SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

VERMIN Richard Lee Byers

A wail made Adalric spin around. Stefan and Pierre were dragging a Muslim woman from her house. A little boy started after them, and she shrilled at him to go back inside. The jabber prompted Pierre to slap her, and Adalric scowled. The blow seemed unnecessarily brutish even if she was an enemy of Christ.

His hauberk clinking, the young knight strode toward the two foragers and their captive. “What are you doing?” he demanded of Stefan. It was easier than asking Pierre. Adalric’s recently acquired French was better than his recently acquired Turkish, but not a great deal better.

Setting forth from Bavaria, he’d somehow ended up in nominal charge of a small band of pilgrims who, though often wayward and undisciplined, at least all spoke the same German as himself. But the Turks had annihilated the majority of Little Peter’s followers almost as soon as they arrived in Anatolia, and the surviving ‘Tafurs’ – penniless men – had clumped together as circumstance allowed. They had little choice. None of the great lords leading the Crusade cared to welcome men generally regarded as rabble into their own companies. Though they were happy to dispatch them on dangerous errands through unfamiliar territory.

His square face peeling with sunburn, Stefan had the grace to look momentarily sheepish. Scrawny with a rotten-smelling mouth missing several teeth, Pierre glowered at the interruption but left it at that. It was questionable whether the Frenchman truly respected Adalric’s authority, but he had sense enough to be wary of proper weapons and armor and a man trained to use them.

“She has money hidden away,” Stefan said. “Look at her.”

The woman’s dress did have more embroidery than seemed common in this dusty desert village. But it didn’t matter. “We’re here for food,” Adalric said; provisions for the Christian army starving beneath the walls of Antioch. “We need to collect it and get away.”

“This won’t take long,” Stefan said.

“She won’t even understand what you’re asking her.”

Stefan leered. “Oh, I’ll make her—“

A horn blatted through the morning air. No one had taught the bugler to blow proper signals, but the repeated blasts conveyed urgency. The Tafurs looked wildly about as if they imagined the villagers they’d been robbing were rising up against them, but that wasn’t the problem. The sentry atop the tower was watching the approaches to the town, not what was happening inside it.

“Back to the fortress!’ Adalric shouted. Some men ran. Others flung themselves onto the half-loaded wagons as the drivers shouted and snapped the reins to set the mules in motion.

Forgotten in the confusion, one cart remained. Adalric scrambled onto the bench. Emboldened by the Christians’ hasty departure, a villager in a brown robe threw a stone, and it clinked against his mail.

As, bumping up and down, his conveyance rumbled and clattered through the streets, Adalric tried to count the Tafurs riding in the other wagons or pounding along on foot. Some were missing. Though he’d attempted to keep them close, the better to control them, a few had plainly sneaked off to loot unsupervised. It was only what he’d expected, but damn them anyway!

The bugle kept blaring, though with longer pauses between notes. The sentry was getting winded. Finally the man himself came into view atop a keep that was unimpressive to anyone who’d seen the castles of the Rhine, Constantinople, or Antioch for that matter, but was nonetheless the tallest structure in the village, poking above the sandstone wall surrounding it.

Adalric raced through the gate and, left to his own inexperienced devices, might have driven his mules broadside into someone else’s cart. Fortunately, the animals had sense enough to balk on their own and brought their wagon to a jolting halt while their teamster was still fumbling with the reins. A crate bounced out the back and smashed open.

Rising from the bench, Adalric looked up at the sentry. “What’s wrong?” he shouted.

The trumpeter tried to answer but was so out of breath as to be inaudible to anyone at the foot of his perch. Realizing as much, he pointed with one jabbing hand and flailed the bugle back and forth with the other. The brass horn flashed in the sun.

“Close the gate!” Adalric bellowed.

The cheeks above his long straw-colored beard scarred by the pox, Faramund turned in his commander’s direction. A man-at-arms by trade, he was one of the Tafurs Adalric actually trusted. “By my count,” he called, “we still have people outside.”

“By mine, too,” Adalric answered. “But I think we’re running out of time.”

They dashed to the gate and began the process of securing it. Just as they slid the massive bar squeaking through the brackets, hooves pounded outside.

Adalric hurried up the stairs leading to the wall-walk. Keeping low, he peeked over the parapet.

Mounted archers rode around and around the fortress that had likely been their own just a day before. They numbered at least fifty, more than his band of ill-equipped peasants could hope to best in open combat.

If the Turks had only stayed away until afternoon, the foragers might have gotten away clean. Curse the luck! Curse—

Adalric took a breath. It was no use railing against misfortune. Or wondering why God rained adversity on those who fought in His name while lavishing every advantage on the miserable heathens who contended against them, although, to say the least, it wasn’t what Little Peter’s sermons had led him to expect. The Tafurs would simply have to cope with the situation as it was.

Perhaps it wasn’t all bad. The foragers couldn’t defeat the Turks on a battlefield, but they might be able to withstand a siege. The modest size of their stronghold would actually help. It didn’t have longer walls than a small force could defend.

Still making sure to keep his head down, Adalric considered the orders he needed to give. Meanwhile, a Tafur straggler with a dead chicken dangling from his band blundered into the open space surrounding the fortress. At once, an archer twisted in the saddle, nocked, drew, and loosed. The Tafur pitched forward with the shaft in his chest.

In the darkness, the fort was like a gray fist with an upraised finger. Standing where a narrow, rutted street gave way to the ring of clear space surrounding the stronghold, Zeki squinted at it, striving vainly to spot some weakness that had hitherto eluded him.

His sergeants had urged him to stay behind cover even after dark, but he wasn’t worried. The last three days had shown that all the expert archers were on his side, which made it all the more galling that he had thus far failed to dislodge the wretched infidels from their stolen refuge.

Behind him, someone coughed. Zeki turned and then hesitated when he beheld, not the subordinate he might have expected to interrupt his ruminations, but a stranger.

The newcomer was stooped, perhaps not a hunchback but on the verge, with long arms and big hands. He wore a striped aba, the sleeveless coat of a Bedouin, and a kufeya held in place with an igal of camel wool. The headwear shadowed a dark-eyed saturnine countenance with a grizzled mustache and beard so bushy as to essentially conceal the mouth.

“You need to stay back,” Zeki said, trying not to sound brusque. There was no reason to take out his ill humor on fellow Muslims. “My men and I have commandeered the area until such time as we storm the citadel and destroy the Franks.”

Perhaps the stranger grinned. The hair covering his lips made it impossible to be sure. “How is that going?” he asked.

“That’s a matter for soldiers,” Zeki snapped, no longer caring if he was rude.

The Bedouin raised one of those big, long-fingered hands. “Forgive me, Captain. I don’t mean to pry. It’s simply that, like every good man, I yearn for the day when the Faithful will drive these savages into the sea.”

“I appreciate that—“

“So I offer what help I can, which is more than you might suppose. My name is Ibrahim, and, appearances to the contrary, I’m an educated man. In my youth, I studied in Dar al-Ilm, the great library of Tripoli. You see me clad as a nomad because I now travel seeking wisdom unrecorded in any of its hundred thousand books.”

Zeki cocked his head. “I don’t entirely understand.”

Ibrahim spread his hands. “Perhaps we could explore the subject more fully indoors? The night grows cold.”

Well, why not? It was indeed getting chilly, and Zeki wasn’t accomplishing anything as he was. Perhaps the stranger had stumbled across a manual on siege-craft wading through his hundred thousand volumes and could provide some sound advice. Stranger things had happened.

Zeki led the self-proclaimed scholar into the house in which he’d taken up residence for the view the windows afforded of the citadel. The woman who lived there served them humus and raki, the latter white from being mixed with cold water, and then she, her husband, and their three children left their guests to their deliberations.

Ibrahim sipped the lion’s milk and sighed. “Delicious. And now, Captain, would you care to tell me how a capable soldier like yourself comes to find himself barred from his own stronghold?”

Zeki’s cheeks grew warm. It was the last story he wanted to tell… or then again, perhaps it wasn’t. Everyone else in the village knew it already, and maybe it would be a relief to unburden himself.

“Well,” he began, “I’m like you. I want to help rid our country of the Franks.”

“While playing a hero’s part in the jihad?”

Zeki’s face grew warmer still. “I wouldn’t put it like that, exactly.”

“Please understand, I’m not criticizing. A soldier is supposed to want to fight the enemy.”

“I agree. But my father doubted my ability–”Zeki pushed away the thought that events had proved his father right–“and he serves the Governor and is highly placed enough that Yaghi-Siyan actually knows him. When it became clear the invaders meant to march on Antioch, he prevailed on our lord to station me here, in theory removed from any danger.”

“That must have been frustrating.”

“It was.” Zeki sipped his anise-flavored drink. “And when I received word the Franks had foraging parties ranging far from the city, I was eager to find and destroy one. But I’m not an idiot, however it looks! Yes, I took most of my men on patrol, but I didn’t leave the fortress unattended.”

“So what happened?” Ibrahim asked.

Zeki took another drink. “As near as I can make out, the Franks must have observed the village without being spotted in their turn. They figured out there were only a few soldiers left in the fortress, and that night they sent horsemen wearing turbans galloping up to the gate. In the dark, a person could mistake them for riders returning from the search, and one of them spoke our language and pleaded to be let in. Somebody obliged, and the infidels killed him and his comrades, too. Then, in the morning, they began stealing what they came for, beating and otherwise mistreating people while they were about it, even though no one was resisting. Until their sentry sighted my patrol returning, and, knowing their wagons couldn’t outdistance our pursuit, they retreated back into the stronghold. Now they’re inside, and I’m outside.” He sighed. “Farcical, is it not?”

