Sailing to Sarantium (38 page)

It was at this point, according to Pertennius, that Auxilius and his
two thousand Excubitors, divided into two groups, appeared at
entrances on opposite sides. One of these-the tale would linger and
gain resonance-was the Death Gate, the one through which dead and
injured charioteers were carried out.

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 non-partisan, 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.