Sacred Games

by Gary Corby

  “Ten drachmae says Sparta beats Athens,” Markos shouted to me over the noise. The racers were clumped so tight, it was impossible to see who was in the lead, but I could clearly see Iphicles in his chariot toward the back of the pack—he had drawn one of the center stalls and got off to a slow start. The chariot bearing the owl of Athens was on the outside but moving up well and shortly behind the rich red of Sparta. I knew nothing about chariot racing, but one thing I was sure of: I wouldn’t let this Spartan go one up on me at anything.

  “Done,” I said. “And five drachmae says Athens wins.” It was a foolish bet. In this race there was no certainty Athens would even finish, but my blood was up.

  “Only if you give me the same for a Spartan victory.”

  “Done.”

  “And done.”

  The cluster of chariots drove into the glare of the morning sun, approaching the turning post at the east end of the course. At this end, too, was the ancient stone altar called Taraxippus—the “horse-terror”—whose power caused even experienced beasts to panic.

  No driver was willing to let another have first turn at the post. They all drove straight for it, wielding the whips and cursing. Forty teams of four frantic horses each tried to fit into a space for one. Metal-rimmed wheels ground against each other producing sparks and a mass squeal that set every man’s teeth on edge. Drivers close to one another struck out with their whips, hoping to distract their opponents. Maddened, frothing horses ran shoulder to shoulder; even with the bits in their mouths they tried to bite the drivers in the chariots ahead. Every driver whipped his team.

  One driver in the middle of the pack was too aggressive, or misjudged the turn, or perhaps his team was spooked by the curse of Taraxippus. His left wheel caught the turning post and tore off. The wheel bounced high into the air and flew into the crowd at the far end, where it struck down several spectators. The chariot overturned to the right, spilling the driver, whose right arm was caught in the reins. The chariot twisted and broke its coupling and tumbled into the altar, where it smashed to pieces. The driver somersaulted in the air and hit the ground headfirst. His unconscious body was tossed to the side like a broken doll while his team continued to race inside the pack. Directly behind came Iphicles. He had no time to swerve. His horses trampled the fallen driver, and then his wheels drove over the body. If the driver hadn’t been dead when he hit the ground, he certainly was now. Iphicles’s chariot swerved from side to side over the uneven bump, and for a moment I thought he would tumble, too, but Iphicles pulled with one arm and then the other, using his main strength against the tension in the reins and the pressure of his feet on the platform to stabilize his vehicle. Everyone shot by as he swerved to the outside to regain control. Men cheered his skill.

  “Good driving,” Markos said, and I had to agree. He’d lost time, but Iphicles had done well to stay in the race. The moment the last driver had passed, a recovery team ran onto the course to drag away the corpse and manhandle the driverless horses to the side. Another group picked up as many pieces of shattered chariot as they could before the racers returned from the other end.

  The first turn forced the pack to string out. Corinth was in the lead; neck and neck behind them were Argos and Cyrene.

  As they approached the turn, the Corinth driver hauled hard on his left rein and threw his body to the inside. His chariot actually rose on its inner wheel, and for a moment the crowd gasped as we all thought he’d fall. But his outer beasts were pulled, and the chariot almost spun on the spot. When it righted with a bounce, the chariot had turned on a drachma and the driver whipped the team into a sprint down the straight.

  Men in the crowd beat one another in excitement and screamed.

  Cyrene was to the outside of Argos. As things stood he was certain to come out of the turn third, but the Cyrene took aim for the corner and whipped. He cut across the path of Argos, and the Argos driver had a choice: ram his opponent or brake. His nerve failed for an instant, and he hauled reins. It was a tight squeeze; the Cyrene got around first, but his momentum took him out wide and the slower Argosian made the tighter turn. When they straightened, Cyrene was ahead by a neck. Both drivers whipped their horses as if they didn’t care whether they lived or died—in the lust for victory, they likely didn’t.

  Athens had forced his way through the center of the pack. Cyrene pulled ahead to a clear second.

