"Oh, definitely better than the hogs," Gunderal agreed. The little wizard motioned Zuzzara to sit down and immediately began readjusting her sister's braids-a good sign that their latest spat was over.
"Hogs?" Sanval said, watching them with a puzzled frown. Ivy wasn't sure if he were confused by the reference to pork or still trying to figure out how the pair could be sisters.
"If we had had more time to work on the fuse and to pack those pigs correctly, we would never have had any problem," said Mumchance.
"What pigs?" said Sanval glancing at the dwarf. So it was definitely the pork that had aroused Sanval's curiosity. Ivy stifled a grin at this evidence of his humanity. Only dead men could keep silent around her friends, once they started one of their rambling tales; and, as she suddenly recalled, even that lich had not been able to resist joining in the conversation once. Oh, that had been a strange campaign!
As usual, each of the Siegebreakers began talking as fast as they could, trying to beat one another to the end of the pig story.
"Dead hogs, actually," said Mumchance and was immediately interrupted by Zuzzara.
"Very dead hogs," said the half-orc, who had complained unceasingly during that campaign that she had to carry most of the pigs.
"Absolutely rotten hogs. Bloating," added Gunderal, blowing her cheeks out to illustrate. Anyone else who did that would have looked hideous, but Gunderal just appeared even lovelier, if slightly fishlike, with her bloated cheeks.
Sanval looked baffled, and then enlightenment dawned. At that point, he looked mildly nauseated.
"Exactly," said Ivy with a chuckle, getting into the conversational game. "We packed a bunch of these dead hogs under a tower."
"The smell was awful," shuddered Gunderal, who had stayed as far away from the dead pigs as she could and kept a perfumed handkerchief over her nose whenever she could not maintain her distance.
"Then we lit a fire under them, dear sir," said Kid, who was wandering in and out of the group as he usually did, too restless to sit still for more than a moment.
"Nice long fuse, right into dry tinder packed under the hogs," said Mumchance. "Only it burned a little faster than we expected."
"And the tunnel that we were in was a disused part of the dungeons," explained Ivy. "Typical place. Scraps of this and that, stacks of dried-out bones from old prisoners, old spell books that the wizard who owned the place had tossed away."
"Everything caught on fire," said Gunderal. "And Wiggles did warn us, Ivy, when all that smoke started pouring up the tunnel toward us."
"The dog was a hero," said Ivy with a roll of her eyes.
"But the pigs? The dead hogs?" said Sanval. Ivy liked that about the officer from Procampur-he could stick to a point. Which is more than any of her friends could do.
"The hogs did exactly what they were supposed to do," said Ivy with a grin.
"The pigs went boom!" said Zuzzara, with a lot of satisfaction, flinging her hands up in the air and giving a very orclike chuckle.
"And the tower fell down," concluded Mumchance.
"Served that wizard right for trying to steal that land from those pig farmers," pronounced Ivy.
"An interesting method of destruction," Sanval said. "Why did you not try to do the same here?"
"Not enough hogs," sighed Mumchance. "What you've got, you eat. Pity. With a little refinement, more containment of the blast, it could be a very effective technique. But there is water here, so we decided to use that instead."
"At least three underground rivers in the area. I just joined them together to form one large river," explained Gunderal. "Then I sped up the current a little and persuaded that river to change course to run under the western wall. It won't last forever; eventually the rivers will split back into their true courses."
"But it should give us an enormous amount of water to wash out the foundations with. Better than pigs really," said Mumchance.
"If we are not in these tunnels when the river goes through," said Ivy and then wished she had kept her mouth shut.
"My dears," said Kid, whose wandering led him to poke his nose down another tunnel, "there is another buried building here."
"All burned out like the last one?" asked Ivy, pulling herself upright and walking over to the entrance.
"No, my dear," said Kid. "Just dusty and smelling of blood."
CHAPTER SIX
Mumchance swung his lantern around. The tunnel opened into a room from another long-buried level of the city. Everyone moved cautiously into the dark new space, listening for the sound of kobolds barking or the patter of little skeleton feet. But only silence filled the shadows. None of them feared a fight; but, as Ivy reminded them in her fierce whispers, each battle cost them time. They needed to find a way out so they could complete their mission and collapse the wall before Enguerrand's charge.
