Mumchance swung flat against the tunnel wall, letting Kid and Gunderal scamper past. A kobold snuck past him as well, and Sanval made as if to follow, but Ivy caught his arm. Kid would keep Gunderal safe. He kicked back with his hooves, catching the kobold smartly on its scaly snout and giving it a flowing bloody nose. Another kick caught the kobold lower down, right below the stomach, and the creature folded into a small ball of whimpers.
Mumchance knocked it into its fellows with a hard blow from his fist. Wiggles gave the creature a nip on the tail in passing and then bit the ankle of another kobold trying to sneak up on the dwarf.
“Good dog!” said Mumchance, pulling the remaining hammer from his belt and braining the kobold with it.
“Use your sword!” Ivy shouted at him. The dwarf always forgot his sword.
Mumchance shoved his hammer back in his broad belt and pulled out his sword, waving it wildly. A number of kobolds ended up with sliced ears and nicked toes. The dwarf delayed following Kid. He still carried the Siegebreakers’ only lantern, and he knew the humans needed him to light their exit from the tunnel.
Ivy whipped around, checking behind her and cutting off a kobold sliding along the tunnel wall. She rammed her sword through the belly of the scaly attacker and grabbed its spear with her other hand. She jabbed back with the spear, just under Sanval’s arm, to catch another kobold in the throat.
Mumchance’s energetic, if less effective, fighting sent the beams of the lantern swinging wildly. To avoid being blinded by the sudden light shining in her eyes, Ivy glanced up. Above them, she saw that one of the old wooden beams holding up the tunnel was clearly cracked.
“Zuzzara!” yelled Ivy, and she gestured with her thumb at the beam. The big half-orc glanced in the direction of the beam and then swept her shovel through the kobolds as though she were sweeping dust out the door. The creatures squealed as they went rolling down the tunnel.
“See it!” shouted Zuzzara.
“Come on, Procampur,” Ivy said, dropping the kobold spear that she still clutched and grabbing Sanval’s shiny steel-clad shoulder. She shoved him in front of her, almost ramming his nose into the side of the tunnel as she swung him around. “Time to run!”
“Your friend—” Sanval sounded a little muffled as he tried to keep his face out of the dirt wall in front of him.
“Can take care of herself,” interrupted Ivy. “Follow the dwarf and stop fighting the kobolds. Zuzzara will get them!”
Falling farther behind her fleeing friends, the half-orc continued bowling kobolds into their kin using her shovel. The kobolds retreated, a bit intimidated by the tall, screaming half-orc woman with pointed teeth who was swinging an iron-headed shovel.
Zuzzara waded right into the group of kobolds. Now she swung the shovel like a scythe, a long, low sweeping motion that mowed through them. The little brown creatures ricocheted off the shovel’s flat end, bouncing head over tail onto their fellows. Thunk, whack, thunk. The shovel rang against their scaly hides and horned heads. The kobold’s leader—a little taller and greener than the rest of the crew—barked something high and sharp that sounded like Draconic commands, and his guards lowered their spears and tried to overrun Zuzzara. Most of the spear points simply bounced off her thigh guards and her wide leather belt with its big brass buckle. She was far too tall for the kobolds to reach any vulnerable points.
“Come on,” said Ivy, still propelling the rest of the group in front of her. “Run!”
Once again, Sanval swung around Ivy, obviously intent on backtracking down the tunnel to join Zuzzara. Ivy grabbed him by his sword arm, disregarding the danger of being skewered by his blade, and pulled him completely around by shifting her weight and digging her feet in.
“We must help her. What are you doing?” yelled the captain.
“No. Keep going,” Ivy shouted the order, and the tone got through to him. He blinked in confusion at her. “She’ll bring the ceiling down. She knows what she’s doing. Run, you idiot hero, run!”
Zuzzara flipped another kobold off the end of her shovel and plunged the blade straight up, catching it against the timber holding up that section of the ceiling. The half-orc bulged her muscles as she levered the shovel against the cracked beam. One brass button pinged off her waistcoat, and the kobold leader screamed as he caught it squarely in the eye.
The crack widened, and dirt rained down upon the squeaking kobolds. They raced away from the terrible giant who had wreaked such destruction upon them. With a loud splintering sound, the beam split in two. The beam’s loose end bounced upon the head of the kobold’s leader, cracking his skull.
Zuzzara spun around and raced back to her group, scooping up Sanval and Ivy as she ran. She tucked one under each arm, as if they were small children. Her shovel crashed against Ivy’s knees as she tightened her grip around Ivy’s waist. Ivy hoped that her armor would hold and tried not to think about breathing. “Let’s go,” Zuzzara cried.
With a crash, the rest of the ceiling collapsed, sending clouds of dirt through the tunnel. Coughing, choking, and with streaming eyes, the group stumbled out into a large, hollow space. Zuzzara gently set Sanval and Ivy down.
“Thank you, Zuzzara,” said Ivy, once she had spat some of the dust out of her throat.
The gentleman from Procampur lowered his head in a quick bow toward the half-orc. “I also thank you, Lady Zuzzara, but I am sorry that I was not allowed to aid in your defense.”
“Sanval, there was no need to play the hero. Zuzzara can take care of herself. Take care of the rest of us too,” Ivy said, once she had figured out that he was courteously criticizing her order to retreat.
“But the thought was sweet,” said Zuzzara, smiling wide enough to show off her long white canines.
“Maybe we all need a short rest,” Ivy said and sat down on the ground with her legs straight out in front of her, her hands on knees, and her back bent. She tried not to gasp too loudly as she endeavored to catch her breath.
Sanval stood beside her, but from somewhere under his armor, he had retrieved a cloth and, to no one’s surprise, began polishing his sword. “What are your plans now, Captain?”
Ivy looked up at him, trying not to look too discomposed. She was fairly certain that there were still bits of kobold stuck to parts of her gear. She pulled off her gauntlets and shoved them through her belt. “We will bring the western wall down for your Thultyrl, just as we discussed. This is just a little detour; but we will end up under the wall, and do a little strategic digging with Zuzzara’s shovel. Let the river do its work. And then, plop goes the wall. We just need to be out of the way when the whole thing topples down.”
“At least today is still better than that time with the hogs,” muttered Zuzzara.
“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 the 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 te
ll 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.
Crypt of the Moaning Diamond Page 8
