The darkness seemed infinite at first; the darkness of death, Pavo was certain. But the furious heat seemed incongruous. And he seemed to be swaying in this black netherworld, swaying to a rhythm of dull and distant crunching boots on dust, spliced by the sharp crack of a whip on raw skin. He longed to see his surroundings, be it Hades or otherwise, but there was nothing.
The burning on his skin abated for a short while, and he heard the distant lapping of waves and the splashing of oars, together with the faraway shrieking of gulls and the jabbering of foreign voices. Finally, the heat of the sun dropped away and there was shade. Not the shade of night, but something else. A stifling, airless shade. He was descending, he realised. Was this the journey to Hades?
It was then that a nightmare came to him. But not the nightmare of the dunes. Now he beheld some vast, vile creature buried in the dust, only its fangless maw visible like a gaping chasm in the ground. He saw nothing but the shadow that filled the depths of the maw, and heard nothing but tortured moans from within the creature’s seven bellies. The maw flexed and chewed as if eager for its next meal. He tried to turn, but could not. He tried to slow his progress, digging his heels into the dust, clawing out, but the maw clamped onto his flesh and drew him down into the darkness of its gut.
In the belly of this beast, he heard nothing but the endless, pained cries of men. But there was something else, something splicing the wickedness; the occasional words of a soothing voice. When the voice spoke, he felt the lip of some vessel at his lips, and liquid trickling into his throat.
One eyelid cracked open, blurry and crusted. The strip of light this cast into his eyes sent shockwaves through his head. He heard himself roar in pain as if miles distant and felt his hands clamp onto his head as if they belonged to someone else. Slowly, his other senses came back to him. He was lying down on some hard surface, dressed only in a loincloth. A constant clink-clink of iron echoed all around. Rasping, rattling coughs came and went, nearby and faraway. The cracking of whips brought forth weak cries. He tried to fill his lungs, but his nostrils stung and the foul air seemed to steal his breath away until he broke down into a coughing fit. His tongue was shrivelled and utterly dry, and a film of something coated it. He felt the urge to retch but did not have the energy. He reached for his eyes with a trembling hand, and rubbed at them gently. Gradually, the blinding strip of light became less painful.
‘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.
Three weeks passed. Three weeks of brutal labour at the salt face. Every day they were afforded a few hours of sleep, and without daylight, the concept of day and night was lost to them. They would be woken by Gorzam’s rattling spear tip on the bars, fed and watered, then shackled and ushered to the salt crystal near the main shaft. Here, the dust was so thick it stole the breath from their lungs, stung their eyes and burned in Pavo’s whip wounds – which had turned to scar tissue after nearly two weeks of agony. Their lips and mouths were constantly cracked and bleeding, their hands raw and their feet callused. They filled basket after basket, loading each one on the pulley before returning to the salt face with an empty one. Men worked all around them, coughing and panting. Nobody spoke, nobody even made eye contact. Don’t ever look the guards in the eye, Khaled had told Pavo, I have seen them kill men for less!
In his first days of mining, Pavo realised that they were deep underground – in the fourth of seven chambers, each linked by the main shaft. So far under the surface that we could cry out until our lungs bled and nobody would hear us up there, Khaled had confirmed, dryly. On taking a full basket to the pulley, Pavo had glanced down into the dark hole of the main shaft, and wondered how many of his vexillatio toiled in the chambers below. He saw another slave nearby, neglecting his work and looking up wistfully. Pavo also risked a look up. High above, he saw a tiny disc of white. Daylight and the world of the living. He only realised he was gawping at it when he heard Khaled’s whispered warning. He turned his eyes down at once, his skin crawling as he heard footsteps thunder over to him. Gorzam had stormed past him and grappled the other slave by the throat. Khaled and Pavo could only stare at the salt crystal and continue to hack at it as Gorzam whipped at the slave again and again until the poor wretch collapsed. Even then, Gorzam did not relent, whipping at the man’s head until the flesh came away and the skull crumpled. He enjoyed every lash. Then he and a comrade kicked the dead slave’s corpse towards the darkness of the main shaft. Another slave chained to the dead man dropped his pickaxe and clutched at the chains as he was dragged towards the shaft as well, begging Gorzam for mercy. The man’s pleas went unheard and he toppled into the abyss with the dead man. His cries echoed until they halted with an abrupt and distant crunch. The monotonous, rhythmic chink-chink of pickaxe on salt continued as if nothing had happened.
