Broken Chariots Read online

  “It’s our fault,” she said, her sobs muffled by his cloak.

  “It’s not our fault. We had no way of knowing that’s how he’d react.”

  “He looked at us to help him.”

  Belbus realised she was talking about the boy now. He shrugged. “We were there.”

  “And we did nothing.”

  “There’s nothing we could have done.”

  “That’s not true. We could have intervened. Stopped him.”

  Belbus nodded. “True, we could have done that. Then we would have been promptly arrested for laying hands on a patrician - and a celebrity athlete at that - for doing what he was well within his legal rights to do. Tell me, with all your legal expertise, how do you think a judge would rule on a cripple and a woman - both mired in the seedy gambling trade - laying hands on one of his own?”

  Ursa frowned. “A judge?”

  “A patrician.”

  “Still, we could have...” She sighed. “He looked at us for help.”

  “He would have beseeched a lion if it wandered in.”

  Ursa scoffed. “A lion would have been more help.” She shook her head. “He was just a little boy.”

  “I know. He was also a slave.”

  Indignation flared in her eyes. “How can you be so...?”

  “So what?” Belbus said, with a harder edge than he intended. “So callous? So cruel? He was a little boy, yes, and he was also a slave. Those are facts. There is the way you want the world to be, Ursa, and there is the way the world is. I promise you’ll have a better time of it if you cease wishing for things to go a different way than they do. He could have dragged his horse into that pool and drowned it and we’d have no more right to intervene than we did with the child. The only difference is a horse would have been harder to kill.”

  Ursa went quiet. He could feel her biting back her hatred of the world. Swallowing the bitter pill of reality once more.

  “We’re the ones who kicked it off,” she said. “We started the whole thing. We’re responsible for...”

  “We’re responsible for us,” said Belbus. “You’re responsible for you, and I’m responsible for me. No one else. We made the decision to go in there, and we have to live with what happened. We have to live with everything that will happen going forward. Pray that’s the worst of it, Ursa. Pray that’s the worst of it.”

  She looked up at him with shining, fearful eyes.

  “I told you if you didn’t have the stomach for this, you shouldn’t have gone in. I’ll give you another chance now. Do you want out?”

  Ursa pulled away from him, sniffling. Her eyes were red. She was thinking about it. Thinking hard.

  Finally, she shook her head. “No. Because now I want to take him down on principle.”

  Belbus beamed. “That makes two of us, sister.”

  Ursa raised her punching hand and flexed it, sucking in a sharp breath through her teeth.

  “Sore, huh?”

  She laughed. “Yeah. Really sore.”

  He took her hand in his, examining it with his good eye. “You clocked him pretty good, I’ll give you that. Broke his nose.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  They stared at each other for a few moments in silence.

  “We’re going to get him,” Belbus told her.

  She nodded sincerely. “I know.”

  “We’re going to take him down.”

  “I know.”

  “When in Rome,” he said. “Do as the Romans do.”

  Then he put his arm around her and they walked back down into the city.

  Part II - Et tu, Leontius?

  The tavern was accessed by descending a flight of stairs into what could aptly be described as the bowels of the earth.

  Sunlight lanced through the dust that hung in the air, invisible in the dim glow of oil lamps that resumed once Belbus closed the door behind him.

  Ursa followed him down into the tavern, and the acrid smell of unventilated bodies rose to meet them. Men talking, laughing. Men playing dice. Men hunched over their wine cups at wooden tables, into which were carved names and phalluses and profanity. A few in the corner being entertained by women of the night.

  Ursa wondered if they were still called women of the night even when it was day in the world above. Down here, she supposed, it was always night.

  A ragged curtain hung over a doorway in the far right corner. Behind it, a hand-carved corridor led away to a more secret part of the establishment. It was down this tunnel that Ursa suspected the women were trying to lure their patrons. She imagined dim, stone-cut rooms off the corridor - perhaps with their own curtains, perhaps with locked doors - where the men would happily empty their pockets.

  A few drinkers looked up as they entered, then went about their business. The newcomers approached the bar, and Belbus raised three fingers to the landlady, then rested an elbow on the counter, surveying the tavern.

  Ursa sighed. “I don’t want...”

  She gave up halfway through.

  “Hair of the dog.” Belbus winked at her with his good eye. His other was hidden behind an eyepatch they’d managed to procure from a vendor en route. Between that and another opium tablet, he considered the problem temporarily solved.

  The landlady set three cups on the bar in a perfect line. One, two, three. She half-filled the cups from a pitcher of red wine, then topped them up with another pitcher; this one filled with water. Belbus watched her pour. She smiled at him. He at her. Ursa watched this little flirtation, and it took Belbus’ interest - however fleeting and circumstantial it might have been - to make her notice the landlady’s understated beauty. She was a little older than Belbus, but had those mature good looks Ursa knew her partner went in for. Not Ursa’s type, but she could see what Belbus saw.

  The bookie paid her, then she went back to cleaning the drinking vessels with a wet cloth. Ursa’s eyes lingered. Not much to write home about in the breast department, but that was one hell of an ass. She was sure Belbus had noticed.

