Seven Breaths

by Flavius Scorpus, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

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A Red took eleven breaths to come round. A Blue took ten. A White took twelve. Thallus, who drove the Greens' second team, took ten on a good day. The two new colours, the Purple and the Gold that the Emperor had made, took as long as they liked, because nobody in the Green stables believed they were trying.

Scorpus took seven.

Ianuarius had first counted it at the Megalesian Games in April. He stood on the sand at the foot of the spina with a full amphora against his shin, and he counted from the moment the Green team went past him out of the far turn to the moment it went past him again a lap later. Seven breaths. He counted it again at the Games of Apollo in July, and it was seven. He told nobody. Afer would have hit him for counting when he ought to be filling.

Now it was September and the Roman Games, the fourth day, and the heat stood on the arena like a lid. Two hundred thousand people sat in the stands above him, more or less, and the noise they made did not come from any one direction. It came up out of the sand.

He was twelve, or near it. He had been born in the Green stables on the Campus Martius to a woman who mended harness, and he had been a sparsor for two years. The work was simple to say. Afer had said it on the first morning, holding up a hand with two fingers missing.

"The wheel. The near wheel, at the hub, where the axle goes in. Not the horses' eyes. You throw water in a Green horse's eyes and you'll wish a Red had run you over."

He had two amphorae, the narrow-necked kind with the handles high up, the clay dark where his hands went. One was always full. Above him, on the top of the spina, a smaller boy called Lupus knelt by the long basin and filled the empty one when Ianuarius swung it up to him, and swung the full one down. The basin was green with weed at the bottom and had a bronze spout at one end running into it. If Lupus was slow, there was no water. Lupus was not slow, because Ianuarius had once held his head in the basin.

His station was six paces down from the turning-post, on the outside of the spina, where the teams came out of the far turn and straightened for the run back towards the gates. The turning-post was three tall cones on one long stone base, the base about waist high on a man and scarred along its edge by wheels. Six paces from it the sand was smooth. Four paces from it, the sand was also smooth.

At the Games of Apollo there had been a Red sparsor at four paces, a boy called Felix with a mole on his lip, whom Ianuarius had disliked on principle. In the fourth race a Red chariot had touched the base on the way in, and the near wheel had come off, and the end of the axle had gone along the sand without it like a ploughshare. Felix had been standing where the axle went. Ianuarius had seen it from six paces. Afterwards the arena slaves had come out with rakes between the races, as they did after every race, and combed the sand in long straight lines. By the start of the fifth race there was nothing at four paces but sand.

He looked at it now, the combed lines, while the trumpets went.

---

There were six teams in the first race of the afternoon, one of each colour. The Green had drawn the fourth gate. From where Ianuarius stood, at the far end, the starting gates were very small, twelve doors in a curved white front under the magistrate's box, and he could not see the magistrate at all. He saw the cloth. It was a white cloth and it fell, and the doors opened together with a sound that reached him late, after he had seen them open.

Then for a time there was nothing to do but wait. The teams came down the long straight on the other side of the spina, where he could see only the tops of the drivers' heads and the dust above them, and then they were in the far turn, and they were on him.

He saw Pegasus first, because Pegasus was always first. The inside trace horse was a grey with a black mane that the grooms kept roached short, and he went round the turn with his body leaning in towards the stone and his near forefoot reaching across under him. Then the yoke horses, Andraemo and Elates, both bay. Then Cotynus on the outside, working hardest, because the horse on the outside of a turn runs furthest. Behind them the chariot, which was no more than a floor and a front, and on the floor Scorpus, the reins wound round his body from his ribs to his hips and the knife in its sheath at his chest, leaning in with the horses.

Ianuarius threw. You did not throw with the arms. You swung the amphora by the high handles from down by your knees and let the water leave it all at once as the swing came up, so that it went out flat. It went out flat and hit the near wheel low, and the horses' legs, and the sand, and the chariot was gone.

He swung the empty one up to Lupus. Lupus swung the full one down.

One.

The White and the Blue came past together, close, and he did not throw at them. Then the Red, then the Purple and the Gold, a long way back. Above him on the spina a slave with a pole tipped the first of the bronze dolphins so that its nose pointed down. There were seven dolphins. When all seven pointed down the race was over.

Two.

He counted the breaths from the Green going past to the Green coming round, the way he had in April and July. Seven. In the second lap Scorpus had the rail, and the White was a length behind him on the outside. In the third lap it was two lengths. Ianuarius threw each time, and each time the water went where Afer had said: low on the wheel, low on the legs. Pegasus did not like it on his legs. He never had. On the third lap he threw his head when the water hit him, and Scorpus's left hand did something with the reins at his ribs, and the head came down.

Three. Four.

On the fourth lap there was a smell when the Green went past him. It was a dry smell, like a lamp wick when the oil is out, and it was gone with the chariot before he could be sure of it. He swung the empty one up. Lupus swung the full one down. Ianuarius looked at four paces.

Five.

The noise had changed. It was no longer coming out of the sand. It was coming down on him from the stands on the far side of the arena, and it was one word, and the word was the driver's name, two hundred thousand times, out of time with itself, so that it sounded like surf. The White was four lengths back. Scorpus did not need to take the turn closer than he was taking it. Ianuarius thought this clearly, in words, and then the sixth lap came round and Scorpus took it closer.

He heard it before he understood it. It was a single crack, like a stick across a knee, and it came from the base of the stone. The near hub had touched the stone. The chariot did not lift. Pegasus did not check. The whole team came out of the turn as if nothing had happened, and there was a line of grey smoke coming off the hub and trailing back behind the wheel, thin, turning over in the air.