At the start of the fifth week of his incarceration, Pavo woke first to the soothing melody of Zoroastrian prayer. The voices of so many tortured souls in this place came together to recite the gathas, and the lilting verses echoed throughout the mines like the tumbling currents of a gentle brook. But the prayer halted abruptly at the sound of a cracking whip and the wailing of some poor slave on the end of its barbed tips. He sat bolt upright. The pain in his ribs and on his back had almost faded, but the burning in his lungs from the infernal salt dust seemed to grow fierier with every day. He scratched at his now wiry beard and straw-like, salt-encrusted hair. Khaled wakened at the same time and the two peered through the bars at the glowing crystalline cavern. Another long shift at the salt crystals lay ahead.
The bars of the cells nearby rattled to the tune of a spearpoint. Pavo and Khaled stiffened.
‘Come drink your water, dogs!’ a grating voice called out gleefully. There was a shuffling of thirsty men rushing to the bars of their cells. Gorzam soon came to their cell, rattling his spearpoint more slowly, as if he had been looking forward to this. He held the whip in his other hand as if in expectation, and the guard with him carried a large water skin. ‘Cups,’ Gorzam rasped.
He and Khaled approached the bars as the second guard readied the skin to pour. They passed their cups through the bars, avoiding the guards’ gaze, Pavo struggling to resist a glance at the phalera on Gorzam’s chest. Gorzam watched as the other guard filled the cups, then took them and handed them back through. Pavo reached out for his cup and Khaled his. His fingers were but an inch from clasping it, when Gorzam let both go. The cups bounced on the floor and the water soaked into the salt and dust in a heartbeat. Khaled and Pavo stepped back, stifling their anger.
‘Ah, it is a shame to see the precious water go to waste, is it not?’ Gorzam grinned. ‘Still, at least you have your food.’ He nodded to the other guard. The man turned to rummage in the hemp sack he carried and produced two lumps of bread.
As Gorzam moved on to the next cell, Pavo prodded at the flint-hard, stale bread, then looked to the spilled water cups. He felt the absence of his spatha more keenly than ever. He pressed his face to the bars, watching as Gorzam halted, he and the other guard pouring water into cups of their own, then squeezing some viscous, grainy substance into it. Pavo frowned, seeing Gorzam lick his lips then gulp at this hungrily. The guard drained the cup then spotted Pavo watching. In a flash, the whip cracked towards the bars of Pavo’s cell. Pavo leapt back, the barbs gouging at the iron where his face had been a heartbeat ago.
Khaled placed an arm on his shoulder. ‘He has but two joys in life: one is the strained seeds from the joy plant – the poppy,’ Khaled whispered. ‘Its juices calm his pickled mind – one day hopefully he will take too much and it will kill him. The other, and by far his favourite pleasure, is to provoke the poor bastards in this place,’ Khaled said, stooping to pick up the two water cups. ‘Don’t give him what he seeks.’ He pushed Pavo’s cup into his hand. ‘Here, drink the drops that are still in there, it will give you moisture enough to chew on this year-old bread. Failing that, we can set about it with our pickaxes,’ he grinned wearily.
Pavo sat with a sigh. ‘That’s two days running he’s denied us water.’
‘It is a complement of sorts. He sees us as a threat. If they spoil our food we will be weak – not so weak we cannot work, but not so strong that we might think about tackling him or his comrades.’ Khaled nodded through the bars to where another guard was crushing the bread of another slave under his heel. ‘There are thousands of wretches in this underground vault, and only a few hundred guards.’
‘Aye, an army . . . but half-blind and lame,’ Pavo commented wryly, seeing the sorry packs of slaves cowering under the guards’ whips all around the cavern. Suddenly, a cracking of bone sounded behind him. He swung round to see Khaled stretching his painfully thin and knotted limbs, his arms looped behind his back and the bones in his chest popping.
‘I tell you, it means less misery at the end of the shift,’ Khaled said, seeing Pavo wince with every crunch and grind. ‘Did it not aid you yesterday and the day before?’
Pavo sighed, nodded and set about following the man’s routine. First, he stretched his hamstrings by sitting on the flattest area of the cell floor and reaching out to grasp the toes of one foot until the back of his leg burned, before switching to the other leg. He shot furtive glances at Khaled and wondered again how long the man had been in here. Years, was all Khaled had said when he asked.
