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Chapter 10
The journey south took a good deal more time, both because of the greater distance they traveled and the infrequency of tunnel boats. Most of the craft on this part of the river were warships thick with well-armed dwarves and throw-lamps. He didn’t dare ride any of those, for dwarves rode in the front, with a good view of the prow of the ship, sometimes tossing lines to probe the water depth.
He even encountered one being laboriously drawn back up against the current by dwarves using poles and hooks, sweating and grunting and chanting as they worked.
They clung and splashed to another vast lake, and Enjor advised them to make for the other side. It was easy enough for the bats to fly, but the Copper had to fight his way through a waterfield of spongy pads anchored to the bottom by long roots. A black slime thick with biting water mites infested the underside of each pad. The slime caught in his scales, and he began to itch immediately.
All the Copper could do was curse the bats for their ability to fly, and his curses were all the more venomous thanks to the foreknowledge that he would never fly, even if he lived to see his wings uncase.
They lingered at the edge of the lake for a day or two in a warren of half-submerged rocks and sand and muck. He had no way of telling time other than his body’s natural rhythm, as he tried to scrub out the nits with sand and freshwater, scratching himself until he was raw and bleeding. In this case the bats were a positive blessing; their saliva took away the itch as they worked over every sore spot.>“The dead men did the fighting for me,” the Copper replied.
“What be that to us? Bug juice is poor in vitality,” Mamedi said. “Besides, w’be leaving the body behind.”
“Ooo, m’be famished, how about—” one of Mamedi’s relations began.
“None of that, now,” Thernadad said. “Our host has done enough. Suck air and saliva for a bit.”
The Copper hardly heard them. He wished he hadn’t thrown away that helmet in a fit of temper. If nothing else, he could poke the more annoying bats with it.
“Good news, m’lord,” Enjor said.
“Almost any change could be good news.” Food, freshwater, an end to all these twists and turns. Even a change in light level. He was tired of groping through the dark, led on by bat yeeks from patch of dim moss to patch of dim moss.
“W’be at the river.”
The Copper had been walking for the last thousand paces or so with just one eye open, trying to sleep as he slid his three good legs forward and hopped over his bad.
“How far?”
“Y’be smelling it just over this next incline.”
The bats flew wearily ahead. He climbed up a rocky tunnel. Someone had cleared a path of loose boulders.
“All I smell is dwarf.”
“Must be a’fighting with the demen again,” Thernadad said.
They passed over a makeshift wall in the tunnel, the source of all the loose boulders, and descended. The Copper smelled wood: Splintered shields lay all about, some with arrows growing out of them. He extracted a few arrowheads and swallowed them. What had made this dark pocket of emptiness worth fighting over?
“M’perishing,” Thernadad gasped.
“We’ll rest.”
The Copper hoped he could find fish in the river. His appetite had progressed from tickle to gnaw to worry two marches ago. He curled up. Past the “wall” the tunnel turned into another series of chambers leading off in various directions, mostly down.
“Lights. Lights!”
It took the Copper a moment to realize that he’d been asleep. He shook his head, clearing cobwebs some industrious spider had woven on his ear. He scanned the downslope with his good eye, marked the beams of light waving around, probing corners.
Behind the beams of light he saw the outlines of glowing beards and thick curves of light-frosted helmets. Dwarves.
“A’searching the cavern,” Thernadad said. “Better run, sir.”
“I don’t think I’m up to it,” the Copper said. “Here, all of you gather ’round; let’s go down this incline. Oh, never mind the damp…I’ve got an idea.”
The Copper clung to the cavern roof in the downslope, hidden by a series of serrations not very different from the ones on the roof of his mouth. The dwarves had broken up into smaller groups to better search all the chambers and shafts of the system behind the wall.
A dragonlength below and up the slope from him, the bats lay on the floor, as relaxed as he could make them, save for Mamedi’s sister, who cowered in a crack for fear of being stepped on by a dwarf.
