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 agr
ee.”
“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 provision
s 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.
SNAFU: Unnatural Selection Page 21
