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.