Byzantium

blood-red glow in his eyes. He whipped his sword out of his scabbard with a terrifying screech and stepped forward, within reach of the Hound’s own murderous blade. ‘I am one of you as well,’ he said in a fierce, rapt voice. ‘But I am not a cowardly Berserk who needed two of his comrades to kill Norway’s king. I am Haraldr Sigurdarson, King of Norway.’ He remembered as clearly as yesterday the Hound’s own words at Stiklestad. ‘When we begin, I will kill you.’

The Hound’s brutal jaw was as slack as an old dotard’s. His huge sloping shoulders sagged. His eyes were burned-out coals. He slumped to his knees like a figure of melting wax. Haraldr looked down on him with pitiless eyes. ‘You have told the world for years how you slew a king in single combat and then fouled a prince’s breeches. Half of that is true. I was a coward then. But you were a coward then, and you are a coward now. And you will die a coward.’ Haraldr brought his blade screaming down on the thick, brutish neck. The head jerked and then slumped to the chest, held by a flap of flesh. The neck gushed bright blood, and the body of Thorir the Hound pitched into the hold. Prince Vladimir screeched in terror.

Haraldr yanked the Rus Prince back up on the catwalk. ‘You need to agree to the Droungarios’s conditions immediately. The fire-ships will not wait for ever on your answer.’ Vladimir stood mute, his lips beginning to twitch. He burst into tears.

‘It is too late!’ shrieked the Rus Prince, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘This negotiation was only to deceive the Greeks! The attack has already begun!’

Haraldr ran to the bow. The front echelons of the Rus fleet were advancing through the white-capped sea, a wall of thick hulls descending on the dhromons. The wind hurled scudding black clouds after them, and sheets of rain ripped by at a sharp angle. Haraldr could only stare in rigid agony. The advance echelon was already within range.

The night turned to fire.

‘It is impossible!’ shouted Halldor. ‘We cannot sail through it! As soon as the fire touches the pitch on our hull, we will become a floating torch!’ Halldor and Ulfr and Hord wrestled Haraldr until he stopped resisting. The burning sea lit their faces an eerie orange and brought sweat to their foreheads. The scene before them was unimaginable, the fiery lakes of damnation raised to the surface of the earth. The entire Bosporus, as far as one could see, was a sheet of flame, and upon this floating pyre scores of ships had become towering, wind-whipped flares. Here and there the flares exploded in immense orange fireballs that illuminated the glowering, low clouds; it was as if enormous, black-shrouded lanterns had been suspended over the sea. The rain, descending in sheets, did nothing to quench these flames.

‘Get the dinghy from the other ship,’ Haraldr said. ‘Its hull is not caulked.’

‘I’m going with you,’ said Ulfr.

‘And I,’ said Halldor.

‘No. I want you two to stay and lead my men and rule Norway. This I alone must do. Bring the boat up.’

‘Haraldr,’ pleaded Halldor, ‘Maria was on the Droungarios’s dhromon. She will be safe. Wait at least until the fire burns away.’ A ship exploded and the light and sound flashed over the water.

‘No one is safe out there.’ Haraldr nodded numbly at the fire storm. ‘We now see the limitation of liquid fire in a general engagement. When the entire sea is set on fire, it burns indiscriminately. The ship that just exploded was a dhromon’.

Halidor and Ulfr could offer no rebuttal as the dinghy was quickly ferried over from the second galley. They knew that they would honour Haraldr Sigurdarson more by living to conquer Norway in his name than by leaping into his funeral pyre with him. Haraldr stripped off his cloak and wrapped a hide cape around his short wool tunic. He unstrapped his sword and inserted his dagger in his belt. He turned to Halldor and Ulfr. ‘I promised her I would come back for her. I wish I could make you the same promise.’ He paused, thinking of an old verse. ‘This is how the skalds said Ragnarok would be. “The sun grows dark, earth sinks beneath the sea. The stars fall from the skies. Flames rage and fire leaps until heaven itself is seared to ashes.” ‘ He looked steadily at his two friends. ‘I know I could live for three score more years and never have better men for my comrades. In the Valhol I will tell them to await the two best men who ever lived. Rule well.’