Ianuarius threw late.

He knew it as the water left the amphora. It went out flat but it went out behind where it should have gone, and most of it hit the sand and some of it hit the back of the wheel rim, and a little of it reached the hub. There was a sound like a hot iron put into a trough. A puff of white went up and broke apart. Then the Green was down the straight towards the gates and the White was coming and he was holding an empty amphora in both hands and Lupus was shouting at him.

Six.

He swung it up. He got the full one. On the base of the turning-post, where the hub had touched it, there was a new black mark among the old ones, as long as his hand.

On the seventh lap he did not look at four paces. He looked at the hub. He threw early, on purpose, so that the wheel ran into the water instead of the water running after the wheel, and it hit the hub square, and the hiss was smaller this time, and Pegasus threw his head and was brought down again by whatever the left hand did.

The last dolphin tipped. The Green crossed the white line at the gates with the White four lengths back and the Blue behind the White, and the Red, and then the Purple and the Gold, who had not been trying.

Then the gold came down.

He had seen it before but always from the stables, never from out here on the sand. Scorpus went round once more, slowly, close under the stands on the far side, standing up on the chariot floor with the reins loose in one hand, and the bags came out of the stands over the barrier and fell on the track around the chariot. Small leather bags, mostly. Some purses on strings. Something that flashed and was a ring. The faction's men walked behind the chariot with a basket and picked them up off the sand as they fell, and the people in the front rows were throwing whatever they had on them. A woman in a green shawl took her shawl off and threw it.

Ianuarius stood at six paces and watched them do it, with the empty amphora in his hands, until Afer came across the sand from the gates and hit him on the back of the head.

"Water," said Afer. "Carceres. Now."

---

The gates looked different from behind. Behind the white front with its twelve doors there was a long, low, dark space with a beaten floor, smelling of horse and pitch and hot iron. The Green team had been brought in through the side and stood steaming in a row while two grooms unharnessed them. Ianuarius carried the water in a leather bucket, one bucket for two horses, and held it up for Pegasus first, because that was the order.

Pegasus put his nose in to the eyes and drank in long pulls that Ianuarius could feel through the handle. There was sand stuck in the wet hair of his forelegs where the water had hit him.

The chariot was tipped up on its back against the wall. A wheelwright was on his knees beside it with the near wheel already off, turning the hub in his hands and putting a thumb to the scorched place on it, and saying something about cedar and pitch to nobody.

Scorpus was sitting on an upturned basket by the wall, drinking from a cup. Somebody had unwound the reins from him and they lay on the floor in a heap. Without them he looked thinner than he did on the chariot. He had a cut on his forearm from something, not deep, and dust in the lines of his face so that it was a different colour from his neck. He was twenty-six. Everyone in the stables knew that, the way they knew the horses' ages, and everyone knew he had bought his freedom two years ago with his own prize money, and that he had a house on the Aventine with a garden in it, and that he still slept in the loft above the Green stable four nights out of seven. Afer said a free man who slept above a stable was a fool. Afer said it where Scorpus could hear, and Scorpus had never answered.

The faction's clerk was standing at the basket with the gold in it, counting. He had a wax tablet on his arm. He took the bags out one at a time and loosened the neck of each, and looked in, and wrote, and tied it again, and put it on the floor. When he had done the last one he said a sum of money, and then he said a different number, a large one, with four figures in it. He said it in a pleased voice, as if it were his.

Scorpus did not look round.

He was looking at Ianuarius, over the top of the cup.

"You're at the far turn," he said.

"Yes."

"How many?"

Ianuarius thought he meant the bags. Then he understood that he did not.

"Seven," he said. "Seven breaths."

"Every lap?"

"Yes."

"The sixth was six."

Ianuarius held the bucket. Pegasus had lifted his nose out of it and was blowing water through his lips on to Ianuarius's arm.

He had been looking at four paces on the sixth lap. He had not been counting.

"The hub was hot on the fourth," Scorpus said. "Not the sixth. The fourth. You can smell it. You threw on the legs on the fourth and the fifth, and the legs don't need it, he hates it on the legs, and on the sixth you threw behind the wheel. The seventh was right."

"Afer says the hub and the legs."

"Afer throws for Thallus. Thallus takes ten." He drank. "Where do you stand?"

"Six paces."

"At six I've straightened. I'm going faster at six. At four I'm still in the turn, and I'm slow, and the hub's had the whole turn to get hot. You get the whole wheel at four. You get the back of it at six."

He said this as if it were a fact about wheels. Ianuarius waited for him to say something about Felix, or about the Reds' axle at the Games of Apollo, or about how it was done in the other factions, and he did not. He put the cup down on the floor beside the reins.

"Four," he said. "And count."

Then the wheelwright called him over to look at the hub, and he got up and went, and squatted down beside the wheel with his forearms on his knees, and Ianuarius went on holding the bucket for Elates, and then Andraemo, and then Cotynus last.

---

The fourth race of the afternoon was a Green race again. Ianuarius went back out across the sand while the arena slaves were raking it, carrying a full amphora on his shoulder, and Lupus went up the steps to the basin with the empty one.

The rakes went past him in a row. Behind them the sand lay in clean lines, all one way, from the turning-post down the length of the spina. The new black mark on the stone base was at the height of his hip. He stood beside it and looked at it, and then he walked away from it down the spina, counting his steps.

At four he stopped, and put the amphora down on the combed sand, and set his foot against it.

At the far end of the arena the white cloth fell. He heard the doors go. He started to count.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem sextum Nōnās Octōbrēs (2 October 2026), ā Flāviō Scorpō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

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Flavius Scorpus, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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