Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [59]
Edius Flavia did not like this man at all. Too cunning by half.
The other one, Phasaei, was more thuggish and easy to manipulate into compromise. He said little that wasn't a quotation from their holy texts. A man who speaks in riddles and verses, Flavia decided, presents no threat to those who favour more direct action at the point of a gladius or a javelin.
`What crimes did these men commit, exactly?' he asked.
`They defiled the word of the Lord,' Phasaei told him.
`The Jewish equivalent,' Titus explained, 'of calling the emperor of Rome a bloated, pox-riddled, worthless son of a whore' Again, he smiled. 'Not that any Jew would utter such damnable slander, of course.'
Flavia turned his horse away from the men without further comment and rode back towards the execution, leaving them to go on their way.
Back on the hill, the situation was in the process of turning ugly. The crowd was in a restless and feverish mood.
'Something bad is going to happen here this day,' Flavia told the captain who offered to help him down from his horse. 'No, I shall remain saddled in the event that we have need of urgent retreat.'
From out of the crowd, suddenly and surprisingly, a group of fifteen or so young men burst forward carrying a variety of homemade weapons. Aaron was leading them and he strode confidently towards Flavia, his group behind him, shouting angrily. Others in the crowd were joining them.
`This obscenity is wrong,' shouted Aaron. 'We demand that it be stopped in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.'
'Demand?' asked Flavia, nervously, as the staggered column of Roman legionnaires took an ominous pace towards the rebels.
`Request, if you wish to play with words. I shall not banter semantics with the likes of you, Roman. Get those men down now, or you shall be smitten by the vengeance of the Lord.'
For a moment Flavia was genuinely unsure of what to do next. There was no chance whatsoever that he would order the executions to stop, and there were enough Roman guards on the hill to put down this little insurrection eventually. But the numbers and their proximity to him, personally, worried him greatly.
Before he could say anything, however, from out of the crowd a young Jew sprang at Aaron, a knife in his hand.
Flavia recognised the boy as Yewhe, one of BaseIlas's men.
Suddenly there were Zealots everywhere, as Yewhe slid his knife easily and quickly between Aaron's ribs, screaming for the Christian to 'die like the pig that you are'.
From somewhere further down the hill, a young girl was screaming.
`Come, my hearts,' Yewhe continued, blood covering him from the fallen Christian. 'Let us have our sport upon these heretics.' The Zealots outnumbered the Christians two to one and began to pick off the terrified men as they scattered, broke ranks and fell back down the hill.
Òrders, sir?' asked the captain.
Flavia briefly considered sending in the soldiers behind the Zealots to massacre both sides. Then he made his decision.
Òur task is to see that this judgment is addressed and applied,' he said, watching the hand-to-hand fighting continue. 'No Roman blood need be spilled. If these dogs wish to wipe each other out, then so much the better. Let them have their rebellion, Captain, they hurt no one of any consequence'
As the raging fight continued, behind the wall at the base of the hill, Iola finally removed her hand from Vicki's mouth.
`Be quiet,' she whispered.
`But they're killing each other,' Vicki replied at a more sensible volume. 'It's... it's unbelievable.'
A shadow passed across the pair and they looked up to find a Roman legionnaire towering above them with a thin and cruel smirk on his face. Two hands reached down and grabbed their arms, hoisting them up.
`Shouldn't you two be somewhere else?' he asked.
Iola began to stammer a reply, but Vicki shook herself free of the man.
`We'd be perfectly delighted to be somewhere else,' she said, angrily. `So let us go and we will be.'
The soldier ran his hand down her cheek and cupped her chin between two enormous fingers. 'But you are a feisty