“Something came down here and pried the gold teeth out of the jaws,” he speculated as he held the skull out of Wiggles’s whining reach. “This area has been pretty well looted. There’s no treasure left down here. Just ash and bones.”
Kid made a little grunt in agreement as he brushed away the ash covering a headless and armless skeleton. Unlike the other bones scattered nearby, this skeleton glowed an odd phosphorescent green.
“Blast,” said Ivy, catching sight of the shimmering green light surrounding the bones. “Kid, I told you to leave that stuff alone.”
The odd skeleton moved, a very slow tentative movement, wiggling through the ash like a worm. Kid skipped neatly out of its way, not particularly frightened but not fool enough to let the skeleton touch him.
“What is it?” asked an amazed Sanval. In Procampur, bones did not go crawling around on their own.
“Skeleton warrior or what is left of one.” Gunderal sniffed. “Badly made too. It should have a head, hands, and weapons.” The thing staggered upright and wobbled on unsteady feet toward them. The Siegebreakers circled out of its way. It tottered after Kid, as if it were playing some grotesque child’s game of hide-and-tag.
Wiggles spotted the moving skeleton and with a joyous bark started chasing after it. The little white dog wove in and around the skeleton’s ankles with little yips, obviously regarding the whole thing as one giant snack. She rose up on her hind legs, dancing like a beggar before the green glowing bones.
“Oh blast,” said Ivy seeing Mumchance’s frown at Wiggles’s actions.
Mumchance whistled one high sharp note. With drooping tail, the dog came back to his side. “It’s your fault, Ivy, that she chases after such things,” scolded the dwarf.
Ivy had taught Wiggles to catch bones when she threw them to her. “Well, she started doing that little dance for bones all on her own,” Ivy said, defending her earlier actions to Mumchance.
“She did not. You encouraged her to do that. And it’s just not dignified!”
Ivy considered that any dog bearing the unfortunate moniker of “Wiggles” already lacked dignity, but she knew better than to say it out loud. Instead, to soothe the dwarf’s feelings, she asked him if he thought the skeleton warrior could be of any use to them.
“Lead us out of here, you mean? No, those things are brainless, and this one is more so than most,” observed Mumchance as he circled left to avoid the headless skeleton. “Somebody looted whatever armor and weapons these poor sods had. They just left the bones behind because they’re worthless.” The skeleton seemed to sense that Mumchance was talking about it, because it began its mad lurch toward the dwarf.
“Let’s leave before it bumps into anyone. It looks a bit moldy under that glow,” said Gunderal, pulling her skirts close with one hand to avoid any contact with the thing. “Or before it kicks up more dust!”
“Shouldn’t we kill it?” asked Sanval, still eyeing the lurching green bones with an uneasy look.
“Gunderal can knock it over with a spell,” declared Zuzzara. “Go on, show him.”
“It’s a waste of magic,” answered the wizard with a small frown of her pink lips. “Why should I do anything to it?” The skeleton was now reeling back and forth, obviously both attracted and distracted by the sound of their voices.
“It is harmless,” agreed Ivy. “And it is already dead.”
“I think we need to go east,” said Mumchance, still walking in circles to avoid the skeleton. The dwarf ducked around the columns.
“Hey,” yelled Ivy, “don’t leave us in the dark.”
Mumchance popped around the column that Gunderal had marked earlier, holding his lantern above his head to cast the widest possible circle of light. “Kid was right. Several ways out of here. I think we have gone west of the city, so we need to find a tunnel leading east.”
“And that will lead us under the walls and then out,” Ivy concurred. “Let’s start moving. Come on!”
But Gunderal and Zuzzara were paying no attention to Ivy. They were still arguing about Gunderal’s reluctance to cast a spell.
“I am not disanimating that skeleton,” said the wizard, with the suggestion of a pout starting to form on her lower lip.
“Why not?” Zuzzara wanted to know. The half-orc’s teeth were beginning to show under her upper lip—a sure sign of annoyance.
“Just because I don’t feel like doing it,” Gunderal replied. The headless skeleton started its weaving wander toward them.
“You always put down bones when you can. You have lost your magic!” The last was shrieked by the half-orc. The skeleton made an abrupt about-turn and lurched away from them.
