Crypt of the Moaning Diamond

by Rosemary Jones

  “Once inside the walls,” repeated the Pearl in her deep voice, “we can make some equitable arrangement with all concerned. After all, we were not the fools who let Fottergrim dance his army through an open gate, all the way to Tsurlagol’s main square.”

  Ivy suspected that the fools who had let Fottergrim into the city were long dead. That was the problem with thick walls and high towers: people forgot that such defenses were only as strong as an underpaid gatekeeper’s resistance to bribery. Unfortunately, Fottergrim’s troops were all that was left of the Black Horde. Having avoided the debacle at Waterdeep, they’d been moving steadily north for the last ten years. Years of constant attacks had made them extremely suspicious of strangers and fanatically loyal to the big orc who had kept them from being slaughtered.

  In their first attempt at breaking the siege, Ivy and Mumchance had disguised themselves as a Gray Forest goblin and orc, as these creatures had been flocking to Fottergrim’s banner since the orc commander had arrived back in the North.

  “Won’t they notice that I am barely the height of a goblin?” the dwarf had asked her.

  “And I am no orc,” Ivy admitted. She was a tall, hard-muscled woman, but still. The orcs were huge. Ivy had added padding and oversized armor until she could barely bend her knees and elbows. “I’m hoping that when they look down from the wall to identify us, the perspective will confuse them.”

  The dwarf merely grunted in reply.

  “Also, I am counting on bribery,” she added.

  But they had been driven back by a hail of arrows before they could even start jingling coins at Fottergrim’s sentries. The next morning, at her first meeting with the Thultyrl, Ivy recommended undermining the walls as the most the logical way to enter the city. As she told the rest of the Siegebreakers that night, a rain of arrows tended to make her cranky, and there was no point letting the Thultyrl know that one of their favorite tricks had already failed.

  So far, the Thultyrl of Procampur had agreed with her suggestion, but now he seemed inclined to argue.

  “You have been digging for how many days?” said the Thultyrl, startling Ivy with the swift change of his attention from the Pearl to her.

  “Only two days, sire,” she answered, trying to meet his gaze calmly. “And I need three more days at least. We had to start the tunnel well back from the walls, behind some scrub trees, to avoid Fottergrim’s sentries spotting us.”

  “But you are still aiming for that corner?” Without looking down, the Thultyrl tapped the map in the exact spot where Ivy had pointed. She wished she knew how he did that trick. It was impressive, she had to admit.

  “Yes, sire,” said Ivy, risking a quick peek at the map to make sure that she had not suddenly chosen a new corner of Tsurlagol’s walls before tapping that section herself. “The walls are always weakest where there is a turn, especially in this case. It is better than trying to go under a straight section or one of the gates. Besides, it is the southwest corner, and Fottergrim keeps his strongest watch on the eastern wall. He expects you to come up the harbor road.”

  “Of course,” said the Thultyrl. “Just as we would like him to come charging straight down that road.” Procampur’s navy had sailed into the harbor at the beginning of the summer siege. Fottergrim had no sailors in his horde and had retreated quickly up the harbor road, shutting himself safely behind Tsurlagol’s high walls and well-fortified gates.

  Another officer entered the chamber, led by a member of the Forty. The gray-bearded man carried the Thultyrl’s ivory chit in one hand. He was short and heavy, and his armor gleamed more brightly than Sanval’s breastplate. He also had the distinctive bowed legs of a horseman. The man bowed and handed his chit to Beriall. Ivy almost missed the Thultyrl’s next question, so distracted was she by the entry of what was obviously a very senior officer of Procampur. “Can you dig faster?”

  “We might be able to reach that corner faster, but we still need adequate time to prepare the wall,” said Ivy, concentrating on the Thultyrl and ignoring the officer so obviously impatient to be noticed by his ruler. “Making walls fall down is easy, sire. Making them fall down where and when you want is a little harder. Myself, I prefer not to be standing directly underneath when the walls start to fall.”

  The Thultyrl smiled. “We understand your point of view,” he said. “But we need you to excavate more rapidly. In two days time, Enguerrand will begin the charge that he has been so eager to lead.”

