Chapter XXV

 

 

 

To live is not to live for one's self alone – Menander

 

Mountain of the Horn

 

The heat. Guards in a surly sulk, beatings more frequent and more severe. Usually when they single out prisoners, it comes on in stages, a kick here followed by a few strokes of the rod. Signs of disfavour accumulate like detritus at the edge of town, until that man is the focal point of every beating. Everyone knows who is in disfavour and keep their distance, like animals that avoid the sick and the lame.

Why they chose Thetis is anyone’s guess. It probably was the heat, and the tedium of watching slaves work. Goaded by their monotonous steady movements, the expressionless faces, the infinite servility. Maybe it was just his turn.

Malorix is in the pit breaking ore with a hammer and chisel. The sound of wood striking flesh is unmistakable. A dull thud, as though a heavy stone has fallen into soft, muddy earth. Malorix turns to see Thetis on his knees. Garum looms over him like judgement day. The guard is sweating heavily, his lips curled in a way Malorix has often seen on the cadavers of dead horses. The guard strikes Thetis again, this time to the shoulder. Thetis does not resist but collapses to his hands and knees. Had he gone to flat to the ground, maybe the other guards would have remained bystanders.

"Lie down, you fool," Malorix whispers. But Thetis doesn’t lie down, and the guards come fast from every direction. Their eyes are shark bright. When they are done, Thetis is a bloody heap. Which should have been the end of it. It should have been just another day on the Horn. It would have become known in pit-lore as "the day they killed Thetis", mentioned quickly in passing as heads turn away to banish the memory. Instead, something happens. Something Malorix does not expect in this place.

As the guards lose interest in Thetis, a squat legionary called Gambax goes to the place where Thetis lies and kneels next to him. Though his assistance at this point is superfluous, his movements appear oddly tender. Balera joins him, and as they begin to pull the body from the dirt Garum turns on them. His eyes are narrowed, triumphant in their hate.

"Leave him!" he shouts, stretching his Greek vocabulary to the limit.

But the Romans do not leave him. Nor do they look away. They stand still and regard Garum in a way that has no place among prisoners on the Horn. Their look is of a type that would earn five quick stripes on any other day, or at any other time. Garum raises his stick, as the other guards turn to watch. From the edge of his vision Malorix sees a skinny sentry they call Pox sidling in the direction of the weapons store. Quirinus joins Balera and Gambax, and one by one the other Romans close in around them. Malorix finds himself among them, clustered shoulder to shoulder, in the face of the common certainty. One day they too will end like this, dying in the dirt.

Garum licks thick, parched lips. Several guards wielding spears and clubs advance on the defiant men, but Garum puts up a hand. Two-score prisoners are facing him now, and he understands their message. They will resist this time, and it will be a hard fight before they are subdued. Garum remains still as Gambax and Balera lift Thetis and carry him toward the cave. He spits at them but makes no move, evidently having decided to let the situation diffuse itself. The prisoners drift back to their work, little able to comprehend what they have just witnessed.

Malorix retrieves his chisel and resumes his methodical search for fissures and fractures in the rock face. But he taps distractedly, his mind is unwilling to bend to the task. His thoughts are not of Thetis, now at peace, or soon to be so. Instead, he finds himself gripped by a kind of curiosity. A novelty of sensation. How it felt … how it feels. To be freed from solitude for a brief, extraordinary moment. Standing together as men do, enjoined to the common will.

A guard gestures threateningly in his direction. Driving the hammer hard down upon the curled iron top of his chisel, Malorix struggles to hold on to the feeling, and the unfamiliar lightness that whispers through his consciousness. This isn’t about Thetis. The Romans despise him to a man. But Thetis was once part of something, a human enterprise in which the components survive because they work in unison, a single whole. In this way for centuries the forbearers of these men defeated enemies who were, man for man, stronger and more numerous than they. In this way these small men, average men, the farmers and the labourers from a tiny peninsula had conquered a world. Once again it had seemed, ephemerally, they had been a legion.

