It was most terribly unfortunate, given so much courage and skill displayed, that his outside chariot wheel bounced down behind him, having been dislodged on the way through the wreckage.
One could not, however brave or skilful, race a one-wheeled chariot. Crescens cut himself free of the reins around his torso. He stood a moment upright in the wildly slewing chariot, lifted his knife in a brief but clearly visible salute to the receding figure of Scortius ahead of him, and jumped free.
He rolled several times, in the way drivers all learned young, and then stood up, alone on the sand. He removed his leather helmet, bowed to the Emperor’s box-ignoring the other teams now coming around the curve-then he spread his hands in resignation and bowed equally low to the Green stands.
Then he walked off the track to the spina. He accepted a flask of water from a crewman. He drank deeply, poured the rest in a stream over his head, and stood there blistering the air among the monuments with the profane, passionate fire of his frustration as Scortius turned the last straightaway into a one-chariot Procession, and then ran the formal Victory Lap itself, collecting his wreath, while the Blues permitted themselves to become delirious and the Emperor himself in the kathisma-the indifferent Emperor who favoured no faction and didn’t even like the racing- lifted a palm in salute to the triumphant charioteer as he went by.
Scortius showed no flamboyance, no exaggerated posture of celebration. He never did. He hadn’t for a dozen years and sixteen hundred triumphs. He simply raced, and won, and spent the nights being honoured in some aristocratic palace, or bed.
Crescens had had access to the faction ledgers. He knew what the Greens had budgeted for counterspells against the curse-tablets that would have been commissioned against Scortius over the years. He imagined that the Blues had designated half as much again this year.
It would be pleasant, Crescens thought, wiping mud and sweat from his face and forehead among the monuments on the last race day of his first year in Sarantium, to be able to hate the man. He had no idea how Scortius had deduced the wreckage would still be there after a simple two-chariot accident. He would never actually ask, but he badly wanted to know. He had been allowed to take the inside out of that last turn, and he had done as permitted, like a child who snatches a sweet when he thinks his tutor has turned away.
He noted, with a measure of wryness, that the fellow racing for the Reds in the seventh lane-Baras, or Varas, or whatever-the one who’d been gulled by Scortius at the start, had actually caught a tiring White team coming out of the last turn and taken second place with its considerable prize. It was a wonderful result for a young man riding second for the Reds, and it prevented a sweep for the Blues and Whites.
Crescens decided it would be, under all the circumstances, inappropriate to berate the fellow. Best put this race behind. There were seven more to be run today, he was in four of them, and he still wanted his seventy-five wins.
On his way back to the dressing rooms under the stands to rest before his second appearance of the afternoon, he learned that the Blues’ Second, Dauzis, downed in the crash, was dead-his neck broken, either in the fall, or when they moved him.
The Ninth Driver was always running with them. He had shown his face today.
In the Hippodrome they raced to honour the sun god and the Emperor and to bring joy to the people, and some of them ran in homage to gallant Heladikos, and all of them knew-every single time they stood behind their horses-that they could die there on the sands.
CHAPTER VII
Could one forget how to be free?
The question had come to her on the road and it lingered now, unanswered. Could a year of slavery mark your nature forever? Could the fact of having been sold? She had been sharp-tongued, quick, astringent at home. Erimitsu. Too clever to marry, her mother had worried. Now she felt afraid in the core of her being: anxious, lost, jumping at sounds, averting her eyes. She had spent a year having any man who paid Morax use her in whatever way he wanted. A year being beaten for the slightest failing or for none at all, to keep her mindful of her station.