‘You might just have saved our skins, Roman,’ Bashu said, watching Gorzam leave. ‘Had a guard died here while we were present, we would surely have been executed.’
Pavo watched Gorzam go, his top lip wrinkling. ‘Perhaps that would have been a fair price to pay, considering the guard in question?’
Khaled scuttled over beside them. ‘Never mind him. Did you do it?’ he said, his eyes sparkling as he untied his facemask.
Pavo frowned momentarily then remembered – the skin! ‘I don’t know yet,’ he whispered as he fumbled to pull it from his loincloth. It was empty, that much he could be sure of. He held the item up so the dull light reflecting from the salt face danced across the skin’s surface. Under the faint etching, more letters had been added.
XI . . . Claudia.
His heart soared.
Then he saw something on the floor, almost buried in the salt dust. Something Gorzam had dropped. A small hemp purse brimming with poppy seeds. His thoughts danced this way and that. Then they settled on something that had happened on the journey through the desert. At that moment, he realised what they had to do.
In the fifth chamber, Zosimus hauled a basket of salt onto his back and set off from the edge of the dark, shallow cavern towards the main shaft. The grumbling, squeaking pulley and the tink-tink of pickaxes sounded all around him. Clouds of salt dust billowed across his face and gathered on his scrub of hair and beard. He stopped as the breath caught in his lungs, then yet another wheezing, hacking coughing fit came on. It felt as if his chest was on fire, today more than any other day in this accursed hole in the ground. He saw Felix up ahead; the short primus pilus was hunched and trembling as he hauled a basket onto his shoulders. The little Greek stumbled, falling to one knee. Zosimus instinctively hurried over towards him, but a guard got there first and Zosimus froze in indecision. The guard finished sucking on his water skin, wiped his lips and then belched, shaking his head as he beheld Felix, crouched and panting.
‘Weak Roman,’ he uttered in broken Greek, then swung his boot into Felix’s gut.
Felix cried out and crumpled under the blow, his basket of salt spilling across the cavern floor.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ the guard said with a gleeful smile.
Zosimus winced. His heart willed him on, to crush the guard’s face with his fists, but his head stilled him. He saw another form nearby, watching this. Quadratus was no doubt a reflection of himself; a hulking frame stretched taut after five weeks of pitiful rations, face coated in the white dust, his eyes black-ringed. A beard now accompanied the big Gaul’s moustache, matted and tousled like his hair.
When the guard had strolled off to berate another group of slaves, Zosimus and Quadratus helped Felix to his feet. Quadratus scraped the spilled salt back into the basket.
‘But there will be dust and grit in there too,’ Felix said, his eyes darting round to see who was watching.
‘Good, then the Persian bastards can break their bloody teeth on it,’ Quadratus seethed.
Felix panted, then broke down in a coughing fit. The little primus pilus seemed to glow red for a moment in his struggle for breath. When Felix steadied himself again, Zosimus’ eyes locked onto the back of the little Greek’s hand; a splatter of crimson trickled over the skin, and there was more on his lips.
‘Sir!’ Zosimus gasped.
‘It was only a matter of time,’ Felix shrugged. ‘For me, for you, for all of us. You’ve heard what the other slaves say; when the blood turns black, it’s over.’
‘Then we need to find a way out of here, or die trying,’ Zosimus spoke solemnly.
‘It’s hopeless,’ Felix shook his head. ‘I’ve spent every moment in my cell thinking about it. The main shaft is the only way out but it’s too well guarded. If there were more of us, perhaps.’
Quadratus wheezed and just controlled a coughing fit of his own. ‘Well maybe this will change your mind?’ The big Gaul looked this way and that, then lifted a half-full water skin from the basket he carried.
Zosimus’ eyes bulged. Felix stifled a gasp. ‘Where in Hades did you get . . . ’ Zosimus’ words trailed off as Quadratus brushed the salt dust from the skin to reveal the XI Claudia etching on there, and jabbed a thumb upwards.
‘It seems we have a comrade in the chamber above. Pavo.’
‘Aye?’ Zosimus thoughts swirled.
‘Aye, and he and Sura have been passing messages up and down since yesterday. They’re planning how they could use the pulley to escape,’ he tapped a finger to the smaller scribblings and drawings around the base of the skin.