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firedrake stuff,” he said vaguely. “It worked well enough at the Humber, but I suspect the quality of the salt petre is different in this batch.” I nodded politely. His explosions had worked a small wonder for us at that battle, causing panic in the Saxon ranks that had led to our comprehensive victory. I could use that kind of help again.
    I explained my mission and the sorcerer nodded. For once, he seemed to have paid attention to another person’s thoughts, which was to me a great compliment, but he had always treated me better than with his usual abruptness, and since Guinevia and I had produced a son, he had been almost benevolent towards me. He liked Guinevia, and I was dragged along in the slipstream of his affection for her.
    “Byzantine Fire, eh?” he said. “I’ve read about that. Very dangerous stuff. It was a state secret, you know, but some fellow alchemists shared it with other sorcerers and the word got out. In certain circles only, that is,” he said, looking smug. “The Arabs got it, you know, and made matters quite uncomfortable for a number of people.”
    “Can you make it?” I asked impatiently.
    “I expect so,” he said, a little distantly I thought, considering he was speaking to his emperor. He must have caught my stiffening expression, for he added: “I can go and look things up, you know.” It was the best I could get out of him, and Guinevia was approaching, so we went inside to continue matters.
    That evening, the sorcerer swept into the chamber where I was writing, waving a handful of scrolls and looking triumphant. He had turned up a formula, he said, for the liquid fire, and had also come across descriptions of its use.
    It was, it seemed, a liquid that the Byzantines sprayed on their enemies, igniting the mix as it left the nozzle of the attackers’ pump. It clung to the surfaces it hit, and was extremely difficult to extinguish.
    “The soldiers who deploy this must be specially trained and equipped,” Myrddin pointed out. “It’s like using a war elephant. It doesn’t know who to attack, so everyone’s at risk, and it can literally backfire on you.” I grunted, and assigned a bright young Transjordanian monk called Ancke to make a copy of Myrddin’s instructions, including the formula and any hints for its use.
    I sent a messenger back to Chester to Grimr’s dependable lieutenant, a Macedonian named Iskandur Declarea. He was to prepare at once to take two galleys across the Narrow Sea. He would link up with his commander at the river base we were secretly establishing in Gaul, on either the Meuse or Rhine. I gave Iskandur specifics about the galleys’ cargoes and readied to return immediately to my stronghold.
    The next dawn, we left Guinevia at the sorcerer’s house with two of her maids, Clarea, the wife of the sea wolf Iskandur, and a slender golden deaf-mute slave called Iantread who had been captured on a raid into Gaul. I was taking no chances on Guinevia being kidnapped again, so I left an escort of troopers to guard the sorcerer’s compound, with instructions to camp at a discreet distance and to avoid incurring his displeasure. Then I was back on my big horse Corvus and headed to Chester to begin implementing my plans.
    The galleys that would go to Gaul would carry containers of rock oil, a medicinal liquid that seeped up from the earth, and baskets of the bitumen that formed when that oil dried. It was a liquid well known even to the ancient Babylonians, who had collected it from the famous Fountains of Pitch on the Euphrates River. They used the tarry substance to waterproof the hulls of ships and to fix handles to the blades of weapons.
    The Romans had used it to set mosaics, as a sort of cement. I had seen the mosaic artist Claria Primanata use it at my now-destroyed Fishbourne palace, and she had mentioned that drier asphalt was sometimes used by both the Romans and the Greeks to bind walls together. I wondered if it might make better fortifications,