“Ground is too soft,” replied the one-eyed dwarf, squinting up at Ivy. The shadows dappling the little glade barely softened the heavy scars on his face. “Told you yesterday that we needed to shift the entrance.”
“We don’t have enough time to move it if we want to earn our fee,” said Ivy, with a quick glance at Sanval and a frown at Mumchance. She did not want the silver-roof noble from Procampur legging it back to the Thultryl’s tent with the message, “Send these foolish farmers home and let us charge the walls like true warriors.” Of course he would probably be more elegant in his wording as he lost them their payment.
When they had first broken ground, the Siegebreakers had been lucky enough to hook into an older passageway that ran under the ruined remains of a former city’s wall, probably dug hastily and long ago for the same reason that the Siegebreakers were digging their tunnel. That older siege tunnel had led into a city that had long since vanished. Tsurlagol had been invaded, burned to the ground, and then shifted to a new location so many times that one jester suggested the city’s best defense would be to build all the houses as boats on wheels and run them into the sea every time a new invasion force came into view.
“We need to slow down, not dig faster,” argued Mumchance. “We’re moving away from the first tunnel, and the ground doesn’t feel right.”
“Did the roof collapse again?” asked Ivy.
“No,” said Zuzzara. “Just the usual bits of dirt down the back of my neck. But Mumchance pulled me out and sent Kid in.”
“He’s smaller than Zuzzara and lighter too,” explained the dwarf. “And he has a good feel for the dirt under those hard little hooves of his. It is the ground below, Ivy, not above, that I don’t like. Nothing feels right. I wanted Kid’s opinion. I left Wiggles with him. She’ll bark if anything starts to go wrong.”
“Wiggles to the rescue,” drawled Ivy, who did not have nearly the same faith in Mumchance’s favorite mutt. He had picked up the yippy little horror two years ago when they had been in the south. Mumchance always claimed Wiggles had a dwarflike nose for trouble underground.
“You have never appreciated Wiggles’s talents, not even when she saved us under that sorcerer’s tower,” muttered the dwarf.
“I gave her a bone afterwards,” said Ivy. “A lovely bit of ham hock.” In Ivy’s opinion, it was just luck that Wiggles had sounded the warning in time. Wiggles barked almost continuously, so the dog was bound to yap at a strategic moment some day.
“Which you picked out of the rubble,” Mumchance reminded her in a sour tone. As if a little dust on a bone had ever stopped Wiggles’s enjoyment. The dog loved bones, with meat on them, or without. It did not matter to Wiggles as long she got something to chew.
Zuzzara ignored the argument about Wiggles, as the dog never woke her at dawn with her insane barking (Zuzzara snored too loudly to hear it). Instead, she was busy telling Sanval that she always did most of the digging for the Siegebreakers, and even a half-orc of her size could only dig so fast and so far in a day.
“I could bring more men from the camp,” offered Sanval. “And some guards. We must not let this position be overrun.”
Ivy gestured at the scraggly trees surrounding them. “We have enough cover to hide us from Fottergrim. They are not paying much attention to this side of the wall—that’s why we picked this spot!”
“Just what we need, more humans!” huffed Mumchance. “Doesn’t matter how many dig, or how fast. The ground is rotten, Ivy. I know it is.”
Ivy stared at the dwarf. He gave her that one-eyed stare back that said most clearly that he was a dwarf and she was a human, and everyone knew who knew the most about soil conditions and digging. But if the tower did not fall, then there would be no gold for their purses, and that meant a long winter with no roof over the animals sheltering in the barn. Which, Ivy knew, meant every single dog, cat, goat, chicken, pig, mule, and stray bear cub currently sleeping in the barn would end up in the farmhouse’s kitchen or, much worse, her room.
“We have two days or we don’t receive a clipped coin from the Thultryl,” Ivy explained more bluntly than she had intended, her voice rising to a bellow. Her crew knew that voice. Zuzzara stood up and grabbed her shovel, swinging it up to her shoulder. She reached a hand down to Gunderal. The wizard floated daintily to her feet, fluffing her skirts around her. After a couple of quick twists with her fingers, Gunderal’s hair obligingly arranged itself into long blue-black ringlets, perfectly framing her pale oval face.
