Leo drummed his fingers on the folds of purple silk covering his knees. This imperial garb made him feel ponderous and slow. He despised it. He was a soldier, accustomed to speed, to motion, to springing onto horseback at a moment’s notice when the alarum sounded. Under the weight of diadem and imperial vestments he felt like a lion chained.

But today the soldier in him must die. Today he needed to be an emperor. He waited, the scent of ambergris oil drifting pleasantly from its censer, content because he had Katāros holding Abdullah al-Battal in an antechamber. He’d told the eunuch to keep Maslama’s envoy waiting there until the frustration was boiling out of his face.

Everything was ready. The khan’s horde was even now marshalling in the west. The fire-ships waited behind the massive chain spanning the Horn – like a nest of deadly vipers, ready to be released with their darting poison. There was even good news from the east. The remnants of the Armeniac and Anatolikon armies had linked up and won a small victory, relieving the beleaguered city of Nicomedia.

To the south, Leo’s spies had sent word that Caliph Umar’s new fleet had already left Egypt and been spotted in the Aegean, approaching the Hellespont. It would not be long. He had to admire the young caliph’s courage. A more cowardly ruler would have cut his losses by now. A more prudent one, certainly. But the Arab generals thought they still had dice to play. Alas, they would soon discover that one of the dice, at least, was loaded against them.

He heard footsteps on marble. He straightened up, tightening his fingers around the lion-head grips on the arms of his throne. The time had come to pick a fight. . .

‘You seem tired from your ride, Abdal-Battal.’ Maslama’s envoy looked a shadow of the proud young warrior who had brought his master’s representations on the other side of winter. The lines of his face cut deeper, his once gleaming beard was now dull and unkempt.

‘It was the wait that was tiresome, Majesty.’

‘The demands of state, Lord Battal. You understand.’

‘My master’s patience has long run dry. But soon you will pay the price for the lies you have told.’

‘I thought it was I who summoned you here. Yet it seems to be you delivering me a message.’

‘Time has run out, Byzantine. Open your gates or the city will be razed. Every man slaughtered. Every woman and child enslaved. You have two days.’

‘I shall save you more waiting, since you find it so tiresome. Our gates will remain closed.’

Al-Battal stooped his head. ‘Then the fate of the city is sealed.’

Leo considered the young man before him. Doubtless accustomed to getting his way. Yet to have his bubble burst. ‘I heard you took a Christian abbess to wife from Amorium. Is it true?’