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He scrambled after it and extended his neck, bit down on the back half, and yanked it skyward. Legs tickling at his throat, he gulped it down.
He looked down to see Thernadad flapping his wings in the face of his mother, who blinked awake. She climbed onto his back and he scuttled back up, in that elbows-out fashion of bats, to the cavern roof.
“Twice grateful, sir,” Thernadad said, panting a little.
“Any blood flowing this fine night?” Mamedi said, creeping forward.
“Out of it!” Thernadad bawled. She was out of reach, so he battled the air in her direction with his wings.
“Just thinking of refreshing meself. Like a new-mated bat you were last sunrise. M’be hardly able to keep a grip.”
“Oh, son, m’be pershishing of that scare,” Thernadad’s mother croaked. “Just a wee drop; perhaps y’be persuading our kindly young prince now?”
The Copper saw other eyes shining in the darkness. How many bats had gathered in this cave?
“Sir—” Thernadad said.
“Leave me alone, would you?” the Copper said. He stalked into the cave, leaving the cluster of bats.
“Greedy sots!” Thernadad yelled, and soon the Copper heard the wing-flapping, tooth-snapping sound of a full-out bat brawl.
The Copper found a dark corner and rested. The seemingly still-twitching centipede wasn’t agreeing with him.>“M’excuse, sir. Sir?” Thernadad said, climbing down the cave wall next to him.
“Yes?”
“The mate an m’talked, and since her sister’s come to stay, we thought one more or less wouldn’t make a difference.” He went into a paroxysm of fur smoothing.
“Why are you telling me?”
“It’s me old mum, sir. E’can’t make it to the surface anymore, or survive the dangers out there besides. Pitiful shape she’s in. If e’could just have a lick or two, e’doesn’t have any appetite at all no more, hardly.”
The Copper saw a half-white bat, small and frail, above.
“Oh, very well. I suppose her sister’s somewhere behind, also starving.”
“Oh, no, no. My brother. A great, well-traveled bat e’is; been down every hole in these mountains. Thousand and one stories. Now e’takes care of old Mum. E’pulled her up, again and again, to the cave roof on the trip so she could drop for another glide. E’perishing with exhaustion, e’is.”
“So he needs some blood down his throat, too.” The Copper felt his griff flutter.
“Sir, don’t be a’taking me wrong,” he said as the tiny old bat crawled down his back. “What you’ve done for us poor hangers more than makes up for your life being saved by quick thinking an’ skill and charity. Wonderful thing, charity. Never know how it a’gets paid back in this life or the next. Here, y’be excusing me, her old teeth, you know.”
Thernadad licked him a couple times, and the Copper felt the nook in his saa go numb. With a quick bite Thernadad opened a cut and the old bat began to lap.
Thernadad wiped the corner of his eyes again and again as he licked a smear of blood from his limbs. “Oh, sir. Me poor old mum. You’ve made me so happy. M’won’t forget this kindness till the day I drop. No, sir.”
“Rich good blood, this dragon,” Thernadad’s mother said.
“Oh, dragon,” a great heavy bat said. He’d shifted to directly above the Copper with surprising stealth. “Haven’t tasted that since I flew the whole way ’round the Lavadome. What a place. Thick with dragons. Not as kind as this one, no, nearly got my wings bit off. Y’be falling into the Nor’flow by accident and get carried all this way, m’lord?”
Thick with dragons? “Tell me more,” the Copper said.
“Glad to, m’lord. It’s only my throat, a’be drying up from the exertions.”
“I suppose I can spare a little more.”
The big bat dropped down to his flank.
“Ooooo, is there a party?” Mamedi said, crawling across the cave roof with her sister and brood behind. A couple more bats seemed to have joined the family.