“Oh, Ivy,” said Gunderal, her violet eyes widening in disapproval. “You are wearing that cap again.”
Ivy put up her bare hand and tugged the brim of her leather cap lower on her brow. Just because she had plucked it off that dead man’s head—and he certainly did not need it at the time or since—Gunderal had taken the most unreasonable dislike to her current cap. Well, Gunderal said that it was the stains and the reek of the leather when the cap got wet in the rain that she disliked. When Ivy had responded that it did not smell any different from the rest of her gear, Gunderal had given one of her huge sighs and said, “That is part of the problem.”
Ivy frowned at Gunderal. She was not going to start a discussion about her cap in front of Sanval. After all, she doubted that officers of Procampur wasted time discussing the quality of their leather goods when they could be doing something else. Or, glancing over at the brilliantly polished boots that Sanval wore, maybe they did. But she knew that the Siegebreakers had better things to do. “It won’t rain today,” Ivy said as firmly as she could.
“I know, but really that cap! I swear there are teeth marks on the brim.”
“Well, if you hadn’t thrown it at the dogs and encouraged them to play tug-of-war with it … Took me forever to get it back!”
“I was just trying to discourage you from wearing it.”
“Thought you wanted to see what Kid found in the tunnel,” said Zuzzara, placidly stepping between the two of them. Since she was digging today, Zuzzara’s braids were bound back from her face in a neat array, and she was wearing a sturdy leather waistcoat rather than one of the more ornate brocade ones that she favored in peaceful times. Heavily influenced by Gunderal’s nagging, Zuzzara’s style did not match the many other half-orcs roaming the North—the kind who typically wore rough untreated pelts with the occasional bone jewelry decoration.
Ivy, however, refused to heed Gunderal’s criticisms. Ivy was a mercenary. Mercenaries wore what they could loot. That was tradition and certainly easier than commissioning matching sets of armor (and cheaper too). When something got too dirty or battered to wear, you grabbed something new or traded with the guy in the next tent over for what you needed. Ivy did not see the point of Gunderal’s constant little lectures that inevitably started with “you would look so nice if only …”
“Maybe there is a way around the rotten spot?” the half-orc suggested, gently steering Gunderal away from Ivy. The wizard followed her with a sad little comment on how nobody really cared about beauty but her.
Grumbling under his breath about how nobody but him really cared about dirt, Mumchance hooked his dark lantern carefully to his belt and checked that his pick was securely fastened. “Tinderboxes?” he asked the Siegebreakers.
“I have mine,” said Ivy. “Old fusspot, it’s not that deep yet.” She handed the old dwarf his short sword. As usual, he had taken it off and left it leaning against a tree trunk. He did not like fighting with it, preferring to use pick and hammer when he needed to.
“Hey, Zuzzara, where’s your broadsword?” Ivy asked the half-orc. If Gunderal was obsessed with clean clothing, Ivy was equally obsessed with weaponry, or the defensive and offensive capabilities of it.
“Ivy, it’s too heavy to lug all the way down here. Don’t need it and don’t want it today.”
“Mumchance is fully armored. I’m fully armored. Captain Sanval”—she glanced over at the officer whose plate shone like a dozen mirrors in the sun—“is even wearing his helmet.”
“Of course,” he said, seemingly a little surprised that she had noticed him and said something that could be construed as a compliment. “It is a requirement that all officers be fully dressed in their armor if they leave the boundary of the camp.”
“It’s a good rule,” said Ivy. “From now on, I want everyone to show up in full gear. We are close enough to the walls that we might be overrun by a raiding party or orc scouts.”
“You are just saying that because you don’t like to wear anything but your ratty old gear. And Mumchance is always more comfortable in chain mail than anything else,” muttered Gunderal, who avoided armor whenever she could. Helmets, claimed the wizard, did unattractive things to her hair.
“Ivy is right,” said the dwarf to Ivy’s surprise. He usually argued with her on the general principle that any right-minded three-hundred-thirty-year-old dwarf knew more than a twenty-five-year-old human. “And you should all be carrying tinderboxes and extra candles for underground work. It is not like Gunderal could light a candle if we needed it.”
