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more.’
     
    ‘I wish there was an answer to it, sir.’
     
    ‘There is, Ferro,’ Cydones leaned forward, ‘a brave and loyal soldier will stay brave and loyal if he is led by a competent and fair officer, while those with fear in their hearts will be lost to us. But if a leader is tenacious, tactically shrewd and willing to fight on the front line . . . then the brave and loyal will fight with all their hearts and the fearful will start to forget their fears. That, Ferro, is the key. Good men.’
     
    His words were cut off with a plunk as Ferro pulled the cork from his skin of wine and took a swig, then offered it over the fire. ‘Good men!’
     
    Cydones’ face wrinkled into a grin as he took the skin and swigged. The sour wash cleared his head of thought momentarily but then his own words echoed inside him.
     
    When the sun sets on that day Byzantium will be no more.
     

4. The Farm
     
    Apion sat on a cool rock that soothed the biting pain of his scar, flexing his bare toes in a dewy patch of grass underfoot, drinking in the vista of the valley yawning below him: the farmhouse, the river and the terracotta and green lands glowing in the breaking summer dawn. He was alone; nobody around him except the goats, crunching into the thick islands of grass of this, the best grazing spot near Mansur’s farm. He decided they had the right idea and reached into his canvas satchel for the flatbread, still warm from the oven, that he had picked up on his way out. He bit a piece off, comforted by its chewy texture and charcoal flavour, and let his eyes linger on the landscape.
     
    Over the last month at the farm he had come to cherish this time when the land would turn from darkness to dawn, the light bringing the valley to life as he watched in silence, feeling the first heat of the sun stretch across his skin. The spectacle allowed him to briefly forget the murky voices and images that swam in his head at all other times. Being up here and bereft of fellowship was like a tonic for his mind. Not that Mansur the farmer had been anything other than a benevolent and warm person since his arrival. Indeed, far from his expectation that he was to be a land-slave, he had been treated like a son by Mansur, who provided him with a fresh and hearty meal every night and had given over to him a small but comfortable and clean bedroom. Maria still scowled at him in a mix of suspicion and curiosity like something she had dug from her ears – of questionable hygiene in any case – but he had come to understand that this was just her way.
     
    Mansur had tried to talk to him on the first few days, usually over meals at the oak table. It was throwaway chatter: about the lands and the prospects for the harvest; about Kutalmish, the farmer over the hill who grew the ripest nectarines and figs in all Anatolia. Apion had shunned the conversation, instead staring through the open shutters, his gaze searching northward; his thoughts on the charred pile of rubble that used to be his home.
     
    Every evening after eating he would go to his room and kneel by the foot of the bed, clutching the prayer rope to his forehead, the words of the Prayer of the Heart tumbling out as he recited the lines again and again, seeking a moment of truth, an answer. Neither was forthcoming.
     
    It was the nights that truly haunted him. He had managed a single night of sleep since arriving. On that first night it had felt as if he had rested his head on the pillow and then plummeted into a deep well, all thoughts evaporating from his mind. It had been a full day later before he wakened. But every night since, that apparition of the dark door floating in the blackness visited him, drawing him towards it. The door was closed, and only more blackness could be seen through the cracks around its edges. Every night he would wake, bathed in sweat, trembling.
     
    ‘So that’s where my other bread went?’ A voice said from behind him.
     
    Apion’s heart leapt and he