Sailing to Sarantium (37 page)

He'd gone over to the Blues in the winter, for a sum and on terms
that no one knew for certain, though the rumours were wild. The
muscular, tough-talking Crescens had come north from riding First for
the Greens in the notoriously rough-and-tumble hippodrome of
Sarnica-second city of the Empire-and had assuaged some of his
faction's grief by being hard and brave and ruggedly aggressive and
by winning races. Seventy-five would be a splendid first season for
the Greens' new standard-bearer.

Seventy five would be, Taras desperately wanted to say, but didn't.
Didn't have time, either. His right-side trace horse was restive and
needed attention. He had only handled this team once before, back in
the summer. The starter's trumpet was up. A handler hurried back and
helped Taras hold his position. He didn't look over at Crescens, but
he heard the fierce man from Amoria cry, 'A case of red from my home
if you keep the Soriyyan bastard outside for a lap, Karas!'

'His name's Taras!' Scortius of the hated Blues called back, still
laughing in the very moment the trumpet sounded and the barriers
sprang away, laying the wide track open like an ambush or a dream of
glory.

 

'Watch the start!'

Carullus gripped Crispin's arm, shouting over the deafening noise as
thirty-two horses came up to the barriers below and the first warning
trumpet blast sounded. Crispin was watching. He and Vargos had
learned a great deal through the morning; Carullus was surprisingly
knowledgeable and unsurprisingly talkative. The start was almost half
the race, they'd come to realize, especially with the best drivers on
the track, unlikely to make mistakes on the seven laps around the
spina. If one of the top Blues or Greens took the lead at the first
turn, it required luck and a great deal of effort to overtake him on
a crowded track.

The real drama came when-as now-the two best drivers were so far
outside that it was impossible for them to win except by coming from
behind, fighting through the blocks and disruptions of the lesser
colours.

Crispin kept his eyes on the outside racers. He thought that
Carullus's very large wager was a decent bet: the Blues' Scortius was
in a miserable position, flanked by a Red driver whose sole task-he
had learned through the morning-would be to keep the Blue champion
from cutting down for as long as possible. Running wide for a long
time on this track was brutally hard on the horses. Crescens of the
Greens had his own Green partner on his left, another piece of good
fortune, despite his own outside start. If Crispin understood this
sport at all by now, that second Green driver would go flying from
the barriers as fast as he could and then begin pressing left towards
the inside lanes, opening room for Crescens to angle over as well, as
soon as they sped past the white chalked line that marked the
beginning of the spina and the point when the chaos of manoeuvring
began.

Crispin hadn't expected to be this engaged by the races but his heart
was pounding now, and he'd found himself shouting many times through
the morning. Eighty thousand screaming people could make you do that.

He'd never been among so large a crowd in his life. Crowds had their
own power, Crispin had begun to realize; they carried you with them.

And now the Emperor was here: a new element to the festival
excitement of the Hippodrome. That distant purple-robed figure at the
western end of the stands-just where the chariots made their first
turning round the spina-represented another dimension of power. The
men down below them in their frail chariots, whips in hand and reins
lashed around their hard, trained bodies, were a third. Crispin
looked up for a moment. The sun was high on a clear, windy day: the
god in his own chariot, riding above Sarantium. Power above and below
and all around.

Crispin closed his eyes for a moment in the brilliance of the day,
and just then-without any warning at all, like a flung spear or a
sudden shaft of light-an image came to him. Whole and vast and
unforgettable, completely unexpected, a gift.

And also a burden, as such images had always been for him: the
terrible distance between the art conceived in the eye of the mind
and what one could actually execute in a fallible world with fallible
tools and one's own crushing limitations.

But sitting there on the marble benches of the Sarantine Hippodrome,
assailed by the tumult and the screaming of the crowd, Caius Crispus
of Varena knew with appalling certainty what he would like to do on a
sanctuary dome here, given the chance. He might be. They'd asked for
a mosaicist. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His fingers were
tingling. He opened his eyes and looked down at his scarred,
scratched hands.

