Scortius knew he ought not to be so concerned with his own affairs at a time such as this. The clerics-whether Heladikian or Orthodox- would all castigate him for it. On some things the religious agreed.
He saw men weeping in the stands and on the track, others gesturing too broadly, speaking too loudly, fear in their eyes. He had seen that fear when the chariots were running, in other drivers" faces. He couldn't say he had ever felt it himself, except when the Bassanid armies had come raiding across the sands and, standing on their city ramparts, he had looked up and seen his father's eyes. They had surrendered that time, lost their city, their homes-only to regain them four years later in a treaty, following victories on the northern border. Conquests were traded back and forth all the time.
He understood that the Empire might be in danger now. Horses needed a firm hand, and so did an Empire. His problem was that, growing up where he had, he'd seen the eastern armies of Shirvan, King of Kings, too many times to feel remotely as anxious as those he watched now. Life was too rich, too new, too impossibly exciting for his spirits to be dragged downwards, even today.
He was nineteen, and a charioteer. In Sarantium.
Horses were his life, as he had dreamed once they might be. These affairs of the larger world… Scortius could let others sort them out. Someone would be named Emperor. Someone would sit in the kathisma-the Imperial Box-midway along the Hippodrome's western side one day soon-the god willing! — and drop the white handkerchief to signal the Procession, and the chariots would parade and then run. It didn't much matter to a charioteer, Scortius of Soriyya thought, who the man with the handkerchief was.