  Her attention shifted to the three - not two - cups. “I take it he’s here?”

  Belbus lifted one of the cups and took a sip. “I can’t believe you don’t know what he looks like.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t pay that much attention to the games. I prefer the behind-the-scenes stuff.”

  “Well, if you want to be in this game, you’d better start paying attention to the games. Their games is our game.”

  “I think you mean, ‘Their games are our game.’”

  Belbus furrowed his brow. “What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘Their games is our game.’”

  “It is.”

  She rolled her eyes. Didn’t bother correcting him a second time. Old dogs and all that.

  “It’s a meta-game,” he said, lowering his voice to a furtive hush. “The game of games, that’s the game we’re in. People like him play the games, and other people watch people like him playing the games, which is also a version of playing the games. We play them. We play the people playing the games and the people watching people playing the games.”

  Ursa blinked several times like he had started speaking a Celtic dialect she wasn’t familiar with.

  “Which is also a version of playing the games?” It came out with the inflection of a question; she wasn’t sure if she meant it to.

  Belbus tipped his head and took a sip, like now she was getting it. “In a sense. The people who play us, that’s what they say.”

  Ursa’s eyes swelled, suddenly exhausted. “Okay, you’ve officially lost me.”

  Belbus jerked his head to the right-hand corner closest to the stairs, opposite the curtained doorway. She followed his line of sight.

  It was dark over there, but in the dark was a face. Several faces, actually, though only one turned to them. The other faces belonged to women kissing his neck and shoulders and chest. The man they were kissing seemed not to notice. He was staring at the newcomers.<
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  Specifically, he was staring at Belbus.

  Ursa turned back to her partner, who jerked his head for the shadowed man to join them. For a long moment, the shadowed man did nothing. Then he drained his cup. Then he stood.

  Even seated, it was obvious to Ursa that the man was tall. Now, rising to his full height, the man looked positively enormous. Easily over six feet from his sandals, maybe even six and a half, his chest barrelled outward and his arms were thickly-knotted with muscle. His simple worker’s tunic, belted at the waist, could barely contain him. Dark, wavy hair flowed over his broad shoulders and down his back like the mane of a lion. A lush beard grew to the hollow of his collarbone.

  Ursa’s eyes grew wide as he stepped forth from the darkness, leaving the women to fawn over another potential client. She realised she was staring and turned away.

  Belbus watched him the whole way over.

  The giant approached them and stood looming a full head-and-shoulders over Belbus, so wide across that the bookie couldn’t be seen from the other side of him.

  It was only now that the silence of the tavern became noticeable to Ursa.

  From the time since the giant stood to the present moment, every head in the tavern had turned to watch the encounter; praying, no doubt, for a fight.

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  Ursa’s was the only head turned away, facing the doorway into the kitchen behind the bar like there was something really interesting happening back there.

  In truth, all she saw was a barmaid kneading dough. The barmaid caught her looking. She was lean and long-lashed and her big doe eyes were darting side to side, not knowing what to do or why she was being watched. The barmaid returned to her dough. Kept kneading. Looked over one more time to confirm that, yes, the strange woman was still staring. After that, she kept her eyes on her work.

  Ursa cringed and looked away.

  She had to admit that she felt a little safer being on the other side of her partner - him standing as a buffer between her and the giant - but not much.

  Ursa could hear the giant breathing like a bull through his nostrils. She turned, daring another glance. The giant’s eyes were fixed on Belbus. They were hard, like the rest of him, but they were beautiful. Piercing and green. Above his left eye was a thin gap in the brow where maybe a blade had caught him. She looked away again. Took a deep draught of wine. Winced as she remembered she was hungover. Swallowed with a shudder.

  “I’d appreciate it if you took it outside,” the landlady said, fearful to even ask the favour of her godlike patron. “I don’t want any trouble in here, Leontius. Not after last time.”

  Without turning his head from Belbus, the giant said, “Wouldn’t dream of it, Lucia.”

  Leontius’ voice was deep and resonant. Commanding. His emerald eyes fell to the extra cup on the counter.

  “That mine?” he said to Belbus.

  “Only if you want it.”

  Leontius eyed the cup, but didn’t take it. “What’ll it cost me?”

  “It’s free.”

  “Nothing’s free.”

  Belbus smiled. “It’s not what it’ll cost you, my friend. It’s what you stand to gain from it.”

  “And what do I stand to gain?”

  “Immortality.”

  Leontius snuffed a laugh. “I wasn’t aware the fair lady Lucia had located the fountain of youth, but far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  He took the cup and lifted it to his lips. Drained it. Set it back down. Ran the back of his shield-sized hand across his mouth, wiping away the residual driblets in his beard.

  It was only now that Ursa noticed he was incredibly drunk. There was a glassiness and a vacancy in his eyes she had previously mistaken for anger. Her own trepidation making mountains out of molehills, perhaps.

  Belbus looked around. The patrons, realising they were not going to see the giant kill two people with his bare hands, turned back to their drinking and dice. A general hum of chatter slowly resumed.

  “How long have you been here, Leontius?”