Although they only had Mumchance's lantern to light the gloom, the ceiling was low enough that they could see a delicate mosaic of shells and blue waves.
"How pretty," said Gunderal. She loved shell patterns and had painted similar waves all around her room at the farm. Then she coughed. "What is that smell?" A sharp metallic odor surrounded them like an evil fog. "It smells like a butcher's shop," she said. "Please tell me it is very old blood."
"Fresh blood," said Kid, his nostrils quivering. "I wonder what died here?"
There were no signs of fire, just the awful smell of blood, underlaid by a moist smell of moss and mire. Wiggles whined and then whimpered. Mumchance patted the little dog on the head, trying to quiet her, but finally scooped her out of his pocket and set her down on the tiled floor. Yipping high enough to make Ivy wonder if her ears would start bleeding, Wiggles raced away into the darkness, with Kid trotting quickly behind her.
"Come quick, come quick, my dears," cried Kid. "Here's a fresh kill."
"More kobolds?" grumbled Mumchance, swinging the lantern toward the sound of Kid's voice and Wiggles's barking.
"Bigger. Much bigger," said Kid, sounding pleased.
A freshly killed bugbear lay at Kid's feet. The bugbear's head had been chewed off, and one arm was missing. When it had walked upright and had had a head, it had been taller than Zuzzara. Scraps of black leather armor bound together with heavy chains decorated the bugbear's body, but its hairy legs were bare, and rope sandals covered the sole of each hairy foot. The stench rising from the corpse was nauseating.
"Look at that blood trail," Zuzzara said, pointing at a mixture of slime and blood that led into another dark tunnel entrance. "Something took the missing arm that way!"
"Well, they can keep it," said Ivy. "Let's see what else that he's got."
"It's a she, not a he," said Zuzzara, looking more closely at the curved leather breastplate and studded leather skirt.
"Well, whatever it is, it is dead," said Ivy, leaning down to search the body. She tried breathing through her mouth to lessen the impact of the mildewed smell. Ivy ran quick hands down the bugbear's bulky body, liberating a leather pouch tied to the creature's weapons belt. She opened it and saw with satisfaction that it held a number of cheap tallow candles, well wrapped against damp. "More lights," she said, and she tied the pouch to her own belt. She fished out a handful of candles, shoving them at Sanval.
"There's a torch under the body too," said Mumchance, pushing at the bugbear. "Here, Zuzzara, roll it over and let's get that." Zuzzara leaned down and flipped the bugbear over.
"You are looting the dead," said Sanval. He sounded troubled and a little disgusted, and was still holding the candles in one armored hand.
"Of course," said Ivy. "Stow those candles somewhere. If you get separated from us, you'll need them." Reluctantly, Sanval tucked the candles behind his breastplate, while Ivy questioned the half-orc. "Zuzzara, what have you got?"
"Torch dropped over here, and two more fastened to its back."
"Excellent. Any food?"
"Just a water bottle, and that's almost dry," said Mumchance.
"So t
he bugbear came down here from the city, do you think?"
"It came with others," said Kid. "There are more tracks here, back and forth: human or two-foot at least, my dears."
"Bugbears? Orcs? Humans?"
"They all wear boots," said Kid. "But big. No little feet like Gunderal."
"I am not little," squeaked Gunderal. "Ivy, somebody has been casting spells in here."
"Whatever killed the bugbear?"
"No." Gunderal sounded puzzled. "It feels more like light or fire. Not my sort of spell. Complicated, arcane, sort of a seeking spell."
Sanval looked doubtful. "Can she tell that?"
Ivy nodded. "It comes from her mother's side of the family. She's got a good sense for magic. When it has been used, how it has been used. She can usually tell if something has been warded or laid with magic traps, which is useful when you're sneaking into places that you don't know."
Gunderal sighed. "I can't tell you more than that, Ivy. But whatever it was, it happened not long ago. Not even a day. It is very strong, much stronger than that room that we just left. That was old magic. This is new."