  Athens led the main pack and made the second turn without incident, but the chariot immediately behind flipped. The driver screamed as his flimsy vehicle slammed into the team coming up on the outside and sent them both into the outer wall, a tangled wreck of thrashing horses.

  Recovery teams ran out to retrieve what they could. I saw one driver still move as they carried him off. The other dangled limp between two men. Three men with swords appeared and finished the horses with broken legs. They sliced the harness so the survivors could be stood to walk off. The owners must have cried. A fortune in pedigree beasts had been reduced to dog meat. Indeed several dogs had already smelled the blood and hovered at the edge of the ring. An attendant chased them away.

  The other teams had to rein in or join the wreckage. They lost time edging about the inside.

  The dust rising from the hippodrome had enveloped the racers. Now the slight breeze carried it over the crowd, and men sneezed as they screamed. Tears ran down our cheeks. Markos beside me gasped and banged on his chest. I looked at him in alarm, but he shook his head.

  “Don’t mind me. This always happens when the air is thick. I’ll be better when it clears.”

  Corinth-Cyrene-Argos-Athens. Then a confused mêlée of teams, and Iphicles of Thebes bringing up the rear.

  But Iphicles had an advantage over every other team: there was no one to interfere with his drive; he accelerated into the race as if it were an exercise.

  Iphicles caught up with the main pack over the next six laps—there are twelve in all, plus the half lap to start. As he did so, Iphicles passed the rapidly growing tail of failed teams: teams with horses lamed in the scrimmage; chariots with damaged wheels, so easy to happen in the grind of the pack; teams that couldn’t maintain the punishing pace set by the leaders; and teams whose drivers had failed at this ultimate test, unable or afraid to compete against the best of the best. None of the failures would give up, but soon they would be lapped.

  Iphicles passed all these and by the next turn was at the back of the pack. Markos wheezed but watched in intense concentration.

  At the next turn Iphicles came out wide and whipped his team like a madman. He surged past all the main pack but the team from Chios, leading the group, which saw Iphicles pass and charged with him. Thebes and Chios were half a lap behind the leaders. The Athenian must have heard the renewed cheers of the crowd, because he looked behind him—something even I knew you should never do—to see the challenge coming fast upon him.

  Iphicles’s chariot seemed to stagger for a moment. Then suddenly his outer wheel came loose and ran alongside before it veered to the right and sped out of the hippodrome and into the crowd. A few spectators were bowled over.

  I gasped. So did everyone else.

  The disaster happened so slowly it was like watching a shipwreck rather than a chariot crash. Iphicles had automatically flung himself to the left, so his weight was over the remaining left wheel. I supposed he’d endured such an accident in training, because his response was immediate. He kept his balance long enough that some fools in the crowd thought he could stay that way and cheered him on. Inevitably the remaining wheel wobbled over a piece of wreckage that lay in the dirt, and Iphicles was flung off.

  He didn’t let go of the reins. Iphicles looked back and saw his danger. The Chian team was right behind him and behind the Chian, a small pack of chariots that couldn’t see him in the dust and wouldn’t stop even if they could. If Iphicles let go, they would run him over and serve out the same fate he himself had delivered to the first man to fall.

  The frightened horses dragged Iphic
les along the ground, tearing away his skin, but he was still conscious and held on to avoid being trampled. The pain must have been excruciating.

  The turning post at Taraxippus was coming up fast. If he didn’t do something, his horses would slow at the end, and Iphicles would be crushed, if the drag didn’t kill him first. All the Hellenes watched, almost silent despite the race, as Iphicles the charioteer fought for his life.

  My witness was about to die.

  “Come on!” I said to Markos. I jumped over the low wooden fence that served as barrier.

  “What are you doing?” Markos shouted at me.

  “That’s our witness out there. You want to lose him?” I ran for Iphicles.

  “Nicolaos, you idiot, wait!” Markos cursed, jumped the barrier and ran after me.

