"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.