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But the nits always rallied and returned Each tiet the fish of that deep, vast lake They were bony, and had thick hides with horny di shovel noses But the softest, tastiest flesh he’d ever sa the underside down the long tail If he dipped his tail in the lake and poked at the botto rocks, the fish would often come, drawn to whatever creatures were stirred up by his probe And et his jaws on one before it could flee, though he once was taken on a wild underwater ride by a specith

He ca teeth

He feasted on fish and the bats feasted on hih the bats were better at digging the creatures out of their fur Scale had its disadvantages

But after a period of rest and feasting on fish he felt the urge to ood insect hunting, especially over those awful pads in the middle of the lake, but after one of their nu that was allon

Just when he thought it was tiain, they were delayed by one of the younger bats giving birth to a trio of young The bats had a strange syste in which the newborns lapped fluid fro wasteful; to hislearned to feed the the utter helplessness of a pink newborn bat, their systeed twice-daily feedings of dragonblood for the nursing reed, mostly because Thernadad said a well-fedwould soon be able to cling to their on, and thus they’d be able to get going downriver all the sooner

Itscarce at that end of the lake, the Copper explored its edges He found a few old dwarvish camps and exploratory tunnels filled with little butback with half of one of the bony fish floating along in hishis clie of the lake because it was e sort of vessel, hardly large enough for more than three dwarves, only a quarter the width of the other vessels, and entirely lacking in machinery Parts of it were charred, and the wood that was in contact with the water had rotted

The Copper found a few tasty reenish heavy metal They s it palatable, he pulled out a second one, and the vessel parted fro into two pieces, one of which was dry and still floated

What dwarves could do, he could He hopped into it and, after a , found that it supported him It was curved, and about half of it went under the water He found that if he lay between the two raised arms he could be mostly out of the water

He pushed off and paddled with his saa, alternating with tail swipes when his legs grew tired With this, he didn’t need a dwarf boat It wasn’t quite swi, but it would do

He paddled it back to the rocks where the bats waited, clinging to the cavern ceiling, and showed off his prize The bats were otten better at pounding ideas into rown used to following his orders "This way you don’t need to fly all the ties, there"

"Ooo,that," Ma and end up on top ofto my back I won’t roll over Here, try"

She stayed where she was on the rock until Thernadad gave her a shove Then she fluttered down and settled on his head

"You’re blocking rets, sir," Mamedi said

He pushed out and swae would handle in the stronger current of the river tunnel But even if he bumped his whole way to the Lavado The dwarves, for all their faults, kne to get from one bit of cavern to another with as little discoe of the Copper’s discovery was that it allowed the youngback onof the journey as one of the key turning points in his life A thousand tiny circu de Had he ridden lazily in the piece of wreckage instead of paddling, had he not passed up likely landing places because of dwarf-smell and pushed the bats, had it been another season when the river flowed e chain of events started when he saw a distant shape in the diht that marked a tunnelin a little shell of a boat not er than his own bit of wood

He reached out a saa and arrested his drift

Three deed their boat out of the current while a third scouted, spiny projections on his back bristling The two began to take baggage out of their craft

"Kuu! Kuu! Kuuuuu!" a chorus of voices shouted