‘Tell me, when you were brought here, Spahbad Tamur must have been little more than a boy?’ he asked in an attempt to date Khaled’s time in the mines.
‘Ah, yes, a young boy with a supple, malleable mind,’ Khaled shrugged, then twisted until his shoulder blades cracked. An incongruous grin of relief followed this. ‘His father, Cyrus, was the Spahbad of Persis before him. A noble soul, but one who neglected to nurture and educate his son. Thus, Tamur has fallen under the influence of others . . . ’
Pavo frowned as he dipped to rest his weight on one knee then pressed forward upon it, stretching his quadriceps. ‘Aye, who?’
‘The same cur responsible for casting me into this place. Ramak, Archimagus of the Fire Temple.’ Khaled’s gaze grew distant and haunted. ‘Spahbad Tamur controls a vast wing of the Savaran. Shahanshah Shapur trusts Tamur. But it is Ramak who truly rules the Satrapy of Persis. There was an internecine war, thirteen years ago, I was chained at the ankle and forced to fight as a paighan in the armies of Tamur. He was a young warrior then – little more than a boy, as you say - over-eager and yet to understand that his orders could cost the lives of men. He sent us in against a gund of clibanarii that day. A thousand iron riders. Man for man, paighan versus clibanarius.’ Khaled shook his head.
‘The clibanarii are all but invincible, are they not?’ Pavo asked, recalling the fearsome iron-plated, masked riders from the desert.
‘Invincible? I thought so too, once. The finest blades – lances and swords – will blunt on their plate-armour. Then I saw a shepherd’s boy fell one of them with his sling. The shot punctured the iron plate as if it was paper. So I had a sling in my belt that day on the battlefield.’ He made a gesture with his arm, as if spinning an imaginary sling. ‘Took down three of them before we were overrun. Tamur’s army was beaten back that day. He still had some light in his heart then, and consoled us at first. But when Ramak questioned him in front of the ranks, seeking answers for his defeat, his mood grew foul. So he took out his ire upon his paighan, claiming some of us tried to run and caused the defeat. Some of us did,’ he shrugged, ‘but not me. Regardless, Ramak saw fit to blame me and the hundred who fought under my drafsh.’ He held out his arms as if in wonderment. ‘And this is my reward.’ His bitter smile faded. ‘Many of my people follow the noble traditions of old Persia, the traditions I was raised by: speak quietly and eloquently, never criticise bad advice, do not leer at food being brought to you, always speak the truth . . . never mistreat a slave. In the far-flung satrapies, slaves are allowed three days of rest a month, they are not subjected to violence and can aspire to freedom. Such virtues are smiled upon by our God, Ahura Mazda, but not in these lands – not by Ramak. The archimagus does little to uphold Ahura Mazda’s glory, for he is too preoccupied coveting and multiplying his own. He talks of Persia and Rome as the truth and the lie. The only truth is that Ramak is the lie.’ He stopped for a moment, struggling to control his anger. Then a canny smile lined his aged features. ‘When an ambitious man seeks to harness the gods; kings, empires and armies should beware.’
‘Aye, I’ll say,’ Pavo pulled a wry smile, remembering the events surrounding the Bosporus mission. Then he stood to begin stretching his arms. He wondered at the significance of this pair, Tamur and Ramak. They knew of the mission for the scroll, it seemed. So they must have known of its importance. He had said nothing of the scroll to Khaled yet. He had quickly grown to like the man, and was now starting to trust him, but past experience had told him to be wary of strangers in the guise of friends. Thus, he decided to tread cautiously. ‘This Ramak . . . how far could his designs for power stretch?’
Khaled shook his arms and rolled his head on his shoulders. ‘The man would gladly slide a blade between Shahanshah Shapur’s ribs then sit upon his throne in Ctesiphon, and still he would not be content. But he cannot do so – for the rest of the Satrapies would crush him. Controlling the Persis Satrapy alone will not realise Ramak’s wants. He needs gold to swell his forces, to challenge Shapur.’
A cold shiver ran down Pavo’s spine, thinking of the ruinous state of the Strata Diocletiana, and then of Roman Syria and the riches a conqueror could harvest from that land. ‘A ripe target. And if the scroll remains lost, a viable one,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Eh?’ Khaled cocked his head to one side.
Pavo shook his head. ‘Nothing . . . perhaps I will talk of it later.’ He sought to change the subject, then realised Khaled had finally answered his question. ‘You were captured and brought here thirteen years ago, you said?’
