Doctor Who_ Byzantium! Part 6

'Blessings be always upon you, good traveller,' said Nikos with a smile as wide as the Bosphorus estuary, flas.h.i.+ng two rows of gleaming white teeth. 'I wish you and your fellow companions good fortune and fair weather for your travels.

And may your G.o.ds go with you.'

'Thank you, good patron,' replied the Doctor. 'And may you always find the world in need of... bread. Or whatever.'

As he finished speaking, a group of ten rough-shaven and aggressive-looking men barged past the Doctor and Ian and strode towards the centre of the market-place, pus.h.i.+ng out of their path any hapless locals that had dared to get in their way. 'Trouble,' the stall owner noted nervously, picking up his money and leaving his bread without another word.

I knew it was too good to last,' the Doctor said regretfully.

'We should have left yesterday, I had a feeling in my bones.'

'Doctor,' Ian said. 'Don't be so paranoid. They're probably just out to do their weekly shopping. Come on, let's find Barbara and Vicki.'

They walked into the central square of the forum. In front of them was the ma.s.sive frontage of the synagogue whilst to the right were the more architecturally staggering Roman temple buildings, their Ionic columns and arches a wonder in an age where most other cultures were still building houses out of mud and straw.

'They certainly knew a bit about construction,' Ian said, as the Doctor and he reached the base of the sweeping granite steps leading up to the temple. 'Must have taken a thousand labourers to throw up this little beauty.'

'Mostly slaves,' the Doctor said; absent-mindedly. 'Coerced into building these triumphalist monuments. It's sickening.'

Ian craned his neck to look up to the temple's high, arched roof. 'I agree, but it's impressively sickening, wouldn't you say?'

At that moment, they spotted Barbara and Vicki emerging from a smaller building on their left across the crowded market square. Ian waved his hand and Vicki responded.

'There they are,' Ian could lip-read the girl telling Barbara.

And then all h.e.l.l broke loose.

The violence erupted, terrifyingly, without warning. One moment the square was packed with thronging, jostling crowds, the next a shout went up and fists were flying everywhere. Just like Sat.u.r.day night down the Old Kent Road, reflected Ian Chesterton. Men wrestled each other to the ground. Ian and the Doctor looked on aghast as, around them, knives were produced and a Roman soldier standing mere feet from them had his throat slit from ear to ear by a grinning man in Jewish garb.

The man shouted something unintelligible at the collapsed corpse and then spat at it, gleefully The meaning was clear enough. He turned with livid madness in his eyes and stared at Ian, the bloodied knife still clenched in his hand. 'The insurrection is come among us, brother,' he shouted. 'Kill, kill, kill.'

And then he Was gone, leaving the Doctor and Ian to stare, open-mouthed, at each other. 'Let's get...' began Ian, but before he could finish what he was saying, the pair were swept away in the tidal wave of humanity that came running down tile steps of the temple to flee whatever was taking place inside.

The Zealots, led by Basellas, had begun their indiscriminate attack on various Roman stalls. Chaos ensued, with people fleeing in panic. Basellas himself stood amid the carnage, laughing a dangerous and crazed laugh of triumph as, around him, his followers attacked anything that moved. A Roman legionnaire lay dead at his feet, his throat crushed by Basellas's vice-like grip. Now the crowd was moving towards side-streets and outlets from the square.

Anywhere, in fact, but where the action was.

The Doctor cautiously tried to follow Ian towards the terrified Vicki and Barbara on the far side of the market-place but, five steps into the crowd, he was knocked to the ground.

As Ian turned and tried to help him, he was attacked from behind by a Roman soldier who had dearly mistaken him for one of the Zealots. Ian was pulled back around and found himself fighting for his life against a big and powerful opponent.

He struck a blow under the man's heart and then another, lower down his abdomen, pus.h.i.+ng him backwards and trying to wrestle the man's sword from his hands. A head-b.u.t.t to the bridge of the soldier's nose, and Ian had the weapon. He thrust forward, twisted instinctively as he had with a bayonet during national service and withdrew as the man collapsed, dead, at his feet.

Ian looked, horrified, at the sword in his hand, momentarily distracted from the life-and-death struggles taking place around him There was an eerie silence in Chesterton's mind, and a small clearing in which he stood. At the heart of the battle, Ian Chesterton was utterly alone. Then, something kicked in within him and he held the sword high above his head and bellowed a vicious, terrifying scream that came from the pit of his stomach. Sunlight glinted on the sword and was reflected around the crowd. Other swords were raised.

