“Up, Arnold, up!” Jim woke me with a well-aimed kick into my ribs.

I considered tripping the bastard and then giving him a good thrashing. Then I remembered that he was much bigger than I, and consistently won all of our wrestling practices. So I opted to growl a friendly protest instead.

“There is no need for kicking, you know?”

“No need, but it feels damn good.”

The fact that I was dallying with Lora while he and Beldrak were working on our magical bracers really ruffled Jim's feathers, and he didn't leave out one opportunity to get back at me for this perceived slight.

“Something is not right in his head ever since his god disowned him,” said Beldrak. “And it got really bad when we were working in the Chiseled Tower. But a few days worth of fresh air will help him to become tolerable again.”

That was a month ago, though, and Jim grew more intolerable by the day. If I was my usual self, one of us would have killed the other by now, but I wasn't exactly right in the head either. At long last, homesickness caught up with me. When we were fighting in the sunken citadel, I had little time to worry about Italia. During our journey to Sky Hall and then Golden Grove, my head was full of the new lands, new people and new cities. In Golden Grove, there was Lora to occupy my thoughts.

But by now, I have become accustomed to the peculiarities of this land, and they couldn't excite me anymore. Rhodarr was still teaching Beldrak and me, but other than that we barely spoke all day. I had hours upon hours to contemplate how far I have been cast from my home, my family and my gods. Homesickness and worries tormented me, my mood becoming blacker every day. The unexpectedly clear weather made my disposition even worse, instead of cheering me up - this golden autumn unearthed thousand childhood memories that only served to deepen my depression.

Meanwhile, Jim's grasp on his sanity was tenuous at best, Rhodarr was still sulking because we left him to rot in prison, and Beldrak was watching us with growing concerns.

“I have made tea,” he said now, and took the kettle down from the floating disk he conjured to use as a stove.

“It smells like Arnold's feet,” Jim said. “What have you put into it?”

“It's linden, but you are welcome to brew your own tea,” Trueanvil snapped. He was terribly proud of his tea-making abilities. Which the tiefling knew, of course.

“No, I think not. And I will pass up on your smelly slop too.”

“As you wish,” sighed the wizard, then poured himself.

“Now, as you know, we will reach Avennar today if everything goes as planned,” he said after he took a sip from his mug. “I have every hope that baron Alton himself will be there, as he left the last inn we passed just a day before we arrived.”

He paused and looked around. Then he exploded.

“So please, please, pretty fucking please start behaving like a functional group of adults!”

“Whatever you say, boss,” said Rhodarr. “Now, can I get some rum into my tea?”

“For breakfast?” I asked. “Do you miss prison so much?”

“First of all, fuck you; secondly, I am cold; and thirdly, mind your own damn business!”

“Have you heard the joke which starts with the crazy murderer and the drunk jailbird arguing?” asked Jim helpfully.

“A group of bloody children,” snorted Beldrak disgustedly. “If I had an inkling of common sense, I would have left you all in Golden Grove.”

“But you didn't, and here we are,” said Jim. “And now I am going to take a crap,” he started towards the forest by the road.

“There are wolves around here, I hear!” I shouted after him. “Please take care! Otherwise you might frighten the poor beasts!”

After a month of quarrelling, all trace of wit disappeared from our insults. Only petty and empty abuse remained, which we hurled at each other's head mechanically. By Jove how pointless it was! And how tiring! I wanted nothing more than to lay back on my bedroll and sleep until the sun was past its zenith. Or better yet, go back to Golden Grove to Lora. Or even better, go back home to Italia.

But none of this was possible. We drank tea, ate hardtack, then broke our camp and were on the march before the morning mist dispersed.

Rhodarr started his lessons as usual. Even though his relationship with us was far from cordial since Golden Grove, his teaching was still impeccable. These times, when he conversed with us in Draconic, he was all vigour and enthusiasm, and only after our lessons were done did he fall back in his usual sulking.

“Arnold, what day is today?” he asked me now, repeating the question after I didn't get it for the first time.

“It... is the 24th of Coldrain.”

“Coldrain? I only understand Draconic, Arnold! What is Coldrain?”

“What was the name then?”

“Yellow-leaf?” suggested Beldrak.

“Yellowing-leaves,” corrected Rhodarr. “Arnold?”

“Is... Yellowing-leaves 24th.”

“Which day is again the 24th?

“Today... is.”

“The whole sentence, please.”

I had to give it to him, it was a very efficient way of teaching the language. Usually we conversed like this for six hours a day while marching, and later, after we encamped, we practised writing and reading for two hours. I felt that we were making progress fast, and I was sure that in less than a year, my Draconic will be as good as my Etruscan. But Rhodarr also warned us that Draconic had many dialects which were almost unintelligible for even him.

“Dragons usually speak the same dialect no matter where they are from, or who raised them. It seems, even if they don't learn Draconic as their first language, they always understand it as soon as they are old enough to talk. Dragonborns, kobolds and troglodytes are different, just like humans or elves. I speak a dialect that is fairly common here in the Misty Hills, and which is relatively close to the dialect of the true dragons.”

“But in the eastern lands, where most of my kind live, they use vernaculars that have diverged from the accent of the dragons long ago. Kobolds tend to take their idiom directly from a dragon, as they often serve one. There is an exception: the great kobold city of Saltwell far away on the shore of Edwellian-sea speaks a lingo far removed from any other branch of Draconic. I have never been there, but I know a few who had been. They say that city is ruled by silver dragons who deliberately taught the saltwellian dialect to their subjects, and they speak it amongst each other.”

“Other than that, the small tribes living in the wilderness, be it kobold or dragonborn, often have their own lingo, just as human languages often change from village to village.”

He told this to us before we started learning, and we accepted it. After all, the most important for us was to understand dragons, and Rhodarr was teaching us an appropriate accent for that.

“Arnold, it is your turn!” he said now, putting an end to my daydreaming. “Tell me again how mortar is made! Yesterday you got almost all words right, so today you are not allowed to make mistakes at all!”