Broken Chariots

by J. G. Willem

  “Who did you follow here?” Belbus said.

  “The girl.”

  Belbus frowned. “Agnina?”

  The captain jerked his head at Ursa. “Her.”

  The bookie turned to his partner. Ursa was caught between bristling at being called a girl, and shame at having been the one who led them there.

  Belbus stared at her long and hard, the muscles in his jaw tightening. He stared at her until she looked away.

  “Oh, see, I was a little bit confused,” Belbus said, readdressing the captain. “Ursa here is a woman.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, that is a girl...” Belbus pointed to Agnina on the balcony. “And this is a woman.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Ursa. “If you can’t tell the difference between them, then maybe you should just take my partner and be done with it.”

  “I would,” the captain said. “But the man who hired us knows what his daughter looks like. Her age and so forth.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Ursa chimed in.

  The captain adjusted his grip on the dagger. “Are you going to let us take her, or does blood need to be shed?”

  “If those are the only two options, then I’m afraid we must shed blood. Agnina cannot be returned to her father until the race is over.”

  “Well, that kind of defeats the purpose of us coming here, doesn’t it?”

  “Does it?”

  “We can’t very well go back to the man who hired us...”

  “You can say Pistrus.”

  The captain blinked rapidly, growing annoyed. “We can’t very well go back to Pistrus and say you’ll return his daughter after the race. The whole reason we were hired is to get her back before the race.”

  “Well then...” Belbus said, drawing the knife at his belt. “We have a problem.”

  Bobarius and Taurinus and Ursa followed suit, drawing their knives in unison.

  The eyes of the mercenaries flitted about with the shing of sharp steel blades coming free of holsters. They braced themselves. Adjusted their footing.

  “I don’t particularly feel like dying today,” Belbus said. “How about you, Ursa? You feel like dying?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “How about you two?” he said to the giants.

  “Nope,” said Taurinus.

  “Not really,” said Bobarius.

  “Didn’t think so. How about you guys?” He was talking to the mercenaries now.

  “I certainly didn’t come here to die,” the captain said, lifting his chin a little. “We’re not getting paid enough to die.”

  “Okay, that’s good.” Belbus exhaled. “The very fact that you’re still listening to me leads me to believe you didn’t count on these two monsters being here.” He glanced at Bobarius and Taurinus. “With all due respect, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Bobarius and Taurinus in unison. No harm, no foul.

  Belbus turned back to the captain. “Or, at least, you didn’t think they’d be so... well, imposing.”

  The captain licked his lower lip. Said nothing. His eyes went to the two walls of muscle with eyes, then landed back on Belbus.

  “I’ll take your silence as affirmation. Good. Now we can talk. You want to leave here with the girl. We want you to leave without her. That might sound like a zero-sum situation.”

  “A what?” said the captain.

  “Yeah, a what?” said Ursa.

  “A zero-sum situation,” Belbus clarified. “Where one person - or in this case, faction - wins only by another person - or faction - losing. What I’m proposing is a non-zero-sum alternative. What’s commonly referred to as a ‘win-win’ scenario.”

  The captain narrowed one eye suspiciously. “Yeah, but I don’t see how...”

  Belbus raised his index finger. “Just listen. What I’m proposing is this: you take Agnina and return her to her father’s villa. We accompany you to the villa so that Pistrus knows we mean business. We got to her once, we can get to her again. After that, we go our separate ways. You fulfilled your obligation to Pistrus. You got his daughter back. We showed him we mean business. If he doesn’t throw the Equirria, he knows his daughter won’t be safe. No one needs to die... unless he doesn’t throw the race, which is beyond your purview anyway.”

  “Wait a second...” Ursa objected. “You can’t just...”

  Belbus wheeled around on her, suddenly furious, shouting, “Do you want to die right now?! Huh?! Tell me what other fucking options you see on the table!”

  Ursa went silent. Looked down.

