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.