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Sometimes their deaths didn’t seem such a crime.
He saw a six-legged scuttling thing crawling along just under the surface of the water, making the smallest of waves in the current. He plunged his snout in, grabbed it, flipped it out, and cracked its shell with a quick stomp of his saa before it could right itself. He tongued out the whitish, rather tasteless meat within and crunched down the legs and limbs. A little grit helped the digestion and was a pleasant change from the dirty, hairy taste of rat. If only he had Jizara to join him in the hunt. One could swim and toss the crabs out of the river; then the other could smash them before they could retreat back to the water.
Jizara’s death was a crime. A betrayal piled on a betrayal.
He could almost hear her singing beside the river.
He hurried away, back to the holes in the cavern ceiling where the bats liked to roost.
He listened for a particular pair of squeaky voices.
“Oh, shove off! Y’nose be dripping all over.”
“Faaaa!”
“Thernadad, you up there?”
The bats quieted. Thernadad climbed out of his hole and worked the back of his head with his gripping claw. “Sir be wanting something?”
“I need to speak to your brother.”
Thernadad clawed his way across the cavern roof, poking his head into holes, climbing over sleeping bats, throwing an occasional elbow and getting swatted in return.
“What be going on. Party?”
“Oooh! Watch it, cousin.”
“Enjor! Rouse yourself, y’fat tick. Sir wants to speak to you.”
The brothers’ mother popped out of her hole, moving with a younger bat’s energy despite her aging frame. “Is a feed on?”
“What do you want, m’lord?” Enjor said.
“How do I get back to my people? The dragons of this Lavadome?”
“Eh? Y’be knowing that best, m’lord.”
It took him several tries to get across that he couldn’t get back to his own kind without help—help from the bats. Their little mammalian brains took a while to get around the idea that they could travel together. While bats understood sharing living space, the idea of traveling together didn’t come easily.
“All roads in the lower world lead to the Lavadome, if y’follow them long enough,” Enjor offered, after much thought. “Don’t dragons have homing sense an’ all that?”
“Mine doesn’t seem to be working,” the Copper said.
Enjor scratched his tailvent and sniffed at the residue before continuing: “The best route would be the rivers. Only problem is the Sou’flow be a weary and uncertain trip from here. You might have to go the wrong direction a’ways, then cut across, though that would take you near more dwarves and their works a’following the river.”
“And then what?” The Copper felt a weight on his tail, found the white-flecked bat at her usual spot, lapping up blood.
“Old caves full of nothing but dark and bad air.”
“So good y’be to us, sir,” Thernadad said as the Copper’s teeth ground against one another.
“Perhaps I could engage you as a guide,” the Copper said to Enjor.
“Oh, m’be too old for such a fearful journey. Besides, there’s old Mum.”
Bats fluttered down from the roof.
“Oooo! A party!”
