Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Nero sat on a golden dais high up on the newly built stands at one end of the oval race track, under a banner of cloth of gold above it.

Immediately beneath, in a display of unmatched arrogance, Bronze was throwing himself back and forth in a frenzy, with Math on the end of the lead rope, fighting to bring the big colt past Thunder and into his place in the Green team, last to be harnessed, last before the race began, last because Math had to lead Bronze himself — last because Ajax wasn’t there.

Which meant he was truly going to have to drive the four colts in the race trial. Which meant, at best, he would lose, and at worst he would kill himself and his horses. If he lived long enough even to start.

At the moment, that seemed unlikely. Bronze screamed again. A front hoof split the air by Math’s head. He threw himself sideways. The leather reins sliced his palm.

‘Let go. I’ve got him. Let go of the reins. Let go. Well done. See? Nothing’s impossible with a tight hand on the reins.’

Math’s fingers relaxed their death-grip on the rope. His knees did not support him. Only the now-still head of his horse kept him upright.

He opened his eyes. Poros was there, holding Bronze; the only man besides Ajax who could hope to catch and hold the colt when he was lost in his rage and the need to fight.

Math stared at him in confusion. ‘Why…?’

‘Don’t ask stupid questions. Have you the racing bit in?’

‘Of course!’ That he could even ask such a thing gave Math the strength to stand straight.

‘Then get that flapping idiot away from the other horses, get the harness tied and get up on the rig before he breaks loose. I can’t hold him for ever.’

Nexos had heard himself being referred to as a flapping idiot. Actually, everyone within twenty yards had heard it. The boy flushed an ugly scarlet but let go of Thunder, smartly. At Poros’ signal, two of the Blue grooms ran forward. The lead horse was buckled into the harness faster than it had ever been done.

Math found he could tie leather and plait the reins and started to do just that.

‘No,’ Poros said, as he reached for the reins. ‘Mount first. I’ll pass you the reins once you’re up. After that, you’re on your own. We have one circuit to warm up, then slow as we come to the start line, and wait for the emperor to drop his white rag. For your horses’ sake if not your own, don’t cross the line early. You don’t want to have to set it all up again.’

‘I won’t.’ Math accepted a leg up into the fragile cage of the chariot. Planting his feet in the corner stays, he looked back down at Poros. ‘Why are you helping?’ he asked again.

The man frowned up at him. His hair flopped down over his eyes. His beard covered most of the lower half of his face like a fungus. Between them, ruddy cheeks lifted in a raw, angry humour.

‘Because I want this race over and won. Your entire team’s only here because Nero wants to bed you, not for your horses or the skill of your driver. Now you’re going to lose and I’ll have been seen to win honestly and fairly. I can wear the Red banners in Rome and nobody, not even the emperor, will be able to stop me. Now fix your reins and get ready before your bloody horse goes wild again.’

As he had predicted, Bronze went wild. Thunder went wilder, straining forward to reach his enemy so that, had it not been for Poros’ slur, Math would have been thrown from the bucking chariot before it ever reached the track.

Your entire team’s only here because Nero wants to bed you, not for your horses or the skill of your driver.

If that had been false, Math would not have been so angry, but the truth spoken so baldly made him livid, and rage gave him a balance he otherwise lacked, so that he stayed upright, and kept his hold on the reins, and burst past the watching slaves in the first two strides.

Which was good except that he wasn’t on the track, but had cut across it and was heading straight for the central wooden spina around which they raced.

Throwing his full weight on the reins, Math hauled the team right, spinning it round Thunder as the outside rear anchor, then let them have two strides straight on the newly raked sand before he began the longer swing left, to follow the track’s counter-sun direction.

So far did his fury last, but no further. A battle raged in the traces and he was powerless to control it. Watch their ears, Ajax had said once. Their ears show which way they’ll go. If you can change that, you have control. Use your body and your voice.

Chaos had come to his chariot and their ears were everywhere; Bronze’s mane was plastered back against his head, so that he looked more like a snake than he had ever done. He was thrashing, trying to turn in the shafts, bucking, striking backwards, missing Sweat who was right behind him only because Ajax had thought to reset the traces so that they were too far apart for such kicks to reach their target.