“Don’t be foolish! I can’t lose my magic. I’m just tired, and my arm hurts, and you keep screaming at me!” Gunderal stamped her foot, raising up a cloud of ash. “Look what you made me do. It will take me forever to clean these skirts.”
“You’re still in pain. I told you that I should carry you out of those tunnels. You have exhausted yourself,” said Zuzzara, modulating her voice into something less than an orc shout but still loud enough to make everyone else in the room wince. The skeleton picked up speed away from the half-orc, lurching rapidly toward the nearest tunnel entrance. Ivy watched it go with a mild expression of envy. Once Zuzzara and Gunderal got to the screaming stage, it was difficult to shut their mouths with anything less than an avalanche.
“I’m not a child,” Gunderal answered back, her voice going higher, like a stubborn little girl. “Besides, that tunnel was so narrow, you could barely get yourself through it.”
“But you’re all white and dizzy.”
“Because I’m wasting breath arguing with you. Leave it be, Zuzzara, I’m fine. The arm just aches. I’m not going to die from a sprained arm.”
“So why can’t you do any spells? You can always do spells.”
“Not when I’m in pain and somebody is shouting in my ear!”
The skeleton was just a faint green glow, disappearing into the black tunnel.
“Shut up!” shouted Ivy, cutting across their words with a parade ground bellow. “They can hear you all the way back to the Thultyrl’s tent. Zuzzara, if Gunderal faints or even starts to faint, sling her over your shoulder. Until then, leave her be!”
“Sorry, Ivy,” muttered Zuzzara.
“Sorry, Ivy,” echoed Gunderal.
Ivy shook her head at them, a little startled that they had actually paid attention to her. They must both be feeling exceptionally bad. “You should be sorry. Disgraceful, Zuzzara spending so much time worrying about you, Gunderal. And Gunderal, you should stand up to her more. Just because you’re such a shrimp …”
Gunderal squealed an indignant reply. Zuzzara frowned at Ivy. “She’s not a shrimp. That’s not a nice thing to say, Ivy. She can’t help being short.”
“I am not short!” yelled Gunderal. “I’m just not oversized!”
“Yes, yes,” said Zuzzara, patting Gunderal on her head.
“Zuzzara!” Gunderal ducked out of reach of the half-orc’s friendly pats and checked her topknot with her good hand to make sure that it was still straight. Her hair had slid a little to the side. Gunderal pulled a small round silver mirror out of her pouch with a sigh. The mirror, unlike her potions, had survived the fall. She handed it to Zuzzara with a sharp command of “make yourself useful, hold this for me.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. The world could be ending and Gunderal would still be combing her curls or arguing with Zuzzara. “Never, ever, go campaigning with a pair of sisters,” Ivy said to Sanval. “Just because they are related, they will drive each other crazy as well as everyone else around them.”
“They are sisters?” He nodded toward them, his eyes wide. The half-orc, with her gray-streaked braids caught in iron beads, her sharp-toothed grin, and her large-boned frame, towered above the delicate Gunderal, with her fine features, rose petal skin, violet eyes, and a cloud of blue-black hair sliding out of its enameled pins and shell combs. Ivy could see why he had not
caught the family resemblance.
There were never two women more physically different than Gunderal and Zuzzara, and most of the mercenaries in the camp never even guessed that they were half-sisters—unless they came flirting after Gunderal only to meet the point of Zuzzara’s sword. Or picked a fight with the half-orc and suddenly found themselves entangled in one of Gunderal’s spells.
After a decade of living with them, Ivy sometimes forgot about the physical differences. It was something about the tone of their voices, the quickness in which they could dissolve each other into tears or laughter, or the way that they would both nag her simultaneously. She had a hard time seeing them as anything but sisters.
“How can they be so different and still be sisters?” Sanval asked.
Ivy shook her head at the Procampur’s stodginess.
“Same human father, very different mothers,” she said. “They each take after the maternal side of their family. Look, we don’t have time to discuss their family history, because it is extraordinarily complicated. Ask Mumchance some time; he knew their father.” To everyone else, she shouted, “Let’s get moving!”
