"That's a good idea," observed Ivy, thrusting the halberd's tip through the breastplate of an orc. She bent her knee and pressed the sole of her boot against the orc's armor to pull the halberd free from the dead creature. With a grunt, she stated, "Let's follow him down."
"I am pleased that Osteroric escaped," said Sanval, close on her heels as she headed for the edge. "He and his brother were rather civilized for bugbears."
"And their pockets are still stuffed with jewels, which is more than what we got," mourned Mumchance.
"We'll just add it to the Thultyrl's invoice," declared Ivy. "Come on, we need to get out of here."
Ivy jumped up on the edge of the wall. Looking straight down, she had a clear view of the ground, a long, long way below her. Piles of dead orcs with twisted limbs and shattered heads and bodies testified to the height. Ivy stood on the ledge, teetered forward, then stepped back and beckoned her crew. "Grab my belt!" she yelled.
"I don't understand," Sanval began.
"Trust me," she said, looking down at Sanval. Despite all the dust and rust and assorted grime that they had picked up that day, his upturned face just shone with honesty, bravery, and all those other fine Procampur qualities. The man did not need highly polished armor to dazzle her. Sanval smiled up at her.
"Ivy!" Zuzzara and Mumchance and Kid shouted together, with Kid adding a gentle, "My dear."
Startled, she swung around to look at them, then completed the turn to look in the direction they all pointed.
Archlis as the demon Nalfeshnee beat his wings frantically, trying to distance himself from the battlements. But he was sinking. The huge creature looked like some six-legged, three-headed bat that could not fly very well. The bugbears, dangling from the giant monster's arms, their legs churning, weren't helping. Tossing their considerable weight in their terror, and swinging their weapons and occasionally pricking the demon's hairy body, they howled and screamed and blubbered. The bugbear brothers had been brave fighters when grounded, but flying was not something any bugbear ever yearned to do.
"We need to get out of here!" Mumchance had finally caught Wiggles. Tucking the little dog firmly into his pocket, the dwarf nimbly avoided one of the falling orcs who had just been brained by Zuzzara's wildly swinging shovel.
"Got a plan!" screamed Ivy. "Everyone to me! To me!"
"Coming, my dear," said Kid, as he leaped up and drummed another orc on its snout with his sharp hooves. The creature let out a howl and clapped both hairy hands over its injured proboscis.
"What are you going to do?" Sanval asked, backhanding an orc trying to detain him as he climbed up on the edge of the wall next to her. Ivy was holding herself steady by wrapping one arm around a wooden pillar supporting the burned-out roof.
"Grab my belt!" Ivy screamed at him over the noise of the fight behind them. There was such confusion that Fottergrim's gray orcs and mountain orcs were busy trying to brain each other-each group was convinced that the others had started the fight that now engulfed the top of the wall. The battered Fottergrim was howling orders at all of them, but nobody could hear him over the general hubbub. The hobgoblins who had come late to the fight, following the orange goblins into the fray, jabbed with their spiked shields. The orcs crouched below them, red eyes gleaming, and thrashed their halberds like scythes. The hobgoblins shouted to each other, closing ranks, occasionally saving each other with a sword thrust, and occasionally overreaching and stabbing one of their own kind.
"My belt!" Ivy yelled at Sanval. All the other Siegebreakers had figured it out, but he had not been there for the fight with the destrachans. She could feel Zuzzara's big hand firmly anchored in her weapons belt. The big half-orc had snatched up her little sister and tucked Gunderal under her other arm. Mumchance and Kid each had their hands locked on her legs. Ivy let go of the wooden post and grabbed the silver buckle of the narrow red belt that she wore loosely below her heavy weapons belt. "Pull the wings open three times and then shut," she whispered to herself as her fingers caught the small silver wings. She twisted them and prayed to whatever gods might be listening that the belt's magic would hold them all up. It had worked well underground, lifting her out of the reach of the destrachans, but she had been the only weight to lift. Now there was a lot more weight hanging off her, and she prayed that her weapons belt would hold and that her pants would stay up. That would be all that she needed-to plunge to her death baring her ass to the fighting orcs and screaming hobgoblins behind her. Then again, it wasn't that bad of a final fate, she decided. It would be a way to leave the world with a certain ragged style.
Either way, Ivy just had to trust that her luck (and her belt) would hold.
"Jump!" she screamed at Sanval as she snagged his collar with her free hand and pulled him off balance. His booted feet shot out and up, his arms flew up, his fist tightened around his sword hilt, and his dark curls blew every which way.
Ivy plunged off the wall.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The belt's magic was strained, but not broken. Rather than shooting toward the sky, they dropped, jerked level, and then started to gently descend to the ground.
Sanval hung straight down from his collar, where Ivy held him in a tight grip, his body rigid, his arms and legs pointing hopefully toward the earth, his face a frozen blank. He made a slight choking sound, and Ivy tried to shift her grip so she would not strangle him before they hit the ground.
Zuzzara had let out a single huge bellow when they leaped off the wall. Ivy looked down at the half-orc, dangling from her white-knuckled grip on Ivy's heavy weapons belt. Beads of perspiration popped out on the half-orc's forehead. Zuzzara was as pale as Ivy had ever seen her. Suspended with Zuzzara's arm around her waist, Gunderal looked like some pretty bird, her body perpendicular to the ground, her arms stretched out like wings, her hair and skirts fluttering around her. She seemed to be shaking with soft laughter.
Ivy looked past them to the two hanging on her legs. Mumchance was staring at the ground, or was that his good eye that he had squeezed closed? Wiggles was a lump in his pocket, not even an ear sticking up over the edge. Kid clung to her other leg, and it did not surprise Ivy to see him look up at her, wink, then grin at the floating Gunderal.
They sank slowly, spiraling down in an odd zigzag pattern, and then they all hit the ground in a tumble of legs and arms.
"Oooh," Gunderal moaned, flattened beneath her big sister.
"Sorry," Zuzzara said, rolling off her onto all fours. She pushed herself upright and pulled her little sister into a standing position.
"It's all right," said Gunderal. She smoothed down the front of her skirt and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. Her blue-black curls fluffed obediently into perfect ringlets, with highlighted streaks of blue and aquamarine framing her pearly features. "Good fighting up there, big sister."
Zuzzara shrugged. "It's what I do best!" Imitating Gunderal, she straightened her waistcoat and shook her head so that her many braids swung out, the iron beads clattered, and the braids fell neatly into place. She smiled weakly and wiped the perspiration from her face with her hand. "Give me a hundred hobgoblins every day, as long as I never have to fly."
"No, it was wonderful," Gunderal said with a little laugh. "I must get a new spellbook-one with flying spells in it."
"How could you like that? You are water genasi, not air genasi!" said a surprised Zuzzara.
"Oh, you remember daddy. He always leaped before he looked. I must have inherited a love of flying from him," replied the little sister.