Sailing to Sarantium (34 page)

'He doesn't possess her, 'Eutychus replied reasonably.' He may not
even be bedding her. And he is a man of some distinction, little
sprout.'

Cleander glared at him as the others laughed.

The volume of sound in The Spina was considerable. It was midday and
the morning's races were done, with the afternoon chariots slated to
begin after the break. The most ambitious of the drinking places near
the Hippodrome was bursting with a sweating, raucous, bipartisan
crowd.

The more fervent followers of Blue and Green had made their way to
less expensive taverns and cauponae dedicated to their own factions,
but the shrewd managers of The Spina had offered free drinks to
retired and current charioteers of all colours from the day they'd
opened their doors, and the lure of hoisting a beer or a cup of wine
with the drivers had made The Spina a dramatic success from that
first day.

It had to be ... they'd put a fortune into it. The long axis of the
tavern had been designed to simulate the real spina-the central
island of the Hippodrome, around which the chariots wheeled in their
furious careen. Instead of thundering horses, this spina was ringed
by a marble counter, and drinkers stood or leaned on both sides,
eyeing scaled reproductions of the statues and monuments that
decorated the real thing in the Hippodrome. Against one long wall ran
the bar itself, also marbled, with patrons packed close. And for
those prudent-and solvent-enough to have made arrangements ahead of
time, there were booths along the opposite wall, stretching to the
shadows at the back of the tavern.

Eutychus was always prudent, and Cleander and Dorus were notably
solvent, or rather, their fathers were. The five young men-all
Greens, of course-had a standing arrangement to prominently occupy
the highly visible second booth on race days. The first booth was
always reserved for charioteers or the occasional patrons from the
Imperial Precinct amusing themselves among the crowds of the city.

'No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow,' said Gidas moodily.
'He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting
glimpse into her soul.' Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be.

'If they have souls,' said Eutychus wryly, drinking his carefully
watered wine. 'It is, after all, a liturgical issue.'

'Not any more,' Pollon protested. 'A Patriarchal Council settled that
a hundred years ago, or something.'

'By a single vote,' Eutychus said, smiling. Eutychus knew a lot; he
didn't hide the fact. 'Had one of the august clerics had an
unfortunate experience with a whore the night before, the Council
would likely have decided women have no souls.'

'That's probably sacrilege,' Gidas murmured.

'Heladikos defend me!' Eutychus laughed.

'That is sacrilege,' Gidas said, with a rare, quick smile.

'They don't,' Cleander muttered, ignoring this last exchange. ' don't
have souls. Or she doesn't, to be permitting that grey-faced toad to
court her. She sent back my gift, you know.'

'We know, Cleander. You've told us. A dozen times.' Pollen's tone was
kindly. He ruffled Cleander's hair. 'Forget her. She's beyond you.
Pertennius has a place in the Imperial Precinct and in the military.
Toad or not, he's the sort of man who sleeps with a woman like that..
. unless someone of even higher rank pushes him out of her bed.'

'A place in the military?' Cleander's voice swirled upwards in
indignation. 'Jad's cock, that's a bad joke! Pertennius of Eubulus is
a bloodless, ass-licking secretary to a pompous strategos whose
courage is long behind him since he married above himself and decided
he liked soft beds and gold.'

'Lower your voice, idiot!' Pollon gripped Cleander's arm. 'Eutychus,
water his fucking wine before he gets us into a fight with half the
army.'

'Too late,' Eutychus said sorrowfully. The others followed his glance
towards the marble spina running down the middle of the room. A
broad-shouldered man in an officer's uniform had turned from
contemplating a replica of the Greens' second statue to the
charioteer Scortius and was razing across at them, his expression
stony. The men on either side of him-neither one a soldier-had also
glanced over, but then returned to their drinks at the counter.

With Pollen's firm hand on his arm, Cleander kept silent, though he
gazed truculently back at the soldier until the man at the spina bar
turned away. Cleander sniffed. 'Told you,' he said, though quietly.
'An army of useless fakers, boasting of imaginary battlefields.'

Eutychus shook his head in amusement. 'You are a rash little sprout,
aren't you?'

