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!”