‘Get up, get up, you young lout!’ yelled Einar’s voice. ‘We ain’t done yet.’ Erlan felt a powerful hand grab the scruff of his tunic and haul him to his feet. He palmed the worst of the blood from his eyes and snatched his new long-knife from its sheath at his back. He looked up. To his horror, the axeman and his comrades were throwing down the splintered remains of the bars that locked the gate in place. The last of them had hardly touched the ground when the doors flung wide and a torrent of men burst through the gap like the breaking of a tidal wave.

Erlan had time only to seize Einar’s shoulder and dive out of the way, dragging the fat man with him. A dozen Arabs were through – then fifty, sixty, a hundred men. His head and shoulders smashed against the stone wall behind the gate, knocking the wind out of him. From the ground, he could see only the door and the racing figures, hear the yells of triumph, taste the sour nausea of disaster and defeat in his throat. Everything was a blur, everything shifting, everything moving. Everything except the door.

It was a mad hope. Mad and forlorn. His head was ringing. But all he could think was: close the gate.

There it was. Close the gate.

He stood, put his shoulder to it and pushed. Pushed against the ocean but the ocean gave not an inch. The weight of men was too heavy. Then, suddenly, there was another man beside him, heavyset, and swearing like a blacksmith in a language he knew well.

‘Heave,’ Erlan rasped through gritted teeth.

‘What d’you think I’m doing?’ snarled Einar, laying his considerable weight against the timber. Wild, wordless prayers shrieked in Erlan’s head. There was a sudden crash outside the gates like a thousand cymbals, a blast of heat through the door. Oil seeped hot and viscous around his boots. There was a strange, weightless lull in the flood, a silent instant which in the next heartbeat was answered with animal screaming. Erlan smelled burning flesh.

‘Now!’ yelled Einar and they shoved again with all the strength left in them. This time the great bulk of oak swung on its hinges until it was almost in place. And thanks to the Christ-God or the Virgin or to pure blind chance, there were defenders on the other door, too. Another Byzantine fell in beside them, then another, until they had the weight of half a dozen men behind them.

Through the wooden planks came Arabic war-cries and savage screaming and the hack of steel against oak, but the pendulum had swung to the defenders now. Spearheads struck like vipers between the closing doors, trying to lever it open. Einar fell back and heaved his axe at the gap, howling with fury, splintering spear-shafts like dry kindling. Any Arab close enough to get a hand through the gap soon regretted it until at last the great doors crashed back on their stone frame.