“Embarrassing, certainly. Until you dislodge them.”

“I’m trying. But the Franks’ commander knows something about resisting a siege. More than I know about mounting one, if the truth be told. My training focused on maneuvering mounted archers on the battlefield.” He took a breath. “But I will get back inside. I may not know much about sieges, but I’ve seen the engines an attacking force brings against a stronghold. The village carpenter couldn’t manage a tower on wheels, but I’ve got him working on a battering ram with a roof to shield the men swinging it back and forth.”

“I trust he knows how to contrive an apparatus that can punch through the heavy reinforced wood of the gate and withstand burning oil.”

Once again, Zeki was uncertain if the wanderer was mocking him. “Do you know how?”

Ibrahim shook his head, his bushy beard swishing across the front of his aba and the brown cotton tob beneath. “I’m not a siege engineer, either. But I can offer assistance if you’re willing to accept it.”

Zeki frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I told you I seek wisdom in the trackless spaces of the world. It is there one hears the jinn and afrit whispering in the wind.”

“You’re talking about sorcery?”

“I understand if that perturbs you.”

“Do you? The Prophet said magic is one of the seven noxious things.”

“Certainly, it is knowledge that weighs on the mind. But if a man uses it in the service of Allah, it is not a sin.”

Zeki snorted. “I doubt my imam would agree.”

“It is your decision, of course, but I implore you to consider carefully. Is it not your duty to retake the fortress as expeditiously as possible? Don’t those who suffered abuse deserve to see the infidels punished?”

Ibrahim didn’t add, Don’t you want to avenge your humiliation? But the thought hung in the air between them.

“Consider, too,” the scholar said, “that if working magic is a sin, it will be my sin, not yours.”

Running his finger around the rim of his cup, Zeki considered. He didn’t want to be the sort of sophist who rationalized his way past the clear intent of the teachings of the Quran. But he also didn’t want word of the current fiasco to reach his superiors – or worse, his father – before he managed to put matters right.

Besides, though sorcerers existed – they must, for wise men said they did – they were plainly rare. Zeki had never in his life encountered the genuine article, whereas he had witnessed countless mountebanks performing on street corners and in bazaars. In all likelihood, Ibrahim was simply one of the latter seeking a reward for ineffectual posturing. If so, it could do no harm to watch the show.

“What exactly would you do?” Zeki asked.

“Have you taken any prisoners?” Ibrahim replied.

“Well… yes. A few Franks wandered off from their fellows and failed to get back to the fortress before my riders caught up to them. We took three alive for questioning – I speak a little of their language – but they didn’t say much that was helpful.”

“That’s all right,” Ibrahim said, rising. “They’ll help us now. Please, take me to them.”

The only proper manacles and cells were back inside the fortress. The Turks had made do by tying the infidels hand and foot, dumping them on the earthen floor of a derelict house, and setting a guard to mind them. The soldier came to attention when Zeki and Ibrahim entered. The Franks eyed them with a mix of apprehension and defiance.

Ibrahim looked over the three, then focused his attention on the sweaty, shivering man whose bandaged thigh was bloody where an arrow had pierced him. “I’ll have this one,” the sorcerer said. “It will be merciful. Otherwise, the festering in his wound will kill him slowly.”

“Do you mean—“

“Surely it lies within your authority to execute an infidel who committed outrages against the innocent, and if I’m merely carrying out the order, then everything is as it should be.”

With no more preamble than that, Ibrahim turned toward the prisoners and chanted in a language Zeki had never heard before, if, in fact, it was speech at all. Some of the syllables were less the tones of human language than clicks, buzzes, and hisses, as if the stranger were imitating a menagerie of vermin. Meanwhile his body bobbed up and down, first straightening and raising his hands to the extent his crooked back would allow, then bowing so low their sweeping gestures nearly brushed the floor.

Gradually, the oil lamp dimmed, and the gloom thickened and rippled, suggesting shapes the eye couldn’t quite define but were repulsive nonetheless. A cold wind moaned, carrying the stink of something fetid. Zeki somehow knew that if he opened the door, he’d find the same wind was not blowing outside.

The guard caught his captain’s eye. Then he touched the shagreen-wrapped hilt of his scimitar.

His mouth dry, Zeki almost nodded. But he didn’t because so far, Ibrahim was only doing what he’d promised: raising a power the officer hoped could be directed to destroy the enemy and avert his impending disgrace. He shook his head instead.

Writhing, struggling to worm their way backward despite their bonds, the Franks cried out to their Savior, Virgin, and saints as the magic unfolded. Then they started begging Zeki for mercy.

He wasn’t sure why they humbled themselves to him at that precise moment. As far as he could tell, no new uncanny phenomenon had appeared. Then it occurred to him that they could see Ibrahim’s face and he couldn’t.

The sorcerer stooped over the prisoner with the wounded leg. Zeki couldn’t see what he did next; saw only his bowed head and broad, curved back. The Frank screamed, thrashed, and bucked to the extent he was able. It appeared to Zeki that something in addition to the man’s bonds was holding the infidel in place.

His shrieks and struggling subsided after a few moments. Ibrahim rose and turned around. The sorcerer’s hands were wet and red, and the Frank’s corpse had holes stabbed or torn in its chest. Zeki couldn’t make out the exact nature of the wounds through the soaked, shredded clothing and had a squeamish suspicion he didn’t want to.

“Come,” Ibrahim said. “I should use the power quickly, before any of it slips from my grasp.”

The foul wind dying behind him, the surviving prisoners cursing and weeping, the sorcerer then passed back out of the door. Zeki gave the guard the no-doubt inadequate reassurance of a clap on the shoulder and followed.

Ibrahim only went far enough to place himself in the center of the street. Then he murmured the start of another incantation. Though recited in the same ugly mockery of language as its predecessor, the new one differed in that it possessed meter and rhyme. Or perhaps Zeki was simply learning to pick out those features from the clicking and croaking.

As the sorcerer declaimed, little forms came scuttling to converge on his position. For a moment, Zeki imagined the darkness itself was stirring as it had before. Then he discerned that the shapes were scorpions drawn from their haunts in the village and possibly the desert beyond.

Ibrahim reached down, and some of the creatures crawled onto his bloody hands. Zeki winced to imagine them nipping, stinging, and scurrying up under the sorcerer’s sleeves. Although apparently they didn’t.

Still reciting, Ibrahim lifted his fingers to his beard. Some of the scorpions hopped off to cling and burrow amid the tufts of hair.

Meanwhile, more arrived to form a seething pool that washed over his sandaled feet. Until he pointed in the direction of the fortress, whereupon the creatures scuttled in that direction. The ones crawling on the magus’s body jumped down to join the procession.

Ibrahim slumped like a man who’d been working hard. “They shouldn’t have any trouble slipping under the gate,” he said. “With luck, the Franks might not even notice their arrival.”

Now that the worst was presumably over, Zeki tried to steady himself and focus on practicalities. “Your vermin may make the infidels miserable, and that’s good. But I doubt this will prove a decisive blow.”

Ibrahim chuckled. “Patience, Captain. We’re just getting started.”

Crouching, Adalric surveyed the clear space around the fortress. Someone in the village had spent the day hammering and for all he knew had been constructing new scaling ladders. If so, the enemy might be organizing even now to make another run at the redoubt in the hope that darkness would help them accomplish what they’d failed to achieve in the light.

A while ago, Adalric’s vigilance had faltered. First, dread seized him as if he’d glimpsed something horrible abroad in the night even though, of course, he hadn’t. Then fear gave way to dizziness, and though nothing about its appearance changed, he felt the black sky open like a sinkhole. Knowing the impulse was insane, he nonetheless clung to a merlon lest he fall upward.

The fit had passed quickly. He hoped it had just been a manifestation of weariness and not the first symptom of some looming fever. His little band of fools and reprobates needed his leadership if they were to hold out.

Hold out. He sighed. He’d deemed himself clever when he’d devised his scheme to neutralize the garrison, then plunder the village with impunity. Yet now the Tafurs found themselves trapped, quite possibly for months, until either Prince Bohemond and his fellow commanders somehow took Antioch and had men to spare to search for missing foragers or Turkish reinforcements arrived in the village in sufficient numbers to negate the defensive advantage that fortress walls afforded.

Well, that was the nature of sieges, and there was no use lamenting it. At least, between the provisions the Turks had laid up in the keep and the additional food the Christians had extorted from the town, the occupiers had sufficient to last them for a while. They didn’t have a well of their own – the only one Adalric had spotted was down in the marketplace – but there was a cistern more than half full of water. Hunger and thirst wouldn’t drive them to surrender anytime soon.

Down in the courtyard, someone gave a choked little cry.

As Adalric spun around, he was certain he was going to see that the Turks had somehow gotten inside the walls. But the enclosed space appeared empty. At first glance, he couldn’t even see the man who’d made the noise. Perhaps no one had. After all, his senses weren’t entirely trustworthy tonight.

Then he noticed the sentry on the far side of the wall was looking across at him waiting for orders. That meant the other Tafur had heard the sound, too.

Adalric raised his hand, signaling the man to stay where he was and continue keeping watch. Then, still keeping low and holding his kite-shaped shield for maximum protection, he darted toward the steps leading downward.

The shield jerked as an arrow thudded into its leather covering. He wondered if the damnable Turks could see in the dark like owls.