  The graybeard bowed at the mention of his name. “Sire,” he said, “I promise you that our assault will free the city.”

  “And you are certain that Archlis is gone again?” asked the Pearl.

  Enguerrand nodded. “He’s not been seen since yesterday.”

  “So,” said the Thultyrl to Ivy, “you understand the need for haste.” It was a statement and it was obvious that the Thultyrl was not going to listen to any arguments. “Archlis only disappears for four or five days at the most. We cannot be certain of even that amount of time. We need to strike while he is off the walls.”

  Ivy could sympathize with the Thultyrl’s desire to rush the walls when the wizard Archlis was gone. According to camp gossip, Fottergrim’s personal spellcaster had engineered most of the orc’s recent victories, including the successful occupation of Tsurlagol. Most annoyingly for the Procampur troops, Archlis was an expert at throwing fireballs and appeared to own a nearly inexhaustible supply of fire spells.

  Unless Archlis was standing on the section that collapsed, and Ivy rather doubted that they would get that lucky, his fireballs would still be a formidable problem. Luckily the wizard had a tendency to disappear for several days at a time. In fact, that was how they’d learned his name, by hearing Fottergrim screaming for him to come up on the walls and attack Procampur’s troops.

  She stared at the map and considered the route of Enguerrand’s charge. North and south was where the hill was steepest, and it was clearly marked so on the Thultyrl’s map. East was the well-watched harbor road.

  “The west is the only approach,” said the Thultyrl. Keen-eyed as a griffin, the Thultyrl had spotted what she had seen: the faint dotted line that marked an old route leading to Tsurlagol’s west gate. “There’s a good road leading north from Procampur, well west of Tsurlagol and out of range of Fottergrim’s patrols. We will move our people, south out of the camp, angling toward the road, then turn and come north fast.”

  “And turn again and come at the wall at sundown, when any sentry looking west might be dazzled by the sun.” Ivy knew that trick. “And mercenaries, with their stinking camels, roaring up the harbor road to distract Fottergrim and split his strength.” Old tricks and half-forgotten tactics—the kind of information that a Thultyrl’s scholars might find in the histories of war and ancient maps tucked in the baskets with the legal scrolls. But they were clever tricks and it took a clever man to think of them—a man who went hunting deer on the western side of the city just to see if the ground matched what his maps had shown. No wonder the Thultryl had been so furious to be surprised on his hunt by mountain orcs and so intent on riding them all down before they got to Fottergrim.

  “I walked the length of the western wall,” said Ivy, “the day my company came here and two nights ago. There is a gate there.”

  “We know,” said Enguerrand. “It is on the map.”

  “The map doesn’t show the size,” said Ivy, looking at him with pity. “It’s a nightsoil gate. One horse wide, and barely that. If you breach it, you still need to go in one by one. A big orc with a large axe could hold that gate forever. He will just pile your dead in the doorway.”

  “Then we will use ladders to scale the walls,” said Enguerrand.

  Ivy shook her head. “There are old holdings on the top of that wall.” Seeing everyone but the Thultyrl and the Pearl giving her puzzled stares, she sketched in the air the shape of the wooden-roofed balconies that overhung the western wall. “There will be arrow slits in the floors,” she explained. “They shoot
straight down on your ladders. It will be bloody fighting to climb over that wall.”

  “Then what do you suggest, lady?” asked the Thultyrl, who obviously had considered this drawback. His face was too calm in Ivy’s judgment for this setback to be a surprise.

  “Burn the holdings if you can.”

  “Fire arrows,” suggested the Pearl.

  “No spells?” asked the Thultyrl. The Pearl shook her head and spread her hands wide, displaying them as empty. Ivy wondered why so powerful a mage (by reputation if not demonstration) could not throw a little fire here and there. Certainly Archlis had been almost careless with his power over the past few weeks.

  “They may have thought of that and laid some protection into the wood. Then again, they are orcs, never the cleverest at defensive warfare,” advised Ivy. “But expect to lose half your force right there. The holdings may burn, but the wall is stone, and it will hold. Also, such a fire will bring everyone running from the other towers. Best to follow the plan we gave you: wait for the wall to fall down and make your charge into Tsurlagol across the fallen broken bodies of your enemies.” It was a stirring speech, and with luck none of the Procampans would recognize that the last few words came straight from the chorus of one of her mother’s favorite ballads.

