'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 kobolds 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
