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Thernadad’s chatter went on, but the Copper slept through the rest.
The Copper woke briefly at a slight smelly sploit of bat guano dropping. He rolled an eye upward and saw Thernadad hanging there, wings well over his face, making rasping noises in his sleep.
“There, e’be waking,” Mamedi said.
Another, even wider than her and with two little bats clinging trembling to its back, also looked down at him.
Mamedi rubbed her grasping digits together. “Sir, not to be bothering sir, but it’s been a long trip and me sister, e’be perishing hungry, and her brood a’be so hungry they barely a’clinging to her back. Just the tiniest of nips out of your tail; won’t feel but a pinch, an’ a little blood loss heals a big wound, good for the circulation an’ all….”
“Just this once,” he said, shifting so he could extend his tail.
Mamedi crept down first, found a scale nit, and crunched it down. “Oh, they a’be the very buggers. There’s another. Sir, what y’been doing that y’picked up so many so quick?”
He craned his neck a little so he could look behind and saw Mamedi’s sister and her children lapping at a slight, pleasantly tingling wound. Another bat crept out of the shadows and joined in the flowing feast.
“Wait, who’s that?”
Mamedi lifted her snout from his scale-roots. “Her mate, of course. E’s supposed to leave the father of her children behind when she moves into a new cave?”
“I imagine not.”
“There’s a lesson in generosity for you, nephews!” Mamedi said. “Remember it. Y’don’t often see the like these days. E’be a very special gentle sort. It’s a rare one that doesn’t forge a favor and returns kindness with kindness, Thernie and me saving his life and all.”
Her sister and family cooed and yeeked agreeable noises as they lapped.
The Copper dozed. He’d hunted again, keeping well away from the set of pools Therenadad had called “the swampy bit.”
He wondered if the events in the home cave had been some terrible dream, brought on by exploring the pool, diving, and being injured when he fell into the river. He’d fallen in and out of consciousness often enough, or been half drowned when pulled by undertow. Could all the detail—the dwarves with their faint-glowing beards and the big man with the glowing spear—be the product of frightful, dying-hatchling dreams?
He told himself his family was alive and well. Not missing him a bit, of course, but such was his lot as an odd male—what had Father called him? Outcast. They were probably gathered around Mother on the egg shelf now, feasting on some thick-muscled oxen brought back by Father, and Jizara was singing after the feast.>He judged himself to be in a cave, vaster but lower than the home cave, branching off in every direction but up. Always there were the little channels of cave moss—in some places stopped up, glowing bright where the water still flowed. There were a good many small holes driven into the ground, as though something had been fixed there with spikes, like the dwarves had used for their water-diversion apparatus, but the work had long since been abandoned and the metal taken up. While nosing around he found a broken bit of spike and swallowed it.
He heard a flutter off in a corner and saw the big blood-drinking bats yeeking in voices pitched so high he could hardly hear them, and flapping their wings in each other’s faces as they hung from the cavern roof. It seemed more of a squabble than a fight, so he ignored the commotion.
The odd thing was that he felt relieved when he saw them. It was nice to have someone speak pleasantly to you, praise you, even if it was only for the number of nits clinging to your scale-roots. And their chatter distracted him from the griefs circling in his mind.
He walked over to the pair, trying to strut like a proud young dragon, but feeling a little off balance, thanks to his stiff tail.
“You, there. Excuse me.”
The bats left off spitting at each other. Both licked their gripping digits and straightened up the fur on their ears and chins.
“Sir a’needing something?” Thernadad said, rubbing his gripping digits together under his chin.
“What is this place?”
“Dwarf mine, long and longer abandoned,” Thernadad said. “In my oldfather’s time, there was a’feasting on draft horses and goats, but now there’s nothing but mushroom-fed rats and moss-crawlies. And the snakes, of course, who a’eating our poor young.”
“What were you fighting about?”
“Nothing of import to sir.”
“Faaaa! E’be a heartless brute, to a’be telling the truth,” Mamedi said. “E’leaving my sister to starve! Ooo, ooo, ooo!”
“Sir doesn’t want to be a’hearing our troubles.”
“Why will she starve?”
“The dwarves just closed off the old air shaft to a stock paddock and she’s—”
