The Sarantine Mosaic (40 page)

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's 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.

It was at this point, according to Pertennius, that Auxilius and his two thousand Excubitors, divided into two groups, appeared at entrances on opposite sides. One of these—the tale would linger and gain resonance—was the Death Gate, the one through which dead and injured charioteers were carried out.

The Excubitors wore their visored helmets. They had already drawn their swords. What ensued was a slaughter.
Those facing them were so packed together they could scarcely lift arms to defend themselves. The massacre continued as the sun went down, autumn darkness adding another dimension to the terror. People died of swords, arrows, underfoot, smothered in the blood-soaked crush.

It was a clear night, Pertennius's chronicle meticulously recorded, the stars and the white moon looking down. A stupefying number of people died in the Hippodrome that evening and night. The Victory Riot ended in a black river of moonlit blood saturating the sands.

TWO YEARS LATER
, Bonosus watched chariots hurtle around the spina along that same sand. Another sea-horse dived— they had been dolphins until recently—another egg was flipped. Five laps done. He was remembering a white moon suspended in the eastern window of the throne room as Leontes—unscathed, calm as a man at ease in his favourite bath, golden hair lightly tousled as if by steam— returned to the Attenine Palace with a gibbering and palsied Symeonis in tow. The aged Senator hurled himself prone on the mosaic-inlaid floor before Valerius, weeping in his terror.

The Emperor, sitting on the throne now, looked down upon him.

‘It is our belief you were coerced in this,' he murmured as Symeonis wailed and beat his head against the floor.

Bonosus remembered that.

‘Yes! Oh
yes
, oh my dear, thrice-exalted lord! I
was
!'

Bonosus had seen an odd expression in Valerius's round, smooth face. He was not a man—it was known— who enjoyed killing people. He'd had the Judicial Code changed already to eliminate execution as a punishment for many crimes. And Symeonis was an old, pathetic victim of the mob more than anything else. Bonosus was prepared to wager on exile for the elderly Senator.

‘My lord?'

Alixana had remained by the window. Valerius turned to her. He hadn't spoken whatever it was he'd been about to say.

‘My lord,' repeated the Empress quietly, ‘he was crowned. Garbed in porphyry before the people. Willingly or no. That makes two Emperors in this room. In this city. Two … living Emperors.'

Even Symeonis fell silent then, Bonosus remembered.

The Chancellor's eunuchs killed the old man that same night. In the morning his naked, dishonoured body was displayed for all to see, hanging from the wall beside the Bronze Gates in its flabby, pale white shame.

Also in the morning came the renewed Proclamation, in all the holy places of Sarantium, that Jad's anointed Emperor had heeded the will of his dearly beloved people and the hated Lysippus was already banished outside the walls.

The two arrested clerics, both alive if rather the worse for their tenure with the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, were released, though not before a careful meeting was held amongst themselves, the Master of Offices, and Zakarios, the Most Holy Eastern Patriarch of Jad, in which it was made clear that they were to remain silent about the precise details of what had, in fact, been done to them. Neither appeared anxious to elaborate, in any case.

It was, as always, important to have the clerics of the City participate in any attempts to bring order to the people. The co-operation of the clergy tended to be expensive in Sarantium, however. The first formal declaration of the Emperor's
extremely
ambitious plans for the rebuilding of the Great Sanctuary took place in that same meeting.

To this day, Bonosus wasn't at all certain how Pertennius had learned about that. He was, however, in
a position to confirm another aspect of the historian's chronicle of the riot. The Sarantine civil service had always been concerned with accurate figures. The agents of the Master of Offices and the Urban Prefect had been industrious in their observations and calculations. Bonosus, as leader of the Senate, had seen the same report Pertennius had.

Thirty-one thousand people had died in the Hippodrome under that white moon two years ago.

After the wild burst of excitement at the start, four laps unrolled with only marginal changes in positioning. The three quadrigas that had started inside had all moved off the line quickly enough to hold their positions, and since they were Red, White, and the Blues' second driver, the pace was not especially fast. Crescens of the Greens was tucked in behind these three next to his own Second, who had led him across the track in their initial move. Scortius's horses were still right behind his rival's chariot. As the racers hurtled past them on the fifth lap, Carullus gripped Crispin's arm again and rasped, ‘Wait for it! He's giving orders now!' Crispin, straining to see through the swirling dust, realized that Crescens was indeed shouting something to his left and the Greens' number two was relaying it forward.

Right at the beginning of the sixth lap, just as they came out of the turn, the Red team running in second place—the Greens' teammate—suddenly and shockingly went down, taking the Blues' second quadriga with him in an explosion of dust and screams.

A chariot wheel flew off and rolled across the track by itself. It happened directly in front of Crispin, and his clearest single image amid the chaos was of that wheel serenely spinning away, leaving carnage behind. He
watched it roll, miraculously untouched by any of the swerving and bouncing chariots, until it wobbled to rest at the outer edge of the sand.

Crescens and the other Green beside him avoided the wreck. So did Scortius, pulling swiftly wide to the right. The trailing White second team wasn't quite quick enough to steer around. Its inside horse clipped the piled, mangled chariots and the driver hacked furiously at the reins tied to his waist as his platform tipped over. He hurtled free, to the inside, rolling and rolling across the track towards the spina. Those behind him, with more time to react, were all heading wide. The driver was in no danger once free of his own reins. One of his inside yoked horses was screaming, though, and down, a leg clearly broken. And beside the initial wreckage, the second driver of the Blues lay very still on the track.