  Iphicles had fallen near the hippodrome’s entrance, but we were closer to the Taraxippus end. If I ran at an angle, I could catch them despite their speed. I picked a spot by eye and ran for it. The Chian had seen Iphicles’s disaster ahead of him, but that wasn’t going to stop him from driving straight for the turn. It was a question whether I could reach Iphicles before the Chian horses trampled him.

  Iphicles had finally lost it. The reins slipped from his hands, and his unconscious body lay there for the chariots behind to crush him.

  The four stampeding beasts of the Spartan team rushed past me. I ignored them.

  I reached the body. With one movement I scooped up Iphicles and tossed him onto the center line between the turning posts. He was safer there than on the track.

  His limp weight had made me lean into the throw, and as he left my arms, I fell face forward into the dust.

  Somewhere outside myself men screamed. Were they screaming at me? I shut it out. I knew that, somewhere to my left, the Chian chariot was fast approaching. I recalled the body of the driver that Iphicles had run over, how his body had flopped in the dirt like a rag doll. I pulled in my legs and hoped.

  I felt the rush of air as the Chian chariot passed me by.

  I laughed in triumph and at the relief of still being alive. Then I scrambled up.

  Right into the path of the back markers, the final three racers. They were three abreast, twelve horses in a row, headed straight for me.

  I can’t explain how I felt. Something rooted me to the spot, and I could only watch the drivers whip their horses as my end approached. They were too wide to avoid.

  I was about to die. I hoped Diotima would forgive me.

  Something hard and heavy hit me and threw me to the side. At that instant the final three chariots passed by. I could hear their drivers cursing. The screech of their wheels was in my ears and their dust in my mouth.

  I suddenly realized I was shaking.

  “What in Hades were you thinking, you idiot?” Markos screamed from on top of me; our faces were so close I could have kissed him. He had dived into me to save my life, and if he’d made a mistake, he would have gone to Hades with me.

  “I’m sorry, Markos, I was—”

  “No time for that now.”

  He was right. The front-runners were making their turn at the end. They’d soon be on top of us.

  We scrambled up, and I spat the gritty circuit dust from my mouth. We each took one of Iphicles’s arms and dragged him to the edge of the ring, where a recovery team hovered and cursed and abused us for interfering. We handed over our vital witness. They carried him away to the iatrion—the aid station—still swearing at Markos and me.

  A fat man who sweated profusely waddled over from the judges’ box, a mighty scowl upon his face. He snarled that the judges would see us when the race ended and ordered us to the room behind the official stand. We nodded our understanding.

  Markos and I helped each other along the way. We were both bruised and bleeding, but I hoped it had been worth it. I didn’t know if Iphicles would live or die, but for the moment at least our vital witness still breathed.

  “All we can do is pray to the Gods that he survives,” I said.

  “He doesn’t have to survive,” Markos replied. “All he has to do is live long enough for us to question him.”

  Which I thought was a trifle callous, if accurate.

  Behind the stand where the judges stood to watch the race was a low wooden building. We sat on the floor and nursed our cuts and bruises while the rest of the race was run. All we could do was listen to the roar of the crowd over the squeal of the chariot wheels and the cries of the horses.

  Trumpets announced the end of the race, after which everything quieted down for the presentation of the crown. I wondered which team wore the olive wreath of victory. Presently, Exelon the Chief Judge entered the room, followed by the other judges. None of them smiled.

  “What in Hades did you think you were doing?!” the Chief Judge shouted at us. Markos and I stood at attention before him. I was used to being shouted at by Pericles, but it made a nice change having Markos for company. The Chief Judge was louder than Pericles but not nearly so cutting.

  “Saving the life of a witness, sir,” I said. I quickly explained why we needed Iphicles alive.

  “You had no business to be on the hippodrome in the middle of a contest. Spectators are not permitted on the field, even to save a life.”

  Markos said, “If I may point out, sir, you did induct Nicolaos and me as Olympic contestants.”

  “Not in the chariot race, you idiot.”

  The Judge had a point.

