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fighting and the screams of those wounded or dying.
    With his men climbing their ladders and coming face-to-face with a poor defence it looked to Flavius as if they might overcome the walls without the aid of those of their comrades within. But Ennes had other ideas and right before his eyes the gates between the towers swung open and their general watched as his troops surged through.
    There was no attempt to control them once they were inside, indeed it would have been dangerous to try. Naples had defied the army of Justinian and it would pay the price in both blood and rapine. All Flavius could do was gather to him Solomon, Photius and a large and well-armed body of his comitatus to enter the city and seek out the leading citizens, either to cast them in chains or, if they were of the stripe of Stephanus, to keep them alive.
    A wealthy trading city and one that had not faced any serious threat for many decades, Naples was ripe for plunder and that was moving forward slowly like a murderous tide, the pace dictated by the rate of pillage. Through every open doorway Flavius could hear the screams of women and children, who would be spared and sold into slavery, as well as the cries for mercy of men who, once they gave up what valuables they possessed, fell silent as their lives were extinguished.
    The cobbles beneath his feet were already running with blood, trickling down the slope that led towards the central area and then to the harbour. Bloodlust was being fuelled by ample wine, which required that his bodyguards form a wall of shields before him as gore-spattered men, now becoming insensible through drink, staggered around prepared to kill friend as well as foe.
    If such creatures carried severed heads, their more astute comrades had sought out sacks to bear away that which they were busy looting, objects of gold and silver. Others had found money chests and were heading back out of the city to a place where they could be securely left, herding before them the women and children they would subsequently sell. All Flavius could do was let them pass as he struggled to move forward, for he had a more serious purpose.
    One time part of Magna Graecia, Naples had been thoroughly Romanised so Flavius knew to head for what had been the Forumand the Senate House, finding matters easing as he got ahead of his looting soldiery. The area surrounded by the old Roman buildings, as well as the spoke-like thoroughfares and one-time pagan temples now turned into churches, were packed with those who had found time to flee with some of their possessions, the sound of their mass prayers setting up a low hum.
    The notables who had defied Flavius had scurried to the Senate House in the hope that they would be defended by what remained of the Goth garrison who had moved out of the fortress to defend the walls and paid a high price in the process. Flavius found what amounted to a small body of men lined up before the oration platform making ready to sell their lives dearly. Before them lay several bloodied and battered bodies, one being that of Asclepiodotus.
    Flavius first ordered that the routes to this central precinct be blocked to keep out his own marauding soldiers, then moved forward to parley with the surviving Goths, a mere seventy men now facing hundreds. Stephanus emerged from between the columns of the building, moving through the line of armed men to close with the conqueror and to bow low.
    ‘It falls to me to surrender to you our city and to plead for mercy.’
    ‘Too late for that, Stephanus. I have the right to put every man, woman and child to the sword.’
    ‘Which I hope your Christian conscience will not allow.’
    Flavius looked at the body of Asclepiodotus and not just him; the man who had preached defiance was surrounded by what had to have been his supporters as well as the stones by which they had been so cruelly slain. Seeing the direction of the gaze, Stephanus acknowledged an obvious truth: that he and his