David Pilling - The Red Death

My hand shook as I plied the whip. This was the day I had trained so long and hard for. The day I had to survive.

The Blues and the Greens were staggered, so I had a rival chariot either side of me as we traversed the track. I vaguely recognised the faces of the opposing drivers, though we were barred contact with our rivals, and remember thinking that in other circumstances we might have been friends. They didn’t even glance at me. Their youthful faces were hard and tense, and I knew their guts were churning with the same terror as mine.

When the lap of honour was completed, we returned to the tunnels of the Starting Gates. The gates were spring-loaded, and when the Emperor was ready he would drop a cloth to signal the race would begin. At that moment the gates would spring open, and the chariots burst forth.

The noise of the crowd rose to a delirious pitch and echoed like thunder inside the tunnel as the Emperor rose to his feet again. There was a pause and a drop in the noise, no doubt while the old fool looked for his cloth, and then the voices rose again and the gates flew open.

I had practised this countless times, but never in the grip of such fear. The horses surged out of the gate, and for a moment I lost my balance. Fortunately the reins were tied around my waist – this was the Roman style, unlike the Greeks who held the reins in their hands – and saved me from an ignominious end to my first race, the more so since I knew Aquila and Leo and Felix were watching from the stands.

There was another in the crowd whose good opinion I cared for. Her name was Elene, and she was a member of the company of female dancers that performed between races. She was about my age, a Greek from Athens and the first lover I ever took, though it was more a case of her taking me. Elene’s long, sinuous body was capable of the most extraordinary contortions, and the source of much private delight and exhaustion.

Like every young idiot who mistakes lust for love I was eager to impress her, and win enough prize money in the race to purchase my freedom from the Blues. The latter was a faint hope, for I was one of the least experienced drivers on the track, but determined to try.

Training and instinct took over, and my nerves quickly ebbed. The howls of the spectators dimmed to a meaningless noise as I roared and flogged my horses into a full-blooded gallop. The cart of the chariot rested on the axle, so I was shaken up and down like a pea on a drum as we flew around the first lap.

I made the unforgivable error of focusing all my attention on my horses, and paid for it as the Green to my right suddenly swerved his chariot into mine and lashed his whip at my face. The first I knew of it was the shriek of metal as our wheels ground together, and the burning sting of my cheek being carved open. I screamed in agony, but somehow kept control of the reins and jerked them hard to the left, swinging my chariot directly into the path of another Green surging up behind me.

Felix told me later that many in the crowd took this as deliberate strategy on my part, and split the skies with their approval. I paled at his account, which he recited with bloodthirsty relish.

“The Green panicked,” he said, “and hauled clumsily on his reins. The front pair of his horses stumbled, and the others crashed into them. You should have seen the chaos! They went down in a tangle of bodies, and the chariot flipped over. The driver was spilled onto the track. He failed to roll aside in time from a Blue that deliberately drove over him. Oh, it was glorious!”

The galloping hoofs and spinning wheels churned the luckless Green into mush. I was spared the sight of his messy demise, but heard the roars of triumph and despair that went up from the watching factions. I closed my ears to them and focused on catching up with the Green who had hit me with his whip. He was just a few feet ahead, flogging his horses for all they worth and exchanging insults with two Blues either side of him.

I waited until the Blues had raced clear – despite his best efforts, the Green’s horses were labouring – and then plied my whip until our chariots were roughly parallel. He glanced to his left, and his eyes widened as he recognised me.

A great cheer went up as we tore past the marker for the third lap. I urged my chariot ahead until I was within striking distance of the nearest of the Green’s horses. I struck out at the beast’s eye, as Leo had taught me, but missed and scored a deep graze down her neck. She instinctively swerved to her right, slamming into the horse next to her. The team panicked and plunged straight towards a gigantic obelisk of pink granite, so large the Emperor Theodosius had transported it from Egypt in three pieces and rebuilt inside the Hippodrome.

The base of the obelisk was carved with a relief showing Theodosius giving a laurel wreath to a victorious charioteer. That was the nearest the Green would come to winning any honours. His chariot smashed into the pedestal and crumpled like parchment. The axle parted, sending the wheels spinning away in separate directions, but the Green failed to draw his knife in time and cut away the reins wrapped round his waist.

He was dragged along the ground by his horses as they galloped away in mindless terror, until they slowed to a trot and a band of attendants were able to rush onto the track and cut him loose. By then he was cut to ribbons, though still alive, and had to be carried away on a stretcher. He survived, but his body was never whole again. Weeks later I saw him begging for his bread beneath the arch of the Golden Gate.

The remaining Greens were hot for revenge, and their two best and most experienced charioteers pursued me like a couple of hounds after a hare. They were flamboyant, those two, and much loved by the crowd. One had grown long curly hair that flowed to his waist, and decorated the manes of his horses with green ribbons and garlands. The other sported a luxuriant Persian-style beard and whiskers.

The Greens in the stands bellowed in rage and bloodlust as their chariots closed in on mine. We were on the eighth lap now, and I got no help from my fellow Blues: three were out of the race, one with a lamed horse and two with broken axles, and the remainder were too frightened of the veteran Greens to interfere.

My chariot occupied the middle of the track. The Greens were fast coming up beside me, one either side. They doubtless intended to make a show of my demise before their adoring supporters, and flog me to a bloody pulp before forcing my chariot into the spine. I could do little to avoid this fate except urge my tiring horses in a futile bid to outrun them. If that failed, all that remained was to steer my chariot into one of theirs and hope to survive a deliberate collision.

Fate chose this moment to guide the hand of one in the crowd. This person, along with hundreds of others, was equipped with a bag of lead amulets studded with nails, which they liked to hurl at the chariots of the opposing faction. The amulets were inscribed with curses and obscenities, and heavy enough to crack a man’s skull.

The Greens on the poor benches had already hurled a fair number of these in my direction, along with rotten vegetables and other bits of rubbish. So far their aim had been poor. One hurled his amulet now, just as the Green with the Persian whiskers was grinning and drawing back his whip-arm.

The missile crunched into the side of my flimsy helmet, piercing the leather and scraping hard against my skull. I was knocked off my feet, flopped over the side of my chariot and hung there. Stars wheeled before my eyes as the track hurtled past, just inches below my face. Hot, sticky blood flowed down the side of my cheek and left a red trail in the dust.

My chariot tilted sharply under the sudden shift in weight and for a few terrifying moments wobbled along on one wheel. My horses didn’t slow their pace, or else the cart would have overturned and crushed me under it.