Rosemary Jones: Crypt of the Moaning Diamond

Ivy skipped over the ditch that separated Procampur's section of the camp from the mercenaries' tents. Shallow and narrow, the ditch served no defensive purpose. It existed to warn mercenaries returning from the latrines in the dark to head down the hill rather than up the hill.

As they climbed the hill to the Thultyrl's pavilion, located squarely in the center of Procampur's tents, Ivy paused and turned to the north. From here, she had the clearest view of the city on the opposite hill. As usual, a few mounted troops were trotting back and forth in the valley, well out of range of Fottergrim's archers. The horsemen raised a fine cloud of dust, as the grass and any other vegetation had long ago been trampled. The sun caught a glint of armor along the tops of the walls. Ivy squinted. Tall shadows and bright helmets were clustered thickest along the southern wall. Fottergrim had stationed the bulk of his troops there to watch the horsemen in the fields below. According to reports from the Thultyrl's scouts, another array of orcs and hobgoblins, well mixed with a few bugbears, kept watch along the eastern wall, ready to raise the alarm if any charge came up the harbor road. Looking south and looking east was exactly what Ivy wanted. Let Fottergrim keep his attention fixed in those directions. She had no intention of entering the city through the eastern gates or by a charge up the steep southern hill. Ivy preferred Fottergrim's army to mass their largest numbers where she was not going.

"Any sign of Fottergrim today?" she asked Sanval.

He did not pause in his steady march up the hill, but answered over his shoulder. "Earlier. Shouting insults as usual and daring us to try the gates."

"Then he's got hot oil, hidden archers, or a good spell set there," said Ivy. "Your Thultyrl's restraint is spoiling all his fun."

"The Thultyrl," said Sanval in the faintest rebuke of her casual tone, "cannot wait forever."

"Your officers are pressing him to go home again?" It was less of a question than a statement. It was an unpopular war, and costly, and Procampur's nobles and merchants liked to see a profit in their ventures. Since Sanval was apparently willing to talk politics, if nothing else, Ivy wanted to obtain as much information as possible. The more the officers pressed the Thultyrl to end the war quickly, the faster the Siegebreakers had to dig. If the walls of Tsurlagol did not fall soon, the Thultyrl was going to try some other tactic to draw out Fottergrim and engage him in a decisive battle. And that, in Ivy's opinion, would be a disaster. Nobody was going to pay the Siegebreakers for failing to make a wall fall down.

"Another petition has come from the merchants. They protest the loss of the Thultyrl's leadership and demand that he return to his duties in the city. There are a number of civil cases that need his judgment," Sanval said.

"And none of your green-roof merchants can settle their own disputes?"

Sanval started to say something and then thought better of it. Obviously it went against his personal code of conduct to criticize his fellow citizens. Ivy sighed and wished the gentlemen of Procampur were more like the humans of Waterdeep or the gnomes of Thesk: ready to slander anyone of low or high station. If Ivy knew what the various factions in the camp wanted, she could always bargain in such a manner that made it seem like everyone was going to be satisfied (even if the only ones who really benefited were her Siegebreakers).

"It is impossible to explain to an outsider," began Sanval, apparently responding to the deep sighs that she heaved behind him. "Our customs and our laws are very ancient and must seem strange to someone like you." He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. Obviously he felt unable to describe what he thought "someone like you" meant, but Ivy had a good idea, and she was more than a bit annoyed by his judgment. Looking messy did not mean that she lacked understanding of the way that silver-roof nobles lived. She understood all too well-she just chose to live differently.

Ivy began to sing in her crow's voice. Daughter of a bard, she couldn't carry a tune to save her life. But she had the same wicked memory for lyrics that she had for accents. Also, only last night, she had found a minstrel with a goodly collection of bawdy songs favored in the worst parts of Procampur. "I'm quite the red-roof girl, in fact, all the warriors declare…"

Now Sanval sighed, turned around, and quickened his pace through Procampur's tents. The Procampur pavilions followed the same straight lines of their city's famous Great Way, not at all like the mercenary section of the camp where the canvas coverings randomly clustered. There, mercenaries pitched their tents in whatever order they liked. Far from the latrine pits was considered a prime location for most mercenaries; other than that, they didn't pay much attention to their surroundings. But in this section of the camp, tents were planted in perfect formations, with the rustling banners and ribbon tent edgings matching the colors of Procampur's famous roof tiles: gold for the Thultyrl's personal enclave, silver for the nobles, yellow for their servants, black for the priests, and so on. The only color not showing was red. That was the symbol for adventurers as well as the areas that housed those adventurers passing through Procampur. That element, as far as the Procampur army was concerned, was already too thoroughly represented by the mercenary camp.

Ivy marched behind Sanval, doing her best to uphold the mercenaries' low reputation. She continued the song that was worth every drink that she had bought for the harper's parched throat. By the time she reached the second verse, with the rousing line of "Once the men lived for my sighs, but now they want a peek of…" the back of Sanval's neck shone pink beneath the rim of his helmet.

The Thultyrl's pavilion dominated the center of Procampur's section, much as his palace reigned in the center of the city. One enormous tent, with silk walls dividing the interior into multiple rooms, housed the Thultyrl and his many retainers.

Only their arrival at the Thultyrl's tent prevented Ivy from completing the ballad. Even she didn't have quite enough nerve to sing the last three lines of I'm Quite the Red-Roof Girl in front of the Thultyrl's stone-faced bodyguards, members of the famous Forty who followed him in every pursuit.

The two on guard today were standing rigidly at attention and staring into space. The one on the left was very young, and Ivy noticed his cheeks were very flushed under the flanges of his helmet. Her voice may not have had the quality of her mother's, but she could pitch it to be heard over long distances. She must have been singing even louder than she had intended. She glanced at the other bodyguard. He was older, and he was not blushing, but he did wink at her as she passed him.

During the day, the canvas outer walls of the Thultyrl's pavilion were rolled up to allow the breezes to blow through the tent; but the gold silk walls were down-probably in a vain attempt to keep the dust from covering the scrolls belonging to the scribes busy working inside the pavilion. The dozen scribes assigned to the Thultyrl's Great Codex fought a constant battle with the grit of the camp, which clogged their inkpots and stained their fine parchments. Still, as far as they were from their cool halls, they continued their mission to copy Procampur's many laws into one great law book. Behind them paced the legal scholars, already debating the exact wording of each law, consulting the original crumbling texts that were being copied, and occasionally leaning over a scribe's shoulder to correct a comma there, a dash here.

As Ivy stood there, brushing biscuit crumbs onto the canvas floor, she reflected that she had known commanders who went to battle with their entire families, often dragging whole harems of lovers and children to a siege camp. But the Thultyrl was the first that she had known who brought his secretaries and lawyers to the edge of a battle. When she had first heard of the Thultyrl's personal passion-the Great Codex to be placed in a library to eclipse all libraries-she had expected to meet an old man, white-haired and wrinkled, determined to build a monument that would outlast his death.