Underkeeper

The next day, Bernt found himself working one of the breaches alongside Kustov—a fresh one that had opened underneath a guard station on the north side of the city the night before, breaking into the basement that served as its armory. Apparently the kobolds killed several guards and nearly made it into the city, but Iriala had arrived and, with the help of a handful of the survivors, driven them back. Civilian deaths had been prevented only because of the archmage’s prescience.

As far as Bernt knew, he wasn’t meant to be in the fighting rotation, but Ed had gruffly sent him to the front that morning to meet Kustov after only the briefest of explanations.

“I don’t have nearly the resources that I need to cover every godsdamned hole those little bastards open up, and I can’t close the holes because I’ve got orders! Damn kobolds could use a face full of fire. But stay back and out of trouble, alright? You’re greener than I’d like for this sort of thing.”

He’d looked worried, and that made Bernt a bit uneasy, too.

They were short-staffed trying to cover an ever-growing number of breaches. That wasn’t exactly a reassuring prospect.

But there were some benefits, too. This assignment gave him an opportunity to watch another mage fight—and Kustov had very unorthodox methods. He was a geomancer, but he wasn’t originally from Besermark. Rather than being a classically trained mage, the dwarf was a stoneweaver from Silvercrag Hall who’d been sent “on loan” to the Beseri government. Evidently, the count hadn’t appreciated the gesture, putting him in the Underkeepers as a calculated insult to the dwarven city-state.

Kustov seemed to take the entire thing with good humor most days, but today he’d shown up ready for war. Instead of his customary robes, he wore mail armor with a broad leather belt and a sensible steel helm. Most surprising of all, he was carrying a weapon—a large stone hammer, bound in runed metal bands.

Bernt had never seen it before, but it was clearly Kustov’s focus.

The dwarf was friendly enough, but not talkative. They barely exchanged more than a greeting before he settled down with a good view of the breach, sitting in comfortable silence and examining the hasty barricade the guards had presumably erected the night before.

After a few minutes of silence, he stood up, eyed the opening critically, and then slammed his hammer down on the ground with a heavy thump. The runes wrapping the hammer’s head lit up with golden light, dimming again a second later as, inside the tunnel, the ground broke. A portion of the stone floor tilted and sank down on the near side, bringing the far side up. This created a low, inward-sloping wall, perhaps knee-high. It would slow down any attackers, Bernt supposed, reinforcing the protection provided by the barricade.

Doing his best to imitate the more experienced mage, Bernt sat on the other side of the dark hole. Jori was nearby, perched in the sewers next to the guard station’s basement. She had no way to reach them, as far as Bernt knew, but he supposed she was just checking to be sure. After a few minutes of hunting for a way in, she scampered off, frustration leaking through the familiar bond.

The ten guards meant to support them stood directly in front of the opening behind the barricade, looking more than a little uncomfortable. Bernt supposed that was fair, considering the bloodstains that hadn’t quite been cleaned off the floors where they were standing.

When the first shouts came, followed by signs of movement in the dark of the ragged tunnel, Bernt reacted quickly. He slung a fireball directly into the opening, illuminating the faces of several ranks of kobolds for a moment, just before it hit.

It clipped one of the kobolds in the side before striking another in the second rank. The first reeled back with a strangled shout, while the second went down, half its body burnt to a crisp. Though many more flinched away from the heat, the front line kept coming and leapt at Kustov’s makeshift barrier. Hot air rolled back into the room as if he’d just opened an oven. From his left, Bernt heard a shout from the guards, and then Kustov was there, jumping right into the tunnel like a madman.

His hammer came down on the ground again, which tore open in front of him with an ear-shattering crack. Kobolds were thrown off their feet, and fist-sized rocks fell from the tunnel ceiling above them. So did a boulder that nearly blocked the opening a few strides in, crushing at least one of the attackers underneath.

Then Kustov stopped, peering into the dusty mouth of the tunnel. A rune glowed brightly on his helmet, directly over his forehead.

“Sorcerer!” Kustov bellowed, stepping back and to his left, out of sight of anyone in the tunnel and behind the barricade. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “Pretty powerful bastard, too.”

At the same time, Bernt cast a torch spell and sent it down into the tunnel for a better idea of what was going on inside. The surviving kobolds were picking themselves up and already moving toward them again. Why were they doing that? They had to know they couldn’t survive just blindly rushing in like this, even with a sorcerer to back them up.

“Potions!” called one of the guards, and each of them pulled out a tiny purple vial, popped the cork and downed the contents. Kustov set the faintly glowing head of his hammer down on the ground, staring at nothing. He was casting, Bernt knew, and might need a few seconds.