Khaled flinched at this. ‘Indeed,’ he said, his lips tightening as he twirled the ends of his moustache. ‘It has been a long time. But this place will not break me. I will not allow it. I pray to Ahura Mazda every day, and ask him to deliver me back to my family. They are out there,’ he said, gazing up as if able to see through the hundreds of feet of thick rock and out into the light of day. ‘I will be with them again.’
Pavo dropped his gaze. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think of that which troubles you.’ But something screamed in his thoughts. If Khaled has survived here for thirteen years, then perhaps there were others who had survived for . . .
‘That I know of no other in these mines who has been here longer than me tells me something,’ Khaled continued, a single tear hovering on his eyelid. ‘That I am destined to live on until I am reunited with them.’
His words hit Pavo like a blow to the guts. Father was dead. He had known this in the deepest recesses of his mind all along, but the truth felt like an icy dagger to the heart. He disguised his anguish by hurriedly tying a rag of cloth over his nose and mouth in preparation for the coming shift. But his lips trembled and a stinging behind his eyes blurred his vision with a veil of tears.
Suddenly, a spear tip rattled along the bars once more. Both men braced. Pavo’s heart thundered. Gorzam unlocked the cell and ushered in another pair of guards, who hurried to poke their spear tips at Pavo and Khaled’s backs. Gorzam cracked the whip down on the dusty, salty cell floor and the noise was cue enough for both men to shuffle out into the cavern obediently.
The echoing rhythm of pickaxes intensified as they trudged along one of the walkways that snaked round the cavern wall. When they came to a ramp that led down onto the cavern floor and the salt face they had worked these last weeks, Pavo turned to descend.
But Gorzam thrust his whip-wielding hand into Pavo’s chest. ‘Not today,’ he barked, then nodded to the far edge of the cavern. There, a network of tunnels spidered off from the main cavern and into the rock. Each tunnel was barely lit and only tall enough for a crouching man to fit into. Gorzam struggled to contain his joy. ‘Today, you work in the wormholes.’
Pavo sensed Khaled brace at this. Then another guard jabbed his spear butt into the Persian’s back, sending him stumbling onwards, round the walkway towards the nearest tunnel entrance. Khaled picked up a basket and a pickaxe from the pile near the tunnel, then crouched and entered the space. Pavo took a pickaxe and followed, stooping so his back was horizontal. The air in here was sweltering and he felt his chest tighten at once. His quickened breaths barely fought off a tingling dizziness. As he stumbled along, the jagged rock overhead scraped on his back, and clouds of dust thicker than ever wafted into his eyes and mouth. Panic began to grip him as he felt the walls of the tunnel grow narrower, almost tomb-like. He stumbled and fell, then righted himself, back pressed against the dagger-sharp crystals of the tunnel wall, panting swiftly.
‘Be calm,’ Khaled grasped him by the shoulders. ‘Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Let each breath reach your stomach, fill your lungs, enrich your blood.’
Pavo nodded, clenching his eyes shut. His heart hammered at first, then it slowed. The air was still foul but the deeper breaths seemed to cool and calm him. His heartbeat returned to normal as he fought back his fears.
‘Now come,’ Khaled beckoned, one eye on the guard scowling at them from the mouth of the tunnel.
They carried on until the torchlight from the main cavern offered only a dull glow that danced from the crystals. Every so often, the tunnel widened where men worked into the salt face. There were pairs and trios of men, bent double as they hacked and chiselled at the salt face.
‘Why do they continue to work – there are no guards in these tunnels, it seems?’ Pavo asked.
‘That’s because no guard would want to come down into these deathly passages,’ Khaled replied. ‘They continue to work because the guards waiting at the mouth of each tunnel know how many men are in there, and they expect twelve crates of salt per man per shift. If there is one crate less . . . ’
Pavo nodded, ‘I can imagine.’
They continued on, passing another group of workers. One skeletal figure trembled, racked with fever and struggling to draw breath. As Pavo passed by, the man retched and spat thick gobbets of blood. Black blood. Pavo’s heart iced at the sight, remembering Khaled’s description of the disease. He wondered whether to pity or envy the man – for surely death would be a freedom of sorts.
They came to the end of the tunnel and eyed the sheet of salt crystal before them. Blessedly, they could stand tall at this point, but there was little else to relish in this location. He and Khaled shared a weary glance before they took to hacking at the face. Salt shards and dust showered back at them with every strike.
