‘Pavo, what is it?’ Falco asked, slowing with him.
‘I think that’s him . . . Ramak.’
Falco’s haggard features paled at this. ‘Bald like a vulture, but even less handsome?’
‘That’s the one,’ Pavo said.
‘Keep your heads down,’ Felix hissed back over his shoulder, noticing the pair as well. He nodded to the near end of the stepped amphitheatre seating. Up above the top steps, there was a short ascent of palm and shrub-studded scree, then the palace towered near the edge of the acropolis plateau. The rabble on the timber steps took umbrage at Felix and Habitus’ attempts to push through them. Then Zosimus and Quadratus came to the fore and their resistance soon quelled. Pavo guided Falco in their wake as they picked their way up to the rear of the amphitheatre.
Pavo shot furtive glances this way and that. The pushtigban dotted around the top rank of seats looked sharp-eyed and vigilant, frequently glancing away from the fighting in the arena to look over the crowds and the surrounding area. ‘The sentries are watching everything,’ he hissed, shooting a glance at the nearest guard then squinting through the noon sun to look up at the silhouette of the palace. ‘We’ll never get a clear run at climbing up there! We need a distraction.’
Just then, the sound of combat fell away. Then Ramak led the crowd in chanting a gatha. Pavo turned round, frowning, seeing all nearby praying with the archimagus. Then his eyes snagged on the pair of bloodied, sweat-soaked warriors kneeling before some filthy stone on the arena floor. The blood seemed to still in his veins as he noticed the glinting, ice-blue eyes of one of them.
‘Mithras . . . is that - ’ Felix gasped by his side.
‘Gallus!’ Quadratus, Zosimus, Habitus, Sura and Pavo finished for him.
Felix shook his head in disbelief. ‘And is that . . . Carbo?’
At this, Falco grappled Pavo’s arm, a dark frown upon his features. ‘Did he say Carbo?’
‘Aye,’ Pavo frowned, ‘your comrade from the Parthica.’
At this, a thunderstorm-dark look befouled Falco’s face. ‘Carbo . . . ’ he snarled like an angered dog, then his voice fell into a low growl; ‘So you came back?’
‘This is it?’ Gallus rasped, exhausted, the prayer echoing around him. ‘They chant to their god and then they dash out our brains?’
Carbo was unresponsive. He seemed to be gazing at a point in the crowd, near the top row of seating. His lips were twitching, mouthing something. Falco?
‘Centurion?’ Gallus frowned, squinting up to there, unable to discern anything in the sea of chanting faces.
‘I am ready to die, Tribunus. My shame is almost over. I know this for certain now, for the shades of my past have come to watch.’
Gallus bowed his head in pity. The man had lost his mind at the last.
‘There was no Persian master who bought me from the mines,’ Carbo said, his words weak and choked. ‘I escaped.’
Gallus looked up, his senses sharpening.
Carbo’s face was tear-streaked. ‘We had planned it for months, my Parthica comrades and I. The guards tasked me with working on the surface for just a day, to clear some debris from a sandstorm. It was the moment we had been waiting for. It was my job to slip away and hide in the rocks nearby until night, then draw the guards from the edges of the mine shaft entrance with some distraction. But that day reminded me what sunlight on the skin felt like. I saw blooms, darting birds. I heard the rush of fresh wind in my ears, felt it filling my lungs. I managed to slip from the guards’ sight. I managed to hide in the rocks nearby until nightfall. But then I saw how fragile our plan was. There were some twenty guards and they had mounts. Had I made some noise to draw them away, I would surely have been captured and so would my comrades were they to break from the mine. So I seized my freedom. I ran. I ran for weeks. Across the brushland, through the dusty flats, always westwards, heading for home. I ran as fast as I could, praying the blood pounding in my ears would drown out the imagined cries of my comrades. Eventually I stumbled into the desert. I slept in the dunes, and that is when the nightmares began – nightmares that have plagued me ever since. But I had my freedom, or so I thought. It lasted only until a Greek slave merchant found me staggering through the sands, half-maddened by the sun. He shackled me and, many years later, I returned to the empire in chains. Providence saw that I was freed to serve in the legions again,’ his chest rose and fell rapidly now, his head bowed and shaking. ‘Free once more, yet forever fettered by my shame.’
Gallus heard those last words as if they had been plucked from his own heart. But the guilt that danced in this man’s eyes had been brewing for far longer than Gallus’.