she replied. 'That's why they do it out here.'

'Well, what about your mother?' Vicki hissed. 'I'm sure she doesn't approve.'

'She does not have to know,' Iola replied. 'Unless you were thinking of telling her?'

Vicki shrugged and turned her attention to what was taking place on the hillside. There were m.u.f.fled shouts from the Roman legionnaires as two men dressed in filthy rags and chained together were pushed towards two vertical stakes which stood erect and stark against the gathering gloom of the afternoon sky behind.

It appears as though it is going to rain,' Iola noted. 'I hope not, we shall get wet.'

Vicki gave her friend a horrified look. 'Do you realise what...?'

A scream from the knot of people on the hill silenced Vicki.

She turned to see one of the men being thrown to the ground and having something large and shiny hammered into his hands.

Oh my G.o.d,' she said, as the screaming continued.

'They're called cruciamentuni stauros,' Iola noted, matter-of-factly. 'Torture stakes.'

The man was dragged to one of the torture stakes and attached to it by ropes around his arms whilst, simultaneously, a nail was driven into his feet.

Meanwhile, other soldiers were beginning the execution process on his companion.

'I think I'm going to be sick,' Vicki told her friend, who was watching the horror on the hill with undisguised glee.

Vicki put her hands over her ears to block out the screaming. To block out everything everything that Byzantium had to offer. that Byzantium had to offer.

Chapter Eighteen.

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not Mark 10:14

'Cease that infernal wailing, you ignorant, flea-ridden peasants,' tribune Edius Flavia told the a.s.sembled crowd as the Christian heretic Malachi was hoisted upright to join Obediah on the stauros. stauros. Flavia pointed his riding crop towards the group and told the sergeant of the guards that he should 'watch this rabble closely. I smell trouble at the heart of them.' Flavia pointed his riding crop towards the group and told the sergeant of the guards that he should 'watch this rabble closely. I smell trouble at the heart of them.'

'Yes sir,' said the sergeant, clutching his gladius gladius threateningly in his hand. In his eyes, Flavia could see an obvious desire to use his sword if the opportunity presented itself. Or even if it didn't. threateningly in his hand. In his eyes, Flavia could see an obvious desire to use his sword if the opportunity presented itself. Or even if it didn't.

On the other side of the hill, Flavia spotted the two senior Pharisees who had requested an isolated spot from which to observe the crucifixion. They, at least, seemed satisfied. But now they were ready to leave.

Flavia rode across to them on his sea-grey horse:Going so soon, gentlemen?' he asked. 'We have yet hours of fine entertainment and revelry to endure before this thing that you requested is done.' So typical of the Jews, he thought angrily.

They get us to do their dirty work for them but they have not the stomach to see it through.

'We are merely here to observe that the judgment of the court of the law of Moses, as ratified by his most gracious excellence, the praefectus praefectus Thalius Maximus, has been carried out,' said t.i.tus with a rather watery smile. Thalius Maximus, has been carried out,' said t.i.tus with a rather watery smile.

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 gladius or a javelin. or a javelin.

'What crimes did these men commit, exactly?' he asked.

'They defiled defiled the word of the Lord,' Phasaei told him. the word of the Lord,' Phasaei told him.

'The Jewish equivalent,' t.i.tus explained, 'of calling the emperor of Rome a bloated, pox-riddled, worthless son of a wh.o.r.e' Again, he smiled. 'Not that any Jew would utter such d.a.m.nable 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.

Orders, sir?' asked the captain.

Flavia briefly considered sending in the soldiers behind the Zealots to ma.s.sacre both sides. Then he made his decision.

Our 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 pa.s.sed 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 one, my kitten,' he said.

Again Iola tried to say something but all that would emerge was a few isolated noises.

'What manner of talk is that?' the legionnaire asked both of them. 'Cat got your tongues?'

'Leave her alone, you big bully,' continued Vicki. 'Pick on someone your own size.'

The legionnaire was rendered momentarily speechless himself before grabbing Vicki by the arm again and pulling her closer to him. 'Your tongue will have you hanged, girl,' he said. As his hand clasped her back, Vicki shouted with pain and tried to get away from him. Instantly the legionnaire dropped her like a piece of hot coal. I have not touched you.