The second trumpet sounded. Crispin lifted his head just as the
barriers below were whipped away and the chariots sprang forward like
a thunder of war, pushing the inner image back in his mind but not
away, not away. 'Come on, you cursed Red! Come on!' Carullus was
roaring at the top of his considerable voice, and Crispin knew why.
He concentrated on the outside chariots and saw the Red driver burst
off the line with exceptional speed-the very first team out of the
barriers, it seemed to him. Crescens was almost as fast, and the
Green second driver in the fifth lane was lashing his horses hard,
preparing to lead his champion down and across as soon as they passed
the white line. In the eighth position, it seemed to Crispin that
Scortius of the Blues had actually been caught unprepared by the
trumpet; he seemed to have been turned backwards, saying something.

'On!' roared Carullus. 'Go! Lash them! Good man, you Red!' The Red
driver had already caught Scortius's Blues, Crispin saw, even against
the advantage the outside chariot was given at the staggered start.
Carullus had said it this morning: half the races were decided before
the first turn. It looked like this one might be. With the Red
already right beside him-and now pulling ahead with the ferocity of
his start-the Blue champion had no way to cut down from his position
so far outside. His cohorts in the inside lanes were going to be hard
pressed to keep Crescens outside or blocked, especially with the
Greens' second driver there to clear a path. The first chariots
reached the white line. The whip hand of the Red driver in the
seventh lane seemed a blur of motion as he lashed his mounts forward,
first to the line. It didn't matter where that team finished, Crispin
knew. Only that they keep Scortius outside for as long as they could.

'He's done it!' Carullus howled, clutching Crispin's left arm in his
vise of a grip.

Crispin saw the two Green chariots cross the line and begin an
immediate angling downwards-they had room. The White chariot in the
fourth lane hadn't started fast enough to fend them off. Even if the
White driver fouled the Green leading the way and they both went
down, that would only open up more space for Crescens. It was
wonderfully well done; even Crispin could see that. Then he saw
something else.

Scortius of the Blues, in the worst position, farthest outside, with
a fiercely determined Red driver lashing his horses into a frenzy to
get ahead of him, let that chariot go by.

Then the Blue driver suddenly leaned over, so far left his upper body
was outside the platform of his chariot, and from that position he
sent his whip forward-for the first time-and lashed his right trace
horse. At the same time the big bay on the left side of the team, the
one called Servator, pulled sharply left and the Blue chariot almost
pivoted on the sands as Scortius hurled his body back to the right to
balance it. It seemed impossible it could remain upright, keep
rolling, as the four horses passed behind the still accelerating Red
driver at an unbelievably sharp angle straight across the open track
and right up to the back of Crescens's chariot.

'Jad rot the soul of the man!' Carullus screamed, as if in mortal
agony. 'I don't believe it! I do not believe it! It was a trick! That
start was deliberate! He wanted to do this!' He shook both fists in
the air, a man in the grip of a vast passion. 'Oh, Scortius, my
heart, why did you leave us?'

All around them, even in the stands of those not formally aligned
with one faction or another, men and women were screaming as Carullus
was, so startling and spectacular had that angled, careening move
been. Crispin heard Vargos and he heard himself shouting with all of
them as if his own spirit were down there in the chariot with the man
in the blue tunic and leather straps. The horses thundered into the
first turn passing beneath the Imperial Box. Dust swirled, the noise
was colossal. Scortius was right behind his rival, his four horses
almost trampling on the back of the other man's chariot. None of
Crescens's allies could block him without also impeding the Green
driver or fouling so flagrantly from the side as to disqualify their
colour from victory.

The chariots whipped along the far stands as Crispin and the others
strained to see across the spina and its monuments. The Blues' second
driver had used his inside position to seize and hold the lead and he
was first into the second turning, straining to keep his horses from
drifting outside. Right behind him, surprisingly, was the young Red
driver from the seventh lane. Having failed to block Scortius, he had
done the only thing he could and pressed downwards himself, taking
advantage of his spectacular-and spectacularly unsuccessful-start
from the barriers.