“Ivy, I hear something,” Mumchance said. “Listen. Something is coming. From there.”
The dwarf pointed toward the far side of the huge hall in the direction they would have to travel. Ivy shifted her sword off her back, clipping the scabbard on to the side of her weapons belt, so it would be easier to draw. She saw that Sanval already had his blade out. It, of course, gleamed in the light of Mumchance’s lantern.
Kid pricked up his pointed little ears, swiveling them in the direction that Mumchance was pointing. “Feet. Many little feet.” Kid licked his lips with his purple tongue. “Many little scaly reptile feet running toward us.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Zuzzara pushed her sister behind her, then stood with her shovel raised over her head, obviously listening. She peered through the darkness in the direction that Kid had pointed out. “He’s right, Ivy,” she said. “Something is coming—something small and fast!”
Mumchance tapped the remaining hammer in his tool belt to be sure it was in easy reach, then lifted his lantern higher, to light the hall to its fullest extent. Ivy hissed to the dwarf, “Your sword, don’t forget your sword.” She did not have to remind Sanval or Kid about the importance of edged weapons. Sanval shifted to a position closer to the front, facing where Mumchance had pointed earlier. Two slender stilettos appeared in Kid’s hands. In a few moments, even the humans could hear the sounds of hard, scaled little feet pattering quickly toward them.
“Kobolds,” groaned Mumchance, a dwarf with far too many centuries of memories of the little lizardfolk that plagued the underground routes of the world. “Those rotten little pests.”
Kobolds burst through two entrances, attracted by the noise that Zuzzara and Gunderal had been making earlier. A few carried glowing green bones to light their way. Others were bearing flaming torches. Still more were heavily armed with pointed sticks, wooden clubs, and looted weapons. They flowed like a river through the cave—a tumbling, angry river of small, scaly brown creatures. From their horned heads and reptilian snouts to their nasty ratlike tails and long-clawed toes, they shook with the fury of their barking. The Siegebreakers could barely hear one another’s warning shouts over the racket.
Ivy realized that their ragged line formation was about to be overrun. She bellowed, “Tight in! Tight in! Form a knot!” Sanval and Zuzzara shifted closer to her, forming the classic square position taught by military tacticians from Tethyr to Narfell. The smaller members of the party gathered close behind them, to be better shielded from the onslaught. Of course, long shields were normally used in this tactic. Any shield would have helped, but none of them had bothered to carry campaign shields to a tunnel dig. Ivy saw Sanval shift his left arm to the classic shield lock position, grimace when he realized that he was presenting just his forearm and elbow armor to the kobolds, and then use that same armored elbow to deliver a devastating blow to a kobold’s vulnerable throat.
“Back-to-back?” asked Sanval. It was another classic, especially if fighters lacked shields.
“Too many,” said Zuzzara, her half-orc vision allowing her to quickly assess the size of the threat about to overrun them.
The kobolds swirled out toward the walls of the pillared great hall, then rushed inward, under and over one another. They wore ragged clothing and bits of stolen armor—armbands from humans now wrapped around kobold thighs, a human-sized elbow guard used as a knee guard—and they waved their spears above their heads. It was hard for human sight to separate them; they looked like one big scaly mass of prickly arms and knobby legs. Ivy found that when she swung her sword at the kobolds, she was apt to bring it down on a sudden gap between them and then lift it with several kobolds clinging to the blade. They flew upward from her raised thrust, flying over one another and slamming into Ivy’s head and shoulders on the way down.
Ivy stumbled and dropped to one knee. The kobolds swept over her in a ceiling of lizard underbellies, tattered shirts, and flashing red eyes. With a death grip on her sword’s hilt, Ivy pushed herself upright, jabbing with her elbows and kicking out with her boot heels. The kobolds scrabbled to cling to her. She reached out with her free hand and grabbed a kobold by his ragged collar, swung him around to gain momentum, then tossed him back against the others. That created a momentary gap in the mass of bodies and gave her room to settle into a fighting stance. Once she regained her balance, she pivoted rapidly, her sword circling in a wide arc. The flat of its blade smacked into scaly bodies, clearing her path.
Another mass of kobold fighters flew toward her. She beat them back with her sword.