Yet,' he said.

'Nor shall you;Vicki replied, looking him directly in the eyes. 'I'd sooner die first'

Behind them, on the hill, the Zealots had routed the Christians, several of whom lay bleeding to death. The Romans, meanwhile, continued to hold a casual disinterest in the entire battle. The legionnaire cast a nervous glance towards the crucifixion. Vicki followed it and understood.

'Deserting your post for a quick rape?' she suggested.

'What will they give you for that? Public castration? Broken on a wheel? Hung, drawn and quartered?'

The soldier looked worried, but said nothing.

One decent scream from me,' Vicki noted, 'and I'll bet half a dozen of them come running. That's if the Zealots don't get to you first. And I'd hate to think what they'd do to you if there aren't any of your Roman mates around to save your life.'

She clutched her back, and winced with pain. 'See, the thing is, I got the beating of a lifetime this morning from my new mummy. One false move and I could be in the most terrible agony.'

'Why did she beat you?' the soldier asked, backing away.

'Why? Oh, obviously a criminal desperado who has nothing to lose. So, what do you say then, you and me behind the wall?'

The legionnaire took a final glance at Vicki. 'You and I shall have a date one day at the gallows pole, my kitten,' he said before breaking into a run, leaping over the dry-stone wall and sprinting up the hill.

'Men,' Vicki told an astonished Iola. 'Predictable in any age. Come on, we'd better get back to your mother before she decides I've corrupted you enough.'

He had faced the fifty-eight terrors of the universe with bravery and a philosophical shrug that suggested that beneath his exterior of befuddled compa.s.sion was one of nature's true fatalists.

The Doctor watched the sun setting over Byzantium and the sea beyond from yet another cave mouth overlooking the city. He could feel nothing but a numb indifference to everything.

The TARDIS was gone. Nothing else mattered.

Memories flooded back to the Doctor. In the sixty years since he had hurriedly abandoned his home and fled in terror into the universe, he had stared death in the face on numerous occasions. In France and Mexico. On Skaro and Mondas and Ca.s.suragi. After a while, the adventures tended to merge into a giant conglomeration of escape-capture-escape-capture-escape. How many metallic corridors had he run down, dragging startled and bemused companions with him? How many times had he blundered into history's minefield of brutality and aggression and, by sheer luck, blundered his way out again?

'I am an old fool,' he had told Barbara and, for once, he had been absolutely right.

Strangely, the memory that was staying with him as he watched the orange-tinged sky fade to black was of a tavern on Rigel during the early years of the Draconian Purges. The first movement of Satie's Trois Gymnopedies Trois Gymnopedies was being played by a green-skinned, three-armed creature on a keyboard-type instrument that the Doctor had not seen the like of before or since. It made a change from the usual scratchbeat Vivaldi or Venusian opera of the place. The Doctor was recovering from bruised ribs inflicted upon him by the Mountain Mauler of Montana. Susan was asking him a question, and... was being played by a green-skinned, three-armed creature on a keyboard-type instrument that the Doctor had not seen the like of before or since. It made a change from the usual scratchbeat Vivaldi or Venusian opera of the place. The Doctor was recovering from bruised ribs inflicted upon him by the Mountain Mauler of Montana. Susan was asking him a question, and...

He looked up to find James standing beside him holding a torch and a concerned expression. 'Now, good sir,' he asked.

'What are are you?' you?'

The Doctor couldn't help but be amused by the irony of the question.'"A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows,"'

he said, remembering that he had witnessed King Lear's King Lear's debut performance, fifteen hundred years in the future. debut performance, fifteen hundred years in the future.

Richard Burbage was a good actor, the Doctor reflected, but rubbish at portraying old men crushed by the delicious uncertainties of life. 'Oh, but I am tired, my friend,' the Doctor said, wistfully, looking into the half-distance at the lights of the town. 'And horrified at the thought of spending the rest of my days stuck in your Byzantium.'

James seemed unsure of how to reply. 'There are worse places to be, surely?'

I' m struggling to think of one just at this particular moment.'