miles today so the Gulf coast is roughly another twenty miles away. I reckon we could reach the shores by mid-morning.’