'Don't call me that.'

'What, rash?'

'No. The other. I'm seventeen now, and I don't like it.'

'Being seventeen?'

'No! That name. Stop it, Eutychus. You aren't that much older.'

'No, but I don't walk around like a boy with his first erection.
Someone's going to cut it off for you one day if you aren't careful.'

Dorus winced. 'Eutychus.'

A figure appeared suddenly at their booth. They looked up at a
server. He carried a beaker of wine.

'Compliments of the officer at the spina,' he said, licking his lips
nervously. 'He invites you to salute the glory of the Supreme
Strategos Leontes with him.'

'I don't take wine on conditions,' brisded Cleander. 'I can buy my
own when I want it.'

The soldier hadn't turned around. The server looked more unhappy.
'He, ah, instructed me to say that if you do not drink his wine and
offer his salute he will be distressed and express this by hanging
the . . . loudest of you by his tunic from the hook by the front
door.' He paused. 'We don't want trouble, you know.'

'Fuck him!' Cleander said, loudly.

There was a moment before the soldier turned.

This time, so did the two big men on either side of him. One was
red-haired and bearded, of indeterminate origin. The other was a
northerner of some sort, probably a barbarian, though his hair was
close-cropped. The noise of The Spina continued unabated. The server
looked from the booth to the three men at the spina and made an
earnest, placating gesture.

'Boys don't fuck me,' the soldier said gravely. Someone farther along
the spina turned at that. 'Boys who wear their hair like barbarians
they've never faced, and dress like Bassanids they've never seen, do
what a working soldier tells them.' He pushed off from the bar and
walked slowly across to their booth. His expression remained mild.
'You style your hair like the Vrachae. If Leontes's army were not on
your northern and western borders today, a Vrachae spearman might
have been over the walls and up your backside by now. Do you know
what they like to do with boys taken in battle? Shall I tell you?'

Eutychus lifted a hand and smiled thinly. 'Not on a festival day,
thank you. I'm sure it is unpleasant. Do you really propose to start
a quarrel over Pertennius of Eubulus? Do you know him?'

'Not at all, but I will quarrel over insults to my Strategos. I've
given you a choice. It is good wine. Drink to Leontes and I'll join
you. Then we'll toast some of the old Green charioteers and one of
you will explain to me how the fucking Blues got Scortius away from
us.'

Eutychus grinned. 'You are, I dare take it, a follower of the
glorious and exalted Greens?'

'All my sorry life.' The man returned the grin wryly.

Eutychus laughed aloud and made room for the soldier to sit. He
poured the offered wine. They toasted Leontes; none of them really
disliked him, anyhow. It was difficult, even for Cleander, to be
genuinely dismissive of such a man, though he did offer an aside
about being known by the secretary one kept.

They went quickly through the soldiers beaker and then two more,
saluting a long sequence of Green drivers. The soldier appeared to
have a voluminous recollection of Green charioteers from cities all
over the Empire in the reigns of the last three Emperors. The five
young men had never heard of most of them. The man's two friends
watched them from the spina bar, leaning back against it,
occasionally joining in the toasts across the aisle. One of them was
smiling a little, the other was expressionless.

Then the manager of The Spina had the horns blown, in imitation of
those that marked the chariots' Processional in the Hippodrome, and
they all began paying their reckonings and tumbling in a noisy spill
of people out into the windy autumn sunshine, joining the disgorged
crowds from the other taverns and baths to cross the forum for the
afternoon's chariots.

The first running after the midday break was the major race of the
day and no one wanted to be late.

'All four colours in this one,' Carullus explained as they hurried
across the open space. 'Eight quadrigas, two of each colour, a big
purse. The only purse as large is the last one of the day when the
Reds and Whites stay out of it and four Greens and Blues run with
bigas-two horses each. That's a cleaner race, this one's wilder.
There'll be blood on the track, most likely.' He grinned. 'Maybe
someone will run over that dark-skinned bastard, Scortius.'

'You'd like that?' Crispin asked.

