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The demen shoved their boat back into the river
The Copper heard a screa new quills in the chest and leg where none had been before He dropped soht-colored orb into the water as he fell His companion shoved their craft into the water and fell on board
The Copper saw sparks fly as ed into view, striking at the de, lashing out with blades in each hand, head-butting dwarves with his spiked helht him across the horned spine The dwarves didn’t stop to celebrate, but threide, flat-bottomed craft of their own into the water and pursued the wounded deman and his companion
The Copper waited with the bats, who filled the ti of exhaustion and hatred of the river and travel He ignored the chatter The only bat he couldn’t afford to lose was Enjor
"Keep out of sight," he told the bats "If I jump off the craft, just drift with it for a while"
He approached the tunnelflesh--heard the dwarves chattering as they burned the body of the slain deman
A pale white object just beneath the river’s surface caught his eye He arrested his silent drift and retrieved it by pinching it between his good sii and the crippled li the river stiffened and took a step toward the bank
It was an egg S and wider at one end than the other, it had a faint, clean srip and let his raft continue downstream The dwarf looked out onto the river, unsure of his own eyes, but by the ti a riverbend
He heard a distant ha later they came upon the dwarf boat, anchored just beneath a series of cracks in the cavern wall that led to another hole in the cavern roof He smelled demen here, and a little dwarf
The dwarves had anchored their craft with an arrowlike piece of ainst the dwarf boat
He dug his teeth into the line holding the boat A quick grind of his teeth and the boat co into some canvas at the bottom of the boat, hopped in after it, and sniffed around the bottom He found sonored the bread, and sed the , with canvas sides held up by wooden slats It leaked a little through the hinge at the bottouessed the dwarves folded the boat up to carry it through the tunnels
He s It was cracked, either when the deman dropped it or in his clumsy retrieval--perhaps even when he’d tossed it into the boat
He tasted the fluid Delicious! He widened the crack and began to lap at the fluid within, and found it so tasty he greedily shoved his nose in and sucked the yolk down He felt like a new dragon afterward
The bats, always sensitive to athat had dripped or pooled in the cracked shell
He sue around the edges of his mouth It was the bestof his own land like the dragon-lords of old, he’d eat one just like it every day
He crunched down the shell Then he left the dwarf boat No one would ever mistake it for a bit of flotsam And if the dwarves needed it back…well, as a series of le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>