  Belbus turned to the other two. “How about you guys? You have a problem with the way I’m handling this?”

  “No, boss,” said Bobarius.

  Taurinus was more reluctant. He bit his tongue, but he, too, was cowed by Belbus’ explosion.

  Finally, he shook his head. “No, boss.”

  “Good.” Belbus let out a sharp, frustrated sigh. Faced the captain. “Does this sound amenable to you?”

  The captain swallowed. He looked at the men behind him, then at the colossi, at the woman, and finally at the cripple. It wasn’t ideal, but if it meant getting out of here in one piece - with the girl - then it was better than the alternative.

  He nodded. “Alright. Get the girl. Let’s go.”

  Belbus nodded back. He stowed his dagger, directing looks at Taurinus, Bobarius and Ursa to do the same. They followed his lead.

  The mercenaries kept theirs drawn.

  Belbus stepped forward - slowly, hands up, maintaining eye contact with the captain - and inched toward the balcony.

  “Agnina?” he called through the door.

  The young girl was still munching away on those dates, oblivious to the danger inside. She turned toward the thin, latticed panel separating her from ten dagger-wielding individuals.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you come inside, please?”

  “But I’m not finished with my dates.”

  “Just come inside. We have to go somewhere. You can eat the dates on the way.”

  Agnina got up from her cushion with a huff.

  “Now, don’t be scared, okay?” Belbus told her. “There’s a couple of other guys in here. They’re going to take us to where your father is training for the big race.”

  “Oh-kay...” she said, uncertainty creeping into her voice.

  Belbus shot a look at the captain and his men, waving urgently with his hand for them to stow their daggers.

  The men didn’t move. He rolled his eyes.

  “She’s a little girl,” Belbus whispered. “You want her to come with you? She’s not going to go anywhere with a bunch of cut-rate cutthroats.”

  The captain clenched his jaw, weighing his options. After a moment, he tucked his dagger inside his cloak and glanced at the others to do the same. They did.

  Belbus gave an appreciative - if somewhat exasperated - nod, then opened the door.

  Agnina stepped tentatively inside, holding her half-finished bag of dates with both hands. Very timidly, she looked up at the six strangers and stepped behind Belbus’ leg.

  “Who are they?” she said.

  “They’re friends of your father’s.”

  “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “They work with the horses. They’re going to take us to where he’s training. Would you like that? To go see the horses at the circus?”

  “I thought we weren’t s’posed to see him before the race ‘cause he’s busy training.”

  Belbus smiled. “I think it’ll be okay if we just go and watch. What do you think?”

  Very wary of the newcomers, she nodded into Belbus’ leg.

  “Good. How are the dates?”

  “Good,” she said. “Some of them are a bit hard.”

  “That’s alright. We’ll leave them out in the sun when we get to the track, okay? Soften them up a bit.” Belbus looked to the lead mercenary. “Alright, shall I lead the way?”

  The captain st
epped aside, gesturing for the bookie and the girl to go past. Belbus nodded. He glanced at Ursa, Bobarius and Taurinus.

  “Alright. Easy now, everyone. Slowly. Calmly.”

  He began limping for the door, guiding Agnina at his side. He passed by the flock of mercenaries and didn’t realise he was holding his breath until he arrived at the door. His heart hammered inside his chest. His mouth felt as dry as the floor of the arena before a match.

  As he and Agnina ventured out onto the narrow walkway, Belbus turned to make sure the others were following and stumbled back into the pile of terracotta tiles he’d skirted earlier.

  “Shit!” he said, wheeling around to see them clattering over the edge and falling five stories to shatter on the courtyard below. He winced as the breaking tiles echoed up the central stairwell.

  Luckily, the courtyard was empty. It was filthy and overgrown with weeds and he hadn’t expected anyone to be down there - the space was very rarely occupied - but you never knew.

  Belbus turned back to the captain, who was next in line. The bookie smiled sheepishly.