Even so, Sweat was doing his best to retaliate, straining forward to bite at Bronze’s bucking rump, but it was Thunder who was causing most havoc; he struck and struck across the diagonal, in his desperation to draw first blood.

As a result, they were not racing at all, not even moving forward properly. All their energy was going upwards and outwards, more up and more out with each stride until they were moving no faster than a trot, but explosively, so that the chariot’s fragile wicker basket was shaken at every stride.

To underline Math’s incompetence for anyone who hadn’t noticed yet, Poros brought his Blue team on the long, lazy route round the outside at an easy canter, performing his warm-up by the book. It was as insulting as anything he had ever done; nobody passed to the outside even in a warm-up unless their horses were five times better than their opponent’s.

Over the screaming madness of his team, Math heard muted catcalls from the Blues and a collective sigh from the Greens. He was too afraid now to be angry, but fear was a goad of sorts and in the madness of his terror he conceived an idea.

With a swift prayer to the watching spirit of his father, he fixed one sweating hand on the reins, leaned forward, and with the other flicked his whip out over the lead pair.

Never hit them. Never. It was the one unbreakable rule.

Math broke it. With an accuracy born of desperation, he flicked the whip’s end directly at Bronze, drawing blood from his heaving quarters. The great colt screamed and bucked so high that the soles of his hooves showed cleanly to Math up in the chariot. The whole team nearly stopped.

Math did it again. Over cries of horror from the Green team, and of derision from the Blues, he did it a third time.

And didn’t die. In his new rage, Bronze slewed the chariot round so tightly that it tilted and nearly fell. Brass tumbled to his knees and was dragged along the sand. Sweat screamed at the pressure put on his hocks and his inside cannon. Thunder had to battle to hold his feet and had no strength left for fighting Bronze.

But they did it, all of them, and when the rig straightened out Math was on his feet and sent the whip singing forward one more time, not at Bronze now, but between the two lead horses, snapping them forward as they had been trained, so that their ears all faced the same way and the chariot surged ahead. It was ragged, and barely controlled, but they were racing at last — just nowhere near the track.

When he had time to take his mind from the horses, Math discovered that he was careering down the middle of the track, along the side of the Spina, heading in a straight line directly towards the solid oak palisade of the compound’s perimeter.

To hit that at any speed meant certain death; at racing speed… there wasn’t time to think how bad it would be. Math slewed the team into a turn so hard he thought his horses’ legs might shatter under the strain. They didn’t, but at the apex of the turn, when all his skill went into keeping the chariot upright, a stray lance of afternoon sunlight struck the emperor’s golden dais and rebounded, dazzlingly bright. A cacophony of light hit all four horses, and spooked them into a bolt that made racing speed seem like a sedate canter.

Coming out of the bend, Math lost all hope of control. Eyes streaming, he headed at a flat gallop up the length of the oval towards the stands that held Nero, which were as matchwood to racing colts. Immediately beyond them was the oakwood palisade, solid as a stone wall.

Math tilted his body and tilted and tilted, trying desperately to bring the trajectory of the team’s panic on to a line that would not hit Nero. He managed that much but little else and at a certain point, when he thought no one else was in danger, he stopped trying and sought instead the freedom of flying that had so exhilarated him the day before.

As he had then, Math called for his father, and felt his presence, and tasted the glory of a death bravely faced. Mourning only for his horses, he relaxed all grip on the reins and gave himself to the last, long gallop up the full length of the track.

As he passed the halfway point on the Spina, he realized that Hannah must be watching, and that she would grieve, not only for him, but for Ajax, who must be dead, or he would have come to take over the race by now. He was consoled by the thought that she would be left with Pantera, which would save her having to choose between the two men. Because she would have had to choose; he saw that with sudden clarity and could not think how he might ever have thought otherwise. It was not that Ajax and Pantera were lovers, but that both men loved Hannah, and she them. Just as Math did.

He carried the thought with him towards death, to give him courage; that Hannah would have the spy and Math would have Ajax, and all that he was. He thought death would be a good place, with Ajax there to greet him.

It was Ajax’s ghost, then, that came running out across the sands, clad only in a loincloth, scalp shining pink under the late afternoon sun, shouting in a language Math didn’t know, which must be the language of the dead, except that it sounded a lot like the songs that Math’s father used to sing, and the words were those Math had heard spoken softly in the nights before his mother had died, words of war and battle and glory and loss that reached into his chest and plucked at the strings of his heart.

