Erlan reached for another fire-pot. Orders flew around him. Their oars ground into the water, checking the run of the hull. He saw Arab faces horror-stricken, heard the wheeze of the syphon handle below, then the whoosh and roar of the fire. Something caught the tail of his eye. There was a weird rush of air and out of the darkness loomed the fierce eyes of a serpent and a massive bow-ram. A curse had barely formed on his lips when the world rolled on its head.

The deck reared up, flinging him against the strakes as the mass of bronze stove like a giant’s fist into Belisarius’s midships. There was a fearful ripping of wood, oars catapulted into the sky, a blizzard of arrows thudded on the deck.

Stunned, Erlan saw the sterncastle ranged above him, the whole ship slewing round with the impact of the ram – then the stern plummeted again in a deluge of sea-spray and shattered oars. There must have been a hole the size of a giant’s maw torn out of the hull because the sea started swallowing up the stern, craning the bows up into the sky.

He managed to sit up. Einar was in a heap just below him. There was Wrathling. He snatched for his hilt as war-cries screeched above and to his right and glancing upwards he saw Arab mariners already on their gunwale, throwing across planks and boarding ladders. Some leaped the gap early in their eagerness to inflict retribution on their tormentors at last.

‘On your feet, my friend.’ Davit’s voice. ‘We’ve got ourselves a proper fight.’

Erlan stood. Arbasdos was groggily drawing his sword. Einar picked himself up, hefting his axe and shield. The oarsmen of the Belisarius were scuttling out of the lower deck like roaches fleeing a flood. The lucky ones had blades and shields to give them some chance against the raining arrows. Above him a whining shriek. ‘Up there!’ someone screamed as a board crashed down onto the gunwale, missing Davit’s head by a whisker.

‘With you, lad,’ he heard Einar growl as bodies came rushing down from above.

Erlan smashed aside the first spear-point and slashed Wrathling’s edge through helm and skull. The Arab fell like lead. Arbasdos was cursing like the Devil to his right. Another Arab, garbed in black, leaped onto the deck. Erlan’s ears were full of the din of slaughter – no different from the gale of Skogul’s storm in the north. Death was death. Steel was steel. And the desperation to live and to kill the same across the world of men. There were flames too, and pricking at the back of his skull the fear that all could, in a heartbeat, vanish in a ball of fire.