  “Didn’t see them,” he said.

  The captain was unfazed. “Let’s keep it moving, huh?”

  “Of course.”

  Belbus led Agnina along the narrow walkway and down the stairs. Half of the mercenaries - including the captain - followed after them, then came Ursa, Bobarius and Taurinus, then the three other mercenaries at the back. Just to be sure.

  As he walked, Belbus looked around at the apartment buildings that walled the courtyard. The walkway wound down the centre in a staggered spiral, touching each separate tower as it went, alternately descending in a flight of stairs, then evening out into a corridor.

  They left behind their tower - the east tower - and started along the fourth floor of the south.

  The higher the levels rose, the more rickety they looked; like at any moment, a stiff breeze might send them crumbling in on the central well.

  The eleven of them walked in silence. Belbus kept his hand on Agnina’s back. He felt the tension knotting between her shoulders. Saw her hands curl tighter around the bag of dates.

  In that moment, he hated himself. More than he ever had, and prayed, ever would.

  They had just reached the fourth floor when Belbus noticed a group of drunkards making their way up the apartment complex from the second. Returning from the tavern, no doubt. Talking loudly and laughing, shoving one another. Angry, violent young men. Thugs.

  In about thirty seconds, there was going to be a serious space issue as the two parties travelling in opposite directions attempted to pass one another. Even at the best of times - a one-on-one scenario - it was a little close for comfort.

  Now, with eleven going one way and five coming the other way, the corridor was ripe for a traffic jam.

  The captain seemed to realise this at the same moment Belbus did.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” he muttered. “This fucking shit-hole...”

  The two parties reached the third floor at roughly the same time. Only now did the drunkards appear to notice the other group. They had the same reaction.

  “Fucking hell!” the thug out in front said, throwing up his hands. The others groaned and muttered things under their breath.

  “Go on,” the thug said to Belbus. “Make room.”

  Belbus swallowed and nodded, instantly accommodating. Not wanting to stir up any more trouble. “Sure.”

  He chose to go on the inside lane; that is, closest to the central well, separated from the three storey drop by a thin timber rail haphazardly nailed together.

  He forced a polite smile to the thugs as they began squishing past each other, though no such courtesy was returned to him.

  Belbus kept an arm around Agnina, not trusting that timber railing for a second should she get bumped.

  Behind him, the bookie heard a lot of grunting and frustrated sighs and muttered curses.

  When the groups were fully side by side, Belbus called out, “Alright, fellas.”

  Suddenly, the drunkards snapped into action. Using the wall as leverage, they bumped and shoved the mercenaries through the feeble barrier, over the edge...

  The mercenaries fell, all six of them.

  They fell, screaming, until the awful, wet, bone-crunching thud of flesh on stone...

  ...and then they kept screaming.

  Three storeys, after all, was not a long way to fall. Not a fatal drop by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Close your eyes, Agnina!” Belbus said to the frozen, pale-faced girl, who was looking at the void through which the men had fallen.

  He picked her up and cupped one hand tightly over her ear, pressing her head into his chest so that her other ear was muffled by his cloak.

  “Are they closed?” he said.

  “They’re closed,” she replied, in a voice so quiet and so small it made his previous self-loathing feel like a warm blanket.

  The people remaining on the walkway - Belbus, his crew, and the five ostensible drunkards, who now looked suspiciously sober - peered over the edge through the broken railing into the courtyard below.

  The mercenaries lay in screaming heaps among the splintered, fallen timber, some of them in puddles of their own blood, some with bones broken, one with a hip dislocated, another with the shinbone jutting up through the kneecap, a third with his spine snapped, the fourth with his skull caved in and his brains oozing out and him moaning incoherently, the fifth wheezing, wide-eyed, his ribcage collapsed inward, perforating his lungs with little bone spears, the last motionless where the shards of shattered tile were most heavily clustered, having become something of a human pincushion.

  None were mobile. None even close.

