Crescens roared another oath at his teammate and went a little higher yet. As high as he could go, in fact, racing along the outermost lane, right against the rail and the screaming, on-its-feet, fist-waving, thunderous crowd.
The new right-side trace horse for the Greens didn't like screaming thunderous fist-waving beside him. At all. He was, in fact, a horse that needed a right-side blinker. It hadn't come up. Crescens had never run him so wide, and this was only the second meeting of the year. They hadn't figured that out yet, the Greens.
A mistake.
Scortius held steady, watched for the moment. Crescens had a tight, grim smile on his face as the quadrigas pelted along. Now that he was at the rail, any further movement towards him by Scortius would have to be seen as a foul. The other Green chariot, still ahead, could safely slide a bit farther over and slow, and Scortius would have to pull up hard.
Experienced strategy, sound reasoning. Might well have worked, if the right-sider hadn't jerked its head just then, in blind panic right beside the howling crowd, and broken stride, pulling the other three horses hopelessly out of their own pace, just as the Greens" number two performed the entirely correct tactical movement of moving a little more right and slowing a shade.
Scortius did pull up, as hard as they'd ever have wanted him to, even a little sooner than they'd expected, as if he was afraid, or weak.
Doing so, he had an exceptionally vivid, close view of the crash. Crescens's quadriga slewed back inwards, pushed by their panicked, undeniably powerful new right-sider, while the other team was still committed to angling out. They met, unfortunately.
Two wheels flew, instantly. One stayed in the air like a discus, spinning halfway to the spina. A horse screamed and stumbled, dragging the others down with it. A chariot skidded sideways, banged the rail, and then came back the other way, and Scortius, pulling sharply left (and crying aloud with the pain of it this time) saw Crescens's knife flash as he cut his reins and leaped desperately free.
He was past them, then, didn't see what happened to the other Green driver, or the horses, but he knew they were down.
He dealt with the turn then looked back. Saw the Reds and Whites toiling behind him now, four of them, closely bunched, labouring. Had a new idea. There was that odd, crimson hue to his vision again, but he suddenly decided it might be within him to bring one last element into this day's aspiring towards immortality.
Ahead of him, the boy, Taras, was slowing for him, looking back. He lifted his whip hand, waved Scortius forward, offering him the lead and the victory.
Not what he wanted, for more than one reason. He shook his head, and as he came up towards the other driver he shouted, in Inici, "I'll castrate you with a dull knife if you don't win this race. Keep moving!"
The boy grinned. He knew what they had just done. The glory of it. He was a chariot-racer, wasn't he? He kept moving. Crossed the line six laps later to win the first major race of his life.
The first of what would be one thousand, six hundred and forty-five triumphs for the Blues. By the time the boy in that chariot retired eighteen years later only two names in the long history of the Sarantium Hippodrome would have won more races, and no one who followed him would do so. There would be three statues to Taras of Megarium in the spina to be torn down with all the others, seven hundred years after, when the great changes came.
The First of the Whites came second in that race, the Second of the Whites came third. The track record of the day, meticulously kept by the stewards, as ever, would show that Scortius of the Blues came a wretched distance behind during his only race that afternoon.
The records can miss everything, of course. So much depends on what else is preserved, in writing, in art, in memory, false or true or blurred.
The Blues faction, with their White partners, came first and second and third. And fourth. Fourth, in what was, all things considered, very likely the most spectacularly triumphant race of his entire career on the sands, was Scortius of Soriyya, who had shepherded the White teams through and past him while blocking, with precision, the two hapless Red charioteers, who were all that was left on the track running for the Green faction.
He ought to have died when that race was over. In some ways he should have died, he was later to think during some long nights, setting a seal of perfection on a racing life.
Those who came running over saw the pool of blood about his soaked sandals when the race ended. The chariot platform was slippery with it. The Ninth Driver had been beside him for those last laps, running very near from the time the fifth sea-horse dived, and closer yet down the final backstretch as he kept on swinging back and forth, almost unable to breathe, holding the Reds before pulling away at the end- alone on the track, in fact, his teammates having finished already, a lap ahead, the Red quadrigas slipping back.
Alone, save for that unseen Ninth beside him, brushing wheels, dark as superstition had him, and crimson, too, like the day. But then, unaccountably, he drifted away, let this reckless mortal go on beneath the streaming sunlight, gathered and held in the enormous cauldron of sound that was the Hippodrome.
No one knew it then, no one could have known, among eighty thousand and more in that place, but there was richer blood for the claiming in Sarantium that day.
There would be time yet to take a charioteer.
Scortius slowed, just across the finish line, swayed where he stood as the quadriga drifted to an awkward halt. He was unable to even begin unwrapping his reins, which were also soaked through with blood by then. He was alone, motionless, done.
They came to help him, sprinting across the track, leaving the victory lap to the boy and the two White teams. Astorgus and two others cut him free, tenderly, as if he were a babe. He saw, with some surprise, that all three of them were weeping, and others who came up behind them, even the stewards. He tried to say something about that, a jest, but couldn't seem to speak just yet. It was very hard to breathe. He suffered them to help him back under the stands, a redness in the air.
They went past Crescens, in the Greens" space along the spina. He seemed to be all right, and the other Green rider was there as well. There was something odd about their faces, a working of emotion being fought. There really did seem to be a lot of noise. More, even, than usual. They took him-carried him, mostly-back through the Processional Gates to the dimly lit atrium. It was a little quieter here, but not very much.
The Bassanid was there. Another surprise. There was a pallet next to him.
"Lay him down," he snapped. "On his back."
"I thought… you had disowned me," he managed to say. First words. There was so much pain. They were laying him down.
"So did I," said the grey-haired physician from the east. He threw aside his stick, angrily. "Makes two fools here, doesn't it?"
"Oh, at least," said Scortius, and then he did, finally, by the very great mercy of Heladikos, lose consciousness.
CHAPTER XI
It is true, undeniably, that the central moments of an age occur on the margins of the lives of most people. A celebrated play from the early years of the eastern empire in Sarantium begins with shepherds quarrelling over their entangled flocks when one of them notices a flare of light in the east as something falls from the sky. There is a brief pause in the dispute as the men on the hill slope consider the event; then they return to the matter at hand.