“He’ll be quick. Silent,” his mother countered.
“Perhaps.”
“All the less hunger to fill. Remember your youth, the chances you took.”
Auron got a mind-picture from his father. Stolen sheep, screaming warriors, the pounding of hunting horses. He felt old scars, crusted over with misshapen scales. He shivered.
“See!” Mother exclaimed. “He takes to your mind already. He learns from you. Teach him.”
“In good time. Perhaps the copper will reclaim the shelf?”
“Not likely. Auron has weight on him already, and is alert and quick.”
Father looked down at the copper, who had retreated to a crevice in the cave wall away from the egg shelf. “It might be kinder to just—”
“No. He shall have his chance. I hear him hunting slugs and rats. Appetite will soon drive him outside. You have fathered two males, my lord. Think of it! Four survivors of five eggs. The words will sound fine in your lifesong.”
Armored fans expanded from Father’s crest at the thought, covering sensitive earholes and the pulse points behind the angle in his jaw where the twin neck hearts worked, then returned to their sheaths. Auron felt his own griff descend a little, but they seemed thin and flimsy by comparison.
“Perhaps you are right. A worthy line for the battle roar,” Father said, as though he’d thought of the idea himself. “Though you may have to help me with it. Wordplay is not my strength.”
“I remember every word of your mating song, harsh though it was to my ears. But I took to the sky with you nonetheless.”
“If my song was lacking, what reason had you?”
Mother’s skin darkened again, and Auron saw a mind-picture of Father shining in the glare of the Upper World, only four horns on his head but still mighty, beating his wings so as to bend the trees as he sang.
“Your great horned head, my lord,” Mother said as her skin turned the richest green. “Ten thousand scales that reflected the yellow sun, your bellows that shivered the very clouds. Your presence captivated me. I lost my head . . . and my hearts. The first came back to me . . . afterwards. But you shall always hold the second.”
Auron’s nose itched abominably. He felt the urge to rub his egg horn against the cave wall, but fought the instinct. After seeing his sisters lose theirs by scraping them off against Mother’s scales, he decided he did not want to part with his. His egg horn still smelled faintly of his brother’s blood, reminding him of the service it had done. There was still the copper to think of, and he worried that he might need its point again in another fight.
Climbing Mother took his mind off the discomfort. He swarmed up her neck and stood atop her head, bleating out his satisfaction with his feat to his sisters below.
Her tail was even more of a challenge, for she swung it up and down, back and forth, until he felt giddy with the motion as he hugged its whirling end. On a low sweep of her tail, he gathered himself and leaped. He sailed over his sisters in a splay-legged fall, and upon landing instinctively absorbed the impact with his tail.
“ ’Gain, Mama!” he squeaked, scaling her haunch. His hooked claws made climbing her armored skin easy.
“Not just now,” she countered. “Eat a little.”
He remembered his appetite and returned to the half-eaten horse, placed on the shelf this morning by Father. It was much better than the egg-size slugs Father had gathered the two previous days. Mother seemed content to eat slugs, though, even with horse-flesh available.
“Wish we could ’ave ’orse every day, Mama,” he said. His sisters had not left him much for seconds. They were useless baggage. All they did was eat and sleep and chatter at each other. If he tried to get them to do something interesting, like wrestle, they would skedaddle for Mother’s belly, squealing. He almost wished the copper would try to take some horse.
“Father has to hunt the Upper World if we are to have horse, Auron. He can’t afford to be gone too long.”
“Why?”
“It’s a risk, dear. You and your sisters are precious beyond my words’ ability to tell. He doesn’t dare leave us.”
“Why?”
“Someone might try to come and take you.”
“Who would come?”
“Your father will tell you, when the time is right.”
Auron—with a belly full of horse entering his bloodstream—bristled. “I’ll fight ’em, Mama!” He shot to the edge of the shelf and looked down, in search of foemen come to harm Mother and his hapless sisters. His griff descended along either side of his head and rattled against his crest at the thought.