The Excubitors wore their visored helmets. They had already drawn their swords. What ensued was a slaughter. Those facing them were so packed together they could scarcely lift arms to defend themselves. The massacre continued as the sun went down, autumn darkness adding another dimension to the terror. People died of swords, arrows, underfoot, smothered in the blood-soaked crush.
It was a clear night, Pertennius’s chronicle meticulously recorded, the stars and the white moon looking down. A stupefying number of people died in the Hippodrome that evening and night. The Victory Riot ended in a black river of moonlit blood saturating the sands.
TWO YEARS LATER, Bonosus watched chariots hurtle around the spina along that same sand. Another sea-horse dived—they had been dolphins until recently—another egg was flipped. Five laps done. He was remembering a white moon suspended in the eastern window of the throne room as Leontes—unscathed, calm as a man at ease in his favourite bath, golden hair lightly tousled as if by steam—returned to the Attenine Palace with a gibbering and palsied Symeonis in tow. The aged Senator hurled himself prone on the mosaic-inlaid floor before Valerius, weeping in his terror.
The Emperor, sitting on the throne now, looked down upon him.
‘It is our belief you were coerced in this,’ he murmured as Symeonis wailed and beat his head against the floor.
Bonosus remembered that.
‘Yes! Oh yes, oh my dear, thrice-exalted lord! I was!’
Bonosus had seen an odd expression in Valerius’s round, smooth face. He was not a man—it was known—who enjoyed killing people. He’d had the Judicial Code changed already to eliminate execution as a punishment for many crimes. And Symeonis was an old, pathetic victim of the mob more than anything else. Bonosus was prepared to wager on exile for the elderly Senator.
‘My lord?’
Alixana had remained by the window. Valerius turned to her. He hadn’t spoken whatever it was he’d been about to say.
‘My lord,’ repeated the Empress quietly, ‘he was crowned. Garbed in porphyry before the people. Willingly or no. That makes two Emperors in this room. In this city. Two . . . living Emperors.’
Even Symeonis fell silent then, Bonosus remembered.
The Chancellor’s eunuchs killed the old man that same night. In the morning his naked, dishonoured body was displayed for all to see, hanging from the wall beside the Bronze Gates in its flabby, pale white shame.
Also in the morning came the renewed Proclamation, in all the holy places of Sarantium, that Jad’s anointed Emperor had heeded the will of his dearly beloved people and the hated Lysippus was already banished outside the walls.
The two arrested clerics, both alive if rather the worse for their tenure with the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, were released, though not before a careful meeting was held amongst themselves, the Master of Offices, and Zakarios, the Most Holy Eastern Patriarch of Jad, in which it was made clear that they were to remain silent about the precise details of what had, in fact, been done to them. Neither appeared anxious to elaborate, in any case.
It was, as always, important to have the clerics of the City participate in any attempts to bring order to the people. The co-operation of the clergy tended to be expensive in Sarantium, however. The first formal declaration of the Emperor’s extremely ambitious plans for the rebuilding of the Great Sanctuary took place in that same meeting.
To this day, Bonosus wasn’t at all certain how Pertennius had learned about that. He was, however, in a position to confirm another aspect of the historian’s chronicle of the riot. The Sarantine civil service had always been concerned with accurate figures. The agents of the Master of Offices and the Urban Prefect had been industrious in their observations and calculations. Bonosus, as leader of the Senate, had seen the same report Pertennius had.
Thirty-one thousand people had died in the Hippodrome under that white moon two years ago.
After the wild burst of excitement at the start, four laps unrolled with only marginal changes in positioning. The three quadrigas that had started inside had all moved off the line quickly enough to hold their positions, and since they were Red, White, and the Blues’ second driver, the pace was not especially fast. Crescens of the Greens was tucked in behind these three next to his own Second, who had led him across the track in their initial move. Scortius’s horses were still right behind his rival’s chariot. As the racers hurtled past them on the fifth lap, Carullus gripped Crispin’s arm again and rasped, ‘Wait for it! He’s giving orders now!’ Crispin, straining to see through the swirling dust, realized that Crescens was indeed shouting something to his left and the Greens’ number two was relaying it forward.