Unable to shake the sensation, it rolls over and over in his mind—the surge of their collective will. A moment of intensity, standing over the shattered hulk of a dying man. Like leaving the precincts of his youth, for an instant he ceased to be the Sarmatian, the spurned, the lone assassin. In that instant the heavy curtain that had divided him from other men had lifted, and he glimpsed what lay in the distance beyond. In that fleeting moment, he had been one of them.

 

* * * * *

 

When Malorix awakens Thetis is dead, his corps taken by the guards to feed their canine clients. Malorix shuffles his way into line for the morning meal of barley gruel. His day is fixed by the heavens. The sun will traverse the sky, and he will break rock until it sinks low in the west. By then he will be ravenous, exhausted, too tired even to talk. He will collapse in a corner of the cave and sleep until dawn. Then it will begin again, the cycle. His life.

And yet somehow, on this day, Malorix is filled with new hope. Balera, Quirinus, and the others seem to sense it too. They are already there when Malorix reaches the queue for food. As they acknowledge his existence, there is a newness in their manner. For some reason he is trying to think of their names. Spectatus, Firmus, and Tullio, a trio of inseparable rankers from IX^th Hispana, who shared the same squad for many years. Tetricus and the bold Gambax, who came to the aid of Thetis. Titus Flaminius, a trumpeter, and Brocchus Surillo another from the Italian Legion, an eagle bearer from Tarraco. Two brothers named Heraclites and Hero, with the olive skin and the tightly curled hair of Alexandrians.

Malorix ponders these men as he consumes his meagre portion. Save the welts on his back from the daily work of the guards, Malorix is now physically stronger than any time since his capture. His wounds have healed and he has grown accustomed to the hard conditions of the mine. This, he knows, will not last. A look at Balera and Quirinus is enough to tell the tale. They are much diminished. Unless he can find a way out, they are all dead men—capable of small heroisms perhaps—but dead just the same.

Old habits reassert themselves, as together they shamble forward in the line, bound at the ankle by loops of iron, heads bowed to avoid eye contact with the guards. Malorix has his eyes on his chipped bowl when he once again feels the violence of Garum’s stick.

"No food for you today." The guard says in broken Greek. "You’re to the smelters."

Whistling follows, and a hail of catcalls from the other guards. "Hey, hey, honey. Woo, woo."

"Baa, baa."

A quick thrust from the butt-end of a club sets Malorix in motion. Balera signals encouragement with a furtive legionary salute, earning Malorix another solid stroke across his back that drives him to his knees. He rises with difficulty, then with further help from the guards is propelled forward, stumbling from view down the stone steps leading from the pit to the mill level.

At the mills the ore is reduced to a coarse powder to be bagged and carried down to a site even lower on the mountain for smelting. The guard accompanying him forces Malorix to hoist a pair of ore sacks and carry them through a gate to a footpath that traverses gently down mountainside. The path offers a panorama of the plains below, the view a tonic despite his burden.

Unlike the pit, where nothing can survive, there is life here. A dun coloured lizard regards him balefully from the protection of a crevice then disappears. Further along, a tawny hoopoe lights upon the branch of a desiccated tree that hosts tiny buds of green and red. The bird flaps its wings revealing vibrant black and white bars. The vibrancy of its life-force is almost shocking in its contrast to the dust-caked monotone of the mountain prison. The bird cocks its head and shakes its impressive crest as though urging him forward.

As Malorix toils with the heavy bags he steals glimpses of the world stretched-out before him. In the expanse below small trails of dust reveal a merchant caravan moving toward some distant destination. His stomach tightens, and he looks away. That world is not for him. Not yet.

The footpath continues its spiral decent until he reaches a gate overlooked by a sentry who jumps down from the wooden palisade to admit him and his jailor. Beyond the gate a clearing is bisected by a small stream. Three water-filled stone cisterns dominate this enclosure. Beyond them smelters burn while others are under construction. Prisoners tend fires and prepare crucibles in which to melt ore. Malorix spies Gelanor, or a facsimile of someone who had once been Gelanor, tending listlessly to a furnace. His fulsome face has grown angular, the eyes sunk deeper.

