The Campus Martius had vanished. Usually patricians strolled there to see and be seen; young sparks raced their horses and plebs gathered to gawk at whatever famous face they could find, but now it had all disappeared into an ocean of slaughter. The rampant soldiers had come squeezing in through the Aurelian Gate, but Vitellius’s last troops led charge after charge against them, and Diana could see the tidemarks of the charges in the fallen bodies. Looters were already scurrying among the wounded, scrabbling for valuables, and more people stood in vestibules watching and making bets as they would at a race. A temple was ablaze, flames writhing up to the twilight sky, and the firelight cast mad leaping shadows across the broken writhing men. The legionaries howled and capered, hauling sacks of loot, waving wineskins, dragging their bloodied swords. Diana saw a man run up to a cluster of soldiers, pointing at a doorway and shrieking “Vitellian, Vitellian!” and the legionaries swaggered over to kick down the door. A heartbeat more and a woman began screaming inside. The pleb pocketed a few coins and ran chuckling to another group of soldiers, pointing to a different door.

“Straight through,” Diana said. “No other way.” She cracked her whip and the Anemoi leaped forward into the madness.

A legionary looked up, staggering with wine, but they’d already flashed past by the time he stretched out a hand. A wounded man screamed, and Diana heard the thump as his leg was trampled under the rim of the wheel. Two plebs darted for safety, a plumed officer held up a spear to halt the chariot, but they were just blurs. The Anemoi were running wild, ears pinned flat against their heads, mad with the smell of the blood under their hooves and the blood in their veins that told them to go faster, faster, and they yanked Diana half over the side of the chariot as she fought to hold them. A cluster of legionaries hailed her with shouts, drawing their short blades and pointing at the horses, but Diana slashed at them with her whip and saw one stagger with blood oozing in a sharp line from his snarling face before they all slid back into the whirling madness. A tremendous lunge past the fountain where a dozen wounded men were screaming and trying to reach the water, and the chariot was through. Somewhere ahead was the Aurelian Gate, beyond that was a road, and somewhere beyond that was a world that was still sane.