Legionary(89)

‘I am one of you, a slave!’ Bashu nodded hurriedly, a sickly grin belying the fear in his eyes, his hands dropping by his sides.

Pavo beheld his cowering form. For just a moment, pity snaked into his heart. Then he saw the glinting dagger blade the man held just behind his back.

‘No, you are a traitor,’ Pavo replied stonily, then booted Bashu in the chest, toppling him into the salt pit. Bashu wailed. In moments, the salt had spilled over his arms and legs. He thrashed, and this only served to pull him down all the faster. In a heartbeat, he was up to his neck. His silver eyes bulged in panic. The man’s roar of terror was abruptly cut short as the salt spilled into his mouth and then swamped his head. His outstretched, trembling hand was the last part of him to disappear. The salt pit had fed and was still again.

Silence filled the passageway as all eyes looked over the scene.

‘You two,’ Felix said weakly at last, forking two fingers at Pavo and Sura, clutching his wound with the other hand, ‘better bloody well have a plan.’

Pavo looked back blankly.

‘He doesn’t have a bloody plan,’ Quadratus snorted in disbelief.

‘I don’t. But my father does,’ he motioned to Falco. He and the other slaves from the wheel were still chipping and battering at the salt face blocking the end of the corridor.

‘Your father?’ Zosimus uttered in confusion.

But Pavo ignored this and strode over to Falco. The aged men were struggling to break through the crystal. ‘Father, what is this?’ he asked. Then he heard it. Just as he had heard it with Khaled. The sound of running water. But this was different, not just a faint hiss, this sounded like a rumbling torrent. Furious, endless, desperate to be unleashed.

Falco clasped his forearm. ‘This mine is man-made. But around it weaves a honeycomb of natural caverns and springs. Behind this crystal, an underground river rages. We have speculated for years as to whether it leads even deeper underground, to the darkest dominions? Or, perhaps,’ he pointed upwards, ‘to freedom?’

Pavo’s eyes darted. ‘Has anyone ever seen this river?’

Falco shrugged, gesturing to his empty eye sockets and to his blind companions. ‘Well that would be hard, down here. But no, we have talked about breaking down this wall for years. Every time we have hesitated. It could simply drown us and flood the mines.’ He cocked his head to one side wryly. ‘Though that option has its own merits.’

Just then, another babble of voices and footsteps sounded from the other end of the seventh chamber, at the main shaft and the stalagmite ring. Habitus staggered up to the open end of the corridor, then came rushing back. ‘More guards, thirty at least!’

‘We have no choice – we must break through that crystal,’ Arius said, his face drawn with fear.

Pavo’s eyes widened and he grasped Falco by the shoulders. ‘Stand back, have your men stand back too.’

Falco frowned, then ushered his aged comrades back from the boulder.

Pavo called on Zosimus. ‘Sir!’

Zosimus frowned, then batted Quadratus on the arm. The pair came over and eyed the salt face. Their eyebrows rose in unison as they heard the rushing water.

‘A swim or a fight?’ Zosimus mused, looking from the rock to the far end of the corridor and the approaching footsteps.

‘Ach, I’ve had a fight already,’ Quadratus shrugged, smoothing his salt-encrusted moustache, ‘And I need a good wash.’

The pair of them hefted their pick axes, throwing others to Felix, Habitus, Pavo and Sura. They went at the salt face like men possessed. Shards of crystal flew in all directions, powder blinding them, coating their skin. The rushing of water grew louder and louder, as did the thundering footsteps of the guards. Pavo glanced back to see the thirty approaching shapes at the open end of the tapering corridor, their spears glinting in the light of the torches they carried. Then a splash of something icy cold around his ankles jolted him back to the salt face. He looked down to see foaming water washing from a growing fissure, spilling out across the corridor floor. The fissure in the salt face was narrow – about the width of a blade. He hefted his pickaxe to strike again, when Falco called from the corner of the corridor end where he and his comrades huddled.

‘No, no more! Get back – over here!’

Pavo frowned, then heard a dull, ominous crack run through the salt face. He, Sura and the others shared a tacit agreement, dropping their pickaxes and rushing over to the corner with Falco and his men.

‘Be ready,’ Falco cried. ‘As soon as the water comes, get your backs against the wall and hold on tight!’ The guards were now only a handful of paces away, and they snarled and cursed in Parsi, some hurling their spears forward, the lances clattering against the corridor end, inches from Pavo.