M. Scott - Rome - The Emperor's spy

He turned to face Caradoc for the first time. ‘If Ajax were to lose the race,’ he asked thoughtfully, ‘and Nero were not to require him to come to Rome, would Ajax help you get Math to safety then, do you think?’

Caradoc looked at him in alarm. ‘Tell me why Ajax might not win,’ he said sharply.

‘A youth of the Green team cut partway through the harness of the offside traces just before the horses left the barns. It was carefully done: the harness will stand for the greater part of the race, but it is my belief that if the team is made to angle hard to the outside, the strain will break at least one of the straps.’

‘Does Ajax know of this?’ They were both standing now, staring out towards the hippodrome. The thunder of the crowd was deafening.

‘I told him before he entered the arena,’ Pantera said. ‘I wouldn’t have come here to tell you otherwise. He will need help later. I thought you would be in a position to give it.’

In the hippodrome, the crowd sucked in a collective gasp. The noise was exactly that of the moment in battle when a champion has been downed in single combat.

Caradoc gripped Pantera’s shoulder. ‘If Ajax is injured, tell Math and Hannah to bring him to the upper room of the Roan Bull tavern; it’s closest to the hippodrome. Go now!’

‘ Go Sweat! Go Thunder! ’

The fifth lap marker fell — another tumbling dolphin that spun and arced down a water slide on the spina to bob in the pool at the base. By the time it settled in its place, the teams were halfway down the far straight, running against the sun, with the Green ribbons lying in third place of four. The Parthians were in the lead for Red, but not as far as they might have been if they had really raced. The magistrate’s four matched grey colts had barely broken sweat and were not being pushed by their driver.

Behind them, Blue, Green and White, in that order, were straining in a tight pack, bunched together, the drivers leaning steeply into the turns, each vying for the place on the rail that gave them the best chance into the bend. Ajax’s bald head was a beacon in the middle, with the coloured ribbons flowing past his ears. Sweat and Thunder were running their hearts out, low to the ground, stretched flat and hard with every stride.

Through the sweating gap under another boy’s elbow, Math watched a space appear between the rail and the inner wheel of Blue’s chariot. Ajax had seen it before him. He always did.

Math watched Ajax shift his weight to his inside foot, felt in his own body the pull of the traces shift a fraction inside, saw the crack of the whip high above Sweat, but not Thunder, pulling him just a step to his left, and then — wait, wait, wait another stride… on! — aiming for a space that was barely wide enough for a single horse, never mind two and a chariot behind.

Math thought his heart might stop with excitement. Ajax was his hero, Pantera forgotten. He grabbed Lucius’ shoulder and jumped high in the air, fighting to see.

What he saw was near-disaster. Thunder broke stride, a thing that never happened.

‘ Nooooo! ’

Ten thousand men, women and children groaned as one. Math jumped again, but Lucius jumped in front, blocking the view, and by the time he could leap a third time and look, the disaster had been averted. There was no crash, but Ajax was still caught in behind the Blues and now the Whites were coming up on the outside, four sweat-streaked black colts, stretched flat to the floor with a thread-fine whip above, moving smoothly into place to box Ajax in.

The boys of the Blues and Whites jumped in unison, cheering. ‘ Go! Go! Go! ’

‘ Unfair! Foul! ’

Math was screaming himself hoarse. So unfair! Everyone knew the Reds were going to win, but it mattered to come second. It had not occurred to him as he walked with Nero that the other drivers would see it, and mark the Green team as the one to beat.

‘Foul! Unfair! They can’t combine, it’s not legal! Foul! Fou- oof!’

A boy from the Blue team slammed his elbow in Math’s gut. He sank to his knees, retching. Hannah jumped down from the rails and pulled him up before he was trampled.

‘One of the other drivers made Thunder break stride. They must have done!’ Math shouted over the havoc around them.

Hannah cupped her palm to his ear and shouted back. ‘The White driver spun his whip at Thunder’s eye. Ajax saw it and pulled him back in time. In Alexandria, even in Rome, the driver would have gone for the gap, and risked a blind horse. Ajax is better than that.’

Math heard the thread of pride in Hannah’s voice, and jumped again. The teams were nearing the bend. The track began its smooth angle to the left and the Blues’ driver lost control of his outer lead stallion, and so lost his tight line to the rail. The chariot swayed out again, leaving the same gap as before. This time, Ajax leaned in over his four, bald head flashing, using voice and whip and reins to ask more speed of them.

Math’s heart hurt; he had never seen the horses strain so hard, or so valiantly. Still, when asked, they dug deep and gave more. Ajax pushed forward and slid neatly through.

‘ Go! Go! GO GREEN! ’

The roar of the crowd became a constant, deafening scream. The last of the leaping dolphins tipped and fell at the end of the track. Math pushed on Lucius’ elbow and saw the grey Parthian team flash past, way ahead of the rest. They had three lengths on the others by now, if not four; an almost unassailable lead.

There was no point in jumping; a dozen of the older boys had gone to stand on the low rails at the front of the enclosure, blocking the view. Math had to duck down and squint under Lucius’ elbow to stand a chance of seeing anything at all.

Through the sodden angle of the boy’s armpit, he saw a smear of white hides and black harness, of red, flared nostrils, of pitted eyes and the white rims around them, then the nearest chariot wheel, so close he could have reached out to touch it. The whine of the wheel-rims on the sand was the sing of angry wasps in summer. The crack of the whip was a lazy breaking branch, no urgency in it at all. They had no need to hug the inside rail, these horses, they could afford to take the corners wide and still win. Their charioteer was relaxed, braced easily against the leathers that held him. The reins were wound round his waist and he barely bothered to touch them with his hand. He, too, was Parthian. He might have known all the legal and illegal manoeuvres ever raced, but he needed none of them.

They were gone, red-ribboned tails flagging the wind. The group of three struggling for second place were not yet at the bend. Math counted four thundering strides, then executed his own manoeuvre, planned in the night.

The mass of boys around him swayed forward, straining their necks hard left to see. When they were at their most precarious, leaning forward on tiptoe, he stuck out his arm, levered up Lucius’ elbow and squirmed in through the gap before the older boy noticed. In a swift, wriggling move, he made it through to the rail and stood up. Nobody tried to knife him.

He and Hannah stood crushed together, in an intimacy of shared excitement that went beyond anything Math had found in his dockside encounters. He grinned for her, shouting, ‘They’ll do it! They’ll come second!’

Then he saw her face.

‘ What? ’

‘Lucius has gone.’ She was white, strained, worried. ‘And the emperor’s man has left the imperial box. Pantera. The one who gave you the denarius.’

‘He finds it more pleasant down here amidst the sweat of the apprentices,’ said Pantera’s quiet voice from his other side. ‘If I were you, I’d watch the harness. If Ajax pushes them hard round one more bend like that, it’ll break.’