He wished he could. At first, scrambling down the steps, for at instant nearly losing his balance, he still couldn’t see whoever had cried out. But as he reached the bottom, he spied a fallen man jerking and shaking.

As he hurried forward, the stricken Tafur came into clearer view. It was Pierre. His breeches were open and wet, his manhood exposed. Evidently he’d come outdoors to piss.

Mostly concealed by his shuddering body, something was moving on the far side of it. A small dog, perhaps, a cat, or conceivably even an enormous rat. Then, its eight legs scrabbling for purchase, pincers clicking, sting curled over its back, it clambered onto Pierre’s belly, and Adalric discerned it was none of those. Rather, it was the largest scorpion he’d ever seen. He gawked at it, and then it charged him.

He retreated. Long legs should have opened the distance faster than short ones could take it up again, but that was only barely so. Still, he managed to snatch his broad-bladed sword from its scabbard.

He cut, the low stroke whizzing mere inches above the ground. The scorpion hopped backward, and the attack fell short. Then the two combatants hovered out of range of one another. Adalric was considering how best to dispose of his adversary, and perhaps, in its fashion, the creature was doing the same.

But when the knight caught the faintest of rustling sounds at his back, he knew he’d guessed wrongly. In reality, the one scorpion had done its best to hold his attention while its twin crept up behind him.

Adalric spun and cut. The sword struck off a pincer and tumbled the onrushing scorpion across the ground. He pivoted, struck a second time, and once again the first arachnid dodged the slash. But at least he balked it and kept it from closing to striking distance.

He wrenched himself back around, cut down at the second scorpion just as it was righting itself, and all but split it in two. It hung on the blade for a moment before dropping away when he whirled once more.

The first scorpion was gone. Gasping, Adalric peered this way and that but couldn’t tell in which direction it had fled.

Still watching for it, he inspected the fallen Pierre. The Frenchmen was still breathing, albeit, gurgling, slobbering wheezes through swollen lips. His attacker’s sting had punched through his worn-out shoe to pierce the flesh inside.

Adalric was no more a physician than anyone else in his ragged company, and he wouldn’t have been eager to perform the chore at hand even if he had been. But it was his responsibility. He bellowed for help, strained to pull off the shoe – the foot within was swollen like Pierre’s lips – and started sucking out the venom.

Zeki took another gulp of raki. He knew he was drinking too much. But though the magic had ended some time before – the shadows had stopped shifting, and the swarm of scorpions had scuttled off toward the fortress – he couldn’t seem to leave the alcoholic beverage alone. He wasn’t even bothering to mix it with water anymore.

Seated across from him, little more than a silhouette in the red glow of the dying embers in the hearth, Ibrahim chuckled.

“What?” Zeki asked.

“Now,” said the sorcerer, “the campaign has truly begun. I suggest you double the number of archers keeping watch and impress upon your entire company the importance of being ready to fight at a moment’s notice.”

“Why?”

“From this point forward, conditions within the stronghold will deteriorate. Deserters may seek to slip away. The entire pack of infidels might even burst forth in a desperate attempt to escape. Whoever emerges, you’ll want to ensure that the act is suicidal.”

As the sky outside the narrow window brightened, Adalric took stock of himself. Discounting the frazzled feeling attributable to worry and fatigue, he didn’t seem to be ill. He’d heard of men who’d sucked poison from another’s wound only to fall sick themselves because they swallowed some or it entered their blood through sores in their mouths or broken teeth, but apparently that misfortune hadn’t befallen him.

So far, Pierre was still alive. Adalric hoped he’d recover but had no idea what if anything else he could do to help him. His task now was to keep the same fate from befalling anyone else.

Except for Pierre and the sentries on the walls, his men stood assembled in the hall of the keep with their miscellany of scavenged weapons. There was even one peasant still making do with the hayfork he’d carried away from home when Little Peter’s exhortations fired his pious zeal. The scorpion Adalric had killed lay atop a table for their inspection.

He waved his hand at it. “That one won’t give us any more trouble, but there’s another. We need to find and kill it.” He repeated the same message in his halting French.

“But what is it?” Stefan called.

“You see what it is,” Adalric replied. “A scorpion.”

“It seems… unnatural.”

It seemed that way to Adalric as well. But he didn’t know, and it would be counterproductive to say anything that would unsettle the men worse than they were already. “Nonsense. It’s a bigger scorpion than any we’ve seen before, but remember, we’re newcomers in these lands.”

A Frenchman asked a question. Adalric labored to decipher the meaning: “What if there’s more than one left?”

“That’s unlikely. Surely the Turkish garrison didn’t live side by side with a whole swarm of the creatures.”

A German raised his battle-axe to attract his captain’s attention. “What—“

“Enough!” Adalric rapped. “Our quarry may be big for a scorpion, but it’s still little compared to a man, and I easily killed its fellow. It was only able to sting Pierre because it took him by surprise, and we’re going to watch one another’s backs so it can’t sneak up on any of us. Now stop whining and split into two groups!”

Muttering, the men obeyed, predictably dividing into a German search party and a French one. Since Faramund spoke only German, it fell to Adalric to lead the latter. He judged that it was likewise his responsibility to search the darkest, most claustrophobic part of the fortress to prove he meant it when he claimed there was nothing to fear.

Accordingly, he led his group to the steep, narrow steps descending into the blackness of the dungeon. With a twinge of reluctance, he set aside his kite shield, the better to manage a lantern. Then he headed down, and his companions followed.

When he reached the bottom, the lantern’s yellow glow washed over three common scorpions eating the carcass of a rat, their jagged, segmented mouthparts scissoring. Short from head to tail, longer, and longest, the trio plainly represented different breeds of their odious kind, but they appeared content to share the meal, and Adalric wondered if, like the two arachnids he’d fought in the courtyard, they’d worked together to bring down their prey.

Evidently deciding that if they were hunting scorpions, they were hunting scorpions, four of the Frenchmen shoved past Adalric to assail the vermin. He winced as wild swings and stabs clashed weapons on the floor, no doubt dulling them.

A Tafur screamed, dropped his mace, and swiped at his greasy black hair. His hands dislodged a pale little scorpion, but instead of tumbling to the floor, it dropped down the back of his tunic. By the time his comrades got the garment yanked up and the creature brushed away and crushed, he had half a dozen swelling bumps on his torso to match the one in his scalp.

The Frenchman whimpered. Adalric took his head between his hands and looked him in the eyes. “I know it’s painful,” he said, “but a normal scorpion can’t kill a man. You’re going to be all right.”

“It wasn’t one of the ones eating the rat,” the Tafur replied in a high, breathy voice. “It jumped on me from the ceiling or the wall. Why did it do that?”

“The commotion frightened it,” Adalric said. “Go upstairs and rest.” He raised his voice: “The rest of you, search the cells!”

The hunt soon rousted out several more common scorpions, prompting him to wonder just how many the fortress harbored altogether. Up until now, he’d seen his refuge as small, but he was starting to appreciate just how many dark corners and hidden recesses it contained. There could be scores—

He scowled to chase such fears away. Small pests weren’t the problem. The one big scorpion was, and surely it couldn’t evade them for long. They’d catch it before the morning was through and, rid of the distraction, refocus on the real menace: the Turks beyond the walls.

As it turned out, the big scorpion wasn’t hiding in the dungeon. Leaving Faramund’s party to search the aboveground portions of the keep, Adalric led his men to the stable.

The outbuilding smelled of grain and leather. The company’s several riding horses and the mules that drew the wagons stood in the stalls. One of the latter heehawed a greeting or perhaps a demand for breakfast.

Adalric directed the search of the stable with the same cautious thoroughness as before, and when it revealed more common scorpions, the men assailed them viciously. Then horses whinnied, and donkeys brayed. The Tafurs looked frantically about.

The surviving enormous scorpion was advancing from the far end of the building where it had evidently hidden during the night. Or at least Adalric assumed this was the same creature, but if so, it had grown in just the few hours since their previous encounter. The arachnid that had eluded him had been, at most, the size of a small dog. Claws and stinger poised, mouthparts gnashing, multiple pairs of round black eyes staring, this one was as big as a boarhound.

Tafurs cried out and crossed themselves. Someone threw a hand-axe that glanced off the scorpion’s segmented shell, leaving a scratch but nothing more.

“Spread out!” Adalric said. “Attack from all sides!” Peering over the top of his shield, he stepped forward to meet the creature head on. Someone had to.

His advance provoked the scorpion into scuttling faster. But before it could close, it listed drunkenly to the left, and then the legs on that side of its body buckled beneath it. It heaved itself up again, attempted to walk, and then all eight legs gave way.

With a roar, the Tafurs charged. It sought to fend them off, but clumsily, as if its pincers and sting had grown too heavy for it. Its shell crunched as weapons smashed and stabbed through to the flesh beneath.

When it was certain the scorpion was dead, some men cheered. Others fell to their knees to give thanks to God. The noise drew Faramund and his Germans.

Faramund gave Adalric a nod. “Nicely done.”

Adalric moved close enough to reply without the men overhearing. He didn’t want them to feel he was belittling their victory. “It wasn’t difficult. The scorpion was sick.”

Faramund shrugged. “The important thing is, this particular problem is over.”

“Right,” Adalric said. Even though the taut, edgy feeling inside him had yet to go away.

The pole hung on the horizontal slung from several ropes. Zeki gave it an experimental push and found that even a single man could easily swing it in its cradle. That confirmed what his eyes had already told him.

“It’s too light to break open the gate,” he said.

The carpenter spread his hands. “My lord, it’s the heaviest pole I had to work with.”