Pavo halted, coughing. He turned to fill a basket, grunting as he hefted the salt chunks into it. ‘You could fit a man in one of these.’
‘Many have tried to do just what you are thinking of; hiding in the baskets that are lifted to the surface on the pulley.’
‘Aye?’ Pavo’s eyes narrowed, intrigued.
‘Aye, the shaft is the only way in or out.’ Khaled shook his head. ‘But at the top, they have men checking every basket. Those they find hiding, they send straight back down. No need for ladders, if you get my meaning.’
Pavo nodded faintly, horrified. He looked to the shattered salt face before them then weighed the pickaxe a few times. ‘Has anyone ever tried tunnelling their way out?’
Khaled’s face fell, then he boomed with laughter that filled the end of the tunnel. ‘If they have tried, then perhaps in a few hundred years they might reach the surface!’ He jabbed a finger upwards. ‘I told you, hundreds and hundreds of feet of pure rock. If you think it’s hard mining the salt, then try swinging your axe at that!’ he said, nodding to a flat patch of blue shale, veined with russet sedimentary rock.
Pavo shrugged and returned to swinging his pickaxe. Within a few hours, they had filled eight baskets. Pavo transported each full basket back to the tunnel mouth and into the cavern, his callused feet moving over the jagged floor more easily now. The air in the main cavern felt almost luxurious in comparison to that of the cramped tunnel. He hurried over to the edge of the main shaft where he latched the basket onto the pulley system. He risked a glance up to the disc of light above, and shuddered at the thought of the poor wretches who had hidden in the baskets and come within feet of freedom, bathed in a few heartbeats of daylight, only to be cast back down the shaft to their deaths.
When he felt Gorzam’s glare upon him he hurried back into the tunnel and stooped to scuttle along to its end. Khaled and he carried on hacking at the salt face. Another hour passed until Pavo’s shoulders ached. He had become used to the burning thirst that accompanied every shift but in this airless tunnel it was intensified. Self-pity drained away and then anger took over. He found a new surge of strength and began to hack furiously. The vexillatio had been all but wiped out, his friends dead or lost somewhere in this underground Hades. The mission had been swatted like a gnat by this Tamur and his master, Ramak. And the dark-hearted bastard Gorzam walked these mines wearing the phalera. Father’s phalera. Father, whose bones no doubt lay somewhere in the dust of this stinking, filthy hole in the heart of Persia, a hole he too would die in as a slave. As a slave! He snarled and his teeth ground like rocks. He smashed at the salt face until shards – some as large as men – toppled to the floor around him.
‘Stop!’ Khaled cried, grabbing his bicep.
Pavo halted, pickaxe raised overhead, panting.
‘You will bring the tunnel down on top of us,’ Khaled continued, wide-eyed, pointing to the large crack snaking across the ceiling. ‘I have seen many men perish like this, crushed under the crystals.’
Pavo fell back, slumping against the tunnel wall, his head falling into his hands.
Khaled crouched before him. ‘Pavo? What’s wrong?’
‘What is right?’ Pavo shrugged, pulling the rag from his mouth and nose. ‘This place drains hope from my every thought. If escape is impossible, then what point is there in living on in this cursed routine?’
Khaled nodded and sat, clasping his hands before him. ‘Your words echo my thoughts from my first year here. I was faced with the impossible; to live through this torture every day in the hope that something would change for me – that I would be free again.’
‘Hope?’ Pavo looked up, shaking his head.
‘It comes from my faith, Pavo. Archimagus Ramak took everything from me the day he cast me down here. Every day since, Gorzam salts those wounds. But nobody can take the light of Ahura Mazda from my heart. His truth is my inspiration.’ He clasped a hand to his bony breast. ‘It lives on in me and I live on because of it.’ He frowned and fixed Pavo with a firm gaze. ‘You have yet to tell me – what god do your legions look to in times of darkness?’
Pavo thought of the pious and bellicose Baptista, now but bones in the desert. He thought of his Mithras-worshipping comrades in the XI Claudia – how many of them were now but shades? ‘These are changing times for the men of Rome’s legions. Many now worship the Christian God; others, like the men of my legion, they stay true to the old ways and worship . . . worshipped Mithras.’
‘Mithras – the friend of Ahura Mazda?’ Khaled’s face lifted with a broad smile.