It was a carnival of swords.

Chesterton looked to his left and to his right. The Doctor was gone. Barbara was gone. He briefly imagined that he saw Vicki, her pale, screaming face standing out from the crowd around her, haloed in the sunlight. Then she, too, was gone and Ian was truly alone.

And then, some blunt and hard implement hit him squarely at the base of the skull. Dazed, he saw the sword spill from his hands and he found himself toppling forward.

Slipping.

Falling He was drowning in a sea of bodies.

Blackness came upon him and he was swallowed by it, whole.

Vicki thought she saw Ian fall, but she couldn't be certain of anything. She was rooted to the spot, too terrified to run or to throw herself back against the stone walls behind her which, at least, offered some protection against the crush. She had seen Barbara swept away by a surge in the crowd that had missed Vicki herself by mere inches. Now she cowered amid the shouting, chanting, excited hordes. She was pushed with them several feet forward and then thrown back as, somewhere above her head, someone was screaming that the Romans were coming. The shout was repeated and the entire crowd, as one, panicked.

Vicki had no option but to allow herself to be carried along by the crowd's momentum, her feet barely touching the ground and she was thrown first this way and then that.

'Kill them all,' shouted one mouth-frothing agitator. 'Cut off their heads and stick 'em up high on poles for all the world to see.'

Vicki tried to turn, to find a way from the madness, but her route was blocked in every direction. She couldn't see anything but bodies in front of her, bodies behind her, bodies to the left and right of her. She felt herself about to faint and her knees buckled.

Terror seized her by the throat. 'Help me someone, please, help me,' she cried out. 'I'm being suffocated. Help.'

For a second, Vicki believed that she saw Barbara trying to fight her way through the crowd towards her. The girl reached out her hand towards Barbara's and they almost touched across the heads of the surging crowd. But then she was gone - the last image that Vicki had of Barbara was of her friend falling to the ground, her face frozen in terror, amid a stampede.

Vicki began to lose consciousness, fully aware of how ridiculous it was that she was going to die two-and-a-half thousand years before she was even born. But just as she was about to collapse to the floor, she was grabbed by strong hands and hauled out of the crowd and into a twisting series of back alleys.

'Keep moving,' said a male voice, holding onto her hand and literally dragging her away from the dense centre of the crowd. 'If you want to live, keep moving.'

Chapter Eight.

Right Here, Right Now

And if a kingdom be divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand. that kingdom cannot stand.

Mark 3: 24

It did not take the arriving Roman soldiers long to put down the insurrection.

They were experienced and tough. Hard men, battle-scarred and terrifying to look at. They had fought across the length of the empire against conspiracies and revolutionaries of all shades, creeds and persuasions. In Britannia. In Gaul.

In Germania, Dalmatia, Macedonia, Judaea, Syria, Galatia and a.s.syria. Through all of the lands of the known world and into the barren wastes beyond. They were a superior race of men and they feared absolutely no one. For they fought with mayhem and violence in their hearts and the promise of the emperor's money uppermost in their minds. What place had true faith and the bleating of sheep against such power as this?

With crimson cloaks, dull-grey body armour and plumed helmets, their black-and-gold s.h.i.+elds glinting in the sun and their eagle standards held high, the legion charged into the square and panic rippled across the face of the crowd in a visible wave. They came rus.h.i.+ng in a fearsome, shouting, terrifying volley of s.h.i.+elds and swords, javelins and nets, separating the crowd with a pincer movement that sliced straight through the heart of the packed market-place.

Everyone was pushed back until those at the edges of the crowd were forced into the narrow pa.s.sages that surrounded the square. And, once a few had begun to dissipate, like a cork from a wine bottle, this freed the route for others to follow.

The air was filled with dust, whipped up by thousands of scampering feet.

Plus screams and cries for help. And for blood.

Some of the desperate crowd were crushed as they tried to flee the advancing Romans, but many found an exit eventually, tearing their way past those weaker and less mobile than themselves. They fled for their lives from the men with glinting swords, hot on their heels, their stinking breath on the necks of those they pursued.

After an hour of almost operatic violence, the market-place was littered with hundreds of broken bodies. From the vantage point of a turret overlooking the market-place, Basellas and some of his followers were jubilant at the sight.

