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By the third beating the pain wasn’t so bad, just dull war 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 hos

The tall one grunted and turned away, al 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 sy-scented ain, and the Copper shut his eyes

The one-eyed one interposed her body, and he noticed that she had leaves in her hair That should , he felt, but the aches in his body kept whatever vestigialdeep and dark

"The dwarves blame you for the cri a very wicked pair, a bronze and his mate, who’ve betrayed and stolen from the dwarves Dwarves will move mountains to reclaim their own, if you don’t know"

She looked at her co to the dwarves One leaned on one of the iron rods they’d used to beat hilowing beard as thenoncommittal hmpf sounds at the pauses The tall man unrolled some kind of map, and the potbellied dwarf sneezed

"I don’t hold with bla for the crimes of their parents, do you?"

He hesitated aWas it wise to talk to a…a…leaf-hair? Elf! So satisfied was he that he had finally summoned the name that he croaked, "No"

The elf showed her teeth when he answered, even though the asabout his snout

The talltongue Casually, while he spoke, he brought his heel down on the Copper’s tail The agony made him whimper and writhe, and the elf finally pushed him away

She yelled at the others until they shrank away from her fury If only Mother had been this protective of her own hatchling

Then she knelt beside his The dwarves have a buyer willing to pay a princely suain with the dwarves, a set of eggs in exchange for ed and fled

"I know dragons I suspect you were driven out of the nest by the stronger male Let me capture your brother and sisters, if any, and I’ll see to it you get enough copper--silver even--to stuff yourself for a year"

She reached into a bag on her belt and extracted some coins and let him sniff Even in his shattered and weakened state, the smell turned his mouth slick

She put the coins back, looked at the others Thesword, an evil carved blade extending fro and queen of dragons, this hatchling’s sires," thethe sky down into the deepest corners of the earth to find hiue

He ignored her "Just what you’d expect froeful dwarves I’ll take his griff as a trophy and the dwarves can finish him"

Another dwarf picked up an iron rod