Zeki indicated the peaked roof built atop the ram. “And this doesn’t stick out far enough. An enemy on the wall could still hit one of the men underneath.”

“Captain, if you had specified exactly… shall I begin again?”

“If you can’t make a proper ram, what good would it do?” Zeki took a breath. “I apologize. I know you did the best you could.” He handed the villager a little drawstring bag of clinking silver dirhems and walked back outside where the bright heat of the day was giving way to twilight.

Ibrahim was waiting for him. “I infer from your expression,” the sorcerer said, “that the carpenter failed to produce a serviceable device.”

Zeki sighed. “As you predicted.”

“If you recall, I also explained it doesn’t matter if your troops can’t get inside. Our strategy is to force the infidels out.”

Our strategy. Zeki resented the implication they were now co-commanders. Especially since the more repulsive aspects of last night’s conjuration had heightened his suspicion the wanderer’s magic was something a pious, sensible man should shun.

Yet Ibrahim truly had worked a marvel even if aspects of it were unsavory, and it was now plainer than ever that Zeki needed a marvel to avoid becoming a laughingstock in Antioch. So he buried his distaste beneath a smile and said, “I’ll ask you what you asked me when first we met: how is that going?”

The hair covering the scholar’s mouth stirred. For an instant, Zeki imagined leftover scorpions crawling around in there. But Ibrahim’s next words suggested he’d prefaced them with a sigh forceful enough to puff out his mustache.

“Not as well as I might have hoped,” the sorcerer said. “The Franks went on a scorpion hunt. They didn’t find all the creatures I sent to plague them, but they killed some.”

Zeki nodded. “At least you have some left. Enough to still make a nuisance of themselves, I hope.”

“Yes, but the situation is more complicated than that. I watch through the scorpions’ eyes and compel them to do my bidding. That taps my strength. I made two of the creatures grow to enormous size, and that takes even more power. Indeed, the giants need recurring infusions of magic simply to enable them to walk, let alone threaten the Franks. Nature didn’t intend their frames to support the weight enlargement imposes on them.”

Zeki frowned. “Are you telling me you ran out of strength?”

“To my sorrow, yes, and at a key moment. One of the giants stood a fair chance of killing the infidel captain before his followers slew it in its turn. Instead, it collapsed, and the Franks overwhelmed the poor thing with little more trouble than farmers slaughtering a goat.”

“Then your effort has run its course?” Zeki wasn’t sure if he felt disappointed or relieved.

The tufts of hair under the sorcerer’s nose stirred again, this time as he laughed. “Hasbinallah, no! Please forgive me if I worried you. I was merely trying to explain that I require new vitality to continue.”

Zeki swallowed. “Does that mean you want to kill one of the remaining prisoners?”

“Both, I think. Perhaps then I won’t run short of power again.”

“I… don’t know if I should allow that.”

Ibrahim’s cocked his head. “Why not? You were being just, were you not, when you condemned the first infidel to death? Aren’t the other two guilty of the same crimes?”

“You told me the first one was going to die anyway.”

“Painfully, and it seemed merciful to spare him. But as a soldier, surely you would agree that war does not always afford us the luxury of kindness.”

Ibrahim hesitated. Last night’s ritual had reeked of the unholy, but it hadn’t hurt anyone on his side, and if allowing it was a sin, well, it was a sin he’d committed already. Perhaps a victory on behalf of Islam would balance the scales.

“Very well,” he said. “Execute the prisoners.” Execute seemed a more righteous word than murder. Or sacrifice. “Work your magic one more time.”

Adalric roused with a start to find himself beside one of the wagons parked outside the stable. An instant before, or so it seemed to him, he’d been near the doorway into the keep. Evidently he’d crossed the courtyard sleepwalking or in a stupor approximating sleep.

He scowled and knuckled a gritty eye. If he was going to doze off, he might as well seek his bed and sleep properly. God knew he needed it, and surely the trouble with scorpions was done. Both big ones were dead, and dozens of the common sort as well.

Yet he couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that, just as strange perils had crawled from the darkness last night, they might arise tonight as well. If he didn’t want to alarm the men when they’d just calmed down and his imagination might simply be running wild, he needed to patrol the fortress himself. He gave his head a shake and headed back across the courtyard.

At the periphery of his vision and low to the ground, a shadow shifted. Or perhaps not. When he pivoted in that direction, nothing was moving anymore.

He suspected his eyes were playing tricks, but he needed a closer look to know for certain. He adjusted the strap that ran from his shield to loop around his neck, made sure his sword was loose in the scabbard, and stalked forward.

After two paces, he perceived he has advancing toward the cistern, a rectangular hole in the ground with a low brick ledge around it. A bucket on a rope sat ready to hand to draw the water forth.

Adalric still couldn’t see any further movement. But he squinted because something about the murky shapes before him was off. Was there a spot where the brick barrier humped up higher than it should?

He took another step. The bulge became a scorpion the size of a man’s head. It had been crouching motionless atop the ledge, but now the sting poised above the cistern began to flick. It was flinging venom into the water.

Underneath Adalric’s coif of mail, the hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end. He and his fellow Tafurs had rid the citadel of the enormous scorpions, yet here, inexplicably, was another deliberately poisoning the water supply. Surely no vermin would undertake such a thing unless guided by a man’s intellect… or a demon’s.

Whatever accounted for it, Adalric had to stop the contamination. He drew his sword, shouted for help, and advanced.

The arachnid neither fled nor assumed a defensive posture. It just kept on flicking. Was it so intent on the task that it hadn’t even noticed him? Or was it trying to hold his attention while another scorpion sneaked up on him like the creature last night?

He glanced behind him. Nothing was there but one of the sentries scurrying down from the battlements in answer to his call. Reassured, Adalric turned back toward the scorpion.

The sentry, a Frenchman, shouted something. It took Adalric an instant to translate it to “Watch out!” By then, the ground was grumbling, and dirt was sliding under his boots.

He whirled, and a scorpion the size of a donkey heaved itself from the burrow where it had hitherto lay hidden. One set of pincers hooked around his shield to seize him.

Appalled, he didn’t consciously shift the shield, but a lifetime of training, cutting at the pell and sparring with other men-at-arms with swords of wood or whalebone, did it for him. The action kept the claws from closing on his body.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop the pincers from grasping the edge of the shield itself. The alder crunched and splintered, and the scorpion jerked on its prize, staggering him. He reeled and fell into a low space like a shallow grave, the burrow from which his foe had just emerged.

Legs splayed to straddle the pit, the scorpion tried to reach him with its unencumbered set of claws. With his shield immobilized and his sword all but useless in such close quarters, he dropped the blade, snatched the dagger from his belt, and met the groping claws with stabs. Each counterattack balked them, but only for a moment. Meanwhile, dirt spilled down the edges of the grave, blinding and choking him.

The scorpion grasped the shield with both pairs of pincers and tried to wrest it away. Adalric clung to the hand strap, switched back to his sword, and stabbed upward, shouting half in fury and half in terror with each thrust. His weapon jolted against the scorpion’s body. With the shield blocking his vision and dust blurring it, he couldn’t tell if any of his strokes penetrated the creature’s shell.

A piece of the shield crumbled in the arachnid’s grip, exposing more of Adalric to its attacks. He struck across his body at the pincers that now sought to close on his shoulder. They jerked back, but then the arachnid’s sting whipped down, pierced the shield, and stopped a finger length above his chest. It yanked free and struck again. The repeated blows clattered like hail on a roof and were steadily smashing the armor to pieces.

Though still fighting as fiercely as before, Adalric braced for the death stroke that was likely imminent. Then pincers and sting lifted away, and, legs skittering around the hole in which he lay, the scorpion changed its facing. Something, probably the sentry rushing to his aid, had distracted it.

Adalric gathered himself to take advantage, and then a smaller but still unnaturally large scorpion, likely the one that had been poisoning the cistern, hopped down by Adalric’s feet and seized one of his ankles in its claws. The pressure hurt. If not for the reinforced leather of his boot, it would surely have cut flesh and broken bone.

Adalric drew up his other foot and stamped. His heel slammed home just above the gnashing mouthparts and in the center of the four sets of black little eyes. Shell crunched, and though even in death, the creature still gripped him, the pressure abated.

He’d have to settle for that. He scrambled to his knees and thrust his sword at the remaining arachnid’s underside. The blade drove into the seam between two pieces of shell. The scorpion froze for an instant, then scuttled backward away from the pit, nearly jerking the hilt from his hand.

He hoped he’d hurt the creature badly. Grinning, he scrambled out of the burrow before the scorpion could straddle it anew, and his momentary elation turned to rage. A decapitated body sprawled on the ground, gore pooled around the stump of the neck, while the scorpion held the severed head in one set of claws. The sentry had indeed succeeded in saving his captain’s life, but at the cost of his own.

Adalric realized the bugle was blaring. The remaining sentry was sounding it. Responding to the call, Tafurs charged out of the keep, then faltered when they beheld the scene before them.

“It’s wounded!” Adalric bellowed. “Flank it and kill it!” He ran at the scorpion, partly to encourage them, partly because he hated it. His strides shook the carcass of the smaller arachnid loose from his ankle.

The scorpion dropped the sentry’s head. Its pincers snatched and, not trusting the scant remains of his shield to block the attack, Adalric dodged. The claws clacked shut on empty air, and he cut at the place where they swelled from the limb behind them. The sword didn’t shear them off entirely, but when he drew it back, they dangled uselessly.