The first of the seven bronze sea-horses tilted and dived from above,
down into the silver tank of water at one end of the spina. An
egg-shaped counter flipped over at the opposite end. One lap done.
Six to go.

 

It was Pertennius of Eubulus who had most comprehensively chronicled
the events of the Victory Riot. He was Leontes' military secretary,
an obvious sycophant and flatterer, but educated, manifestly shrewd,
and carefully observant, and since Bonosus had been present himself
for many of the events the Eubulan recorded in his history, he could
vouch for their essential accuracy. Pertennius was, in fact, the sort
of man who could make himself so colourless, so unobtrusive, that you
forgot he was there . . . which meant he heard and saw things others
might not. He enjoyed this, a little too obviously, letting slip
occasional bits of information, clearly expecting confidences in
return. Bonosus didn't like him.

Notwithstanding this, Bonosus was inclined to credit his version of
events in the Hippodrome two years ago. There were a good many
corroborating sources, in any case.

The subversive work of men strewn through the crowd by Faustinus had
managed to set Blues and Greens somewhat at odds towards the end of
that day. Tempers frayed with uncertainty, and the allegiance between
the factions seemed to be wearing thin in places. Everyone knew the
Empress favoured the Blues, having been a dancer for them herself. It
had not been difficult to make the Greens in the Hippodrome anxious
and suspicious that they might be the prime victims of any response
to the events of the past two days. Fear could bring men together,
and it could drive them apart.

Leontes and his thirty archers of the Imperial Guard made their way
silently down the enclosed corridor from the Precinct to the rear of
the kathisma. There followed an ambiguous incident with a number of
the Hippodrome Prefect's men, guarding the corridor for those in the
box, allegedly undecided where their immediate loyalties lay. In
Pertennius's account, the Strategos made a quietly impassioned speech
in that dark corridor and swayed them back to the Emperor's side.

Bonosus had no obvious reason to doubt the report, though the
eloquence of the speech as recorded, and its length, seemed at odds
with the urgency of the moment.

The Strategos's men-each one armed with his bow as well as a
sword-then burst in through the back door of the kathisma, joined by
the Prefect's soldiers. They discovered Symeonis actually sitting on
the Emperor's seat. This was confirmed: everyone in the Hippodrome
had seen him there. He was to argue plausibly, afterwards, that he'd
had no choice.

Leontes personally ripped the makeshift crown and the porphyry robe
from the terrified Senator. Symeonis then dropped to his knees and
embraced the booted feet of the Supreme Strategos. He was permitted
to live; his abject, very public, obeisance was a useful symbol,
since everything happening could be seen clearly throughout the
Hippodrome.

The soldiers made ruthlessly short work of those in the kathisma who
had placed Symeonis on the Emperor's chair. Most were popular
agitators, though not all. Four or five of those in the box with
Symeonis were aristocrats who saw themselves as having cause to
dispense with an independent Emperor and be the powers behind the
throne of a figurehead. Their hacked bodies were immediately thrown
down to the sands, landing bloodily on the heads and shoulders of the
crowd, which was so densely packed that people could scarcely move.

This, of course, became the principal cause of the slaughter that
followed. Leontes had the Mandator proclaim the exile of the hated
taxation officer. Pertennius reported this speech at some length as
well, but as Bonosus understood events, it was likely that next to no
one heard it.

This was so because, even as the Mandator was declaring the Emperor's
decision, Leontes directed his archers to begin shooting. Some arrows
were fired at those directly below the kathisma; others arched high
to fall like deadly rain on unprotected people far off. No one on the
sands had any weapons, any armour. The arrows, randomly strewn,
steadily and expertly fired, caused an immediate, panic-stricken
hysteria. People fell, were trampled to death in the chaos, lashed
out at each other in desperate attempts to flee the Hippodrome
through one of the exits.