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“I’m tired of swimming,” the Copper said—though he’d been floating, there was no reason for the bats not to think him as tired as they were; otherwise they’d each clamor for blood. “Let’s ride with the dwarves.”
“Muh?” the bats chorused.
“You cling to rock well enough. Hang on to the front of the boat.”
“With all that racket?” Thernadad said. “A’deafened by that bell? Can’t echo with all that noise.”
“Leave the steering to the dwarves. Anyway, I’m going to ride for a while. Try to keep up.”
“The lordship’s right!” Enjor said. “M’be for it. The dwarves know their business.”
The Copper slipped back into the water.
Bing-bing. Bing-bing…Bing-bing.
It filled the tunnel like an angry dragon, light and clanging and churning as it cut through the water.
The Copper reached for it, but the front had been smoothed where it met the water. He slipped beneath its prow and felt the pull of current toward the bubbling stern, clawed frantically, and finally got a grip on a sort of rail running the underside of the vessel. He locked sii and saa on the projection and used it to climb back to the nose end.
He rode for a moment between front point and bow wave, catching his breath. Using the power in his saa and his good sii to grip, he managed to round the nose and found the bats huddled unhappily, their gripping digits white with terror. Worked metal in regular spiral shapes had been driven into the bow. Whether it was decor or functional he couldn’t say, but it did offer a grip.
He wrapped himself around the bow as comfortably as he could.
“M’feel like a bit o’ flushed dwarf-waste,” Thernadad said. His face was wet from being splashed.
“Ooo, ooo, ooo, such a tragedy,” Mamedi blubbered; some cousin of hers had slipped and fallen into the water.
Some of the bats climbed on the Copper, as his scales offered better grips than the smoothed wood.
“Sir, m’be losing strength,” Thernadad’s mother said. “Just a quiet nip and none be wiser.”
“Oh, very well.”
The bat dug around in the soft tissue behind his ear and he felt the usual tingling numbness as she licked the area before biting. He couldn’t move his head without squashing her, but he rolled an eye down and saw the other bats feeding.
Irked that they didn’t ask permission, he was tempted to eat one in the hope that it would teach the others some manners. But Mamedi had finally left off her blubbing.
The river wasn’t always flowing and channeled. Three times the boat plunged into rushing, frothing water, thoroughly drenching them as it nosed into walls of water. Bats and one exsanguinated dragon hung on until the bat claws hurt him more than the teeth. At these moments the dwarves shouted to one another and beat a drum, and the Copper heard a clanging within as they worked their machinery.
Other times the boat stopped at steel doors in the water and waited until the dwarves finished turning wheels and clanging, then passed through to another chamber shut by another set of steel doors, sometimes raising the boat and sometimes lowering it. During this process the Copper and the bats hid under the nose of the ship. The dwarves emerged from the boat’s interior and stretched on the flat top of the craft, or fouled the water with their waste.
These water chambers were thick with rats, but the Copper didn’t dare leave to hunt. The bats were under no such compunction, and whipped through the chamber, clearing it of insects.
Thernadad returned, cleaning his teeth and gum line with a darting tongue-tip.
“Wherever dwarves go, rats go. Wherever rats go, bugs go. Wherever bugs go, bats hunt.”
“Maybe you should live here, then.”
“Oh, sir, w’be sticking to you. Be a heartbreak to leave you after all w’ve been through.”
Water bubbled all around the craft as the chamber filled, and the dwarves shouted to one another. The Copper, splashed and cramped from clinging to the underside of the boat, felt a nip at a sore spot behind his saa joint.
He lashed out and down, heard a brief squeak as he crushed a bat in his jaws. He swallowed it.
The other bats yeeked in terror.
“Stupid sot,” Thernadad said. “That’ll teach ’em some manners.”