A moment later, Faramund lunged, chopped with his battle-axe, and maimed one of the scorpion’s legs. Another man rammed a spear into its side.

We’re killing it, Adalric thought. Then something clanked on his helmet and knocked it askew. It wasn’t the scorpion. Its sting and remaining set of claws were busy assailing other foes. He cast about; arrows were whistling down from overhead.

The Turkish bowmen could arc shafts over the fortress walls. But how did they know to loose at this particular time and at this particular section of the courtyard?

Only newly risen from his sickbed, Pierre gasped as an arrow pierced into his shoulder. Other men cried out in consternation.

“The Turks are shooting blind!” Adalric shouted! “We’ll be all right, but we have to kill the scorpion!” He cut at the head and hacked off one of the mouthparts. An instant later, an arrow plunged down and punctured one of the rearmost eyes. The vermin flailed its claws.

“Kill it!” Faramund roared. He struck a second blow with his axe.

Heartened, other Tafurs resumed attacking, and after a few moments, the scorpion fell. The segmented tail was the last part to stop moving, flipping back and forth in diminishing arcs.

“Now get under cover!” Adalric cried.

Once inside the keep, he checked on everyone’s condition. Fearsome though it had been, the huge scorpion had only killed the sentry, while the shower of arrows had only found Pierre, who appeared likely to recover.

“We were lucky,” Faramund said.

Perhaps so. But Adalric didn’t feel lucky, and he wondered just how enormous the next freakish scorpion would be.

Ibrahim stared at nothing, presumably looking through the eyes of one of the vermin in the fortress. Zeki wondered if a man could simply walk up to the sorcerer and kill him while he was in his trance.

Then he glimpsed a tiny scorpion crawling on Ibrahim’s foot. Zeki suspected it was playing watchdog. That didn’t mean it could read a man’s thoughts, but he still felt a ridiculous impulse to somehow convey to it that he’d merely been speculating and didn’t intend its master any harm. Then the sorcerer turned in his direction.

“How did we do?” Zeki asked.

“Not as well as I expected,” Ibrahim replied. “We got some venom into the cistern, but the scorpions only killed a single Frank. The archers hit another, but in all likelihood, not fatally.”

“That’s not good enough! Especially when we’re running short of arrows.”

“I promise you, Captain, in the end, it will all work out. If we simply continue applying pressure, the enemy will inevitably break.”

“Go on, then. Work more magic.”

“Tomorrow night. After I renew my power.”

Zeki frowned. “We’re out of prisoners.”

Ibrahim waved at the street behind them. “Walk with me, young sir. There’s no need for simple soldiers to overhear deliberations that might distress them.”

“Keep watch,” Zeki told one of the sergeants. Then, with a pang of trepidation, he followed Ibrahim into the dark.

“Like every village,” the wanderer said, “this one surely has one or two troublemakers as well as old, sick people who live in constant misery. If they fly off to Paradise as martyrs, won’t everyone be better off?”

“You can’t be serious!”

“You and your men need not take an active part. I can gather the harvest myself.”

“That’s not the issue! You’re talking about slaughtering our own people!”

“Only a handful, and as you and I have already agreed, in war a soldier must occasionally commit a small wrong to achieve a greater good.”

Zeki hesitated. “Even if that were true, how can you be sure the new deaths would give you enough power?”

The hairs around Ibrahim’s mouth stirred. “To explain,” he said, “I must take you deeper into my confidence than I originally intended or than may be comfortable for you to hear. But if you insist?”

“Yes.”

“As you wish, then. You likely assumed I’m simply taking the lives I reap and burning them like wood in a fire. But the truth is more complicated. The lives are offerings to something strong and old – think of it as a jinn if you like – and as I continue ingratiating myself, it grows increasingly generous in its turn. Once it fully accepts me as its imam… excuse me, vizier, cleaning out your fortress will be child’s play. Why, together, you and I will raise the siege of Antioch.”

“You sound like a blasphemer and mad as well.”

“Because I believe the Old One would favor me to that extent? You doubt because you haven’t seen the signs.” Ibrahim brushed his mustache and beard to the sides of his face to reveal the wet, protruding mouthparts twitching beneath.

Zeki cried out and snatched for the hilt of his scimitar. Then something pinched his calf. He looked down, and a black scorpion, long and skinny like a needle, scuttled up his leg.

“Please don’t slap at it,” Ibrahim said. “Magic has increased the virulence of its venom twentyfold.”

Heeding the warning, Zeki simply stood and trembled. Even when the scorpion writhed inside his clothing.

“It won’t hurt you,” Ibrahim said, “as long as you don’t attempt to betray our holy cause. So I implore you to forbear. Let me win us our victory, save you from disgrace, and make you the hero you yearn to be.”

Adalric surveyed the men assembled before him in the hall. Sleep, a meal, and daylight had steadied them, but fear still lurked in many a haggard face and perhaps even the stink of their unwashed bodies.

“We now know,” Adalric began, “that our situation is more desperate than we first supposed. The Turks are using witchcraft against us. We have to decide what to do about it.”

“Keep a guard on the cistern,” Faramund said. “The larder, too. Kill the giant scorpions whenever they turn up.”

“That’s one option,” Adalric said. “But for all we know, the water supply is already unsafe. Even if it isn’t, it seems likely the sorcerer, whoever he is, will work magic against us night after night, with the curses growling steadily stronger and the scorpions ever huger. I doubt we could hold out for long.”

“We might not have to,” Faramund said. “Bohemond’s men could show up to raise the siege tomorrow.”

“Because of the love the prince bears for King Tafur’s followers?”

Faramund snorted. “Fair enough. There’s not much chance of it, is there? But do we have another choice?”

Stefan pushed to the fore of the assembly. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s time to think about surrender.”

Some of his fellow Germans snarled, “Fuck that!” and “Coward!” But only some. A moment later, after the suggestion was translated for the Frenchmen’s benefit, perhaps half expressed similar sentiments in their own language.

Stefan bore his comrades’ scorn without flinching. “I don’t like the notion, either,” he said, “but how long can ordinary men last against witchcraft?”

“The warlock works his magic at night,” Adalric said. “That’s when the scorpions grow and do his bidding. If we make a move before sunset, he may not be able to harm us.”

Stefan sneered. “‘May not.’ That’s not reassuring coming from someone who’s been wrong about everything up to now. You said we’d raid the village and get away before the patrol returned. We didn’t. You claimed we’d be safe in the fort. We aren’t. When the first big scorpion appeared, you told us it was a natural creature. Now you admit you were mistaken about that, too.”

“I do admit it,” Adalric said. “Since we came here, I’ve been wrong more than once. In my defense, I can only say that in war, nothing is certain, and that I don’t see how anyone could have predicted the Turks would use witchcraft against us. They never did before, even at the massacre outside Civetot.”

He took a breath. “But it doesn’t matter if I’m shrewd or stupid. It matters that we came on this journey vowing to do the work of God. We assumed that meant killing the Turks who prey on pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, but we’ve found a greater evil even than that. We’ve come face to face with Satan himself. We can’t surrender to him. We have to defy him with our last breath.”

Faramund smiled a crooked smile. “Yes,” he said, “if only because, if we serve ourselves up to a devil worshipper, he’s likely to do even worse than make us renounce Jesus and slice off our foreskins. Better to fall in battle than be tortured to death on Hell’s altar.”

The Tafurs muttered back and forth. Then they drew themselves up straighter, and one of the Frenchmen called, “We’re with you, Sir Knight!” Either Adalric’s words had swayed his followers or their innate grit and faith were buttressing their resolve.

Stefan grimaced. “So be it, then. But if we won’t surrender and can’t stay in the fort, what do we do?”

“The only thing left,” Adalric said. “Throw open the gate and try to break through the Turks. Some of us will die, but with God’s help, some may survive to carry warning of the warlock back to Bohemond.”

Some in this instance meaning one or two, and only if God was finally inclined to provide His ragtag soldiers with a miracle.

The Turkish soldiers surrounded the fortress in groups of three or four wherever cover could be found. Though it was unlikely an infidel archer shooting from the battlements could hit a vulnerable foeman at this distance, it was nonetheless prudent to deny them the opportunity.

Zeki prowled from one position to the next inspecting the arrangements. He was sure the sergeants checked periodically to correct any deficiencies and did so with a keener eye than his own. But he wanted a distraction from the creature nestled between his shoulder blades.

He suspected from the occasional twinges and constant itching that the scorpion had hooked tiny claws at the end of its legs into his skin. Perhaps his back was bleeding, but if so, the rectangular iron plates of his lamellar armor, the padding underneath, and the tunic under that would hide the blood, and anyway, no one could help him even if it were visible.

He just had to endure the discomfort and, worse, his gnawing dread of the creature’s sting as best he could. If he could only bear up, all would be well. The Franks would surrender or perish, Ibrahim would relieve him of his hideous minder, and in due course the world would hail him as a hero.

Except, he thought as entered another house that afforded a view of the stronghold, it wasn’t that simple.

Ibrahim stood revealed as a monster in service to a greater monster. How, then, could Zeki believe anything he said about his intentions regarding the war in general or his unwilling collaborator’s ultimate fate in particular?

He couldn’t, and even were it otherwise, how could he allow the sorcerer to murder innocent people to achieve his ends? It was his duty to protect them!

If he didn’t at least try, then what would it matter what his superiors or even his own family thought of him? Forever after, he’d know he truly was the incompetent weakling he’d always feared being, a cringing dupe who could be controlled by vermin riding him like a horse.

“Captain?” Murat asked.

