‘You don’t need a stone hall to race horses,’ said Gerutha.

‘Apparently you do in this city,’ replied Einar.

They had picked up the Greek in Constanta, a port further up the Black Sea coast. Or Einar had, when he’d knocked over the man’s wine pitcher in a tavern there and bought him another to make amends. He soon discovered this Demetrios had three useful qualities: he spoke a northern dialect which Einar could understand; he was a helmsman by trade; and he knew the way to Miklagard. Or Byzantium as he insisted they call the city.

‘Vy zánt io,’ muttered Lilla.

‘Excellent!’ Demetrios cried. ‘I’ll make a Byzantine of you yet.’

That felt a distance off. Lilla had made only a little progress learning the Greek tongue. For some days after awaking from her fever she had been too weak to do anything but rest and, at Gerutha’s insistence, eat. Eventually she started to feel stronger, and as soon as the Greek joined them, she was determined to make use of him.

Poor Gerutha struggled to make any headway with the new tongue, but to Lilla’s surprise, Einar took to it like a moorhen to water. No one, least of all himself, could fathom how. When she asked him his secret, he only shrugged and said he could hear the music of it, that was all.

Just as well: Lilla had decided to send Demetrios back with the ferry to oversee Fasolt until their return. It was her ship now. Her ship, her gold, her men – at least the few left of them. She had judged it best to leave them in the smaller port of Chalcedon to guard the ship and to stay out of trouble, and Demetrios could make himself useful staving off any nosy officials who turned up to pester them.

Meanwhile, she and Grusha and Einar would cross the straits to the city, and then. . . then they would find him. She wished it were that simple.

Gerutha glanced back at her from the bows. ‘Are you all right?’ Lilla was too nervous to do more than smile and nod in reply.

All the way south from Constanta they had heard rumours of war. And then they were rumours no longer but reports. The largest army ever assembled was marching north out of Syria, leaving in its wake devastation, vast tracts of land desolated and abandoned, left to be reclaimed by wild beasts. They called them Arabs, and other names. ‘Muslims’ – followers of a new god, so she had heard, or a new idea. It wasn’t clear to her. But in the imperial hinterlands their armies had swept all before them, and now they were only days away from closing an iron fist around the city.

‘Looks peaceful enough,’ observed Einar. ‘They said the caliph’s army was circling from the south but all I see that way is sea.’