“Suit yourself, but it helps your eyeballs,” he said, referring to Alwyn’s need for spectacles. Yimt upended the canteen and gulped several mouthfuls of a liquid most certainly not water as the pungent vapors drifted into the night air. Wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, Yimt deftly stuffed a wad of crute, the rock spice the dwarf was forever chewing, between his cheek and metal-colored teeth.

“Five islands of nothing but black misery. I understand the need to weed these foul trees before they really take root, but why’s it always us? I’ll tell you this, Ally, if his arseness the Prince orders us to one more dust speck in the middle of the ocean, I might just risk the noose and kick the bugger right where his top and bottom halves meet. And with a running start.”

A smile, Alwyn thought. I know I should smile.

Alwyn took a deep breath and let it out, forcing his shoulders to relax and doing his best to reassure. “I can see you’re wasting no time in trying to lose those sergeant’s stripes,” he said.

Yimt patted his arm and traced a finger around the recently sewn-on stripes on his uniform. “These aren’t what make a dwarf, Ally, though I got to admit I’m feeling a bit more protective of them this time round. Someone’s got to keep their head.”

“You’re saying Major Swift Dragon isn’t?”

Yimt rolled his eyes. “The major’s spittin’ musket balls. The Prince is a hairsbreadth from his last breath if he keeps sending us to these cursed islands instead of straight on to the desert wastes of the Hasshugeb Expanse. Now just between you and me, I’m starting to wonder a bit about the major. He’s gettin’ a bit frantic to find the first Iron Elves. ’Course, I can see his point. Be nice to have some reinforcements with all this going on,” he said, again waving a hand around them. “I swear by the dew of a freshly laundered nun the major’s going to do the Prince harm.”