'Look upon that,' Basellas noted with pride at a job well done. 'Look upon that, you Roman dogs, and despair.' He turned, jubilantly to his men. 'See you what has come to pa.s.s within this place?' he asked. 'We have spoken. And they have been forced to listen, and listen well.'

'Your good brother should have been here upon this day and witnessed with his own eyes the carnage that we have brought down upon their n.o.ble heads,' Ephraim shouted in a sarcastic voice above the noise from below them.

The moaning and wailing of the dying.

'For we have given the Romans a merry thing to think on, this day, have we not?'

Basellas said nothing. He merely watched the comings and goings beneath him, like a general observing movements on a battlefield.

Instead it was Ephraim who spoke for him. And for all of the Zealots watching the activities in the market-place. 'This is a great day for Byzantium,' he noted. 'A great day. The brutish and d.a.m.nable actions of these Roman swine will bring the freedom of our people closer. Byzantium shall be free.'

The door burst open and Simeon turned to find himself facing a trio of armed adversaries stepping from the shadows.

'What business have you men within my house?' he asked without raising his voice. Yewhe ignored him, instead reaching behind the sackcloth curtain that separated the main room from a bedchamber to the right. He dragged Rebecca, spitting and kicking, from her hiding place behind the curtain and forced her to drop to the floor the scythe that she held in her hand.

'There shall be no good sport for you this day, my pretty,'

Yewhe said, kicking her viciously in the stomach and throwing her down.

Simeon flung himself at Yewhe but a blow to the side of his head from Benjamin sent Simeon sprawling to the ground beside his wife.

Benjamin stood over Simeon's p.r.o.ne body and drew back his foot. It impacted with the side of Simeon's head which juddered under the power of the blow. Benjamin did it again and this time, there was no movement at all from Basellas's brother.

'Simeon,' screamed Rebecca. She scrambled towards her husband, but Yewhe's arm around her throat dragged her backwards.

'Silence, you piteous and mewling sow,' he spat. 'So endeth the lesson, and so perish all of those who oppose the will of our leader, thy brother,' Yewhe continued as he withdrew a knife from his belt and slit the woman's throat in one casual movement before letting her slide from her knees to the floor. He turned to Benjamin and the third man, Dimodis, who were about to ransack the house. Yewhe grabbed the ear of his young fellow freedom-fighter and twisted it, causing Benjamin to cry out in pain and, like Rebecca, drop to his knees.

'What do you think we are, Benjamin?' asked Yewhe angrily as Dimodis looked on, terrified. 'Are we thieves? Do we covet what is within our neighbour's house?'

'No,' screamed Benjamin as the pressure on his skin tightened. 'Stop it!'

Yewhe put his blood-soaked and razor-sharp knife to Benjamin's throat. 'Know you the substance of the ten commandments handed down to Moses from G.o.d?' asked Yehwe.

Benjamin didn't reply quickly enough and Yewhe moved the knife away and struck him, viciously, across the face with the back of his hand. 'What say you, Benjamin?'

'Yes,' the boy replied, as the knife returned to its threatening position. 'Yes. I know them all. For strong is my devotion to them.'

Yewhe released his tight grip. 'Tell them to me...'

Benjamin stared at him, open-mouthed. Another blow to the face brought a swift response. 'Take not the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vein. Honour thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not...'

'Yes,' said Yewhe, quickly. 'Thou shalt not...' 'Thou shalt not...' He stopped and bid Benjamin rise up. Yewhe pointed to the two dead bodies on the floor next to each other. 'They did not observe the word of the Lord,' he said. 'And behold what sorry and infamous fate befell these wretched sinners.' He stopped and bid Benjamin rise up. Yewhe pointed to the two dead bodies on the floor next to each other. 'They did not observe the word of the Lord,' he said. 'And behold what sorry and infamous fate befell these wretched sinners.'

Benjamin looked, firstly, at the bodies of Simeon and Rebecca, and then at Dimodis. And finally at Yewhe, who had the madness of killing within his eyes.

'We do the Lord's work,' Benjamin said, flatly. 'And nothing else.'

'Good,' said Yehwe, heading for the door. 'Let us return from whence we came and tell Matthew the good news of that which has been done here in his name.'

Meanwhile, within the market-place itself in the aftermath of the riot, Gaius Calaphilus and his tribunes, including Marcus Lanilla and Fabius Actium, and various ranking centurions, were surveying the carnage about them.

There was a furious, if mute, atmosphere about the Roman party as they stared at the bodies of their soldiers amongst the trampled remains of dead townspeople.