Startled, Zeki jumped. “Yes?”

“You walked in,” the burly, black-bearded sergeant said, “and then you didn’t say anything. Is something wrong?”

“No,” Zeki replied, “I was just thinking. What’s your appraisal of our situation?”

“Well,” Murat said, “nothing has changed since last night when we loosed those volleys of arrows. Honestly, sir, I advise against any more blind shooting whatever your friend the scholar recommends. We don’t have enough—“

Without warning – or at least he prayed the scorpion didn’t sense his intent – Zeki threw himself backward and slammed his shoulders into the wall.

An instant later, he felt a stab. The scorpion was still alive. The padding under his armor had protected it.

He pounded it again, and it responded with more stings. Zeki was surely a dead man now. All that remained to him was to make sure his killer didn’t survive, either.

He bashed it, and it scuttled onto the top of his shoulder. Apparently the repeated impacts had alarmed it at last. It scraped the side of his neck as its pincers and head emerged from under his layers of armor and garment.

Screaming, he grabbed it, ripped it all the way out, and dashed it to the floor. Then he stamped on it repeatedly, reducing it to scraps and slime before realizing that Murat and the other soldiers were gaping at him in astonishment.

“That… was a big one,” the sergeant said.

“It’s killed me,” Zeki gasped. Then he realized that, although the stings were burning and throbbing, he didn’t feel consciousness slipping away.

“Let’s take a look,” Murat said. He helped Zeki remove his armor and tunic and then inspected his back. “They’re going to hurt, that’s certain. But they don’t look any worse than other scorpion stings.”

Zeki surprised himself by laughing. “The son of a dog didn’t really make the venom deadly. He thought me coward enough that the mere threat would paralyze me.”

“Who, sir? Your so-called sorcerer?”

“Yes. Ibrahim put the scorpion on me. How much do you understand about him?”

Murat hesitated. “Again, if I’m to speak honestly, I know you put great stock in him. But some of the men claim to sense evil hanging over the village since he arrived. I just thought he was a lunatic or a fraud.”

“I wish you had been right,” Zeki said. “You were right in thinking I never should have trusted him. But he truly does command magic, and not for the glory of Allah whatever he claims. If we don’t stop him, he’ll do terrible things with it.”

The sergeant frowned. “If he is what you say, can we stop him?”

“I hope so. He mostly casts his spells at night. That suggests he’s weaker during the day. Perhaps we can even catch him sleeping.”

Murat grunted. “That sounds sensible. Do we arrest or kill him?”

“Kill.”

“Yes, sir, and how many men do you judge that will take?” Murat smiled wryly. “We do still have a fort full of infidels to deal with.”

Zeki’s instinct was to lead his entire force against Ibrahim, but he did need to keep the Franks contained, and if he suggested otherwise, Murat would think he was crazy. He might believe it anyway, but if so, he was willing to humor his poor deluded captain if it meant disposing of a troublemaker whose presence undermined morale.

“If there are only a few of us,” Zeki said, “we can sneak up on him more easily. Let’s say four of the men, you, and me.”

“You, sir? You’ve just gotten hurt.”

“I can stand it. It’s my fault Ibrahim gained a foothold here and my responsibility to deal with him.” He swallowed away an excess of saliva, perhaps another manifestation of the venom in his system. “Help me put my armor back on.”

Despite the cloth underneath, the weight of the lamellae plates chafed his stings and made them hurt worse. He tried not to let it show as Murat gathered and instructed the soldiers who would accompany them.

In due course, they set forth, and people who spied them hurried indoors. Apparently Zeki and his companions had a grim cast to their expressions, or at any rate, something about their mien conveyed they’d embarked on an ugly business.

When Ibrahim’s temporary lodgings came into view, everything was quiet. Zeki blinked away a momentary blurriness, likely another symptom of his poisoning, and he and his men prowled up to the little house.

He took a breath and threw open the door. No one was in the front room, and he and his soldiers spread out to search the rest of them. Moments later, the man who’d entered the kitchen cried out, and everyone scrambled in his direction.

Ibrahim wasn’t there, but the widow who’d been taking care of him was. She lay facedown in a pool of blood with two ragged wounds in her back and her head torn halfway off. Scorpions swarmed over the corpse partaking of the feast their master had left him. A soldier turned away and vomited.

Zeki’s jaw tightened with an anger directed in equal parts at the sorcerer and himself. “I should have gotten here sooner.”

Murat frowned. “You couldn’t know this was going to happen.”

“I knew Ibrahim links his mind to the minds of his servants. I should have guessed that when I killed the scorpion, he’d understand I was about to lead men against him and seek to gather the power to withstand us.”

“While the sun’s still up?”

“Evidently he can invoke his jinn in the daylight if he has to. We need to find him before this gets any worse.”

They strode back outside. Zeki considered the village with its low, huddled buildings and narrow tangled streets. Ibrahim could be hiding anywhere. He could even have fled into the desert. Zeki tried to decide how best to direct a search, and then, to the south, someone screamed.

The soldiers ran toward the sound, and as they rounded a bend, two more corpses – a man's and a little girl’s, each ripped like the widow’s, appeared. Behind them the door of another house stood ajar revealing the gloom within. A smear of blood led up to it and over the threshold as though Ibrahim had dragged yet another victim inside.

If so, perhaps he’d intended that unfortunate for a lengthier, more formal sacrifice – a ritual more pleasing to the Old One, in which case, the villager might still be alive. “We have to get in there now,” Zeki said.

He led his squad toward the front door. They were a few paces away when a scorpion the size of a horse lunged forth to meet them.

Ibrahim had alluded to enlarging scorpions, but the words hadn’t prepared Zeki for anything like this. He froze for what would likely have been his final moment except that the arachnid with its splayed limbs and upraised sting had difficult negotiating the cramped confines of the doorway. As it thrashed its way into the open, he broke through his shock and came on guard.

He blocked a sweeping sting attack with his shield and riposted with a scimitar cut that fell short. Meanwhile, claws clacked and men cried out to either side. He realized there had been more scorpions lying in wait along the sides of the house. But he couldn’t spare so much as a glance for them or the soldiers they were assailing lest his own foe dispatch him in that instant.

A soldier rushed past him on the left and struck at the arachnid that had come through the door. Until then, Zeki hadn’t realized he had a partner in his portion of the battle. The looming terror of the scorpion itself had consumed every iota of his attention.

The soldier’s blade clashed on shell. The scorpion pivoted, bringing its pincers to bear. Zeki lunged and cut at the creature’s flank, at the spot where the stub of a head fused with the body.

The scimitar sliced deep but not deep enough. The scorpion still caught Zeki’s ally in both sets of claws. The pressure snipped him to pieces and dropped them thumping to the ground.

Screaming, Zeki struck a second time. The arachnid fell, a moment too late. Its tail whipped in spasms, wasting its venom on the dirt.

Zeki cast about for someone he could help.

The brown scorpion on his right crouched over a pair of corpses.

The yellow one on the left lashed its sting up and over, spiking it right through Murat’s helmet into the top of his head.

The sergeant whimpered. His eyes rolled up and his knees buckled, dumping him on top of the man the arachnid had slain previously.

Zeki couldn’t fight the two surviving scorpions alone. Panting, sweating profusely – fear, the venom afflicting him, or a synergy of the two – he backed up. Seemingly in no hurry, the giant vermin moved to flank him. Perhaps they meant to toy with their prey. Or, more likely, the shadow framed in the doorway was holding them back.

“It didn’t have to be like this,” Ibrahim said. Even speaking normally, his voice now hinted at the inhuman clicks and buzzes his sorcery required. “I truly would have made you a hero and rid our land of the infidels.”

Terror was supposed to dry a man’s mouth, but Zeki still needed to spit away more excess saliva before replying. “At what cost?”

“In your lifetime, relatively little. In a generation or two, the nature of your faith will change, and ultimately, strengthened by the devotion of multitudes, the Old One will return from exile.”

“All because of the help you provided? We don’t need it!”

“Possibly not, but someone, the Governor, the Sultan, or one of the Emirs, will want it and quickly come to depend on it. My influence can only grow from that point forward.”

“It will never happen. Your ambush killed the soldiers lying here, but I have fifty more.”

“Even if you could make it back to rally them, it wouldn’t matter. I explained that with every offering, my patron grows more generous, and even undertaken on the fly in the daylight, these last few proved remarkably efficacious. Let me show you.”

Ibrahim stepped farther into the doorway. He was indisputably a hunchback now. He’d discarded his kufeya, and his beard and, indeed, every hair on his misshapen head had fallen out. As a result, the wet, scissoring mouthparts, grown even more prominent, were entirely visible, as were the several pairs of round black eyes. Each set of bloody pincers was bigger than his skull.

Zeki flinched back a step.

“Now you understand what an ingrate you were.” Ibrahim waved the scorpions forward. “Kill him.”

The arachnids moved in. Zeki saw no way to evade both of them. He raised his scimitar.

Behind him, a door creaked open. “Here!” a bass voice called.

Zeki bolted for the house that offered survival. He lunged through the door, and a stout old villager with a mole at the corner of his mouth slammed it shut. The door clattered and jolted on its hinges as the scorpions struck at it. The tip of a claw punched through.

“Get out!” Zeki gasped. He dashed to the back of the house and swarmed out a window into an alley that was as yet mercifully free of pursuers.

If he kept ducking into houses to throw them off, he might just make it back to the troops surrounding the fortress after all.

