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“Then hang on to my back. You’re going to get wet.”
“Oh, bother,” Yari-Tab said. Wistala winced as she felt claws dig into the base of her scales.
Wistala plunged through the spray and came out the other side into a join of passages.
Yari-Tab hopped off her back and made a great show of flicking her tail this way and that and kicking up her rear legs as she shook off the wet, a good deal of her grace and all of her dignity gone. She was even bonier than Wistala had imagined, obviously—
A ripple broke the pool, and the water exploded as a blur of a long-nosed shape lunged for Yari-Tab. Wistala saw snaggly yellow teeth and open mouth—
Once when Wistala was just out of the egg, a stalactite had cracked in the home cave, and Mother came to the edge of the egg shelf in a flash, putting her scaly bulk between the hatchlings and the gloom of the cave before the echo faded. Mother explained it later as “the fighting instinct,” and something very similar must have happened in some same depth of Wistala’s brain that kept her hearts beating.
Wistala jumped forward, threw herself into the jaws, felt them close on her scales and belly. An irresistible force dragged her into the water and under into darkness.
Whatever had a hold of her was perhaps surprised at her size, for it tried to shake her, but managed to only wave her back and forth in the black water filled with tiny strings of water roots. Wistala clawed with both sii and saa, lashed with her tail, brought her head round, and bit whatever held her at the join of its jaw. She got one saa into the teeth and tried to pry the jaws apart.
The pressure vanished, and the beast rolled, pulling her around it like a constricting snake as she left its jaws. It was perhaps the weight of a pony, though all jaws and tail, limbs smaller even than hers—
Since it had released her, she returned the favor, and it swam off into darkness. As she broke the surface of the water, she saw a thick tail with a serrated fringe like leathery teeth swirl the water and capsize the podlike blossoms of the water plants.
Wistala hugged ground and pulled herself up beside Yari-Tab, spat out a loosened hatchling tooth.
“That was a channelback!” Yari-Tab said from a perch at the top of the wall. For a half-starved cat, she was quite a jumper. She hopped down and landed softly next to Wistala.
“It fled. I was too big a mouthful anyway.”
“If you miss on your first pounce—,” Yari-Tab said.
“Try, try again elsewhere,” Wistala replied, paraphrasing an old dragonelle proverb. A creature that lived by hunting could ill-afford fights with prey; a lost eye or a broken limb could mean death by starvation.
“Thank you, tchatlassat,” Yari-Tab said. They turned and climbed away from the tunnel lake to a drier path, only to be attacked again.
Wistala felt a pull at her saa as she saw a trio of rats leap down from the ledge above—she lashed out instinctively with her saa and swished with her tail.
Two rats landed on her back, one on her head. It went for the eyes, and she panicked, whipping her head and rolling. Yari-Tab squealed as her body weight rolled over the cat.
She felt a bite in the naked flesh under her sii-pit. She whipped her head down, pulled the rat up by her teeth as she might a tick, crushed it, and flung it back into the channel water. Something bit at her hindquarters again, and she kicked—
Then they were gone as quickly as they’d come. She smelled blood and rats thick all around.
Yari-Tab had one pinned, both claws digging into its shoulders as it kicked out. The feline opened her teeth—
“Wait!” Wistala said.
“Whyever? The foul beasts bit my—”
“I want him to show us to the coin.”
The rat squeaked in fright.
“Ask it,” Wistala urged. “Ask it where the shiny metal is.”
Yari-Tab squeaked out something, and the rat chattered back.
“He says he knows just what you mean and that there’s lots. Don’t believe a word, though. Rats will say anything once you’ve got your claws in them.”
“I’ll take the chance. Tell him to show us.”
“He’ll bolt down the first hole or dive—”
