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.