Chapter Fifty-Four

Seneca stood in the dark and felt through his feet the stamp of the guards marching back and forth at both ends of the barn. The two senator’s sons were not remotely in step, but they were making enough noise to cover the slight sounds he made in trying to find a means to pick the lock that kept Ajax imprisoned.

A fingertip search of the empty stall in which he stood offered nothing. Across the aisle was the tack area in which, searching by starlight, he found the racing chariot, the training chariot and two complete sets of harness. With a little more effort, he found six beautifully crafted, leaf-light racing bits hanging together from a hook on a slender hoop of wire, high up on the wall.

In the traditional way, the hoop on which they hung was made from a single strand of wire bent into an eye at one end and a hook at the other; when the hook snagged the eye, it made a circle. And when straightened it could, with any luck at all, make a lock pick.

Seneca was a man for whom luck was made, not given. With slow care, he slid the hook from the eye and the six racing bits from their wire. One by one, he laid them on soft hay where the rattle of sweet-iron would not alert the guards. With them gone, he turned his attention to the wire.

An age later, he stood in the aisle outside Ajax’s prison holding his new lock pick in one hand. He ran his dry tongue around his drier teeth, found a knot hole in the wood and put his mouth to it. ‘It’s me. I think I can open the lock.’

There was a moment’s surprised pause, then Ajax whispered, ‘I’ll piss in the bucket. The sound will give you cover.’

Seneca’s instincts were not those of a thief as were Math’s, or even Pantera’s, but the lock was flashily big, made to withstand crowbars and axes, not to hold off a wire. Shortly after Ajax began noisily to spray his urine into the bucket Nero’s guards had provided, the padlock sprang open.

If he had expected thanks, Seneca was disappointed. Lean as the wind, Ajax slid past him, patting his shoulder lightly as he crossed the aisle to the tack room.

The man was feral, and preternaturally silent, and Seneca, who had trained the best assassins in the Roman empire, watched him as a circus-owner watches an exotic beast. He had met chariot-drivers aplenty. None of them had inspired in him the hope and fear that this man did.

He was halfway to an idea when Ajax returned, carrying a set of reins from the harness on the wall. The thin, pliable leather smelled lightly of oil.

‘What are you going to do?’ Seneca whispered.

‘Kill the guards.’ Ajax’s amber eyes flashed in the starlight. ‘We can’t get Math out with them there. You were planning to get Math?’

‘Of course. Pantera sent me to-’

Ajax’s iron grip caught his wrist. It took a long, long moment before Seneca heard what Ajax had heard.

When he did, he said, ‘That’s a horse, coming fast.’

Ajax frowned. ‘Nero doesn’t like interruptions at night,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows that.’

‘Then Rome is burning. Nobody would come that fast for anything else.’ Seneca tugged his still-held wrist. ‘We must leave. We can come back for Math later.’

‘What will he do?’ Ajax asked.

‘Nero? That depends on whom he’s with and whom he’s trying to impress.’

‘Nero is with Math.’

‘Ah.’ Seneca blew out his cheeks. He wished he didn’t feel so old. ‘If they are already… occupied, nobody will dare to disturb him. If he is not yet engaged, and is halfway to sober, he will want to prove himself the great warrior, saviour of his people.’

‘Will he go back to Rome? Or organize relief from here?’

‘He hasn’t the power to do it from here. He’ll have to go to Rome.’

‘Can he ride well enough to get there in a hurry in the dark?’

‘No. He’ll take the chariot. Tonight, perhaps even the racing chariot.’

Ajax laughed, a soft huff of derision that barely moved the night air. ‘Who’ll he take as driver?’

‘You. Except you’re in prison and he’s not likely to decide to let you out. So-’

‘ Math.’ Ajax smacked his balled fist into his palm with a force that was no less frustrated for being silent. ‘He’ll have Math drive him with all four colts, it’ll be his greatest love-gift.’ He turned on his heel. ‘I need to be back in the prison. They’ll notice if I’m gone and rip the place apart looking for us. Lock me in again and then hide somewhere safe if you value your life. Quickly. The guards have noticed that someone’s coming.’


‘You will drive for us. You wished to race for your emperor, and you will do so, not against other drivers, who might slow their horses and lose for fear of our displeasure, but against fire, which is driven by the gods.’

Nero, fully dressed, and sober, stood in the aisle of the horse barn. Two dozen pitch-pine torches flared and spat, chasing the shadows. Grooms sprinted to do his bidding. The race chariot stood at the end of the barn, ready to drive. The two senator’s sons held Sweat and Thunder. Nexos, thick with sleep and fear, had been woken to harness Brass and Bronze and was doing so, badly.

Math stood to one side, kept out of the way by men who treated him with undisguised contempt.

‘You should take the practice rig,’ a clear voice said from the far end of the barn. ‘The racing one will disintegrate on the roads long before you get to Rome.’

That was true, but nobody had dared say so aloud. They didn’t say so now, but kept their heads down and worked on with the horses.

Nero turned slowly.

‘Who speaks?’ His voice was uncommonly low.

‘I do, lord. Ajax of Athens.’

They had locked Ajax in a stable with no food and no water. Nero had told Math so. He had three days’ life, at most, before he died of thirst. For a man under sentence of lingering death, he sounded inhumanly composed.

Nero stalked down the aisle to the last box. Two of the vast Germanic guards followed, each bearing a torch in one hand and his naked sword in the other. Nero lifted a chain from about his neck and used the key thereon to unlock the padlock that held Ajax’s stable-prison closed.