Prodded onward by his companion, Malorix approaches a bulky looking Parthian in a battered helmet who directs him in no uncertain terms to the stone sieves. Here he deposits his burden and stretches his aching back. This is the penultimate stage of ore production before the gold goes into the furnaces. The sieves are hollowed-out stones, their bottoms permeated with holes. Iron rings are attached to either side of the sieve, by which it is suspended in the air between wooden stakes driven into the ground. The crushed ore is poured into the top and prisoners shake the sieve and force the finer grains out through the holes using an iron bar.

It’s strenuous work. After only a few minutes Malorix is sweating profusely. Periodically he is interrupted from this toil by prisoners with baskets who take the grains of ore too large to push through the sieve back to the mills for further grinding. Grains that penetrate the base of the sieve fall into a metal pan. When it is full Malorix carries it to group of prisoners standing in a stream working with hand sieves and wooden tables. An Egyptian wearing only a loincloth takes his pan and pours it on to a table about ten feet across. The wooden boards of the table traverse the stream just below the surface of the rushing water. As the Egyptian rubs the ore powder over the boards, the lighter gangue drifts downstream while the heavier gold-bearing material sticks to the boards and is scraped into separate pans for drying. The collected residue is dried in the sun to be poured into the crucibles for smelting.

The surroundings are an immense improvement over the searing intensity of the ore pits. There are trees here, as well as cacti, scrub, and conifers, fed by the fast-flowing stream. Malorix has spent the morning at the heavy stone sieve working beside a large man with broken teeth when a familiar voice intrudes.

"How do you like the accommodation, Sarmatian?" Polydius.

"As you see," he replies, "I have steady employment."

Polydius screeches with laughter. "Steady! By the gods indeed you do. Enough to last you ’til doomsday!" He bends to pick up some pieces of ore and examines them distractedly. "You look pretty strong. I’m guessing you’ll last a good year before you drop."

"Good to know I have a secure future."

Polydius loses another howl. "A future!" Malorix observes the Greek’s eyes traversing the work area. "Your future could include liberation from this place," he says in a lower voice. "Does that appeal?"

Malorix keeps his head bent toward a handful of ore nodules while, aping Polydius, he scans the yard. Submerged instincts struggle to reassert themselves. "Why should you care what happens to me?"

"I am a friend of the Imperial Secret Service."

"That is nothing to me."

"On the contrary, I have it on good authority that it has everything to do with you." A serpentine smile. "You are a Roman agent, as is your friend over there—or what’s left of him." Polydius reaches inside the grinding stone as if to inspect the ore again and plays with a new handful of nodules. "You are wondering how I know these things," he resumes conversationally. "Two days ago, commander Vasiges … you remember Vasiges, do you not? Well, two days ago he received a visitor, a Greek. Oddly, he seemed to know a lot about you."

"Did this Greek have a name?"

"Calls himself Cocconas. Said you are an imperial spy, stole his gold, and he wants it back. Plans to go into business with Vasiges. I do not fear he will end up like you however, for he appears to be more the viper of the two. They are interested in making money together. Their first project will be to stake you two skeletons out on the ground to lure in your partner, the one who roams the desert with the remainder of your gold. They intend to use you as bait."

"We are to be ransomed?"

"In a manner of speaking. Vasiges will ransom you, and then kill you. He cannot let you live. For one thing you are a Roman agent, which is reason enough to kill you. Secondly, this mine is Vasiges’ private operation. He reaps all the profits and does not share so much as an obol with his king. Can you imagine his fate were this to become known in Ctesiphon? You must die. Gentle soul that he is, I’m afraid Vasiges will insist."

"My future is shorter than you imagined."

"Yes, yes," he chuckles, "short indeed. By the gods, I like you, Sarmatian. You were born to play Lysistrata!" He makes a further show of examining the sieve. "I also sense certain hostility towards your person from this Cocconas. He is most keen to come here and visit you, but I’m keeping him off. Vasiges thankfully, is with his squadron. When he returns, however," Polydius shrugged, "I will be unable to prevent what is to come."

"Why would you protect me?"

"I have my own scores to settle with Vasiges. As a gesture of my good faith I’ve had you transferred to these smelters." His features tighten. "What choice do you have? If I am secretly in league with Vasiges, will you be any less dead?" Malorix tries to contradict this logic, but it seems conclusive. "In return I need a favour of you. A debt that I will collect when we escape."

