Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

Having been summoned to this gathering purely for the procedural formality of it-the Senate still, officially, advised the Emperor on the people's behalf-Bonosus found himself standing uncertainly, superfluous and afraid, between a delicately wrought silver tree and the open eastern window. The Empress turned her head and saw him. Alixana smiled. Sitting three rows behind her now in the kathisma, his face burning again with the memory, Plautus Bonosus recalled his Empress saying to him, in an intimate tone of arch, diverted curiosity, as if they were sharing a dining couch at a banquet for some ambassador, "Do tell me, Senator, assuage my womanly curiosity. Is the younger son of Regalius Paresis as beautiful unclothed as he is when fully garbed?"

Taras, fourth rider of the Reds, didn't like his position. He didn't like it at all. In fact, being as honest as a man ought to be with himself and his god, he hated it like scorpions in his boots.

While the handlers held his agitated horses in check behind the iron barrier, Taras distracted himself from the pointed glances of the rider on his left by checking the knot of his reins behind his back. The reins had to be well tied. It was too easy to lose a handgrip on them in the frenzy of a race. Then Taras checked the hang of the knife at his waist. More than one charioteer had been claimed by the Ninth Driver because he couldn't cut himself free of the reins when his chariot toppled and he was dragged like a straw toy behind the horses. You raced between one kind of disaster and another, Taras thought. Always.

It occurred to him that this was particularly so for him in this first race of a festival afternoon. He was in the seventh position-a bad post, but it shouldn't have mattered. He drove for the Reds. He wasn't expected to win a major race with the first and second drivers of Blue and Green all present.

He did have-as all the White and Red drivers did-a role in every race. And this function was greatly complicated for Taras just now by the undeniable fact that the men in the sixth and eighth slots had very strong expectations of winning, despite starting outside, and each carried the fervent hopes of about half the eighty thousand souls in the stands.

Taras tightened his hold on his whip. Each of the men beside him wore the silver ceremonial helmet that marked them as First of their colour. They were taking those off now, Taras saw, glancing to each side furtively, as the last of the Processional music gave way to the final preparations to run. On his left and a little behind him, in the sixth post, Crescens of the Greens shoved his leather racing helmet firmly down on his head as a handler cradled the silver one tenderly in his arms. Crescens glared quickly across at Taras, who was unable to glance away in time.

"He gets down in front of you at the Line, worm, I'll have you shovelling manure at some broken-down hippodrome on the frozen border of Karch. Fair warning."

Taras swallowed and nodded. Oh, very fair, he thought bitterly but did not say. He gazed past the barrier and down the track. The Line, chalked in white across the sand, was about two hundred paces away. To that point each chariot had to hold its lane, to allow the staggered start position to have its effect and prevent crashes right at the starting gates. After they reached the white line, the outside drivers could begin cutting down. If there was room.

That was the issue, of course.

Taras actually wished, at this moment, that he was still racing in Megarium. The little hippodrome at his home in the west might not have been very important, a tenth the size of this one, but he'd been a Green there, not a lowly Red, riding a strong Second, fair hopes after a fine season of claiming the silver helmet, sleeping at home, eating his mother's food. A good life, tossed aside like a broken whip the day an agent of the Greens of Sarantium had come west and watched him run and recruited him. He would race for the Reds for a while, Taras had been told, starting the way almost everyone began in the City. If he did honourably… well, the lives of all the great drivers were there to be observed.

If you thought you were good, and wanted to succeed, the Greens" agent said, you went to Sarantium. It was as simple as that. Taras knew it was true. He was young. It was an opportunity. Sailing to Sarantium, men called it, when someone took a chance like this. His father had been proud. His mother had cried, and packed him a new cloak and two sealed amphorae of her own grandmother's sovereign remedy for any and all ailments. The most evil-tasting concoction on earth. Taras had taken a spoonful each day since he'd arrived in the City. She'd sent two more jars in the summer, by Imperial Post.

So here he was, healthy as a young horse, on the very last day of his first season in the capital. No bones broken on the year and barely a handful of new scars, only one bad spill that left him dizzy for a few days and hearing flute music. Not a bad season, he thought, given that the horses the Reds and Whites drove-especially their lesser drivers-were hopelessly feeble when matched on the great track with those of the Blues and Greens. Taras had an easygoing disposition, worked hard, learned quickly, and had grown more than adequate-or so his factionarius had told him, encouragingly-at the tasks of the lesser colours. They were the same at every track, after all. Blocks, slow-downs, minor fouls (major ones could cost your lead colour the race and get you a suspension and a whip across the back-or face-from a First driver in the dressing rooms), even care- fully timed spills to bring down a rival team coming up behind you. The trick was to do that last without breaking a bone, or dying, of course.

He'd even won three times in the minor races involving the lesser Green and Blue riders and the Reds and Whites-amusements for the crowd, those were, with careening chariots, reckless corners, dangerous pile-ups, hot-headed young riders lashing at each other as they strove for recognition- Three wins was perfectly decent for a youngster riding Fourth for the Reds in Sarantium.

Problem was, perfectly decent wouldn't suffice at this particular moment. For a veritable host of reasons, the race coming up was hugely important, and Taras cursed fortune that it was his lot to be slotted outside between ferocious Crescens and the whirlwind that was Scortius. He shouldn't even have been in this race, but the Reds" second driver had fallen and wrenched a shoulder earlier in the morning and the factionarius had chosen to leave his Third in the next race, where he might have a chance to win.

As a direct result of this, seventeen-year-old Taras of Megarium was sitting here at the starting line, behind horses he didn't know at all well, sandwiched between the two finest drivers of the day, with one of them making it clear that if he didn't cut off the other, his brief tenure in the City might be over.

It was all a consequence of not having enough money to buy adequate protection against the curse-tablets, Taras knew. But what could one do? What could one possibly do?

The first trumpet sounded, warning of the start to come. The handlers withdrew. Taras leaned forward, talking to his horses. He dug his feet deeply into the metal sheaths on the chariot floor and looked nervously to his right and a bit ahead. Then he glanced quickly down again. Scortius, holding his experienced team easily in place, was smiling at him. The lithe, dark-skinned Soriyyan had an easy grin-allegedly lethal among the women of the City-and at the moment he was glancing back with amusement at Taras.

Taras made himself look up. It would not do to appear intimidated. "Miserable position, isn't it?" the First of the Blues said mildly. "Don't worry too much. Crescens is a sweet-natured fellow under that surface. He knows you can't go fast enough to block me."