Right at the beginning of the sixth lap, just as they came out of the turn, the Red team running in second place—the Greens’ teammate—suddenly and shockingly went down, taking the Blues’ second quadriga with him in an explosion of dust and screams.
A chariot wheel flew off and rolled across the track by itself. It happened directly in front of Crispin, and his clearest single image amid the chaos was of that wheel serenely spinning away, leaving carnage behind. He watched it roll, miraculously untouched by any of the swerving and bouncing chariots, until it wobbled to rest at the outer edge of the sand.
Crescens and the other Green beside him avoided the wreck. So did Scortius, pulling swiftly wide to the right. The trailing White second team wasn’t quite quick enough to steer around. Its inside horse clipped the piled, mangled chariots and the driver hacked furiously at the reins tied to his waist as his platform tipped over. He hurtled free, to the inside, rolling and rolling across the track towards the spina. Those behind him, with more time to react, were all heading wide. The driver was in no danger once free of his own reins. One of his inside yoked horses was screaming, though, and down, a leg clearly broken. And beside the initial wreckage, the second driver of the Blues lay very still on the track.
Crispin saw the Hippodrome crew sprinting across the sand to get the men away—and the horses—before the surviving chariots came round again.
‘That was deliberate!’ Carullus shouted, looking down at the chaos of horses and men and chariots. ‘Beautifully done! Look at the lane he opened for Crescens! On, Greens!’
Even as Crispin dragged his eyes away from the downed chariots and the motionless man and focused on the quadrigas flying down the straightaway towards the Emperor’s box, he saw the Greens’ number two driver, sitting in second place now after the accident, pull his team suddenly wide to the outside as Crescens, just behind him, lashed his own horses hard. The timing was superb, like a dance. The Greens’ champion hurtled past his partner and was suddenly right beside the White team that had been leading to this point—and then past it, outside but astonishingly close, in an explosion of nerve and speed, before the White driver could react and swing out from the rail to force him wider as they entered the turn.
But even as Crescens of the Greens hurtled brilliantly by, accelerating into a curve, the White charioteer abandoned the attempt to slow him and pulled his own horses up sharply instead, reins gripped hard, holding them right on the rail—and Scortius was there.
The Blue champion’s magnificent inside bay brushed up against the White’s outside horse, so close was the move that his own wheels seemed to blur into those of his teammate, and in that instant Crispin surged again to his feet shouting along with everyone else in the Hippodrome, as if they were one person, melded by the moment.
Crescens was ahead as they swept under the Imperial Box, but his ferocious burst of speed had forced his horses wide on the curve. And Scortius of the Blues, leaning madly over to his left again, his entire upper body outside the bouncing, careening chariot, the great bay horse pulling the other three downwards, had curled inside him only half a length behind as they exploded out of the curve into the far straight with eighty thousand people on their feet and screaming.
The two champions were alone in front.
Throat raw with his own shouting, straining to
see across the spina, past obelisks and monuments, Crispin saw Crescens of the Greens lash his horses, leaning so far forward he was almost over their tails, and he heard a thunderous roar from the Green stands as the animals responded gallantly, opening a little distance from the pursuing Blues.
But a little was enough here. A little could be the race: for with that half length gained back again, Crescens, in his turn, leaned over to the left and, with one quick, gauging glance backwards, sacrificed a notch of speed for a sharp downwards movement and claimed the inside lane again.
‘He did it!’ Carullus howled, pounding Crispin’s back. ‘Ho, Crescens! On, Greens! On!’