“No, but I can use your flint and stone; you always have some with you,” Gunderal said to the dwarf, unruffled by his comment. Her genasi heritage made all water spells fantastically easy for her—but it also caused fire spells to fail in a puff of damp smoke whenever she tried even the simplest flame tricks. “And there are other ways to light the dark, that don’t need fire.”
“Magic,” grumbled the dwarf, as he led them to the entrance. “It’s not wise to rely too much on magic. I keep telling you girls that, but you never listen to me.”
“Yes, Mumchance,” said Zuzzara and Gunderal together. “We know.”
At the tunnel’s entrance, Mumchance cocked his head and listened, then he whistled. A faint shout came back from Kid and a shrill yap from Wiggles.
“Probably safe,” Mumchance decided. He jerked a thumb toward the officer from Procampur. “Is he coming?”
Ivy turned to Sanval. “Are you coming?”
“Perhaps I should stay here,” said Sanval, looking at the dark entrance to the tunnel. Ivy was sure that he was calculating how long it would take his servant to clean his armor after squeezing through the dirty hole. “And guard the entrance.”
“There’s no danger,” said Ivy, squeezing around Mumchance so she could go first. “None of Fottergrim’s patrols have left the walls for days. And, besides, Gunderal has a potion to hide the entrance.”
Once everyone had entered the tunnel, Gunderal extracted a crystal flask from her heavily embroidered belt pouch. She pulled the glass stopper out and carefully let three drops of the flask’s contents fall on the ground. A pale smoke rose, darkening as it filled the entrance. “From the outside, it just looks like a shadow cast by one of the trees,” Gunderal explained. “You have to step in it before you can see this hole.”
Ivy shifted her sword from her side to her back and tightened the straps to keep it close to her body. The last thing she needed was to go tripping over her own blade when trying to show the tunnel to Sanval. She wanted to impress him with her explanations of the intricacies involved in undermining walls (and why those intricacies needed more than two days), not stumble about looking like an idiot. After a few awkward paces in she was able to stand upright.
As they advanced farther into the tunnel, Ivy explained to Sanval how they had used their own timbers to stabilize the roof.
“So it is safe now?” Sanval asked, as dirt continued to dribble down the walls, little clods landing behind them with soft puffs.
“For a rabbit,” muttered Mumchance. “Anything heavier …”
“Is just fine,” finished Ivy. “See, here’s Kid and Wiggles.”
Kid greeted her with a fleeting smile and a ducked head. Small and compact, with features almost as pretty as Gunderal, most people thought Kid was “sweet” until he dipped his long fingers into their pockets.
“Well?” said Ivy as soon as she reached him.
Kid stamped one hoof against the dirt and then moved two paces over and stamped again. Both stamps sounded the same to Ivy, and she said so.
“Little different, my dear,” explained Kid. “Like Mumchance, I hear something wrong here.” His pointed catlike ears were good; he often heard things that the others missed, and that was saying a lot in a group that included a half-orc, a half-genasi, and a full-blooded dwarf.
“Told you,” said Mumchance, coming up to them. The others all clustered closely around to hear the discussion.
“All right,” said Ivy. “The ground is a little soft.” She stamped too. Her foot sank down into the dirt, and a little more dry earth trickled off a tree root above her head and dropped on her nose. Ivy sneezed.
“Ivy, can you move a little farther down the tunnel?” asked Gunderal, with a wrinkle of her delicate nose. “All I can smell is your boots.”
Ivy obediently shifted behind Zuzzara, farther away from Gunderal.
“Phew!” said Zuzzara, waving a hand in front of her sensitive orc nose.
“It’s not that bad,” said Ivy, scraping her boots against a tree root. She had done the same thing earlier when she was leaving the camp, using a rock to rub off the worst of the muck. She guessed she must have missed a spot or two.
“Hush!” said Mumchance. A worried look wrinkled his scarred face. The dwarf relied more on his hearing underground than any other sense. He claimed that he could usually hear danger before he saw it. Wiggles whined at his feet, and the dwarf picked up the little dog and popped her into his pocket. It was an old habit, but it startled most people to see the dog’s sharp white nose and large pink ears suddenly emerge from the pocket of a stout, gray-bearded dwarf.
“Phhstt,” said Ivy, brushing the dirt off her face and trying to stifle a second sneeze. It came out as a loud snort.