  The giant squinted one eye and looked at the ceiling, as if the answer was chiselled there. “Well, tonight...”

  “It’s morning, Leontius.”

  “Oh, well... last night. And most of yesterday. And this morning, I guess. And then, last night, also...”

  “Have you eaten anything?”

  “Of course,” the giant said, dismissively.

  “What?”

  “Grapes.”

  Belbus pursed his lips. “Ah.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” Ursa said. “Where do you relieve yourself?”

  His eyes found her and Ursa turned to stone. Leontius, apparently, was a very handsome and very masculine Medusa.

  “I hold it,” he said, with a shrug.

  “For two days?”

  He nodded.

  Ursa arched an eyebrow. “While imbibing wine more or less continually?”

  Belbus cut her off. “He said he holds it.”

  “I don’t believe him.”

  Leontius chuckled, amused. “And where do you relieve yourself, miss?”

  “I use a latrine, like a normal person.”

  He frowned. “I am... abnormal?”

  She eyed him up and down. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “Good.” He nodded, seeming pleased with that. “To be normal is the cruellest fate of all.”

  Ursa frowned, not sure if that was meant to be an insult or just his genuine opinion.

  Belbus leaned closer to him and whispered, “Is there somewhere we can talk a little more privately, my friend?”

  Leontius looked right through him for a moment, then gave a shrug and turned. He grabbed the wine pitcher in one hand and the water pitcher in the other and headed for the corridor.

  Lucia, the landlady, went to object, but Belbus quickly forked over a couple of coins and winked at her. She nodded gratefully.

  Then he added a few more coins.

  “Could you bring some bread and olive oil, and some meats and cheeses if you have them? Something to soak up the vineyard’s worth of wine in the big guy?”

  Lucia’s eyes lit up at the amount she’d been given. “Right away, sir.”

  She went to head into the kitchen through a doorway behind the bar.

  “And Lucia...”

  The landlady turned, eyebrows raised, expectant.

  Belbus held his hands out wide. “A lot of it.”

  She closed one eye and raised a finger, as if to say, “Don’t you worry about a thing, generous stranger. I’ll sort him out.”

  Satisfied, Belbus took his own cup and the giant’s empty one, and followed after Leontius. Ursa went to follow empty-handed, but Belbus noticed. He turned fully. Stopped dead. Gestured with his eyebrows to her barely-touched wine. “Get your cup.”

  Ursa made a sulking face, like a girl about to throw a tantrum. “I don’t want to.”

  She didn’t think it was possible, but he raised his eyebrows even higher, face tight.

  “Get your cup,” he repeated. Then he was gone, brushing past the curtain and disappearing from sight.

  She huffed, and collected the cup, feeling her stomach churn.

  “Am I not allowed water?” she complained to no one. “Or milk?” Another wave of nausea hit. She paused momentarily to collect herself. “Ugh. No, not milk.”

  As she made her way to the corridor, Ursa saw a balding, overweight patron leering at her. He was slumped to the side, head lolling. Apparently, he’d been here all night too, and either thought she was a working girl, or didn’t want to pay for companionship.

  Ursa hissed at him like a cat, baring her teeth and everything. The man jumped back in surprise.

  She parted the curtain with her free hand and went down the corridor. As expected, it was lined on one side by rooms with curtained doorways. Some were occupied. Through gaps in the curtains and what she could parse from the sounds being made, Ursa
inferred all manner of positions and combinations of men and women. Some surprised her. Some intrigued her. None more so than the shoulder-span and the bull-breathing of the giant gladiator half-filling the tunnel up ahead.

  The corridor emptied into a back room that was more well-lit than the corridor itself; which wasn’t to say well-lit at all, just lit. Oil lamps tucked into hollows in the wall flickered dimly, guttering with their every exhalation.

  At the centre of the room was a single wooden table. Leontius set the pitchers on the table and sat down on the far side. He took up the entire bench with his elbows, so Belbus and Ursa sat side-by-side across from him, which they probably would have done even if the gladiator were a slighter man.

  Leontius refilled his own cup with surprising dexterity, given his state. He sipped diluted wine and surveyed them in the semi-dark. The oil lamp burning on the table cast his face in threatening shadows.

  “What are we doing here?” the gladiator said.

  “I want to talk to you about the Equirria.”

  Leontius scoffed a laugh. “You want me to make a bet?”

  “I want you to drive.”

  “You know I don’t drive anymore.”

  “We thought you might be interested in getting back in the saddle,” Ursa said, leaning forward.

  Leontius squinted. He glanced at Belbus, then back at Ursa. “The Equirria is a chariot race.”

  Ursa stared blankly to cover her mistake. Inside, she was screaming. “I know that. I meant... in the chariot, is what I meant.”

  Belbus shook his head. “We want you to race in the Equirria and beat Pistrus.”

  Now, Leontius laughed properly; a big, booming laugh that echoed in the room and down the sex tunnel and into the tavern and up the stairs and probably through the thick wooden door out into the street beyond.

  “No man can beat Pistrus. Not in the circus. I tell you what: why don’t you tell him to come down to the arena? Pick up a sword, strap on some armour. Dip his toe in my swimming pool.”