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With the waters rising again it meant a little longer swim to the treasure chamber. He took extra time smelling the air and certainly smelled no dwarves, though there was a dirtier scent, of the kind he associated with bits brought down from the Upper World.
The garbage pile had some meaty tidbits, and he lingered at the edge of the pool, ready for a fast dive, slowly nosing drier garbage aside while he extracted the meaty joints.
Then he smelled the silver.
It wasn’t a strong smell, and leather masked the aroma. He investigated next to the benches and cubbyholes—they smelled of the recently cooked meat—listening, always listening, and probing with eye and ear before he placed a foot.
The silver-and-leather smell came from pegs driven into a wooden wall hung with bits of woven fabric, most of which smelled like either grease or charcoal. Farther down the tunnel were stacks of fragrant wood, and many roots and herbs hung up and drying—perhaps the dwarves were replenishing supplies as the season changed above.
He found the source of the enticing smell. A leather bag containing a few coins—copper, silver, and even a faint aroma of gold—hung there. The top had some kind of binding on it, evidently to close it, and had been left loose, allowing the smell of coin to escape.
The Copper salivated. The dwarf would pay for his forgetfulness….
He nosed the bag off the peg.
Ka-thunk!
The peg, relieved of the coin’s weight, sprang up in its wooden slot.
Hairy masses of rope engulfed him. Festoons dropped from the cave roof, weighted with chains, and his eyesight went white as one of them struck him across the snout. The boxes to either side exploded open, throwing more lines that sprang from them. He felt weights and hooks and slick little circles of metal skittering across the floor.
When his eyesight returned he saw shadows all around, their beards glowing faintly. He felt tugs at his limbs as they attached lines.
He’d never been so terrified. His hearts felt as though they’d burst out of his chest or from behind his griff. Auron’s leaps and sudden pins were nothing to this.
One was trying to extract the purse from his mouth, grunting as he pulled. The Copper sawed at the purse strings and the dwarf fell back. Defiantly, he swallowed the silver. The dwarves might win a three-limbed hatchling, but they’d lose their silver.
The dwarves made noises that all seemed to be some variety of yak or grumt or phmumph.
They drove metal claws into the rocks and tied him, snout and tail, and set bands of leather about his limbs. A massive dwarf with an ax watched the whole thing, gurgling to his companions, ready to sever his head if he wiggled free.
But the dwarvish hands seemed made of rock and iron, and he was soon covered with their greasy smell.
Then the beatings began.
They took iron bars and smashed them against his vulnerable pinioned tail. The pain ran up his body, fired in each digit, sparked yellow in his eye sockets, whirled about his organs so that each breath brought agony.
He whimpered; he cried; he sent mind-pictures begging them to stop.
That pain was nothing to what came when they stopped, gave him time to sleep and heal, and then started in on his tail again. During the second beating his teeth came together and tore at mouth edge and tongue until he spit blood.
Even through the pain a clarity took over and he wondered at the dwarves. What sort of creatures cause pain just for the sake of pain? There was no contest for control of a cavern, and they weren’t killing him to eat him. The torture was its own end.
By the third beating the pain wasn’t so bad, just dull warmth with the occasional jolt, like a fading cramp.
He heard a heavy step and shifted his body, felt scales give way. His skin had stuck to the floor with his own dried blood.
He did his best to tuck his tail. It moved clumsily, stiff and heavy, unable to curl. He rolled an eye upward, saw a vague sort of shadow, a hominid huge and dark looming above. The hominid smelled of dogs.
The tall one grunted and turned away, almost as an afterthought giving him a swiping kick to the nose with the side of his heel. Pain shot across both eyes.
A warbling broke out, and another hominid fell to its—no, her—knees in front of him. Her flat face was scarred on one side, and she wore an eye patch. A light brown eye, with just a touch of Mother’s gold and a hint of green, looked into his.
“Oh, how they’ve hurt you, young one,” she said in intelligible Drakine. “Poor thing.”
His hearts woke to the words, the sympathy of her tone, even if the Drakine was nasal and harsh. She reached out and rubbed him between the eyes. If his snout hadn’t been tied shut, he would have brushed her with the tip of his tongue, so grateful was he for the sympathy.
“Worthless little scut,” the tall, broad, dog-scented man said in far worse Drakine. He lifted his boot again, and the Copper shut his eyes.