"We?"

"Yes. In the past, I had certain problems, which led me to leave the precincts of the Roman Empire to seek my fortune abroad."

"What sort of problems?"

"I crossed a man of influence. A rich Athenian whose influence travels far."

"You were exiled."

"In absentia. If I return, I will be tried and probably executed or murdered."

"Your crime?"

Polydius runs a hand through his matted hair. "In truth, he had a most seductive daughter. She was perhaps a little young."

"He wants you dead."

"And his sons. The whole family, actually. There is a warrant for my arrest."

"You think I can help."

"You are Frumentarii. You can intercede to have the warrant suppressed."

"In exchange?"

"You and your friend leave here, with me, and return to Cappadocia. I supply horses and provisions. I need your answer quickly. With or without you my time here is finished."

"Why?"

"I built this operation for Vasiges. I know everything about it, and him. Your admirer Cocconas has sent for man of science to replace me. When that man arrives Vasiges will no longer have need of me and will send me to join my ancestors. I do not desire their acquaintance."

 

* * * * *

 

At nightfall prisoners working the smelters are held in separate stockades. Malorix chokes down a meagre ration of barley gruel and collapses in a heap at the edge of his assigned enclosure, his senses engulfed by the odour of chicken-shit straw and rancid urine. Despite the weight of his weariness sleep eludes him, as his mind parses new, unforeseen possibilities. Has his luck changed at last? Perhaps Tempus or some other deity has seen fit to take an interest in the Romans’ plight.

Every instinct informs Malorix that he can place no trust in this mendacious Greek. And yet, should Polydius prove false—what is lost? You live, you die, as Vadomar said, and then proved his point. And what of this mission. To proceed alone means failure, for Malorix has need of someone who can retrace the route to Silo’s resting place.

Would Balera or Quirinus leave the Horn without the others? Unlikely. These legionaries have suffered together too long. To abandon one another now would be to abandon all that remains of what it means to be soldiers, to be men. Vows were given, and not just to the scores of dead lying in the dust at Elegia or here at the mine. Solemn covenants contracted long ago. Obligations of duty, to the legionary standard, to their golden eagle. The legion remains a sacred thing—as are its god protectors watching from afar. Mars Ultor—the Avenger, stands ready to strike down legionaries who would do him dishonour. So too Mithras, god of their most sacred cult.

Take them all then, or at least free them. That means overpowering the entire garrison. A daunting prospect, and should they succeed how to move such a brave but enfeebled amalgam of skeleton soldiers … and with what animals? And then the Reaper … Malorix has seen enough to know he believes in this thing, this force from beyond death. A malign spirit that will give no quarter until it possesses the soul of every survivor of the IX^th Legion. To make a stand with such men-condemned is to invite disaster. Yet what choice remains? Knowing Rome’s mind Silo built this edifice, and then sealed all the exits.

Absorbed in these contending thoughts, Malorix fails to detect the assailant’s approach. Sensation. A vicious wrench to his scalp, a blade held tight to the throat, the strong odour of onions and arkhi. One cut now resolves all, for him. A tingle where the blade cuts lightly, almost tenderly into his skin.

"I missed you on the field at Elegia, Sarmatian," whispers a voice, recollected through a stupor of fear and fatigue. Cocconas has the edge well honed. So cool, where the rivulet of blood meets with the open air. "I told you what would happen the next time I saw you. Tonight they’ll have your friend, and then … I will enjoy watching. For you, I might even join in. Later we’ll discuss old times with your feet to the fire."

The pressure of the blade releases and his face is mashed savagely into the filthy straw. By the time Malorix can clear his faculties, voice, blade, and their proprietor have vanished. The other prisoners rest undisturbed as if Cocconas had never intruded into their sanctum of tortured dreams. Malorix dabs with his tunic at the line of blood lacing his throat, a stinging reminder of what the fates have in store. He remembers the frontier. Now it is he, not Cocconas who is helpless. The guards will take him and there is nothing and no one to stop them, not even Polydius. In a matter of days or hours Malorix will face the choice of shame or death. If the choice is on offer, and even that is doubtful.

