Valrik half-stood. ‘No one say a word,’ he called to his men around the circle. ‘Not one word! The lad brought it on himself.’ Even so, some of the Northmen were muttering darkly. Lilla found Einar’s face in the crowd. He gave her a shake of the head. But no one moved. It was over. And now all she wanted was to get away from this place, as far as she possibly could.

But now the girl was pulled forward to the same spot, where Jarpr’s blood was still soaking into the earth.

‘What are they doing?’

‘She gets the same penalty,’ said Bayan.

‘But he attacked her.’

Bayan grunted. ‘The way they see it, she’s guilty too. She shamed her father and her clan.’

The father was looking grim, maybe even with the glint of a tear in his eye, but he did nothing to intervene.

‘This is wrong,’ Lilla said, her voice rising. ‘So wrong!’

‘Stay calm.’ It was Valrik’s turn to check her arm. ‘It’s their law. Their judgement.’

‘Damn their accursed law!’ She was on her feet. ‘It’s this girl who has been wronged! She is innocent!’ The headman turned. ‘Please,’ she begged him, but his fat features showed nothing but dull indifference. And with a flick of his hand he signalled the ox-handlers to continue.

Lilla felt giddy, adrift on a sea of rage. She heard Valrik struggling to his feet behind her. She was beside the headman, reaching for him; his guards moved in, hard fingers dug into her flesh, twisting her arm. She screamed. There was a rasp of steel. Valrik was there. Metal flashed bright in the firelight, she heard a gasp and something warm splattered her face.

The next moment all Hel erupted.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

By the time they reached the towering black gates that marked the entrance into his new home, Erlan was in a state of complete bewilderment. Byzantium – the Great City, the City of Constantine, the Queen of Cities – was beyond belief. The scale, the intensity, the noise. Everything was stone – white blocks blinding in the sun, black polished pillars, tall blood-red columns. Giant houses that defied gravity, vast bulbous vaults of wood and stone, images splintered into ten thousand pieces, scattering the light that fell on them in silver and gold.

The market streets of Uppsala and Sigtuna were mere pimples on the landscape against the broad thoroughfares of paved stone, each lined with shaded colonnades under which craft-shops hid from the beating sun, selling everything from oils to tableware to spices bright with every colour of the rainbow. Copper-workers, tinkers, smiths, cloth merchants, wine merchants, silk merchants, carpenters, stonemasons, bakers, butchers, and on and on and on.