Legionary(65)

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.