  “Then bring that wall down,” said the Thultyrl, sitting straighter and wincing as the movement pulled on his unhealed wound. “At sunset, in two days time. We have decided.”

  The Thultyrl has decided. The Thultyrl has decided. The refrain echoed through Ivy’s head as she marched back down the hill, trailed by a silent Sanval.

  “The Thultyrl may have decided,” said Ivy, “but we’re the ones who have to dig! Can’t be done. Not that fast. Not safely. But maybe. If Gunderal can speed up the underground water. Mumchance would know. There might be old tunnels on that side. We could use those. If Zuzzara ever finds them. Can’t be done. Could be done. The Thultyrl has decided! Oh, blast!”

  She was arguing with herself because Sanval was not saying a word. In fact, he seemed stunned into even deeper silence than before. He had stayed completely rigid in his burnished armor the whole time they had been in the Thultyrl’s tent. Then the Thultyrl had addressed him directly.

  “We regret,” the Thultyrl had said to him, “that we must refuse your request to rejoin Enguerrand’s regiment. We need your services as assigned for two more days. To bring us word, you understand, of the success or failure of this lady’s work.” The Thultyrl nodded at Ivy.

  Sanval had bowed, very deeply, to his ruler. Ivy thought that she had heard him sigh, but it had been a very, very soft sigh.

  But it was the Pearl who apparently had mystified Sanval. She waited until they had left the Thultyrl’s presence and then stopped them.

  “You will find your glory easier underground than in Enguerrand’s company,” the Pearl said to Sanval. “If you remember who you are and forget your vanity.” Sanval stared at the white-haired woman and did not seem to know what to say to her.

  The Pearl turned to Ivy next. She picked up one of Ivy’s gauntlets. The armored glove had slipped from where Ivy had tucked it into her belt and had fallen to the ground. The Pearl handed the gauntlet back to her, fingering the little silver token sewn onto the leather cuff. The token felt surprisingly warm to Ivy when she slid the glove back under her belt.

  “You need no prophecy from me. You have always known your way and are wise enough to trust your luck. Continue to believe in your luck when you make your plans,” said the Hamayarch of Procampur. Then the Pearl glanced down and smiled faintly. “But I would suggest that you clean your boots.” The Pearl rustled back inside the silk-draped pavilion.

  Now, marching down the hill, Ivy muttered to herself, which meant she was loud enough for only Sanval to hear clearly. “If she can see the future, I wouldn’t mind knowing it. I can take a prophecy as well as the next woman. It’s not like my mother or my father wasn’t always meddling in some great magic. There were long prophecies, short prophecies, incredibly cryptic prophecies all naming one or the other at some time. But do I get some prediction of glory? Of course not! The woman just tells me to clean my boots. What is wrong with my boots?”

  “They have camel dung on them,” said Sanval from behind her. “On the back.”

  Ivy ground to a halt. She pulled up one foot and twisted it to look at the back of her boot. She put her foot down slowly. She pulled up the other leg and looked at the back of that boot. Both of them were liberally splashed with dung. She had walked through the Thultyrl’s silk-lined, wool-carpeted, incense-scented pavilion with dung-mired boots. Even for her, that was a bit much. No wonder Beriall had been sniffing so loudly today.

  “I would have told you,” said Sanval, “but you kept singing that song.”

  Ivy thought about hitting him. But they were still in the Procampur section of the camp, and somebody was sure to make a fuss if she knocked down a Procampur officer and ground his face in the dust.

  “Come on,” she said. “I need to tell the others that they have two days to do a tenday job. The Thultyrl has decided.”

  But even as she hurried toward the tunnel, she wondered if she could make good on her promise. No matter how fast the Siegebreakers dug, she was not at all sure that they could bring down the wall in time to save the Thultyrl’s troops from disaster.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Once Ivy arrived at the site of the tunnel, she considered that meeting the Thultryl’s deadline might be easier if anyone were actually digging. Instead, the Siegebreakers were resting in the shade of a small grove of trees. Out of the corner of her eye, Ivy caught a glimpse of a slight disturbance on Sanval’s handsome features before his face smoothed into its usual stoic expression.