As the next wave of kobolds pushed into the basement and came up against the barricade, the guards repelled them with short spears while Bernt peppered them with fire darts—it was already uncomfortably warm and he didn’t want to heat up the room too much.

Several went down, but more kept coming, crowding into the semicircular area between the tunnel entrance and the shoddy barricade. Then Kustov finished casting and the entire tunnel collapsed.

Dust and bits of rock were hurled out, knocking down kobolds and hitting the barricade. Something slammed into Bernt and knocked him down. Claws scrabbled at him, and Bernt activated his thorn skin amulet, pushing back as hard as he could, feeling scales under his hands as the creature went flying. He sat up, casting a fire shield in front of himself, but he found it wasn’t necessary. A guard was ramming a spear into his attacker, who had apparently jumped over the barricade in panic.

A few seconds later, the dust hanging in the air fell like rain, drawn down to the ground by another of Kustov’s spells and revealing the results.

The tunnel was just… gone. The kobolds closest to the entrance lay dead or dying, crushed by falling rocks, while the few who remained were desperately trying to climb over the barricade. They weren’t going to make it.

As Bernt watched, the guards cut them down, including a staff-carrying kobold that tried and failed to cast spells at them right up to the moment a spear took it through the chest.

Silence descended on the room, broken only by heavy breathing and the quiet whimper of a dying kobold.

“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?!” demanded a guard, gesturing at the rubble with one hand as he pressed down on a wounded leg with the other.

Kustov gave him a dour expression. “I’m not supposed to close them. I figure it makes it easier to know where they’ll be coming from. Now they’ll probably open a new breach nearby—and we’re not going to find it till they start spilling into the city. But there were too many of them here.” He shrugged. “No sense in dying.”

Bernt spat out some grit that had gotten into his mouth during the collapse. “So, that wasn’t normal? If they’re pushing harder here… what about everywhere else?”

In the distance, the faint sound of trumpets sounded an alarm, then another and another.

***

Master Alchemist Theresa stared at the letter, reading it for the third time as she ignored the alarms sounding from the breach near the western walls. The guards would be fighting kobolds there—nothing serious in her estimation. If an actual elder dragon was going to come for the city, it would have done so already. Besides, what could a deep dragon possibly want so close to the surface, anyway?

Not that she believed the fantastical reports coming out of the Adventurers’ Guild in the first place. Those fools had died somehow, to be sure. But that didn’t mean there had to be an elder dragon. They’d likely gone in completely unprepared to deal with a moderately organized enemy supported by mind sorcerers. Now they were humiliated. They would call in the army, storm the dungeon and wipe out the kobolds. Then they would claim the dragon made a strategic retreat, or something similarly difficult to prove.

No, what was serious was how first the Underkeepers and now the Mages’ Guild were taking advantage of this situation. First, that half-baked Underkeeper archmage managed to seize control of half the guard and started turning her Guild’s own charter against her, demanding nonstandard elixirs in ridiculous quantities with practically no notice. Then, within hours, she’d learned most of the city’s supply of castrum root had already been bought up. They’d barely been able to make three hundred doses with what remained. Ed must have known she couldn’t meet such a quota.

Her first thought was that the Underkeepers had bought it up, but now… she tapped the letter.

Master Alchemist Theresa,

It has come to my attention that your guild is experiencing a shortage in some critical reagents, namely castrum root. As a token of goodwill and solidarity, I’m sending our guild herbalist’s supply to you free of charge. I’ve also taken the liberty of contacting our supplier on your behalf, and would be happy to arrange a meeting for you in the coming days.

With highest regards,

Archmage Iriala, Halfbridge Mages’ Guild Administrator

The wording was friendly, sure, but the message was not. The tiny bag of castrum root sitting on her desk was barely enough for ten doses, and served more as proof the old hag had access to the stuff than anything else. Iriala was putting her into a corner, but she wasn’t a fool. The archmage was a diviner—of course she would have known what Thurdred was about to pull and seized the opportunity to make some money. Her “supplier” would probably just be a guild-affiliated merchant cutting her in.

But that was better than the Underkeepers buying up and destroying the reagents to try to take down her entire branch. No amount of money was worth losing the guild’s exclusivity rights in the city. That would create a safe haven for nonguild alchemists, and that was a threat to the national guild in the long term.

As long as Iriala kept her prices somewhat reasonable for the circumstances, it wouldn’t have to get nasty and everyone could walk away satisfied.

In the distance, Theresa heard someone scream.