‘How?’ Crispin said aloud, to no one in particular. He watched Scortius belatedly go hard to his own whip, lashing his team now, and saw them respond in turn as the two quadrigas flew down the far straight. The Blue horses came up again, their heads bobbing beside Crescens’s hurtling chariot once more—but it was too late, they were on the outside now. The Green driver had seized the rail again with that brilliant move out of the turn, and at this late stage the shorter distance along the inside would surely have to tell.
‘Holy Jad!’ Vargos suddenly screamed from Carullus’s other side, as if the words had been ripped from his throat. ‘Oh, by Heladikos, look! He did it deliberately! Again!’
‘What?’ Carullus cried.
‘Look! In front of us! Oh, Jad, how did he know?’
Crispin looked to where Vargos was pointing and cried out himself then, incoherent, disbelieving, in a kind of transport of excitement and awe. He clutched at Carullus’s arm, heard the other man roaring, a sound suspended between anguish and fierce rapture, and then he simply watched, in the appalled fascination with which one might observe a distant figure hurtling towards a cliff he did not see.
THE TRACK CREWS, administered by the civil office of the Hippodrome Prefect and thus resolutely nonpartisan, were extremely good at their various tasks. These included attending to the state of the racecourse, the condition of the starting barriers, the fairness of the start itself, judging fouls and obstructions during the races, and attempting to police the stables and prevent poisonings of horses or assaults on drivers—at least within the Hippodrome itself. Attacks outside were none of their business.
One of their most demanding activities was clearing the track after a collision. They were trained to remove a chariot, horses, an injured driver with speed and skill, either to the safety of the spina or across to the outside of the track against the stands. They could disentangle a pair of mangled quadrigas, cut free the rearing, frightened horses, push twisted wheels out of the way, and do all of this in time to enable the surviving chariots coming around to proceed apace.
Three downed and wrecked quadrigas, twelve entangled horses, including a broken-legged White yoke horse that had dragged its thrashing, yoked companion awkwardly over on its side when it went down, and an unconscious, badly hurt driver presented something of a problem, however.
They got the injured man on a litter over to the spina. They cut all six trace horses free and unhooked two pairs of the yoke horses. They dragged one chariot as far to the outside as they could. They were working on the other two, struggling to unyoke the terrified healthy horse from the broken-legged one, when a warning shout came that the leaders had come back around—moving very fast—and the yellow-garbed track crew had to sprint madly for safety themselves.
The accident had taken place on the inside lanes. There was plenty of room for the thundering quadrigas to pass the wreckage to the outside.
Or, in the alternative, just enough room for one of them, if they happened to be running nearly abreast and the outside driver was disinclined to move over enough to let the inside one pass safely by.
They were, as it happened, running nearly abreast. Scortius of the Blues was outside, a little behind as the two quadrigas came out of the turn and the sea-horse dived to signal the last lap. He drifted smoothly outwards as they came into the straight—just enough to take his quadriga safely around the wreckage and the two tangled horses on the track.
Crescens of the Greens was thereby faced, in a blur of time and at the apex of fevered excitement, with three obvious but extremely unpalatable choices. He could destroy his team and possibly himself by tearing into the obstruction. He could cut towards Scortius, trying to force his way around the outer edge of the pile-up—thereby incurring a certain disqualification and a suspension for the rest of the day. Or he could rein his steaming horses violently back, let Scortius go by, and veer around behind the other driver, effectively conceding defeat with but a single lap to go.
He was a brave man. It had been a stunning, blood-stirring race.
He tried to go through on the inside.
The two fallen horses were farther over. Only a single downed chariot lay near the spina rail. Crescens lashed his own splendid left-side trace horse once, guided it to the innermost rail and squeezed his four horses by. The left one scraped hard against the rail. The outside trace horse clipped a leg against a spinning wheel—but they were by. The Green champion’s chariot hurtled through as well, bouncing into the air so that Crescens appeared to be flying for a moment like an image of Heladikos. But he was through. He came down, brilliantly keeping his balance, whip and reins still in hand, the horses running hard.