  “So what do you think is wrong?” huffed Ivy at Sanval, because it was easier to be mad at him than start yelling at her friends.

  “Pardon?” said Sanval, startled enough to turn his head so she could see his face clearly under the brim of his shining helmet.

  “You disapprove of something. I’m an excellent judge of those non-expressions of yours,” Ivy replied.

  “Really?” His tone was as even and bland as his face.

  “Quarter turn down of the left corner of the lips: deep disapproval from Captain Sanval.”

  Sanval choked slightly at her retort, and the recently criticized left corner of his lips quirked up for moment. “They are not in armor,” he observed. “This far from camp, that is not well advised.”

  “They are digging a hole in the ground, which is a little hard to do in full kit,” said Ivy, ignoring the fact that she had been shouting only last night that they were too close to the walls to fully ignore all precautions. Of course, she never felt comfortable in a war camp without armor. Besides, her gear hid the stains on her shirt and breeches. Sanval was fully armored too, but then he seemed to live in halfplate (and live in it without sweating or feeling the weight, which was most unfair). Ivy suspected that even the shirt underneath the plate was gleaming white.

  Still, Sanval was right. So close to the walls, the Siegebreakers should not be lazing about in the shade like they were taking a break on the farm. There was a siege going on only half a field away—even though, like most sieges, it was more often than not an exercise in yelling insults at your opponents from a safe distance, out of range of their weapons and spells.

  Stripped down to her shirt sleeves and leather waistcoat, sitting on a rock with her legs dangling before her, Zuzzara appeared to have no cares at all. At her feet, the wizard Gunderal was lying on her back, watching the clouds float by, weaving strands of water between her pale fingertips. She was lazily nodding along to Zuzzara’s reading of a letter that had arrived yesterday with the latest shipment of supplies from Procampur.

  Ivy stared at the two women, hoping they would see her wink her right eye toward the Procampur officer standing politely and silently beside her. Gunderal gave her a languid little wave.

  Zuzzara was squinting too closely
at the parchment to notice Ivy’s approach. “Mimeri says that the sundial and the water clock no longer agree.”

  “Then Mimeri needs to shift the sundial,” said the dwarf Mumchance. At least he was wearing his helmet and chain mail vest. But, Ivy knew, that was only half-armored for the old dwarf—his big war axe, his full plate, and other more vicious weapons were currently buried under a pile of panting dogs back at the camp. “I told Mimeri to adjust the clock as soon as the solstice had passed. What about the shingles for the barn roof?”

  “I think we have more pressing concerns right now,” said Ivy, sidestepping around Zuzzara’s shovel, carelessly propped against a large rock. Sanval sidestepped right with her, saying nothing. She smiled, a friendly showing of teeth directly at the others, in the hope that they would get the message.

  With a vague smile back at Ivy, Zuzzara continued to puzzle over Mimeri’s cramped scrawl. “She says that the carpenter will bring the shingles when we have the payment,” Zuzzara said.

  “You’d think that man would give us credit by now,” Mumchance grumbled. Ivy tried a gentle cough to attract his attention, but the dwarf ignored her and Sanval. “We have replaced that roof often enough.”

  “Only twice,” murmured Gunderal. “And this time was not my fault.” The wizard rolled over on her stomach with a swish of silken skirts and caused a tiny rain cloud to shower on a nearby weed with a waggle of her right hand.

  “Never said that it was your fault,” Mumchance stated. “But it is a good thing that we have got this payment coming.”

  “Not if the walls of Tsurlagol are still standing,” interrupted Ivy very loudly. Enough of winks, smiles, and discreet coughs. Subtlety around her friends rarely worked. Very aware of Sanval watching the whole group over her shoulder, Ivy continued, “Are we not supposed to be digging a tunnel today? Mumchance, I’m surprised at you. Where’s that fabled dwarf work ethic?”