"Wonderful," said Ivy. "That means that there is someone else down here." She passed out the candles and the torches, spreading the lights around so that Mumchance could wander off with his lantern and not leave the rest of them stranded in the dark. Zuzzara relit the bugbear's torch and held the light over the blood trail leading off toward the dark entrance of the tunnel.
"Funny marks in the dirt," she said.
"Footprints," speculated Kid. "Big four-foot with round, flat fleet."
"Hope whatever it was is off enjoying lunch," said Ivy, "and will take a little nap afterwards."
"Just so long as it doesn't wake up hungry for a snack," said Mumchance.
"Lovely thought! Anything else worth taking?" said Ivy, poking the bugbear's recumbent body with her toe.
"Nice rope," said Zuzzara, unwinding the coil of rope from the bugbear's shoulder.
"The weapons are trash," replied Mumchance with a dwarf's contempt for shoddy metalwork. "Worse than ours. The sword is blunt, and the knife has a notched blade. The scabbard's not bad-it's better work than the rest, gilt on leather and some nice stitching."
"Loot then, picked up here and there," said Ivy, knowing the signs. "Making do with what the others don't want. Fancy scabbard kept after someone else has taken the good blade."
"Fottergrim's raiders were so armored," said Sanval. "Carrion crows, picking what they can out of other's misery." Ivy wondered if he was still describing Fottergrim's troops or delivering a bit of a rebuke. She decided to take his comments as referring to the former.
"There might be more of Fottergrim's people in the ruins," he added.
"Must be more," answered Ivy. "A bugbear like this wouldn't come down on its own."
"Maybe they were countermining us," said Mumchance.
"Countermining?" asked Sanval.
"Digging under where they think we are digging," Ivy explained, "to collapse our tunnel. Except we did such a very good job of collapsing it ourselves and saved them the trouble. Mumchance, they are pretty far off the line if they were looking for our tunnel. And the bugbear doesn't have any shovel or pick."
"Maybe the others took the tools with them," suggested the dwarf.
"And left the weapons and the torches?"
"No, my dears, they did not stop to take anything. When this one was killed, the others kept their distance," said Kid, who was circling back and forth, peering at the tracks on the tiled floor. "They started forward, stamp, stamp, stamp, not running, just walking, but then they stopped very quick, shuffle, shuffle back and to the side. Two of the big ones tried to turn back again, but the other one, the one with man-sized feet, drove them away."
Silence fell on the group, as they realized what Kid meant.
"They moved out of range and let whatever it was chew on the poor bastard. Or their officer ordered them not to attempt a rescue," said Zuzzara, voicing all their thoughts. "Remind me not to fight for Fottergrim's pay, if that's the way that they treat their mercenaries."
"A wise decision," said Sanval with that little quirk of the lips that indicated he was amused.
"Especially since we're fighting for Procampur," emphasized Ivy with a quick kick at Zuzzara's ankles. She missed her target; Zuzzara could move fast when she chose.
"Why are they here then, Ivy?" said Gunderal to cover up her sister's mistake and Ivy's embarrassment.
"A little quick treasure hunting?" guessed Mumchance.
"In the middle of a siege?" said Ivy. "Well, it can be boring sitting on the walls waiting for someone to attack."
"Because of this," said Mumchance, who had moved from the bugbear's looted corpse. Before him gaped a black square. He swung the lantern forward to reveal an ancient city bath, with marvelous mosaic pictures covering the bottom of what was once a large pool.
With the use of Mumchance's lantern, they could make out footprints trailing through the dry and dust-filled bath. Kid jumped in the pool and began tracking the tracks, his nose almost brushing the floor.
"Here a big two-foot knelt," sang out Kid. "Here his four companions waited, jog, jog, jog from one foot to the other. They were impatient. Scared too, most certainly frightened. They kept turning to peer behind them. Why, my dears, why?"
"They heard a noise, or thought they heard one," speculated Ivy. "They were expecting an attack. Then they came out of there and were attacked."
"Five at the bottom of the pool?" asked Sanval.
"Oh, five, definitely five," said Kid. "Five walked down here, and five went out. But only four ran away from this room."
