‘What can I do?’ asked Leo.

‘Help restrain him.’

There was a foul smell – like burning flesh and something rotten. Lilla, too, was leaning on his waist which was bucking around in his fit. Her hand touched the leather belt at his waist. It was scorching hot. ‘The belt,’ she said, recoiling her hand, and then remembered. ‘That thing. It’s of something evil, too.’

Gerutha returned with the cross. Domnicus snatched it from her and pressed it onto Erlan’s chest. He screamed once more with the voice of a fiend and smoke started skirling off the belt. There was a sizzle of flesh like meat on a griddle. ‘Cut it off him!’ she cried. Einar drew his knife and jammed the blade under the belt, heedless of whether he cut his friend. The leather split in a second and immediately burst alight. Einar seized it like a poisonous snake and threw it across the floor where it continued to burn.

Domnicus was praying, invoking the name of his God over Erlan in a voice almost as strange as the demon’s, his words resounding with an unnatural authority. He commanded the demon to come out of him but the response was only a jabber of words. They sounded like dark curses in a language Lilla didn’t understand.

‘Do you know what he’s saying?’ she asked.

‘That’s Aramaic,’ replied Domnicus, drawing breath. ‘He is cursing God and the name of Christ. And me!’ He suddenly laughed. ‘You cannot win, devil! You cannot! You must obey Christ! He is the firstborn of creation, the Son of the Most High God. His death was your defeat! His blood overcomes all things. His cross stands between you and this man! The cross defeats you!’ These words were all too strange for Lilla. She was still bewildered that some other spirit could somehow be in the man she loved. ‘Come out of him, devil!’

‘I—will—not,’ croaked a voice in Norse from Erlan’s throat that sent a chill through Lilla’s blood. It was thick and dark and crackled like angry fire, like many voices speaking at once. The sound of it drew out a memory, one she had wished never again to come to the surface.

‘Azazel,’ she murmured.

‘Shut your whore mouth, you sadistic bitch!’ snarled the voice on her lover’s lips.

‘What did you say?’ Domnicus stole a glance at her.

‘It is his name. The Witch King’s name. . . Azazel.’