The ship changed course, its bows swinging to the west. The order was given to cease rowing. The sails were lowered. There was a new smell on the air.

‘Stinks, doesn’t it?’ muttered Ildur.

‘What is it?’

Ildur chuckled. ‘The city. What else?’

He still couldn’t see much. Peering through the oar-hole, he glimpsed a huge pillar of stone and beyond it a mishmash of shapes – spikes, towers, arches, domes as big as giants’ skulls – each appeared and vanished from view in an instant. The noise also grew, crewmen shouting at each other, laughing and calling out to sailors on other ships and the smaller craft bustling around them.

‘Must be coming into harbour,’ replied Ildur.

Some of the crew were bantering in animated voices on the steer-board side of the ship. ‘What are they saying?’

Ildur listened a while. ‘They’re asking about the Arabs.’

‘Arabs?’ He didn’t know this word.

‘The enemy of the Byzantines. They say an army is on its way here. I heard the same rumours back in Krim.’

‘An army? Is it war then?’

‘Worse.’ Ildur gave a grim chuckle. ‘It’s the end of the world.’

There was a bang as another smaller craft came alongside the ship. ‘Get them on deck,’ shouted Ramedios, appearing above the hold. ‘We’ll lower them down in pairs, then ferry them over a dozen at a time.’

Two by two the slaves were unchained from the benches and dragged up on deck. This wasn’t how Erlan had imagined arriving at this almost mythical place, but still he couldn’t suppress the rising anticipation he felt. The chain slipped angrily through the iron hoops holding them to the bench and Erlan and his row-mate were jerked up and out of their festering pit. For a second, the brightness of the sun blinded him; the chain around his ankles caught on something, and he tripped and fell hard on his knees.

‘On your feet, cripple.’ Rough hands seized him and pulled him up again. As they did, his gaze was drawn beyond them, beyond the ship, out over the water and upwards. In that instant, everything and everyone around him vanished. He was transfixed. Stretching upwards towards a jagged skyline was a mountain of stone. He saw white walls striped with bands of red, huge houses of stone of three, four, even five storeys, vast temples of red and white with domes that bulged up into the sky. And everywhere people. Swarms of them on land and on water. Dozens atop the walls armed with shield and spear. Hundreds on the stone quayside, moving up and down the stairs leading to the choppy harbour water which stank of rotten fish and tar and human waste.

‘Welcome to the centre of the world, slave,’ Ramedios sneered, and shoved him towards the gangway.