Kay, Guy Gavriel – Sarantine Mosaic 01 – Sailing to Sarantium

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 Scortms 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.

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