Legionary(76)

‘Where are you going?’ the voice growled in Parsi, behind them.

Pavo slowed and stopped, the blood pounding in his ears. This was it. The plan was surely ruined. He grappled his spear and readied to turn and face the pair. Now he had no option but to fight. He turned to see one of the guards scowling, whip raised. But the man’s eyes were trained over Pavo’s shoulder, to a clutch of slaves behind him. The guard lashed his whip down, then beckoned his comrade with him in stomping over to deal with the slaves.

‘Time to spill some blood, eh?’ the whip-wielder cackled to Pavo on the way past.

Pavo struggled to disguise his relief.

‘I think it is prudent that the guard tunics are brown, do you not?’ Khaled remarked through his face veil, deadpan.

They set off again and stopped by the main shaft near the pulley, looking around the cavern and snatching furtive glances to the rising salt baskets. Finally, one rose that seemed to sway on the ropes a little more than the others, as if it carried something other than salt. Pavo gripped Khaled’s shoulder in anticipation.

They watched as the basket rose past them, the slumbering form of an unconscious guard curled up inside it, a bright red lump and a flowering bruise on the back of his head. He and Khaled shared an almost disbelieving glance. ‘Your Roman friends, they did it!’ Bashu whispered through taut lips.

‘Aye, now we must do our part,’ Pavo nodded to the ladders that led up through the main shaft. They hurried over and Pavo went first, hooking his hands and feet over rung after rung. When he reached the top, he gingerly poked his head up and glanced around. This third chamber was much taller than the fourth, and had been stripped of most of its salt crystal. The ladder leading up to the second chamber was a good fifty feet away, around the mouth of the main shaft and past a forest of dark rock pillars. He looked this way and that to see that only a few guards were nearby and none were looking at them. He climbed up and onto the floor of the third chamber, then flitted through the forest of stone columns to the next ladder. He scuttled up this ladder, all the time keeping his eye on the swinging basket, being sure not to ascend faster than it. When he reached the second chamber, he glanced down to see Khaled and, some thirty feet down and climbing, four more forms in guard armour. Sura, Quadratus, Zosimus, Felix!

He looked up to see the disc of daylight. It was now so much bigger – almost blinding. His heart raced. The sweet prospect of freedom danced in his heart. Shielding his eyes, he saw the swinging basket ascend, nearly at the top of the pulley. He hurried to climb the ladder into the first chamber. Up here, he could feel a change in the air. It felt clean, it carried scents he had almost forgotten – just the faintest hint of shrub and bloom. Freedom was only feet away. He eyed the last ladder, and saw the outline of four spear-wielding guards in the daylight, perched at its top. When the body was discovered on the pulley, they would rush to the scene. They had to. The plan hinged on this.

The swinging basket disappeared into the disc of light and Pavo waited. Khaled arrived beside him, Bashu close behind. ‘God of the Light, let this happen!’ he panted, craning his neck to the light above.

Then he heard the wheezing gasps of his comrades. He turned to them and longed to embrace each of them. The stolen guard armour they each wore disguised them well, betraying just their eyes. He noticed there were a few men missing. ‘Noster and Habitus?’

‘Still down there,’ Quadratus replied gravely. ‘Either they couldn’t take the guards or they were locked in their cells.’

Zosimus was last up the ladder. He clasped a hand to Pavo’s shoulder with a glint in his weary eyes. ‘Good to see you, Optio. You haven’t found any scrolls lying around in this place, have you?’

Khaled frowned at this and opened his mouth to speak.

‘Never mind that,’ Sura gasped, looking up. ‘Have they spotted the unconscious guard yet?’

Pavo raised a finger to silence his friend. At that moment, the pulley slowed. A voice above cried out some jagged Persian curse. Other voices up there echoed the cry. ‘I’d say they have now,’ he replied, struggling to contain the tremor in his voice. Up above, the dull shapes of the guards around the ladder disappeared one by one, rushing over to the pulley system.

‘This is it,’ Pavo whispered, resting one hand on a rung of this final ladder, ‘when that last guard goes too . . . ’

His words faded as a scraping of timber on rock sounded. The rung was pulled from his grasp as the last guard hoisted the ladder up and onto the ground above. Only then did the last guard leave his post to go to the pulley system. The forty feet from the floor of the first chamber to the surface above seemed like miles.