Sounds of struggle from the other lock-up. Malorix elicits angry moans and curses as he scrambles clumsily over bodies to locate a gap in the palisade through which to see into the work yard. A campfire burns on the far side. Though cracked planking he counts three—no four guards, and Cocconas dragging a body toward the stream. A girlish giggle. For only an instant a face is captured in the firelight, and Malorix knows he will never forget the expression held there. Gelanor vanishes, and the cluster of guards fades into the darkness to the sound of splashing water, of oaths, and pitiless laughter.

 

* * * * *

 

The following day Malorix proposes his terms. "All of them?" Polydius nearly shouts, his face flushed as he struggles to maintain a measure of composure beneath the scrutiny of the guards. "You're insane. Quite mad," he says, nodding his head rapidly with the frenetic conviction of a priest examining unfavourable entrails.

"It is possible, and if you want the warrant rescinded, this is my price. I only want the legionaries."

"Sarmatian, look around you ..."

"What do you intend to live on when you return? There is gold here, enough to set you up for life. All you need to do is put it in your saddle bags."

"I have funds set aside." The Greek’s colour subsides. "Still... One can never have too much." He turns away and conducts a slow circuit of the work area, stopping for a long time before a smelter crew. This is the final stage, where dried ore residue is mixed with various metals and salts to promote separation, and crucibles containing the mixture are introduced to the ovens with heavy iron tongs. Wooden bellows are worked to magnify the heat. When the impure material is burned off, what remains is gold. Polydius watches the crew thoughtfully as they pour out the bubbling metal. Returning to where Malorix is hard at work he says, "Upon reflection, perhaps a teensy uprising might be arranged."

Polydius pairs Malorix with Gelanor at another of the smelters. Separate in their awareness of the previous night’s horrors they work in silence, lifting crucibles in and out of the oven’s torrid interior and pouring the gold into pottery moulds for cooling. "How goes it with you?" Malorix ventures.

Gelanor makes no reply. The stiffness of his motions, tortured, mechanistic … all speak loudly of his suffering, as do the fresh scratches and bruises on his face and arms. They continue their work for an hour, perhaps two, before he utters, "I live".

As they work the tongs together to withdraw a crucible Malorix whispers, "I have an escape plan.” The iron shaft stops in place as Gelanor takes in the words. "The Greek Polydius will help. He needs the influence of the Frumentarii to suppress a warrant against him."

Gelanor’s lips curl as the movement of the tongs resumes. "Only you would believe such a tale."

"If we do not escape soon we will die here. I have accepted his offer." They pour out more gold. "I do not intend to go alone," Malorix continues. "We will take the Roman prisoners with us."

Gelanor releases his grip on the tongs. As Malorix struggles to keep the crucible from spilling Gelanor faces him. "Still, the fool! That is not our mission. Rome cares not a jot for them—they are dishonoured forever by their own actions!" Over by the gate a hairy guard rouses sufficiently from his torpor to summon-up a threatening shake of his club. Gelanor bows his obeisance, glares at Malorix, and grudgingly resumes his hold on the tongs.

"We have no choice, Gelanor," Malorix hisses, as they resume their work. "I have learned from the Romans that Silo is buried a few days from here. There will be a message there, I am certain of it."

"You would believe that too!" Gelanor’s eyes burn. "More tales for children."

"It is our only way out."

"Thanks to you."

"Look, we need these legionaries to find where Silo lies, and they will not help us unless we help them. You can stay or go. Until then …" An image of the previous night flashes in his mind.

They continue their work in venomous silence. Malorix greets the return of Polydius with relief, welcoming enlistment to stock supplies into a squalid hut near the gate. As he shuffles away, Gelanor spits on the ground at his feet. "We were cursed the day you gained command!" Malorix stops, turns and opens his mouth to reply but can find no words, nor the spirit to deliver them. All he has left is a plan, and the promises of a miscreant Greek.

"Polydius," he says as he shambles toward the hut, "I will need keys for the prisoners' leg and wrist irons."

"What else?"

"A Parthian bow. And all the arrows you can muster."