He began to weep hot tears of fierce, painful joy, that filled his eyes and blurred his vision so that he thought he saw Ajax running alongside the chariot with his arm reaching up, and thought he heard him shouting out, ‘Give me your hand!’

Death was more exciting than he had dared imagine. Math reached out his hand as the ghost of Ajax grasped his wrist and, shouting ‘Hold tight!’, used it as an anchor by which to haul himself into the fragile wicker basket that was made for one man, not two.

‘Give me the whip! Lean your body to the left. Left. Left! Left! Good. Now stand very still. I need to take the reins from your waist.’

Math’s vision was still blurred, but there was no mistaking Ajax’s voice, nor Ajax’s nimble fingers unwinding the reins and retying them round his own body, nor Ajax’s whistle to the horses, that caused all of their ears to come straight, nor Ajax’s command for more speed that did things to the chariot Math had never even dreamed about.

Somewhere, a great many throats were cheering themselves hoarse. Math thought he heard Hannah’s voice within the cacophony. Certainly he heard Nero’s. It came to him in a dawn of wonder that neither he nor Ajax was dead, and that they were, in fact, racing. Two of them, racing in a one-man chariot. He dashed the tears from his eyes and looked around for Poros, and saw him four lengths ahead.

Ajax had the horses under control, if racing this fast was ever under control. He was standing spread-legged across the width of the wicker, with his feet braced on either side. Math was caught in the back corner. He looked up, just as Ajax glanced down and grinned at him. ‘You’re going to have to act as second man. Just don’t lean as far on the corners as you did before. This rig isn’t built for that.’

‘What are we doing?’ Math asked.

‘Racing. To win.’

But Math was watching Poros. The Blues’ driver was the only other person who mattered just now and he, too, had truly begun to race. He was one man, and they were two. Even with better horses, they couldn’t hope to make up four lengths.

A corner was coming. Seeing it, Math’s mind became startlingly clear. He let go of the chariot’s sides and shifted his weight to the inside. To Ajax, over the speed of their racing, he shouted, ‘You can’t win with two of us on board!’ and launched himself out across the sand.

He had six months of training; six months that were, really, a daily practice in throwing himself from a moving chariot without dying, although none of it had been anywhere close to the speed and angle and sheer insane danger of this.

For a moment, Math truly flew and, flying, curled himself into a ball as he had been taught, bringing his chin to his chest and bending his arms round so that his elbows made a circle rather than a corner, squeezing his knees up to his chest His world, briefly, was full of sound and light and the screams of the onlookers. The circling track and the palisade turned upside down. A voice he didn’t recognize said, ‘Math, curl tighter, now!’

He did his best. Soon after that, he hit the ground sickeningly hard, and knew nothing.

‘Math?’

The voice came from behind him. Nexos. It sounded like Nexos.

‘Math… wake up.’ A warm, friendly hand shook his shoulder twice, and then withdrew. In grief, Nexos said, ‘I can’t get him to wake.’

‘He’s as awake as he’s going to be. Let me see.’ It was Hannah. Math felt her hand on his brow, on his neck, on his wrist. He tried to grasp her fingers but his own hand had no strength. She lifted it and held it. ‘Math? Can you hear me?’

He could, but only just. Mostly what he could hear was the sound of a crowd going wild in a kind of delirious ecstasy, and somewhere over it a big colt, screaming his victory.

He said, ‘Is the race over?’

‘It is. You missed the best bit.’ Hannah was trying to sound cheerful, but in truth she was worried. Math frowned.

‘Ajax lost?’

‘No. Not at all. Not even close. He overtook Poros on the second to last lap and came in three lengths ahead. Nero was right; our four colts were more than a match for Poros’ when they were all raced together. It was the best race there’s ever been in Alexandria, everyone says so. Nero is a very happy man. I think you might be made an honorary member of his family.’

Math’s mind was too fuddled to make sense of everything all at once. He worked through it, step by step by step, and ‘We’re going to Rome? The Green team’s going to race for Nero in Rome?’ There were all kinds of reasons why that was a very bad idea, but just now his chest ached with a burning, bursting pride.

‘We are.’ Hannah leaned down and kissed his cheek. ‘For better or worse, we are all going to Rome.’