Carullus considered the question for a moment. 'I wouldn't,' he said
finally. 'He's too much pleasure to watch. Though I'm sure he spends
a fortune each year in wards against curse-tablets and spells. There
are a good many Greens who'd cheerfully see him dragged and trampled
for crossing to the Blues.'

Those five we drank with?'

'One of them, anyhow. The noisy one.'

The five young men had pushed ahead of them across the Hippodrome
Forum, heading for the patrician gates and their reserved seats.

'Who was the woman he was going on about?'

'A dancer. It's always a dancer. Latest darling of the Greens. Name's
Shirin, apparently. A looker, it sounds like. They usually are. The
young aristocrats are always elbowing each other to get in bed with
the dancer or actress of the day. A long tradition. The Emperor
married one, after all.'

'Shirin?' Crispin was amused. He had that name in his baggage, on a
torn-off piece of parchment.

'Yes, why?'

'Interesting. If this is the same person, I'm supposed to visit her.
A message to deliver from her father.' Zoticus had said she was a
prostitute, at first.

Carullus looked astonished. 'Jad's fire, Rhodian, you are a series of
surprises. Don't tell my new friends. The youngest one might knife
you-or hire someone to do it-if he hears you have access to her.'

'Or be my friend for life if I offer to let him come visit with me.'

Carullus laughed. 'Wealthy lad. Useful friend.' The two men exchanged
an ironic glance.

Vargos, on Crispin's other side, listened carefully, saying nothing.
Kasia was back at the inn where they'd booked a room last night.
She'd been invited to come with them-women were permitted in the
Hippodrome under Valerius and Alixana-but had been showing signs of
distress ever since they'd passed into the roiling chaos of the City.
Vargos hadn't been happy either, but he'd been within city walls
before and had some framework for his expectations.

Sarantium dwarfed expectations, but they'd been warned it would.

The long walk from the landward walls to the inn near the Hippodrome
had visibly unsettled Kasia the day before. It was a festival; the
noise levels and the numbers of people in the streets were
overwhelming. They had passed a half-naked ascetic perched
precariously on the top of a squared-off triumphal obelisk, his long
white beard streaming sideways in the breeze. He was preaching of the
City's iniquities to a gathered cluster of the City's people. He'd
been up there three years, someone said. It was best to stay upwind,
they added.

A few prostitutes had been working the edges of the same crowd.
Carullus had eyed one of them and then laughed as she grinned at him
and slowly walked away, hips swinging. He'd pointed: the imprint of
her sandals in the dust read, quite clearly, 'Follow Me.'

Kasia hadn't laughed, Crispin remembered.

And she had elected to remain behind at the inn today rather than
deal with the streets again so soon.

'You'd really have started a fight with them?' Vargos asked Carullus.
His first words of the afternoon.

The tribune glanced over at him. 'Of course I would have. Leontes was
maligned in my hearing by an effete little City snob who can't even
grow a proper moustache yet.'

Crispin said, 'You'll do a lot of fighting if that's going to be your
attitude here. I suspect the Sarantines are free with their
opinions.'

Carullus snorted. 'You are telling me about the City, Rhodian?'

'How many times have you been here?'

Carullus looked chagrined. 'Well, just twice in point of fact, but-'

'Then I suspect I know rather more than you about urban ways,
soldier. Varena isn't Sarantium, and Rhodias isn't what it was, but I
do know that if you bridle at every overheard opinion the way you
might in a barracks you command you'll never survive.'

Carullus frowned. 'He was attacking the Strategos. My commander. I
fought under Leontes against the Bassanids beyond Eubulus. In the
god's name, I know what he's like. That bedbug with his father's
money and his stupid eastern robe had no business even speaking his
name. I wonder where that little boy was two years ago today, when
Leontes smashed the Victory Riot? That was courage, by Jad's blood!
Yes, I would have fought them. It was ... a matter of honour.'

Crispin arched an eyebrow. 'A matter of honour,' he repeated.
'Indeed. Then you should have had rather less difficulty
understanding what I did at the walls yesterday when we came in.'

Carullus snorted. 'Not at all the same thing. You could have had your
nose slit for declaring a name other than the one on your Permit.
Using those papers was a crime. In Jad's name, Martinian-'