Inside the wall, the street was clamouring with the rattle of handcarts and wagons, and packhorses and mules clopping along the pavings. There were myriad faces, skin of every shade: white, yellow, brown, even some black as jet-stone, though most were sun-bronzed like Lilla and her companions. As they shuffled onwards amongst the stream of people, the buildings rose over them like a canyon of stone, squeezing the sky into a slender belt of blue overhead. Lilla thought of her home in Uppsala where everything was wood. Here, everything was stone. Archways, columns, shops, street pavings, staircases that led who knew where, crowded porticos. It was too much to take in and she noticed only details. A baker pulling bread from an oven on a large wooden paddle, a boy knocking over a basket of yellow fruit, a roar of air as a furnace opened, two old men seated on a step concentrating on little black and white pieces on a chequered board scratched into its surface.

They passed soldiers wearing plumed helmets, food hawkers yelling at the tops of their voices; whores cooing like doves to Einar who just laughed and walked on, holy men in long black robes with hems dragging through the gutter dung.

‘Gods in Asgard,’ Einar exclaimed in dismay as they spilled out of the street at the top of the hill. ‘How in the name of Odin’s arse are we going to find one man in all of this?’

Before them spread a huge field of marble filled with people. At either end were two enormous gates, and forming the perimeter was an unbroken chain of towering white facades, more splendid still than anything they had seen so far. Shooting skywards from the very heart of the space was a massive column, thick and purple. Lilla’s gaze climbed in amazement, shielding her eyes against the sun to make out the statue at its summit. A man, rendered in solid bronze. Their god, she wondered, or else a king. Maybe even the Emperor Constantine from whom, she had heard, the city took one of its many names.

She stared up at him for a moment and then her gaze came crashing down again to the level of the forum, where the chatter of hundreds of traders echoed off the marble houses. The improbability of finding Erlan amid all of this hit her like a fist in the belly.

‘We’re not here for one man,’ she said.

‘Aren’t we?’ returned Einar. ‘Then do you mind telling me why the Hel we are here?’

‘To see their king.’

‘Their king?’ Einar shook his head, exasperated.

‘Emperor,’ corrected Gerutha.

‘King, emperor? Whatever the son of a bitch calls himself, I’m sure he’s just dying to give you an audience, ain’t he? It’s not as if he’s a little busy with a war on or anything.’