It was most terribly unfortunate, given so much courage and skill displayed, that his outside chariot wheel bounced down behind him, having been dislodged on the way through the wreckage.
One could not, however brave or skilful, race a one-wheeled chariot. Crescens cut himself free of the reins around his torso. He stood a moment upright in the wildly slewing chariot, lifted his knife in a brief but clearly visible salute to the receding figure of Scortius ahead of him, and jumped free.
He rolled several times, in the way drivers all learned young, and then stood up, alone on the sand. He removed his leather helmet, bowed to the Emperor’s box—ignoring the other teams now coming around the curve—then he spread his hands in resignation and bowed equally low to the Green stands.
Then he walked off the track to the spina. He accepted a flask of water from a crewman. He drank deeply, poured the rest in a stream over his head, and stood there blistering the air among the monuments with the profane, passionate fire of his frustration as Scortius turned the last straightaway into a one-chariot Procession, and then ran the formal Victory Lap itself, collecting his wreath, while the Blues permitted themselves to become delirious and the Emperor himself in the kathisma—the indifferent Emperor who favoured no faction and didn’t even like the racing—lifted a palm in salute to the triumphant charioteer as he went by.
Scortius showed no flamboyance, no exaggerated posture of celebration. He never did. He hadn’t for a dozen years and sixteen hundred triumphs. He simply raced, and won, and spent the nights being honoured in some aristocratic palace, or bed.
Crescens had had access to the faction ledgers. He knew what the Greens had budgeted for counterspells against the curse-tablets that would have been commissioned against Scortius over the years. He imagined that the Blues had designated half as much again this year.
It would be pleasant, Crescens thought, wiping mud and sweat from his face and forehead among the monuments on the last race day of his first year in Sarantium, to be able to hate the man. He had no idea how Scortius had deduced the wreckage would still be there after a simple two-chariot accident. He would never actually ask, but he badly wanted to know. He had been allowed to take the inside out of that last turn, and he had done as permitted, like a child who snatches a sweet when he thinks his tutor has turned away.
He noted, with a measure of wryness, that the fellow racing for the Reds in the seventh lane—Baras, or Varas, or whatever—the one who’d been gulled by Scortius at the start, had actually caught a tiring White team coming out of the last turn and taken second place with its considerable prize. It was a wonderful result for a young man riding second for the Reds, and it prevente
d a sweep for the Blues and Whites.
Crescens decided it would be, under all the circumstances, inappropriate to berate the fellow. Best put this race behind. There were seven more to be run today, he was in four of them, and he still wanted his seventy-five wins.
On his way back to the dressing rooms under the stands to rest before his second appearance of the afternoon, he learned that the Blues’ Second, Dauzis, downed in the crash, was dead—his neck broken, either in the fall, or when they moved him.
The Ninth Driver was always running with them. He had shown his face today.
In the Hippodrome they raced to honour the sun god and the Emperor and to bring joy to the people, and some of them ran in homage to gallant Heladikos, and all of them knew—every single time they stood behind their horses—that they could die there on the sands.
CHAPTER VII
Could one forget how to be free?
The question had come to her on the road and it lingered now, unanswered. Could a year of slavery mark your nature forever? Could the fact of having been sold? She had been sharp-tongued, quick, astringent at home. Erimitsu. Too clever to marry, her mother had worried. Now she felt afraid in the core of her being: anxious, lost, jumping at sounds, averting her eyes. She had spent a year having any man who paid Morax use her in whatever way he wanted. A year being beaten for the slightest failing or for none at all, to keep her mindful of her station.
They had only stopped that at the very end, when they wanted her unmarked, smooth as a sacrifice, for death in the forest.
From her room at the inn Kasia could hear the noise from the Hippodrome. A steady sound like the cascading waters north of home, but rising at intervals—unlike the waters—into a punishing volume of sound, a roar likesome many-throated beast when a turn of fortune, terrible or wonderful, happened over there where horses were running.