Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [109]
‘I am sure that the madness will pass,’ said Dorcas. ‘But in the meantime, we must use whatever means are available to us to find our own paths in life.’
And, with it, a chance to walk and admire the distance we can put between us and the past,’ Felicia added.
‘So, feel up to explaining how you found us in the nick of time?’ Barbara asked.
‘I was told Vicki was alive earlier today,’ Ian noted, putting down his sword. ‘l spent hours trying to find her in the Villa.
When I couldn’t, I figured she might have tried to get back to this place, so I got the location from one of the soldiers who abducted her and, well, the rest you know. Finding you was a bit of a bonus, though!’
Iola was delighted to see Vicki again. ‘I thought they would have killed you,’ she told her friend.
‘No,’ Vicki replied, ‘though I think they had something even more horrible in mind for me. Marriage.’
‘Oh, that’s not so bad,’ Iola told her, confidentially. ‘In fact, I think that Mother and Father have got someone in mind for me for next year when I shall be of age to wed.’
‘Don’t you find that at all outrageous?’ Vicki asked.
‘No! replied the girl. ‘It is our way.’
Vicki left it at that, but couldn’t resist asking Ian and Barbara what they should all do next.
‘Help is on the way,’ said Dorcas, enigmatically, and as she finished speaking, there was a hammering on the Georgiadis door.
‘Let me in,’ came a voice from outside.
‘Who is it?’ asked Georgiadis.
‘A friend,’ Dorcas told him, rushing to the door and removing the bar.
Tobias dived into the house and hugged Dorcas in his well-muscled arms. ‘You followed as you said that you would,’ she noted.
‘By the trail of your dead,’ replied the Egyptian, giving Ian an impressed glance.
‘He wouldn’t listen to reason,’ noted Ian, still cleaning his gladius. ‘But he got the point. Eventually.’
Dorcas turned and smiled at her assembled friends. ‘Now is the time to reveal to you that I have sent word via courier to our brother Christians in the hills. If you will allow us to shelter here this night, then tomorrow we shall be able to smuggle ourselves outside the city walls, whilst the rest of the town is still distracted with the full horrors of the bloody events of tonight.’
Georgiadis looked at his wife and then nodded. ‘Stay as long as you wish,’ he said, kindly. ‘Our home is your home.’
‘We shall leave at first light,’ Tobias noted and Ian nodded his agreement.
‘I should like to stay,’ Felicia told them. ‘I do not think I could face another step.’
‘You are welcome to remain here for as long as you wish,’
Evangeline told her.
Dorcas gave her friend a hug. ‘You would face grave danger by staying within the city,’ she noted.
‘No greater, surely, than you shall face in the hills, being hunted by Roman death-squads. I admire your bravery and resourcefulness, Dorcas,’ Felicia replied, ‘but that is not the life that I wish to lead.’
‘And what of us?’ Barbara said. ‘Without the Doctor, what are we to do?’
‘Ah,’ Ian said. ‘You know, I’ve been giving that a lot of thought in the last couple of days. I can’t say for certain that I saw the Doctor die. Can any of you?’
Vicki and Barbara both shook their heads.
‘Whatever the truth,’ Ian continued, ‘our only option is to head for the TARDIS and hope that the Doctor is waiting there for us. Let’s get the hell out of this city.’
The Doctor had been foolish, he knew, to leave the relative safety of the Christians’ camp and come into the city on his own, but he still harboured hopes of finding Vicki alive. Yet now he found himself, instead, in the midst of his worst nightmare imaginable, once again in the market square where the horror of the last two weeks had begun, as, around him, the night air was filled with the screams of the dying.
And the blank staring eyes of the dead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A New Dawn Fades
What manner of man is this, that even the wind and, the