Sparhawk looked at him more closely. ‘What’s the matter, Berit?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry, Sir Sparhawk. I can’t hear you. They rang the bells in the Basilica when the attack started. All the bells are up in the cupola on top of the dome. You never heard so much noise.’ Berit reached up and thumped the heel of his hand against the side of his head.

Sparhawk took him by the shoulders and looked directly into his face. ‘What’s happening?’ he bellowed, exaggeratedly mouthing the words.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sir Sparhawk. The bells sort of rattled me. There are thousands of torches coming across the meadows on the other side of the River Arruk. I thought you ought to know.’

‘Reinforcements?’ Delada said hopefully.

‘I’m sure they are,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but for which army?’

There was a heavy, booming crash behind them, and a fair-sized house collapsed in on itself as a huge boulder caved in its roof.

‘God!’ Delada exclaimed. ‘That boulder was enormous! These walls will never withstand that kind of pounding.’

‘No,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘It’s time for us to go to the cellar, Colonel.’

They went through the trap-door and started down the ladder.

‘They started throwing those big rocks earlier than you thought, Sparhawk,’ the colonel noted. ‘That’s sort of a good sign, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow that.’

‘Wouldn’t that suggest that the army to the west is a relief column for us?’

‘The troops outside our walls are mercenaries, Colonel. They could be in a hurry to get through our walls so that they won’t have to share the loot with their friends out there on the other side of the river.’

The lowest cellars of the Basilica were constructed of gigantic stones that had been laboriously chiselled and then carefully laid in long, low barrel vaults supported here and there by massive buttresses. The weight of the entire structure towering above rested entirely upon those mighty arches. It was dim and cool and quite damp in these cellars lying even below the crypt where the bones of long-dead Churchmen mouldered in dark silence.

‘Kurik!’ Sparhawk hissed to his squire as he and Delada passed the barred gate of an area set off from the rest of the cellar where Sparhawk’s squire and Delada’s guardsmen waited.

Kurik came to the bars on quiet feet.

‘The mangonels have started,’ Sparhawk told him, ‘and there’s a big army coming in from the west.’

‘You’re just full of good news, aren’t you, My Lord?’

Kurik paused. ‘This isn’t really a very nice place in here, Sparhawk. There are chains and manacles hanging from the walls, and there’s a place towards the back that would have warmed Bellina’s heart.’

Sparhawk looked briefly at Delada.