"If not us then someone else. It's the way it has been for centuries now. In the face of that, I find it difficult to complain," he said. He hadn't specifically set out for that duty or for many others that had befallen him. The young recruits never put that much thought into such things, nor did they have that much knowledge of what it entailed. He didn't think he'd have chosen any differently, nonetheless.

"Dignified?" That earned a soft snort of a laugh. "Show me any fight to the death where anyone has the luxury of being dignified, and I'll show you a dreadfully overbalanced fight that probably should never have happened in the first place." Maybe dragons swallowed people down their gullets with dignity. For the rest of them it was the mad scramble, the rush of adrenaline, skill, timing, and often dumb luck. "You did what needed to be done. If anyone there has a problem with how you looked, I certainly haven't heard it."

He had the sail run up and trimmed with just a little fumbling, then headed to the back of the boat to take a seat and set a hand to the tiller. With the direction of the wind, he didn't think he'd need to do much tacking until they wanted to find the inlet his friend had told him about. "You know, it's really not much of a trip between Kirkwall and Amaranthine. Maybe a week full round. I don't know if she's still there. That was the last I had heard. I imagine if you wrote the castellan of Vigil's Keep you could find out for certain."