Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [106]
Mark 16:15
Dorcas’s plan had a relatively straightforward first phase.
Flee the compound.
‘That’s it?’ asked Vicki, surprised. She had expected something more complicated with maps and diversionary tactics and suchlike.
‘We only have to get past the gatehouse,’ Felicia told her.
‘I have done it many times before.’
‘Greater dangers will present themselves once we are outside,’ Dorcas continued as the three girls reached the wall of the barracks, just across the parade ground from the exit.
‘Now what?’ whispered Vicki.
‘We wait until the coast is clear,’ said Felicia just as a huge battery of soldiers arrived, cutting off the only escape route available to them.
‘Today has been, as t’were, a momentous climax to events of recent times,’ general Gaius Calaphilus noted to the massed ranks of his legion.
‘We undertake this night, to put down the obscenity which blights our fair Byzantium. To erase, for all eternity, the putrid stench of rebellion within our own ranks. And make it known throughout the empire, from the isles of Britannia to the citadel of Rome itself, that this thing shall not stand.
There was a huge cheer from the assembled men, many of whom banged their shields loudly with their swords. Others raised their weapons in the air and shook them at the night sky.
‘But first,’ Calaphilus announced to his troops, ‘it is beholden on me to reward those whose bravery and loyalty in the face of threats and menaces has deserved recognition.
Step forward loyal centurion Crispianus Dolavia, whom we do now, and with great emotion, promote to the noble rank of tribune in the service of his most divine and awesome majesty, the Emperor Lucius Nero.’
Calaphilus pinned the tribune’s regalia to the lapel of Crispianus’s tunic and kissed his brother-in-arms on both cheeks. ‘May you always have good fortune and triumph in battle, and do unto your enemies great murder.’
There were other pieces of backslapping promotion to be handed out, too. Captain Drusus Felinistius replaced Crispianus Dolavia as centurion, whilst Marinus Topignius, to the men of the legion’s hastily expressed approval, was honoured with a captaincy. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the general had promoted wisely and with an eye on gaining the total support of his men. They would probably have followed him to the brink of death anyway, but with one of their own like Marinus now within the officer rank, it was a foregone conclusion.
This was, in fact, exactly what Calaphilus had in mind.
Earlier, he had told Ian Chesterton that he intended surrounding himself with loyal, if unspectacular, men.
‘Promoted men are grateful men,’ he had noted.
‘Our task, this night,’ Calaphilus told the men when the changes in rank were completed, ‘is to ruthlessly put down the rebellion that is upon us. No quarter should be asked, or given. Your orders are to find Fabius Actium, Marcus Lanilla, Honorius Annora and those others who attempt to usurp the power of Rome, and to end their treasons. Let us march upon the hour, and woe betide the villains who stand in our way.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Vicki, straining to hear.
‘I think they are hunting traitors,’ Dorcas whispered. ‘We had best wait until they have gone before we attempt to leave.’
So, they shrank back into the shadows, and waited.
A night of terror was erupting around Byzantium as the advanced ranks of the Roman soldiers and their praetorian colleagues took a merciless revenge on treasonous colleagues.
In the forum, a group of soldiers loyal to the dishonoured tribunes had seen their retreat from the city blocked in a swift movement by an ambitious young captain with an eye on a centurion’s post. Calaphilus had been sent for and arrived on horseback, with Dolavia at his side, to find twenty or so men cowering in the centre of the market square, surrounded by those troops loyal to the general and the praefectus.
‘You men,’ said Calaphilus, angrily. ‘Your lives are forfeit.
Die with honour, at the point of a sword, or shamed by the torments of crucifixion.’