  “By Jove...” Ursa breathed.

  Belbus was already off, heading for the flight of stairs bridging the third and second floors at a clip.

  “You know what to do,” he called behind him to the drunkards.

  “You got it, boss,” their leader said.

  “Taurinus, pay ‘em!”

  Ursa rushed after Belbus, Bobarius after her. Taurinus produced a small bag of coins and tossed it to the drunkard - who was not drunk at all - then he followed the others down.

  The thug tossed the bag a few times in his palm, feeling the weight of it. He grinned, then turned to his boys, tucking the bag into his cloak and drawing a dagger of his own.

  “Come on, lads.”

  They all produced knives from various sheaths and holsters and followed him down.

  The people of this apartment complex were used to certain things. Screaming was among them. It was common. People fell all the time. People ran afoul of each other all the time. Screaming didn’t warrant opening your door and risking involvement. It was better to stay inside, wait it out.

  One door, however, did open.

  A man on the fourth floor stepped out to see what all the fuss was about. He saw the broken, wailing bodies and the thugs heading down with daggers drawn to finish the job.

  Their leader saw him from the lower level and pointed to him and screamed, “Get the fuck back inside!”

  The man did not argue. He got the fuck back inside and stayed there.

  By this point, Belbus and his crew had reached the bottom level. The bookie held the little girl tight and went to duck down a corridor for the street outside.

  Before he did, he caught sight of the captain; the one who had fallen on the terracotta shards. He was face down, but summoned the energy to lift his head from the pile of debris.

  He wasn’t looking at Belbus. He wasn’t in the world anymore. The world he inhabited more closely resembled Tartarus than the experience of mortal reckoning.

  His teeth were as smashed and as jagged as the tile underneath him; the tile embedded in his face. The tile which, in its breaking, had summoned the thugs upstairs. Of course, the captain had no way of knowing about the signal Belbus had given them. He had no way of knowing about the bookie’s contingency plan should any of his c
rew be followed back to the safe house.

  He had no way of knowing anything.

  Blood ran in rivulets from a dozen places down the ragged, punctured mask that used to be his face, dripping from his jawline and from the chunks of gouging tile and the bunched, taut skin around them.

  One eye socket was crammed full with a ceramic spike; answering without subtlety the age-old question that a square peg could indeed fit a round hole, if enough force was applied and the round hole was sufficiently pliable.

  The other eye bugged wide - pupil darting this way, then that - trying in vain to navigate its new, nightmarish landscape. The captain’s mouth yawned to the point of tearing at the corners, and a rasping gurgle echoed from somewhere far back in his throat; back behind the broken teeth. It was, Belbus realised, a failed attempt at screaming.

  The bookie turned, and with the girl blind and deaf in his arms, left the building.

  The others followed after him, each taking one last look at the men who came to kill them. Forcing themselves to remember that that was why the men had come. That those same men would shed no tear nor spare a second thought if their places were reversed.

  They didn’t see the thugs arrive in the courtyard. Didn’t see them spread out, blades gleaming. Didn’t see them take the mercenaries roughly by the hair and tilt back their heads and open up their throats.

  They didn’t hear the screams die into gurgles die into nothing.

  They didn’t see the thugs drag the bodies out of sight, leaving bloody smears on the unswept tiles of the courtyard. Weeds growing up through the cracks and broken tiles scattered there and blood.

  Lots of blood.

  Part V - The Spiky Thing With Flowers

  Tiberius was not in a good mood when they went to see him. It didn’t make their task impossible, only harder.

  The squat, curly-haired promoter had an office tucked into the flank of the Circus Maximus. A broad, shuttered window opened onto the racetrack about halfway between the turning posts. This meant he caught the horses at full gallop, at the point where they had achieved top speed but were not yet required to slow to make the turn safely.

  Ursa watched through gaps in the shutters as the charioteers ran their practise laps, getting in shape for the upcoming race.