Mumchance dropped to one knee to get his head closer to the ground and patted the earth with one gnarled hand. “There’s something here.”
“Yes, I smell something below us,” said Gunderal.
“What?” asked Ivy.
“Water,” said Gunderal. Another gift from her genasi ancestors, Gunderal’s sensitivity to water’s proximity was as strong, or stronger than, her ability to detect magic.
“Water, running fast, and the earth moving with it, unable to hold it, breaking away as old rocks shift,” Kid’s voice echoed eerily in the tunnel. Like Gunderal, Kid often sensed things that the others couldn’t see or hear or smell, especially changes created by magic. No one knew what ancestor had given Kid that ability—probably the same one who had left him both the little ivory horns hidden under his dark curls and the fine pair of hooves at his other end.
Ivy shuffled her feet. Mumchance was right: the ground did feel soft under her feet, almost like stepping on something rotten. She looked back to the entrance. They could go out, maybe probe for another way into the tunnel. This spot was too soft. Look at Sanval, she thought. The weight of his armor was causing him to sink into the dirt; it was almost to the level of his ankles. The same thing was happening to Zuzzara, trying to sidestep cracks growing in the tunnel’s floor. Ivy realized what she was seeing. “Oh no!” she yelled. “Get back! Get back!”
She tried to pull Mumchance back from a suddenly appearing crack, and pulled too hard. He stumbled into Gunderal, who grabbed at Zuzzara, who swung around and got her shovel entangled in Sanval’s sword, who fell heavily forward, almost crushing Kid beneath him. They all swayed together and began to fall. They kept falling as the tunnel floor collapsed beneath them.
Ivy grabbed for all of them, trying to save everyone and failing to get a grip on anyone.
The ground crumbled below her feet. She plunged into darkness, into the swift, cold water below. She fell fast and hit the water hard. The icy current shocked her silent as the river pulled her under.
CHAPTER THREE
Ivy surfaced, coughing and spitting out water that tasted of mud and ice. The strong current surged around her hips. The water was cold, pulled-out-of-the-mou
ntain cold, pulled-out-of-the-heart-of-the-earth cold. It felt cold. It smelled cold. It even sounded cold, the river’s hissing whisper running swiftly around her.
She could barely keep her balance. The sodden leather breeches and damp padded tunic that she wore under her mismatched pieces of armor added to her misery. The weight of her sword on her back was her only comfort. The crisscross of leather straps keeping the scabbard high on her back still held the blade safe. She checked the side of her belt. Her dagger was still secure in its sheath. She thought about loosening the ties on her belt dagger so she could use the knife quickly. But in the water, with her footing so unstable, she decided that she might drop any weapon that she drew.
Her braid lay sodden across the back of her neck. With bare hands she reached up and confirmed that she had lost her leather cap. She swore a little. She liked that cap. Being secondhand, it was nicely softened for the most comfortable fit possible. Now it was gone, and Ivy would have to find another one. Maybe she would get lucky and fall over another dead body wearing a cap.
Luckily, her gauntlets, armored and lined with sheepskin, had survived the fall and were still stuck in her weapons belt. She pulled them on to protect her hands from the cold water. Besides, the scaled armor on the knuckles of her gloves made a formidable weapon if something jumped her before she could draw her blade.
Ivy stood in the darkness, with water hissing past her, and blinked. She blinked again. It was still pitch black, and she couldn’t see anything. She patted her pouch. She had her tinder and flint but no candles. The icy current hissed past her hips and she heard a faint splashing sound farther down. She tried a hesitant step forward. It felt like she were moving downhill. Ivy lost her footing, slipped, and slid under the water again.
When she surfaced, cursing steadily, the water sloshed off her. The sound of her splashing progress made it impossible to judge what direction she was heading. The river was not deep, just bitter cold as if it ran underground from a mountaintop glacier. Freezing to death seemed more likely than drowning. Ivy started moving, deciding it made no sense to stay still and shudder herself into pieces. If she ran into any sort of enemy—a hobgoblin or an orc seemed likely with a city full of them nearby—she wasn’t sure how well she could swing her sword while shivering.
Crypt of the Moaning Diamond Page 4