"Leaving one dead companion behind them," said Ivy. "They were right to be nervous. Something was hunting around here."
"Then why wait for someone to look at pictures in the bottom of a dried out pool?" asked Gunderal.
"There are armor scrapes against these tiles. From where the one with man-sized feet knelt," said Kid, peering even closer. "Here's a line a little ways back. Sword, scabbard maybe, brushed the dust behind him?"
"Officer then. They had to wait for him," said Ivy, sitting down cross-legged on the edge of the bath. When Kid went tracking, he could grow a bit obsessed. From past experience, she had learned to make herself comfortable until he was done. Sanval remained standing, straight as always, shifting slightly from one foot to the other. Ivy reached up with her fist curled and rapped his armored knee. "Rest now and stand at attention later," she said.
Sanval nodded and knelt on one knee beside her to watch Kid. Well, sometimes the man displayed sense, thought Ivy.
"Look at the picture, Ivy, that's a wizard in the center of that picture," said Gunderal. "Zuzzara, can you bring the light closer?"
Zuzzara nodded and jumped down into the bath. She swung her lit torch over the pattern that Gunderal had pointed out.
The dust had been carefully swept away from the center of the bath, displaying a series of mosaic pictures. The first picture showed a wizard, with runes woven in his azure cloak, standing before a tall tower with flames sprouting from it. More flames played along the walls behind the tower, and behind the walls a hint of rooftops, also engulfed in flames. Men and women ran along the tops of the walls, arms outstretched as if pleading with the wizard to save them. A great jewel, portrayed in tiny crystal tiles, glittered in the wizard's hand.
A trail of more runes, picked out in silver and gold tiles, circled away from the picture and led to a second one. The burning tower was leaning forward, and men fell from its crenellated top to lie on the ground before the wizard. Black lines zigzagged away from the wizard's feet and led to a final picture, which showed men carrying the supine wizard away on a bier, the gleaming gem resting on the center of his chest and portrayed as twice the size of any man's head.
"And down go the walls of Tsurlagol," said Ivy, waving a hand at the center picture. "Which siege do you suppose that was?"
"Long ago," guessed Gund
eral. "Look at the runes on his cloak."
"Two or three generations before they built this bath, and the tile work is old to begin with," guessed Mumchance. The dwarf dropped over the rim of the bath and stalked toward the picture to examine it more closely.
"What do you mean? Why two or three?" asked Sanval.
"Takes that long for humans to turn something horrible into art," said Mumchance with all the authority of a dwarf who had already celebrated his three hundredth birthday. "Mighty big shock for the folk like me-leave a town with all the humans swearing that they will never forget this or that, come back in ninety years, and it's all a fairy tale to those humans' grandchildren. Or a decoration for their city bath. Why if half the heroes in the world were as tall as their statues…"
"They'd all be giants," chorused Zuzzara and Gunderal. This was an old, old complaint of Mumchance, and they'd heard it almost as often as his tale of having to earn his first mining tools by shoveling away snow higher than his ears from the mountain entrances of his family's diggings.
"And dwarves don't do that?" asked Sanval, and Zuzzara and Gunderal groaned.
"You shouldn't encourage him," translated Ivy when Sanval glanced at the sisters. "Let's hope this is one of his shorter lectures."
"It takes dwarves longer to lie to themselves," admitted Mumchance, ignoring Ivy's comment. "And we don't do pretty just for pretty's sake. Well, not in pictures. Armor and jewelry-that's metalwork and another story. Elves, now, they have the longest memories. When they make a picture like this, it's to remind other folk, and they hate it when you question what's real and what's not. Everything is real to an elf."
"Some of them just have a finer sense of humor about it than others," added Ivy, who got along better with elves than the rest of the Siegebreakers. She appreciated their efforts to seek out her father in Ardeep when he disappeared during his last journey into the forest. It wasn't the elves' fault that he had not wanted to be found after her mother's death. Ivy suspected that he was probably one of the murmuring oaks shading the path there. He had always talked about the simplicity of life as a tree-trees, after all, did not have hearts that could break, or even crack a little.
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