‘Listen.’ Anna’s voice broke the moment. ‘Can you hear it?’ She turned back to the city. ‘They’re singing.’ Sure enough, a chorus of voices came floating down from the galleries of the Great Church on the hill behind them.

‘Sad that men are dying while something so beautiful is going on.’ It was Gerutha who had spoken, her voice wistful. The emperor turned and looked at her. ‘Forgive me,’ she added, her gaze dropping demurely. ‘It’s not my place to say so.’

‘Sometimes men must die to preserve what is beautiful,’ the emperor replied.

‘Majesty, look!’ One of the guards was pointing excitedly across the straits. ‘Around the point. See!’

Lilla strained her eyes but could see nothing at first. Then, after a few moments, she caught a wink of gold in the blue-black gloom, then another, and another – lights shining constantly now and fanning outwards.

‘What is it?’ Anna whispered.

Leo was gripping the stones, eyes wide with wonder. ‘That, my child, is the hand of God.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

‘There’s the signal,’ said Arbasdos, his voice calm. The beacon fire on the promontory blazed fiercely against the hungering dark. ‘Make ready.’

Shouts of command rippled down from the sterncastle to the oarsmen amidships. The trumpeters along the rail blasted their brass horns over Erlan’s head, making his ears ring.

‘Odin’s arse!’ said Einar, wiggling an irritable finger in his ear. ‘We’ll all be deaf as deadwood before the night’s out.’ The fanfare blared on through the ranks of the fleet behind them, each vessel waiting its turn to advance.

‘Release the chain,’ said the general. An archer touched his arrow-tip to the torch in Davit’s hand, then loosed his shaft in a flaming arc towards the promontory. In answer, there was a shriek of metal as the massive chain spilled over the harbour edge into the sea.

‘Sound the advance.’

More trumpeting. Erlan felt the stir of the wooden hulk beneath him. The oarsmen reached forward, oar-tips covered in the ink-black water. He felt his heart beat faster. Ahead of them were three ranks of ‘fire-runners’ – the smaller dromons. Thirty-six in all. Their sails were ashore: there was no wind tonight. Anyway, once they closed with the enemy, all would be settled by oar.

And by fire.

Arbasdos’s command ship was the Belisarius, a dromon of middling size, powered by fifty oars. Not as nimble as the fire-runners, but like them it was armed with a syphon mounted under the elevated foredeck in the bows. The bigger galleys, the chelandions – with their lantern sails and double bank of oars – would remain in harbour. Tonight, everything would depend on the fire-runners.

The vanguard of the fleet moved forward, oars dipping and feathering in time with the drums. The Belisarius squeezed on against its own inertia, slowly gaining momentum. ‘She ain’t no sea-wolf, that’s for sure,’ grunted Einar.