He shot down it like a fleeing spirit, then onwards, down staircases, along colonnades, through courtyards, slavishly following the instructions of his unexpected ally. Most of the household were lost in happy oblivion after the excesses of the night’s revelry. Now and then, a laugh echoed out of the corner of some deserted courtyard but the few watchmen still on duty had no more notion of the fugitive shadow than they would a ghost. At last he came to the stairs that led up to the walkway on the outer wall. Gaining the parapet, he limped to the edge, leaned over and looked down at the drop on the other side. Thirty feet at least. He had rope enough for perhaps fifteen.

Then he looked out over the rooftops. The setting moon’s light was glinting silver off the waters of the Horn. Freedom lay that way. He was about to tie off the rope and chance his luck when a whisper sounded in his ear. ‘Turn around.’

He spun around. There was no one there, though he would have sworn he had heard a voice. Instead what he saw transfixed him. A huge, monstrous shadow rising up over the city on the summit of the hill above him. It was bigger than the mightiest hall, taller than a mountain, the vast black dome soaring as high as Ymir’s skull. He froze, gawping like a man who’d lost his wits.

A shout from the courtyard below jolted him to his senses. ‘You up there! What’s your business?’ Erlan cursed; his outline atop the wall must have stood out clear as a beacon-fire against the greying sky. ‘Stay where you are!’ But Erlan was already securing a knot in the girdle and flinging the tail of it over the wall. He followed it over the edge just as a javelin looped over his head and clattered against the wall of a facing building. Erlan could already hear the outcry behind him, scuffled footsteps multiplying in the courtyard below as more watchmen arrived on the scene. ‘Thief!’ someone yelled. But he was already slipping down the rope so fast his fingers burned. The end came fast though there was another fifteen feet to the cobbled street below. Reaching the knot, he hesitated. There was a shout above him. He glanced up and was shocked to recognize the face of the second spatharios – whose friend he’d killed in front of Arbasdos.

He let go, losing his stomach for a dizzy second before he hit the ground hard. Fire shot up his right leg and exploded out of his knee. He yowled in frustration and pain. With a crippled ankle and a twisted knee, he wasn’t going to be winning any foot races.

‘Northman!’ the spatharios bellowed into the predawn gloom. ‘You can’t run!’