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.