Page 196 of Etruscan Blood


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  The chariot jolted as the left wheel ran over the lictor's body, nearly throwing Tarquin out; he grabbed Tullia, and the recoil brought their bodies slamming together. She was pulling the horses up - thank the gods, he thought, she's got them under control, but she was pulling their heads round, turning the chariot, starting them up for another run.

  The dead lictor had pushed Servius on to the ground, out of their way; now Servius was struggling to rise, but he seemed to have caught his feet in the folds of his tebenna, and was struggling like a dog whose spine has been broken. The tebenna that Tanaquil had woven for him, wrapping itself around him like a snake.

  Tullia drove over him three times before she stopped, and the horses trampled his body, before she unwound the reins from her slender waist and stepped down from the chariot, wetting the little red boots of an Etruscan princess in the fresh blood of a king.