Ulfr rushed forward, sobbing, and embraced Haraldr. He had no words for this. Finally Haraldr had to prise him away. Halldor, grim and implacable, wrapped his huge arms around Haraldr. ‘We . . .’ His voice choked. ‘We love you, comrade.’

Haraldr leapt over the railing and into the dinghy.

The heat at Haraldr’s back was so intense, he thought even his wet hide cape would burst into flame. But there were passages through the blazing waves, twisting, treacherous, evanescent currents of orange-tinted water. And he could see Moschus’s dhromon, ringed by fiery patches but still intact, the bow spout still spitting flame.

Haraldr rowed furiously between crests crowned with fire. He turned to adjust his course, an orange burst greeted him, and he smelled his singed hair. Burning globs rolled off his hide cape and sizzled on the hull of the dinghy. He passed a blackened, floating corpse; the man’s arms were seized up, as if he were trying to claw his way out of Hell. Finally Haraldr reached a large, clear path and closed to within a hundred ells of Moschus’s dhromon; he could see marines operating the missile throwers on the deck and repulsing Rus boarders at the stern. A blackened hand swiped in front of him and he had a terrible glimpse of desperate white eyes against a greasy wave. He put his back to the oars. A fire-peaked wave rose up before him and then fell away to reveal a giant beast from Hell. Another dhromon, its pitch-smeared hull completely engulfed in flames, came hurtling out of the enraged sea. It was a wall of fire descending on him.

Haraldr threw aside his cape and leapt. He swam under water for perhaps fifty ells. He saw no flames above him. He surfaced to an immense crash and felt the shock even in the water. The burning dhromon had collided with Moschus’s flagship, bow to bow. A blinding explosion flung shattered, glowing timbers into the air. Haraldr went under again. When he surfaced, embers still drifted to the sea around him. Both bows were now rapidly descending beneath the waves.

Moschus’s ship listed to the larboard and the fire spread along the hull. The stern was still free of flames and Haraldr stroked wildly for it. Fire began to leap along the pitch-slathered strakes but the tacky surface gave Haraldr’s slippery feet purchase. He scrambled across the slope of the vast, tilting hull. He reached the railing and saw marines trying to walk upright on the steeply inclined deck. The bow was an inferno; dead marines lay on the deck in blackened armour. The ornate cabin at the stern was still intact, and Haraldr scrambled for it, ascending the increasingly sloping deck. The gilded door had been flung open and he ducked into the chart-strewn office of the Droungarios. ‘Maria!’ he screamed. An officer in a gold breastplate appeared, a small lacquer casket under his arm. ‘Where is the woman!’ bellowed Haraldr; he grabbed the officer’s arms and shook him. The casket tumbled to the deck and gold coins scattered. The officer shook his head numbly, and Haraldr released him and stepped back through the door. The slender but powerful arms seized him from behind.

‘God, you are alive!’ gasped Maria as Haraldr turned to wrap her in his arms. ‘Holy Mother, you are alive!’

‘I promised I would hold you again, even in the shadow of the dragon.’ He held her as if this embrace would last them for eternity. And because his eyes were closed, he could only feel, not see, the line of flame bursting through the deck of the dhromon in the instant before the ship exploded.

Halldor rolled over the floating, blackened corpse and studied the charred lump that had once been a head. .Unable to identify it, he pushed the corpse away with a staff fitted with an improvised grapple on the end; the body was quickly rejoined by dozens of nipping fish. ‘Who can tell?’ he said wearily to Ulfr. ‘You cannot even tell a woman from a man, much less a Rus from a Roman.’ He straightened and looked out over a calmed sea littered with countless fragments of flickering wreckage and a few still-blazing hulks.

‘Should we wait until dawn?’ asked Ulfr. ‘It is only an hour.’

Halldor shook his head. ‘We probably would have no better chance of finding them in the light of day. And who could sleep?’

Halldor hooked another floating corpse, a legless form with curled, foetal arms; the hands were merely crusted bones. He pushed it away after the most cursory examination. ‘This is no way for men to die,’ said Halldor bitterly. ‘To a flame that has no courage or loyalty, that kills friend and foe alike, that does not even allow a man the dignity of seeing the face that has sent his soul on. If this flame were set loose upon the earth, it would mean