Astride his roan stallion with the gate at his back, Adalric regarded his fellow Tafurs. The other five accomplished horsemen were likewise in the saddle. But most of the company were on foot, just as they’d tramped all the way from their homes in Christendom and as many if not all would die today.

“We’re ready,” he called. “When the gate opens, run. Don’t stop for anything unless you’re one of Faramund’s party. They have a special errand.” He turned to the rider on his left.

“Spying from the top of the keep,” Faramund said, “we spotted the paddock where the Turks are keeping their horses, and the shit-eating sons of bitches are cavalry to a man. If we interfere with their mounts, they may lose the will to chase us. Failing that, we might at least delay them long enough to give us a good head start. So my fellows and I will throw some spears, set a fire, chase the horses out of the pen, or something. Whatever looks feasible when we get there.”

“If anyone gets separated, Antioch is to the northwest.” Adalric pointed. “That way. May God be with us.” He took a fresh grip on the round shield he’d found in the citadel’s armory and nodded to the men charged with opening the gate.

They started to slide the bar back, and then voices clamored from outside. Some of the cries, he thought, were Turkish soldiers shouting orders although he failed to catch the gist. Others were people were wailing for help or wordless shrieks of terror.

The men opening the gate looked up at their commander to see if he would countermand his order. Faramund turned to him as well. “Did someone come to rescue us after all?”

“I don’t know,” Adalric replied.

He could dismount, ascend to the battlements, and look around in an effort to determine what has going on outside, but he begrudged the time it would take. His men were ready now. By the sound of it, the enemy was dismayed and distracted now. He shouldn’t let the moment slip away.

“We’re still going out!” he shouted. “But watch me when we do! If I change the plan, I’ll signal! Otherwise, do what I told you before!”

The men on the gate pulled it open as fast as its bulk would allow. Adalric kicked his stallion into motion. Shouting the names of Christ, the Virgin, and various saints, his fellow Tafurs rushed out behind him.

A few arrows flew at them. One whizzed through the space between Adalric’s horse’s neck and his own torso. But despite the cover of which they’d availed themselves, he could tell most of the Turks were turning away from the fortress. At least some were abandoning their positions and advancing into the village.

“They’re running away!” a Tafur cried.

“It’s a miracle!” another shouted.

It wasn’t. The Turks had turned to contend with an immediate threat. But that didn’t mean Adalric shouldn’t seize the opportunity that afforded. In all likelihood, it was another company of Crusaders attacking the Muslims, and if the Tafurs joined in, they and their allies could grind the enemy between them.

He brandished his lance over his head. He was about to sweep it forward to order a charge when a Turkish archer scrambled from behind a barricade constructed early in the siege and ran straight at his Tafur foes. He was more terrified of something at his back than he was of them.

An instant later, the something climbed over the barrier and scuttled in pursuit. It was a coppery scorpion with a thick body the size of one of the Tafurs’ now-abandoned wagons. Its pincers snapped shut on the archer’s head, and blood squirted out around the edges. The arachnid dropped the corpse with its pulverized skull and crouched over it with mouthparts gnashing.

Adalric’s stallion balked, and he would have reined it in if it hadn’t. His men likewise froze, their martial fire chilled like his own.

Faramund spurred up even with him. “The attackers aren’t Bohemond’s men!’ the man-at-arms declared, and Adalric resisted a mad impulse to laugh at the most unnecessary statement anyone had ever uttered. “The Turks’ witchcraft has turned against them!”

“Apparently so,” Adalric said, and then a little girl raced out into the open. No doubt she was running away from one enlarged scorpion, and when she discovered her flight had brought her into proximity with another, she froze. Abandoning the body of the man it had just killed, the boxy arachnid pivoted in her direction.

Adalric had to spur his horse three times, but then it charged. As the scorpion neared the little girl, he thrust his lance into its flank.

The creature wheeled in his direction. His steed danced backward in an effort to evade it, and he yanked the lance from the puncture it had made.

The scorpion’s sting whipped in a horizontal arc. He caught the stroke on his shield, but the bludgeoning force of it all but knocked him out of the saddle. As he struggled to recover his seat, pincers reached for him.

Faramund galloped in and plunged his lance into one of the round black eyes. An instant behind him, other Tafurs stabbed and swung their weapons. Someone managed a mortal blow, and the arachnid fell down thrashing.

Faramund turned to Adalric. “What were you thinking?”

Adalric hesitated because he wasn’t sure himself. During their time trapped in the fort, he’d come to hate the scorpions, but there was more to his fury than that. “She was a child.”

“We’ve seen scores of dead children since we set out and are apt to see plenty more. But anyway, you saved her. Now let’s get out of here and leave the scorpions and the Turks to one another.”

Feeling like a fool, Adalric said, “I don’t think we should.”

“What are you talking about? The Turks are the enemy! Muslims who resorted to witchcraft to try to kill us! Whatever befalls them now, they brought on themselves!”

“The soldiers, perhaps, but the scorpions are likely to kill the villagers, too.”

“Again, filthy Muslims! Our task is to fight for Christ!”

“If you’re fighting for our Lord, don’t you see the Devil in the scorpions? They’re more his servants more than any ordinary Turk could ever be!”

“Whatever they are, if you try to lead the men against them, they won’t follow. Not when they have the chance to escape with their lives.”

“If so, I won’t blame them.” Adalric turned toward the other Tafurs, many of whom had indeed hung back, staying clear of the most recent battle. “Brothers! Demons are killing women and children! I believe God intends us to put a stop to it! If you agree, help me! If you don’t, Faramund will lead you back into the desert!”

With that, Adalric trotted his horse toward the nearest street. After a moment, he glanced back. He was afraid to, fearful he’d see that no one at all had chosen to join him in his folly. But he needed to know what he had to work with.

The sight behind him made him weak with relief. Many Tafurs were fleeing, but a score were courageous or crazy enough to accompany him. Faramund cantered up to ride beside him.

“I thought,” Adalric said, “you were going to march the other half of the company to Antioch.”

“You pointed them in the right direction,” Faramund replied, “and I can’t have people saying you spat in Satan’s eye while I turned tail. Look there!”

As they negotiated a dogleg in the street, the scene ahead came into clearer view. Several Turks stood in a line shooting at another scorpion with a body the size of a cart, this one slate gray with a tail that switched from side to side. The front of the creature bristled with shafts that had seemingly done only superficial harm. A scissoring mouthpart snagged the fletched end of one such arrow and snapped it in two.

Adalric groped for the proper Turkish words. “Make way!”

Startled, the archers looked around. One drew, but the man next to him grabbed him, prevented him from loosing, and shoved him to the side. The rest of the Turks moved of their own volition, clearing a path up the center of the street.

Adalric spurred his steed into a gallop. Faramund and the other horsemen pounded after him. Presumably the Tafurs on foot were bringing up the rear.

The creature balked when it realized opponents were running at it. Perhaps, given the choice, it would even have fled, but if so, the same power that had grown it to monstrous size compelled it to stand fast. Pincers reached and, guiding his stallion with his knees, Adalric urged it to the right. The claws clashed shut off target.

His lance plunged into the spot where the arachnid’s stubby head emerged from its body, deep enough that it wouldn’t readily come out again. Hoping to recover it later, he let go and rode on down the creature’s flank.

Behind him, shrieks rang out, a man and horse screaming together. Adalric turned his stallion. The scorpion had grabbed a Tafur and his steed, thrown them to the ground, and was indiscriminately pinching both. The effect reminded Adalric of playing with clay as a child and pressing two lumps into one.

He drew his sword, rode forward, and cut at the arachnid’s rearmost leg. When he crippled that one, he moved on to the next.

The scorpion scuttled backward, maneuvering into a position from which its sting could threaten him. He caught the banging impact on his shield.

Then the giant faltered, shuddered, and flopped over on its side. Someone had slain it, or near enough. Several Tafurs kept hacking, hammering, and stabbing anyway.

Adalric pulled his lance out of the carcass and walked his horse back to the Turkish archers. “That – charging the scorpion – was brave,” said the man who’d kept his comrade from shooting. “I don’t know if I could have done it.”

Adalric grunted. “Thanks to you people, we’ve had some practice killing the things.”

The bowman spat. “Don’t blame us! Given a choice, we would never have tolerated a sorcerer. It was our captain!”

“Where is he now?”

The Turk waved his hand. “If he isn’t dead, somewhere in that direction. He was trying to lead the entire company against Ibrahim. He said that if we could kill him, the giant scorpions would lose their strength. But everything was confusion, the creatures attacking from every side, and we couldn’t stay together.”

“Stick with us.” Adalric turned to the Tafurs, a couple of whom were still doggedly assailing what was now manifestly a carcass. “Enough of that! Apparently, if we kill the warlock, this all stops! He was last seen in the southern part of the village, so that’s where we’re going! Form up!”

They pressed on. Bodies lay scattered about with scorpions, both the common sorts and big ones, feasting on them. Still, a number of the houses to either side were closed up tight, and Adalric hoped some of the villagers were still alive inside.

But if so, they surely couldn’t hide for long. Plainly, this Ibrahim’s sorcery had grown vastly more powerful, for the plenitude of oversized scorpions was staggering. It put Adalric in mind a dam bursting. If someone didn’t contain the flood of abominations, who knew how far it would spread?

Periodically, one or more of the arachnids attacked the Tafurs and their newfound allies. The Turks expended the last few arrows in their quivers on threats that appeared at a distance. Scrambling to envelop, the Crusaders fought the creatures that got in close. Conceivably grateful that their current adversaries were merely cat and dog-sized – not big as oxen or wagons – they did so ferociously.