Pavo nodded uncertainly. He knew only that the Mithraism of the legions had its origins far east of the Roman Empire. Before the fall of the Danubian Limes, he had often visited the Mithraeum near the fort in Durostorum with his comrades in the XI Claudia. He remembered vividly the initiation rite in that dank, underground chamber – Quadratus pressing a heated blade against his bicep. Yet he had found faith not in Mithras, but in the legionaries he had come to know like family. They trusted him like a brother. And he them. A stinging sorrow needled behind his eyes.
But Khaled seemed transported from the mine as he recalled; ‘Mithras shares Ahura Mazda’s truth. Mithras is love, affection, friendship, the light of the sun. Mithras is a companion in life, in battle and in the afterlife.’ He glanced back to Pavo as if snapping out of a trance. ‘You and your men have chosen their faith wisely, Roman.’
‘Perhaps, but then I’d hope Mithras would offer me a sign of hope . . . ’ he stopped, frowning.
Khaled frowned too.
They both looked to the salt face at the end of the tunnel. From behind there, where Pavo had gouged the huge chunks of salt crystal, there was the faintest sound. A faraway hissing.
‘Water?’ The pair whispered at once.
They crawled back to the salt face and chipped carefully at it. They worked towards the sound of hissing for over an hour until they could hear it clearly. When Pavo chipped away another shard, the sound changed to a gurgling. Both men yelped as a meagre trickle of crystal-clear, ice-cold water tumbled from the tiny opening, poured across a lip of sedimentary rock and then drained through a crack in the floor. They looked at one another, faces stretched in impossible smiles, then cupped their hands under the stream. Each took a handful and drank in silence, draining every last drop. They did the same again and again until their bellies were full, then they took to lashing the water over their faces and hair, cooling themselves and washing off the grime of sweat and dust. The coldness inside and out was like the most soothing of balms. Pavo wondered at the sound of his and Khaled’s laughter – a salve that helped dissolve his dark thoughts. He hefted his pickaxe carefully to chip more crystal from the opening to the spring, when Khaled grappled his wrist again.
‘No. We are not the first to hear the rushing of water behind the rock and the salt. What trickles through here as a gentle spring might be a torrent behind these crystals. If we mine too far, the tunnel could be flooded in moments and we would drown.’
Pavo tilted his head to one side in agreement, lowering his pickaxe. ‘Aye, a spring will do for me.’ Then he looked to Khaled, grinning. ‘But we must fill our quota of baskets, then perhaps we will be sent back in here tomorrow?’
But Khaled’s grin faded and he looked past Pavo’s shoulder, down the tunnel.
A pair of eyes glinted in the gloom, blinked, then disappeared.
‘Who is it?’ Pavo whispered.
‘Bashu!’ Khaled gasped.
‘A guard?’
‘No.’ A broad grin spread across Khaled’s face, lifting his moustache. ‘Something more precious than a seam of gold . . . a friend!’
The eyes jostled ever closer, then the lean form of a young man emerged into the end of the tunnel. He was handsome, with silver eyes and dark hair swept back from his face. ‘Did I just see that?’ Bashu asked, his eyes glinting as he beheld the trickling water.
‘You can do more than see it,’ Khaled said, gesturing for Bashu to approach, ‘drink your fill!’
The man nodded in greeting to Pavo, then cupped his hands under the water and drank copiously.
Pavo watched him. ‘Khaled, perhaps we should keep this to ourselves, for now?’ he whispered.
‘Do not fear this man,’ Khaled gestured towards Bashu. ‘There was a traitor in the mines recently. A slave who was Gorzam’s dog. He told the guards everything we spoke of. Many I once knew are now dead because of that cur. Bashu here put an end to his deeds.’
Bashu turned back from the spring, grinning, swinging his pickaxe round and cocking an eyebrow towards the tip. ‘Aye, the fool strayed between me and the salt face at the wrong moment, if you take my meaning?’
Pavo nodded. ‘I think I understand.’
Bashu looked to the whip scars on Pavo’s shoulders. ‘You already understand Gorzam’s whip, I see?’
‘That one will push someone too far one day,’ Pavo shrugged and stooped to pick up the basket by his feet, brimming with salt crystal.
Bashu smiled at this. ‘Aye, that will be a fine day!’