Sanval fought as Ivy had expected he would—with the absolutely correct posture of a man who had been trained by the very best tutors and then practiced every day as they recommended. The swift strokes of his sword cleaved a clear path through the kobolds. Unlike Zuzzara, Mumchance, or—it must be admitted—herself, Sanval did not scream or yell or curse as the little scaly pests swarmed around them. He just moved in perfect time with Ivy’s attacks—backing up a step when she backed up, lunging forward with her when she lunged, his dagger in one hand, his sword in the other, in a perfect fighting stance. The kobolds tried to take advantage of his upright position, ducking beneath his weapons and wrapping their arms around his leather boots. They scratched and clung and tried to climb, curling their fingers around his belt to pull themselves up. He raised his arm, tapped his dagger on the top of his helmet to straighten it, then dropped into a lower position—all the better to hit vulnerable parts of the kobold anatomy with his shining sword and dagger.
The creatures parted before him, obviously intimidated by the fighter in brilliant armor. Sanval just smiled and dived after them. He seemed much happier now that he was confronting living things. He had lost the consternation evident during the earlier encounter with the glowing skeleton, but he did pause to say over his shoulder, very politely, “Is it acceptable to kill these creatures?”
“Not even their mother will miss them!” yelled Ivy, slicing a hand off a kobold that was making a grab for Sanval’s brightly polished elbow guard.
The beast fell down with a gurgle of blood gushing over its companions. The other kobolds seemed distracted, obviously trying to decide between looting their injured companion and attacking the warm-blooded humans before them. Two kobolds looked down at the easy prey at their feet and up again at the warrior woman with her sharp sword and stolen spear and the man in the impossibly bright armor. The half-orc was still bashing right and left with her shovel and getting nearer. The two kobolds looked at each other again and broke off from the fight, dragging their screaming former companion to a shadowy corner and snarling at anyone trying to take their prize from them.
With the kobolds distracted by the scuffle over the wounded member of their tribe, Ivy took advantage of the lull in the fight to glance over her shoulder.
Everyone was knee deep i
n the short reptilian fighters (except Mumchance, who was nose deep). Like Ivy, the dwarf turned in circles, to protect himself on all sides, keeping the metal lantern as high as possible to give the fighters the most light. He kept jerking his head from side to side to see out of his one good eye.
Zuzzara—a mountain in the sea of kobolds—beat down from her height, her neat braids and big gold earrings swinging around her head, her finely tailored leather waistcoat stretched tight. The shovel became a no-nonsense club in Zuzzara’s big hands, perfect for smacking heads, breaking spears in half, and sending kobolds flying.
But for every little brute that they knocked down, more appeared.
Ivy screamed at her friends to beat a strategic retreat up the nearest tunnel that was kobold free. “Knot hold, small fall back,” she shouted.
Mumchance, whose responsibility in such formations was to lead the rear retreat, yelled that he had a tunnel. It was a narrow hole, only two or three kobolds wide and barely tall enough for Zuzzara to stand without bending.
Zuzzara was the last to leave the hall. She stopped in the shallow cave in front of the opening and tried to make a door of herself, closing the entry to the kobolds with her width and her slamming shovel. The majority of kobolds, still hungry, tried to rush around Zuzzara to follow them. Zuzzara gave a shout when one of the creatures trying to circle around her attempted to ram its spear into her backside. The spear caught on the long tails of the half-orc’s leather waistcoat, proving Gunderal right in her argument that the style was not only fashionable but good protection too. Then Zuzzara swung around and brained the kobold with her shovel.
Ivy shoved little Gunderal in front of her as Sanval defended her back. The dainty wizard turned, obviously worried about her sister. Facing the pack of reptilian humanoids, Gunderal brought her uninjured hand up to her face and blew hard, making a high whistling noise. A blue light streaked across a startled kobold’s face, and a fine icicle suddenly appeared hanging off the end of its nose. But the creature took no harm from the spell, shaking off the ice and wading back into the attack. “Go on, go on. Zuzzara is doing fine,” Ivy shouted at the obviously dismayed wizard. “Keep up with Kid.”
Crypt of the Moaning Diamond Page 7