  “Sir,” said Markos, “it was your express order that we must do everything possible to solve this crime. If we had stood by and watched while an important witness died—a witness Pindar the poet had told us had information—what would you have said to us then?”

  “The word of Pindar is like the word of the Gods,” said one of the other judges, rubbing his chin, a tall scrawny man. “It’s true, Exelon, such young men as these could hardly be expected to use sound judgment in such a situation.”

  “That’s why they were chosen,” Exelon said. “Because, contrary to current evidence, they’re supposed to be smart.”

  “The contest ground for the chariots is the hippodrome, is it not?” said Markos.

  “Certainly.”

  “And the contest ground for the athletics is the stadion.”

  “Of course. What’s your point?” said Exelon.

  “That the contest ground for Nicolaos and me is all of Olympia, sir,” said Markos. “There is no boundary.”

  The Chief Judge growled. “Let me make this clear. You took the oath, so you are beholden to us judges, and not to your own cities. That doesn’t give you the right to meddle in the Sacred Games. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” we said in unison.

  “Any questions?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Who won the race?”

  The Chief Judge glared at me. “The team from Cyrene. Athens was second. Sparta third.”

  I held out my hand.

  Without a word, Markos put a hand beneath his exomis and withdrew a money bag. He untied the leather thong and made a great show of counting out ten coins. Then he spat on the coins and slapped them into my palm.

  I grinned. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

  “I’ll win it back next time.” He grinned back.

  The judges stared at us as we both broke into hysterical laughter. It was the shock and relief of being alive.

  “Get out. Both of you get out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As we walked from the building, I said to Markos, “If you ever want a job in the law courts at Athens, let me know and I’ll introduce you around.”

  He laughed. “I’m happy in Sparta, thanks.”

  Men covered the hippodrome in the aftermath of the race. They congratulated one another or stood silent and glum, according to whether their teams had finished or lay among the carnage. My own father, Sophroniscus, was across the other side of the field. He stood among a cluster of men who waited to congratulate the owner of one of the teams.

>   Pieces of chariot and dead horses littered the arena. The cleanup crews had begun to pick up the mess. As soon as the wreckage was cleared, the next event could begin: the bareback horse races.

  “At least Iphicles is still alive. Speaking of which, we should go to him straightaway. He might tell us something.”

  “He won’t be conscious for hours, I should think,” said Markos. “Not if he’s lucky. I felt a few broken bones when we moved him.”

  “We have to check,” I insisted.

  Markos sighed. “Very well.”

  I had no idea where to find the iatrion. We asked. Someone eventually pointed us to a large tent erected between the stadion and the hippodrome. We could hear the screams as we approached. Markos and I shared a look. This was going to be unpleasant.

  “I hope that’s not Iphicles.”

  We pushed through the flap. The tent material smelled new. Inside was a row of camp beds, and on six of them lay chariot drivers. The man who screamed was closest to the entrance. His right arm pointed straight into the air, or, rather, what was left of it did. I could actually see the bone sticking out past the elbow. The flesh from that point was simply gone, to leave a ragged end.

  I swallowed to hold back the bile.

  Two men pressed him back onto the bed. Another man stood over a brazier that burned hot.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “Lost his grip and came off his chariot backward. The one behind ran over his arm.”

  I’d seen it happen. I’d had no idea the injury was as bad as this. Markos peered at the wounded arm curiously but showed no reaction. Perhaps these Spartans were as tough as everyone said.

  “Since you’re here, you can help,” said the man at the brazier.

  “We actually came for Iphicles,” Markos said.

  “I need you now. This man will die if we don’t act at once. Then you can see your precious Iphicles.”

  Markos nodded assent.

  “Are you a doctor?” I asked.

  “Heraclides of Kos, yes. How do you do?” he said mildly, as if we’d just met at a symposium and not over the mutilated body of a screaming man. “What we need to do,” he said as he pushed the bar about inside the fire, “is close the wound so the poison can’t get in. If we do it right, he might even live.” He looked over to the man who held a wineskin to the lips of the driver. “How’s he doing?”