‘Come out.’

‘I am at your service-’

‘Down!’

Before he could move, the larger of the two guards slammed the hilt of his sword against the driver’s head. Ajax dropped to his knees like a poleaxed ox. Math kept his eyes on the horses and dug his nails into his palms against the stinging in his eyes.

‘You are alive at my whim. For this insolence, you will die.’

‘We all die, lord. But if the emperor dies before he reaches Rome, the empire will lose its father. A racing chariot is not built to survive thirty miles on metalled roads. It will break before the halfway mark.’

‘ Math! ’

‘Lord.’ Math sprinted down the length of the barn.

‘Will the racing chariot break apart on the roads?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Forgive me, lord.’ Math knelt as far from Ajax as he could. It mattered now to divert everyone’s attention to the chariots. ‘I was thinking only of speed. It would be safest for my lord if he used the practice vehicle.’

‘But slower?’

‘It matters not how fast you travel, lord, if you die before you reach the gates of Rome.’

‘Of course. Such wisdom from a child.’ Nero looked at the taller of the two guards. If he nodded, Math didn’t see it, but the effect was immediate.

Faster than Math had seen any trackside team, the racing chariot was wheeled away and the practice rig made ready. Bronze and Brass backed into the traces ahead of Sweat and Thunder as if it were any normal day. There was no warfare, no screaming, only a bloodless, terrifying efficiency.

Somewhere along the way, Ajax was returned to his cell. The guards beat him first, efficiently and nastily and silently. Nobody paid them any attention.

Nero demanded the drivers’ resin and was given it. He smeared some on his own hands and, with no ceremony whatsoever, handed the pot to Math. The torches lit them both. Nero was sweating, exactly as he had been in the bedroom. His pupils were just as dilated.

‘We ride, then,’ he said casually. ‘Rome awaits us. You, Math of the Osismi, will race for me against the fire, and you will win.’

For Seneca, picking the lock on the stable door the second time was faster than the first, if no less quiet. Two of the guards were at their station at the head of the barn, marching back and forth as they had been. The senator’s sons had gone from the other end, taking horses to follow the emperor’s racing chariot. Their absence made little difference to the danger.

The lock sprang open in his hand. He slid into the stall, easing the door shut behind him. Ajax was lying in the straw, breathing harshly. With Seneca’s help, he eased himself to sitting. The shadows were kind to him, hiding his face.

‘Are you fit to ride?’ Seneca whispered. He impressed himself with his own calmness. He was filthy, his tunic was torn, grain husks scoured his skin and his hair, he was sure, was in utter disarray. His consolation was that, even in the half-dark of the stall, Ajax looked far worse; clotted blood made dark streaks around the point on his left temple where the guard had clubbed him and a spreading bruise flared scarlet across his ribs where he had been kicked.

‘I’m fit enough,’ he said, and stood up.

‘In that case, you’ll need this.’ Seneca handed Ajax the loop of harness the driver had previously chosen as his means of assassination.

‘What’s that for?’

‘To kill the guards, as you planned before.’

Ajax took a long breath of barely held impatience. ‘We can’t. The whole palace is awake. If we kill them now, someone will notice and follow us. If we leave them, they won’t notice I’ve gone before morning.’

‘But they’ll hear us as soon as we bring the first horse out of its stall.’

‘Exactly. So we’ll have to walk.’

‘To Rome? Are you insane? You’re barely fit to-’ Seneca lunged forward as Ajax’s legs gave way, and caught him before he hit the ground. The noise of that alone would have brought the guards at a run.

‘Are you all right?’

‘No. Yes… Give me a moment.’

They wrestled together, ineffectively, until Ajax found his feet again. Standing, he swayed back until his shoulders met the wall. A band of light filtering through the bars that made the stall a prison flared across his face, illuminating, at last, the clear signs of pain.

Seneca made to touch the bruise and took his hand away.

‘Your ribs,’ he asked. ‘Are they broken?’

‘No.’ Ajax pulled a face. ‘We were discussing how to leave in a way that wouldn’t alert the guards. We can’t take a horse, so we’ll do it on foot. If we walk nine paces then run nine, then walk nine then run again, we can do it.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Seneca said.

Improbably, Ajax grinned. ‘You’ll only think it is for the first ten miles. The last ten are the easiest. The ten in the middle you will hate. But you will want to tell the world of your prowess when you finish. Are you coming? Soonest started is soonest finished and-’

Seneca laid his hand on Ajax’s shoulder. ‘I have a better idea. My horse is less than a mile away. Near enough to reach and far enough away not to be heard by the guards. I suggest we share it, one on foot, one riding, changing every mile. If you want to run for your mile, you’re more than welcome. I’ll walk for mine.’


Later, as they passed the eighth milestone, with Ajax jogging and Seneca riding, the philosopher, looking down, observed thoughtfully, ‘Your hair is growing back and neither of us has a razor with which to shave it. What are you going to do when the world finds you are as gold-fair as a Gaulish warrior, and not possessed of the night-black locks that herald a true son of Greece?’

He got no answer; he had not expected one. A dozen miles later, when he had thought some more, he said, ‘What is Math going to do when he finds you share his colouring?’

Ajax said nothing this time, either, but that was as much of an answer as his previous silence had been. Reaching the twenty-second waymark on the route to Rome, Seneca found himself smiling.

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