Still, they faltered when they caught sight of the marketplace with the well in the center. Possessed of a black body and a sand-colored tail and limbs, the biggest scorpion yet had knocked down most of the stalls as it rampaged back and forth tearing people apart.

Now, though, it was restricting itself to a smaller area, the better to protect the even more hideous creature sheltering behind it from the Turkish soldiers struggling to get at him. Clad like a desert nomad in a striped sleeveless coat with a robe beneath, their target was a hunchback with enormous pincers in place of hands, a shifting, jutting puzzle of a mouth, and several pairs of round black eyes. Ibrahim, surely, so given over to magic that he’d come to resemble the vile servants he commanded.

Adalric hoped that if he and his men rushed onto the battlefield, they could swing around the scorpion before it had a chance to react. He spurred his horse onward, and the surviving members of his command streamed after him.

The giant creature shifted toward him, and he glimpsed his reflection in its eyes. It started forward, and some of the Turks who had engaged it scrambled to hold it back. Long as a sword, the scorpion’s sting flicked and stabbed one in the chest. As the Muslim staggered, venom swelled his body so the edges of his armor cut into his flesh. His bulging lips split lengthwise.

Adalric kept circling. Intent as he was on reaching Ibrahim, it took him several moments to distinguish a frantic voice from the general cacophony; realize it was calling to him, and then decipher the Turk’s imperfect French. The man was shouting, “Above you! Above you!”

Adalric looked up. A twin to the prodigious scorpion before him perched on a rooftop to his left. Just as he grasped what he was seeing, the creature hopped down among the Tafurs.

The jump smashed men beneath the scorpion’s double-clawed feet. Pincers snapped shut around the head of Adalric’s horse. The arachnid yanked the dead or dying stallion toward its mouth. Adalric kicked his feet out of the stirrups and threw himself clear.

He landed hard on his hands and knees. His hauberk rattled. He gasped in a breath and, planting the butt of his lance as if it were a staff, clambered to his feet. Meanwhile, the scorpion’s pincers snipped Pierre’s fighting arm off at the elbow. The Frenchman stared at the stump and spurting blood. He was still staring when the claws came back, clamped on his torso, and pulverized it.

Adalric charged. Even without the impetus of a running horse behind it, the lance punched deep into the scorpion’s body. Perhaps he’d found a thin spot in the shell. The arachnid wheeled in his direction, and Adalric retreated and drew his sword.

He never got a chance to use it. Pincers snapping, sting whipping, the scorpion attacked so relentlessly it was all he could to block with his shield and dodge. But while it was fixated on him, Faramund and others scored on it, and after several moments, the vermin fell convulsing.

Adalric pivoted and then cried out in elation. The Turks had killed the other scorpion, albeit at a heavy cost as the shredded bodies strewn before it attested.

Unprotected at last, Ibrahim still stood at the far end of the marketplace. Someone found a final arrow to loose, and it streaked at the sorcerer’s chest.

Ibrahim shifted one of his pairs of claws. The arrow struck the armored extremity and glanced away.

Then we’ll kill you with swords, Adalric thought, and as if that had prompted them, the Turks surged forward. Faramund and another mounted Tafur pounded past their leader. Adalric ran after them even though it was unlikely he’d get close enough to strike a blow before the sorcerer fell to the foes who would reach him first.

Ibrahim cried out in an inhuman rasp, and then his body expanded. For an instant, Adalric imagined he was witnessing some manner of witchy suicide and the attendant death throes, for his mind balked at the notion that any living thing could enlarge so violently without tearing itself apart.

But Ibrahim didn’t. Not when the lashing, lengthening tail and extra legs sprouting from his sides tore his garments to tatters; nor when, in a matter of moments, his body loomed as large as any of the houses surrounding the marketplace.

Entirely a scorpion now, with only the shape of the head hinting at the humanity he’d cast away, Ibrahim scuttled forward to kill the men who’d been rushing in to kill him. One pair of pincers snapped shut on two soldiers at once.

Faramund galloped past the claws, slashed at one of the colossal scorpion’s legs, ducked, and charged on underneath the body. Adalric judged it was a maneuver intended to flummox Ibrahim and keep him from striking back. But the transformed warlock scurried, spun around, and so put the man-at-arms within reach of his pincers. Ibrahim snatched rider and steed together, hoisted them into the air, and silenced their screams with a final squeeze.

The Turks quailed and, shouting, a young man who was apparently their commander ran forward to rally them. Short, skinny, and mild-looking, he was nothing like the mighty adversary Adalric had been imagining since the siege began. But something in his exhortations or simple willingness to stand in the forefront steadied his men.

Casting about, Adalric realized his own troops were in danger of breaking. He brandished his sword over his head. “We can kill it,” he bellowed, “just like we killed the others! Hit it when it’s looking elsewhere and defend when it turns in your direction!”

The Tafurs held and, insofar as their untrained desperation permitted, fought as Adalric had bade them, chopping at the scorpion’s legs as if they were felling trees. Their tactics might be prolonging the battle but weren’t accomplishing much more. Unfazed by any trivial hurts he might be suffering, Ibrahim reached again and again, claws cutting and pulping anyone he caught.

Perhaps the solution was to strike at a more vulnerable spot in the giant’s anatomy, but people were already swinging and jabbing at every portion within reach. Adalric ran to one of the houses bordering the marketplace, climbed onto the roof, and then discerned in the moments that had taken him, Ibrahim had scuttled farther away.

Adalric waved his sword and shouted the Turkish word for “captain.” The enemy commander looked up. “Push him back this way!”

The Turkish officer hesitated, but then he shouted, “Charge!” Scimitar extended, he ran at the titanic scorpion, and other men pounded after him.

Claws spread to punish their recklessness, but at the same time, reflexively perhaps, Ibrahim gave ground. His retreat carried him back toward Adalric’s perch, and the knight leaped.

He landed on the scorpion’s rounded back and immediately started to slip off. He twisted, threw himself down, and sat astride, his legs splayed by the creature’s bulk.

He then peered about to determine whether Ibrahim had noticed him. It appeared not. The monster arachnid was too busy killing the men on the ground.

Adalric had intended to make his way up the creature’s body to the head, but he now feared that if he tried, the violence of Ibrahim’s movements would buck him off. Praying that scorpions had vital, cleavable spines, he cut repeatedly.

Like his comrades attacking Ibrahim’s lower parts, he only inflicted shallow wounds. The arachnid’s natural armor was too hard and thick. Yet suddenly instinct screamed that he’d caused sufficient discomfort to draw his foe’s attention.

A glance assured him that Ibrahim’s pincers were incapable of reaching around to pluck a man from his back. He then looked behind him. The tail with its bulbous segments was swinging up, and he felt a surge of hope. Because scorpions sometimes stung themselves to death. Perhaps he could make that happen now!

Heart pounding, he waited until the sting plummeted at him. He dived forward, and shell crunched.

He’d expected his frantic evasion to toss him off Ibrahim’s back, but through luck more than agility, he stayed put. No doubt the scorpion would shake him off momentarily, when its death spasms began.

But they didn’t. His whole life, people had told Adalric scorpions could perish of their own venom, but evidently it wasn’t true. The sting whirled up for another stroke and, feeling defeated, cheated, he half wanted to let it pierce him and be done.

Then he noticed the ragged breach in the shell and the puncture beneath. Effectively poisoned or not, the wound was more severe than the petty cracking and chipping his own attacks had produced.

He wrenched himself around, scrambled forward, and managed to stay atop the scorpion yet again. He thrust his sword into Ibrahim’s wound and yanked it out. He wondered how many more times he could do so before the sting found him.

He stabbed three times in all. Then the scorpion’s back heaved and flung him into space. He slammed down with all his weight on one twisted foot. His ankle snapped, and he pitched forward onto the ground.

He rolled onto his back. To his amazement, Ibrahim was toppling. It seemed such a glory that he almost didn’t care if the creature crashed down on him. As appeared likely, for there was no time for a lame man to struggle to rise and hobble out of the way.

But he didn’t have to. The scorpion’s body thudded down behind him, and he lay safe amid the feebly kicking legs.

Zeki surveyed the surviving soldiers. There were more Turks left than Franks, and their superiority with regard to gear and deportment was apparent. Perhaps he could take the infidels prisoner or kill them. Arguably, it was his duty. But he doubted anyone had the stomach for such a confrontation, least of all himself.

The stings on his back throbbing, he walked over to the Franks’ leader. Though younger than expected, the knight was broad-shouldered, brawny, and capable-looking, the sort of officer who had often inspired Zeki’s envy. But he didn’t feel that way now. Perhaps he was too tired or numbed by the terrors he’d endured.

A man who knew about setting bones had wrapped the Christian’s ankle, and someone else had brought him a stool to sit on. Judging from his glower, those kindnesses hadn’t filled the knight with gratitude. “One of your archers told me,” he said in broken Turkish, “that you unleashed the sorcerer and brought all this down on our heads.”

Zeki resisted the urge to look away from the other commander’s flinty gaze. “I believed Ibrahim’s magic was a weapon like any other. When I understood otherwise, I tried to make amends.”

The Christian’s expression softened. Now he simply looked as exhausted as Zeki felt. “I suppose you did at that. What happens now?”

“Obviously, I can’t let you to strip the village of food. But we can have a truce. You and your men can go away.”

“Under the circumstances, that will do.” The infidel snorted. “It will be strange to go back to the war as if this nightmare never happened.”

“Well, we needn’t forget quite yet. Sup with us tonight and depart tomorrow.”