‘Impressive. Although not to everyone’s taste, it seems.’

‘Indeed. Her mother was a Jewess. Her father, God only knows,’ the steward chuckled.

‘I see Arbasdos takes a proprietorial interest in her.’

‘Mmm. I suppose he shall have to give her up. With all this.’ Silanos gave Katāros a knowing smile.

‘Yes. . . But will he?’

Not that it mattered much to Katāros. This alliance, these great men, these pampered patricians. Their voices were like echoes from beyond the grave. They were about to be cut away like rancid flesh from a diseased wound. The hurricane had risen in the deserts of the south. And he, for one, intended to be on the right side of history’s unforgiving blade. If that also meant avenging the wrongs done to him against the Queen of Cities. . . well, so much the better.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Erlan was lucky to be alive. His act of defiance had not gone down well with his new master. Arbasdos had railed like a fire-worm with a spear in his guts and, looking back, Erlan was surprised the general had not had him butchered right there while Georgios’s blood was still filling the paving cracks. In the heat of that moment, Erlan would have had few regrets if he had.

But Silanos’s calming counsel had prevailed. Erlan had been bought, the steward reminded his master, for a considerable sum of gold. If the Northman were now despatched to the afterlife, this sum would be a lamentably wasted cost. And that was something Arbasdos was loath to suffer even more than the demise of his favourite spatharios. Silanos’s second ground for sparing the Northman’s life was that, regrettable though the outcome had been, it did seem to prove the point which he himself had been trying to make. Namely, that the cripple could fight. No other spatharios had ever been able to best Georgios in the training circle, but this lame Northman had made of him – well – dog food.

All the same, too many of the general’s household had witnessed this upstart slave’s insubordination and Silanos had conceded that the godless barbarian should be taught a lesson. So it was agreed that he should be slung into the ‘hole’ and, according to the general’s wishes, he would remain there until he had learned that he was indeed a slave and would remain a slave, probably for the rest of his days.

So Erlan was led down into the cellars where he was lowered into a pitch-black hole which must once have served as a well but had long since fallen into disuse.

There, Erlan languished for four days, soaked in mud and slime and his own filth. All the while small creatures slithered around him and over him unseen in the ooze and the stink. He heard them though, and felt them, sitting alone in darkness as black as a raven’s wing, waiting. Enduring.