Byzantine Grit

I ~ Blood and Hooves 

Normally, I can do this shit with my eyes closed. In fact, I often do – it helps keep the dust from clouding up my vision. But there’s just too much at stake to go easy.

I grip the reins tight, steering the four trained horses across the notorious bend at the far end of the Constantinople Hippodrome. The stallions can be uncooperative motherfuckers, especially when they get nearer to the curve.  It’s hard enough to steer the chariot, without having to worry about the cocksucker in the next cart looking to ram me into the perimeter wall. Gotta keep that Serpent Column in my line of sight, if I wanna make it to the home stretch. 

I barely notice when the Phonenician upstart who’s riding for the Gold faction starts getting cocky; he wipes out clear onto the track, several meters in front of me.  It’s a small miracle that Precious Hearth – my outer horse on the left – just manages to avoid crushing his noggin like a soggy dolma.  Somehow, amid the clusterfuck, I manage to keep control, navigating the U-turn around the Obelisk of Theodosius.

I admit that I usually soak up the cheers, at this point. But today, I don’t hear squat. Oh, I know for a fact that the crowd is roaring like usual. I can vaguely make out the chants for my faction – Prasinoi, the Greens – rising above the din. I know they’re out there, whooping and hollering like a pack of savage beasts, all decked out in the team colors. But right now, my mind is way too gone to take in any of it.

No turning back. This is gonna be the moment that changes everything. 

As I steady the chariot for the final lap, memories from yesterday evening start to flood my brain.

II ~ Cold Hard Solidus

There I was, having dinner at the taverna, as usual, shooting the shit with the boys from the stables. I had just made a bet with that asshole Iohnnes that he couldn’t get the Persian hooker at the next bench to give him a preview of her services, gratis, within our eyeshot.  He was just about to stand up, when some jerk-off in clerk’s robes approaches me, looking for private time.

At first, I just laughed him off – told him the eunuch bath-house is several doors over, which got hearty cheers from the guys. But then he got serious, and whipped out an official-looking summons – Imperial seal and whatnot. 

So we took a walk into the alley, with the others standing guard. Long story short, he asks me to blow the race, on purpose. No need to fuck it up too bad, he said. Just make it seem like I was having an off-day. Then he hands me a drawstring pouch with the two shiniest bits of gold coinage I’ve seen in my life. A “goodwill measure”, he said, to ensure my cooperation. I swear these were newly-minted solidus, with Justinian marks. He guaranteed me three more, when the games are over, long as I go through with my end of the deal. And of course, he left me with a veiled threat – that his boss doesn’t take kindly to people who go back on their arrangements. I wasn’t stupid enough to point out that we never officially agreed on it.

I knew enough to realize that I wasn’t just dealing with some petty magistrate whose ambitions were larger than his beard. I figured this went up high as the Praetorian prefect level. For all I knew, it could’ve been John the fucking Cappadocian himself running the show. Whoever was calling the shots, he was offering the kind of money I could retire on.

III ~ Down and Out in Stravolos

So what happened at the race? I’ll leave it up to the royal archivists to sort that out.

Suffice it to say that I ditched Constantinople, the very next morning. Took a slow barge down the Bosphorus. Ain’t never looked back since. Just as well – the Nika Riots broke out not a month later. If I stuck around, I’d probably be a stiff by now.

Not that I haven’t been dealing with periodic attempts on my life. Heck, just yesterday, some prick tried lacing my pulses with hemlock, as if I were too drunk or stupid to notice. I may be getting up in the years, but I’ve still got my wits about me.

Agata, my wife, knows this, which is probably why she chooses to stay with me, even though my equipment isn’t quite what it used to be. These days, I run a tannery in a hamlet, down Strovolos way. For the most part, it’s pretty quiet. Every now and then, some douchebag from the capital will figure out who I am, and try giving me shit for it. But the locals have got my back. I’ve always found ways of guarding my secrets.  

I know this can’t go on forever. And I dread what’s gonna happen to Agata and the girls, once the proverbial shit gets real. But until then, I’ll be right here, with my whetstone, my skins, and my family, just another disloyal subject of the Byzantine Empire.