Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [107]
There were a series of pathetic cries for mercy from the gathered men. Calaphilus turned to the captain and gave his order.
‘Have your men make plain the displeasure of the empire,’
he said. ‘Get thee in amongst them like crazed dogs and leave not one man standing to spread his odious poison in my sight.’
Then he turned his horse away and headed towards more important matters as the first blow was struck against the traitors.
Zealots, too, were being rounded up and slaughtered.
It was as if the city had finally decided, en masse, just exactly whose side it was on.
Barbara dodged through the streets, keeping to the shadows. She saw terrible things as she crept from doorway to doorway towards the barracks where, she had been assured, Vicki was known to be.
She passed the summary execution of a Jew, a Zealot presumably, caught at the rim of the Jewish quarter by a group of angry, shouting legionnaires. He tried to sprint for his life but was skewered on the end of a gladius, then dropped to the ground and was hacked to death in an obscene orgy of violence.
Putting a hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming or being sick, or both, Barbara raced across the now-deserted market square, barely paying any heed whatsoever to the dozens of blood-soaked bodies lying strewn around the forum. She turned left at the temple walls, remembering how she had stumbled in there, afraid for her life, what seemed like a decade ago, but which had actually been just sixteen days.
She circumnavigated the walls of the compound and arrived at the barracks gates to find two lone sentries barring her way. She shrank back into the shadows, waiting for them to make the next move just as, behind them, she saw the movement of three figures, dull and indistinct against the torch light of the barracks frontage.
After a moment, the sentries moved out of sight, leaving the way into the gates clear. But still Barbara waited, knowing that someone inside the barracks would be coming her way soon.
When they did, and it proved to be Vicki, running low to the ground in a zigzag pattern to minimise the chances of being seen, Barbara almost let out of yell of delight, but she caught her breath until Vicki and her companions were actually out of the gates. Then, she leapt from the shadows and called out Vicki’s name.
‘Crikey!’ said Vicki, angrily. ‘Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?’ Then she threw herself into Barbara’s arms for a joyous reunion, much to the obvious discomfort of the two young women with her.
‘Far be it from me to interrupt this... whatever it is,’ began Dorcas.
‘This is Barbara,’ whispered Vicki. ‘She’s a friend. I thought you were dead.’
‘And I, you,’ answered Barbara drawing Vicki and her friends into the shadows from where she had come. ‘I found the place where you stayed in the Greek quarter.’
‘Georgiadis, and Evangeline, and Iola?’ asked Vicki, quickly.
‘They’re all right,’ Barbara told her. ‘It might be an idea to try and get back to them, actually. At least that’s one friendly shelter in this city. Judging by the things I’ve seen, we could use one.’
‘It is the reckoning,’ Felicia told them with a look of horror.
‘We are all doomed. Doomed.’
For some reason, this made Vicki smile. ‘Not if I can help it.’ She said. ‘Come on, I know a short-cut to the Greek quarter. Then we can figure out what to do next.’
They crossed into the forum again, Vicki letting out a brief, but high-pitched scream as she saw the bodies of the executed traitors up close.
‘My God,’ she said, ‘who could have done this?’
‘Honourable men,’ noted Barbara sadly. ‘They are all honourable men, apparently.’
Dorcas looked quickly around her and then motioned for the terrified Felicia to keep up with them. ‘We have not far to travel,’ she said, reassuringly. ‘Once we can get a message to my people, we shall leave this town far behind us.’
Barbara gave her a suspicious look. ‘My people?’ she asked.
‘The Christians,’ replied Dorcas.
‘Oh,’ Barbara noted. ‘That’s all right then, I thought we might be about to meet some real religious maniacs.