Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Fifty-Six

Math was living his dream, and it was a nightmare.

A roaring dragon devoured Rome. Wings of flame scorched the sky. Its tail destroyed houses, men and horses alike, smashing them to bloody bone. And Math was racing towards it.

He was racing as badly as he had done in Alexandria, probably worse. All four colts were bolting, entirely out of control, just as they had done in the final trial, with the difference that the road was clear in front of him, Poros was not trying to squeeze him on the corners — and there was not the slightest chance that Ajax could come to help him.

His ribs ached; they hadn’t stopped aching since he had woken in the palace with Crystal tapping his shoulder. His feet were bruised from bracing against the constant buck and dive of the chariot, and his tongue was sliced on both sides by his clattering teeth. Cut raw by the reins, his hands had long ago lost all feeling, and his ears hurt from the hammering hooves on the solid road, the slashing wind and, above both of these, the screaming encouragement of Nero, his emperor, who clung to the wicker at his side, goading him on like a madman.

They had a train of mounted men behind them, striving to keep up, of whom Faustinos, the water engineer, was the only one within reach. He had been given the big grey gelding, favoured son of Crystal, that Math thought the best of Nero’s riding horses. Driven by his need to get back to the city and repair his beloved cisterns, he hurled his mount at insane speeds after the chariot, shouting at Math to go faster.

The two Germanic guards and the detachment of dress cavalry detailed to guard Nero were hopelessly outdistanced. Inferior horsemen on inferior horses, they trailed a quarter of a mile behind with no chance of catching up, while Nero, who held their lives in his hand, rode with one hand on the wicker rail and one high in the air, brandishing a flaring torch, declaiming his love for the night, for himself and for Math.

Oblivious of danger, god-like in his euphoria, Nero had bellowed his promises to the city he was coming to save for the past thirty miles and continued unabated even as they reached the outer streets of Rome and felt the fire’s first breath scorch their faces and the stench of burning people began to send the horses wild.

Math was exhausted. Simply to stand in a chariot for thirty miles tested the limits of his endurance, but once in the city the challenge of keeping the smoke-maddened horses in line, keeping them from running anyone down, keeping them on the main streets, turning corners as Nero directed, required feats of concentration he had never considered possible.

But he survived each threat and surprisingly soon they were careering down a broad, open street, with the marbled villas on either side glowing red as if cast from molten metal. The sight of them caused Nero to let go of the rail and lunge at Math, brandishing what looked at first sight like a cudgel.

The chariot slewed off balance. Fighting for control, Math heard Nero shout, ‘Can you sound a horn?’

The thing blocking Math’s view of the road wasn’t a cudgel, but a bull’s horn of quite fantastic length, chased with silver at tip and rim, carved with intricate sigils across its belly.

‘Can you-’ Nero shouted again.

‘ Watch out! ’ Math threw his whole weight on the reins. Bronze screamed. Math thought Thunder’s foreleg buckled, but the colt took the weight of the turn and the chariot wrenched round, missing the family they had nearly run down. The man snatched his three children from the road. The woman sprang inelegantly into the gutter.

Nero fell sideways, hard. The chariot rocked and rolled as he clawed at Math and pulled himself upright. By a miracle, he had not dropped the horn.

‘You will announce my entry.’

The side of Nero’s face was bruised. Tears sparked in his eyes, and the first flickers of rage.

Math already had the reins tied to his waist. He worked his right hand free from the plaited leather rein and held it out.

Nero pressed the horn on to his palm. It was smooth as polished marble, but warm, with the silver worn by years of use.

‘Can you sound it?’

‘I’ve blown one like it.’ Twice, in fact, most recently when his mother died. Then, his father had given him a horn far smaller than this one, with only a single band of silver at the mouthpiece, and had bade him play it. It was to help his mother find the gods, apparently. Math had not believed it, but had played for his father’s sake.

He knew how because he had learned on the night his mother had last been well, when the tall, silver-haired man in the stained cloak had come from Britain and had given Math’s father news of a death, or perhaps of many deaths.

Later, when he had gone, Math’s father had blown the horn. Math had got up and gone to him and so it was that, before dawn, he had learned how to sound the lament and had done so, finding solace in the way it wrapped them together.

Now, for the third time in his life, as he rounded a bend with fire on two sides and people scattering before his horses like hogs before hounds, he lifted the long, elegant horn and pressed the silver to his lips and blew the only notes he knew: his father’s lament for the war-slain dead.

Bright, rippling horn music sang to the smoky stars. Falling back, it became by turns the sound of his father, weeping, and then a man’s voice, singing.

By a small, but necessary, miracle, the four colts slowed and became controllable.

Math took the horn from his lips but the music did not stop. At its behest, the crowd thinned, and moved aside, as corn moves before the wind, so that Math’s chariot passed through without bringing hurt to anybody.

A single man stood at the roadside, sounding his own horn. He was Ajax’s height but Pantera’s leaner build. He had Pantera’s hair, grown long, but Ajax’s mouth and the same slant to his nose. He had straight shoulders, which was entirely unlike either of them, and eyes that were black as the night sky seen in a millpond.

Math felt his gaze and turned his head and his eyes locked with a man who was neither Ajax nor Pantera, but an amalgam of both.

He wanted to call out, but his voice failed him. He had only the horn. He blew it again in a long, fine note and, as the sound fell away, the other music stopped.