Pavo bent double to scuttle back through the tunnel, leaving Khaled and Bashu to talk. He rose as he came to the end of the tunnel and back into the main cavern, then headed straight over to the pulley by the main shaft. For once, the pulley was still. He questioned this for but a moment, dumping his basket to the ground. He found his thoughts drifting. Once more, despite a voice inside him screaming at him to stop, he risked a look upwards. The distant light of day seemed curious and foreign now, so long it had been since he last felt it upon his skin. For just an instant, he let his thoughts drift. That last night with Felicia. His belly full and his heart content. The warm comfort of the bed. Her smooth, scented skin.
A roar of laughter from Gorzam was enough to snap him back to the grim present. The giant guard stood up on a shadowy alcove on the cavern wall, supping the dregs from his cup of water and crushed poppy seeds. It seemed Gorzam needed a regular dose of the mixture – a few hours into every shift. The big guard drained his cup and began to descend a rocky path towards the cavern floor. The man’s usually twisted features seemed relaxed, his eyelids hooded slightly from the concoction. Pavo lifted an empty basket and made to turn for the tunnel entrance again. But he froze, his gaze locked on the lip of the main shaft before him. A salt-coated, blonde mopped figure emerged at the tip of the ladder, coming from the chamber below. His heart thundered.
He and the other gawped at one another.
‘Pavo?’ Sura croaked.
Pavo stepped forward gingerly, as if wary of dispelling this mirage. But this was no illusion. His heart ached as he beheld his friend; joyous that he was alive and sickened at his gaunt form. Sura’s eyes were sunken and black-ringed. His cheekbone had been broken, no doubt at the hands of the guards. His ankles were caked in salt, barely masking the raw flesh where he had been chained and marched through the desert. His ribs and shoulders jutted just like Khaled’s.
‘Well don’t look at me like that – you look like a beggar’s breakfast too you know,’ Sura frowned.
It was all Pavo could do not to burst out in laughter and embrace his friend. He snatched a glance to either side, seeing Gorzam making his way over. ‘I don’t have long – where are you being kept?’
‘We’re in the chamber below. I’ve been sent up here for some rope – the pulley’s broken. I’m supposed to collect the baskets that come down from the chambers above.’
‘We?’ Pavo snatched on the word.
‘Zosimus, Quadratus and Felix are down there too. I’d be mining alongside them at the salt face but . . . I tried telling them I’m the best salt miner in Adrianople . . . even I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean.’ He offered with a wheezing cough and a weak grin. ‘Habitus and Noster are in the chamber below us. There were others, but . . . ’ he shook his head.
Pavo’s eyes darted. ‘Gallus . . . what about Gallus?’
Sura’s face fell and he shook his head.
‘They slew him? Out in the desert?’ Pavo heard his words as if they were spoken by another.
‘No,’ Sura replied, ‘he was with us all the way here – through the rest of the desert, across the Persian Gulf and out to this living nightmare. He and I carried you, you know. The Savaran seemed amused that we would want to add to our burden and they let us; we kept you watered and fed you honey when they gave it to us. Then, when we reached the entrance to the mines,’ he jabbed a finger upwards to the disc of light, ‘Tamur took Gallus and Carbo away. To stand them before his master in Bishapur. Archimagus . . . ’ Sura started, frowning as he tried to remember the name.
‘Archimagus Ramak,’ Pavo finished for him, bitterly.
‘Aye,’ Sura frowned in confusion. ‘They were to be executed, Pavo. And that was weeks ago.’
Pavo’s gaze fell away. His joy at seeing Sura faded. The iron tribunus of the XI Claudia had fallen at last. He felt numbness creep over his heart. It was a sensation he had not experienced since he was a boy. That day when the dead-eyed legionary brought father’s funeral payout to him. To Pavo, Gallus had been aloof, cold, never a friend like Sura. Never a friend . . . no, he had been so much more.
‘Pavo . . . ’ Sura grasped him by the shoulder, shaking him from his thoughts. ‘Pavo!’
Pavo looked up, seeing the alarm in his friend’s face. Sura’s gaze was fixed over his shoulder. Footsteps thundered up behind him. Pavo spun just in time to see Gorzam’s twisted scowl. The whip lashed down upon him and tore at his arm.
‘Get back to your post!’ he roared, the brief effects of the poppy extract clearly wearing off.
Pavo scrambled back, panting in agony, seeing Sura being bundled back down the ladder by another guard. He hobbled away from Gorzam’s follow-up lash, cupping his bicep, torn by the barbs. He crouched and hurried back through the tunnel, his breath coming and going in rasps through gritted teeth. Anger like never before boiled in his veins.